Secrets

"What?" Sirius asks, when he sees Hermione smiling darkly at something he said, but she only bites her lip and keeps her words at bay.

Harry and Ron look expectantly at her, and Sirius only waits patiently for her to avoid answering. He knows she won't say certain things in front of anyone but him, now, he knows she only says the lines to Harry and Ron that will fit the character she has created for them. Sirius never noticed before that it was only a character, never noticed that there was something else at work in her, but she is making it undeniably clear to him, now. She is sharing all of her secrets.

He doesn't think this change in her is something his imagination has created, but no one else seems to notice and to him it is just indescribably there. He doesn't remember her ever being this way before he was brought back from The Veil. He remembers her hand reaching forward and grasping his from that whirlwind of black and white and can't help but wonder if it is he that has changed her, that magic has driven part of his darkness into her.

"Nothing," she shakes her head, "It was nothing."

No, he thinks. These things were always there, always present just beneath her skin. When The Veil between them was broken, when he was brought back, was the wall that held her darkness back also smashed away?

Just the other day, he says to himself, wasn't Hermione talking to you about Ron? Wasn't she saying she was waiting for the day that he just lost it, when he would slap her hard across the mouth? Wasn't that mouth turned up then, in a small, secret smile?

Hermione has always seen everything and everyone around her, has always known what made every one of them tick. She presses her thoughts to him, now, thoughts formerly so diligently kept quiet, and all he can do when faced with them is nod.

But what she shows to everyone is still there all of the time, even when it is only Sirius and Hermione. The nature she exhibited when they first met is still bright and beautiful and unable to be ignored. She still sits for hours with books and still smiles in the same way. She still laughs loudly and unashamedly with Harry and Ron about silly things.

He looks to her again and the sharp edge of her tooth is pressing hard, drawing blood just beneath the surface, turning her bottom lip dark red.

His eyes linger there, and late at night he remembers it. He thinks of all of her words and the new edge upon the ones she says when she knows Harry and Ron and Remus aren't listening. He tenses at this thought, that perhaps she saves some of her words and her breath just for him, that she shows some deep, dark part of herself to him that no one else will ever know.

He brings himself off to thoughts of the dirty, secret taste of the new things she only says to him, and to the sound of her voice heavy in his ears.

***
She sometimes tells him about Muggles, about what they do instead of this spell or that. He drinks this up while his mother screams on the wall about blood, because he knows the Muggle world is the one she was born into, that she created herself there.

"Air conditioners," Hermione says to him at the kitchen table, wiping sweat off of her brow and muttering a cooling charm. "There's nothing better than stepping from sweltering heat into a room kept icy cold by an air conditioner."

"Show me," he says, his eyes following a drop of sweat slipping down her neck.

They apparate to her parents' house, since it is the middle of the day and she says they are both at work. Sirius watches attentively while she puts her arms straight out in front of her and her palms flat on each side of the window holding the air conditioner. He blinks and holds his body straight so as to keep himself from moving any closer to her, and cold air blows fast into her hair and onto her skin.

His gaze traces down the curve of her back the way a hand would, and his eyes linger on the goosebumps on her arms and on her nipples pressing out at the thinness of her tank top. He swallows and goes to turn away, but she turns quickly to him and stands closely and fearlessly, her body challenging what everyone would say is wrong about the static crackling in the air between them.

Locks of her hair are still moving and curling around her face from the air conditioner behind her, and when she leans forward and opens her mouth to his, he, at first, doesn't even think about pushing her away. She presses her tongue into his mouth and his hand slips around her side and presses hard at the small of her back, bringing her body into fierce, sudden contact with all of his.

She puts her hands underneath the back of his shirt, cold skin meeting hot, and the touch jars him back to reality.

"We can't do this," he says after pulling away, voice low.

She steps back from him and with a crack, disappears.

***
Hermione avoids him after this, and the things she used to reserve for him, the words that excited him so much before, disappear suddenly, making him realize at night, in bed, that he is really, truly alone.

"I'm in love with her," Sirius says desperately to Remus, begging for answers.

"Yes, I know," Remus says flatly, eyes steady on the pages of a book.

"You know?" Sirius demands, and Remus tears his eyes away to say point-blank, "Yes, you make it quite obvious. I don't know what you want me to tell you. Hermione is a bright girl, and she's eighteen now, so it's her choice. I can't stop you."

The last of it is supposed to be chiding, but Remus is smiling despite himself.

"Do you think she's in love with me too?"

"I can say with utmost certainty that she is," Remus says, eyes back on the page. Before Sirius can scream for an explanation Remus says, "I had this very conversation with her just last night."

***
Arthur visits, and after sitting down at the dinner table and talking about Death Eaters and Voldemort and it won't be long now, he asks Hermione, "Have you ever seen an air renditioner?"

She laughs a bit and tells him all about the air conditioner she has at home, and catches Sirius' eye as he thinks of her hair blowing all around her and the icy touch of her fingers on his back.

He puts his palm against his mouth and coughs, the memory of her kiss so present in his mind that he can swear he feels something swirling in his mouth and pressing down on his tongue.

***
The night before they are all to go to platform 9 3/4 and see Harry, Ron and Hermione off for their seventh year at Hogwart's, Sirius wakes up when his bed shakes, and he turns sharply to see Hermione lying next to him, arm thrown over her eyes.

He goes to clear his throat but it barely comes out as anything audible.

"Sorry," she says, arm still covering her eyes. "Harry and Ron won't go to sleep."

In the dark, the idea of what is right and wrong so far away from him, Sirius rests his hand on the flat of her stomach. He knows Harry and Ron are fast asleep, he knows she has not come here to escape anything at all, and that she certainly has not come here to get any sleep.

Hermione stills at his touch at first, then removes her arm and turns her body so she's blinking slowly at him. He can barely see it but for the light coming in from the crack of his door.

His hand is curled around her side now, and he swallows hard as she inches closer to him. She ducks her head and presses her lips against his, and her leg swings over his hip. He presses his fingers onto her cheeks and pushes her back.

"Someone will hear," he says breathlessly, though the press of his erection says he doesn't care. He looks fearfully at the door but she whispers back to him, "No, they won't."

She leans forward and kisses him, tongue tracing the seam of his lips. He pushes her back again and says, "You're too young."

"I don't care," she says, almost angrily, as if it had been said to her by a thousand people before. "I'm in love with you."

The words from her very mouth, now he knows it is true and it is all he can do not to tear her apart right there. She pulls her shirt off and he looks to her chest and the tight black lace she wears.

He no longer can control himself, doesn't care that he cannot, and he says just above a whisper, "I'm in love with you too."

She pushes him down to straddle him and he moans into her mouth as she grinds down on him, and though her movements are bold he can see in her face disbelief of what he has said to her, almost as if she were expecting him to reject her again. He has no idea how she could ever think that, how he could possibly reject someone so beautiful and perfect.

Her hands smooth up his chest, and he hisses when her finger catches the edge of his nipple. She drops her head and puts her mouth around it, and he grips her hips painfully and clenches his eyes closed. She scatters hotmouth kisses all over his chest, next to his navel, and he looks down to see her finger hooked into the edge of his pyjama pants.

His head falls back when she presses her hand inside, but before she can bring him anywhere her hands move and are gripping the waist of his pants and pulling them down. He sits up and pulls them all the way off himself, throwing them across the room, and when he turns back to her, she is completely naked.

He reaches a hand forward and presses it between her legs, and she shivers and convulses and he almost expects her to break open and all of her secrets to come spilling out.

"Please," she whimpers.

He moves so he is looming over her, and her nails dig hard into his shoulders. He presses forward and into her, and he leans down to kiss her and to devour the sounds she makes. He closes his eyes and starts moving, and he feels as though he will explode into a thousand splinters of heat.

He doesn't think he's ever felt so good and when she starts tightening around him, he loses his breath. His movements become faster, more urgent, and he's whispering nonsensical words into her hair.

She's breathing hard and she's almost there, and he presses a hand to her mouth to muffle her scream when she explodes.

Her body archs and he comes inside of her, her name from his lips lost in the strands of her hair.

***
"Where did you sleep last night?" Harry asks Hermione as they are walking out the door for the train station. She smiles at him and pauses. Sirius doesn't flinch because he thinks Hermione will make something up. He has come to know how easily she keeps secrets from Harry and Ron, after all.

"With Sirius," she says, her voice assured and steady.

They all look to him. Remus looks amused, but Harry and Ron look positively shocked. They start hollering at her and she smiles even more sweetly at them, answering them calmly when they demand an explanation, when they scream about her age and his.

"You don't think I'm smart enough to make my own decisions?" she asks, the smile still in place.

This makes both Ron and Harry deflate and now they don't really know what to say.

So much for secrets, Sirius thinks, but when Hermione turns her smile upon him, he can't help but smile back and glow with happiness.