AN: Sorry it's been a few days since my last update! I've been covering for all the people on my team for the past few weeks due to illnesses and I'm in the middle of exams right now. But I couldn't get Hermione and Sirius out of my head so here we are! I hope you enjoy, I'm trying to build up to the bigger reveal... stay tuned, more delicious smut and adventure to come!
Hermione spent the entire afternoon lazily draped over a plush velvet sofa in the Black library perusing rare and historical volumes. She was reading a fascinating tome of lore of the sorceress Morgana and her rise to notoriety in Muggle literature. Questions of Morgana's magical orientation were mixed, whether she practiced Dark Magic was obscured by multiple and varying reports. There was a certain greyness to magic that Hermione had come to appreciate since the conclusion of the wizarding war she had lived through. Intentions mattered. Outcomes mattered. It was all too complex to be compartmentalized and judged uniformly.
She had thrown back the rich silk window coverings to allow the room to be illuminated by natural light while she savored the solitude her secret hideaway afforded. As the sun began to dip, the natural light gradually faded and Hermione began to drift into a comfortable sleep.
Sirius was stroking her hair lazily; she was curled into his side, legs intertwined with his and her hand resting on his chest. She let out a contented sigh, relishing the feeling of his naked flesh against her own. "What are you thinking about, love?" he murmured into her ear, his breath tickling her neck, raising goosebumps on her arms.
"Mmm," she purred contentedly.
He chuckled, "Didn't quite catch that."
She nestled her head further into his neck and sighed. "Just about how happy I am right now, here with you." He dropped a kiss on her temple.
"I was thinking the same thing." She smiled up at him, her adoring gaze igniting a protective feeling in his chest.
"I might also have been thinking about your arse," he intimated teasingly. She swatted him on his chest and propped herself on her elbow to give him a playful look of outrage.
"Oh, were you now?" she said, arching her eyebrow expectantly.
"Well, love…" he started, pausing as if considering it deeply, "I might always be thinking about your arse."
She threw her head back and laughed, then captured his lips with her own. "I suppose that's a forgivable offense considering it really is one hell of an arse," she retorted, cheeks coloring at her own boldness.
"Can I tell you a secret?" he asks, smile still quirking on his lips. She nods. "You're so sexy when you talk about yourself like that," he whispers in her ear, giving her goosebumps. She nestled into his arms grinning widely, feeling giddy from his affirmation, the confidence he brought out in her.
"I'm going to go get you some tea and toast you sexy witch, and when I get back I'm going to eat you for breakfast," he growled in her ear.
She felt heat ignite in her abdomen and between her thighs. She knew that he knew the effect he was having on her. He nipped her ear, trailing kisses down her neck, and shoulder and collarbone, finally pressing his lips above the swell of her breast before leaping out of bed and sauntering out of the room entirely nude. She watched him go with lust trickling through her like someone had cracked an egg on the top of her head. Lord, he was going to be trouble.
Hermione snapped awake, disoriented and disturbed by the contents of her second sultry dream with Harry's godfather. The room was almost pitch black since the sun had fallen, only some light from the street illuminated the book that lay slack across her chest. "Lumos." She carefully placed the volume on an end table and sat up, clutching the side of her head with disbelief. She could feel her wetness in her panties again, she felt betrayed by her own dreams, conjuring illicit and previously unfathomable scenes in her head.
It was the house, she decided. Her mind was playing tricks on her, she had returned to a place clearly embodied by the memory of a dead man, and her subconscious was filling in absurd situations because of her elevated and confused emotional state. The simple solution was obvious: leave the house. She exited the library with resolve, quietly crept down the stairs, out the door, and apparated to her flat. She realized she didn't even know the time. The clock above her mantle showed it to be half past seven. She oddly wasn't hungry, though, so she decided to take a shower.
It felt good to stand under the hot water, hotter than she could stand, steam rising off her skin. She sometimes took showers like she was accepting some kind of punishment, especially when she was missing Ron. She used them to atone, to distract, to deflect the pain that lived in her chest to some part of her she could control. A part of her knew that Ron wouldn't want this, he would be hurt that she did this to herself to deal with the pain of his loss, but she didn't know how to stop. She wondered if the guilt she felt would ever soften, let her live her life in peace. Images flashed through her mind.
"HERMIONE!" she heard him scream her name, her heart was racing in her chest as she found herself cornered, disarmed. Hermione squeezed her eyes shut.
"Ron, please wake up, please please wake up," she sobbed, cradling his head in her lap, willing his eyes to open. She dipped her face under the scalding water, focusing on the way it made her skin burn.
Harry hovering over them, shocked, wand at his side, two Snatchers lay dead behind him. Hermione sat down in the tub clutching the sides as the humidity became too much to bear. She started to feel light-headed, quickly turning off the tap and collapsing against the side. Hot tears commingled with the drops of hot water running down her cheeks. She looked at her breasts and arms and stomach and was fascinated with the the terrible redness of her skin. She needed to stop. This wasn't doing her any good. It wouldn't do Ron any good either, dead as he was in his grave.
She thought of the white lilies she had laid on his headstone just the day before. They had magically marked the place where they had laid Ron to rest on their horcrux hunt, and they had returned for his corpse when the final battle had been won. Mrs. Weasley had been so grateful to have the opportunity to mourn him properly, alongside Fred, whom he was buried next to. It seemed so wrong. Fred should be buried next to George after living to an old age, and a wife that he should have had, and mourned by his many children. Ron should have started a career, maybe settled down, lived so many more years than he did. It was hard to conceive of a future when so many no longer had one.
Ron's grave still didn't seem real to her, even when she was kneeling atop the earth that covered his remains, she could still picture his icy blue eyes as though it were just yesterday that she had gazed upon them. The flowers she laid there seemed perfunctory, expected. Sometimes when something made her laugh, she thought, "I can't wait to tell Ron." Then she would remember that she wouldn't see him at his mother's table, she couldn't send him an owl, he was just gone and there was a hole left now.
She watched her skin fade to pink then back to porcelain. When she felt recovered enough she stood and wrapped herself in a threadbare yellow towel that she'd kept since her mom had packed her trunk for Hogwarts. She padded into the kitchen and filled a glass of water from the tap.
Grimmauld Place intruded on her thoughts; so did its final occupant who had been spending an inordinate amount of time in her dreams. She had spent almost an entire 24 hours there on a whim. She felt uncomfortable now that she had returned there, stirring her already delicate emotional state into overdrive. That place was a war room, a fortress for soldiers and strategists, where certain inhabitants were also prisoners. It was not an emotional safe haven or hideout. The compulsion to visit made no logical sense, though she reasoned she has not been in her most logical state when she ended up there.
The Sirius of her dreams was swimming in her mind's eye, younger than the Sirius she had known in his life, unscarred and vibrant. His hair was silky, his eyes full of merriment, his hands smooth and without prison markings. She had been with this Sirius in the forest in her dream before she looked at his old photographs—it was odd that he should visit her in that state without prior encounters of his youthful visage.
The more she considered the Sirius of her dream the more her thoughts were drawn to the pendant she had found. She felt an irritation in her brain, like an itch she couldn't scratch, developing. Was she drawn to it because of its beauty or because it was enchanted to draw the interest of the admirer? She deliberately tried to divert her thoughts but found the more she avoided thinking of the pendant, the more prominent it grew in her thoughts. She began to feel panicked, she opened the cabinet where she kept her remedies and uncorked a calming draught. Taking two decent pulls from the bottle, she felt her mind settle and she was relieved when she discovered she could concentrate on other subjects than the necklace. If she wasn't sure before, she was now: there was something up with the pendant she had found in Sirius' room, and she was fairly certain it couldn't be good.