Disclaimer: All canon characters, places, plots and situations from the Harry Potter Universe belongs to J.K. Rowling. I make no profit from this.

Warnings: Rated M for language, violence and scenes of a sexual nature.

A/N: So I'm not sure if everyone's just been chilling away for Easter, or if this story just isn't holding interest anymore. I'll keep posting though – just feeling a bit meh.

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WARNINGS FOR THIS CHAPTER:

Please note this chapter may include scenes of a sexual nature, including implied sexual activity as well as highly descriptive language, so if that's not your thing, move along.

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Chapter Fifteen Gambling Game

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Sirius woke up quite suddenly in the early hours of the morning, just as the dawn was breaking. Physically he felt warm, snug and pleasantly sleepy with his witch beside him, but his mind was on full alert; something had woken him up. He cocked his head, listening, but could hear nothing besides the usual sounds a house makes as the temperature changes. He frowned, looking down at the witch beside him. Hermione was still fast asleep and he didn't want to disturb her, especially since she'd woken them both up in the middle of the night with one of her nightmares and it had taken a while for both of them to get back to sleep.

There it was again. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up, as he recognised the disturbance as something brushing up against Grimmauld's walls. In an instant he had slipped out of bed, grabbing his wand. He exited the room as quietly as possible, and meeting an equally alert Tonks on the landing confirmed his the urging of his intuition. "Moony?" he whispered to his cousin.

"Asleep," she answered.

Because the house still belonged to Sirius as the last surviving Black and the wards were intimately woven with his family's magic, he was the first to notice the disturbance. Tonks was second, only because she shared his blood and was living under his roof. Again came the uncomfortable sensation, like something cold and prickly being dragged over his skin, stronger this time. A sense of urgency washed over him.

In Auror mode, at the bottom of the stairs they wordlessly split up, Tonks heading to the kitchen to check the back door, while Sirius went to the main entrance. The sensation got stronger, the prickles turning into a stabbing sensation, like thousands of tiny pins, itchy almost. Just as he reached the front door, there came the sound of breaking glass from the floor above, and he immediately turned on his heel, catching Tonks' eyes before the both of them bolted up the stairs. Sirius went straight to his bedroom; it was as though an invisible thread was pulling him there.

The first thing he saw was that Hermione was awake, sitting up in bed with the sheets pooled around her waist, wand in hand. The piece of wood was pointed straight at the bedroom window. Across the room there was shattered glass all over the shortboy and the floor, the bowl of owl treats he kept on the windowsill overturned, with the biscuits spilled in amongst the glass and splinters of wood. He rushed to Hermione's side.

"What's happened?" he asked her, as Tonks came into the room with her wand out, surveying the damage. Hermione was still staring towards the window but reached out blindly with her free arm until it connected with his, and turned to him.

"There was an enormous bird!" she said. What? Sirius hesitated, wondering if she had perhaps been dreaming and woken up confused. "I was almost waking up, my eyes were still closed by I could sense the daylight and then there were these shadows and when I opened my eyes there was a bloody great raven, just sitting there on the sill, looking directly at me." Hermione shivered. "I – I just reacted," she said quietly, finally relaxing her wand arm.

"That's alright love," said Sirius. "Window can be fixed." He was more concerned about what Hermione had seen and why. He couldn't dismiss it as a coincedence; one look at Tonks told him she thought the same, that the sensation of the ward breach had started just before the appearance of the bird, and ended by the time they'd come upstairs. Owl mail simply did not garner the same reaction.

"Why are you out of bed anyway?" asked Hermione, looking at him more closely.

"Had to use the lav," he lied smoothly. He could feel Tonks' eyes on him. To his relief, Hermione just nodded, too tired and in shock to question why he'd felt it necessary to take his wand with him to the loo.

"So sorry to wake you up," groaned Hermione, apologising to Tonks. "Please tell me I haven't woken up Remus and Teds as well?"

"No, no," said Tonks. "Don't worry, I'm the only one who heard the sound." She exchanged a look with Sirius before raising her wand and beginning a litany of spells and charms to put the window back together.

"Oh you don't have to —" protested Hermione weakly, but Tonks just smiled.

"It's no trouble," the Metamorphagus said, with a wink. "After all I've had loads of practice with repairing charms." Once every shard of glass was back in place and Sirius had added his own strengthening charms to the window, Tonks left.

Sirius turned back to Hermione. Her hair was charmingly disheveled from sleep and she had impressions on her left cheek from the pillow. She was blinking rapidly as she attempted to wake up properly. Sirius placed his wand on his bedside table and leaned over to kiss her on the forehead. "Just nipping to the loo love, be back in a tick," he said. She nodded.

As he'd expected, Tonks was waiting outside the room to speak to him in private. "Okay so I know why we lied in there," she whispered. "But do you really think this might be related to... That case?"

"I can't say, can I?" said Sirius a little bitterly. "Since I'm not on it."

"Oh come on Sirius," snapped Tonks. Sirius glared at her briefly.

"Well you felt that, with the wards, right? It wasn't just me?" he asked his cousin. Tonks nodded.

"Felt when it started, felt when it ended," she said, emphasising. Sirius nodded thoughtfully.

"A common bird shouldn't have had that effect," he said. "Otherwise the wards would be going off every time one decided to rest on a windowsill or fly too close."

"Animagus?" suggested Tonks.

"Could well be," agreed Sirius, looking back over his shoulder to make sure Hermione was still in the room. Tonks must have read the battle inside him on his face because she touched his elbow to get his attention back.

"You can't tell her what you really suspect," she reminded him. He huffed frustratedly. On the one hand he needed to follow Harry's orders, and on the other he thought Hermione would want to know. Thinking of her nightmare the night before, though, compounded the issue.

"I know," he said. "Just, I'd feel better if we strengthened the wards."

"I'll do it," said Tonks, insisting. "Go back to bed or Hermione will start suspecting something if she hasn't already."

Sirius snuck into the lavatory, flushing the toilet before heading back to his bedroom. Hermione was awake, but lying on her side, staring sightlessly at the window. By the glassiness of her eyes he could tell she was still dazed rather than worried. He slipped into bed beside her, breaking her line of sight and pulling her towards him so they were cuddled up close together. He smiled appreciatively as she met his eyes, realisation of where they were dawning in the whiskey depths. "Alright love?" he asked, but she was silent as her eyes travelled down his bare chest. It had gotten quite warm the night before, and he was in the habit of taking his top off and flinging it wherever during the night. In the drama of the morning he'd completely forgotten that all he'd had on were his boxers.

She didn't seem to mind, he noted, amused at the hunger he saw in her eyes, but then she reached out and trailed her fingers over his chest and in two seconds flat he'd gone from feeling pleasantly cocky to feeling as though he'd been struck with a Confundus. His mind went hazy and he was unable to stifle his groan at the feeling of her fingertips on his skin.

"So you weren't just teasing yesterday," Hermione said, with a sly grin that widened when she stroked her fingers over the center of his chest again, and he shivered. He grabbed her wrist, determined to regain control. If she was going to test him, then she was going to get a little test of her own.

"You are a very naughty girl Ms. Granger," he said in a low voice, watching how her pupils dilated and her breathing sped up a little. She was wearing a strappy top made out of some soft fabric, and no bra. He groaned inwardly, trailing a hand over her hip to squeeze her arse. She inhaled sharply. Well, well. Who would have thought swotty Hermione Granger liked a bit of that. He certainly wasn't complaining, however, he was struggling to stay in the moment after what had just happened. On the bright side, his fractured attentions helped him reign himself in, however reluctantly. He pulled away from her and immediately he could see the disappointment in her whiskey depths looking back at him. His certainty wavered.

He'd wanted to take their relationship slowly, which to him meant waiting a little while longer before they had sex. He wasn't experienced in relationships, but even Sirius knew that adding sex to feelings complicated things. He was satisfied with what had happened with them in the library two days before, and was quite happy for more of that, but did she want more? So soon? What if she discovered she was sick of him in two weeks? What if he got killed on a mission? What if –

"It's okay," she said softly, as if his thoughts had been written on his face. She'd reached out and was rubbing at the wrinkles between his eyebrows. "This probably wasn't a great idea, coming in here," she said. He was confused. What did she mean? She made to get out of bed and he tightened his grip on her wrist as a new thought occurred to him.

"Babe I'm not rejecting you," he said gently. She stilled, and he knew he'd touched a nerve. Who in the hell had given her cause to think she was rejectable?! He pulled her hand that was still in his grasp down under the sheets, turning it and pressing her palm against his erection, so she could feel how much he wanted her. "He doesn't lie," he joked lightly. "You're gorgeous and interesting and intelligent and so, so sexy. You are," he insisted at the doubt in her eyes. Gods, how could she possibly think he didn't want her? He was so hard he was twitching under the merest pressure of her hand. His desire stoked, he swallowed hard to keep his words safe, but the truth came out anyway. "You are, and there's nothing more I'd like to do than fuck you right here and now until you lost your voice from screaming my name," he said hoarsely.

Her eyes widened slightly, and the hint of a smile played on her plump lips, reassuring him that he'd gotten through to her. Unfortunately for him though, vocalising his desires did nothing to curb them, instead having the opposite effect.

"So the other day in the library... you don't regret that?" she asked, her hand still on him.

"Gods no! No, no," he gasped, burying his face in the warm space between between her shoulder and neck, groaning as her palm began to move more confidently over him.

"So... it's okay if we do things like that?" She punctuated her question with a squeeze.

"Merlin," he groaned. "More than ok."

"So just not sex sex?" she said thoughtfully, as though working through an equation. She laughed.

"Oooh..." Sirius bit out. "Ngh! What are you laughing at?"

"Just... I sounded like a teenager for a minute there," she said, removing her hand. He growled frustratedly, then gasped when she slipped her hand inside his boxers to stroke him skin on skin. Oh, that's even better, he thought, his breath coming faster. She moved towards him, dipping to place open-mouthed kisses against his chest, and he clenched his teeth against the somewhat embarassing sounds he thought he was going to make. He tangled a hand in her curls, panting. It was only a few more minutes of this and he came with a harsh gasp, his fingers rubbing sensually against her scalp.

When he opened his eyes her face was flushed, her eyes sparkling and her breath coming in shaky bursts. He took a minute to return to himself. "Your turn," he croaked and nipped playfully at her mouth and ears as he pinned her down and set about the serious business of using his hands to make his witch see stars.

"I suppose it's not so bad," she said, afterwards, when their breathing returned to normal.

His eyes widened. "Woman you weren't exactly complaining a few minutes ago," he said defensively.

"No, not that," she said, turning to him. "That was brilliant." He grinned and she rolled her eyes. "I meant, it's not so bad doing this like teenagers. I did miss out on that part of my life."

He turned to her, tracing light circles on her upturned palm, making her shiver. Gods, she was so young. So soft and unblemished, next to him, by far. He didn't often think of her as the Hermione he'd met so very long ago, but sometimes when she mentioned her youth he wondered if it was really okay, him and her. The friends that they'd told so far seemed perfectly okay with it, but what about everyone else? Molly and Arthur? The public in general?

She sighed, breaking his line of thought. "Just don't make me wait too long, okay?"

"Gods witch, you're insatiable," he teased, pushing his concerns to the back of his mind.

"Well you keep doing what you just did and it's only going to get worse," she joked.

"Touche."

They lay in comfortable silence, Sirius wondering how it was that he'd never done this before with a woman, just lying together in bed, even after. It had always felt too strange, too intimate, but with Hermione it didn't feel weird at all. It felt like lying beside a friend who he just happened to really, really want to see naked and do naughty things with.

And who had just wandlessly accio'd the drinking glass from his side of the bed and filled it with water. Wandlessly. Fuck but it was impressive, and he loved the cocky little grin she gave him as she passed the glass to him. He grinned back at her, tugging on one sleep-frizzy curl.

"This is nice," she sighed. "I almost forgot about earlier." She looked at the window, her expression growing troubled. "Don't laugh but I've got a strange feeling about that raven. The way it looked at me..." She shivered. "I'm being silly, aren't I? And to think I broke a window over a bird."

"I think you were woken up with a terrible fright, and as for the window – I can't blame your reflexes," he soothed, both admiring that she had them and hating the way she'd come about them.

She sighed, flopping back down onto her side. "You're probably right. I hate being so paranoid," she confessed in a whisper. Sirius had to look away. She didn't need to beat herself up about this, not when she actually had a very good reason to be hyper-vigilant.

He tucked a curl behind her ear and it bounced right out again. "Always trust your intuition, love," he said, then realised that he'd been telling the opposite not even minutes earlier. Merlin but he wanted to kill Harry for putting him in this position.

By the time Ginny's birthday came around, Sirius was starting to feel like he could let down his guard a little, which was a problem. Since the incident with the raven there'd been no more strange occurences. After begging Harry, he could also confirm that nothing had happened when he couldn't be with Hermione and she was tracked by Aurors instead. Things were nice and quiet, and quiet was nice, but quiet didn't always mean good, or even safe.

Things were going well. He and Hermione had slipped into a kind of routine, and he ignored Moony when he accused him of being 'domesticated'. Although things with Harry were still not entirely great, Sirius felt a lot better now that he was back on field work. They'd caught two more vampires, another Death Eater who'd been low on the totem pole, and one of Riddle's unmarked proteges. So, good stuff.

Right at this moment though, he was quite possible in hell, if hell was too many red heads to count and a fruity pink concotion being shoved into his hands. Ginny had insisted on combining the baby-shower and her birthday party. "There's no way," she'd explained, "that I'm going to be able to handle another Potter-Weasley Event before the baby comes."

Sirius had thought it was very sensible at the time, but now he was seated at a lon table covered in pink decor and - was that a pile of nappies rolled into the shape of a cake? - suffering through Molly's mimosa-fuelled thoughts on quite possibly every subject under the sun. Including Hermione's 'terminal singledom'.

The terminally single girlfriend in question was seated way down the opposite side of the table, and the effort of maintaining the appearance of a platonic relationship with her in front of everyone was difficult enough without Molly's unintentional stoking of his possessiveness. To make matters worse, Hermione was wearing a dress with tiny cherries printed all over it, and Sirius couldn't help thinking she'd done it on purpose, just to drive him crazy. She rarely wore dresses or skirts, so it was completely distracting to him when she did.

"I'm just saying, it would be lovely to see her happy, with a family of her own, you know what I mean dear?" Molly rambled on. "Not that I'm saying she doesn't have a family, oh no, goodness no! She's as good as one of ours, mine and Arthurs, she is. It's just with her parents gone, we – what is with having just one child anyway, I always say –"

Sirius wondered if it would be possible to put his head through the table. He looked around, his eyes alighting on the action at the other end of the table where Ginny was going through some gifts. She'd pulled out a tiny yellow romper that the other women were now dutifully coo-ing over. Desperately, he did the first thing that came to mind. "Ooh that's lovely that is," he said, shrill with hysteria and aware that listening to Molly for fifteen solid minutes had affected the way he was speaking. Sod it. Everyone else snickered at him, Hermione arching her eyebrow curiously, but the deed was done – Molly was distracted.

"I'm going inside for a bit," he muttered to Arthur, who clapped an understanding hand on the younger wizard's shoulder.

"See if you can bring the Firewhiskey back with you," said Arthur out of the corner of his mouth. Molly had decreed that a baby shower for a little girl was no place for 'hard liquor', and most of the men present felt much worse for it. Only Charlie Weasley seemed to be enjoying the mimosas and gushing over really tiny clothing, but then again, the wizard was more gay than a hippo in a tutu, and Molly had already chewed Sirius' ear off about how her son 'just needs to find a nice girl and settle down now'.

The house was blissfully quiet with everyone else outdoors, and he sighed with relief as he entered the cool kitchen. Right. First things first. Firewhiskey. He began searching through every cupboard.

"Under the sink." Harry had walked in, looking like he clearly needed an escape as well. Sirius grabbed the bottle triumphantly and turned to Harry.

"Thanks mate," he said. "Er... fancy a shot? For a toast," he added hurriedly.

"Er, yeah alright," Harry said, blinking owlishly behind his glasses. He helped Sirius find two shot glasses.

After Harry had been filled in about the raven, the Animagus registry had been thoroughly searched, to no avail. If the raven was an Animagus, then he was an illegal one. When the search came up empty, Sirius had allowed his frustration and sense of helplessness to get the better of him, and Harry and him had had another argument about Sirius getting involved.

"You know how this works Sirius, you're compromised. And even if you weren't, I still wouldn't put on the case after that stunt you pulled last month! I'm actually glad Baric took his offer and buggered off when he did, otherwise Merlin knows what you would've done if you'd bumped into him in a hallway!"

Feeling like he'd been kicked in the chest by an angry hippogriff, it was only the reminder of his disappointing reckless that stopped Sirius from arguing any further. That had been almost two weeks ago and things were still tense between the two.

"Sorry about the other day," said Sirius quickly. "I know you're in a tough spot – it's just... it's her, you know."

Harry nodded. "Look Sirius, the thing is, if it were up to me I might think about putting you on the case but we can't afford another incident right now. Not me, not you and not the department. I know it's difficult because you have... feelings for her, but think of it as being for your own good," he urged. "You do something to get yourself suspended again, or worse, you'll be out off the department, and I need you to be an Auror, right? We need Order members who have higher security clearances but aside from that, I don't want you to lose your badge and neither would she. You have to trust that I am doing everything in my power to protect her. She's my best friend you know."

Yes, but she's my witch, Sirius wanted to say, but bit his tongue. After all Harry seemed to think that that was the exact issue that had Sirius compromised. He swallowed any desire to argue and poured them each a shot instead.

"To you and your little girl," toasted Sirius, lifting his glass and knocking it back in tandem with Harry.

"Cheers," said Harry when he'd finally stopped coughing. Sirius thumped him on the back.

"So a girl, eh," said Sirius.

"Yeah," Harry said, his eyes going wide. "What in the world am I going to do with a little girl?"

"Tea parties at some point, but we've also been known to enjoy the odd book or two," came a dry voice from the doorway. Hermione smirked at Harry. "Harry if she's anything like Ginny do you think you'll be that out of your depth? Not sure about her brothers though." Both her and Sirius smirked at the grimace that crossed Harry's face, and then their eyes locked.

"Well, er, I'd better go join the party," Harry said, awkwardly. Sirius handed him the bottle wordlessly, his eyes never leaving his witch.

"Hey," said Hermione coquettishly, once Harry had scurried out.

"Hey yourself," Sirius said, flicking his eyes over her body. She pretended not to notice, walking over to the pantry and rummaging for something. He had the perfect view of her arse, and he was sure she knew it. He scrubbed a hand over his face, exhaling slowly. "You're playing with fire love," he said.

"Who, me?" she said with feigned innocence, emerging from the pantry with two gigantic bags of crisps, using one sandled foot to knock the door closed behind her. Orange polish, he thought, looking at her feet. Her toes looked like little sweets.

His eyes snapped back to hers, noting with annoyance the smug grin she wore. Alright then love. Two can play this game. He pushed his elbows back, leveraging himself off the counter he'd been leaning against, knowing that it did things to his t-shirt that made her hot and bothered. He walked towards her slowly, grinning inwardly at the faltering bravado in her body language. Closer and closer he came, until he was so close she had nowhere to go and was pressed against the kitchen counter. There was a loud crunching sound as one of the packets of crisps was heedlessly squashed between them. He could see the quick movement of her chest, the way her eyes looked up at him with anticipation. He stared deeply back into them, licking his bottom lip... before reaching up to open a cupboard door above her head. "Excuse me," he said cheerily, before removing several more shot glasses, closing the cupboard and swaggering out the door. He heard the frustrated huff she made just as he left the house and grinned to himself.

He knew she was taunting him, seeing how far she could push him before he caved and claimed her completely. A few weeks ago the idea would have made him anxious, but now he saw it for what it could be, and he was determined that when it came to it, she would be desperate for him. Well, that's if he wasn't desperate as well, he thought, surreptitiously rearranging himself.

A/N: How long can they keep this up?