AN: Helloooooo! I don't know if I'll be able to keep up the pace of one new chapter a day, but I'm on a roll so I thought I'd upload another chapter. Looking forward to your comments, please review and let me know what you think! 3 xoxo
Hermione did dream. It felt a little bit like she was looking at the world through thick glass, images were distorted like she was watching them from a distance. She was in a peaceful wood, on the outskirts she reckoned by the thinness of the trees and the smattering of light peeking through the foliage above. It was autumn, the vibrant leaves under her feet crunched satisfactorily as she walked along a path to a clearing. She saw a man sitting on a large rock huddled over a fire, his dark hair covering his eyes as he fiddled with something across his lap. Hermione felt warmth as she looked at him, she was aware of the smile that played across her lips as she continued to approach him.
"Well, hi there," she called to him. He turned to face her, a large grin on his mischievous face. "You're back quite soon, love," he remarked to her.
"What can I say? I suppose I missed you a bit," she teased, taking a seat next to him on the large stone. His face was so handsome, his hands were strong and beautiful at the same time. He extended a stick to her capped with two marshmallows on the end. Their fingertips brushed, and she felt a pleasant tightening in her chest. Being this close to him was intoxicating. She held the stick over the fire, taking pleasure in the way the marshmallow skins slowly became golden. She smirked when her companion thrust his marshmallows in the fire clearly hoping to set them ablaze.
"Do you really like them burnt like that?" she asked, throwing him an amused glance that he returned easily.
"Of course. You know me, I don't do things in halves. I'm all in." She felt her breath hitch as she interpreted the double meaning layered in his reply.
He clearly enjoyed the tension he was building between them. His marshmallow caught fire and he brought it closer to his face to savor the rush of the blaze. After several seconds of burning, the outside of the marshmallow growing charred and brown, he made eye contact with her and blew on it, forcefully extinguishing the fire. The heat between them crackled. After allowing it to cool, he bit the marshmallow off the stick whole, relishing her enamored demeanor as she watched him devour it.
She leaned close to him, raising her hand to the corner of his mouth. Gently she brushed her thumb across his bottom lip and the crease between them her eyes were cast downward, shyly, gazing at his lips. He reached for her chin and tilted her face upwards. Her long dark lashes fluttered, brown eyes meeting grey.
"You've got something on your face," she murmured cheekily, her thumb still resting on the corner of his mouth. He wrapped his hand around her wrist and she let out a sigh.
"Love, I-" she cut him off by gently replacing her thumb with her lips, kissing him tentatively. She felt him go stiff, and she made a motion to retreat. This was a mistake. I've ruined it, she thought. He surprised her by tugging her wrist toward him and using his other hand to pull her waist close, responding to her kiss firmly. She could feel the heat of his mouth warming her from her toes to the top of her head. Every nerve was tingling through her as he deepened the kiss, their open mouths responding to each other and the long-standing tension they had developed. They broke apart and she rested her forehead against his, cupping his face with her palms.
"Oh, Sirius," she breathed.
Hermione jolted awake. Her stomach did several backflips as if she'd been falling down a blackhole and suddenly hit the bottom. Her headache was murderous, she clearly had not had enough water to counteract the effects of the butterbeer she drank at the Burrow or the firewhisky she had quelled her grief with the night before. She opened her eyes and remembered where she was, blushing as she remembered the dream that had awoken her. She spiraled deeper into her shame as she noted that she wasn't wearing jeans while lying in the bed of Sirius Black.
She had recognized the man in her dreams as Sirius even though he looked nothing like the Sirius she had known in life. The man in her dreams had shoulder length, thick, wavy, gorgeous hair. His face was bright and mischievous, no lines from years of stress and incarceration. The undone buttons of his shirt revealed a soft smattering of curly hair and the edges of a tattoo. The Sirius she had known was covered in faded tattoos, his hair was long but had lost it's fullness and shine, and while a gleam of mischief could be found in his eyes from time to time, he had always seemed tired when he thought no one else was looking. She brushed her hand over her panties and was embarrassed to discover she was wet. This was the strangest possible variation of grief she had experienced-a wet dream about a dead man old enough to be her father.
She looked at the clock on the side table and noted it was about ten o'clock in the morning. She flopped back on the bed and sighed. It was Saturday so she didn't have to go to work. She'd left Harry and Ginny and the rest of the Weasley family last night at the Burrow so none of them would be expecting to see her today, and no one would think to look for her here even if they happened to be looking. She wondered how long she could get away with hiding out at Grimmauld Place with her sad memories before the world demanded that she smile again.
She took a more careful look around the room than she had the night before. The morning light softened the decor invoking nostalgia. The Muggle posters of naked women still made her feel a certain distaste, though she supposed that could be excused somewhat as it was partially a statement of spite against his insufferable blood puritanical family. He had clearly done his best to make the room a statement against everything his family had stood for. She smiled a bit in appreciation of his pluck for standing against deep seated evil. She couldn't imagine what growing up in his house must have felt like. How did you escape a nest of snakes?
Her gaze landed on an open crate next to the bureau and she craned her head to get a better look. It looked like something that had been stored in an attic for an extended period of time. She couldn't see very well from her perch in the bed, so she swung her legs over the side and padded over to see what was inside.
Squatting so that she could take a better look at the container, she saw the crate was labeled with the words: Remus J. Lupin and Property Of: Sirius O. Black in faded ink. I suppose Remus kept some of Sirius' things all those years he was in Azkaban, she thought to herself. He must have returned these items to Sirius when he moved back to his childhood hellhole. She felt a pang of sadness thinking of Remus all alone for all of those years, unable to give up a box of memories that undoubtedly caused him pain and confusion in light of Sirius' supposed betrayal.
A maroon and gold Quidditch jersey was folded haphazardly in the top. She gingerly lifted it and turned it over to see BLACK and the number 7 emblazoned across the back. There were loose stitches and a few holes but the jersey was largely intact. It was strange to think of Sirius as a young student, aloft on a broom, playing sports while the world around him hurtled towards a precipice of darkness.
She picked up a photograph underneath and saw a man who looked startlingly like her best friend and a much younger version of her favorite Defense professor lounging by the Black Lake. This is what the Sirius of her dream looked like, she realized with confusion. She only knew a rugged, war-weathered man from her years in Hogwarts. This young, handsome, mischievous man was a stranger to her... or at least he should have been. How could she have imagined him like this in her dreams without ever having known him like this? She felt strangely protective over this version of the man she had barely known, unaware of the misery the future was to bring, how cheated he would be.
She briefly wondered what he would have been like if he had never been framed for mass murder and the betrayal of Harry's parents. If he would have gotten married, raised Harry, kept Remus in better shape. All of the years that should have been good to him were stolen-first by Azkaban and then by being in hiding. Sirius had been a wild spirit, that much she remembered well from their years of acquaintance. What a cruel twist of fate that he lived his life in a literal and then psychological cage. The tragedy of it was of Shakespearean proportions.
She sifted through other various photographs and letters in the box, N.E.W.T. results (he'd done surprisingly well), and other various school effects before stumbling upon a heavy pendant in the bottom of the box. She lifted it out carefully and stared it in puzzlement. This didn't seem like a school-age possession that Remus would have taken into custody for Sirius.
It was gold, untarnished (she assumed it was enchanted to dispel dirt and rust) and would hang a few inches above the navel if she guessed correctly. It was a large sapphire, cushion cut, at least 10 karats, with a halo of diamonds and emeralds. This seemed old, and full of magic, and hardly the taste in jewelry that Sirius had had, at least in the time she'd known him. She turned it over, searching for an engraving that might illuminate its purpose or origin or any darkness it contained. She found nothing. The longer she looked at it, the more she felt connected to the stone, almost as if it were putting her into a trance.
She wanted to put it on, but her experience with magical artifacts warned her against this. She was in a house that was previously infested with dark heirlooms likely spelled to cause harm to those who didn't fit a particular heritage profile, like herself. Her intuition nudged her away from this idea, and she forced herself to place it on the bureau instead. She rummaged about in the box more, pointedly ignoring the pendant, skimming a few letters between Sirius and his school friends, before the discomfort of the intrusion finally put an end to it. She neatly rearranged the box's contents before crossing the room to pick up her jeans and pull them on, followed by her shoes.
How was she going to spend the rest of the day, she did not know. Perhaps a cup of tea would give her time to mull it over and make a plan. She wasn't ready to face her well-meaning friends yet, or anyone in the magical world for that matter. She felt guilty for being so sad when the Weasley family had more cause to grieve over Ron's death anniversary than she. But she had been there, she was the one he had died protecting, she had buried his body. They would never have to live with those memories.
She rinsed her mouth and crept down the front stairs carefully, eager not to awaken Walburga Black from her portrait's silence. She slipped out the front door and walked a few blocks to find a cafe and some breakfast. Having successfully acquired a pastry and a large earl grey tea, she decided to return to Grimmauld Place and not her own flat. She hadn't taken advantage of the library at Grimmauld for quite a few years and she remembered it was full of rare and interesting books more likely to be found in the Hogwarts restricted section than a display at Flourish and Blotts.
A lazy day of reading was just what she needed.