Thunder and Lightning

On a day filled only with clouds and clear sunlight, Harry catches Hermione staring wistfully at his scar.

"Hermione, are you okay? Why do you keep looking at me like that?"

She says nothing, just frowns and looks down at her wrist, wringing at it as if there were a pain there, beneath the surface.

Hermione gets up and goes to her room, and later she lays awake, smothered by the stillness of a painfully silent night.

***
After some of the truth about the Order comes straight from Sirius' mouth at Harry's insistence, Sirius sneaks up the stairs to press his ear to the wall of Harry's room. "Size is no guarantee of power," he hears Fred and George say about Ginny. Sirius whips around when he hears the stairs creak with footsteps, and disappears with a nearly inaudible crack before Molly comes walking gingerly down the hall. The next day, at breakfast, Sirius turns to blink at Hermione. Size is no guarantee of power. He looks down at her hands, at the girlish and gentle retainers of her power, and he sees that her left hand is tightly wrapped around her right wrist. He remembers his own fingers bruising that wrist, the hot burn of their skin pressed together. His eyes scream to her face, and she is looking at him now. Her hands quite suddenly separate. Hidden under the soft sound of his breathing, she can hear him say, "I am thunder. I can scare you."

She looks to his eyes and they say, "I am lightning."

Lightning, lightning, she thinks, too beautiful to be held in one place forever.

***
Hermione walks into the kitchen at midnight, seeking a drink and respite from the overwhelming darkness of her room. Sirius is sitting at the kitchen table, and they both quite suddenly realize that they are alone in a room together. Sirius' eyes dart to the edge of Hermione's nightshirt, the fabric skimming her thighs. He looks away and gets up to leave, blood pulsing with electricity. He does not know what he will do, what he can do, with her so close.

"Sirius," Hermione says, moving so she is standing in front of him, her hand reaching up to grasp his shoulder.

She's holding him there, and she feels the heat of that. She flushes.

"Was there something...?" Sirius trails off and blinks over and over again. Hermione wonders if he's thinking about the last time they were alone together, about lightning, about thunder, about beauty and fear. Her gaze traces up her own arm to where her hand connects to his body, where her index finger lays on the collar of his shirt. She moves it half an inch so it is pressed against the exposed skin of his neck.

He draws in a breath and holds it, and they're both just staring and waiting. She's standing proudly, her body says that she's touching him in defiance of everything everyone might say, but he sees uneasiness in her eyes. He feels her hand begin to falter, to slip away, and he remembers what he did before when she started to move away from him, remembers grabbing her wrist and holding her in that moment. He takes a breath and reaches up quickly to wrap his fingers around her wrist. He pulls her body into his. Before her gasp can hit the air, he's devouring it with his mouth, lips and tongue silencing anything else she might have had to say.

He is still gripping her wrist, pinning her right hand to his chest almost painfully, and his other hand is barely touching her cheek, fingers tracing lightly. Fear and beauty, she's thinking, thunder and lightning.

When their lips part for a second and he breathes into her open mouth, she feels as though his breath is dripping down inside of her, branching out and trickling through her veins like streams of liquid lightning.

She dives back into him, pushing her tongue inside of his mouth. She's pressed so tightly against him that it's almost as if she can feel every seam holding his body together, every crack bursting with molten light, every rumble beneath his skin that, if revealed, could make her shake in fear.

His hand leaves her cheek and drops to the hem of her shirt, pushing it up so his grip lies hotly on her hip. She breaks the kiss and ducks her head to open her mouth on his neck, to run her tongue across the outlines of his veins. He pushes her shirt up further and splays his hand across her ribs, the tips of his fingers just barely touching the bottom of her breast, and she leans her head backwards to look up at him.

A second later, his face turns white with the unmistakable slash of a lightning bolt glaring through the window. She draws in a quick breath and presses her body even closer to him, and his arm moves from her ribs to wind around her waist. She shakes against him when the thunder follows, when it roars so loud she feels as though the floor beneath her will collapse.

He is surprised by her response and holds her tight, looking at her as she stares out of the window in exhilirated fear. She's waiting for more lightning, for more thunder, but nothing comes and the kitchen is completely quiet except for their breathing.

Hermione looks away from the window and back to Sirius, and in the dimmed light her eyes look black. His arm is holding tight to her waist under her nightshirt, and all of a sudden it seems to her like a terrifyingly intimate thing for him to do. Her body relaxes and she starts to pull back. His arm falls away from her waist but his other hand doesn't slacken from her wrist, so she's standing three steps away from him but her arm is outstretched and her palm still pressed to his heart.

She can feel the steady thunder of his heartbeat grow from faint to pounding, and she begins to step further back quickly when it feels as though that thunder is seeping in through her skin and into her blood. He's still holding tight to her wrist but it's like he doesn't realize, because when she pulls hard, wrenching out of his grasp, he shakes himself and wakes up. She gasps and grabs her wrist, bringing it to her own chest, and he looks stricken at his own loss of control.

"Hermione, I-"

She turns and walks quickly out of the room, leaving Sirius standing in the kitchen, alone with just his breathing and his thoughts.