Thunder and Lightning

Hermione used to love lightning. Neon threads hanging in the sky, magical before she knew what magic was.

But lightning was never alone, thunder always followed it, like a shadow. After lightning appeared and disappeared, there was silence and in those few moments of stillness, everything inside of her wished that the thunder just wouldn't come.

But it always did, reminding her that lurking behind every beauty, there is something unpredictable and frightening.

Hermione thinks more about lightning after she meets Sirius. Maybe they are just rips in the sky, she thinks to herself in Transfigurations, her wand lazily waving, changing things. Maybe they are just tears in reality, she continues while watching liquids melt together in her caudlron in Potions.

She watches out of her window as the sky comes alive with lightning at night, when everyone is alseep, and she thinks, maybe these rips are just letting in a little bit of light, a little bit of the kind of beauty that people can only endure for a second at a time.

She drops her head to her pillow and grips her sheets when the thunder groans so close to the castle she feels as though it will crumble at the sound.

***
Months later, at Grimmauld Place, when Hermione is close to Sirius for days on end, she feels that danger, that rumble held just below the surface. When he turns his eyes upon her, she holds her breath and waits for the thunder to come.

It doesn't, his steady gaze is beautiful and she knows there is something dangerous behind it, but it never makes a sound.

***
On a night when lightning blazes in the sky, Hermione tip-toes down the stairs to search for a room without a window, even though she knows there is no such room.

She finds Sirius asleep on the couch, and as she looks at him she thinks, Maybe he is a tear in reality. Maybe we're all just dim in coparison to his bright light, maybe-.

"Hermione?"

She whips around and Remus is standing in the doorway. He steps closer to her and asks, "Did the thunder wake you?"

She coughs and looks down at the carpet, at Sirius' hand hanging over the edge of the couch. "Yes," she says softly.

"Maybe we should wake him," Remus says. The room is dark, and she looks up at Remus just in time to see a stripe of lightning illuminate his face.

"Why?" she asks and the room shakes with thunder. She steps back quickly from Sirius, as if his sleeping form had created the thunder.

"He loves thunder," Remus says, and Hermione stares wide-eyed at Sirius' body, completely stilled, not disturbed by the thunder at all, as if it were a part of him.

She swallows and says nothing, stepping around Remus quickly and practically running up the stairs.

***
The next time it rains, Hermione stays inside while Sirius stands out on a balcony getting drenched in freezing rainwater. The thunder and lightning starts, and Sirius stays outside for an hour longer.

When he walks back inside, soaked to the skin, hair plastered on his face in wet, black curves, Hermione looks up, stricken. She rushes to him.

"What were you doing outside?! You'll be sick!" she says. Her grip on his shoulders is squeezing out rain in his shirt, making it trail down from between her fingers onto the backs of her hands.

He doesn't say anything, and when she puts one of her hands on his forehead to smooth his hair out of his eyes, she says, softly, "Anyway, you really should come inside when there's thunder and lightning."

Lightning flashes through the windows and onto her face, brightening the smoothness of her cheek, her eyes huge in the darkness. He stares at her as if he has never seen her before, and she feels as though her face and her body is stripped raw in front of him.

"It's not safe," she whispers, her hand smoothing away from his forehead, tracing down the edge of his face. He reaches up and catches her wrist in his hand, and she gasps. His eyes settle on her opened mouth and he remains silent.

Harry slams a door loudly downstairs, and upstairs, Hermione and Sirius jump apart.