Hogsmeade was exactly the way Hermione remembered it. Even if she had never become entrenched in magic, she would have wondered if the place had been put under a preservation spell after seeing it now.
She stared down the road, watching signs sway outside of establishments, the crowding of students, and other passersby. It wasn't like Diagon Alley, where she had seen the desolation wrought by Death Eaters and supporters and could compare it to the bustle she had known as a child. Hogsmeade, on the other hand,was nearly the exact same as the last time she had seen it. Like she had stepped forward in time – as though if she turned her eyes Harry and Ron would be walking next to her; like Neville was walking into Fern's & Fronds at the edge of her peripheral vision, or the flash of Ginny's red hair could be seen disappearing into Honeydukes. It wasn't simply the sting of memories, it was the feeling of fighting an illusion that you secretly hoped would win, a gauzy hallucination that echoed around her, thin enough to see past but wish it were more opaque. It was like there was a thin film of what should be reality floating behind her eyelids and every time she blinked and opened her eyes she half expected to find herself there.
She ached.
It made her feel hollow. Brittle. Like bird wings under pressure. Fissures cracking along the surface of her very bones. That frustration of reality being not quite right fed into a desperation that couldn't ever be relieved. It welled up like a bitter scream in the bottom of her lungs that wanted to be let out but wouldn't allay even if it was.
A large, warm hand fell against the curve of her back. The familiar feeling of Sirius' fingers stroking her spine, served as a grounding force, allowing her to take the first deep breath she so desperately needed after setting eyes on the village. Her chest expanded, soothing the ache of shallow breaths that followed the beginnings of a near panic attack. Her true reality solidified, the phantom film of her old life lifted from all but the barest edges of her mind.
Hermione tilted her head to look up at Sirius' concerned face and let his storm cloud gaze anchor her. No matter the grief she felt in her situation, his presence was the one boon to her heart that had been given to her by the hands of fate. His death had been an incomprobable blow to her soul, one that she never fully recovered from. It had stripped the one pillar of strength and security she knew she could lean on away from her just as the world began to fall apart around her.
With a smile and a small shake of her head Hermione signaled to Sirius that he didn't need to worry. Not speaking as to not alert the others to anything being wrong with her. He didn't look anywhere near convinced and kept his hand where it was pulling circles into the knit of her sweater. The bone deep familiarity of his touch was soporific.
Peter was nearly vibrating next to them. "Where should we take Hermione first? Honeydukes? Zonko's?" He asked. His blue eyes sparkled excitedly in his round face.
"Hm," James hummed, resting his forearm on Peter's shoulder. "I wonder. Wherever could our Miss 'Mione want to visit?" Even though his voice was flat and sarcastic he sported a good humored grin.
"Ah, yes. The Book Eater must be fed," Remus nodded sagely and led their way toward Tomes and Scrolls. His pale blue eyes pulled towards her in a discrete look of concern.
Peter pouted as he followed, not having noticed the current mood. "But Hermione is in the library all the time. Why does she need to go to a bookstore?" He whined, his eyes fixed on the candy store as they walked past it.
"It's like this Peter," Hermione started to explain, her voice gentle even as she hid her laughter at the look of yearning on the boy's face. "Have you ever walked into the kitchen in your house and tried to find something to eat, and you know there's food but you just couldn't bear to eat anything because it's the same food that was there yesterday and the day before and the day before that?"
"I guess that makes sense," he groused even as he conceded. He kicked a rock, and watched it skitter over the cobblestone walk.
"Don't be too put out, Petey," Sirius said cheerfully, hiding his worry. "We have all day. We'll make sure she gets the full experience."
This seemed to brighten Peter's mood, as he put up a brighter smile. The apples of his cheeks crowded his eyes into crescents. "All right. You're right," he said, his mood lifting. "Hermione, you better find something good to read to us."
A little ember sparked in Hermione's chest. The habit that had formed between her and her Sirius had been a comfort, one that had been whisked away from her when he had tumbled through that archway. Having it reestablished and shared with his closest people, when the horrors of his life had not yet – might never – shroud his heart, was precious to her. Even if that ember burned her at the same time it warmed her.
She laughed and reached back to hook her free arm with his. "Tell you what, Peter, if you find something you like I'll read it to you."
He grinned at her as pep returned to his step and they entered the shop, greeted by the tinkle of a bell at the door that cuts the librarian hush of the space. The room was sparsely occupied by students, and the shopkeeper who shuffled behinds large stacks of books behind the counter.
Hermione usually loved any space that was overrun with books. Indirect light and the stacks of pages and binding created a natural sound dampening that instantly made time slow and soften, the space between heartbeats lengthened and tempered, and the mind could let worries go slack and focus solely the words on the dry, crisp pages. The constant vise that constricted her chest loosened ever so slightly as she broke off from their group and made a beeline towards the muggle fiction section of the store. There, where words never changed, the stories she read as a little girl were fantastic, unspoiled and forever.
When she was young, not even two years ago, Hermione would take comfort in those unchanged words, rereading them when life seemed unmanageable, as it so often was. She'd take comfort in knowing the events, knowing the ending, knowing that all the struggles the characters would face would end as they were always meant to do. In a world of uncertainty, the only constant were the words of the pages of her favorite fairy tales. Because, life was always uncertain, always hard and scary, and Hermione was a creature that craved certainty and security. Sure, she loved adventure, the thrill of feeling like she was the protagonist of some great story, but as she grew up the in-betweens hit her hard. It was in the spaces that weren't written about in the grand adventure books that she read that she struggled. Because it was the in-between that gave her time to think, to consider the ramifications and the uncertainty of her life and the rest of the world. It was the in-between that fear was allowed to creep up and choke her.
Hermione was made for the softer, surer parts of life. The parts where she was curled up on a couch with a pot of tea in a hushed house, with a pillow that was prepared on her lap for the mop of dark hair that liked to rest there, that breathed steady breaths that warmed through the fabric of her sweater as she read some fantastical story aloud to the man that she had somehow fixed in her mind and heart as an immutable, indelible part of her life. She was made for soft words and a broken man that died because she was trying to save him.
Without realizing it she had paused with a finger on the spine of a book, the vise had crept back. It squeezed her heart with a vengeance, to the point she wished to rip it out. Because wouldn't torn flesh be less painful than this?
She rarely read for her own pleasure after. Rarely sought out the relief of jumping into the pages of another world. Because in the years after, there wasn't time between grief and the start of war. Because security didn't exist anymore. Had never existed beyond illusion. Instead she only read for the reminder, for the memories that lay in every word of the books that used to bring her comfort. Because they were the only place she could find him anymore.
"Kitten?" a hushed, concerned whisper broke her from whatever space she had retreated into. She tore her eyes from the book she had been staring at, her fingers lightly tracing the spine of the paperback – The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe – and she looked up into achingly familiar eyes. Eyes that weren't quite the same, that had never been totally shattered yet had the strength to convalesce and shined with an aching, fearful tenderness for those he loved.
Sirius cupped her face with both his hands and dashed away tears she didn't remember crying from under her eyes with an almost ticklishly light touch. "What's wrong, Love?" He leaned over her like he could protect her from the world with his body.
Hermione didn't have the words to speak. Didn't know how to tell a boy that her heart ached for a man she loved that he had yet to become – that she hoped he would never become. So she shook her head and leaned into his chest to calm herself down, breathed in the scent that was all at once the same, and not the same at all.
He was at once her greatest comfort and strength in this time, and he was also her greatest sorrow.
"I'm sorry," she whispered against him. "I don't know what's wrong with me. I keep falling into these moods and I don't know how to stop it."
Sirius just held her to him. Perhaps he was confused. She had just been laughing and now she was crying, seemingly without cause of provocation. But he didn't question it or try to get her to stop. He shielded her as though they were on a battlefield rather than a secluded isle of books, until she leaned back to wipe her eyes, not affording them the gentleness that he had given her.
He caught her hands and pulled them from her eyes, replacing them with his thumbs, as though claiming her tears as his own – and maybe they were. Sirius looked at her with star bright eyes that affirmed him as the galaxy's brightest star in the night sky.
"Kitten," he murmured, tilting his head lower for her to hear. "You don't need to stop it. You need to let it happen. It doesn't need to make sense. There doesn't need to be an explanation."
He let a hand fall to her low back once more, anchoring closer her to him, as his other hand continued to trace her tears across the curve of her cheek. Their position was intimate. Too intimate for the stacks of a public bookstore and too intimate for two people that had never declared romantic intent for each other. But Hermione didn't care. Because at that moment she saw her Sirius in his eyes. The rawness, the pain that showcased his bleeding heart for those he wished to protect, for those he took under his care. Her Sirius was a protector, he lived and breathed to provide, to shelter – had died to keep them safe – and this Sirius was that same soul.
He tilted his head further down, his hand on her face holding her still even as she offered no resistance and closed her eyes. She felt her breath hitch when he pressed a firm kiss to her forehead lingering like he had so long ago, in a different life, before he pulled away and tucked her under his chin and wrapped his other arm snugly around her.
She breathed deep, feeling warm. For a moment she thought he was truly going to kiss her, giving life to a part of her heart that had died falling through the Veil alongside him. She had never confronted that part of her heart, neither before or after he died – the part that slowly and sweetly threatened to consume the rest of her heart. For a moment, in the safety of his arms, she almost confronted it. Almost turned to see if it would lead her home or send her crashing into a final despair.
But, whatever moment they had just had was broken by the shuffling of feet and voices calling for them.