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"I won't fall in love with anybody."
Sirius heard the words, but they crashed against the stone wall of his will, falling pathetically into a heap of pity at his feet.
"I don't believe that for a second, darling."
He held the cold mobile phone to his ear with his shoulder while he fiddled with a fuse box on his newly acquired motorcycle— only the latest in an increasing collection of bikes he planned to enchant and sell someday. ("I'll get around to it," he'd say to anybody who asked.)
The line on the other end was nearly silent, crackling with the sound of movement until he heard the screeching of metal hinges and the cold, blunt thump of a closing car door.
"Hermione, love, please don't tell me you're getting in that car?"
"Yes, I'm— hold on, I'm starting her up," she grumbled as the roar of her engine's vehicle overtook the speaker.
"Christ," he yelped, dropping the fuse box and pulling the mobile away from his ear. "Love, use the spell we talked about, I can't hear anything over that thing— You need a new one, I've told you a thousand times—"
"And I told you I can't afford a new one," Hermione's voice chipped in, now reasonably audible as the subdued groan of her vehicle indicated she had, in fact, used the charm Sirius suggested.
"And I told you that I'd happily purchase one for you if it meant I'd have some peace of mind whenever you decided to gallivant across the countryside the muggle way."
Hermione snorted on the other end. "The muggle way? Says the man with a garage filled to bursting with motorcycles—"
"Flying motorcycles," he corrected, fruitlessly.
"—and I've yet to see you actually enchant a single one. The first one doesn't count, I wasn't born yet."
Sirius rolled his eyes and kicked the stand up to the bike he was currently tinkering with, and with a huff, rolled the machine into said garage. He cast a glance over the various gleaming bikes, a wide range of colors and shapes, before sighing and snapping his fingers to close the door.
"I'm assuming you called with a purpose, darling," he said, more a question than a statement. He knew he wouldn't get an answer.
The line cracked again, and he could picture her: her mess of wild curls would be piled atop her head and her face screwed up in consternation, fighting an eye roll as she slouched against her threadbare seat belt. She'd be gripping her steering wheel, hands at 10 and 2, knuckles white in feigned annoyance (and fear, because despite her hesitation over buying a new vehicle, the monstrosity she drove filled her with dread).
He cleared his throat, a habit he had unconsciously picked up after years in her presence; it helped him get through most conversations he had with her. Either to help him collect his thoughts, control his voice or to brace himself for whatever was about to come flying out of her mouth.
I won't fall in love with anybody, she said. The sentence sent a chill of apprehension down his spine. It made him uncomfortable. He disguised it well, he thought, but his inability to breathe normally wasn't all due to the physical effort put forth when moving a 400-pound bike. If Hermione wasn't going to fall in love in with anyone, he was truly fucked, because Sirius Black was deeply in love with Hermione Granger.
He had fallen in love with her at some point between falling out of the veil and when the phone calls started.
The phone calls started a year ago, after Harry had convinced him to join the modern age and get a mobile. They were nearly a decade into the new millennium, now, his godson pointedly noted.
It was all, the kids all have one now, and wouldn't it be nice to have some forewarning when Jamie and Al want to pop over— without having to further obliterate your kneecaps kneeling at the floo?
Teddy eventually added that not everyone had an enchanted mirror, and whined that the enchanted mirror couldn't even take party calls, Uncle Sirius.
He never remembered peer pressure being quite so severely hard to resist, he said to Hermione— the very first person he ever dialed on his new muggle device. She had laughed, a full cackling laugh that overtook the airwaves and filled his chest with its warmth (maybe there were some perks to mobile phones, after all). "Peer pressure is nothing compared to nephew-pressure, Sirius. These kids just look at you with their sad little eyes and suddenly you're thinking you could burn the whole country down if it would cheer them up, the little buggers."
"First-hand experience, love," he'd asked her.
"That Teddy is a right manipulative little urchin," she'd laughed. "Harry must have taught him his sad-little-orphan routine."
Long before the phone calls, Hermione had become one of his closest friends. They had a routine and Sirius had come to rely on their routine. This, he thought with a dark chuckle, was something he'd never expected to rely on.
Prior to his stint in Azkaban, Sirius lived every day flying by the seat of his pants as Euphemia Potter used to say. Dropping in on people unannounced and welcoming guests at all hours of the day or night (provided they could pass Order-of-the-Phoenix standard security questions). After Azkaban, he couldn't really pop in or out of Grimmauld place at all, and visitors weren't so much dropping by to see him as they were babysitting.
It wasn't until after the veil, after the war, that Sirius finally had the freedom to move about as he once had. But, with no one left from his world to visit, (Harry 's family lived at Grimmauld with him, as did Andromeda and Teddy), he had no destinations unless they were errands.
One day, after aimlessly wandering about, he found himself standing outside a motorcycle shop. He only stepped in for a lark, wondering how the contraptions had evolved since his glory days. The salesman, a young muggle kid with a sheen of sweat across his forehead, started yammering on about this feature and that on this bike or the other, and before Sirius knew it, he was handing over a muggle credit card and riding the new bike back home.
When Harry, Ginny, and the kids moved out, his restlessness only worsened. It was nothing against Sirius or Grimmauld, they assured him, but Ginny had fallen in love with the look of a little cottage outside of Essex; it had a large garden and the countryside was filled with trees for climbing and secluded enough for flying.
The emptiness in the house reverberated through every bone in his body. Sure, Andie still lived there with him, but she was often occupied doing whatever young grandmothers do in Wizarding Britain while Teddy was at Hogwarts. The silence seeped into every pore, he thought, a heavy sort of grime that chased him out of the house. A week later, as he was riding home on yet another new bike, lime-green, he caught sight of Hermione.
He shouldn't have been surprised to spot the witch in Muggle London, although he thought she should have been more surprised to see him in Muggle London. Instead, when he'd caught her eye, she'd set toward him with such determination that he couldn't help but hopp off the bike to greet her properly.
"I need your help," she'd said, completely foregoing formalities.
"Why, hello Sirius, it's so good to see you out and about on a day like this! How's the weather," he had asked, his voice raised an octave in mockery of a female greeting. His cheek fell on deaf ears as Hermione quickly and quietly shrunk his bike, pocketed it, and pulled him by the sleeve into a cold empty shop.
"I've bought this shop and I have no idea where to start," she began, chewing absently on the inner part of her bottom lip, and casting a glance at Sirius from the corner of her eye.
"Uh," he hesitated, looking around the dark room at the bare walls. "I s'pose the next step is to start selling stuff?"
She stamped her foot and groaned. "I know that part, Sirius! I don't know how to set up a shop! I don't know the first thing about running a business!" Her face was now buried in her hands, groaning and muttering something about a Connor and being more spontaneous. Sirius got the distinct impression she'd been manipulated and hadn't the foggiest idea of how to help her.
"Well," he'd said, knowing full well that he was just as ignorant on the subject as she, "I could help you paint the walls? It's muggle London, so we may have to do some things the muggle way to avoid suspicion," the tail end morphing into a mutter only intended for himself. "Oh, and hey, we could build some shelves over here, put a sofa and table in this corner over there— pet, what are you selling?"
Hermione looked up at him, face red as she mumbled, "Books?"
"You're not sure?"
"Yes. No, I mean, yes, I'm sure. I'll be selling books."
He nodded, taking another glance around the space before settling his attention on Hermione. "Good. See, you've got a plan."
Not much later, the two were comfortably volleying ideas back and forth, toying with the idea of adding a secret room in the back for magical texts.
"Look, you've got a perfectly serviceable closet here! Just charm it to expand for magical folk, and muggles will be none the wiser. Two customer bases served, zero statutes of secrecy broken!" He threw open the door to display the musty utility closet in question, but closed it just as quickly wrinkling his nose and muttering to himself about learning some of Andie's cleaning and purification spells.
He wasn't surprised, later on, when Hermione admitted she had been heading to fetch him at Grimmauld Place when she'd spotted him on his bike. It wasn't a secret among his friends and family that he was slowly going insane in his house without anything to do. The growing collection of motorbikes in his garage wasn't a secret either.
He knew Harry and Andie were both concerned about it, thinking he was likely buying bikes left and right as some sort of coping mechanism for the shock and heartbreak of being magically resurrected and spit out into a world he hardly recognized. And while said shock and heartbreak was real, he refused to admit to them that the purchasing compulsion had almost nothing to do with his change in circumstance and everything to do with pity for Jeremy, the nervous salesman who Sirius now knew had triplets with his young wife and crippling anxiety over food security for his family.
The worry and speculation circulated, as it was wont to do, and Hermione had taken it upon herself to put him to work. He should have been annoyed; really this was just another thinly disguised method of babysitting him again. But painting walls and building shelves for Hermione's new shop was fun enough that he let it slide. At least the witch wasn't dropping by the house to chastise him for moping around and frivolously throwing his money away.
"What are you planning to do with all those bikes, then," Hermione had asked him, rolling her paint roller across a tray, glancing at him with curiosity.
"What bikes," he asked, feigning and failing at nonchalance.
"I see," she huffed, teasing in her tone. "The first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem, Sirius." He chuckled, flicking a pinch of robin-egg-blue paint in her hair, relishing the exaggerated gasp of offense.
"I don't have a problem, Hermione. I have a relatively normal collection of motorbikes for a man my age."
"Relative to what," she asked, siphoning the paint from her hair with her wand. "Weren't you just on a new lime-green one the other day? You don't even like lime-green," she accused.
"I like lime-green," he exclaimed. "It's a much better green than other greens I've seen," he replied, dodging the incredulous look the woman shot in his direction. "I'm not sure yet. Maybe I'll fix them up and sell them."
Hermione made a noise caught halfway between a hiccup and a guffaw. "They're brand new bikes," she reminded him, "there's nothing to fix up."
He scowled. "Fix up magically. Like my first bike. James and I had a lot of good times on that bike, and really, I'm surprised no one else has leaned into that market yet."
"They're too scared," Hermione agreed. He looked over his shoulder at her. She was admiring her work on the opposite wall, her hair piled on her head and held by her wand, paint spatters dotting across the back of her oversized graphic tee-shirt. He cocked his head in curiosity.
As though she could see his expression, Hermione continued. "Bikes are too muggle, and wizards, even after winning the war, are still too staunchly convinced that muggle technology is inferior to magic. Marrying the two is seen as eccentric, like Arthur Weasley."
Sirius snorted. "Like as if they haven't married magic and technology already," he scoffed. "As if a wizard didn't base the Wizarding Wireless Network on muggle radio." He painted in silence for a minute before adding, "and for Morgana's sake, what about the Knight Bus, or even the bloody Hogwarts Express! Trains and buses aren't Wizarding inventions."
"True," Hermione conceded, placing her roller carefully on her paint tray and admiring her work, hands set firmly on her hips. "I think you should do it."
"Do what," Sirius asked, glancing over his shoulder once again, eyes catching on the slight jut of her hip and effectively spilling every other thought out of his skull until she spoke again.
"Open a bike shop!" She looked at him with an excited grin. "Join me in my entrepreneurial journey and go for it!" She bounded over to him, placing one hand on his shoulder and dragging the other across the empty air in front of them. "Picture it, 'Grimmauld Motor Works, specializing in airborne cycles since 1977!'"
He grinned, mirroring her position with an arm slung casually around her shoulders. "I'd hardly call that accurate, pet." She turned to him and shrugged. He guessed she probably hadn't realized that her breath caught at the surprise of his proximity, but he did, in fact, notice. He took that little hiccup and folded it into into a a secret pocket he didn't realize he'd been filling for the past few days. His secret pocket was slowly overflowing with smiles and reactions from the girl in his arms; moments he could see her blush, or instances he noticed her blush or smile, or the three to five seconds he lost all his words around her— all filed neatly away in a deep deep pocket with a label on top reading I promise I don't have a problem.
"It's close enough to the truth. Wasn't that when you enchanted the original?"
"How'd you know that?"
She grinned, a small pink sliver of her tongue poking out between her teeth on the right side. Folded up and filed, he thought, trying to focus on her eyes instead as she sing-songed, "Harry tells me almost everything."
When the bookstore opened, the routine set in.
Sirius, excited to have had a hand in the shop's initial coming-to-be offered to help Hermione every couple of days, re-shelving, stocking and general shop maintenance. It kept him busy and social. He couldn't quite tell if it was the work he enjoyed so much as the company, but that was neither here nor there, and the thought was never uttered aloud. The company truly was nice, he admitted. Hermione had a warm countenance— her tongue was as sharp as her mind and quick as her wit, giving both customers and Sirius regular friendly lashings. When the shop was slow, he found he rather enjoyed the stillness with her as much as the hustle and bustle. She never shied from making light-hearted barbs of his follies ("Please, Sirius, Harry knows you're hiding away at my shop right now. No, I don't think its morbid to celebrate Jamie's birthday on his grandfather's birthday— I know you aren't really this emotionally constipated, please see your mind healer and work through this before the boy's party.").
Eventually, Hermione began dropping by his garage on weekends to sit and watch him tinker with bikes. She asked unending questions about the enchantment process, which he had yet to attempt on any of his bikes, making sure she understood how the magic married with the machinery. He happily went over his copious notes on the spell work with her, listening to suggestions and reworking his ideas to better adapt to the newer muggle technology.
Oftentimes, she would gently rib him to actually test the enchantments over tea or lunch. With a saccharine smile, or in many cases a rougher-than-necessary stab at his salad, he'd claim he didn't fully understand the muggle mechanisms yet and, "if I attempted something right now, it could have deadly consequences, love." She'd frown, roll her eyes, and carry on relaying all the details of Harry and Ginny's life in the country or some chatter about her customers at the shop. Sirius took great (covert) pleasure in watching her wave her lettuced fork around in the air as she recounted her tales, eyes sparkling with delight. her laughter filled him with a warm sort of wonder (a feeling which promptly was filed away with the others in his secret pocket which he was now starting to refer to as Pandora's Box, terrified of what he would truly find inside if he allowed himself to analyze its contents).
Connor Edgecomb was a point of secret contention between Sirius and his rationality. Not that rationality was ever his strong suit, but, for goodness sake, he tried. Edgecomb, however, was proving to be a rather hefty obstacle in the endeavor. The man was a bit of twat, if he were objectively honest and Sirius could tell Connor had an interest in Hermione, even before they started dating.
Hermione, while not oblivious to his advances, disregarded them quite clunkily, which frustrated Sirius to no end. For a witch so heavily gifted in eloquence, he'd imagined dissuading a potential suitor would naturally leave no room for misinterpretation. However, the way she blushed in the face of his flirtations and stumbled through half-hearted brush-offs, produced quite the opposite effect.
Edgecomb was, Sirius learned, the reason Hermione had opened the shop in the first place. After nearly a decade working for the Ministry of Magic, she confided in Sirius that she never felt fulfilled and was far too stressed to enjoy even her time off. Connor, whom she had also shared this feeling with, during one of their casual shared lunch periods (Hermione refused to call them "dates"), urged her to take life by horns and bend it to her will. "Be more spontaneous, Granger, I know you have it in you! I bet you'll glow doing something you actually like, instead of being stuck in this musty ministry!"
The observation wasn't untrue, a fact that annoyed Sirius purely due to it having been Connor who said it.
The man was an open book. His interest was printed on his face and every time he entered the bookstore Sirius could practically hear the crier boys calling out, "Extra! Extra! Read all about it! Edgecomb makes a move for Granger, thwarted once again by a soft blush and a pittance of acknowledgement."
Somewhere between the cringe-worthy pick-up lines and offers to help her promote the shop, Hermione stopped blushing when Edgecomb came around. Instead, she would sneak a quick glance at Sirius, often found re-shelving volumes by the front of the store when Connor stopped by. Sirius, the great dolt that he was, merely shrugged his shoulders, silently communicating his helplessness. When the glances over Connor's shoulder ceased, a deep unsettling weight draped itself across Sirius's frame. It wasn't pain, but an aching hollowness he hadn't felt in a lifetime.
Loss.
Great dolt that he was, he wasn't entirely stupid.
When he heard Hermione finally give in and accept Edgecomb's offer for a date, he became immediately and acutely aware, by the raging distress which swept through him, that he had fallen in love with her.
Connor Edgecomb interrupted Sirius's routine. Their regular weekend lunches faded away, first with heartfelt apologies, later with single-word notes, "rain check?"
Sirius had been limiting his time at the shop, knowing full well Conner would likely be there more often and Sirius promised himself (and the version of Hermione who lived in his head) that he would treat the other man with dignity and respect. Dignity and respect were more easily bestowed from a distance when proximity seemed to inspire some of Sirius's more adolescent urges.
Despite his outward reluctance to join the modern world and buy a mobile, when all was said and done, Sirius was infinitely indebted to the small hinged contraption currently in his hand.
"C'mon, love, what's with the gloom," he urged after the silence on her end had dragged on for longer than he thought was healthy (he was too focused on what she said before, I won't fall in love with anybody). He quickly checked his watch, mentally carving out the rest of his day for her, should she need it.
He heard the soft ticking of her turn signal before the phone picked up her voice. "We broke up."
Elation was not the proper response to a friend's heartache, he reminded himself, pulling out a somber voice to continue.
"I'm sorry, darling," he started, but was interrupted by her laughter.
"God, I'm not," she exclaimed. "I was so bored Sirius! For all his talk of being spontaneous, Connor was so boring. I swear, I could literally feel the hours just crawl by the whole damn time. He only expected me to be the exciting and spontaneous one!"
Sirius swallowed to clear his throat, elation morphing into intense relief. "Good for you!"
"Tell me the truth, Sirius, did you notice how boring he was? God, you must have. Why didn't you say anything?"
"It's not really my place to comment on your choices, love—"
"Not your place? Sirius you comment on literally all of my choices for Merlin's sake," she exclaimed, voice breaking with an airy chuckle. "What happened to, 'A bit heavy on the paprika, love,' or 'Are you really going display fantasy and romance on the same table?'"
Sirius smirked at the way she jumped to a lower register in a poor recreation of his own voice.
"Oh! Or, 'You need a new car, Hermione— you insist on doing things the muggle way!'"
At that, Sirius released full barking laugh. He settled on his sofa, feet raised on an ancient ottoman. "Okay, yes, fine. I do have the occasional opinion."
"Oh, but you didn't happen to form any opinions on Connor?"
"I did, in fact, form many opinions on Connor," he corrected, feeling light at how freely they were talking again.
"Right, and you never shared with the class?"
"I shared with the class, love, just not with the professor."
He smirked at the silence on her end, recalling the hours he spent on this very couch, regaling Andie or Harry or whoever would listen about how big a twat he thought Connor Edgecomb was.
"He's not right for her," he'd informed Andie, who had merely glanced up from her knitting with a stern stare. "What," he'd asked her. "He's not."
Or, "Hermione's out with Edgecomb tonight; the fucking creep," he'd said to Harry. Harry, who had grown to be a surprisingly perceptive fellow, only groaned in response and bluntly advised Sirius to unbottle his feelings for once.
Unbottling was a dangerous move, but he trusted Harry. At the half-year mark of Hermione's relationship, Sirius unbottled everything. He reached into himself for Pandora's Bloody Box, dusted it off and opened it. The change started subtly, but obvious enough to his family— he could have sworn he caught Andie nodding in approval every morning he readied himself to help out at the shop.
Sirius began spending nearly four days a week at the shop, helping with sales, displays, recommendations and gift-wrapping. His presence seemed to please Hermione and simultaneously irritate her boyfriend who, in turn, made one or two snide remarks about unpaid labor.
"I consider myself a partner, actually. Or, at least a silent investor— I promise you, this is well worth my time," Sirius drawled back, smirking at the small, just-barely-there vein throbbing on the other man's forehead.
He began responding to Hermione's little "rain check" notes over the weekends, penning messages on the back of her parchment squares with things like, "just say when, love," or "I'm holding you to it." Simple. Honest. Persistent.
After their first phone call, Hermione started calling him more and more.
"Sirius, are you coming by the shop today," she'd ask, a nervous wobble to her voice. "Could you pick up the order of Green's new release?"
"Sorry to bother you, but could you give me a ride in today, my car's not starting."
"I know you said I need a car, but the mechanic said he could get it running again for cheap."
"You missed out today, Sirius, Mrs. Criddle came in absolutely fuming over the end the Nighthawk series. She actually demanded a refund! As if I were the one responsible for the ending— I didn't write the silly book!"
The phone calls went on longer and longer every day. Some days Hermione would call him just to chat on her way home. Other times, she'd keep him on the line until she walked through his front door, hanging up only upon finding the room he was in and sitting down next to him to continue the conversation as though she'd been right there the whole time. Sirius didn't even attempt to hide the warmth he felt with this development. Hermione just continued her chatter, whether about Mrs. Criddle, Mr. Moore from the almanac club, or even Connor's unfortunate interactions with her more colorful clientele, and Sirius would vanish her shoes, pull her legs up over his and pour her a glass of her favorite wine as he listened.He relished her presence, her voice, her friendship.
By then everyone knew Sirius was in love with Hermione. He didn't hide it. He bought her jewelry for her birthday and practically begged her to accept it ("sell it and use the money to replace that demon of a car, please, I'm begging you!")
But this, right now, was the phone call he had been waiting for.
"And what exactly were your opinions on Connor," she asked. He knew she knew what he would say. Instead, he chose to play her game.
"Hermione, I had nothing but respect for the tosser, you know me." He heard a small chuckle through the line, crackling again with movement. "So what now?"
"Now," she sighed, "I drive the two hours back home and start fresh in the morning."
"Two hours," he yelped, "Hermione, please tell me you're not driving two straight hours in that chunk of scrap metal."
She laughed airily, exclaiming, "I am indeed! I gave in to Ronald's pestering and let him spell-o-tape everything to keep it together.
"I— I have no words. You and Ron have rendered me absolutely speechless." Her small giggle lit his heart ablaze, but not quite enough to outshine the genuine anxiety clawing at him knowing she was driving for two straight hours in that bucket of bolts.
"You worry too much," she chided.
"I worry a perfectly respectable amount, Hermione," he muttered, standing, grabbing a random set of keys and leaving out the backdoor with a silent wave to Andie in the kitchen.
"I'm perfectly safe," she insisted, just over the sound of a stutter. "I think."
"Pull over," he instructed. "I'll be right there."
"Sirius, I don't need to—"
"Pull over, love. I'll be right there."
"Alright, I'll pull over and let her rest for a few minutes, but there is absolutely no need for you to come this way— I am perfectly safe—" the car stuttered again and Sirius felt his stomach bottom out.
"Hermione, pull over, for the love of God," he nearly yelled. He pushed a button on the keychain he'd snagged and quickly shrank the bike with blinking lights, shoving it in his pocket, and promptly turned on his heel.
The move was a risky one. Apparition into a moving vehicle was not widely recommended due to the astronomical probability of splinching. There was a trick to it, he'd claim later, but not one he'd ever actually tried prior to that moment. He appeared in her passasnger seat with a pop merely seconds before Hermione's car spluttered to a complete stop, unwilling to even wheel itself off onto the the shoulder of the road.
"Sirius," Hermione yelped, clutching the meshy material at her chest. "Are you crazy?"
"I might just be," he responded, "birds of a fucking feather, love! Two hours? Did you really think she'd last? When the buggering fuck has Spell-o-tape ever worked for anything that didn't end in disaster, Hermione?"
"Why are you yelling at me? I'm not the one who apparated into a moving vehicle!"
"Are you really that daft? This was dangerous!"
"Driving this stupid car was a hell of a lot safer than apparating into it!"
Sirius wasn't angry with her. He was frustrated. He was honest-to-god frightened. He was also incredibly confused by her ire.
"What? Did you just expect me to leave you out here?"
"We were on the phone, Sirius. You could have come for me afterward. You know, when the car had stopped?" She was heaving large, deep breaths, tears pooling in her eyes. "Never, in my thirty years, have I ever met anyone as reckless and stupid! Have you absolutely no regard for your safety?"
"My safety?"
She nodded, lips pursed tightly. "You idiot."
Sirius dragged a hand down his face, calming himself at the sound of her soft voice-breaking insult. With his free hand, he reached across the the center console and laced his fingers gently through her own.
"I hate this stupid car," they both said. Surprised, they let out twin chuckles, but the laughter was laced with the tension of the moment. A car zipped passed them, horn blaring as it briskly moved along.
He shook his head and hopped out of the car, making sure to help her out as well and pulling her securely against his chest.
"I'm sorry, love. I'm sorry I scared you."
"It's okay," she muttered, voice muffled by his jacket. "We're both okay."
"I'm buying you a new car, Hermione. Don't you even fucking argue with me." She sighed against him, letting herself melt bonelessly into his grasp. Sirius pulled back a fraction, assessing her for injuries.
"I'm okay," she repeated. "I'm not hurt." Instead of arguing, he pulled her tight once more and muttered into her curls.
"Will you ever just let me take care of you?"
He felt her swallow, followed by the ghost of a nod.
"Okay," was all she said.
The ride back to Grimmauld was devoid of speaking. Even Sirius hadn't yet figured out how to charm noise reduction on motorcycles, so neither would have had much luck communicating anything had they even wanted to.
The longer he sat with his thoughts, the more he understood Hermione's fury with him. It had been irrational and dangerous. He knew that before he did it, which probably made the situation worse. He'd never seen, since returning from the veil, anyone be that frightened for him, though. She was still horrified, he could tell, if the tight grip she held around his waist was any indication. Her fingers were clutching his jacket, pinching a miniscule sliver of skin at his abdomen which really quite hurt. The only thought his narrow mind clung to, though, through the entire ride was that she cared about him.
A lot.
Later, after more soft apologies and tight embraces, both witch and wizard sat staring into the crackling fireplace at Grimmauld, hands resting a mere centimeter apart on the sofa cushion.
She cared. The thought floated freely in his soul, lighting his dark corners with such an ease, until he remembered how the phone call had started.
"I won't fall in love with anybody."
She may have cared for him, he thought, but what would make him any different from Connor if she couldn't love him back? He swallowed back the heavy feeling of early-onset despair and looked at her.
Her hair was a mess. More so than typical, curls unwound into fluffy kinked strands falling out of the thick knot at the top of her head. Her eyes were only a little bit swollen from the tears she had shed as she finally gave in to Sirius's incessant insistence to buy her a new car. ("There's no saving it Hermione, the monster is dead," he argued.)
Courage for a great many number of things came easily to Sirius, it was the trait his aunt Euphemia believed had sealed his fate as a Gryffindor. Somehow, even though he had spent the last six months making it perfectly clear to everyone around him how he felt about Hermione, starting a conversation which might lead him to heartbreak had him too scared to open his mouth. Maybe it would have been easier had Hermione also caught on to his infatuation; at that point she could easily turn to him now and say something as simple as, "sorry, but not you," and they could be done with it. But Hermione seemed to remain entranced by the flickering flames, blinking at the light but never moving her focus.
"Hermione," he started weakly and cleared his throat. "Love." Her eyebrow quirked in indication she was listening. "I really am sorry about Connor." She smiled wistfully.
"I dumped him, you know. Don't worry about it."
He grinned, briefly, at the image in his head of her ending their farce of a relationship (in Sirius's version, Edgecomb was struck dumb. Maybe he cried a little).
"Not the breakup, love. I'm sorry I didn't say anything when I knew how unhappy you looked."
She turned to him now, shadows hiding her features. "No, I suppose it would have been awkward to bring it up. If we were reversed, I'd feel incredibly stupid bringing it up to you. I shouldn't have put that on you like that." His eyes adjusted to the new angle, now able to make out her face again. He took in a deep breath and reached the small distance to clasp his fingers around hers.
"'I won't fall in love with anybody,'" he repeated, looking past her.
"What—"
"That's what you said on the phone." Her brow scrunched up, adorably, as she thought back, running through the events of their conversation which seemed like a lifetime ago instead of the smattering of hours that it actually had been.
"Oh," she chuckled, looking back into the fire and turning her hand in his grasp to weave their fingers together. "I was going somewhere with that," she murmured, her lips curling up at the corners. She squeezed his hand. "I spent the drive up to Connor's rehearsing this whole dramatic scene for how I would tell you. It's funny," she chuckled lowly, "I should have been rehearsing the breakup I was about to perform instead, because I truly mucked that right up."
His heart skipped a beat, he thought, only briefly getting caught up in the biology of it (do hearts really skip a beat when that happens, or are we just short of breath?). "You rehearsed how to tell me you broke up?"
"Not quite. It was— something else entirely. But I had to break up with him first, you see?" Sirius had an idea. His hand gripped hers just a bit tighter, careful not to hurt her, but tight enough to let her know he was there, waiting in the palm of her hand. "See," she shook her head, "I had it all planned out, how the conversation would go. I'd start it by saying something stupid and dramatic— a hook if you will. It would be playful, to lighten the mood a bit. You'd fall for it, which obviously you aren't stupid enough to do since you immediately derailed the whole thing before I even got started. In fact," she turned to him again, raising an accusatory finger to his chest, "you baited me!"
"It's my pleasure, love," he replied stupidly, watching the reflection of the flames dance in her eyes with along with her amusement. She quirked her brow at him, in that way she'd started doing when she realized it could get him to talk. (She had to know.) "Okay, Hermione. I'll let you try it again. I'd hate for all your hard rehearsing to go to waste. You know I love a good performance."
She flashed him a grin before she schooled her features, eyes closed, concentrating on a blank expression before adjusting herself to sit tall and face him. She hadn't made to release his hand, though, he noticed with triumph.
"I won't fall in love with anybody," she said, perfectly matching her dejected miserable tone from earlier.
"I don't believe that for a minute, darling." The sharp look she gave him indicated he hadn't followed the preferred script but he wasn't about to let her have the upper hand in this skit. He was more of an improvisational man, anyway.
She continued. "If it hasn't happened yet, I should just stop expecting it to happen, right? I'll have you know I've tried! I keep thinking if I adjust my focus to someone more suitable, at least by Molly's standards, I'll magically someday manage to fall in love with them. But it's not working and I don't believe it ever will." She scooted closer to him then, picking up their joined hands and clasping her free one around them as she held them to her chest. "It took Connor Edgecomb to make me realize I could never truly love any of them because I'm so stupidly in love with you."
Several things happened at once, Sirius thought, though he couldn't rightly remember the exact order of any of it. His stomach nearly bottomed out as the words spilled from her beautiful mouth; his free hand came up to cradle her head as he pulled her face to his own, and pressed a rough, possessive kiss to her lips. Hermione released his hands and pulled him even closer by the shoulders, wrapping her arms securely around his neck and sighing with satisfaction into his kiss.
He positioned her against the back rest of the sofa, his knee at her hip before he pulled back to make sure he heard her right. Her eyes, dancing with joy, confirmed it and he released a heavy sigh of relief, casting his eyes down with a disbelieving chuckle. "Darling," he said, looking into her face again, brushing a bushy strand of relaxed curl out of her face and looping it securely around her small adorable ear. He breathed out an incredulous chuckle. "You were going to tell me you're in love with me over the phone?"
"I was too much of a coward to say it to your face," she whispered, eyes flicking between his lips and his gaze. He peppered soft, tender kisses against her lips, relishing in the feel of her skin and her fingers burying themselves in his hair. "Sirius," she said between kisses. "You still haven't said anything."
"I have," he countered, trailing his lips across her jaw, noting a sweet spot just behind her ear that made her shiver.
"No," she breathed, "kissing me senseless doesn't count as responding."
He chuckled, deep and throaty, pressing a lingering kiss to her beautiful swollen lips. "Do you need it written between the stars, darling," he asked? "I've been yours for years."
"Since the phones," she asked, chewing absently on the inside of her lips. He shook his head.
"Before then."
"Since the lime-green bike?"
He grinned, pressing his forehead against hers. "Since the lime-green bike, my love."