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There is a slight dip within the folds of the atmosphere when November comes to an end and December breaks through the curtains in dull, grey lighting. England falls into a contradicting haze. One where the high-pitched shrieks of laughter fall in line with the parallel highs and lows of the holidays, and the beginning where everything eases into a standstill.
Sirius falls into the latter category.
The holidays don’t seem like the holidays, not since James and Lily left him. It’s not the same, which doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not a bad thing—just different.
“What are you doing?” Hermione asks after a moment - she finishes the line in her novel - before flickering her eyes up and glancing at the animagus whose sole purpose, from what she can tell at the moment, is to bother her.
“Staring at you,” he answers baldly.
She narrows ember eyes, “Why?”
“Why not?”
“That’s not an answer.”
“You and your logic,” Sirius rolls his eyes; he never realized how much he liked to look at her until she pointed it out, just at that moment. She never looked out of place, not in terms of belonging to the house of Black - though his mother would beg to differ horrifically - but almost like she had always been a permanent fixture on that couch. In his life.
He does not know when that happened.
“You know,” he starts off, not too sure where he’s going with this sentence, “If you keep reading like that, you’re going to need glasses, but then maybe you and Harry can pass for siblings.”
Yeah, he doesn’t know what he’s saying.
Because Sirius is Harry’s godfather and if Hermione and Harry were siblings wouldn’t that mean that he would also be her godfather, his mouth twists up in distaste. He doesn’t want to be like a godfather to her, because his thoughts were nowhere near godfather-ly towards her.
Merlin, he needs to sleep.
Sirius presses the heels of his hands into his eyes and rubs until galaxies flash over him in hot, red blurs. The pressure of his palms eases an ache he didn’t know he had at the back of his neck.
“It amazes me that despite all the spells and charms you lot—,” she ignores his question of my lot, “—created, that healers still haven’t created a way to cure or to solve the question of blindness! And you say muggles aren’t advanced.”
Hermione didn’t want to get into the discussion of contacts, she didn't think that she could handle the conversation of contacts not a directory of some sort.
“Maybe some of us like wearing glasses,” Sirius tries to defend—what is it that he’s trying to defend?
“You sound suspiciously like Harry,” her eyes twinkle at that and he curbs a chuckle.
“Well, he did learn from the best.”
“Remus usually is,”
Sirius puts a hand on his chest in mock offense and exhales as if he were kicked, “Poppet, you have to know that your sarcasm hurts.”
Hermione snorts and bookmarks her page in her novel.
The long-standing question, the one that she isn’t sure she should ask is: why was Sirius Black hanging out with her on a Friday night?
Granted, she’s pleased that he isn’t out and about drinking away his liver – if he were a muggle, she’s pretty sure he would’ve died from liver cirrhosis by now – or picking up some tart from the nearest bar. She’s extremely glad that the ache in her chest has diminished since he stopped bringing those trussed-up peacocks – Harry calls them deranged chickens – around and in her—their space. She thinks that Harry may have let it slip that Hermione had been planning on moving because she felt uncomfortable with his revolving door of paramours.
But she didn’t want to think about that too closely.
Her brain would conjure up a hypothesis that she’s not sure she’s ready to pick apart.
“Why are you here?” Hermione asks this time and makes a generic hand gesture, one that displays both a feigned show of indifference and casualness in an attempt to not sound too curious or too concerned, “With me? On a Friday night off all nights? Aren’t you, I don’t know, going out?”
Sirius furrows his brows, “Going out with who?”
“I don’t know,” she shrugs and tries not to look too nervous, “Didn’t you have something with Andromeda?”
“That’s next week.”
“A date?”
“I don’t date, poppet.”
Hermione rolls her eyes and mutters bitterly under her breath, “I know.”
Sirius’s brows shoot up at the acerbity in her tone and presses his lips together, “I thought you would be happy that I wasn’t sleeping around.”
It didn’t come off as nonchalant as he wanted it to, instead, it was sarcastic.
“Are you happy?” she prods back.
“With not sleeping around?” he snipes dryly, rhetorically, and muffles a scoff deep in his chest.
“Being stuck here with me on a Friday night?”
“Why do you think that spending time with you is some sort of punishment?” Sirius demands with exasperation and tangles his fingers in his hair, the joints yanking the strands accidentally.
This time, Hermione presses her lips together.
Because it is.
It always has been, the notion has been shoved down her throat more times than she can count that it’s become this passive, obvious—matter-of-fact, thing that can easily be disputed as a fact. Sirius now, just realizes this, and that makes it even worse than it really is. He doesn’t pry the topic open, not once ago, not like how he used to, he thinks that he’s adapted to the art of subtlety.
“I like spending time with you, poppet,” Sirius confesses, his eyes glint like rainwater and she shivers from the cool, “You know that, don’t you.”
It’s a statement rather than a question; she can’t give an acceptable because her brain stutters in response to his honesty.
Hermione doesn’t look at him this time. She focuses on a point on her novel and then flickers her eyes over to the fireplace. She rubs her cheek distractedly, an absent habit that she can’t seem to break, and Sirius watches her for a moment before making a decision. He gets up from his place on the loveseat and takes a seat next to her on his sofa. He wraps an arm around her shoulders and pulls her closer into his chest.
“Stop thinking so much,” he murmurs into her hair and she tenses at the order, but relaxes nonetheless.
“You do know who I am, yes?”
“Cheeky,” he presses a thumb to her cheekbone, “You’re starting to sound like me, kitten, I don’t know if I’m proud or disturbed.”
“I learned from the best,” Hermione chuckles lightly at her wordplay, “I’m going to make more hot chocolate, and no, you can’t have spiked it with any more firewhiskey.”
Sirius pouts, but the tension in his face from their little – too gentle to be an argument, but too tense to be a regular conversation – and tugs on a curl when she stands up, “You’re getting a little too comfortable, Hermione.”
“Isn’t that what you wanted?” Hermione answers the question he doesn’t dare ask.
He swallows thickly and smiles charmingly when he finds himself speechless.
She presses her lips to Sirius’s forehead, walks into the kitchen, and takes the warmth with her.