Wedlocked
Chapter 26: Senses

"Have you heard from Sirius lately?" Hermione asked Harry the moment he sat down at breakfast. All her efforts went into not sounding as panicked as she felt, so she had nothing left to spare for patience or pleasantries.

Sirius had not spoken to her in a week. Admittedly, for them, that was not strange, but he had promised absolute honesty. When he had not come back into the castle, she could only assume that he was angry at her. She had written to him, a first for them. That had been three days ago, more than enough time for an owl to reach London. If he was not replying to letters, he might have been injured by Death Eaters. She found the idea horrible but oddly comforting that it might be bodily harm and not anger keeping him away.

Harry's nod punctured her bubble of morbid hope. "Yeah, we talked in the fire last night."

"Was he all right?"

"Yeah, fine. Why?"

One worry replaced another: Sirius was alive, safe and well, which could only mean that he really was properly cross with her. Had this been how Sirius felt when she had left him so coldly after their first night together? It was difficult to believe that he was angry at her; her words had been playfully meant, not intended to insult him, but he had not thought his truthful admission of celibacy would have hurt her either.

She did not like this uncertainty. She felt it like heartburn, a pain in her chest and gut as her anxiety ate away at her from the inside out.

Sirius was hardly the first person to be angry at her, nor was he the first to cease speaking to her because of his anger; Harry and Ron had refused to even sit near her after she had turned the Firebolt over to Professor McGonagall third year. At least with that incident she knew the reason and understood it on some level, even if it was utter rubbish. With this, his reasons were a mystery and she could not stand it.

Strange as it was to admit, the fact that it was Sirius made it all the more difficult. He had been the man to step up and save her. To keep her save, he sacrificed the thing that was most precious to him after twelve years in Azkaban: His Freedom. For that alone he deserved happiness in any way she could provide it. If that meant biting down on her occasionally rather sharp criticisms and reigning in her bossiness, then so be it. It would not be easy, but she would try for him.

Since Sirius was not there, she had to practice on the people who were – Harry, Ron, Ginny and Neville.

It was painful having to watch Harry and Ron goof off when they ought to be studying, but she managed not to snap at them. "Don't you think you should be doing your homework?" she suggested quietly, so quietly they didn't even hear her over their own laughter.

"Okay," Ginny said, closing her book and setting it to one side. "What is with you? You never let them get away with that."

"Nothing," Hermione insisted as gently as she could.

It only seemed to convince the girl that something really was wrong because she reached out and put her hand against Hermione's forehead. "Not running a temperature…"

"I'm not sick," she huffed. "I'm trying to be less bossy."

Ginny looked as if she was torn between laughing and frowning. "But that isn't you."

"I know, but I was bossy to Sirius and now he isn't speaking to me."

"Wait." Ginny edged closer, her grin looking disturbingly similar to Lavender's when she found out the identity of Hermione's fiancé. Her voice low, she continued, "Are you trying to improve yourself for him?"

"What? No," said Hermione. "I just want to be nicer to him. He's done a lot marrying me and he deserves an easy marriage."

"That is practically romantic!" she cried and gripped Hermione in a painful hug. "I knew you would fall for him if you tried!"

"Not wanting him to be miserable is not the same as being in love," Hermione wheezed through the girl's tight grip.

Ginny released her physically only to lock onto her again with a hard glare. "Will you stop being so bloody stubborn! You like sleeping with him. You like spending time with him. You want him to be happy, and you're willing to change to make it happen. That sounds an awful lot like love to me."

"If I was doing it for Harry, would you still say that?" Hermione demanded, all thoughts of gentleness gone.

"You don't love Harry?"

"Well, of course I do," she said, glancing over at the messy black hair of her best friend. "He's like my brother, you know that."

"My point exactly," Ginny smirked. "There are a lot of different kinds of love. And I think you're very close to having some form of it for your husband."

"Oh, will you just give it a rest," Hermione huffed, standing abruptly. "Stop goofing off and do your homework!" she shouted at the bewildered boys in front of her before stomping angrily from the common room.

Her Prefect rounds were unpleasant. Everyone she came across made her furious by their very presence, especially when they were couples holding hands and giggling. After finding a pair of cooing Hufflepuffs down the third floor of the East wing, the girl went out of her way to find the most distant and hard-to-reach corners of the castle. She told herself it was to avoid people, but really she wanted take points off whomever she found hiding in the far-flung broom cupboards.

Eleven o'clock saw the girl marching to the Divination tower, convinced that she would discover someone hiding in the tiny storeroom one floor below the trapdoor that lead to the incense- and ottoman-filled realm of Sibyll Trelawney. As she stalked up the curving stone stairs, she slowed and let her feet fall silently so she might better ambush the people in the storage room. There had to be at least two considering how much noise she heard.

Bracing herself for all manner of cursing and levels of undress, she threw the door wide open. "Just what do you think you're doing?" she demanded.

Her practiced outrage was wasted.

The storeroom was empty.

"What the…" she wondered aloud, stepping into the miniscule room and scanning the limited space. Save the spiders, there was no living creature among the crates and ancient traveling trunks. It was impossible. Someone had been banging around just seconds before. Peeves was never one to hide and the ghosts were incapable of moving anything, let alone doing so with enough force to have the sound echoing off the tower walls. What could it have been?

The door swung shut, slamming solidly against the frame, with Hermione inside. In the darkness and eerie silence that followed the ear-splitting noise, she heard the click of the lock.

"Hey!" she called, more panicked than angry now. "Let me out!"

She waited, listening hard. What did she expect to hear? Footsteps as someone ran away, the voice of a gloating Slytherin or laughter from Peeves, but she heard none of those.

"Alohomora!" she cried, but the door remained locked.

"You're in a bit of trouble now," a quiet whisper commented in the darkness.

Hermione screamed at the unexpected voice and its proximity in the tight space between the four-foot-tall travelling trunk and the teetering tower of crates where she and some other person were now trapped.

'Think!' she shouted at herself. 'There was no one here. It's probably a ghost drawn to the noise same as you… but then why hadn't I seen it on the stairs.'

"Who's there?" she demanded, willing her voice steady.

"I think you know," the whisper was somehow even closer. A hand caught her arm and pulled the wand from her fist before she could even think the spell to light up the room. She felt the size and warmth of it and knew that hand had to belong to a very real, very live, very male person.

She ran through her pitifully limited options, but found she had no way of escaping. The door was locked. He had her wand. Retreating to some far corner was impossible; her back was already pressed against the traveling trunk. Even as she managed to find a fraction of an inch more room, she could feel the air passing over her when he breathed out. Her only hope was to identify this boy and report him to the Headmaster later. Her list of available senses was as limited as her options. Without light to see, she was blind. He was keeping his words low and brief, so she could not recognise his voice. The musty smells in the storeroom would have overpowered the most offensive of body odours, so any subtle colognes or personal scents he might have carried were lost on her. Those three gone, she was left with the sense of touch; she could feel him in the hope of finding an identifying scar or feature. That was hardly an option.

There was one human sense that she had neglected, one which he was quick to remind her of. The sense of taste.

In the inky blackness, she could not see it coming. She felt the heat of his body as the already minute space between them fell to nothing. He was there, in front of her, pressing her harder against the battered trunk. His hands found her face in the darkness and helped guide his mouth to hers, all in the time it took her to take in breath enough to protest.

"Don't—" Her words stopped instantly as she clamped her lips firmly together. His tongue coaxed and teased tantalisingly, but she refused him entrance.

Whoever he was, he kissed very well for a blackguard. If he hadn't locked her in a storage room and forced himself on her, she might actually have enjoyed his attentions. As it was, she was torn between digging her fingernails into his face and letting him continue to kiss her. Either way he would be in considerable pain before long. Carrow had not managed to keep his hand on her face for a full minute before the blood magic scalded him. Concern further furrowed her brow; Hermione could not be certain, but she was convinced this horrid boy had been on her more than one minute.

'What will Sirius think?' she fretted.

He would feel the touch of another man on her lips, know that it had gone on far too long for a friendly peck. He could not know that she was being held against her will in a space so tight she could not even lift her knee in self-defence. He would think she wanted this, that she chose to kiss someone other than him. An easy, happy marriage, that was what she had wanted to give him, not one where his wife was hiding away in dirty cupboards snogging heaven only knew who while he was miles away and powerless to stop her.

Spurred on by her desire to make him happy and proud, she struggled against this thief who stole her kiss and would likely try to steal more of her. She brought her hands up to gouge at his face. Little good it did her; her arms were caught the second her nails grazed his cheek. He wrenched her arms behind her back and gripped them so tightly she gasped in pain even as she told herself not to. It was all the invitation the rogue needed; he swept into her mouth, caressing her tongue with his.

'Bastard,' Hermione spat, as offended by the action as with how good he was at it.

Strangely, despite her outrage, a spark of the familiar lit on her tongue. She could taste him, this disgusting potential-rapist, and he tasted like cognac. She had tasted it before, fine and smooth and expensive. Daring to hope, she inhaled. Close as he was, his unique smells were not quite drowned out by the mildew of the storeroom. There! Just barely detectable beneath the overwhelming stink of the musty room she caught the glorious smell of tobacco, leather and oranges; a combination of tastes and smells unique to one man – Sirius Black.

It took surprisingly little strength to pull her hands free. After that initial twist to make her gasp, he must have loosened his grip. Her hands flew to his hair, gripping tightly and yanking down hard.

"Ow! Fucking hell, girl!" he shouted.

"Sirius?"

"Yes, dammit!" he swore, slapping her hands away from his hair.

"Oh, thank god!" cried Hermione and latched onto him, kissing him with all the relief and happiness she felt.

"That's more like it!"

He leaned into her again, pushing her back against the trunk, and this time Hermione did not care in the slightest. Quite the opposite, actually. Considering that she had worried for a week that he was angry at her and for the better part of five minutes that he would think she was cheating on him, she was elated to know beyond doubt that Sirius was quite happy to see her.

"You didn't know it was me?" he asked in a ragged whisper.

"No."

He was smirking; she could just tell. "Nice to know I'm not losing my touch."

"Git," she swatted at what she assumed to be his shoulder. "Why are you even here?'

"Aside from the obvious?" questioned Sirius with a deliberate twist of his hips against hers. "To keep you on your toes. You never know when a Death Eater might figure a way into the castle. I want to make sure you are fully prepared."

"Really?" she replied. "Then perhaps I should be hexing you instead of kissing you."

"Save that for next time," he decided, stealing into her mouth again, preventing her inquiry about there being a 'next time'.