They had to be quiet about their plan. No one would agree with them; spouting with the utmost belief that Dumbledore knew what was best for Harry. Fortunately, Hermione and Sirius had grown rather adept at sneaking around Grimmauld Place to meet up and sneak cigarettes, so it was easy enough to be meeting up for another purpose.
Over the next few days, still with no news from Dumbledore or the rest of the Order about picking up Harry, the planning begun. Their first plans were too simple, and the easy ideas were dismissed almost immediately. Then came the overly complicated plans that would have been impossible to pull off.
They decided, in the end, to stick to a simple idea that was foolproof. They hoped it was, anyway. They had to find a way to clue Harry in as much as possible, but they couldn't figure out how at first. Dumbledore, or someone else from the Order, were reading Hermione and Ron's letters to Harry so there would be no way that they could outright just say it. Sirius, as decreed by Dumbledore, was not allowed to send letters to anyone.
Which if you asked him, was complete bullshit. Hermione agreed - he was a grown adult and not allowed to send a letter? However, Dumbledore had sound reasoning behind it. "Sirius was an escaped convict," Dumbledore told Hermione when she asked, "it would be a great travesty if the ministry were to find that he was hiding in Britain. Indeed, a greater one if they were able to find where he was hiding."
After that short conversation with Dumbledore, Sirius had been able to see the swotty bookworm in Hermione that Harry had told him about. She seemed to have had a revelation from the conversation but wouldn't tell Sirius about it until she was sure that it had merit. She was looking a bit hectic in her research, so Sirius decided that the reasonable thing to do was to go bug Moony.
One of the first thing that they agreed on in regards to their plan for Harry was that it had to stay secret. That meant that neither of them could change their behaviour and potentially tip someone off about it. For Sirius, that meant that he had to carry on bugging Moony and Dumbledore about Harry and when he was going to arrive. It wasn't difficult. He was still anxious about it and now knowing that Harry had very little protection made him more so.
For Hermione that meant that she carried on cleaning with the Weasleys, as that was the only thing that the children in the house were really permitted to do. It wasn't unusual for Hermione to hole herself in the library at the end of the day, so no one blinked an eye when she retreated to the library. No one joined her either, as the adults all kind of ignored the children and the Weasleys knew that if they went in the library, Hermione would ask them about their summer homework.
The most frustrating thing was that she had to carry on writing to Harry as though nothing was wrong when she knew it was.
Her hard work paid off, though. After a few nights of slogging through old history books, Hermione had found a solution. Not to the picking up Harry problem, but to Sirius' problem. Dumbledore had said that Sirius was an escaped convict, but that hadn't sat right with Hermione. She knew that Sirius hadn't had a trial, and therefore wasn't convicted of anything. He couldn't possibly be an escaped convict if he hadn't been charged and convicted of a crime.
The solution to this problem would be to get Sirius a trial, but to hand him over to the ministry would result in him receiving the dementor's kiss. So Hermione had been looking through old court cases, and the customs of the Wizengamot to see if this had happened before. Somehow she wasn't surprised that it had.
They met up that night, as was their custom, and she told him, "I think I have a solution." He perked up before asking, "About Harry?"
She shook her head, before stopping with a considering expression. "No. Well, kind of. It's actually about you."
He laughed and replied with a cocky look, "what isn't about me?" Hermione could almost see him nearly twenty years younger, goofing around in Hogwarts with an ego bigger than the castle.
The playful mood turned sombre when she continued, "it's about your trial. About how you didn't get one, to be more specific. I was researching, and I found that it's happened before - someone being sentenced to Azkaban without a trial. There was a case years ago where Feliks Rowle was imprisoned for poisoning his father. It came out after about a year that it was actually his younger brother, who had wanted to be the Head of the House had poisoned their father, which would have been fairly obvious if they'd bothered to give Feliks a trial."
Sirius didn't say anything, but nodded along with her to let her know that he was listening.
"It led to a new precedent being made, to avoid this from happening again. But because it's such old common law, it took a bit of time to find, and to understand. Basically, you have to hand yourself in to the ministry and tell them that you're there under the protection of precedent from case number 14706."
Predictably, Sirius did not like her idea. "What do you mean, hand myself in?" He exploded, his hands clenched in fists. "You know they'll just throw me back into a cell so they can get a dementor!"
Hermione grinned at him, and Sirius found himself perplexed. Why was she smiling about that? "I know. That's why we're not going to do that." She leaned towards him, conspiratorially. "What we're going to do is this."
She explained the plan and the effects it would have if it all worked, and Sirius was amazed that someone that was only fourteen could concoct something so complicated, and that it was a viable plan for the problem he'd been dealing with for nearly as long as she'd been alive. Not only that, but she'd done it with only three or four days of research!
The more she explained her plan, the more sense it made to Sirius, and by the end of it, he had an answering grin to Hermione's.
"We can't do that yet, though," she cautioned him. He had a questioning look, and he tilted his head in confusion. Just like a dog, Hermione thought to herself, amused.
"Because first, we're going to try to smuggle information to Harry. I need you to tell me if anyone that checks the letters is muggleborn, or if they would know anything about muggles." When Sirius shook his head, she carried on telling him her idea. "So I figure, that if I write Harry about muggle television or something, they won't know what to look for or if anything's off about it, as long as it's not too obvious."
Sirius threw his head back and cackled. "You're a genius, you know?" Hermione laughed with him, now feeling more secure in her plan. It helped her believe it a bit more now that an adult had heard it and agreed with her.
"So, what's the first step?" Sirius asked, becoming thoughtful. "Writing Harry, right?"
Hermione nodded and was suddenly glad that Harry's aunt and uncle had raised him, otherwise the entire plan would be useless. Well, for a given value of 'raised', anyway. But if the members of the Order were mostly purebloods and halfbloods like Sirius said, then there were no issues with writing Harry. Apart from making the phrasing obvious enough for him to pick up on but not too obvious that the person checking the letter would be able to pick up on it.
"That's gonna be the hardest part of this bit," she told Sirius. "Merlin knows I love Harry like a brother but sometimes that boy couldn't figure something out if it was slapping him in the face," she laughed.
Sirius quirked an eyebrow and asked, "anything embarrassing?"
Hermione hummed as she tried to think of something recent enough that she wouldn't have to try to explain the three years of their Hogwarts education. Her eyes lit up as she told Sirius about the Yule Ball experience.
"Well this one isn't as embarrassing for Harry as it is for Ron, but apparently neither of them had realised that I'm a girl until about the week before the Yule Ball. Neither of them had dates and were getting a bit desperate, especially Harry because he had to dance as a Champion with a date to open the Ball. So one day they were talking about it and I didn't say anything because I didn't want to show off that I had a date and they didn't. Harry asked if I had a date and I could just tell that he was going to ask me and then Ron chimed that 'Hermione's a girl!' And that I should go with one of them because a girl going without a date is just sad."
Sirius raised his eyebrows in disbelief. He could understand what Hermione meant about Harry being oblivious now because even he had never been as bad. He'd met Hermione in her third year and saw the obvious - she was a girl. He was a bit puzzled how Harry and Ron had needed nearly four years to figure that one out but was aware that Ron wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed.
Hermione and Sirius were only a few days away from enacting their plan, just needed a few more days to figure out any flaws, but in typical Harry style, it all went wrong.
Harry had been attacked by dementors. The Order was in uproar, all furious at Mundungus, who was supposed to be watching Harry. Sirius wasn't taking it well, to say the least. He'd told her before that the Blacks weren't good at controlling their emotions, and Hermione could tell that he really was trying not to act on his emotional impulses. He was still stalking around Grimmauld Place quietly simmering in his fury.
Hermione had noticed that Mundungus hadn't returned to the Order's headquarters since Harry had been attacked. She was able to find out that Mundungus was terrified of Sirius, terrified of all the Blacks, really. It was something to do with schoolboy fights and duels and then later, fighting both with and against various Black siblings and cousins. With the way Sirius was acting Hermione didn't think she could blame Mundungus for his avoidance. She didn't think it was going to be pretty when Mundungus did eventually resurface.
However, every cloud has a silver lining, and the silver lining of this cloud is that Harry could finally leave Surrey and his awful family. The Order had a plan that was drawn up suspiciously quickly following the attack, leading Hermione to suspect that Dumbledore had figured that something like that might happen. And yet, he had left Harry practically defenceless over the summer, apparently for some sort of blood wards. Hermione thought it was bullshit, especially after Voldemort's use of Harry's blood in the ritual at the end of the last year.
Harry appeared after a tense few days with Hermione more wound up every day that passed, and Sirius still coldly reining in his anger. He was hostile towards everyone, snapping at anyone who tried to talk to him, even Remus. Hermione had snuck out of the bedroom she shared with Ginny to find Sirius and smoke together like they used to, and it had ended with him shouting at her to just leave him alone. It stung more than Hermione had thought it would.
She tried to be understanding, tried to give him his space but it was difficult in a house where neither of them could leave, and the only other company they had were the Weasleys. Hermione loved the Weasleys but they were all beginning to get on her nerves. Especially the twins who thought it a brilliant idea to apparate everywhere they needed to go in the house.
The whole house was tense, everyone uncomfortable with the rising anxiety of various occupants, so it came as no surprise when Hermione was startled by George and had screamed in shock when he apparated into the kitchen when she was quietly trying to make herself a cup of tea at god knows what time in the morning. To be fair to George, he looked equally startled to have found her in the kitchen. Both of them were startled when Sirius barged into the room, staggering drunkenly and wand out.
He looked at the two of them and seemed to realise that there was no danger. He sighed and looked at Hermione. "Fancy a cig, kitten?"
George gaped at the offer, and the familiar way Sirius spoke to Hermione. Hermione thought George's jaw was going to drop off when she gave a considering hum and then nodded. "You coming, George?" She asked mainly to tease him. It was a bit of a challenge too, and an easy way to make sure that it stayed between the three of them. And, Fred too, she supposed.
He didn't respond, but he did follow Hermione and Sirius into the garden, the spot where they'd first encountered each other only a few weeks ago. It felt longer. George still didn't say anything during the now-familiar ritual of Sirius handing Hermione the packet of cigarettes and his lighter, her lighting a cigarette and passing it to him and then lighting one himself. She didn't light one for George, just silently handed him the cigarettes and lighter.
Hermione felt a bit mean, but couldn't help but laugh at him. Sirius finally seemed mellow enough to be able to partake in conversation without snapping because he raised his eyebrows at George and said, "not what you were expecting?"