4

There was silence in the Grimmauld Place.

Sirius inhaled the familiar smell that moulded itself into every corner of the dog in him could differentiate each tone, separately and all together. The mixture of mint, lavender, vanilla, the faint aroma of an opened wine, wood from the furniture, the cleaning products used on the carpets, tonight's dinner which obviously had been pizza from that Italian place in Islington and the coffee that was left over in the pot… Everything.

And he loved every bit of it. It smelled like home. The townhouse was completely altered and cleaned. Harry had brought life into it and even though begrudgingly, Sirius enjoyed the place.

Imagine your mother's face if she saw it now, mate, James' voice chuckled in his head, and Sirius laughed along with him, his feet taking him to the library. He stopped midway, realising what he was laughing at.

His dead best friend's voice.

His laughter died in his throat. It was as if he remembered where he was and the walls suddenly were covered by portraits of his ancestors instead of photographs of Harry's friends. He could even feel the shift in the air, as dark magic filled the place like slime and he could almost hear his mother's voice that should be absent.

Was it just another ghost? Or was he truly imagining it?

Stop being so over-dramatic, brother.

He felt shivers run down his spine. He put his hand on the wall and a wave of nausea hit him.

Please, Sirius, said the voice as arrogant as its owner. I'm only your brother. Is this really necessary?

"I'm sorry," he said and immediately regretted that he opened his mouth to talk.

He wished the world would stop spinning like it was going to leave its orbit.

For what? Regulus' voice sounded genuinely curious. Death gives a certain perspective to things, Sirius. If there was anything to forgive between us, I'm pretty sure me dying has trumped that.

"I should have taken you with me, should have forced you to come with me. Shouldn't have cared what a little shit you were, ignored your protests…"

Stop it, really. Regrets are boring. And your guilt is just annoying.

Sirius laughed bitterly at that. "I always annoyed you," he said, leaning on to the wall with his back, feeling that he wouldn't be able to carry himself any longer. "Why stop now?"

"Sirius?"

Sirius jumped and turned to the owner of the voice. Hermione stood there, wearing a pale pink dress. A nightgown maybe, he wasn't sure, but it made her skin glow. Her hair was free of the confines she often put on them. No hair band nor products to keep them tame. Instead, it looked clean, shiny and soft.

And wild.

You are staring, Padfoot, said the mocking voice of Lily.

"Hermione," he exhaled, just to say something to fill the silence.

Hermione looked at him, her eyes assessing and thoughtful.

"Are you okay?" she asked in a tiny voice.

"Did I wake you up?" he countered instead, avoiding to answer.

"No, I was reading," she said and took a step towards him. "I heard some chatter, and I thought…"

She didn't say what she thought.

"Good, uh, that's good…" Sirius said lamely. Did she hear him talking to Regulus? Well, to himself?

She was near him, suddenly. He could smell that she had taken a shower, or maybe a bath soaked in lavender oil that would explain the smell that taken over the house. He wanted everything to smell like this. He wanted to whine like a puppy now that she was so near, not knowing why. He wanted to growl too, but not out of anger. He wished he knew what it was that caused him to feel that way. The sound that left his throat was a mixture of both. It was pathetic to his ears.

He wanted to turn to Padfoot. It was easier when one was an animal. Nothing was so confusing then, the emotions didn't need to make sense like they did when you were a man.

"Where-" she began but stopped. "Sirius, I heard you talking."

Sirius shook his head and took a step back. "You heard wrong."

Denial was never a good method of taking back control, though. He had to be better than that since he knew that she wouldn't buy it. He was basically telling her to shut up, not to ask questions. It was disrespectful and he didn't want that.

What did he want?

His eyes saw her tiny feet, naked and toenails painted. He swallowed.

Within that moment of silence, Hermione came inside his personal space and her arms wrapped around his waist. His thoughts halted, so did his body. He remembered to put his arms around her only after few seconds. His nausea stopped. The eerie noise that always reminded him that the voices were near stopped as well. The weird and dark perception of his surroundings disappeared. He was still, and the house he was in became home again, without a trace of the darkness it once carried.

And it smelled like lavenders.

His mind clearer now, he looked at the witch. She was sad, for some reason, he hoped that she wasn't sad for him. Were the lines on her forehead a sign of worry?

"Are you okay?" he asked. He wanted the answer to be a smile and a 'yes.'

She nodded, and it wasn't good enough for Sirius. She looked up at him. "Are you?"

He smiled softly at her, touching her hair. He wanted to nod, but he shook his head instead. He couldn't lie to her.

No more denying. He had to own up to his problems. He had to grow up.

"No," he sighed.

It felt good to admit it. It felt strangely strengthening and in control. What a conundrum.

"Are you drunk?" she asked this time, a single eyebrow in the air. She was looking up but he could see that she was trying to look taller than him. He chuckled.

It was cute.

"I was," he smiled. "Not anymore, I think."

She sighed and gave up playing the bossy one just like that. "Want to talk?" she asked.

"Until the sun rises?" he countered with a grin.

She giggled. It was far better than the soft tone of worry. He had to find a way to make that stick.

"But with coffee instead of firewhiskey?" When Sirius nodded she added: "I'll make it. Why don't you wait in the garden?"

Sirius put a kiss on her forehead, ignoring his conscience that screamed for him to stay away.

I don't think you should stay away, Sirius.

His brother's voice was like a whisper, coming from far away, but still near. Were these voices just an excuse his maddened, deprived mind was creating?

As if you could be that imaginative, Regulus answered this time, and Sirius could swear, as Hermione slid out of his arms with a smile, he had heard Lily Potter's infamous loud snort. Sirius ignored it. He squeezed Hermione's arm, not too hard, just enough to remind him of the living, and just like that the constant buzz of the veil was gone again.

"I'll take mine black, darling," he said in the real world.

"I know," Hermione said with a smile.

He allowed her to leave as he went out to the little garden of the townhouse. He took out his jacket, since the night was warm, and put it on the back of the chair he then sat on. He reached down the pockets of the jacket from where they hung to take out a pack of Magus Gold* cigarettes. He picked one from it, his favourite brand solely because it was what the weird man in Hogsmeade sold around a corner when he was a teenager.

There was a soft wind and he found it quite enjoyable. His arms felt a little chilly, and although Sirius hated the cold, he couldn't find it in himself to complain. Everything cold used to remind him of Azkaban. Since the veil, or rather his return from it, the prison he spent the years that should have been his best was like a distant memory. Maybe he was starting to associate things in a healthier manner now.

It still affected him, of course.

He didn't think he could handle seeing Dementors again and he still was unable to cast a Patronus. It was hard to remember good memories and when he did, they came with the bad.

A single good memory.

That was all he needed.

She is coming, Regulus said. Don't worry, we'll leave you alone.

Thank you, Sirius thought at the voice, and he was thankful to a degree. But even in his head it sounded sarcastic.

He turned towards Hermione who floated their coffees on to the small table of the garden. She sat down on the second chair.

"Oh, no," Hermione said when she saw that he was moving his chair to see her better. "Please, don't disturb yourself."

"I want to see you," Sirius said, and Hermione looked down, curls falling over her face to cover it from him. She huffed and pushed them away, looking annoyed at her untameable hair.

"Alright, then," she said.

They sipped their coffees in silence. Since they started to live together Sirius had realised that Hermione was not the best cook. It could be because she rarely ate, of course, but he doubted it.

But, damn, could she brew a coffee.

"Where were you today?" Hermione asked conversationally, as Sirius sighed contently into his coffee cup.

"Went to a nearby pub," he said. "There are so many places I don't recognise around here. Need to discover the town, you know."

Hermione hummed and stared at her cup.

"Harry gave his resignation today," she said. Sirius was startled to hear it, but also he knew that they were avoiding talking about what she witnessed back inside. "He'll just need to work for another month, close his cases and transfer them."

"I didn't know he was planning to do that," Sirius said.

He, too, wanted to talk about something other than himself.

"He didn't tell me either," she said. "I mean, he was considering it, but… I think it might be a sudden decision."

"Not much of a planner, is he?"

Hermione laughed at that like she remembered a funny memory, something funnier than his comment. Sirius noticed her collarbones, sharp and hollow. It was beautiful, but also too thin.

"Did you eat today?" he asked her, while his mind informed him that aside from the dress' stripes her shoulders were naked.

He moved uncomfortably on his chair as he noticed that she wasn't wearing a bra. He was sure that he shouldn't have become aware of that. He was sure no decent man in his place would.

Still, instead of avoiding her completely, he looked at her face.

"Of course," she said. Sirius knew she was lying.

"Liar."

Hermione blushed even further and ducked her head. "I don't know why it's your business if I eat or not, Sirius."

"You didn't eat, you didn't sleep. What did you do today, for yourself, aside from a shower, Hermione?"

"Again, I don't see how that's any of-"

"Don't," Sirius interrupted her. "Please, do not finish that sentence, kitten. It's not any business of mine. It doesn't need to be. I care."

"I'm perfectly fine, I just don't have an appetite nowadays, that's all," she said in defence of herself.

"I hear voices," he said suddenly, deciding to remind her it wasn't only her that had problems. "You heard me talking to them didn't you?" Hermione nodded hesitantly. Sirius continued to stare at her face. "That's why you made that coffee, that's why you are sitting there, in the middle of the night, away from your books and your warm bed. That's why you are looking at my drunkenly debauched face, that definitely doesn't deserve your care the least." He grinned. "Tell me, why is it any of your business?"

She bit her lips and sighed deeply. Sirius could see the change in her demeanour. She accepted her fate, apparently.

"Food doesn't taste good," she explained. "I barely have time for it anyway, it just seems so irrelevant and unnecessary."

"You'll get stupid if you don't eat," Sirius said with a grin. "And then what will you do?"

"Use my feminine wiles?" Hermione joked, but she said it in such a way Sirius frowned.

"Oh, kitten, I'm sure that'd work great for the rest of the world," he said leaning a little. "But would it be enough for you?"

Hermione rolled her eyes and then looked at him pointedly.

"What voices?" she asked.

The witch was treating this like a Beater practice. He had hit the ball towards her, and now she did the same. Well, Sirius had made his bed and would lie in it. He was the one that offered her to talk about his problems in exchange for hers to begin with and fair was fair.

"Everyone," he said with a shrug. The first word was easy to speak, the rest wasn't so easy. "The dead."

He had expected the silence that came after the reveal. He still hated to see how Hermione's eyes softened and her gaze fell on him with pity. Sirius smoked the last of his cigarette and threw it on the ground, knowing Kreacher would clean it up the next day.

"Don't," Sirius warned Hermione but the girl shook her head.

"I'm not. I… Are they real?" she questioned.

"How can they be?" Sirius said with a scowl.

"Well," Hermione said with a frown. "Everything is possible. You were in the veil, Sirius. I mean I don't think you really died, you are awfully solid for a ghost, but you were, alive at the moment or not, inside the veil. That could explain why you hear voices."

"Or I'm losing my mind."

"Or that, but-"

Sirius cut her off.

"But nothing." He usually enjoyed Hermione as her mind whirled and reached the possibilities surrounding a situation. But apparently, not when the topic was him. "If I lose my mind, what else do I have? How far will the madness go? How far will I lose myself?"

"Occlumency, have you tried that?"

Sirius took a deep breath to relax and to try to find some stability in her desire to logically assess the situation.

"It's tiring," he answered her question. "I never been really good at it and it's so very tiring Hermione."

"But it works?"

Sirius nodded begrudgingly. "Yeah, suppose it does." He swiftly threw in his card this time, he didn't want to allow her to focus on him too much. He smiled at her, and she bit her lips. Sirius knew she wasn't aware of it. She just had felt what was coming. "Did this not-eating thing you've got going on started after Ron?"

Hermione huffed at him and rolled her eyes. Still, the game was on and she was aware of it. She shook her head, hair bouncing.

"It comes and goes. It's not necessarily when I feel bad, Sirius. I know what you are thinking." She really did, it seemed. "It's just sometimes I forget. And everything starts to taste bad. I drink my coffee with milk or eat a piece of ham to sustain me when I feel hungry. But…"

"You eat when I prepare something," Sirius reminded her.

"You ask me to," Hermione said as soon as he finished his sentence and Sirius looked at her, halted.

She blushed and looked away.

Sirius grinned.

"Would you eat three meals a day, if I asked you to?" he asked.

"It's not that I don't want to eat!" Hermione objected heatedly.

"Right, it's me not asking you to."

"You are so annoying sometimes, did you know that?" Hermione huffed, crossing her arms.

"Yes, I do," he said with a grin, then allowed it to become a smile. "Hermione," he said in a soft tone that he knew would get through to her. "I really want you to take care of yourself."

"Why?" she asked. Maybe he was starting to associate things in a healthy manner now.

Sirius didn't know the answer so clearly until he spoke it.

"Because you need someone to want it," he said softly. "Even if it's me."

*Credit to The Artful Scribbler for the brand name. Thank you!

My lovely Alpha-Reader Kreeblim Sabs breathes life into this story. I can't thank her enough for that.

I want to dedicate this chapter to my grandmother, the princess of our family, who has passed away. She would think Sirius as someone lacking in morals, and click her tongue at him yet would never judge him, and probably would knit a scarf for him. She lived encouraging people to be themselves, even when she thought it was against her better judgment and I will miss her terribly.

Also to Barbar, our dog, who has passed away today. I will miss his huge hugs, and paws as big as my head. He was a true knight.

This chapter gives me joy. I hope it will do the same for you.

Please leave a review, for as you know, they are what sustains us.

Love,

Synoir