Thank you so much to everyone that reviewed, it is wonderful to read your comments and I really appreciate that you took the time to tell me your thoughts :) This sequel is for you :)
Also since Hermione was born in the Marauder Era; I decided to switch her places with Emmeline Vance. So now the Golden Trio in this AU consists of Harry Potter, Ron Weasley and Emmeline Vance. And Hermione's adult personality is a bit more like Emmeline's: mistrustful and tired of war, she also works at the Ministry. I'm writing adult Hermione as a very hurt person too since she hasn't been right since 1981 when she lost Lily, James, Sirius and Peter all in one night...
Son of a Dog
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Orion snickered to himself as he shoved his nose into a pile of leaves and sniffed around. Oh yes, he was on the right path, he could practically smell the rat now... He was in his animagus form and mulling around in their garden, digging up holes, when his ears perked at the sound of his mother's voice.
"Orion!"
Bollocks. Well, he'd have to continue his imaginary games of wands, robbers and rats later...he wasn't sure why but he really hated rats.
"Orion come inside at once!" his mother called again and her rising tone warned him not to make her call a third time.
The brown-and-black mottled dog immediately shook the dirt off his coat and then a few seconds later, a young boy with beautiful grey eyes and light brown hair stood there. He smirked with an almost too knowing and mischievous grin before running back out the garden gate and into his mother's kitchen.
His mother, who had brown hair like him, only much messier, had a worn frown on her face as she surveyed her one and only child come, covered in dirt, into the kitchen.
Her brown eyes flashed as she saw his dirty shoes had left tracks of mud in her clean kitchen.
With a tired but resilient sigh, Hermione sat down at the table and leaned back her head against her elbow, holding up her aching forehead. "Orion were you digging in the garden again?"
The boy with grey eyes tried not to smile. His feet, however, tapped a bit too energetically on the floor, showing that he really was not remorseful. "I might have...There was some gnomes and rats in the garden, mum, I swear I saw them."
Hermione, who was now nearly thirty-four, let out a long-suffering sigh and stared in exertion, of caring and the constant grind of being a parent, at her son.
"'Rion, I don't know what's your obsession with rats, but I would ask you stop—"
"But mum, I see them in my dreams, and I just know they're bad, and somehow this man they're suffering because of them."
"What man?" Hermione's face paled and she immediately stopped looking at him, almost appearing as if she were going to cry.
"The black-haired man," Orion said quickly. "I see him all the time in my dreams, I know he's good—"
But his mum got up from the table and was getting crosser by the second, as if he were bringing up a topic that she just couldn't bare to hear. "Just stop, Orion. I told you no more."
"But mum—"
"No Orion!" she snapped but then covered her face with her hands when she realized she had lost her temper. "I'm sorry," she said quickly and stared down at him with tear filled eyes.
"Mum...why are you crying?" Orion gasped in confusion. His mum did not get upset easily, she was very strong, but whenever he seemed to mention his dreams or rats or black-haired men, she became tearful, and almost angry, for an inexplicable reason.
His mother pressed her lips tightly together to keep them from wobbling, before she wiped her eyes, tried to clear all emotion from her head and then addressed him with a warmer expression on her face. "I'm sorry, baby, it's not your fault, your mum got upset...There's just things your mum can't talk about it and...that's one of them."
Orion stared incredulously at his mother and couldn't understand why she was speaking about herself in third person or why she'd become so emotional. It did, however, make him feel terribly guilty.
"I'm sorry, mother," he said almost formally. "If it upsets you so much, I promise never to dig in the garden again."
His mother suddenly gave a croak of laughter, her shoulders shaking.
"Mum...what is it?" He frowned in confusion for a second, before his lips turned up in a smirk too. "Why are you laughing now?"
Hermione sighed and smiled pleasantly at him, as she wiped another tear from her eye. 'Your mum's just confused, and tired. Orion. Now come here and give me a hug." She held out her arms and he rushed in to grab some of her warmth and snuggle into her. He was nearly 12 now but he loved his mother more than ever and he still didn't mind giving her hugs or being a bit coddled by him. At least, as long as she didn't hug him in public or in front of his friends from Hogwarts. His friends Luna Lovegood and Albie Smith would tease him for it endlessly.
She kissed his head. "I'm sorry."
"But I don't understand what I did wrong?" Orion mumbled, his hand clutching at the necklace around her neck.
She held him tighter and her hands played with the lightly wavy hair at the back of his head. "You didn't do anything wrong, Orion. It all happened before you were born; unfortunately, mummy's been a bit.."—that was an understatement—"confused ever since."
"What happened?" he dared to ask, with trembling lips. "Does it have to do with dad?"
Her arms around him seemed to freeze before she stood up from their hug to stare intently, more intently than she ever had, at him. "Where did you get that idea? You know you never met your father," she informed him tersely, in a rehearsed voice she always used whenever she spoke of his father "Your father abandoned us and I've never told you his name."
Orion shrugged and twiddled his thumbs together, as he examined a peculiar sliver that had snuck its way under his thumb and which he was trying to squeeze out.
"I just know that's not true," he mumbled, more to himself than her.
But she heard. And suddenly his mother had such a wild, and solemn, look on her face. "That's what I thought once too. But when Dumbledore showed me the evidence, it removed all doubt."
His mother's face again paled and she seemed shaken out of her normal routine, as if talking about his father brought some taboo or dangerous subject she couldn't bear to deal with.
"Orion. Please, one day you'll understand. And until then, I don't want any of these wild statements. I loved your father but he was...was..."
Orion groaned inwardly, in frustation; his mother never did actually say what his father 'was'. She hinted at it sometimes, if he pressed, but she never actually let slip a word. Sometimes, he had a feeling she was implying he was a Death Eater or had been one during the war, but somehow Orion couldn't bring himself to believe even that. His mother was a muggleborn and that made him sort of a half-blood, and there was just no way his father would've been a Death Eater on purpose.
"Please mum, just tell me," he pleaded for the thousandth time. He just wanted to know who his father was, if only his name.
His mother, however, shook her head resolutely. "No, I can't. Sorry. Not yet. You're too young."
Orion tried not to roll his eyes at his mother; sometimes she could be quite daft. Like she had allowed him to learn advanced potions and transfigurations at home, so that he could be ahead in his classes. She had even allowed him to learn how to be animagus, for 'his own protection' she said. Though she never said what he needed protection against. Only that one day, if they both ever needed to go on a run, there would be a brown dog and an otter walking as odd partners in the woods.
Sometimes he thought his mother was completely bonkers; at other times he just thought she was completely lost and had been hurt a long time ago and hadn't recovered since. So he tried to be patient with her, although it was quite difficult to do when he was so energetic and eager to learn about life himself.
Life couldn't be so bad could it?
His mum seemed to be pessimistic, but he, Orion Edward Granger, didn't see a reason to be so afraid of life or other people.
He loved life and other people; and they seemed to love him back. He was told he was a good-looking boy and smart; his professors at Hogwarts were kind to him and seemed to like his humour, as long as it didn't go to out of hand; Harry Potter had even spoken to him a few times and he loved his housemates in Gryffindor, the house of the brave. He didn't see a reason to be afraid that something bad would happen in life. Bad things didn't happen to good people, did they?
Orion didn't think so, and he hoped desperately to prove his mother wrong.
Though he was just 12 years old and how much could a 12 year old do?
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a/n: "How much can a 12 year old do?" Well, if you're the son of one Sirius Orion Black, I'm guessing quite a bit of mischief, trouble and adventure...and good. Because he has a good heart like his dad.
Also apologies, I hate having to write Hermione believing Sirius was guilty and just accepting it, because I don't think she really would believe that BS, but it's necessary for the plot and keeping up with canon. Also this story originally started as me writing emmeline vance/sirius black so I'm still sort of basing Hermione's decisions in life on Emmeline's canon character. Hope that isn't too confusing and please drop a little thought in the comment box if you have two seconds...it's nice to get feedback and to know someone is reading this
thanks and happy reading :) I also have lots of other sirmione and jamione stories too if you want to read that
