Wedlocked
Chapter 37: Bloody Miracle

Hermione stood motionless as the battle began, hexes and charms flying so near to her that her hair blew in their wake. Spells so advanced and obscure she could spend the rest of her life researching their inventors, origins and purposes and still not have touched on all being thrown. A colossal snake of fire reared to the domed glass ceiling, swallowing the jet of iridescent flames Dumbledore had sent across the concourse of the train station, spitting caustic venom at the great white wizard, but succeeding only in dissolving the tiles of the floor instead; Hermione stepped sideways to avoid falling into the chasm, but that was all the notice she bothered to take of so amazing a convergence of magic. She paid no more attention to the duel between the two greatest wizards of the age than she would to a fly bothering her while she tried to revise her Transfiguration notes.

How could she be bothered when she had something far more important to observe: Sirius.

Hermione stared down at him. His skin still so soft and full of colour, it looked as if he had fallen asleep with his eyes open. He looked perfectly peaceful, every fold and crease smoothed with the loss of worry and anger, just as he did when he slept. She had noticed, like all those odd titbits she found herself squirreling away without consciously doing so, that even on those nights he felt haunted by memories of what he had lost or what he had been subjected to, when he came to their bed, all those fears and worries melted from him as if she had been his peace, her arms comforting him and keeping him safe.

As she studied those arms now, her eyes came to her left hand and the naked fingers. Her heart ached to see it bare, the ostentatious rings that she so hated now gone, lost in the chaos of King's Cross, and the barest of indentations marking that they had once had a home and meaning on her finger. Seeing that they had fallen, Hermione could not fool herself into believing Sirius was merely sleeping. Those rings were bound with fidelity charms to only remove with her spouse's death. She wished she could have saved the rings, her studies of blood magic told her how valuable a person's blood was, even after death.

Death.

Sirius's death.

She looked to him again, blinking as a spell shot near enough to graze her arm.

"That hurt," she muttered dully.

'Sirius will never feel pain again,' she thought and her knees gave out.

He had known a lot of pain; his life had not been a happy one, mad family, lost friends, distrust, deceit. That was all at an end now. His struggles were over and he would join his brother in the misty, white afterlife Harry had mentioned when he woke from his second death. That's where Sirius would be now. That's were Sirius would be happy, where he would be free.

That's what she had wanted for him: happiness and freedom. She should be pleased that he was released, that he would move on.

She should be, but she wasn't.

"You stupid git!" She slapped him, her hand stinging from the force of the blow.

Her fingers tore at his clothes, ripping open his robes and growing more frantic as she sent the buttons of his burgundy waistcoat and his horribly mismatched paisley shirt flying into the riot of Muggles in her desperation to reach his chest. Hands clasped, she pushed with all her strength, forcing his heart to pump, manually circulating the blood through his veins. Muggles survived heart failure all the time with this seemingly simple effort. Granted no one had ever explained what it was about the Unforgivable that killed a person, but so long as the blood kept pumping there was hope.

Even as her muscles burned from the action, her brain was fighting against her efforts, callously reminding her that no one in the combined recorded histories of Muggle or Wizarding medicine had ever been said to have been revived from CPR after being struck by the Killing Curse. Her mind began to pull factoids from medical journals and CPR training leaflets, informing her that brain cells began dying after only four minutes without oxygen and that she had no watch; she couldn't know how many minutes had passed since the spell had been cast, how many minutes she stood by gawking idly before finally acting.

Besides, they had depleted their store of miracles for a lifetime. Harry had already survived the curse today and again so many years before. Once was enough. Twice would be a miracle. Two people could not be so impossibly blessed.

'But Sirius is blessed,' she insisted, and she knew it was truth. He was not saintly by any stretch of the imagination, but Sirius was blessed. How many men got a second chance at life as he had? How many men survived so vicious an upbringing with a mind entirely his own? Found friends as dedicated and loyal? Only Sirius.

So those interlaced fingers still pushed bruises into his sternum despite what cold logic told her.

As she fought to bring Sirius back to life by shear stubbornness, Hermione caught a word that finally drew her attention to the fighting wizards.

Dumbledore said her name.

"—focused on brining Miss Granger under your control, you have failed to notice the rent pieces of your soul being destroyed. Your diary is gone. As is your ring and your locket, your cup and the piece of yourself left in Harry, and," the man gestured to his left where Remus stood over the massive corpse of Nagini, Voldemort's familiar, "your snake. You are all alone now, Tom. Nothing can save you from death except yourself."

"Horcruxes are easily made," the Dark Lord said dismissively.

"Your soul cannot possibly withstand another attempt, Tom," the man shook his head.

Even with only half an ear given to the conversation, Hermione could glean enough information to form a long-delayed resentment. She had been lied to. The Horcruxes and the Order business, which she had learned about only a few days ago, they had been Dumbledore's greatest goal for months. In all likelihood, they had been his goal for longer than that given the mention of Tom's diary. To find all those vital pieces of Voldemort's soul had to have been an intensive, protracted search. That sort of quest would have gained the attention of at least one Death Eater or Dark Lord had they not been looking elsewhere, had they not been looking at her. For months, the Order had been using her as a decoy to distract the most dangerous wizard in the world while they hunted down his Horcruxes.

She flushed with rage at this new understanding. She was the brightest witch of her age, dammit, someone Voldemort had spent incalculable resources and time to obtain. She was not some wooden duck designed to lure him in. And Sirius knew about it.

"Bastard," she growled. "Keeping secrets from me!" Anger coursed through her, the magic in her veins sparking violently, shooting through her fingertips into Sirius's chest.

Determined to bring him back from the dead just so that she could kill him herself, she forced his lips open and breathed into his mouth. His lifeless lips pressed against hers, taking her breath and mouth for himself. Lifeless fingers moved to tangle themselves in her hair and the still heart thumped hard against her chest.

It was her imagination. Wishful thinking. Delusions brought on by the trauma of the day and possibly a concussion when she was collateral damage to a stray spell. How else was she to explain her very dead husband kissing her? She had not really thought her attempts to revive him would work, but she had to try. This had to be her strained mind using all their time together to fill in the holes where Sirius ought to be, setting his warm lips against hers in place of the cold, dead things she had breathed past, moving his fingers against her skin in a small, circular rhythm completely at odds yet perfectly harmonizing to the movements of his mouth, filling her ears with his ragged breath as he pulled away. That's what it was, her imagination. Now, after drawing that slow breath, he would speak, saying something wonderful about her as he so often did, that's what her brain would have him say.

Hermione held her breath as she waited for the complimentary words to come.

"Why do I feel like I've been dropped on my head?"

She couldn't keep the snort back. That was certainly not what Sirius ought to be saying.

"I understand you're cross, but that's no reason to knock me on the head when I'm trying to protect you. How many men would take a Killing Curse for you?"

Hermione tried to keep the frown from her face, but it crept into the corners of her mouth and continued to pull down as Sirius spoke. If this were little more than the delusions she thought them to be, then she would never have allowed Sirius to remember the Unforgivable that ended his life. She wanted nothing but happiness for him, and thinking about that gut-wrenching moment would only bring him pain. Despite what she wanted for him, the man kept on about it.

"It was green, that's the Killing Curse. There's no other spell like it," he paused and sat up, bringing Hermione along with him. "Am I wrong? Am I dead? Did you get hit, too?"

His hands set to work examining her for damage, the warm fingertips grazing her cheeks as he pushed her hair back. This was pointless. She wasn't dead. Or was she? Had she been struck down while administering aid? Was that the reason he was sitting up and speaking? She tore her eyes from him to look for the mist and white walls. It was still King's Cross. Even battered and embattled, there was no mistaking it. That alone would have sealed her opinion against being dead, and then Sirius found the wound on her arm. She screamed when he prodded it.

"Sorry, pet." He placed an apologetic kiss on her cheek before tearing at the hole in her sleeve and revealing the ugly gash still dripping blood down her arm. It was ghastly and painful. How had she not noticed it before? She could barely breathe, it was so excruciating.

Sirius took the wand from her pocket, his own had fallen when he did. "So, any thoughts on why I might still be breathing?" His voice was casual, holding no hint of the chaos that must be waging inside his own head. "I'm not complaining, but it is rather odd."

"Odd," she agreed, but offered no explanation as she had none.

"I mean," he continued as his spell began to mend the gash in her arm, "there's not much precedence for this sort of thing, is there? Harry, obviously, but last I checked no one had died protecting me recently, so there's really no cause for my being not dead right now."

As he continued, Hermione's frown etched deeper into her forehead and mouth. Everything he said was true and just offered further evidence that his being alive was absolutely beyond possibility. The only reason Harry lived as an infant was because of the sacrifice his mother had made, but she still did not understand how Harry had lived today. It was not still the mother's sacrifice; Voldemort had seen to it that the power no longer protected Harry when he took the boy's blood.

"Blood."

"Yes, loads of it," Sirius agreed. "It's a wonder you're still standing when you've lost that much."

"No," Hermione said, launching to her feet, immediately feeling the effects of all her blood-loss. "No, not mine. Yours."

"I'm not bleeding."

"Not now, no, but you did. You gave blood for the diamond on my engagement ring. What did the Goblins do to make that stone?"

The man shrugged. "Damned if I know. The Goblins would never reveal their secrets to a wizard."

Hermione pressed on through the dizziness that was trying to claim her. "They had to do something for it to forge a magical link that you felt clear across the country."

"You think that link can stretch into the afterlife?"

"Why not? Blood magic is strong, some of the strongest magic known to exist," she insisted, swaying on her feet but batting away his offer of help. "I'm right. We'll ask Dumbledore."

"I think he's a bit busy at the moment," Sirius muttered, finally taking notice of the battle still being waged by the two great wizards. It was easy to see they had been at it for some time. There was little left of the concourse where they fought; the glass ceiling was shattered, Victorian metal melted and scorched, brick pillars crumbling. There was little of the structure left, but still the two men fought.

"Give up, Dumbledore. You will not kill me," Voldemort laughed, sending a particularly vile spell that thankfully managed to hit no one.

"I have no intention of killing you, Tom," Dumbledore said. "I only wish for you to finally understand."

"Understand what?" the Dark Lord demanded.

"That there is magic greater than either of ours in this world."

"Let me guess," he said, raising his hands in a mocking prayer, "Love."

"Indeed," Dumbledore agreed and took advantage of Voldemort's momentary distraction. With a long swish and sharp jab of his wand, he sent a spell that engulfed the dark wizard in a whirlwind of magic that made him scream and spasm. "Love can hurt if you are incapable of understanding it."

Hermione flinched at the wail of agony escaping the man so many feared. Had love really done that to him? She had always thought it a source of strength, not a weapon. It seemed hard to believe that the feeling that warmed her heart at the thought of her family and friends, spurred her on in times of desperation and danger, gave her hope when she was in need might be used in such a way. To a man so lost to humanity as Voldemort, however, perhaps that warmth burned like a poison. Or perhaps there was more to love than she would ever understand.

A/N: As if I would really kill Sirius... doesn't mean his torment is over, though. Need I remind you that mind is a villainous authorship and that, prior to my MCU Ice Bear series over on AO3, I was content only to write the drama of forming relationships and not established ones? Rainbows and kittens, not my thing. Angst. Angst is where it's at. You have been forewarned (as if the previous 37 chapters weren't warning enough).