Chapter 30: Silly Rules are there for the Breaking

Sirius gave up on sleep in the early hours of the morning, sick of lying there with Alecto Carrow's cackle stuck in his head; unable to get out of his mind the feeling of Hermione's soft arms squeezed in his hands as he shook her…. the sight of her in little girl pyjamas as she stared up at him with surprised brown eyes. It was different from what Sirius usually had stuck in his mind when the lonely shadows of night crept around him. But it wasn't an improvement.

One last bottle of Firewhiskey sat on his bedside table, full but for two tots. And that was how it was going to stay.

The streets of Islington were empty in these quiet hours of a Wednesday night. Sirius ran them at full pelt until his complaining muscles forced him to slow to a trot.

It wasn't and never had been true. Sirius had never been interested in younger women. Not a single one of them had ever been someone he'd have called a "girl" at the time. He'd been known for it, even if that bit of gossip had managed to escape Carrow.

That he was some kind of girlie predator was not an impression he wanted Hermione to have. It was almost as bad as being someone who would use brutal force against an innocent person who didn't stand a chance defending herself against him.

While not entirely floppy, Hermione's body hadn't held much resistance. Her entire torso had shaken under his grip.

Sirius broke back into a sprint.

Canine thoughts, however dulled, were often not far enough from human ones. Sirius's dog form wasn't much of a blanket against the shame of hurting someone that trusted you.

When he finally returned home, Sirius didn't try to go back to bed. A drained mind and body was a decent numbing agent. He took a shower and turned to beginning his day.

But being exhausted was no aid to double-checking the recipe for an antidote to his bottled attempt at a Wolfsbane Potion. Sirius's eyes ached trying to see the words on the page and his brain was too sluggish to evaluate the consequences of each step. He sat on the floor of his potion room, A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in one hand, and looked around the room. It felt very lonely. Cloistered. Like a cell.

Sirius tried to read. He gave it a solid attempt. Then gave up.

He'd never been a good reader, and just sitting there made him antsy. What was more, the potion room no longer felt like a haven.

Sirius left it and started down the stairs. The NEWT students were back at it in the drawing room. All but Neville, Sirius thought, pausing to listen. They seemed to be working on three different things at once: Harry fighting with Glamors again, Ginny attempting to Conjure a hummingbird, and Ron trying to manage a Concealment Charm – on something that caught fire, from the sound of his 'Woah!' and Hermione's hurried 'Aquamenti!' Hermione had deviated from her own study schedules, Sirius thought, heading on down to the kitchen. It was Healing she'd written for Transfiguration this month, not Conjuration.

Crookshanks had taken Sirius's usual seat, so Sirius sat down in the one next to it with a slice of a cake he'd found in the pantry and his third cup of coffee for the day. Crookshanks didn't stay long curled on a hard seat. His knowing eyes watched Sirius sit and, the moment Sirius was settled, he hopped onto the table and shoved his way past Sirius's arms and onto his lap.

Crookshanks wasn't a cat to be denied something for long. He'd been with Sirius overnight, but had grown annoyed with Sirius's tossing and turning and taken a spot instead on the far side of the bed.

'If I'm going to be still now…' Sirius said to the purring cat. A single blink was Crookshanks's only answer, and it said all Crookshanks needed to.

It was a thing to do for a while: be bed to a cat vibrating Sirius's lap with purrs. After that…

Sirius wasn't quite ready to face Hermione. It was the one drawback to joining the students in the drawing room. Those brown eyes… He felt even less up to spending time with a wolf who knew him far too well and a very small person even more delicate and trusting than… well, than Hermione.

Crookshanks gave Sirius a good, long excuse to just sit and pet him. The cat wasn't a permanently cuddly creature, though. Sirius watched him stroll to the stairs, then dart up them, off to do his own thing. Sirius didn't get up to follow him.

He must have dozed off at some point, because he jolted awake at the sound of feet and chatter coming down the stairs. What time it was, Sirius didn't know, but as Kreacher wasn't preparing anything, it couldn't be lunch yet.

Hermione, followed by Harry, Ron, and Ginny, appeared through the kitchen door, their rucksacks over their shoulders or held in hands. Hermione stalled in the doorway, and Sirius rose hastily to his feet.

'Oh, there you are Sirius,' Hermione said. 'I thought we'd see you earlier.' She dumped her heavy bag on the table and unzipped it. 'We're going to try Static Temperature Matter-State Shifting for potions. I know the theory, but…' Hermione treated Sirius to a momentary brown-eyed look as she pulled her cauldron out of her bag. 'Well, I've never tried it myself. I know you've done it, though, so I thought you could help?'

'Crookshanks?' Ginny asked, grinning.

Sirius frowned at her, confused, then followed her eyeline. The lower portions of his t-shirt were covered in the ginger fur the cat had graciously transferred to him.

'Yes,' he confirmed before looking back to Hermione. She'd pulled out stand and scales, and was setting a thick glass vial of vitriol on the table. He eyed her for a moment longer before Hermione looked up and met his gaze.

There was nothing hesitant or shrinking about her look, just some uncertainty. The other three were banging their cauldrons down on the table and rummaging through bags for their potion ingredients. Sirius gave Hermione a nod and she smiled back at him.

Ginny had popped the cork out of her bottle of Aqua Vitae. She sniffed it and pulled a face.

'Merlin's socks…' she uttered. 'And some people drink this stuff to get drunk…'

'Don't try it,' Sirius warned. 'There's a fair chance you'll go blind.'

'So,' Hermione began once they'd all sat before their cauldrons, or, in Sirius's case, just sat. 'Matter-State Shifting is essentially a basic Alchemic process.' She had her textbook open in front of her, but it was from her own notes Hermione was drawing information. Hermione's notes, Sirius saw, looked a lot like she'd taken everything she wanted from the textbook… and then added a hell of a lot to it. The tiny, compact writing on the page looked a nightmare to read.

'The Aqua Vitae and vitriol isn't the key to achieving it,' Hermione went on. 'Its purpose is to make the substance more receptive to having its molecular bonds modified. It's Transfiguration that we'll use to change the movement of and pressures experienced by the atoms. In Alchemy's more advanced form, such Transfigurations would focus on a more minute level, shifting protons, neutrons, and electrons to change the substance into a completely different element that retains permanence… but that's well beyond the scope of our course, and, of course, very few witches and wizards have delved far into that area of study…'

Ginny was squinting at Hermione, Ron was playing with a thread that had come loose from his sleeve, and Harry looked like he was sick of school.

'This is where everything you've learned in previous years starts to come together,' Sirius said. 'Up to seventh year, they keep the subjects separate, but complex magic doesn't stick to subject categories. Defence Against the Dark Arts and Charms overlap, as do Transfiguration, Potions, and Herbology. For this, learn the spell, understand what it's doing, and you'll get it every time.'

Hermione ran them through the spell, and they got started, using small pieces of aluminium as a starting substance to turn to liquid without heat. Other than speak up to direct wands and words, Sirius hadn't much to do until Ginny's cauldron began an ominous sizzling. Sirius launched out of his seat and flung the entire thing into the kitchen sink. It set off like fireworks, the pewter cauldron shooting red and green sparks into the rafters.

'You're going to need a new cauldron,' he told Ginny as they stood there, watching the spectacle.

'Oooh!' Hermione uttered worriedly, staring up at the rafters. 'What if it catches the beams on fire?'

'It won't,' Sirius said, without solid conviction. 'Pewter,' he went on, coming up with some justification, 'doesn't burn that hot. It'll cool by the time it hits the wood…'

'But that wood has had centuries to dry!' Hermione protested.

'One century,' Sirius corrected, then corrected himself, 'and… a bit…'

Hermione glanced at him, but Sirius kept his eyes on the rafters. There was a possibility she was right to be worried…

Luckily no fires caught. The kitchen sink needed a bit of remodelling though. Sirius found a spare cauldron for Ginny, and, having made sure she knew to keep her wand movements entirely centred on the aluminium – and directed away from the lump of sulphur in the liquid surrounding it – the process began again.

Sirius was occupied by the students that day, but not the next. He was left to his own devices, and struggled with them until Hermione knocked on the potion room door.

'Sirius…' she said, hovering in the doorway. It was something she seemed to do… hover. In doorways. Sirius looked up from his antidote notes at her, wondering whether he'd like what she had to say this time.

'Yes?' he prompted after a long moment of Hermione staring off into a corner of the room.

'I'm just thinking…' she said slowly.

That was left floating in the air for long enough that Sirius had managed to think up five different glib responses to it, none of which he said, before Hermione looked directly at him.

'I thought I had an idea,' she explained, blushing pink, 'then I wasn't so sure…'

It didn't seem a train of thought Sirius would dislike. He set his quill aside and paid her full attention.

'Well,' Hermione said, 'I was thinking about Umbridge. I think we were in the flowerbed when she noticed something in the grass. And that makes me think what she noticed were the Extendable Ears – which were rustling in the grass.'

'Sure,' Sirius said. 'That's possible.'

Hermione nodded absently. Sirius wondered whether there was more to this. He didn't have to wonder long.

'Well then,' Hermione said, 'it would be good if the Ears didn't do that.'

Sirius hadn't been in a great mood, but right then he could have laughed. He kept it in check and waited patiently. Hermione did deliver.

'How could you make,' she said, 'the Extendable Ears retain their function while shifting between matter states? If they acted as gas or liquid when they needed to then they wouldn't be noticed moving around at all. If you combined the matter shift with some kind of Stasis Charm? Then you'd probably need something else… An Instant Reversals Potion? But then, I could only find information about that potion's application in Exploding Bonbons… Or, I was thinking, perhaps sap of the Chagarins Plant? But that would need a binding philtre, wouldn't it?'

Sirius set his antidote notes aside and slid a spare piece of parchment across the table. He held out his quill. Still looking thoughtful, Hermione approached and took it.

'It probably would,' Sirius answered. 'And you'd likely require a Spagyric transformation of the Chagarins's sap, if you used it, before you added it to any potion and layered a bunch of spells on it. But if you do that, you're going big, Hermione. The binding philtre you'd need for that would probably use dragons' blood along with the standard binding ingredients. You're not going to mix Charms, Potions, Alchemy, and Extendable Ears without something strong.'

Hermione nodded thoughtfully.

'Well,' she said, 'I wasn't planning on doing it myself. I thought I'd pass the ideas on to Fred and George. But I think you're right, and that means… it would get very expensive very quickly to experiment with this…'

And dangerous, Sirius thought, though that seemed to be the kind of experimentation the twins enjoyed most. Lucky kids.

'Ergh…' Ron uttered, scowling at his end table. He gave Hermione's chair, which was performing perfect pirouettes, a sideways glance. It didn't improve his expression.

It was Friday, and Sirius hadn't needed to be enlisted to help the students this time. He'd been drawn to where they were pilfering items of furniture from the dining room by Hermione's irritated lecture on the importance of homework. They dragged a couple butchered chairs up to the drawing room to join a selection of side tables, and started trying to charm the items to run on their own four legs.

Ron's latest attempt… Well, he had Animated the table. Sirius considered its surface, trying to work out where the boy had messed up. One of the knots winked back at him.

'What's gone wrong with yours?' Ginny asked, looking over. Ron's table poked a wooden tongue-like protuberance out at her.

'Could ask the same about yours,' Ron said pointedly, indicating the jerky swaying Ginny's table was doing.

'Yeah,' Ginny said, starting to snigger, 'but at least mine's not doing that!'

The table's tongue was now waggling suggestively. It gave Ron another wink.

'Stop it!' Ron grumbled at it. He grabbed the tongue and tried to stuff it back into the wooden surface. 'Ow!' he exclaimed, yanking his hand back as Ginny snorted with laughter. 'It bit me!'

Sirius looked over as Remus entered the room.

'I preferred it,' Ron groused to Ginny, 'when you weren't in my year.'

'Animation Charms?' Remus guessed, sidestepping Hermione's chair as it danced towards him. 'Twist,' Remus advised Neville as the boy worked his wand, 'before you flick.'

Neville's correction came too late, and he twisted at the same time as he flicked. Sirius stopped the charm with a hurried, 'Finite,' before any damage could be done.

'Where's Teddy?' Ginny asked.

'With Dora,' Remus answered, sitting down on a sofa. It was two days off full moon, and the werewolf looked like he was feeling it. Sirius could almost hear Remus's body groan as it folded into the chair. As Remus didn't begin informing them about anything, Sirius assumed his presence was a sign Remus needed a break. Likely from a five month old baby. A much more natural teacher than Sirius, Remus seemed not to think twice before he halted Harry's latest attempt and guided him through a new one.

With Remus lending an additional hand, the students made far swifter progress and broke for the lunch Kreacher brought them with end tables and chairs scuttling around them.

'Excellent!' said one of the twins as both of them came through the drawing room door. 'We're in time for lunch George!'

'Pies?' George said, taking one from the platter on Sirius's mother's old desk. 'Chicken or beef?'

'Both,' said Neville. 'And turkey.'

'Donb't oo 'ave a shob to rum?'

'Well observed, Ron,' said Fred. 'Would've been nicer to hear if you'd swallowed first.'

'We're here for Hermione's notes,' said George. He looked to Hermione. 'You said you and Sirius had some suggestions for the Ears?'

Hermione dug into her bag in search of them.

'Ah, seventh year,' said Fred wistfully, watching the bounding and bouncing items of furniture. 'T'was a good one.'

'You left,' Hermione said, startled, 'halfway through!'

'Precisely!' agreed Fred, making Ginny snigger and Neville shake his head amusedly. He took the notes Hermione handed him and looked them over.

'Oh,' said George, grabbing a second pie, 'and mum says you're all to be at the Burrow for dinner at 6 tomorrow, unless, of course, you want to get there earlier to help her set up.'

'And we'd recommend you do that,' added Fred, ''cause mum's already going spare with all the preparations and having to do them all by herself and it's only going to get worse by tomorrow.' He held the roll of notes up. 'There are a lot of words on here Hermione…'

'Well,' said Hermione, 'there were a lot of different possibilities, so I was thorough. Anyway, what is your mother preparing for?'

'Your birthday,' Fred said, 'obviously.'

'Unless there's something else going on tomorrow…' George said, looking over at his twin. 'When's dad's birthday again?'

'February!' Ginny provided exasperatedly.

'That's right,' George said, nodding.

'But…' Hermione had grown pink. 'Oh… she doesn't need to make a big deal of it!'

'Well don't tell mum that,' said George, picking a bottle of Butterbeer. 'She loves a good excuse for a party. And she's already gone and made sure with Kingsley that we'll all be off watch – which is great 'cause I was on Blishwick's place and the lawns around his house are covered in weeds that have these little spikes that get stuck everywhere you don't want them to. I spent a full hour last week trying to pick them out of my –'

'No one wants to hear about your wherever, George,' Ginny interrupted.

George shrugged.

'Your loss.'

Fred surveyed the prancing chairs and tables.

'So what are you going to do with them?' he said, gesturing to the melee.

Harry rescued his Butterbeer from the wild kicks of Neville's chair.

'Do with them?' he asked.

'Pathetic,' said George, shaking his head. 'Just pathetic. This is why people need us around, Fred.'

'Upsetting but true,' agreed Fred. 'Most people aren't capable of coming up with their own fun.'

'What do you want us to do?' said Ron. 'Battle with them?'

'Battle with them?' George repeated, aghast. 'Sometimes I worry about your brutal instincts, little bro.'

'We'd never ask you to battle with them!' said Fred. 'We want you to race them! What do you say? Every man – or woman,' he added hastily, pacifying Ginny and her indignantly opened mouth, 'for him – or her – self. George and me are in, Remus? Sirius?'

Sirius and Remus had sat for lunch at the circular table. Sirius caught Remus's eye and suppressed a smile. He put his hands to the table.

Bom – bom, he beat out on the table before bringing his hands together in a clap! Bom – bom – clap! Bom – bom – clap!

A smile was tugging at the corners of Remus's features.

'Go on then,' he cajoled.

Sirius fought a grin. It took him a moment to remember the lyrics.

'Buddy you're a boy, make a big noise, playing in the street, gonna be a big man someday…'

Now Remus was smiling properly, but it wasn't him who joined in with the beat first. On the sofa, Hermione had leant forwards and reached out to use the coffee table.

Bom – bom – clap! Bom – bom – clap!

'What's that?' George asked. He, the other Weasleys, and Neville looked confused. But Harry's face had grown a smile that was fantastic to see. His bright green eyes watched Sirius as he leant forward to copy Hermione.

Bom – bom – clap! Bom – bom – clap! Remus was chuckling as he watched Sirius, waiting for him to continue.

'You got mud on your face!' Sirius sang, quite well, if he did think so himself. 'Big disgrace! Kicking your can all over the place –'

Bom – bom – clap! Bom – bom – clap!

The beat was starting to reverberate through tables. Hermione put her hands to either side of her mouth –

'We will - we will ROCK YOU!'

And it wasn't just Sirius singing it, he had Hermione and, to a lesser extent, Harry and a chuckling Remus joining in.

'We're in,' Sirius said, quite happily.

'What was that?' George repeated, frowning at the four who knew it.

Hermione was giggling. Harry stared at Sirius, looking amused.

'Where'd you learn it?' he asked.

'That's nothing,' Remus said, getting up. 'You should hear him do Bolan.'

'Bolan?' Harry said.

'T-Rex,' Hermione supplied.

Harry stared at her.

'Since when do you know music?'

Remus chose to Animate the heavy old armchair that had sat before Sirius's mother's desk for decades. Hermione, Ron, Harry, and Neville kept their dining chairs and end tables, but Ginny swapped her table for the wrought iron fire poker stand. Fred and George opted to enchant Ginny's and Ron's copies of A Standard Book of Spells, Grade Seven, both thick tomes growing two long legs out of twisted paper; and Sirius dumped the pieces out of the chess table. They complained and swore at him as he cast the charm on the table and its spiral pedestal unwound itself into four curl-toed legs.

Kreacher re-entered the room in the middle of a furniture hurricane. Unable to reach the remains of their lunch he just stood, flummoxed, as chairs, tables, books, and a poker stand danced around him.

'Could you count us down, Kreacher?' Hermione asked.

It clarified little for the elf.

'Okay,' said George, on the marks with his wand directed at his skipping book, 'so the course is upstairs, touch the fireplace in the library, then down to the kitchen, around the table, and back up here. First one over the threshold wins.'

They chorused their acknowledgement.

'Just count down from three!' Sirius called to the befuddled elf.

'…Three – ' Kreacher began.

'Hang on!' Shouted Ron. He jumped around the sofa and got into line with the rest of them. 'I wasn't ready,' he said, pointing his wand at his table. He nodded to Kreacher. 'Okay, I'm good now.'

The wide-eyed elf looked around the room.

'They,' he croaked quietly, 'are acting like children.'

'Yeah, yeah,' said Fred. 'We know.' He was poised like a runner ready to set off, wand trained on his book, ready to direct it. 'Just count us in, would you?'

Kreacher trod to the far side of the room, stood straight, and raised his hand. It was barely visible over the heavy desk.

'Three,' he counted, 'two…' His hand swept down out of sight. 'One!'

They took off. Sirius and the chess table, with its slender, long legs, got through the doorway first, Fred and George on his heels, their books snapping at his ankles. He heard the swears and shouts of those who'd gotten stuck in the scrum behind him.

Up the stairs was a task. Despite the chess table's adroit limbs, it was perilously top-heavy. Sirius kept his wand on it, giving it extra prods every time it tipped. He hit the second floor landing just behind the twins' two-legged racers.

'You're cheating!' Neville shouted at Sirius from just behind him.

'Who gave us rules?' Sirius shouted back, bolting after the twins towards the library. He reached the doorway, the chess table taking the turn clumsily, just as a butchered dining chair flew past him, hit the doorframe, and ricochet off into the room. Sirius saw it pirouette and correct course for the fireplace as Hermione raced past him, giggling audibly.

'Who indeed!' she called back at him, swinging her wand and sending her chair flying, once again, clear over the cluster of armchairs around the fireplace.

Sirius's chess table touched the fireplace just behind Hermione's chair. He doubled back instantly, dodging Remus, Ron, and Harry on his way out. Ginny's poker stand was still struggling on little legs up the stairs, but the girl in charge sprinted past it.

'Oi!' Ron shouted from behind Sirius. 'Your Animated thing was supposed to touch the fireplace!'

'Really?' Ginny laughed, dashing back into the corridor to meet her poker stand as it struggled up onto the landing. 'I didn't hear that!'

Sirius was hurrying down steps, catching up with Hermione who was having difficulty keeping her chair from tumbling. He overtook her, swung on the curve in the handrail down to the next flight, and sent his chess table straight at the twins' books, both skinny-paper-legged beasts looking particularly unsteady on the stairs.

'No you don't!' one twin shouted, and both books jumped out of the way – which suited Sirius just fine. He sent his chess table on ahead and hopped to the ground floor just as Ginny's poker stand rolled down behind him, having taken the steps on its side, and turned to roll on down the corridor. It was the lesser of two tumblers – Sirius heard cries from higher up the staircase and the loud clattering of much heavier objects falling down the stairs.

Sirius cast a quick look over his shoulder and spotted Remus's sturdy armchair scrabbling to its feet, one dining chair, one end table, and two books scattered around it. Laughing, Sirius sprinted on for the kitchen stairs, overtaking Ginny and her unwieldy wheel of a poker stand just yards before the doorway.

The train wreck behind him had gotten back on its feet. Sirius saw a fleet of six charging after him as he swung around, directing his chess table down the kitchen stairs with his wand. They followed after him, first Ginny, then a clattering of others, taking the steps as fast as they could.

It was a mad dash around the table. Sirius went one way. Seeking to stymy him, Remus went the other, his armchair toppling kitchen chairs in its wake.

Sirius leapt a scattered chair, but his chess table was less fortunate.

'Sore loser!' Sirius shouted after Remus – the crafty bugger – as Harry, focused and determined, overtook him. Remus just grinned over his shoulder at Sirius, headed back to the stairs.

The kitchen stairs were a bottleneck, narrowed further by Neville, Hermione, and Ron coming down them. The tight squeeze benefited heavier objects. Sirius's chess table got ahead of Fred and George's books by centauring through them and he raced up after Harry and Remus, dodging Neville and Ron but brushing up against Hermione as he passed her. For a split second, amused brown eyes stared up at him in the stairwell, the softness of her front slipping past Sirius's arm.

Remus's armchair was gaining on Harry's dining chair until, out of nowhere, Ginny's poker stand scuttled forward on tiny legs, flung itself forward, rolled along on its side, and shot straight under Harry's chair legs. Harry's chair stumbled on it and fell badly. Sirius and Remus careered past the wreckage, Sirius gaining ground and thinking he was clear no more than a second before he saw Remus's sidelong glance –

And then the armchair was knocking into his chess table. Top-heavy as it was, the chess table tipped over, scattering itself on the ground floor corridor; Remus's armchair racing on ahead.

'Dirty wolf!' Sirius shouted.

'"Sore loser" Padfoot?' Remus shouted back.

But the werewolf wasn't in the clear either. Sprinting up behind him were two books. Sirius got his chess table back on its legs and on course again in the same moment the two books leapt in front of the armchair and linked legs.

'Win it for us Gin!' a twin yelled from behind Sirius as Remus's armchair flew top-first into the carpet.

Sirius hit the stairs first, but Ginny had the cheater's advantage: not bothering to use her wand, she skidded up next to him, swung a leg, and kicked the poker stand clear above their heads and up the stairs. Sirius did his best keeping the chess table in the game, but all Ginny had to do was sprint past him after the poker stand and give it another kick on the landing above.

There was a hope her kick hadn't been accurate, but as Sirius raced after her along the first floor corridor he knew it was in vein. He careened over the threshold a second before Ron, and trotted further in to avoid being knocked over by Harry. Sirius turned a step before the worn silk sofa and fell, back-first, onto it.

'Miss Weasley wins!' Kreacher declared loudly.

Ginny had her arms high in the air and laughed as Fred and George jogged in and slapped her on the back. Ron had collapsed, panting, on the sofa opposite, and Harry was leant up against the wall. Remus followed the twins and sunk, drained, onto his Animated armchair; and Hermione, slowing once she passed over the threshold, bent and held her knees, breathing heavily.

'Who,' Neville panted, coming in last, 'came in second… and third place?'

'Master Sirius,' Kreacher announced, seeming to rather enjoy being adjudicator, 'then Mr Weasley.'

'Good…' Neville panted graciously, 'job!'

Hermione straightened, though her chest was still heaving, and, for another moment, met Sirius's eye. Her cheeks flushed with exertion, her face was lit with a sort of joy he'd only seen on it when she had been heartily affected by the whacky tobacco he'd given her. For a sustained moment, Sirius's gaze lingered on her. It was remarkable how bright the brown-haired girl could look in a room when she was grinning. Hermione's eyes dropped from Sirius's, but they didn't seem to stray far.

Sirius looked down, spotted his bare midriff, and tugged his top down to cover it. It may merely be further flushing from the race, but when Sirius looked back up, Hermione, her gaze directed elsewhere, looked even pinker than before.

'We don't follow the rules,' Hermione confided amusedly to Sirius later, once they'd gotten back on track with their studies. 'Umbridge was right. Somehow, though, I don't really mind.'

Ron wasn't far away. Overhearing, he gave Hermione a funny look.

'You love rules!' he said to her.

Hermione grinned.

'Not silly ones,' she retorted.

Sirius hid a smile with a dipped head. He'd had good times with a Hermione that didn't follow the rules.

Author's Note

This chapter, as I'm sure you can tell, was largely just me enjoying the characters having fun!

For anyone interested in how I picture them, I posted up my character sketches of Hermione and Sirius on DeviantArt. I find I can't really get into a character unless I can see them in my mind's eye, and this story is particularly demanding when it comes to getting into the characters' heads. I'm no great artist, but thankfully, if I try hard, I have enough ability with a pencil to have gotten out drawings that are the likeness of Sirius and Hermione, as I picture them. My DeviantArt profile is under the same username, and you can access it by searching that or just adding /etinsmuir to the end of the basic DeviantArt url.

Responding to reviews:

Dear Guest,

Oh I agree completely on why Ron and Hermione's birthdays were just about left out of the books! Lingering on birthday after birthday would have been tedious and detracted from the stories.

I'm pretty sure Ron and Harry did forget Hermione's birthday in the 7th book though, when they were running from the Ministry. For me, I can't see how celebrating her birthday would have been a priority then. And thinking that, for me, makes a strong contrast to how, just weeks before Hermione's birthday, Harry's was celebrated by the Weasleys.

I did start to feel such sympathy for Hermione here. Ron's birthday is used, IIRC, for the plot point around Demelza's love potion and the poisoned wine. It gets more of a mention than Hermione's. I feel Ron's feelings and insecurities are more explored than hers. We know all about Ron's family, but barely know anything about Hermione's. We know her parents are dentists, and that's about it. We only see them for a second in the, I think, 2nd book? Otherwise, Hermione's parents are never there. For most of the books, they're not there to drop her off at Platform 9 ¾, she misses out on spending time with them in order to be there for all the things the trio needs to do (I mean, how often does she not spend Christmas with her parents?), and then she makes them forget her, sends them away, to stick with Harry and help him…

Even leaves behind her beloved cat to do that. And she never gives up. Ron gives up at one point, Harry rails against his destiny repeatedly, but damn, Hermione just sticks with it (and bursts into tears a few times and tries to beat Ron up for leaving).

Plus, it just seemed to me like the things the trio did were often harder for Hermione. She's more brave than daring, with pretty bad anxiety. Ron and Harry are fliers. Hermione isn't. And yet: she has to fly on a hippogriff, then a thestral, then A DRAGON! Aaaaannnndddd jump OFF the dragon haha! She's the one that had to go that extra length to protect her parents, something she just went and did without any help. Ron and Harry didn't have that responsibility (not to downplay their harrowing journeys, just to highlight Hermione's). It's her magical expertise that saves their skins a lot. And she's the one who nurses Harry in that tent, doing it all alone with no assurance he'll be fine.

Considering all that, she complains surprisingly little.

I also imagine that if she told her parents everything she went through at school, they wouldn't have kept sending her there. Imagine your kid comes home and tells you "so, I was petrified by a Basilisk this year!", "I fought a troll!", "I got badly injured fighting all these dark wizards and flew an invisible death horse to the Ministry of Magic, and broke into a secure part of it!"… Um, yeah, no. I wouldn't let that kid go on back to school the next year lol! And her parents wouldn't understand it the way a magical parent would. So I also think she felt she couldn't talk to them about a lot of what she was going through.

Again, though, you're right: it's because of what worked with the plot. But man, that all would have been awful for her! And she did it all to help. That's pretty selfless, very loyal, and, as a result, I want her birthday celebrated XD.

There are a lot of parts of this story that I like going back and reading, and that first cuddle is one of them! I'm really glad you liked it – and I agree, Sirius is starting to feel some tenderness for her! I tend to think he's also starting to feel some purpose in his life, and is happier as a result.

It's also really great to hear you like the other parts of the plot too! It is chilling! And it's got to be an awful feeling, to be protected from what you know others born as you were are experiencing. Scary, to know what could be your fate if your protection disappears, and guilt-inducing to not be able to help protect more.

If you're happy to answer… What do you think about a pairing between Hermione and Sirius outside of this story? Did you think they were right for each other in general, or just interested in the pairing?

Every time a review pops up, I get this little thrill like "Yeeesss! Now I get to read what someone thinks about it!" Thank you thank you for indulging me! I love it!