A/N: Herein the author continues to beat her readers over the head with self-righteous anger and a considerably smaller amount of virginal terror than was in the first draft. (Seriously, if this amount annoys you, you would have cringed at the original.)

Wedlocked
Chapter 19: The Bloody Deadline

Hermione dug her nails into his forearm as she kicked at his knees and shins or whatever part of him she could manage to reach. "Let me go, you bastard!"

"Will you bloody stop hurting me every time I'm near you!" Sirius shouted and threw her across the room. She braced herself for a collision with the floor, but her fall was broken by a soft mattress instead.

She scrambled off the bed, trying to recognise the duvet as she went but it was no room she had ever seen before. "Where are we?" she demanded, digging in her pocket for her wand. "Where's my bloody wand?"

"My room at the Three Broomsticks," he told her curtly as he ran his wand over the wounds she had just made in his arm. "Did you really have to gouge me so hard?"

"Where is my wand?" she asked again, panic dulling the hard edge she had intended for him to hear.

"In my hand," he replied. "Are you blind now?"

"Give it back!"

"I'd like to keep my bollocks, thank you very much," he said lightly. "And you've done enough damage without magic, so I'll hold on to it for a while." She watched, angry and verging on hysterical as he put her wand into his pocket and folded his arms over his chest.

"Take me back," she demanded.

"No."

"I have class!"

"And you can make it up later. Minnie knows where you are," he said. "Dumbledore, too."

"He allowed you kidnap me?" she gaped, pushing past him to the door, twisting and turning the handle until her muscles burned from the wasted effort.

Sirius laughed, though not at her failed escape attempt. "You think I could get a portkey permit with the Ministry under Voldemort's control? Dumbles had to make one for me."

She whirled around and stared at him in disbelief. Why was everyone conspiring against her? McGonagall gave permission for her to miss class; Dumbledore facilitated her unwilling removal from the castle; Ginny and Tonks, even Harry's mum, pushed her into wearing completely outlandish under-things. It was a grand conspiracy against her.

"We have a deadline that I have no intention of missing," he informed her flatly, no humour or threat in his voice.

"I'm still mad at you," she bit out.

"Well, you have thirteen hours to get over it," he said.

"Fifteen," she corrected. "Midnight is in fifteen hours."

"Well, I like to think it will last longer than a minute," he replied with a faint smirk.

"Don't you start!" she warned. "You and your damn boasting and sleeping with people you don't love and bloody sex books." She was rambling and she knew it, but she was furious beyond reason. "And how the hell did you change my books?" she demanded with a hard stomp of her foot.

"That?" he grinned, throwing himself onto the bed and folding his hand behind his head. "That was easy. I learned that spell third year, found it in some mouldy old book in the library. We used to use it to hide what we were really reading from all the teachers. Dead useful when we were learning to become Animagi." He paused and gestured for her to sit, an offer she refused without consideration.

He shrugged and continued, "The spell is deceptively easy, just one word 'mutaro', but you have to have both books in front of you and keep your focus as you wave your wand to transfer each page."

"You did that to every one of those books?" Her face twisted with her incredulity.

Again he shrugged. "I was bored."

"You were not," she insisted. "You planned it, knew you'd do it almost since we were engaged. It was premeditated!"

"Being premeditated does not negate the possibility of my being bored," he countered with a raise of his eyebrow. "I don't like going out anymore, so I stay in. I've read every book in my library and Moony is off doing whatever 'Order business' he refuses to discuss with me. I had a pretty, prudish fiancée to annoy, so I started plotting. It's what I do. Deal with it."

"Wait…" she said. "How did you get your hands on my books to begin with?"

"I have my secret allies," he smiled.

"Ginny."

"I will neither confirm nor deny that claim," he said.

"So that's how they kept changing even after I checked them all. And here I thought it was some impressive, time-delayed spell," she snorted and sat in the chair before the small writing desk, folding her arms triumphantly.

"I resent that," he glared at her. "That was terribly impressive spell work and you know it. And it wasn't a time delay; those are for amateurs."

"Oh?" She fought to keep her face impassive, knowing that if she aimed for boredom he would know just how curious she really was; he was properly clever, Ginny was right about that, but that didn't mean she had to show her true interest in his magical prowess.

"Yes, any moronic second year can manage a time-delay," he waved his hand. "But a voice-specific password… that's a challenge."

"You locked the hidden text inside a password-protected disguise charm?" her voice gave away her amazement, but she didn't care. "How did you keep my detection charms from finding them?"

He grinned, "Even harder still, a localised Confundus charm."

"But I wasn't befuddled," she said.

"Not for you," he waggled a finger. "It was for your wand. Wands choose their owner, so they have enough awareness to be befuddled."

She frowned. "I've never read that…"

"Nor have I. I took a guess once – a long while back – tried an experiment with a Confundus charm on Moony's wand and it turned out that I was right."

Her jaw fell without her permission. "Do you have any idea how dangerous that could have been? Tampering with wands can be catastrophic! You could have blown up half the castle!"

"Have I mentioned that I was a foolhardy youth?" he smirked. "Remus wasn't nearly as good at keeping me in check as you are Harry. Have I thanked you for that?"

"Don't you patronise me," she snapped. "What's the password and how do I turn my books back?"

He sighed, "Fine. The password is 'book'. Unimaginative, I know, but I assumed you said it enough to work as a password. I considered using my name to trigger the change, but I didn't want to be presumptuous and think you talked about me often enough for that." He paused and grinned at her as if begging for her to confirm that 'Sirius' would have made a fine password. When she remained silent, he sighed again and continued, "As for how to fix them, I'll leave that for you to sort out. Now that you know what's changing them, I'm sure you can figure out a way to fix them."

"You made the mess; why should I have to clean it up?" she balked.

"Because I have no respect for someone who can't solve as simple a problem as that," he said with a smug smile as he closed his eyes and started humming a song to himself.

She grabbed the first item she could reach and threw it at him. "Like I care what you think!"

Sirius somehow managed to avoid being hit by the paperweight, a damn shame in Hermione's opinion, and replied in a more meaningful tone, "Clearly, you do if what I say upsets you so much."

"You upset me because you are an insufferable, insensitive, immature git!" she shouted, punctuating each slur against his character with an object at his head. None of them hit their mark, but they certainly got her point across. "I may be married to you, but I don't have to like it! Or you!" She dropped back into the chair, turning it to face the opposite wall. "Just go away."

"I paid for the room. I don't see why I should have to leave it."

"Then unlock the door so I can leave. I'm sick of the sight of you," she spat, still refusing to look at him. She hated sulking; when she got angry, she preferred to shout, throw an object or a hex at the offending party and storm off to get over it in private. Sirius was denying her the ability to storm off, which left her with only glowering as an option.

"Well, that's too damn bad, then, isn't it?"

Silence of the most angry and awkward nature descended on the room. Sirius returned to the bed, laying in absolute comfort while Hermione sat stiffly in the chair, her arms tightly folded across her chest as she glared her anger at the parchment in front of her. The silent minutes continued to tick past, becoming an hour, then two, then three.

"Ah, lunch," Sirius said brightly as the tray appeared on the desk before her. "Pass me a sandwich, would you?"

She grabbed a sandwich and tried very hard not to throw it at his head. "Here."

"Thank you," he said.

"You're welcome," she practically shouted, furious that he remembered such pleasantries.

"So," he said, pleasantly, "I've been trying to figure out where Remus has been going whenever he disappears on 'Order business' – you can't see it with your back turned, but I just made inverted commas in the air. I thought he might have been sneaking out to meet Tonks, but I overheard them talking." He paused, either to take a bite of his lunch or to give her time to insert an appropriate question.

"Well, I'm very disappointed in Moony. He's turned the girl down," he said sadly. "Said that he's too old for her and too dangerous and all that rot." Another pause.

"If he isn't meeting up with her, then he really must be off on 'Order business'– inverted commas again – and it must be pretty massive if he isn't even telling me about it," Sirius sighed. "I hate being out of the loop."

There was a long pause that had Hermione assuming he had given up trying to carry on a one-sided conversation, but it had only been time to chew and swallow because he continued, "I've considered breaking into his room, but I suspect he would smell it… tosser and his super smell. You know, at school he would always spoil the big news about who I had been snogging. He could smell the perfume on me and told everyone before I got the chance, the git."

"Will you stop talking?" Hermione said. "I am trying to eat."

"You can't chew and listen simultaneously?" he asked with a smirk in his voice.

"Not while also fighting the overwhelming urge to stab you with a letter opener, no," she replied tightly.

"Have it your way," he said and fell silent. Unfortunately, his conversation about Remus and his 'Order business' had given her something to think about other than how insufferable her husband was, and she found herself considering what the Order of the Phoenix was doing that even Sirius was being kept in the dark; he was one of the senior members of the organisation, if anyone deserved vital information, it was him. Another of their precious few hours passed during which she slowly chewed on both her sandwich and the available clues.

She had not seen much of Remus since term began, just their brief Friday evening together. He had not appeared overly stressed, had he? Their arrival was more jittery than normal, with Tonks and Remus jumping at every shadow. Did that indicate that they were anticipating a real attack? If so, who was the intended target?

"Have you tried following him?" she asked, spinning her chair around to look at him.

Sirius blinked back from whatever daydream he had found to quietly occupy himself, "Who? Oh, Moony? I tried Monday night, but I lost him when he disappeared down Knockturn Alley."

"What would he be going down there for?" she wondered.

"Well, it wouldn't surprise me if some werewolves camped down there," he said. "But I thought the Order had given up on convincing them not to join Voldemort."

She frowned. "I don't like it."

"Nor do I," he agreed and dropped his head back onto the pillow to recommence his daydreaming.

Hermione turned back to the writing desk and took to making a list of all the potential things Remus might have been doing for the Order. Their situation had changed dramatically with the passage of The Bloody Law. There had been fewer attacks and no news of Death Eaters recruiting abroad. It was almost as if Voldemort had a new obsession: Her. She shivered at the thought of being the dark wizard's sole objective.

While an unbelievably frightening thought, not to mention completely self-centred, she could not imagine another reason for the lull in Death Eater activity. Since becoming the unseen master of the Ministry, Voldemort had done nothing with that authority to advance his cause or increase his power. The only thing he had done was pass the marriage law so that one of his minions might marry her and bring her to him in chains. When that plan failed, he created the amendment so that she would go to Azkaban, because she would surely choose protest over mandated sex.

Voldemort's new aim was in controlling her. It was the only explanation for the alteration in Death Eater tactics. However, it still did not change the fact that Remus was disappearing down Knockturn Alley, the dark wizards' haunt.

"I hate to bring it up again," Sirius said quietly. "But it's eight o'clock and we do have a deadline." He held aloft the little mechanical alarm clock that had been sitting on his bedside table.

"Eight?" she repeated disbelievingly and tore the clock from his hands. "When did it become eight? What happened to dinner?"

An amused smile crossed his mouth, "You ate it already while you sat and stared. What were you thinking about?"

"I did?" she looked at the empty plate on the desk and back at Sirius, who nodded. "I was thinking about Voldemort and must have lost track of time."

"Well, we've four hours left," he commented.

She stared at him, her original concerns returning and she cringed to think how childish she seemed dressed in her school uniform, having a strop and daydreaming away so many hours without even realising.

"You go take a shower or something to relax," he suggested. "I'm not going anywhere."

She nodded her compliance and went into the washroom, remembering somewhere between rinsing her hair and washing her feet that she had been angry with him just eleven hours earlier and now she was mutely following his orders. So what if Voldemort had made her the focus of his attention? So what if she was only seventeen and her husband was thirty-six? Nothing changed the fact that Sirius had acted the scoundrel towards her.

She threw her clothes on and stormed back into the bedroom. "What are you playing at?" she demanded. "You still haven't even apologised to me!"

"That would be because I'm not sorry," he said matter-of-factly. "I appreciate how you feel. But I do wish you would get over it so we don't end up in Azkaban. Need I remind you that I've spent a great deal of time there and know for a fact it is not a place worth visiting?"

"I don't care about deadlines and Azkaban," she spat. "I care about you treating me horribly and not apologising."

He rose languorously, stretching out his long arms as he walked around the bed. Coming to a stop directly in front of her, he considered her persistent anger and smiled. "When I know I'm wrong, I apologise," he said. "I don't think I'm wrong this time."

"You—" she started to berate him again, but he dropped his head and kissed her pouting lips.

"I need a shower," he said and walked around the poor, stunned girl.

"How does he keep doing that?" she asked the empty room.