Wedlocked
Chapter 12: A Frank Assessment

Hermione missed the drumming noise.

Without that hard, deafening beat filling her head, she was all too aware of everything and everyone around her. She saw her Aunt Lisa talking with Kingsley, looking more than a little intimidated by the man's height and impressive formal dashiki; saw Fred and George chatting up her cousin Louisa. She heard her grandmother asking Professor Dumbledore why he was wearing a costume to a wedding and her mother hissing at Tonks to keep her hair to one colour. Worst of all, she saw Sirius smirking at her.

"Problem, Mrs Black?" he asked lightly as he danced with her.

"You're smirking," she said, keeping her voice low. "Can you not smirk when you look at me? My parents will think you have ideas."

"I always have ideas."

"Not about me you don't," she said. "Not in front of my grandparents."

"So I can have ideas about you provided we're in appropriate company?" he chuckled. He always had a way of making her arguments seem ridiculous.

"Oh, shut up," she said. It was a struggle not to glare at him. Married people usually waited a while before they glared at one another, she was sure. They were supposed to be in love. People in love did not glare… did they? "I've no idea how we're supposed to be acting," she admitted. "But I'm quite sure we shouldn't be smirking."

He laughed again, pulling her closer as they danced. "Quite right. I'll save the smirking for later."

She hadn't thought about later.

She didn't even know where she would be later. Obviously, she could not stay with her parents; they thought she was marrying Sirius because she wanted to, which meant the newlyweds ought to be going on a proper honeymoon. Mrs Weasley would probably offer no resistance if she requested to spend the night and following day at the Burrow, but she was not quite sure if that would be the right thing to do.

Besides, what if Sirius wanted her to stay with him? She had yet to ask him.

"Um…"

"May I cut in?" Phillip Granger requested.

"Of course," Sirius smiled and handed his wife off to her father.

Phillip danced slowly with his daughter, more from lack of skill than to keep with the tempo of the music. Gradually, he led them across the temporary dance floor toward the house and further from Sirius. When the other man was well out of earshot, Phillip finally spoke. "I got them."

Hermione's smile grew enormous. "You did?"

"Only took me two games," he offered a confident smirk of his own. "David will never learn."

"How much does Dr Bradshaw owe you?" she asked, worried that her father was purposely playing the man into debt.

Phillip considered the maths. "Well," he said thoughtfully, "after the cost of your presents were deducted… I believe Dr David Bradshaw, worst poker player in the history of the game, still owes me nearly one thousand pounds."

"Dad!" she chided. "That is just cruel! You could let him win once in a while."

"It's good for him," he insisted.

She bit her lip. That was what Ron said when he forced her to play wizard chess, knowing she would lose; he loved that there was at least one thing that she was rubbish at, and wanted her to be humbled with it occasionally. She felt for Dr Bradshaw; the man was a brilliant painter and art historian, but clearly a miserable card player and a man who desperately needed to learn when to fold.

"Come on," Phillip pulled his daughter off the dance floor. "While he's looking the other way." They hurried through the doorway and into the house, her father leading the way. He jogged up the stairs and into the spare bedroom, closing the door shut as soon as her train finished entering the room. "I've been hiding them from your mother," he admitted. "She insisted we get you a toaster."

"I told her we've no electricity," she sighed.

"I think she wanted to rub that fact in a bit."

Hermione clicked her tongue, which only made the man smile. "You sound just like your mother when you do that, you know." He laughed as she folded her arms, "Look just like her when you do that, too."

"Dad!"

"Right, Mrs Black," he said, still laughing. "Who are these people anyway?" He pulled the white sheet off the painted canvases and looked at the portraits his friend had made.

Hermione lost her breath. They were perfect. The expressions just as she had thought they should be, the mischievous twinkle of the eye, confident curl of the lip. It was obvious why Dr Bradshaw singlehandedly restored every painting of note that passed through half the museums in Oxford. When she found her voice again, she replied, "Lost friends."

Phillip nodded as if he understood, though he was missing quite a lot of information. "Do you want me to put them down with the rest of the gifts?"

"No," she said as she considered how best to present them. "I want to surprise him."

"How does one surprise a wizard?" Phillip asked as if it were a philosophical question, running his fingers down the sides of his chin and pursing his lips in thought.

"Easy," Hermione smiled. "Get a better wizard to help."

Picking up the front of her skirt, she ran down the stairs and into the back garden, carefully hiding herself behind the larger clusters of guests until she managed to reach the Headmaster's side without Sirius seeing her. "Professor, I wondered if you would help me with something," she requested politely.

"Naturally, my dear Mrs Black," Dumbledore said, his eyes twinkling brightly as he offered her his arm.

Ninety minutes later and some sixty miles to the east, Hermione stood back and smiled at Dumbledore's handiwork, amazed that the old wizard could magically demolish a wall and rebuild it again inside two hours and without breaking a sweat. She hoped to one day know how he managed to do so much with so little effort. Until that mystery was solved, she had to settle for gratitude. Thanks to the Headmaster's seemingly infinite skills with magic, the two portraits Dr Bradshaw had painted now hung proudly on the new wall of the entrance hallway of Number 12, Grimmauld Place, taking the place of Walburga Black's empty frame and blank canvas.

Wand in hand, she stared intently at the paintings and said the spell to bring them to life, "Animus!"

As the inhabitants began to shift inside their frames, she smiled, catching their eye. "Hello, who are you?" the man asked, his hazel eyes watched her uncertainly.

"Hermione Granger," she said. "No, make that Hermione Black."

"Black?" he repeated. "As in Sirius Black? As in 'there's no way in hell I'll ever get married and doom myself to a life of nagging and inherited insanity' Sirius Black? As in—"

"Yes! That Sirius Black," she cut in before he could continue.

"Oh… you must be good. OW!" he whined as the woman beside him smacked his head.

"Ignore him. Nice to meet you, Hermione," she said. "What can we do for you?"

She looked at the woman, noting her gentle smile. "Just stay quite when Sirius comes in. I want him to be surprised."

"Oh, he'll be surprised all right," the man grinned, a wicked glint in his eye.

"I'll keep him quiet," the woman promised.

"How do you plan to do that, exactly?" he inquired with a wiggle of his eyebrows. The woman leaned in and kissed him. "Ooh, I like this keep quiet plan."

The young woman rolled her eyes at the portrait's foolishness and turned to the other painting. The young man watched her with curiosity from inside his frame but said nothing.

'Sirius is going to be so shocked,' she thought with pride.

"HERMIONE!"

"The master of the house approaches," the hazel-eyed man whispered.

Hermione waved for him to be silent before stilling her hands and turning to the door, "Sirius, what's the matter?"

The man barrelled into her, wrapping her in a boa constrictor embrace and refusing to let go even as he yelled at her. "What's the matter? You're honestly asking me what the fuck is the matter?" he shouted. "You disappeared! What's the big idea of vanishing like that? I thought Death Eaters got you!"

"I'm fine," she insisted. "Really. I just had to do something."

"Alone? Without telling anyone where you were going? Are you fucking stupid?"

"That is no way to talk to your wife, Padfoot!" the painting admonished, adding in a whisper, "Believe me, I know. I called Lily daft once and she hexed my mouth shut for a week."

The boa constrictor tightened. "I'm going mad."

"Given our lineage, I wouldn't doubt that," the previously silent young man spoke. His voice was as deep as his brother's but with an edge of superiority that Sirius lacked.

"Definitely going mad if I'm hearing that voice again."

"Sirius, I can't breathe," Hermione gasped.

"Serves you right for wearing a bodice that tight," he said absently, but loosened his grip all the same.

"That is a very tight bodice," the portrait of James Potter agreed. "You got married in that? Naughty thing!"

"I didn't pick the damn dress!" Hermione glowered.

James just grinned at her.

"Are you Muggle-born?" Regulus Black inquired, forgoing any grand reunion with his brother in favour of studying Hermione.

"Yes. Why?" she answered, shifting a bit uncomfortably under his prolonged gaze. When she decided to give Sirius portraits of James, Lily and Regulus, she had not expected them to be at all interested in her.

"Figures that he would go for a Muggle-born," the young man replied lightly. "Never did care for tradition."

"I never thought he'd marry at all," James insisted. "You should have heard him go on about the evils of marriage when he got pissed on my stag night. You would have been thoroughly ashamed on him, I'm sure, Hermione."

"Oi!" Sirius called, finally breaking free of his shock now that they were insulting him. "That was eighteen years ago! I'm allowed a change of opinions in eighteen years. I like being married."

"We've only been married two hours, Sirius," Hermione muttered. "I don't even live here. How can you possibly say that?"

"Where is here?" Lily asked.

"Grimmauld Place," Sirius replied, his distaste for the address obvious.

The woman narrowed her eyes at him. "What's with that face? What sort of house is this?" Hands on hips, she marched from her frame, through Regulus's and then out of sight.

"She's not going to be happy," he commented. "Perhaps you should have redecorated like you wanted."

James snorted and laughed at his friend.

"Oi!" Sirius sent a rude gesture at the painting. "Don't you laugh at me, Potter."

"You're whipped!" James declared. "Wrapped around her finger!" He winked at Hermione, who just shook her head. He would never have dared to say that if his wife was in the frame with him. "Never thought I'd see Sirius Black willingly enter married life."

Hermione dropped her gaze so he would not see her shame-filled face. If it wasn't for her, Sirius would likely never have chosen the old ball and chain. Her husband's reaction was far from resentful, however. "I get my bike, my drink, fags," Sirius listed smugly and swiftly reached out, grabbing Hermione and pulling her flush against his body, "and shags. Married life isn't half bad."

"I will hex you," Hermione warned and he released her immediately.

"Whipped," James repeated.

"You'd listen to if you saw her fighting Death Eaters," he said darkly. "She's scary…imaginative."

James grinned and readied himself for another round of laughter, but stopped abruptly when his wife shouted from a frame in the sitting-room. "SIRIUS BLACK! This house is completely unacceptable! There aren't two rooms together that are even remotely liveable! And there is a bloody hippogriff sleeping upstairs!" she hollered as she stomped back into view. "You will not be bringing that girl into this house."

The men shrank back from her ire, even Regulus in his separate frame and Sirius whom she hadn't the ability to physically touch. Hermione's mouth twisted up into a smile as she watched the woman rant about the squalid conditions, noting the irony that she had won a present for removing the old ranting witch only to replace her with a younger one.

"What are you grinning at?" Lily demanded.

"Nothing," she replied quickly.

"You will not be staying in this house, and that is final," the woman declared as if she was the absolute authority on the matter.

"What?" Hermione asked, shocked that a painting she had commissioned and animated would dare to start bossing her around. Something snapped. Anger boiled inside her at the realisation that she was standing in a dress she had not chosen being ordered about by a painting she had created to celebrate a marriage she had not wanted to a man she did not love. There were far too many things out of her control and she was not having any more of it.

"I will live wherever I bloody want!" she declared loudly. "I am sick of everyone deciding what I'm going to do, with whom and when! I'll be damned if I'm going to let you people control my fate any longer!"

She stomped from the hall, slamming the kitchen door shut behind her.

"Told you," she heard Sirius say.

Thankfully, the man was clever enough to leave her alone. If he had shown his face, undoubtedly wearing that damned sympathy they all wore around her, she would have hexed him. As it was, she started tearing through his kitchen – their kitchen – throwing every breakable plate, cup, saucer and bowl she encountered with as much force as she possessed, desperate to vent her frustration on something.

She did feel slightly guilty about destroying his – their – things, which only made her angrier.

"Hermione?"

She took it back. Sirius was not clever.

"Are you alright?" he asked, daring to stick his head through the door.

Not waiting to see the horrid compassion on his face, she grabbed the dirty mug from the sink and threw it at him. He ducked, letting the cup fly over his head and shatter on the wall.

"I actually liked that mug," Sirius commented mildly.

"I'll fix it later!" she spat. "Leave me alone!"

"No," he said, stepping over the rubble of his heirlooms, dusting off a chair and sitting down.

"Just go away!"

"No."

"Why not?" she stamped her foot, hating that the heel absorbed none of the impact.

"Because I'm as angry as you and deserve the chance to break something, too," he said candidly and casually pushed a plate off the table. It crashed to the floor and added to the girl's considerable mess.

Hermione blinked, confused. "What?"

"I'm bloody annoyed!" he shouted. "I didn't want to marry you! I didn't want to marry anyone, ever!"

"Don't you yell at me! It's not my fault!" she hurled a wine glass at him.

Even as the crystal grazed his cheek, he snarled, "Yes, it is! You and your bloody cleverness, fighting wars too big for you. Why couldn't you stay in school where you belong, you bloody swot?"

"Git!" she spat.

They glared hard at one another across the corpses of Sirius's fine china and the ridiculous of it hit Hermione as hard as her anger had minutes before. She tried to keep it down, to maintain her hard expression, but the laughter refused to be contained. It slipped through, an involuntary snort at first, then a short laugh and finally a mad giggle. Sirius held out longer, but his bark of laughter soon joined hers.

"It's a little late for all this, isn't it? We are such idiots," he said and dropped back onto the chair.

"I think that is a frank assessment of the situation, Mr Black," she said, glancing around at the damage she had done. "Talk about tempests in a teacup."

He laughed again, a slightly derisive edge to it that she feared might have been directed at her. As he spoke, however, those fears were vanished. "I think I would prefer my tempest in a tumbler right about now. I don't know about you, Mrs Black, but I could do with a drink."

She nodded.

"Kreacher!" he called.

The house-elf popped into the kitchen, a look of horror contorted his features from both the state of the kitchen and the sight of Hermione in a wedding dress. "Y-Yes, Master Black?"

"Wine, please, Kreacher," Sirius said. "And don't bother cleaning up the kitchen."