Sirius: 12

Remus: 13

Threesome: 4

A/N: Sorry about the long time in updating and the rather shortness of the chapter, but I've been distracted by the movie and such. And! Just for the record I had to do the last half of the chapter in my new acrylic nails – yeah, typing's a bitch. You're lucky I love you guys...

BIG FYI: We're finally getting some action next chapter, so strap your booties on and brace for impact! The chappy should be up tomorrow afternoon (? hopefully). For all y'alls trying to escape your relatives, lol. Enjoy

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"HERMIONE!"

A petite, red whirlwind attacked the brunette, nearly bowling her over. With the younger girl dancing around her, Hermione barely managed to set her books down at the lunch table before she grabbed the girl to make her stop moving.

"What the devil's wrong with you, Ginny?" Hermione demanded of the youngest Weasley, rubbing her side where she'd been collided into.

"I've been so busy this first week, I haven't seen you at all!" The younger girl exclaimed, orange ponytail bobbing behind her. Going up on her tiptoes she waved to the other six with a toothy grin. "Hey, guys."

Before Hermione could protest, Ginny had pulled her down onto the bench beside her. "Do you know what this weekend is?" She chattered excitedly, reaching for crisps.

"Three days from now?" Hermione replied blandly.

"It's a Hogsmeade trip!"

Hermione glanced to Harry who confirmed this news with a nod. Hermione's interest piqued. "Really?"

Ginny nodded into her milk. "I'm going straight to the Quidditch shop – there's a new set of leather gloves I've been saving for."

"Really?" James exclaimed.

She nodded emphatically while trying to spread jam on her toast. "'Specially made for Chasers. You should take a look at 'em," she suggested.

"A girl after my own heart," Sirius charmed, and Hermione rolled her eyes. She wondered how many times that line actually worked.

"Do you lead with your left or your right?" James was asking, leaning against the table, kitty corner to Hermione.

"Oh, left definitely," Ginny replied.

"Me too!"

Hermione sighed, defeated once more by the topic of Quidditch. At least they were all sitting together which was more than she'd planned on after last night.

"I'd ask you to come with..." Ginny turned to her. "But Remus is taking you, right?"

Hermione choked on her toast.

Their whole section burst into laughter, but when they realized that Remus and Hermione weren't joining in, the humor died. Hermione's cheeks were pink and Remus was looking down at his lap. The glanced furtively at one another and then away.

"I always said the two of you were perfect for one another," Ginny rambled on, completely oblivious. Hermione clapped a hand over the red-head's big mouth and the younger girl dropped her fork in surprise.

"We're not together, Gin," she hissed, and Ginny's frosty blue eyes widened. Very cautiously, Hermione lowered her hand.

"Really?" she exclaimed.

"Really really."

"But what about all the love lett-" Hermione slammed her hand back down over her mouth.

Harry was laughing hysterically.

"Sis," Ron said slowly. "Shut. Up."

Ginny stuck her tongue out at him, but only succeeded in getting Hermione's hand wet. She groaned and wiped her hand off on her robes, shooting Ginny a disgusted look. Remus was determinedly staring at her in that patient way he had. It was unnerving. Sirius was burning a hole in the opposite wall with his glare.

Ginny reached for her fork, but Hermione grabbed her firmly by the wrist. "Oh, no," she said. "We're going to have a little talk."

Dragging the redhead off the bench, she scooped her books up in her other hand. "See you guys at the grounds," she said quickly and took off, pulling the reluctant Ginny behind her, who managed to snitch a cupcake from the table before she was yanked down the hallway.

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"Where's little red?"

Hermione looked up in surprise to see Sirius lounged out on one of the large rocks by the lakeside. Harry was perched behind him, his robes opened and his back to the forest.

The others were spread out around them, sitting in the grass or skipping stones across the lake. She was more than surprised that the Marauders had showed up – she was floored.

"Back in the common room," she managed.

"She's not training?"

Hermione shook her head. "No."

"Shame. It would have been nice to add another female to the group."

She snorted, "I'm sure she wouldn't mind a private lesson from you."

"That's my sister!" Ron shouted indignantly.

Clearing her throat pointedly, Hermione stripped off her robes and threw them off to the side, and the look on her face told them all that it was time for business. To their surprise, however, she dropped her wand beside it after a few murmured incantations.

"Hand-to-hand combat," she said clearly, tying her hair back with an elastic band. "You lose your wand you'll have to survive long enough to get it back."

Taking a few steps back, she gestured to Harry. "Harry – you and I will demonstrate."

He nodded and discarded his robes and wand on Sirius' rock, then rolled up his sleeves. The Marauders perked up and waited anxiously for the pair to begin.

The atmosphere was calm and relaxed until Harry got within three feet of Hermione and she unexpectedly lashed out. What followed next was a high-paced flurry of blows that one only saw choreographed in movies. Expect these hits were landing.

Harry dodged her first punch and high kick and retaliated with a left hook that Hermione had to duck to avoid. Taking advantage of her poor position Harry brought his knee up into her jaw with enough force to rock her back. She caught herself with her hands and kicked upwards using her momentum as she pushed off the grass to get back to her feet. He caught her ankle and tried to twist it, but she spun out of his grasp, pulling him off balance and cracking him across the cheek with her elbow as she finished her pivot.

Stumbling slightly as the lights danced across his vision Harry aimed a blind punch at her head. She blocked it with her forearm and he swung his other fist. She blocked that too. Grabbing the wrists of the fists she was holding off, Hermione's nails bit through the skin, and she whipped her head forward, slamming her forehead into the bridge of his nose. There was a disgustingly audible crack as bones broke.

She started to jump back, but now Harry had grabbed her wrists. Dizzy, disoriented, and blood dripping from his nose, Harry yanked her towards him and they both went down. Hermione's ribs fractured as her falling form was met by Harry's feet to her stomach.

He kicked upwards and Hermione went flying over his head and bounced across the ground to the Marauder's feet. Both injured, it took them each several seconds to get up.

Harry got up first and charged at her, tackling her before she was half up. Hermione went down fighting, clawing at his arms with her nails and drawing blood. They rolled over and over, trying to catch one another's throats and landing several blows along the face and shoulders.

He tried to kick her over him again, but this time she grabbed his arms as she went through the air. Her back hit the ground in a roll and Harry was thrown through the air. She scrambled back to her feet, vaulted the rock Sirius' was sitting on, and hit the ground running. Harry swept her legs out from under her and the wind was knocked out of her when she collided with the ground. Harry was instantly on top of her, straddling her abdomen and pressing his forearm against her adam's apple.

She kicked and bucked and clawed, but Harry would not be dislodged, and she couldn't breathe. Limbs flailing and darkness creeping into the edges of her vision, she could hear someone shouting.

"Get off her! You don't have to kill her, you've already won!"

It took Hermione's oxygen deprived brain an extra second to match the voice to a face. She was surprised to recognize Remus' voice.

She blinked her eyes rapidly to make the fog disappear and she focused on Harry's face. He was trying not to smile. She frowned, but found it too painful to maintain and just when she was about to lose consciousness, Harry rolled off her.

She flooded her lungs with oxygen – deep, even breaths that belied the fact she'd almost been choked to death. Then she stood up.

Her hair was a humid mess – the parts that weren't sticking up every which way were matted to her forehead with sweat. She had a long bleeding gash along her hairline from forehead to cheekbone, and her jaw was swollen and most likely broken. A blackened right eye matched the yellowy-green bruises dotting her visible skin and the swollen purple band across her throat. There was a streak of blood across her blouse and it seemed the cracked rib had punctured the skin.

Harry, though better off, looked a lot worse. His nose had stopped bleeding and the coppery rust color was smeared across the lower half of his face. The elbow Hermione had graced his cheek with had ruptured a sizely amount of blood vessels beneath the surface and his left side was an ugly violet color. The crooked set of his nose was only marginally offset by the large goose egg on his brow.

The only other part of him that showed as much damage as his face were his arms. The slender half-moons of Hermione's nails had pooled with blood around his wrists. Those same nails had carved dozens of bloody furrows down each arm. His sleeves were bloody taters and his forearms were slick with cooling crimson.

They looked awful.

"Hermione! Are you alright?" Remus ran to her and gingerly began probing her injuries. Hermione didn't flinch, scream, or take any notice of him at all.

"Hand-to-hand combat," she repeated, taking several steps towards Ron and the Marauders with Remus keeping a concerned step beside her. "Messy, bloody; old-fashioned. It's something most wizards nowadays won't expect. One of the secondary units in the war will be spell-locked with protection and sent in to fight hand to hand."

Lily tentatively raised her hand, and Hermione nodded at her. Dropping her hand back in her lap, she fidgeted anxiously apparently afraid that she'd be volunteered for the next sparring demonstration. "Umm...will we be a part of that, er, unit?"

Hermione gave a Gallic shrug that meant everything and nothing. "It's my job to see where your talent lies. If you're of best use in arms combat then you'll be put under Harry's guidance. He'll be leading that battalion."

"What piece do you lead?" James asked, his presence as he stood beside Lily's rock calming her.

"Ron and I are merely soldiers. We'll go where Dumbledore tells us."

"I'll believe that when I see it," Sirius muttered.

Hermione's head whipped around to face him, cold eyes staring him down reproachfully. It was then that he noticed the peach coloring returning to her cheeks and the swelling in her jaw had all but disappeared. He was ignoring her stare and focusing instead on how to piece together what his brain was telling him. She'd been talking for the last few minutes – an act that with a broken jaw was impossible – and the injuries he was sure she'd had just five minutes were nearly gone.

She was healing right before his eyes.

Hermione's voice interrupted his thoughts. "What you are seeing is the Decantalus spell. It only lasts for five minutes, but it heals all minor injuries sustained in that amount of time."

"I've never heard of that charm," James murmured.

"Neither have I," Sirius added.

"And Sirius and I know all there is to know about Charms," James looked a little upset at the lack of knowledge.

Hermione tossed her ponytail back over her shoulder. "It's not a charm."

"It's a dark spell," Lily said quietly. "Of the most advanced kind."

Hermione nodded in confirmation.

"It was only a theory in our time. How did you manage it, Hermione?"

Hermione knelt beside the lake and began to wash herself clean of the dirt and blood. Harry crouched beside her and did the same. "Voldemort perfected it and I mastered it," she explained bluntly, splashing water over her face. "We're in the process of teaching it to all the Order members, but it's difficult."

"The Order?" James questioned.

"The Order of the Phoenix," Ron amended. "The Resistance, the Good Guys, whatever you want to call us. It's a group of witches and wizards working in secret to defeat Voldemort."

Hermione straightened using the sleeve of her discarded robe to dab the beads of water from her face. "Each time we train in fighting I'll cast the spell, and each of you I'm sure will be able to cast your own Numbing Charm?"

"That's why you weren't screaming," Remus sighed in relief. "You couldn't feel anything."

There was a loud pop and they turned to see Harry's nose had snapped back into place. He wiggled it experimentally and grinned.

"Right," Hermione cleared her throat. "Let's pair up. Harry – you'll be the one to take two."

Harry nodded without argument.

She put her hand to her chin and thought for a moment. "Remus go with Ron, and Harry you take James and Lily."

"You wanted me all for yourself, did you pigeon?" Sirius drawled with a suave smile.

Hermione ignored him, picking up her wand to cast the Decantalus spell once more. "Let's begin," she said.

"You know, Hermione, you shouldn't high kick like that in a skirt," he leered, fingering his wand. "You gave Harry quite a view."

"My eyes were on her face, Black," Harry said with a pointed look, moving his group away from the other two.

"We'll go over a few basic moves first." Hermione was awfully gifted at ignoring everyone around her.

"Pff," Sirius snorted. "No need."

"Alright," Hermione dead-panned, and her fist rocketed into his face. A round-house kick caught him mid-fall and sent him sprawling onto his back yelling in pain.

"BLOODY HELL!" He cradled his cheek, already turning colors; he scowled at Hermione who was looking down at him, with her blank expression flickering slightly and her pale face glowing from residual lake water.

She looked almost disappointed.

"You neglected your Numbing Charm."

Then she turned away from him and towards the others who were wisely remaining silent. Sirius was the only one it seemed who hadn't learned to keep his mouth shut. "We'll start with the five basic attacks first and then move into combinations. When you have mastered that, we'll move on to sparring."

As Harry stepped forward to demonstrate the first of the five attacks, Sirius pulled himself angrily to his feet. He moved in beside Remus and tried to catch Hermione's gaze, but her eyes were closed, and if he looked hard enough the air around her was shimmering slightly.

By the time each of them had gotten the combinations down (Remus taking longer than most) it was time for class, and Sirius had been unable to get Hermione's guarded look of disappointment out of his mind.

As they were all gathering up their things, Sirius jogged to catch up with her.

"Listen...I'm sorry about earlier..." He mumbled trying not to sound too pitiful. The look was still bothering him.

He was rewarded by a startlingly exuberant smile. Training was over and Hermione Granger was back in force. "We'd better hurry, or you'll be serving detention instead of helping me with that prophecy."

It still unnerved him how easy it was for her to slip between such polar opposite personalities, but he grabbed her hand and began pulling her after him as he ran crazily up the steep slopes of the grounds. "Then let's not be late!"

"Sirius!" She called, but her laughter drowned out her cries for him to stop.

He stopped to pull open the entrance doors, but it was so sudden that Hermione came crashing into them and they both ran straight into the heavy wooden doors.

"Trying to cripple me, pigeon, isn't going to make me late for class," he teased, rubbing his arm. "I wouldn't miss our rendezvous for the world."

She cleared her throat. "I'm...sorry," she said it with such gravity that Sirius knew instinctively it wasn't running into him that she was apologizing for.

After a moment of silent deliberation, in which the others were given enough time to catch up, he smiled at her. "Don't worry about."

Hermione's shoulders sagged in relief and she grinned. It was the mega-watt smile that could light up a room and make his own lips twitch upwards. In one big herd they hurried through the entrance hall and then split off in different directions for their separate classes.

Sirius wasn't late

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In response to the tawny owl that had swooped down on her during class, Hermione broke away fro the crowd rushing out of Muggle studies and turned her footsteps to the Grand Staircase. Just then, someone grabbed her sleeve.

"Hermione! Where are you going?" Lily asked walking with her.

Hermione waved the note she'd received absently. "Dumbledore's."

Lily gave her a stern look, "You're not going to be late for your date are you?"

"Date?" She repeated, perplexed.

"With Sirius!"

"One," Hermione started tersely, lifting her fingers up for Lily to see. "It's Dumbledore and I'll stay as long as he needs me to. Two – it's not a date."

"Remus seems to think so."

Instantly, Hermione's face flushed. Throwing her situation with Remus back in her face was something Hermione really couldn't handle at the moment.

She did her best to fake innocence. "Why would Remus care."

Lily grinned devilishly and it gave her a pixie-like quality. "Oh, I've heard about the "history" behind you two...Ginny told me after that escapade at lunch."

Hermione cringed. She made a mental note to hex the youngest Weasley.

"Oh, yes!" Lily's face was triumphant. "That little piece of information you neglected to tell me."

"It didn't seem that relevant," Hermione mumbled, finding instant fascination with the paintings passing by them.

"Bloody hell it didn't," Lily accused, and Hermione had the decency to look chagrined.

"Don't you start too," she groaned.

"Harry and Ron have been giving me a hard time," she supplied in response to Lily's inquiring look and raised eyebrows.

"About Remus?"

"About the both of them," she clarified.

"Duh!"

Hermione glared at her and almost missed her turnoff.

"They're obviously quite taken with you."

Finally throwing her hands up in the air Hermione exclaimed "I don't want to be taken with. I don't want to be took anywhere!"

"Dear lady!" Cried one of the portraits. "Is there something the matter?"

Hermione stomped right past the old man and his shaggy gray dog with Lily trailing after. "She's got two blokes terribly mad for her," the red-head said in a loud stage-whisper.

The old man tapped his nose knowingly and Lily winked at him before a screeching Hermione clapped a hand over her mouth and dragged her down the hall. "Will you stop it," Hermione insisted.

"Why?" Lily drawled. "Trying to hide your own passionate urges?" She flung her arms out at the last part her loud voice catching the attention of a few passing Hufflepuffs. They stared openly and Lily waved cheekily at them.

"I will hex you," Hermione hissed. She quickened her pace, stalking broodingly ahead in what looked like an attempt to escape her tag-along.

"I have no doubt."

"You don't have to walk me there, you know." It was a poor way of trying to get Lily to ditch her.

"Oh no!" Lily tossed her hair flippantly back over her shoulder. She called her tease as Hermione turned the corner. "I'm going to make sure you're not running off to meet Remus in a broom closet or something."

CRASH!

Hermione had walked straight into one of the suits of armor that bordered Dumbledore's office doorway. She lay in a heap of metal plates, her legs thrown up in a very undignified way. If Lily had been able to stop laughing long enough to help her, it was highly unlikely Hermione would have allowed it. As it was, she was digging herself out from underneath the collapsed suit, cursing all the while.

"Oh, cork it," she growled at Lily, kicking a silver shoulder plate at her.

"That was priceless."

"I'm leaving now."

Hermione barked the password to Dumbledore's office and stomped up the spiral stairs as they appeared.

"Don't be late!" Lily called sternly up after her, sticking her head into the doorway.

The last corner of Hermione's robes disappeared around the stairwell with a swish. "Yeah, yeah."

Shaking her head, Lily whipped the armor suit back into place with a wave of her wand and headed down to the Great Hall.

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Hermione never showed up for dinner. Lily reassured them all that Hermione had promised not to be late, and they took it in stride, finishing their dinner at an unrushed pace before moving to the Gryffindor Common Room.

Each hour passed agonizingly slow. The hour of training came and went, without a showing from Hermione.

The fire cracked and sizzled in the fireplace. The conversation around the common room was forcedly upbeat and a little tense. Harry kept shooting furtive glances at the portrait...

...but it never opened.

At half-past eleven (nearly six hours after Hermione disappeared into the Headmasters office) Sirius threw his quill down on the book table and shoved his chair roughly back. The rest of them looked up in surprise.

"I'm going to bed."

Lily scrambled out of James lap and tried to stop him. "Just wait a little longer," she pleaded. "She'll be here."

"Whatever," he muttered. Hands crammed deep into his pockets he slouched up the stairs and disappeared into the boys' dormitory.

Lily slowly sank back down into the warm space she'd recently vacated between James' long legs. "I don't understand," she said, and looked genuinely confused. "She promised she wouldn't be late."

"She's not just late, Lily," Remus's eyes darted to the door. "She hasn't even showed up, and it's been hours. And she completely blew off training."

"I'm worried." They all looked to Harry who was sitting in the armchair that faced the portrait entrance, his elbow on the armrest and his fist pressed to his mouth.

Ron patted Harry on the back. "I'm sure she's fine, mate. She was with Dumbledore after all."

Harry sighed and his fist dropped into his lap. "I don't like him making all these demands on her."

"There's nothing we can do about that," Ron said. "She's a very capable witch and you know she wants to be of as much help as she can..."

Remus stretched his sore arms up over his head. "She certainly is the brightest witch of her age."

Harry and Ron both tensed, remembering those same words spoken four years ago in the Shrieking Shack. Lupin had been nearly thirty five then. Sirius too.

"Do you think we should check on her?" Harry whispered more to Ron than the rest of them.

Ron sighed. "We'd know if she was in trouble. Let's just go to bed and leave it be."

Harry agreed with reluctance, but opted to wait a little longer while the other retired to bed. Eventually, he too left the common room for bed, the last of the flames dying out in the hearth.

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The quietude of the shadowed common room was broken by the low creaking of hinges at quarter to one. The creak echoed again as the portrait door drifted back shut.

She slipped off her Mary Janes and, holding them by the backs in her hands, she tiptoed on cat's feet to each staircase; checking that no one was still awake. Then she made her way to the couch – now devoid of any warmth that might have alluded to its previous use. She sank into the plush cushions and leaned her head back. A low breath escaped her lips.

The moonlight from one of the bay windows caught her pale face in its ivory beams and chased the shadows from her closed eyes; her round face glowing. A shimmering like diamonds in starlight sparked beneath her lashes and spread along the dark ebony fringe.

That's how the tears began.

They rolled down her cheeks in mercurial waves, tinted silver by the ethereal moonlight, and splashed into her hair. Her image in the white glow shook, trembling beneath continuous onslaught of the moon's rays. She pitched forward and caught her face in her hands.

In the darkened shadows her tears were nothing but dark droplets running over her fingers and dripping through onto the bared flesh of her thighs. Like celestial fingers the blue-white light reached out for her, the moon moving higher in the sky, and placed a comforting hand across her back. As she trembled the ends of her curls caught in the moonlight and bleached amber, swaying across the silvery circle of her robes.

She sniffled softly and it was the loudest sound in the common room. Wiping at her eyes with the already dampened sleeve of her robes, she slowly unclenched her fist. A formal, if slightly crumpled, parchment lay in her hand. Its words squinted up at her and she could hear it laughing at her, mocking her despair. A tear drop fell upon the paper, smearing the Ministry crest at its top.

Her fingers curled back around the parchment and the paper that had been tear-stained and dried too many times crinkled loudly in protest. She imagine the words dying in her hand as she forced it back into the tight ball it'd come from. But in the end, it was just a piece of paper, and all the crumpling in the world couldn't stop what was going to happen.

She ran a hand through her hair and pressed her palm to her forehead. Through the strands of bushy hair trailing between her fingers she watched the moonlight move across the floor and gently reach out to tentatively touch her stocking feet. The lines blurred and she let the tears roll again down her cheeks as they had so many times before.

With the moon as her soul companion the only sound was her quiet sniffling in the dark.

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I know the ending may be a little confusing – but, trust me! I DO have a plan. Please Review – it means the world to me.