"Has Remus already left?"

Sirius nodded. "He flooed to Hogwarts about ten min—"

"Damnit!" Hermione stamped her foot and gave him a cross look, as if he were responsible.

Despite knowing it would only encourage her insanity, Sirius decided to take the bait and asked, "What did you need?"

"Doesn't matter now," she huffed. "You don't happen to know anything about the imperfect subjunctive tense of ancient Samarian runes, do you?"

Sirius blinked. "No..."

"Blast!"

He watched her storm back into the study, and while he truly wanted to turn around and floo Harry for a chat or a bit of Quidditch, something pulled him after her.

She was leaning over the desk, her nose inches from an old and dusty tome, quill flying over a scrap of parchment. Both her shorts and Ginny's old Harpy tee were spotted with ink, but Hermione didn't seem to notice, much less care. How very like her.

He tipped up the book form under her nose to read the spine. "Absolutely Untranslatable Runes?" he said, eyebrow raised. "What are you doing with this paperweight?"

Hermione slammed the book back down, crushing his fingers in the process, and then glared at him when he had the audacity to yelp in pain. Tucking her wild hair behind her ear, she bent back over the book and marked her place – right hand groping for a fresh parchment. "I'm trying to stay busy," she quipped. "And you? – nothing in this house capable of capturing your interest that you must always bother me?"

"Do you always work runes dressed as a Knockturn witch?" he asked, without skipping a beat.

Hermione didn't even raise her eyes from her work. "Does it help your confidence to constantly make attacks on my virtue?"

"What virtue..."

"You're too predictable, Sirius," she said. "You enjoy getting into other people's business and you're placing a great deal of significance on that blouse."

"What blouse..." he parroted.

Hermione threw down her quill and turned so suddenly that he had to step back, not having realized how close he had been standing to her as she bent over that book – shirt clinging to the curve of her back. Arms crossed under her chest (her usual stance of defiance), she locked eyes with him.

"What problem do you have with me?" she demanded; logically striving right to the point of things.

Remus loves you. He mirrored her pose. "I've no problem with you, Brown-Eyes. You must be mistaken."

She was – predictably – suspicious. "Then your brutish questions...?"

"To make out your character," he replied calmly. "I've made a hobby of studying people, you know."

"Your methods are questionable."

"So's your honor," and he stepped up against her, making her stumble against the desk; catching her off guard as she had done to him more than a week ago. Her hands slid out behind her, looking for purchase to steady herself, and a cup of quills tipped onto its side, spilling its feathered contents across the oak desk and onto the floor. To her credit, Hermione was never one to back down from a challenge; in fact, she glared straight up at him.

"Be careful, Sirius – your attitude savors rather strongly of jealousy," she hissed, a defiant tilt to her jaw. "But since you assure me otherwise, I can only have confused jealousy with curiosity."

"It's 'otherwise'," he affirmed, his voice low and gravelly.

"In that case, it seems my only choice is to assuage that burning curiosity of yours," her lips curved upwards and Sirius, suddenly suspect, quickly searched for a twist in her logic. "Yes, I slept with Charlie Weasley in Romania."

Sirius stared at her. Then she rose up onto her toes and whispered, with her breath hot in his ear:

"and it was bloody fantastic."

An inkwell shattered and books toppled from the desk as Sirius grabbed her forcefully by the neck, smashing their lips together in a bruising kiss.