AN: Hello, fanfiction and Harry Potter fans. I do not own Harry Potter, but feel free to enjoy this or hate it. If you enjoy it, please leave a lovely comment, if you hate it, then leave some constructive criticism, thanks!

Can You Take the Jump?

Chapter 47

Lucius' eyes trailed towards Sirius who was straightening out his robes. "Black, step out for a minute."

"What?! No!"

"Sirius," Hermione nudged, "why don't you floo ahead? I'll follow you soon."

"What? Hermione, I'm not leaving you alone with him. Don't you know he—"

"SIRIUS." She stopped him. "Please. Two minutes. I'll follow you after 2 minutes."

"Two minutes," he agreed. He walked to the floo.

"I told you I understood, didn't I?" Lucius smirked. "Hermione, don't you feel it when you step into the room? The subtle heaviness? I even get voices in my head that voice out my strongest desires, and the urge…Hermione, the urge." His voice shook. "If I followed it, it would reveal my biggest secrets and weaknesses. What great power it has."

It?

"I received a journal."

…

Sirius paced the floor in front of the fireplace, grimacing through a smile every time one of the guests of this bizarre wedding greeted him. He'd never been to a wedding where he felt so overdressed. People came in tie-dyed shirts and muggle jeans, some came in wizarding robes, though none as formal as his. Some wore such vibrant colours that they grabbed all the attention.

Two minutes had to have gone by now, but there was still no sign of Hermione through the fireplace.

"You idiot," he smacked himself on the head. "You fucking idiot!" Public sex wasn't even his kink, but he wanted—no needed—Malfoy to see that he was the only one who could make Hermione feel that good. He was the only one whom Hermione wanted.

He should have stopped when he heard the door open, but it was as if something had possessed him. Logic no longer dictated his mind, but desire, insecurity, and jealousy.

"What came over me?" He whispered to himself. Sirius gripped the

He paced again and again.

"You'll put a hole through the rug."

Sirius swirled around, to a dirty-blonde-haired woman with silvery eyes. Her hair was very long, reaching down to her hips in loose curls. She wore a flower crown on her head, with a simple linen white dress. Despite everyone around them being outrageously dressed, it was clear to Sirius that she was the bride. There was a glow about her, this woman was happy and loved.

"Hello. Pandora, right?"

She smiled, "Yes, and you're Sirius Black. Hermione's boyfriend."

"Hermione spoke about me?"

"Only once," Pandora let out a small laugh at his disappointed face. "But it was enough. You weren't around at the time, but her concern for you, her thoughts of you, and her love for you were very clearly apparent."

"S-she said she loves me?!"

She shook her head, "not in so many words, sadly, but such emotions rarely need the words, don't you think? Don't you show her without the words as well?"

The two turned as a fire roared next to them. Hermione stepped out calmly glancing back and forth between Pandora and Sirius.

"Pandora? Shouldn't you be hiding? The ceremony hasn't started yet, you don't want your husband to see you before your entrance, do you?"

"Nonsense," she shook her head. "Xeno was the first to see me today and helped me pick out the dress. Why should I hide and wait for an entrance at my own wedding?"

Hermione opened her mouth, but quickly closed it when she noticed the unusually dressed guests as well. Nothing about this wedding was conventional.

"You look wonderful, Pandora. Thank you for inviting me to your wedding."

"Thank you for coming, my friend."

The corners of Hermione's lips lifted at the word. Few people in this time would go as far as calling her their friend.

"I have to go greet a few of Xeno's family members but enjoy the party. The ceremony will start soon."

The couple watched the bride walk over to her husband-to-be, radiating joy. Xenophilius Lovegood wore striped tweed robes, similar to the ones Hermione remembered seeing him in, all those years ago when he betrayed Harry to the Death Eaters to save his daughter. However, unlike that time, he had a healthy hue of colour on his skin and rosy cheeks as he laughed with happiness, his arms around his soon-to-be wife, speaking to his parents. His golden locks weren't dirty and matted, but hung as loose curls, just like Luna's. He had braids in his hair, intertwined with the same flowers that made up the crown on Pandora's head.

"Two peas in a pod, aren't they?"

"Hermione," Sirius gripped both her hands and pulled her to face him but couldn't meet her eyes. Tears welled as panic filled those beautiful greys orbs. His breath shook and his hands trembled. "Listen. I-I-I don't know what happened. I trust you; I swear to Merlin, I trust you, but when I entered that room…I'm so sorry. I don't know what came over me, but all of the sudden, there was this voice, and this wave of urge pushed me over the edge." He sounded frantic, trying to wrap his head around what had occurred in the Malfoy Manor's study. "I know this sounds like an excuse, but—"

"Shhh," she pressed her finger into his lips to stop the verbal vomit that continued out of his mouth. "Sirius, don't worry about it."

"Don't worry about it?" The space between Sirius's brows wrinkled.

"There was an object of dark magic in the study, our proximity to it allowed its influence to leak into us. Nothing more. So, what happened isn't on you."

"Oh," his shoulders dropped, and a calm washed over him.

"Let's enjoy the wedding, all right? Put it behind us."

"Right…"

…

The bride and groom, and the guests weren't the only unique elements of the Lovegood wedding. There were no seats and no rings. The small group stood around the couple, linking hands, while the couple in the center did the same.

However, this wasn't the element that caused Hermione to gasp. The wedded couple took veritaserum as they took their vows and then proceeded to bind themselves and their vows to each other with the Unbreakable Vow.

Hermione watched, jaw dropped and shocked beyond belief.

The wedding wasn't just a wedding. It was a fae wedding. Old Magik, the type that existed before Merlin's descendants of witches and wizards. When magic was neither light nor dark, but just magic. Magic, just like the Cave of Wishes.

Sirius squeezed her hand, giving her a questioning glance. She glanced down at the joined hands, realizing what they were doing. They, the guests, were creating one of the rings that would bind the couple together. The couple themselves held each other's hands, creating a second ring within. The guests' ring meant that they were witnesses to their love and devotion, while the couples' ring symbolized their promise to one another. Rings, or circles, were a symbol often found in runes of old temples before they were ruined by civilization. They represented infinity, holiness, oneness, truth, and completeness.

Pandora and Xenophilius weren't just affirming their love for each other and getting married, they were cementing their love and union through all of time and space. A promise to each other that they would find each other in the next life and/or the next world to be together and love one another.

"They're promising each other everything." Luna smiled as she watched her parents kiss, tears of joy spilling from their eyes. "They were soulmates. Real soulmates. Not the type of soulmate that you hear when you talk about a couple that suits each other well, but real, genuine soulmates. The real thing is extremely rare, you know." Luna's eyes shined with mirth. "All living things have a soul. Sometimes people are reincarnated as animals or plants, not allowing a match to happen. Sometimes they aren't born yet, even as you die. Sometimes it's a twin sibling or your baby. With so many variables, it's quite impossible to find a real, genuine soulmate, let alone a soulmate that can be your spouse."

Hermione could feel the magic pulsing with bliss around them at the union.

"The vows took hold," Hermione spoke with awe. "They're soulmates," she whispered under her breath.

Luna nodded.

"If the vow didn't take hold, the flowers in my parents' hair would die, and they'd both fall gravely ill. It was a big risk to hold a fae wedding, many things could have gone wrong with they misjudged their connection."

Walking with long flowy strides, Luna approached her parents. Her long hair that reached down to the back of her knees swayed ever so slightly as she reached out to touch her mother's face. "Of course, not all of us are blessed. Instead, we marry those we love with our hearts. Someone who fills our soul more than others, but never completely." Luna's light and twinkling voice grew heavy when her hand moved through her mother's face, a cold reminder that she was a figment of Hermione's imagination, a ghost of the future. Pandora died when Luna was only nine, she witnessed the whole thing at such a tender age, able to see the Thestrals long before Harry. She'd been old enough to comprehend death, yet too young to understand it. "Funny, she's both familiar and unfamiliar at the same time."

Everyone dropped their hands as the magic calmed, instinctively knowing that the ceremony was completed, and the souls were now bound by magic.

Pandora walked over to Hermione and Sirius, grinning from ear to ear.

"Congratulations," Sirius greeted her. "What an impactful ceremony. A lot of big promises, you must love him a lot."

"While I love Xeno, it's more than that. You see, we're—"

"Soulmates." Hermione finished for her.

Her eyes shined, just like Luna's had. "You figured it out?"

"The circles tipped me off, a fae marriage." While the part of Hermione that understood the complexities and indescribable mysteries of magic knew that her friend had found her true soulmate, the logical side of her wanted to scold her for the recklessness of her vows. They'd promised each other forever and beyond. It wasn't just for Pandora, but her newlywed husband, and her unborn daughter. A vow like that impacted the survivors more than those who have died and left.

"Hermione," Luna looked so much like her mother, it was as if Pandora had a twin sister who was attending the wedding. "Save her. Not for me, but for my father. She was taken too early from him."

"You must be Hermione, my Pandora has been telling me all about you." Luna's father walked right through his daughter without even knowing it, jarring her back to the conversation at hand. "Thank you for coming to the wedding."

"You're the author of the Quibbler, right?" Sirius asked, recognizing the blond man. "You write the most bizarre pieces. I love it! Honestly, it's better than the rubbish that the Prophet brings out these days."

"You read my articles?"

Sirius and Xenophilius walked away, speaking to each other about the piece the Quibbler wrote about the conspiracy of the 1953 Quidditch World Cup being rigged. Luna walked with them, listening in on their conversations and adding in little bits of information, despite knowing they couldn't hear her.

"Sirius is a good choice for you, although I see someone else in your life as well. A tall ginger?"

Hermione struggled to maintain her unfazed façade. Maybe it was the magic that had surrounded her only moments ago, but Pandora's clairvoyance seemed remarkably clear today, unlike the usual days.

"Well, if that's true, we'd have outrageously red-headed children," she pushed back with humour, refusing to make an actual remark on her uncanny sight.

"Thinking of children?"

"Are you?"

Pandora's calm eyes stayed on Hermione, growing the sense of inner discomfort within her. Luna never seemed to care if Hermione avoided certain topics of conversation, easily switching from one conversation to the next without an awkward pause, but Pandora wasn't the same. While she didn't glare or look annoyed, it was the innocence behind her eyes that made Hermione want to spill the truth.

"Xeno and I aren't meant to have children, or so my family says."

"Is your family against the marriage?"

"No, just against me having kids."

"They don't like kids?"

"No, they love them." A sad smile formed on the beautiful bride's face, "I'm just not meant to have one."

Hermione's eyes unconsciously flickered to Luna who now stood behind her mother.

"I don't understand," she paused, stopping herself from blurting out the fact that Hermione knew for a fact that she would give birth to a daughter. "Why? What do you mean you aren't meant to have children?"

She nodded towards two people who stood in the back, slow dancing with each other, oblivious to the world. The older couple looked so very in love, as they gazed into each other's eyes, soaking in the other's presence.

"My mother married my father despite the objection of her family. You see, my mother's side of the family is quite well known to have specifically arranged marriages, but not so politically arranged like other Purebloods, but to enhance the power of these," she tapped her eyes. "You know I have eyes that see more than most, but they're quite weak compared to the rest of my family. Diluted, they would say."

"Your clairvoyance is an inherited trait?"

"I'm lucky for even my smallest and weakest bit of sight. It's why my maternal grandparents even bother to speak to me. You see, my mother's side of the family is well known to produce Seers."

Hermione had been casually watching the bubbles of her champagne rise from the bottom of her glass, froze at the news.

"What's your mother's maiden name?"

"Trelawney."

…

Sirius leaned on the railing of the gazebo, looking up at the twinkling lights of the night sky. He traced the summer constellations in his mind, Sagittarius, Scorpius, Delphinus, etc. He used to do the same thing in the attic of his home with his brother, hiding away from their crazed mother as she rampaged about their father's adulterous ways.

The cool night breeze swept through his hair, bringing scents of the food they'd eaten for dinner, the sweetness of the cake, and the earthiness of the grass that surrounded them in the countryside.

It had been a lovely wedding. He was lucky to have witnessed a soulmate wedding in his lifetime.

He looked down at the hand that had been holding Hermione's during the ceremony, wondering if she was his soulmate.

"I just knew," Xenophilius told him when he'd asked how he knew Pandora was his soulmate.

"What a bullshit answer," he muttered, sipping on his butterbeer. Did the fact that he was questioning if Hermione was his soulmate mean that they weren't? Did it even matter if they weren't? What if Hermione met her soulmate one day, what would happen to him? What if he met someone who was his soulmate, would his feeling for Hermione change? He couldn't imagine it, not feeling for Hermione the way he felt now. That burning desire he had for her, the enjoyment of every moment with her, his appreciation that she simply existed in his life. He couldn't imagine not feeling those things.

There was a soft knock on the wood, pulling him away from his thoughts.

"Hiding from me?" Hermione smirked as she approached him. "Worried that I'm starting to have delusional thoughts and expectations of marriage because of this?"

Sirius let out a small laugh, "Does she feel the same feelings you feel for her? Why doesn't she want the things she saw at this wedding?"

Another set of intrusive thoughts. Ever since he became aware of them in the Malfoy study, it was harder to ignore them and pretend they didn't exist.

"Hey, you okay?" Hermione approached him softly, she caressed his face with her cold hands. He shook off his outer robes and put it around her shoulder without saying a word.

"You said that what happened in Malfoy's study wasn't my fault."

"You're still upset about what happened? Sirius, I told you, it's not your fault, there was a dark object in our—"

"See that's the thing," he interrupted her. "I've had those thoughts before, I just pushed them away, pretending they didn't exist. The dark object didn't place false thoughts in my head, it was simply amplifying the thoughts that were already there."

"Sirius—"

"No, let me finish." He stopped her once more. "I hated the fact that you've had access to Malfoy Manor for Merlin knows how long, I hate the fact that you've been there so many times that you can navigate through his massive home with ease! It drives me bloody mad that Lucius makes an exception to his ridiculous prejudice for you, not because he's suddenly a changed man and loves muggles, but because it's you! And while I'm infinitely grateful, I despise the fact that this all started because you needed help to save me from Voldemort's grasp! I hate that you risked your life that night, and the person you trusted to get you out if things went wrong was him. So, I didn't just have sex with you because you were hot and I was horny, I needed us to have sex in that study because I knew that Malfoy would walk in. He would sense that you hadn't left yet, and I knew he wouldn't resist the urge to come to see you, so I—"

"Showcased me like a trophy." She stepped back, clear hurt written across her face.

Sirius blinked when he realized what he'd just said, "no! I just wanted to prove to him that—"

"I was yours? You think that excuses you from putting me out on display to be seen by another person without my consent?!"

Speechless and shocked by his own rambling words, Sirius open and closed his mouth like a fish out of water. What he wanted to do was explain his fears and insecurities since the night of the Initiation, but what had come out was his ugly green monster of jealousy and petty vengeance. While it hadn't been his intention, what Hermione was saying was true. He'd used her to satisfy his own ego, displayed her, and treated her worse than some cheap prostitute in Knockturn Alley because he'd been blinded by his jealous rage. Dark object or not, what he'd done was unforgivable.

The realization of the depth of damage he'd caused with his action hit him.

He reached out to her, fearing she'd run away from him, but couldn't grab her with his dirty and pathetic hand. What right did he have? No matter his insecurities, there was no excuse for his actions.

Hermione watched his eyes shake and his skin pale. He wasn't even breathing. She watched him go through the different phases of grief in a matter of seconds. Sirius dropped his outstretched hand, limp at his side: acceptance.

As awful as his actions were, she couldn't deny the terrifying fact that she had the urge to forgive him. He looked so miserable that she wished to pull him into her arms and tell him everything was all right, that if Tom Riddle's diary hadn't been there, he would have never gone through with his thoughts.

Maybe she was being unreasonable. Hermione was used to intrusive thoughts, and dark influences crowding her mind all the time. Her hallucinations often coaxed her to kill people or at least harm them, so it was easy for her to push past the influences of the Horcrux without any hesitation. Lucius knew that the Horcrux was there, so he was able to identify that the intrusive thoughts were not out of his volition, but from the darkest piece of magic that could be made. However, Sirius, poor, sweet, and innocent Sirius had faced the assault with no warning or preparation.

Right?

"He knew, Mione." It was rare to hear such a tone in Harry's voice. Hermione remembered hearing it once when James lied keeping an eye on his baby sister while they were outside playing when in reality he'd been busy riding a bike. Lily had gotten hurt. It wasn't only Lily's injuries that made Harry so mad and so disappointed, but it was James's broken promise and his lies.

"He knew that Lucius would walk in. That's…" Harry shook his head while placing himself in between her and Sirius, being her shield, although his intangible form would be able to stop nothing. The protective brotherly act brought tears to her eyes as her heart broke for herself and Sirius. "Intrusive thoughts don't possess you and they don't erase your sense of right and wrong. He knew."

"You knew." Her voice cracked, stabbing a dagger deeper into Sirius's heart.

"I'm so so sorry. I'm so sor—" His voice broke as he crumbled to his knees. "I'm so sorry."

…

AN: Nooooooooooooo!

I wrote this, but I'm heartbroken for them? I knew it was happening, but I deleted the scene and wrote an alternative ending, just to delete that and put the original scene back in…I'm too invested in my own characters' relationships! If I was this invested in my own love life maybe I wouldn't have attended my friend's wedding, but my own….

Anyway!

I kind of regret not posting last week because the Thursday fell on September 1st! Such a loss in opportunity, but there's no way I could have uploaded this chapter…I only wrote like 300 words!

I'm glad to be back, the wedding was great, it was at a golfing country club! It was a Thai x Korean wedding, so you know the food was bomb. I had a great time, even though I was running around in 30C weather in full hair, makeup, dress, and heels for the first half of the day. The ceremony was so romantic and the night was really fun and amazing, so I guess it was worth it.