So... After a week in a daze of writing (neglecting all sorts of aspects of reality) I now post The End. It's so damned hard to let go of this world I conjured up. I will miss it.

When I began writing fan fiction, five years ago, my other long story "A Hidden Agenda", the tone in Sirmione pics was different than it is now. I'm a bit slow, though, and a hopeless romantic. My story seems to depict other characters than new Sirmione fics do, (not that there are many of them), and because of this my writing seems positively archaic. Still, I'm thrilled by your shown interest. Thank you for reading, reviewing, supporting me.

Kia

Chapter 26

Grimmauld Place, 18 June 1996

Sirius

Sirius is having the strangest dream. He wasn't even aware he was asleep, when he heard the front door slam, and Hermione call his name. As always he felt his heart swell with love at the sound of her voice, but instantly remembered that Hermione is Harry's friend now, and can't possibly want to talk to him about anything that doesn't concern Harry, or maybe the Order. He hasn't spoken to anyone in days, and has been quite content in the empty house with only the people in his memories for company. James and Lily. Hermione most of all. And then this younger, sometimes tiresome, version of her comes along. Alone.

When he reached the hall and saw her he didn't quite recognise her since last he saw her, which must have been Christmas. She looked more like the images in his memories, and he gritted his teeth in silent frustration for this new ordeal he had to endure when seeing her. He'd dreaded the skinny teenager growing into the woman he remembers, and wasn't prepared that it would happen so soon, and to such extent. Her hair is just like he remembers it; soft and shiny rather than the wild and bushy curls she had a few months ago.

Someone must have taught her a spell. Damn! And is she wearing heels? She looks tall. Never mind, just behave.

He kissed her politely on her cheek while holding his breath. Her scent still played tricks with his mind. He thought he could feel the way the cottage used to smell, mingling with her own impossible scent of vanilla, tea, fresh linen, peaches. At that point he began to suspect he was dreaming and asked about Harry and Hogwarts and that dreadful woman Umbridge, just to mentally place the Hermione of now in her fifth year at Hogwarts. And suggested tea just to keep the conversation running.

She followed him closely up the stairs to the library, and didn't show a hint of the insecurity of being close to him, as she had at Christmas, after that kiss that filled him with equal parts shame and twisted hope.

When she sat down on the couch next to him and closed her eyes while she sipped her tea it was painful to watch her. She looked too much like… before.

And now? It is a dream, it must be. Harry's friend holding up that hideous device that tampers with time and makes them all miserable. And talking about his death and taking him with her. He'd go anywhere with her, in an instant. Does she know that?

"No, this can't be," he croaks. "This is some kind of twisted dream. You can't be here. Not like this, with that." He touches the Time Turner that sways slightly from her fingers. "I wish you could, and would, but…"

"But I am here! And I want to be here. My timelines are all messed up. You didn't send me back to where I came from. I missed more than three years, the same time I spent with you."

Slowly Sirius raises his fingers to her cheek. She leans into his touch and closes her eyes again. His shivering fingers against her skin. The stillness around them.

He looks down and barks a short laugh that makes her looks up.

"What are you wearing, love?"

"The same jacket you sent me away in. You bike jacket. And this."

She pulls at the paw-printed silk around her neck. His breath hitches when the dark silk falls into her lap. His fingers continue down the side of her neck, and touch the angry, red scar.

"Did I do this?"

She nods, and grips his fingers with her own.

"I forgive you, I forgave you as soon as it happened. I should have told you. Should have told you everything."

Since this clearly is a dream he figures he can't lose anything by speaking freely.

"I wouldn't have listened. Or I would have tried to change the course of history. I shouldn't have hurt you; I shouldn't have sent you away. You trusted me with the Time Turner, so it wouldn't ever be used again, but I broke that trust. And there hasn't been a day since without regret. I like this dream. In most of my dreams you don't answer me when I talk to you."

Tears fill her eyes at his words.

"Oh, Sirius. I'm not a dream. I'm here."

"Yes, and when you are here you are my godson's best friend who fights with me about how I treat my house-elf. Of course you are a dream. I've never had a more beautiful dream than you."

Hermione moves closer to him and puts her hand against his cheek.

"Is this a dream? My touch?"

"Definitely."

She leans in and kisses him softly.

"And this?"

"Most certainly."

She wriggles a little, retrieves something from her pocket and places it in his hand.

"And this?"

Stunned he looks down into his palm.

"I love you forever; time is nothing," she whispers.

"Impossible," he answers shakily and carefully places the ring on the armrest of the couch. "Why are you here, Hermione? Did you say I will die tonight? Are you a ghost? Have I finally lost it? My mind, my barely held together sanity?"

"You know what I am, Sirius. I'm a time traveller. I've been in several different timelines the last twenty-four hours. I come from 2001 now. And by then you are dead. If you don't come with me now. Remus said…"

"Remus? Where is he?"

"In your cottage. Our cottage in Godric's Hollow. He lives there."

"Nonsense. It's empty. I've offered it to him, but he refuses."

"But in his 'now', a few years ahead, he lives there with his son. They are very happy. They don't know I've come here to take you with me. Anyway, when Remus talked about tonight, this now that is in his past, he said that you were angry, shattered and unfocused, and that got you killed. So you are coming with me."

Sirius laughs bitterly and looks away.

"You can't imagine how much I'd like to believe you."

"Then believe me!"

"No. If I go along with this dream tomorrow will be even worse than today, and I won't be able to even look at you when you come here with Harry this summer."

He hears a faint sob, and when he chances a look at her she is crying.

"Please, don't. What did I say?"

"I've been here before, Sirius. In this house, this summer. The Order of the Phoenix held a kind of memorial service for you. I was 16 years old and couldn't tell anyone my heart was in pieces."

"I was…?"

"…dead. Gone. You were cursed into the Veil in the Department of Mysteries, and never came back. It's a barrier between the land of the living and the land of the dead. I could hear your voice from the other side, Sirius, but you never came back. When I saw you again…"

"Hey, wait dream-girl, you just said I never came back. I must be asleep. The Hermione I know and love would never contradict herself like that."

"I saw you again when Minerva McGonagall sent me 20 years back in time. On the 2nd of May. We had just won this wretched war, yes, Sirius, we will win. But she sent me back to your last year at Hogwarts. I went down the stairs and saw you, Remus, James and Lily. You know this, you must remember."

"You looked like you'd been in a war."

"I had."

"And I thought I'd seen you before, and said embarrassing things and couldn't sleep. You walked right into my heart."

"You were already in mine."

Tentatively he lifts his hands and cups her face.

"I don't care if this is a dream."

He leans in and kisses her as carefully as on Christmas Eve. Her hands grip his shoulders and go around his neck, and she presses herself against him in a way he rarely dares to think about. Not at all like on Christmas Eve. Like when she was his. Before.

When she opens her mouth and lets him taste her he drinks her like a man dying of thirst. He pulls her into his lap and she follows willingly. His hands pushes the jacket off her shoulders, pulls the knitted sweater she is wearing over her head, feels her warm skin against his palms. For so long, and so forbidden he has craved her closeness. Her taste on his tongue, her skin against his, her strained breaths in his ears. Her fingers make quick work of the buttons in his shirt and then she stills.

"What?" he pants with his lips against her ear. "Don't disappear, dream-girl."

"Your skin," she says simply. "It wasn't… Did it hurt? When did you…?"

She slowly traces the ink in the tattoos that cover his skin, and her touch makes it hard for him to string words together.

"In prison. I was bored. The pain made it less boring, for a while. And I figured someone with knowledge in Arithmancy, Ancient Runes or some other extinct, written language might be able to identify my body if I were to somehow… disappear. People did in Azkaban, you know. They tell the story of my life, up until then. This is you."

He touches a symbol on his chest, surrounded by tiny symbols.

"I can get rid of them, if you want me to," he says quickly. "I'll do anything you ask me."

She leans back and looks into his eyes.

"Anything?"

"For as long as I'm in this dream I'm yours."

"Then give me the ring. I'll wear it now."

He picks up the ring next to him and takes her left hand in his.

"Middle finger," she says.

"I can alter it," he says and reaches for his wand.

"No. I want it the way it was when you gave it to me before."

He puts the ring on her middle finger and she places her hand on his chest.

"I don't want you to get rid of these. I want to spend years of studying them, touch them, taste them. I want to read you, to love you. Please, come with me. Pretend it's still a dream and do anything I ask you."

"I'm afraid the time travelling will wake me up. I'd rather wake up with you here, in my arms. Especially if I'm going to die tonight. Let me just…"

He kisses her hard and pulls her against him in a less than gentle manner. She tastes and feels like she does in his dreams. Her body still fits his like a piece of a jigsaw puzzle. When he pushes down the strap of her bra and nibbles along her collarbone she moans with a sound that reverberates deep inside him. He doesn't care if she is a dream, or if he will die later tonight, or if he's cursed into insanity for touching, holding, tasting and kissing a possibly too young girl the way his memories haunt him he once did. The sounds she makes anchor him in this elusive now, and he lets himself remember a symphony of sounds she made when he used to touch her.

He kisses her shoulder and grips her arms. The skin under his fingers reminds him of something. He opens his eyes and glimpses the scar that reads 'Mudblood'.

"This can't be in my dream," he whispers against her skin. "You might actually be here."

"I am. Right here. And I want you. Please, Sirius. We haven't got much time…"

"Time is nothing," he mutters. "And I love you forever."

He tears at her clothes; she rips out a few buttons in his shirt. When her whole body is bare before him he doesn't dare pause even a second to argue with this possible illusion of who once was the whole world to him. He takes her on the couch he's spent countless lonely nights on, haunted by his memories of her. Takes her, fills her, owns her. Love and bliss.

"I'm yours, remember," she pants against his lips.

"You were," he growls back.

"No, say it. I'm yours, I'm yours."

The dark night of his soul lifts by the utter completeness and raw vulnerability. The dawn in her eyes claims him and transforms him.

"You're mine. Only mine."

"Yes, yes, yes."

When the sweat cools on their bodies and their breathing calms down, Hermione reaches for the Time Turner on the coffee table and lets it sway from her fingers.

"Will you come with me?"

"Where to?"

"Life. Love where time is nothing."

"Yes, yes, yes."

When Alastar Moody bursts through the front door of 12 Grimmauld Place, with Kingsley Shacklebolt, Nymphadora Tonks and Remus Lupin the couch in the library is still warm, with the imprints of two bodies, but empty. No time is wasted on searching for the sometimes unreliable and always unpredictable owner of the house. Getting to the Department of Mysteries in the basement of the Ministry is more important.

"I haven't apparated for years," he mutters and steadies himself against the wall of the familiar cottage. "I don't want to go in."

"Just for a second. Come on. You can keep you eyes closed. Alohomora."

Well inside Hermione also finds it difficult to look around and see the dusty remains of the life they used to live. In the middle of the large room she pulls out the chain around her neck and whispers a charm to make it longer, before she holds it up and places it around Sirius's neck.

"Need some light. Would you? I promised Remus and Teddy I would be back soon. Wouldn't want to miss a year or so."

"Lumos. Who is Teddy?"

"A young relative of yours with metamorphmagic abilities. You'll meet him soon."

She spins the three rings of the Time Turner the calculated turns and holds Sirius close. They glimpse images of Remus, of Tonks, of a blue-haired baby, before the room stops spinning. A toy broomstick appears under Hermione's feet and when she falls she brings Sirius down with her. Her elbow lands on something small and hard with a sickening pain, and she feels blood gushing down her arm.

"Ouch! Merlin, that hurt!"

"What? Where?"

Sirius pulls the jacket off her and pushes up the sleeve of her sweater.

"Vulnera Sanentur," he whispers with his wand aimed at the jagged wound.

The wound closes itself.

"What was that?" he wonders. "Remus shouldn't have possibly dangerous things laying around if he has a child."

Hermione searches under the crumpled bike jacket on the floor and pulls out a goblin-made gold chain with the remnants of a miniscule, broken hourglass set in three twisted rings.

"Time is nothing."

"I love you forever."

The sound of two sets of footsteps and voices are heard outside the door to the cottage.

"Can we show Hermione some more photos after supper, Daddy?"

"Maybe, Teddy. If she is back."

And this is where I leave them. I'm not the writer to explain the fine points of time traveling, even though I've relied on said points for this story. All I ever wanted was to not having Sirius cursed into that bloody Veil, so this was my rescue mission. And angst-ridden romance, always that. I need it as much as I need air. Love to hear what you thought about it.

Love from Kia