There was a silence. Sirius still looked lost.
"I stayed here in Grimmauld Place with you."
Another lost look, and Hermione laughed.
"I was one of the ones that was there—not entirely conscious, but there—when you died."
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"When I… when I what!" Sirius choked slightly; he was now very certain that the girl was insane, whether organically or as a result of such a high fever.
"When you fell through the arch."
Sirius really did remember falling through the arch, and then getting back up to walk through it again, but he had no idea how this tied in with her previous comment about him dying.
"The arch kills anyone that falls through it. It's there for people at the Ministry to study death, but all the people it kills are supposed to be 'accidental' deaths, and thus possible—not likely, mind you, but possible—to bring back to the world of the living."
Sirius was stunned for a moment, before realizing that she must have been kidding him. Good joke. Really had me going. He leaned back, now smiling.
"So… that's what you did, is it? You, er, brought me back to life? After I, um, died, did I?"
The girl's twisted smile seemed to reflect that she knew Sirius did not truly believe her. "Yes. You died seven years ago."
Sirius almost laughed out loud. "Ah. I see."
The girl stared at his laughing eyes for what felt like entire minutes, but finally sniffed airily and returned to her soup. "Fine, don't believe me. I almost kill myself bringing you back, but you don't have to take a word I say into that thick skull of yours."
His face reddened slightly in anger. He had never really been one for keeping his temper.
"Now see here, little girl," he said, brushing off all ideas of referring to her as 'young woman', "you did not risk your life to bring me back last night. In fact, if anything, it was the exact opposite!"
The girl's face flushed bright crimson. "I studied five years to learn the secrets of that arch, and you wandered around London with me for less than an hour! Such a great sacrifice it must have been, bringing me in, then, eh, Sirius? You've always been a rude git, haven't you?"
"If I'm a rude git, why did you work so long to bring me back?" Sirius taunted.
"I wasn't working to bring you back!" Suddenly, the girl was not matching his taunts with her own; she had broken into a fresh wave of tears. She threw the bowl of soup at him, splattering him with it and smashing the bowl against the wall. The soup was still warm enough to be unpleasant, and he glowered at her before leaving the room with the slam of a door.
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Sirius brooded in a guest bedroom for about an hour before finally calming down. The soup stains had left, along with a few prods from the strange girl's wand. Through the ceiling, he could barely hear her still tumultuous tears.
He felt cut by her words. Pretentious. Insensitive. He had been called these before, but never by a complete stranger, especially such an attractive one. He smiled a little to himself, despite everything. Yes, she was undeniably attractive… although he did not think he could go for someone with that many mental problems tucked under her belt, and at such a young age.
Something in the corner of Sirius's vision caused him to reach for a huge book on top of the bed. This had been Ron and Harry's bed when they stayed over summer, and then again at Christmas. It took him only opening the first page to realize this was Ron's photo album, probably left from whenever his last visit here had been. Sirius smirked as he thought, poking fun at the girl, Oh, about seven and a half years ago.
The first photo was of the entire Weasley family as Sirius knew them… all, that was, except Percy. The next photo was of Ginny alone, combing her hair and looking sore at whoever was taking the picture. Then came the wonder trio; Harry, Ron, and Hermione all waved up at Sirius from the page. The next picture was only Harry and Hermione. The next, Ron and Hermione. The next few were of Hermione alone.
And suddenly, a wheel turned and clicked into place at the back of Sirius's mind, sending off a chain reaction until he was rigid with the shock that came with realization.
The photo album slid to the floor with a loud thud.
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Hermione wondered if her tears would ever stop coming. She had wondered this many times before in her life, of course, but it was different now. She knew Sirius could hear her, and was probably waiting for her to stop crying before coming into the room. She was unsure as to whether she wanted to see him or not. If she just told him who she was, he would know the entire story he believed insane was true; but did she want him to know? Sirius knowing all about it seemed to make it real, make it a fact more than a possibility that the spell had failed her, had brought back the wrong person. Of course, Hermione had mourned when Sirius had died. She had even had quite a crush on him when he had been alive. But there was no possible way that he was the one that had turned her into such a recluse, such a hermit.
It was impossible.
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The young woman was Hermione.
That meant that seven years had passed.
That meant that he had been dead.
And anything could have happened in seven years. Harry could be dead, for all he knew. There was only one way to find out at the moment.
He tore up the stairs and flew through the door into his own bedroom, where a silent, twenty-three year old Hermione lay prostrate on the bed.
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"I thought you'd figure it out for yourself eventually." Hermione mumbled, as Sirius knelt on the floor beside the bed, grabbing Hermione's hands and forcing her to look at him. He looked desperate, needy, and in all other ways completely unlike the Sirius she had once known.
"H-Hermione?" He asked her.
Slowly, biting her lower lip, she nodded.
He closed his eyes and let out a shuddering breath. "You have to understand me. From my perspective, I fell down with the world one way, I got back up, and suddenly everything had changed. I… I need to know what has happened since I… left." He finished lamely.
There was a long silence. Hermione turned her head the other way and looked longingly out the window of the room. It was a small, grimy thing, as something simple as cleaning the windows Molly and the children of the Order had never gotten around to doing. Technically, this house was now Harry's, but he had not mentioned it, much less stepped foot in it, since it falling into his name. Hermione had a grand suspicion that the two of them were the first there in years.
A thousand possibilities flew around Hermione's brain, all cruel and uncaring. It was stupid, she knew, but hearing Sirius state it the way he had felt it had shaken her, and for some reason she now wanted him to know, wanted the two of them to be on the same page. She wanted someone who could understand her suffering.
Then, however, nobody really understood her suffering. They had not had the kind of relationships with the people concerned as Hermione had. When Sirius died, she had tried to appear merely sad on the outside, not ravaged from the inside out, as nobody then had known what she had felt for him. When Dumbledore died, an enormous burden was placed upon Hermione's shoulders, expected her to be the new Dumbledore, her to be the next person with all the answers. She had nearly cracked under all that stress. When Ron died, so soon after giving Hermione their first kiss together, she had stopped working inside, becoming cold enough to murder. She was unsure if she could say these out loud.
When she finally spoke, she did not meet Sirius's eyes, and it was like a newspaper that she lifted off the names of the dead. "You were among the first; nobody else died that night. Then Emmeline Vance, and, almost a year after you, er, died, Dumbledore was killed." Here, Sirius flinched so hard it looked as if he had been struck. He began to shake, eyes wide in disbelief. "Then Dedalus Diggle, and at the end of the next year, R—" her voice fell through, and she coughed a little to bring it back up again. "Ron was murdered, then. That was the night Voldemort was killed, as well as Bellatrix and Malfoy Sr. The rest have either been rounded up and sent to Azkaban since, or likewise killed."
"Anyone else from… from our side?"
Hermione shut her eyes tight. So many. She had not even thought of them for so long, was unsure whether she could still remember their names, even.
"Firenze. And… and Alicia Spinnet." So very, very many. "Madame Maxime." The names flashed before her closed eyes now, like from a list on plain yellowed parchment. "Charlie Weasley. Susan Bones. The Creevey boys. Ernie MacMillan." She remembered the boy who looked disappointed, if not surprised, at making second-in-class to herself, and shivered a little as if in cold. "That's… those are all I remember."
She turned her head to look at Sirius. He was taking this all in with a stunned, saddened expression. She knew that he had known very few of these people, but there were so many names listed, so very many losses.
"But we won out in the end?" Sirius asked, voice a little shaky. "Harry got Voldemort, right?"
"Oh yes." Hermione said, almost ruefully. "And then got married, just last month."
"To… to who?" Sirius inquired incredulously, suddenly losing all tentativeness in his voice.
"To Ginny Weasley." Hermione said simply, knowing that this would come as a shock to Sirius. She watched surprise flutter across his face, then a little smile.
"Knew she fancied him. Mungdungus owes me ten Galleons."
Suddenly remembering, Hermione sighed. "Yeah, well, that's not all Mungdungus owes you, and, unfortunately, you're not the only one Mungdungus owes."
Sirius raised one eyebrow.
"He was caught stealing your things from this house for resale." Hermione said gingerly, as if afraid of angering Sirius. "But he's also been thrown in Azkaban; something about some other burglary, I'm not so certain on the details. He should be out… next year, I think."
To Hermione's surprise, Sirius smiled, a grin she had not seen on his face since that Christmas, so many years ago. It made her almost want to smile herself.
"Always count on Dung to make the best of a bad situation. Crafty fellow… I taught him everything he knows, you know."
"Yeah, well, I wouldn't be proud of that if I were you." Hermione snapped, turning her head away and gazing out the window again. Sirius was beginning to annoy her, suddenly happy and moving in on her sorrow. Could he not just leave her be?
Sirius let Hermione's hand fall. "Now, now… don't be sore at me. Here, I'll leave, but if you need anything just holler."
"I'll be fine." Hermione said stiffly. "I just need back at my flat, and you need to find another place to be, too, until you can talk things over with the Honeymooner."
"What?" Sirius asked, pausing in the doorway.
"This is Harry's house now, as well you know… after all, you're the one who left it to him."
There was a long silence, and Hermione tossed her hair the other way so that she could look in Sirius's direction. He was pausing thoughtfully in the doorframe, silence etched in every centimeter of his pose. His stare unnerved Hermione, and only reminded her how she hated the fact that he was alive again.
Finally, he spoke. "You need to get to your flat, eh?"
"Yeah."
"Well, I think there's some Floo powder by the fireplace." For some reason, his words were slightly slower and slurred than they had been before. Noticing this, Hermione sat up and put on a concerned face against her will.
"Sirius? You okay?"
"Oh yeah." His words were now very run-together, and he was swaying slightly on the spot. "Just… stood up too fast. I'd better go… go…."
What Sirius had better go do was lost on Hermione, because, at that instant, Sirius crumpled into a dead faint.
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A/N: There... erm, well maybe not less of a cliffhanger, but a... well... nevermind.