AN: pgoodrichboggs & guest: Thank you BOTH for your reviews! Your feedback is very kind and helpful.

Guest, since you weren't logged in, I couldn't reply to you directly: I'm very happy you found that portion precious. It is certainly a very special relationship and I look forward to working with it further throughout this story.

All I think about night and day is trying to work on this story. I have been dreaming about putting 'pen-to-paper' on it for so long, and so many things get in the way right now. But I digress… I hope this chapter makes some of the wait WORTH it!

Disclaimer: Anything you recognize for HP verse, belongs to JKR. I'm utilizing it for my own amusement. Some elements/concepts are, in fact, my own!

Chapter 10

Mid-morning arrived unmarked and barely recognized in the hustle to get to the Grand Stables. Tyt'o and Hermione had colluded together to visit as they waited for their peers to draft their letters homeward. The two walked through the immense carved wooden doors that were set with iron supports and massive iron bolts to hold it together. Tyt'o swung a door wide for his sister and she chuckled out her reluctant thanks as she rolled her eyes. The last year, especially, her brother had paid attention to gentlemanly behaviors, whereas Hermione continued on as she always had; refusing to wear layered skirts and gown, or putting her hair into any discernable shape resembling that of a young woman.

Inside the wooden shutters had been lifted to allow natural light inside, and the rays of sunshine cast warmth upon everything it touched. Stable hands were busy combing tethered horses in the common area outside the stalls as the well-cared for horses lazily picked at buckets of grain and sweet alfalfa. At their arrival, a few of them pricked up their ears and observed momentarily before returning to their pampering.

Each stable hand, in turn, bowed dutifully to the Gresham heirs as they passed. Hermione would pass her hand over haunch or click her tongue in greeting to the animals, and smile unreservedly to the grooming stable boys, causing a few of them to fleet their eyes to her with a blush as she bid them good morning and thanked them for their expert care.

The Gresham House was known within the Guild for their generations-long relationship with the Dragons as their riders, but also as a family with a love of creatures great and small. The horses within the Grand Stable were a testament to that as it was were the prime specimens of their herds resided. Aethonan and Abraxan winged horses lived here as well as rare Fresian beauties and a set of rare Kelpie half-breeds that Loren's grandfather had begun developing as a young man. Each animal was shown loving care, and Loren had decreed that for each breeding pair of animals there was to be but one groom who was overseen by the Horse master, who then reported to Loren directly.

Neither Tyt'o nor Hermione were so arrogant as to assume they were more skilled care better than any of the young men employed within the grand structure. Each man within the stable was familiar with his charges, and the animals attuned to their handler. Loren Gresham required such commitment, in fact, that the upper level of the stable contained clean and separate living quarters for each of the twelve stable grooms that saw to a pair of breeding horses directly. It was a conservative space, given, but it was clean, free of common pests, and solely belonging to the stable grooms, and each of them lived there with pride. Such was evident in the state of each horse individually; their manes and tails were impeccably clean and knot-free, their hoofs oiled and trimmed expertly, and each coat gleamed to perfection in the morning sun.

Hermione fidgeted as they strode through the stable listening to the nickering contentment of their animals. Tyt'o gave her a sidelong glance. "Calm yourself: Our teacher will be ready for us soon enough."

"I hate this waiting." Tyt'o knew she was talking about more than the matter of their late-sleeping tutor.

"I know, little sister." He studied her face from the side as he calculated the tiny changes in her demeanor through her answers. "How felt you in sharing secrets of our House to our new Housemates?" Hermione's copper colored eyes darted to him.

"When we brought them to the Dragon tears?" He nodded, and Hermione looked away from him as heat appeared in her cheeks. How brazen she had been to allow her eyes to linger as she had lifted her water-filled palms to the lips of her new peer, and have his gray eyes drink from hers the same way his lips had from her fingertips. "It is good that we teach them lore about the family, and the Dragons, is it not?"

Tyt'o smirked toward his sister, though she did not see him. He could read her better than any, and he saw how she scrunched up her face. It couldn't be helped, he supposed. Like it or not, his little sister was well on the path to becoming a woman. Whatever that meant for the rough-and-tumble girl beside him, who, in truth, was a girl no longer. Despite how she tried to shirk any airs of femininity that might be thrust upon her.

Hermione had grown true and sure; she carried herself with excellent posture, and walked with purpose, if it lacked an alluring sway. She was strong and capable, and the soft edges of baby fat had begun to recede back just as his own had to give way to a picture of a young woman with sharp brows, definition to her cheeks, and a smile that came upon you without warning and lit up every recess around it with brilliance. Every smile she deigned to grant touched every part of her face; it was honest and open and completely unprotected.

Tyt'o sighed as he saw her in this moment, almost for the first time, as she had become. Were it not for the rigors of training and preparing the Dragons to clutch he was certain that his mother would be combing and oiling her hair, and having beautiful gold and green dresses to adorn her daughter in. How she would be instructing her with wisdom in how to run one's Household, balance accounts, and maintain inventories and track breeding lines in all their prized bloodlines. Hermione was unaware of the massive level of work and commitment that it took their parents to run such a vast estate; when it had become apparent that their Dragons were going to clutch, all other imperatives aside from their training had simply fallen to the wayside to make way for their new efforts.

Hermione was beside herself at the possibility to have teachers arrive from abroad to bring yet-unlearned spells and teachings of the olde magics to them. Her hunger for knowledge was greater than that of their own mother, it seemed, for Hermione could bury herself in books without care so long as she was sustained with food, water, and the means to sneak outside of the Keep to find the nest where the Dragons would wait for her.

"Recall you the first time you pulled me out of bed to drag me to the Dragon nest, little sister?" He teased her, and she chuckled, stowing away her internal musings.

"Aye! How you fought me brother! 'No wren, no!'" she mocked, emulating her brothers little voice as a child. "No takees from bed! Momma says no!'" Tyt'o laughed with her a little. "I remember how you rubbed your eyes and cried, but you let me pull you all the way down through the passages and outside. You protested until you could hear the humming, didn't you?"

"Aye."

"When could you hear it?" She asked.

"Only in the lower cellars, just before the final descent." He confessed. "Where could you hear it?"

She pursed her lips briefly before answering. "From the nursery." Tyt'o's look turned incredulous.

"Truly?" And she nodded at that.

"It would start soft as we lay down, and grow louder until I couldn't hear anything else." She told him, and looked towards the mountains. "When we would lay with them, the hum was all around us, just as they were."

"Could you feel it in your bones, too?"

She shook her head. "Aye. It was part of us." She sighed. "I miss them so much Tyt'o."

Seeing her heart yearn as it did, Tyt'o touched her shoulder gently. "It won't be much waiting yet sister. We will be with them soon."

….

The warm smile of Ursa Gresham was something of great beauty, the Warlock Sirius Black had concluded. The edges of her perfect dusky pink mouth curved up without pretense, and her aristocratic teeth gleamed, straight and perfect from within. It was an expression of gladness, and appreciation to be sure. It didn't help that the wearer of that smile was also the possessor of one of the sharpest minds he had ever met, nor that every aspect of her person was the utter definition of perfection as well.

He had come to see clearly how he digressed every time he returned to Gresham House, only later to chide and chastise himself of his own secret impropriety. His last stay had been but a year prior, but nothing about her had changed. She smiled as he approached her, surely unknowing that behind his gray eyes there lay covetous machinations that brewed.

"'Tis good to see you once again, Sir Black." as he took her outstretched hand and pressed it to his lips, perhaps for a fraction of a second longer than he ought to. Sirius Black was not above taking advantage of the fact that Loren Gresham was not in their presence, and he could afford the unspoken flirtation. Ursa indulged him the moment, but retrieved her hand to her side while continuing to smile.

"As it is to see you again, my Lady," he returned her smile with one of his own, and fell into step beside her as they strode to the Gresham's Great Hall. "though I had not expected the request to return, I am still glad to have returned."

Ursa nodded to him, clasping her hands together beneath her long sleeves. "My Lord and I once again seek your expertise to further tutor our future riders." Sirius frowned.

"Yet when I bade your family farewell after year last, we had tested Tyt'o and Hermione quite extensively, and they produced such fine results. Why bid me return to further instruct; the missive from your Lord gave no detail." Ursa bit down on her impulse to blab out the facts, realizing that the change in plan had not yet been exposed to any other House within The Guild at this juncture, and least of all to the great tutors and instructors to the Houses themselves. Their opinions had not yet been weighed, nor had any meeting of the Lords of Houses been called to conclave upon the change of events.

It was a delicate situation indeed that Lord and Lady Gresham found themselves in. Covenants and Contracts were at stake, and ties between Houses were going to suffer because of it, she was certain.

"I know my Lord has not confessed all to you, Sir Black." she started, and he fought desperately in his mind to beg her to call him by his first name alone. Though his stays were only months in duration, he had returned many times to continue the tutelage of her children as he had traversed between Houses and other pupils. In that time he had come to anticipate his returns to the earthy and warm walls inside the Gresham home as each time he returned to her. She continued unknowing the struggle within him, behind the mask of calmness that he fought with as he listened to her.

"And you have sacrificed lessons with other students to return here in an hour of our great need -for which we cannot express thanks enough-" she added hastily. "But that our carefully constructed plans of taking in children from other Houses within the Guild has had necessity to change." Ursa hesitated, trying to articulate around explaining the blackmail that had befallen their family at the hands of the snake, Lucius Malfoy.

"It has fallen to us at this late hour to bring two new students to our House, and moreover to ensure they be acceptable to join my own to pilgrimage into the mountains when the Dragons call for them."

"What mean you by this, my Lady?" Queried Sirius, and Ursa Gresham turned and looked him straight in the eye.

"I mean, Sir, that we can ill afford these two students to be rejected by the Dragon Sires once they reach their nest," Her bronze eyes searched him desperately and she lowered her voice to a whisper as they had stopped walking just outside the doors to their Great Hall. "The consequences of their rejection will be dire, indeed, Sir Black," Her eyes began to plead silently into his pouring all of her worries through their bronze depths beneath her dark silky lashes. Sirius was fixed in place, unable to move. "If not deadly. I fear-" she cut herself off, and took a breath to steel herself.

"What is it you fear, my Lady?" Sirius reached for her hands as they remained clasping each other desperately as her widened eyes danced with wildness, touching them to ground her with reassurance.

"Our Dragons are so precious to us, but not so mighty are they that they cannot be corrupted!" Her harsh whisper was silenced by the noises of footfall within the Great Hall as an attended pushed open the doors further, and Sirius immediately removed his hands from Ursa and stepped away from her, realizing what position he would have put her in should the attendant have seen them so close together.

Loren Gresham loved and trusted his wife, but no husband of any prize as great as she would be so foolish to allow such a trespass to go unaddressed. Sirius bowed himself to Ursa. "My deepest apologies at my misstep, My Lady," he straightened again and motioned her forward politely. In truth, Ursa had forgotten herself as she she spilled her family's secrets to her children's tutor so openly, and foolishly. While she tried at so many turns to adopt the tactile and clandestine ways of her husband, she often found herself at war with her greater impulses.

"Sir Black!" The exclamation was made a fraction of a second before the force of a person exploded upon him without preamble. Sirius stumbled as a pair of warm arms wrapped around his waist accompanied with gleeful exaltation. He looked down at his chest at a head of brown curls, and beside him Ursa Gresham chuckled only momentarily before righting her strangled laugh into a reproving mannerism.

"Daughter, you are too old to be bounding about the castle in such a manner. Where be you manners?" It was spoken gently, but the words caused Hermione to stiffen at the disciplining statement.

Hermione's copper eyes appeared from beneath the darkness of her hair as she smiled up at Sirius. He found, suddenly, that he stared too unbidden at them, with their frames of dark, thick lashes, and her smile which stretched for miles. He found his arms around the girl as easily as she had hers around him. "But we've missed you so much here!" Hermione declared exuberantly to first Sirius, and then her mother.

Ursa shook her head, and gently pried her daughter from her instructor, sliding her hand to her daughters. "Aye, that we have, my sweet." Ursa agreed, though the motion did nothing to take Hermione's eyes off of Sirius. From behind her, waiting, Draco had caught the scene just as Hermione had grasp him enthusiastically.

That smile of hers felt like a summer morning. It shone just like sunshine and the way the gray eyes of the Warlock lingered just a moment on her face made something in Draco twist furiously. It was something he had no right to feel, either. He tucked it away for later thought and tried to deepen his breath for a moment.

The dramatic greeting with his pupil was so sudden that Sirius hadn't had time to truly take in whom he was looking upon. As Hermione was pulled away, took in the sight before him and found that he couldn't reconcile the two: The dancing of those warm eyes caught him in such a way that it occurred to him his student was, in fact, no longer a child.

She'd added some height, to be certain. Her eyes were still the same, but the way the curves of her face had defined and the shape of her body clearly spoke to the notion that she had shed her girlhood did not escape him.

Ursa sighed and held her daughter, watching her youngest's beatific smile adoringly at the man whom she was certain Hermione doted upon with innocent adoration, though it was true that it had been a full turn of seasons since the Warlock had resided as tutor for the Greshams, and in that time Ursa had seen many changes in her daughter that she wasn't sure Hermione was even aware of. Ursa felt a little sink in her heart as she realized that jubilant innocence was no longer an excuse for Hermione to claim, and that it was indeed time to reign her in for the greater sense of propriety. Hermione was going to loathe it.

Despite her mother's firm grip, Hermione dove straight in with questions for Sirius, practically tugging at her mother's hand as she did. She was so excited for news from outside their family lands, and to know more about his travels in the year he had been away.

Sirius couldn't help but laugh at her overflowing excitement, and answered her as she pelted him with them over and over. The three young men watched on as the minutes passed feeling quite excluded and unnecessary as Hermione left no room for interloping commentary, and as their conversation turned to the debate upon the merits of the use of alchemy in pursuit of treatment for maladies to magical livestock, it was Ursa who gently touched the two conversants to bring them back from their soaring heights to the ground below.

The two settled at her touch, and Ursa motioned with an arc of her graceful arm to the waiting trio of young men attending them in the Great Hall. "Warlock Black, I wish to introduce our two charges and Guild acolytes, young Theodore Nott, and young Draco Malfoy." Sirius was caught completely off-guard. Nott and Malfoy? Sons of The Unified? He thought as incredulity and shock worked their way onto his face.

The two bowed dutifully to Sirius, but kept their eyes trained firmly to him as they did. Sirius nodded to each of them warily. Both Draco and Theodore knew who Sirius Black was already; the Black family was well known to the Houses of the Unified. Even their sons and daughters.

Their lack of reverence was clear on their faces, and Sirius felt his hackles rise. "Lady Gresham, might I have words with you in private?" he ground out? Ursa nodded and parted from her daughter, bidding them all to remain within, and followed him out into the hall.

Sirius was furious. "What is the meaning of this, Lady?"

"Sir Black, I-" Ursa stammered out, looking to the floor unexpectedly. She knew Loren couldn't have told Sirius whom would be here for the training, in the event that the missive was intercepted. She knew it was going to be a shock for Sirius to come here, to teach the children of those two Houses. After what his own House had suffered… It was a fairly brazen request. Ursa swallowed deeply and continued, rubbing the palms of her hands together methodically as she spoke. "Please accept my apologies." She started, her voice smaller than it once was, less brave. "My Lord husband was not able to extend an explanation of the circumstances to you when he beseeched you to return-"

"Teaching the spawn of those treacherous monsters? Men sworn to the United?!" Sirius hissed out at her, and Ursa winced slightly, afraid to meet his storming gaze suddenly. It was so unlike her character. Sirius ignored her and pressed on. "My Lady, you Lordship is wrong indeed to think I would return here to entertain the likes of these two budding bastards, let alone share the same secrets bestowed to me as a Master Warlock!" He spat the last words at her, looming further in his growing rage forcing Ursa to lean away from him.

"I, I-" She stammered, unsure as to what she could say, what she should say. She knew in her very bones that what Loren had done was to lure the great teachers who were willing to return to their House under the guise of strengthening their own children's skills. While part of that was true, it was a pretense nonetheless.

"Does the cat hold your tongue, My Lady?" Sirius sneered and raised his finger in warning. "Mark my words, I will die before I support any member of the Houses of the United!" He finished and made to sweep away from Ursa, and she shot her hand out to grab his.

"Please, Sirius!" She cried, and Sirius turned to look at her, shocked back to her by the use of his first name. His gray eyes met hers to see tears bubbling forth in her eyes, spilling over to hear lovely soft cheeks. "Please…." She begged, and he stilled a moment to hear her words.

She held his hand in her own with veracity, her tears making their way to her jawline and down her lovely neckline. "Please, Sir Black. I…. I beg of you. Do not leave us. It was so wrong for my Lord to lure you back here under such a farce, I know this so well." She shook her head and the frown she wore deepened. "Lord Malfoy has our family in his debt, and this is the price he asks." She quivered out. More tears made their way from her eyes and Sirius felt himself soften. He sighed.

"I beg of you, do not leave us. I know that House Black was never joined to The Guild, and what is happening now might lead to the end of the line of Gresham," he startled at her words as she paused. "But as a mother I beg you, do not let them have reason to call upon this debt. It will be the end of us."

Her pleas were genuine, Sirius had no doubt of that. Though it was still the case that he had been brought to their House under a false artifice he could see that the reasons rocked Ursa Gresham to her very core. Her allusions to the reasons behind it were not explained further, and he did not pry. He simply covered her desperate hands with his remaining free palm and sighed.

"My Lady, my knowledge and mastery as a Great Warlock are at your disposal. But my eyes are upon these two. I will train them in the time we have remaining, but know that I will not favor them."

Ursa shook her head. "Nor should you, Sir." And then she smiled. Sirius felt his heart warm again as he looked at her, and she at him. Her smile carrying her gratitude to him, and it filled his heart again with a bliss he had seldom known in his life.

From far above on a balcony shielded, Loren Gresham backed away from the railing at the sight of his wife standing so close, so intimately, with the Master Warlock Sirius Black, and returned to his study.