The rumours of my death have been greatly exaggerated.

Chapter 4. Secrets of the Veil

The name slithered out of his mouth with resounding obscenity. The P popped profanely, the T twisted at the tip of his tongue and the G gurgled from his gut. Hermione shivered with disgust, her eyes trailing the pub desperately for an easy exit. It would make sense that he had looked familiar to her—enough to know she had met him, but not enough that she would immediately recognise him. She had never met the man for more than a handful of seconds—and that was after he had turned into a rat for over a decade.

"Nice to meet you," she replied quietly, shaking his hand with the tips of her fingers. "I am afraid it is very late, though, and I do have to hurry home. My boyfriend will be waiting for me." The excuse spilled out of her with ease, the gears built in her mind by her years of training turning once again now that the shocks of the evening had finished rippling through her.

"I'm sure you can spare a grieving man a few minutes of your time," he said, refusing to let go of her hand. "Your boyfriend will understand."

Hermione's lips curled in an uneasy smile. "Certainly. A few minutes couldn't hurt." He dropped her hand and relaxed against the booth's seat. "I'm sorry about your father," she added, still eyeing the exit to the pub. "What happened, if you don't mind my asking?"

He looked away from her. "Murdered."

The word rippled through the air, covering even the volume of the telly and the resounding cheers of the frenzied fans watching their team score a goal.

"I'm sorry," replied Hermione, though she wasn't sure she meant it.

Silence fell between them, heavy and cottony, a wall between two worlds. Peter hadn't turned back to face her—it was as if spilling out the fact of his father's death had forced him to come to terms with it.

There was something about the creases in his face that bothered Hermione. She had always believed him to be a simple coward, easily bent to the pressures of powerful men, disloyal by nature—a pawn in a game of chess played by men infinitely more successful and complex than he. But, at this very moment, years before he was to turn into a watery-eyed man with a mousy face and a bald patch, courtesy of the decade he spent as a rat, he looked like someone who had been imbued with nuance. Like there were layers to be peeled, a complexity to be uncovered and understood. He was still pathetic in many ways—the few words he had spoken to her so far told her as much. A bitter, pitiful man. But there was more—something she couldn't quite put her finger on. An aggressivity, a desire to fight—something not yet moulded by the tyranny of Voldemort and the long years spent as an Animagus.

She understood it then, right as his eyes lowered on her, a twitch at the corner of his mouth. This was the night he would decide to turn to darker endeavours. This was the moment he made his decision—having lost his father to powerful enemies, seeing the reality of war seep into the fabric of his own life. This evening was the key no one had thought to look for in their desire for revenge from the man who had taken everything for them.

And, perhaps, perhaps, there was something to be done about it.

Overcome by a sympathy she never suspected she could feel for the man, Hermione added: "Maybe you should avenge him. Face his enemies and take from them what they took from you. Be courageous."

She immediately wished she could take it back—but it was too late. He was now staring right at her and all she could see was vitriol and anger and rage and disgust.

"You're right," he said with acidity. "You should go home."

Hermione dithered—this was the exit she had been looking for, but it had lost its appeal to her. She wanted to try and remedy her mistake, to take it back, to shove him down another path—

No. She had fought about it with Sirius all day long. Changing the past was a dangerous endeavour, one they should not undertake under any circumstance. They had not used a Time-Turner—there was no guarantee that they had landed in a fixed loop, where every single one of their actions would set into motion the inevitable, what was already come to pass. They had fallen through a crack in time and space—any attempt at correcting her error was further damage inflicted on them. It was as irrational as it was dangerous. It could prevent everything, from the first death of Voldemort to the birth of Harry himself.

"But you've just tampered with Time, dear. What's a little more?" echoed the voice of her broken, distorted self.

A cold sweat seized Hermione—yes, she had just done what she so eagerly denounced.

She had already set in motion an altogether different set of events.

She had messed up already.

But… she had messed up enough. It wouldn't do her any good to push her luck further.

"Have a good evening, Peter," she replied hurriedly before making a beeline for the door.

Once she was out, she hid in a dark alley nearby and Disapparated back to the shack, where the silence nearly suffocated her. Sirius was asleep on the couch, lying on his stomach, a sheet covering him from his waist all the way down to his feet. He had removed his T-shirt and she could make out the lines of his back in the darkness—the sharp edges of his shoulder blades, the soft curves of his trapezii, the supple waves of his spine, and, buried under layers of ink, the roughness of his skin. He breathed deeply, his back rising and falling in a steady rhythm, like he had found peace.

She stood there, a few feet away from the couch, staring at him with an all-consuming guilt. She had fought the premise of changing the course of Time so hard, had worked against herself and against him to preserve the timeline, and yet, on this very night, she had talked to his enemy. She hadn't said much, certainly, and she doubted her interference—

No. She could not know what her interference had done. She needed to keep her focus, to stop trying to derail from the choices she had made. He had wandered there and met her out of pure coincidence, certainly, but she had goaded and interrogated him, her words now embedded in an already decaying mind. She had set some things in motion—she couldn't be sure which, but they were there, drifting in the wind and moving towards a new future.

A mumble came out of Sirius' mouth and pulled Hermione out of her trance. She gave him one last glance before exiting to what Sirius had called a bedroom—really, it was just a room with a hatchet paint job, a rickety cot placed in the middle and a few empty shelves lining the walls. It resembled a prison cell more than it did a bedroom, but Hermione was too exhausted to mind. She lay down on the cot and drifted to sleep without giving her current dilemma another thought.

They shared an awkward breakfast. Sirius had woken before her and bought them a few pastries from a local bakery. He had even made a hot pot of coffee which, as disgusting as it was, was greatly appreciated by Hermione.

She silently munched on a croissant while he leaned out the kitchen window, a cigarette in hand. It was like he couldn't even look at her, much less talk to her. The croissant sat awkwardly on her stomach, mixed in with the guilt and the pain and the desire to spill her confession, to tell him what she had done.

She said nothing.

The day passed them by with equal discomfort—neither daring to look at each other, to utter words to each other. Even simple greetings seemed out of reach. Hermione locked herself in the bedroom, reading the only book she had managed to find in this downtrodden place (Requiem for a Dream, which she found downright depressing), while Sirius blasted classic rock on the record player in the living room. They were in a stalemate—neither wanting to acknowledge the difficult position they were finding themselves in, or each other, for that matter. Their endless arguments about interfering with Time had never quite come to an end—Hermione was unwilling to fight that battle once more, especially now that she had betrayed her arguments. She had messed with time, with the trajectory of Sirius' darkest enemy. The confession itching to get out was lodged at the back of her throat, safely tucked under the layers of guilt she harboured and the terror tearing her insides.

She was in a never-ending nightmare of her own making. And, so, the distorted version of her, the one reflected in the mirror and painted across the skies, returned.

"I've never known you to misunderstand an assignment to this degree, Hermione. You were always so diligent at Hogwarts!" The voice rippled between Hermione's temples, a headache blooming just beneath the bridge of her nose.

Shut up shut up shut up you're not real you're a figment of my imagination, you're just a hallucination, shut up shut up shut up—

"That's no way to talk to yourself dearest. You know what to do. So do it. Come clean. Agree to his terms. Change the past and win him over. You know there's no turning back." She hated hearing herself like this. A cracked egg dripping on her skin, cold and thick and revolting.

Shut up shut up shut up—

"He's the only thing you truly desire."

"SHUT UP!"

The scream was just as violent as it was sudden, ripping her from limb to limb, breaking her apart. Her hallucination smiled in response and dissolved into the air, leaving its physical counterpart red and heaving with rage.

The air stiffened with silence for a few seconds. Nothing happened for a little while—perhaps he hadn't hear her, perhaps he was out, perhaps—

Then—a knock at the door.

"Hermione, love, what happened?"

She slapped her hand on her mouth. Great, he was going to think her properly mad now.

"Hermione? Open the door and talk to me, please."

"I'm fine." Her voice was too hoarse for it to be true—and, of course, it was nothing more than a lie. Just another one to her ever-growing list.

"Let me in, Hermione." Sirius' tone was rough. Demanding, even.

This was an order, not a discussion.

And it made her squirm. It made her feel hot and flushed and uneasy.

She tried to quell her embarrassment at this visceral and physical reaction of hers before sheepishly opening the door.

"I—" She paused, the breath suddenly knocked out of her. "It's still there?" she pointed to his chest.

He was standing in front of her, shirtless, the pitch-black stain still stretched across his skin. It looked like it loomed above his heart—a black hole, a dying star, draining all the light around them and entrapping it inside. She had hoped it would be gone by now, but…

"That? It's nothing, don't worry about it," he dismissed. "Don't change the subject, Hermione. What happened?"

"I just had a nightmare. And that is not nothing. It's… it hasn't even dimmed," she added. The anger rushed back to her cheeks and tainted them with blood.

Sirius sighed, jaw moving imperceptibly and teeth grinding. "I don't know what you expect me to do about it," he seethed. The irritation made his lip curl and his nose twitch. It was difficult to say whether it was directed at her observation or at her dismissal of the scream she had let out a few seconds earlier.

But it didn't matter. The vision was now anchored in her brain, pouring itself down her veins and reminding her of what she had done.

"Oh." Her knuckles rubbed the doorframe. "I didn't mean… of course you're not responsible for it, I was just…" She tried to smile. "Well, at least it doesn't seem like it has grown since. Does it… does it hurt?" She stretched out her hand, the pulp of her fingers resting against the charcoal dark skin, questions flooding her mind. Another complication to their already messy predicament… another problem to solve.

"I'm not feeling any pain. I'm not feeling anything, really. It's like the tissue is… well, dead," he shrugged.

Hermione recoiled in horror. "Is this thing killing you?"

"I don't know, Hermione. You know everything I know—actually, you probably know more than I do," he sighed. "And I'm done talking about it. Come with me to the kitchen, we'll have a drink."

"No, I…"

She wasn't sure what she wanted to say. She had apologised a million times by now—it was futile to add fuel to the fire, to hope yet another admission of guilt would solve anything. There was nothing more to say—not about this, anyway.

"Don't resist, love. We both need it." His voice was softer, almost pleading—still, the edge in his tone made it sound like a command.

And Hermione obeyed. She exited the bedroom and followed him to the dingy kitchen, where a bottle of Firewhiskey and two glasses were already waiting for them. Doubt blossomed in the back of her mind, its vines grabbing onto her consciousness and strangling it.

He had planned for them to talk around a drink. He had to know something.

No, he didn't know something—

he knew her.

He knew how she would react to him prodding her about her screaming and her secrecy and her distance and the faraway look she had when she looked at him. He intended to coax her secrets out of her, to soothe her with the burn of alcohol and the soft lull it would paint inside her.

They sat across from each other, the shack burdened with a heavy silence, save for the clink of the glass bottle as Sirius set it back down after pouring each of them a drink. The last golden streaks of sunlight filtered through the amber liquid, shimmering pools of copper light flooding the table and reminding Hermione of late August days spent reading under the tree by her parent's country home, far from her troubles.

Far from her current reality.

She took a cautious sip, barely dipping her lips into the glass. A single rivulet flowed down her throat, coating her insides with a vaguely sweet burn as she swallowed. Sirius had not yet touched his drink—she could feel his stare burning through her, stronger than the Firewhiskey.

"We're going to need to talk, eventually, Hermione," he stated—all manner of irritation was gone from his voice. He sounded… resigned? She couldn't find it in her to look at him, to attempt to read him.

"I know," she responded, shifting her gaze to the window. "I wish I could… I wish I could take it all back. Everything I've done."

He slid his hand across the table and placed it on hers. The gesture was warm, inviting, welcoming. It softened her—turned her into hot metal, malleable at will. Pliable and supple and obedient—bendable to his will.

So it came as no surprise to her that the truth edged itself out of her, gagging her self-preservation and shoving it back down her throat. "I did something, yesterday. I… I think I did something terrible." The sun was now kissing the horizon, vibrant reds and oranges painting the skies below and blurring the line between the tangible and the cosmic. "I r-ran into Peter Pettigrew."

Sirius' hand clenched on hers—iron fingers digging into her flesh, nerves rattling above her skin. She nearly yelped in pain, but she knew it was just the shock. Perhaps he noticed the look on her face—he immediately let go.

"What happened?" he was trying to sound neutral but, beneath his carefully picked out words, she could tell there was anger threatening to burst out of him like burning lava.

"It was an accident, I swear. I wasn't trying to do anything, I really just wanted to escape and take some time to make sense of things, but it just happened. I was sitting in a pub and he came in declaring that his father had died. He walked over to my booth—he wanted to talk to me, he wanted to pressure me into spending the night with him." Hermione knew that she shouldn't be confessing to this. She knew that saying these things would only make Sirius angrier and more inclined to attempt to change the past, something she had so adamantly argued against. But there was no escaping from the reality that she was now finding herself in, there was no escaping from the choices she had made and the bed she had so readily prepared for her own demise. She needed to accept that she had interfered with the things of the past and she was now obligated to pursue this to its very end. Perhaps it had been stupid of her to ignore the consequences that would necessarily abound from her choices, and it had certainly been reckless, but it was the only path forward, the only thing that she knew to be right in this very moment. "He wouldn't let me go, so I did something—quite inadvertently I think, but I did it nonetheless. I asked about his father, and he told me he had been murdered. I thought I saw something in him, something of courage, a desire to fight, and I implied that he should avenge him. I didn't consider—it was stupid of me but, I entirely forgot about our discussion, because in that moment—in that moment, I didn't even think about my own arguments, it was like, like they fell down a well. I knew it was wrong as I said it and I regretted it instantly, but it was too late. I think perhaps, had I said nothing… well… maybe he wouldn't have turned against the Order. Or… I don't know. Maybe I helped turn him—one way or another. I—" The end of her sentence faded out of her mind, refusing to be spoken into the world. She knew nothing, truthfully—and speculation would only make things worse.

Sirius remained still for a moment. The cloak of night was now well settled in, darkness seeping through the window and engulfing them—only then did Hermione finally dare to look at his face, protected by the absence of light. There was nothing there she could read—he had diverted his gaze from her and seemed fixated on a faraway point she could not identify.

"It seems you've painted yourself into a corner, Hermione." There was no amusement in his voice—not even the hint of a victory well-deserved. He was—seemed—upset, even.

"It seems I have," she acquiesced, a lump forming in her throat. Admitting defeat was not something Hermione was accustomed to—much less enjoyed.

"Why did you change your mind?"

"I didn't—I reacted impulsively. I didn't—I didn't think it through," she quipped, befuddled by the question.

He turned to face her, molten grey eyes burning through her. "You are many things, Hermione Granger, but you are not impulsive. If anything, I distinctly remember you scolding me for my impulsivity when the Order was reborn. You're going to have to do better than that."

He was right.

Why had she tried to talk Peter into following another path?

Beneath the silvery glow of the moonlight, on the windowpane, her tether appeared, a victorious smile etched on her ever-changing face, an eerie air of told-you-so dancing in her irises.

Because the answer was the same as it had always been. It was the same reason she had become an Unspeakable, the same reason she had chosen to discard her moral compass. It was all for him. They may have fought about changing the course of Time for hours, spouting vicious insults at each other in order to get ahead, but, deep down, she had wanted to be wrong—to give him what he wanted. And, even if she had seen an inkling of something in Peter, a hint towards another future, she felt no empathy for the man. She had simply wanted to save Sirius from the path she had known he was going to face should Peter turn to darker endeavours.

And she couldn't admit to that. Not to his face, at least.

She had to come up with another excuse—and fast.

"Chalk it up to Gryffindor recklessness, or to my desire to see the best in people," she said without conviction. "I saw something in Peter. He wasn't far gone yet. I wanted—I was hoping to spark that desire to fight in him. And it seemed wrong not to act on it." The irony of the statement barely escaped her—the more she deviated from her own morality, the more she clung to ideals she had long forgotten and dismissed. Perhaps out of a desire to keep up appearances, or to negate herself. It didn't matter, because—

"That would make sense. You were the first one to give Remus the benefit of the doubt once you found out—you have a good heart, Hermione."

And, for the first time in what felt like forever, Sirius flashed her a genuine smile, the corners of his eyes sprinkled with laugh lines and a softness she felt she could melt into.

It only made her all the more queasy.

"I'm sorry this is all such a mess, Sirius. I guess maybe now would be the time to figure out what plan we want to put into motion," she responded, trying to keep the nausea at bay.

"We can do that tomorrow. Let's polish off our drinks and go to bed—I think we both need a good night of rest before trying to delve into the intricacies of tampering with time," he laughed, grabbing his glass and emptying it in a single sip.

Hermione watched as his long black hair cascaded down his neck and below his shoulders—thick streams of dark water fluidly tossed back, hiding the marks of the past—the tattoos and the scars and the blemishes on the nape of his neck and the skin of his shoulders. A single drop of Firewhiskey leaked from the corner of his lips, trailing its way down his jaw, losing its substance amidst the stubborn stubble of his three-day beard until it was reduced to nothing. She felt a stumble in her stomach and nearly ran to lick the liquid residue—she pictured her tongue devouring him whole, revelling in the roughness of his stubble and marvelling at every inch of its skin.

She must have seemed very flustered, because she didn't notice Sirius setting his glass down, turning to face her, and quirking an eyebrow.

"Are you okay?"

She was hot—a crimson flush had crept up below her skin, drowning her face in the colour of blood, and she could not say whether it was from lust or embarrassment. Probably a bit of both—almost certainly, even.

"I'm fine," she blurted out, sounding very much like she was not fine. "It's just the alcohol. I don't… I don't drink much." Well, at least that wasn't a lie—not entirely, anyway.

Sirius looked sceptically at her nearly full glass but said nothing.

Cotton silence spread between them, thick with the things they didn't say, the things they implied and the things they regretted saying.

"We really ought to go to sleep then," Sirius said after a moment.

Hermione's chair scraped the cheap linoleum floor as she got up, questions buzzing between her ears. She turned away from the kitchen without uttering a word, too scared she would vomit her feelings in a messy confession right there and then. He was right: she was in dire need of a night of restful sleep.

"Oh, and Hermione?"

"Yes?" She looked ahead, not daring to meet his gaze. She was in a precarious state—she wished nothing less than to risk that awkward balance.

"Thank you." The words were sincere, heavy with something she wasn't sure she could identify—whatever it was, she deserved none of it.

And that's why it hurt all the more when she responded: "Of course, Sirius." Anything for you.