Hermione couldn't remember when she'd first started hearing the voices, though she was sure it had never happened before she'd entered the department of mysteries a few months prior.

She couldn't always hear what they were saying either. Sometimes the voices woke her up, even though the brief snippets of conversations she caught weren't clear. It didn't matter if the words were whispered or shouted in the dark, it was never just one voice and it was never coherent. But when she slept the voices were clearest.

Occasionally what she heard comforted her - though she could never remember exactly what it was that did. Other times what she heard had her waking up in a cold sweat with no concrete reason as to why.

Still she tried not to let the strange new development bother her - it wasn't like she was actually hearing the voices aloud. She was probably just stressed, wrung out and a tiny bit paranoid.

She didn't express her concerns to Harry and Ron because Harry had enough to worry about, with his extra lessons with Dumbledore. And Ron...Well Ron was too busy sticking his tongue down Lav Lav's throat to notice anything was amiss with one of his so called best friends.

One of the rare times she actually caught a coherent whisper, the voice muttered its opinion on Ron's maturity and soothingly stated all the ways Ron wasn't right for her. She found herself agreeing with that voice, and found that it helped her stop wasting time and tears on someone as immature and selfish as Ron.

So, she kept the voices a secret from everyone.

As the year went on and Harry became more and more obsessed with Draco Malfoy and Ron became less obsessed with Lavender, Hermione began to think that the voices she'd been hearing so frequently previously were finally leaving her be.

She hadn't heard a coherent voice in months and the whispers were becoming less consistent too. Infact Hermione was beginning to wonder if she hadn't made the whole episode up and it was merely her subconscious manifesting due to the sheer amount of pressure she'd been under.

It wasn't until she was kneeling beside Harry as he wept over the body of Dumbledore, cursing the existence of Snape and muttering "I told you so's" quietly under his breath that the voices returned and snapped Hermione's posture straight.

It probably had something to do with the fact that there was only one voice now. It was rational and insistent and if Hermione wasn't sure of the fact that the man was dead she would have sworn he was kneeling right behind her speaking directly into her ear.

"Poor Harry" he spoke softly.

It wasn't every day you heard the rich baritone voice of a very not alive Sirius Black.

Hermione tried not to panic the first time she heard Sirius' voice. After all it wasn't that uncommon for your subconscious to take on the "voice" of someone you knew and so she quickly tuned him out and focused on Harry and the fallout from Dumbledore's death.

And it worked. For a few days.

When things had quieted down and Harry had explained to both Hermione and Ron about the fruitless journey he and Dumbledore had taken right before he died to find a horcrux she was barely able to pass off the jump Sirius' voice had given her when Harry had read the note aloud.

"R.A.B?" Sirius muttered under his breath and Hermione had to stop herself from turning her head to where he should have been sitting.

"Regulus?" He muttered again before going silent once more. Hermione frowned at his tone and then again when she realised she'd thought he had one – Sirius was dead. The only voice in her head was her own.

Still when they happened to stumble upon Regulus' old room in Grimmauld place and ascertained from Kreacher the how, where, when and why of Regulus' death, Hermione couldn't help feel apprehensive. There was no way she was really hearing Sirius' voice in real time. Right?

Time moved on. They went to the ministry succeeding and failing all in one day. They moved slower with an injured, bitter, resentful Ron.

Hermione couldn't hide her disgust when he eventually left them – it wasn't the first time he'd abandoned Harry as Sirius reminded her.

"He's always been jealous of both you and Harry" he whispered to her when they were alone. Hermione hummed her agreement, something she found she was doing on an ever-increasing basis as they exchanged moments of quiet conversation. She tried not to think too much about her inconceivable connection with Sirius – there was too much going on to fixate on it now. There would be time when the war ended and Harry had won, Hermione assured herself – it helped that Sirius agreed with her.

She dreamt him up one night. They were both sitting on a couch in Grimmauld place.

"Hello kitten" he smirked at her, tucking an errant curl behind her ear in the process. She stared at him, eyes wide and heart racing.

"You're dead" she mumbled, standing suddenly and spilling the glass of red wine she'd apparently been holding all over the floor. He only smirked up at her before he was suddenly behind her, his breath hot against the back of her neck.

"Am I though?" He hushed.

Hermione shot up from the lower bunk panting heavily, tears prickling at the back of her eyes.

"It's not real, it's not real, IT'S NOT REAL" she screamed - her magic crackling around her.

"Hermione?"

Harry stood at the entrance to the tent soaking wet.

"Harry" she muttered, wiping the tears that had spilled down her face with the back of her sleeve, "You're all wet – why are you wet?" She asked, her face scrunching up in confusion at the sight.

He smirked at her and she felt a frisson of fear crawl up her spine at how eerily familiar it was.

"Look what, and who I found" he smiled, holding up the sword of Gryffindor and moving aside to reveal an equally wet Ron.

"I'm sorry kitten. I didn't mean to scare you" he whispered softly.

Hermione closed her eyes and grit her teeth in an attempt to fight the overwhelming sense of fear she felt sitting alone on guard, while Harry and Ron dried off and caught some sleep.

"Go away Sirius" she gritted out, opening her eyes to dispel the image of him looking at her with puppy dog eyes. She felt truly alone for the first time in nearly two years when she did and the eerie silence of the night surrounded her.

"SIRIUS" she screamed over and over again in her mind as she writhed under the force of Bellatrix's cruciatus.

"Please Sirius, Merlin please" she yelled in her mind while Bellatrix carved her arm open.

"I'm right here love, I'm always right here" he muttered affectionately and Hermione could almost feel his hand running through her hair as he whispered words of praise and encouragement in her ear about how well she was doing and how strong she was - how proud he was of her. She sobbed in relief as his voice washed over her and then there was quiet.

There was no time to stop. There was no time to think. They were at Shell cottage, then Gringotts, Hogsmeade and finally Hogwarts. There was no time for anything – until there was.

Harry was dead, then he wasn't and Voldemort really was. There were tears and smiles and heartbreak for Fred and Remus and Tonks.

"Poor Teddy" Sirius sighed and Hermione couldn't help but see him run a hand through his hair in exasperation and sadness at the loss of his young cousin and fellow marauder. Hermione spent the night in her old bed in Gryffindor tower.

"I want to see you" she mumbled as she fell asleep.

She "woke up" on a sofa in the library of Grimmauld place with Sirius kneeling beside her, watching her eyes flutter, her mouth parting slightly, her chest rising and falling.

She turned to look at him and felt naked under his gaze – she could feel his hand on her hair now.

"What is this?" She asked swallowing down the lump in her throat – no one had ever looked at her the way he was.

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you" he chuckled ruefully, standing and moving away from her towards the stacked shelves of the room. Hermione followed him with her eyes for a moment before she spoke.

"What if I read it?" She asked hesitantly – Sirius grinned lasciviously at her.

"You can't ignore me forever love" Sirius muttered petulantly as Hermione smiled at the young wizard she was currently on a date with. She hadn't been particularly eager to go out with him or anyone but Harry had refused to stop going on and on about his new work colleague that was apparently "perfect" for her. Hermione had only smiled at him and agreed, as long as he left her love life alone if the date didn't work out – which it obviously wasn't going to, though not for the young man's lack of trying.

No, the only person who was "perfect" for her was twenty years her senior and currently dead.

Soulmates.

That's what the bloody book Sirius had pointed her in the direction of had said. It's also what every other book she'd manage to find on the topic had reiterated. Sirius was her soulmate, and because of the unusual way he'd died and the fact that she'd been in the surrounding area at the time his subconscious had landed with her and now here they were.

Two years after the war had finally ended and Hermione wasn't able to move on with her life. Sure, she had gone back to school and got her N.E.W.T.S and eventually landed a job in the legal department of the newly reformed ministry but she'd never been able to connect with someone on a personal level and begin a relationship with them no matter how hard she tried.

Because no matter how hard she tried they didn't measure up to the wizard who lived in her head. They didn't frustrate or challenge or irritate her as well as he did and she knew that if he hadn't fallen through the veil when she was sixteen that they easily could have started a relationship when she finished school.

It wasn't fair.

She'd been telling him that every day since she'd found out the truth. She'd cried herself to sleep over it more times than she could count – she couldn't have the wizard who was "perfect" for her in every way and she'd never be truly happy with anyone else. She told him all this, again, when she eventually fell asleep and "woke up" in his arms that night.

"I don't know how much longer I can do this Sirius" she mumbled into his chest as he trailed his fingertips over her back, leaning down to give her a chaste kiss on the lips, his thumbs wiping her tears away.

"I know love" he sighed, "I know."

Harry Potter loved auror training. Even though he'd spent most of his life being hunted by a madman he loved the comradery and occasional mundaneness that came along with solid investigating – without Hermione beside him to help, he realised how good he actually was at it when he put his mind to it.

Right now, he was trying to work out why his best friends Patronus had changed from an otter to Padfoot. In fact, Harry was so caught up in why the Patronus could have changed, that he missed half of what it was saying.

"…. years and I just can't go on like this without him anymore Harry. I'm so sorry I never told you about him but he's so proud of you and loves you so much Harry, just God I love you so much, please don't blame yourself for this, I never told anyone about the voice's Harry, nobody. Ok. Ok, time to go" Hermione's Patronus said and Harry could hear the smile and relief in her voice, "I love you Harry – I'll see you" and then it was gone.

It took Harry a lot longer than he ever admitted to anyone to realise what was happening and by the time he did, it was too late.

Sirius Black had not been a patient man in life. He had been so impatient in his eagerness to make Peter pay for his betrayal of James and Lily that he'd spent twelve years atoning for it in Azkaban. And then, he'd been so impatient in making sure Harry was ok when the boy had mistakenly believed that he had been in danger at the ministry, that he'd gone and gotten himself killed.

He had also never been a one-woman man, in life. In fact, Sirius had been a serial womanizer and his friends had constantly made fun of the fact that it would take an exceptional woman to make him give his "bad boy player" image up.

Sirius thought it was beyond ironic that it had taken dying to fall in love. He would happily wait for his soulmate, Hermione, to join him in death as long as she was happy.

But Sirius had always been selfish. So, he didn't attempt to stop Hermione from walking into the ministry, sneaking into the department of mysteries and falling through the veil straight into his waiting arms.

"Hello love."

Sirius was sure he'd felt his heart skip an impossible beat when she grinned up at him and they walked hand in hand towards the rest of their very dead lives.