Lost and Found

Chapter 1 - Perchance to Dream

She'd gotten through it somehow. Put him on the couch, covered him with one of those guest blankets she'd never used, and looked him over for injuries. Not many, of course, except for the place where the curse had hit him full on in the chest. Fever? A bit. Expected from the soaking outer robes she'd had to strip from him. No broken bones, a few minimal lacerations, maybe, and that scraggly beard he'd always refused to shave (she remembered that). He was...

Exactly as he had been.

"Damn you," she muttered. "You died. You died for nothing and you have the gall to-" He was a boggart. Yes, that was it, that had to be it. She would get her wand and imagine him falling through that curtain, yell ridikkulous and laugh bitterly as he died again.

Because no spell was that tidy, she thought as she walked up the attic stairs, still open. No little spell would bring you something that powerful, even if it was painful. It would give her a cheap imitation, something from her memory...

The wand was still there, where she'd left it in the open chest. It glowed faintly in the darkness, a charm she'd once placed on it to find it should she drop it at night. At night, when they'd always gone out to make trouble...

Hermione bit her lip hard, ignoring the sweet, coppery taste that touched her tongue. She had been remembering it her whole life. She didn't need to remember more now. She could always do it after she'd vanquished this enemy, this reminder of something before her time, once more revived...

She returned to the couch with a frown, wondering if the spell worked against unconscious boggarts. Because he was sleeping, and his fever had risen, just a fraction, and he was... he was...

Breathing hard. Murmuring. Tossing and turning as though he were having a nightmare when she knew that boggarts wouldn't- couldn't-

Against her better judgment, she found herself looking for the washcloth, finding it, dousing it with water. Hermione brought it all the way back to the couch when she saw the chocolate-blood stain on it and laughed. She retrieved a new one, unstained, and put it to his forehead. He still looked like... well, him.

Hermione felt the dangerous temptation rising within her - her hand was halfway to her wand, her lips were already murmuring the spell to mend bruises and hurts (how many times had she used it then?) but she stopped abruptly.

"What am I doing?" she whispered.

Magic. Magic had led to this. No, she wasn't going to. He could get better with some aspirin and some band aids once he woke up. If he wasn't a boggart. Her lip curled in derision.

"Tonks?"

She choked and looked down.

Two glassy eyes stared at her, barely comprehending.

"No," she said. Nymphadora Tonks was dead too.

"Oh." He closed his eyes again and she cursed. Because if this thing thought that all it would take was a little reminder for her to heal it-

It was right.

An incantation, a swift flick, a jab, and she saw the smaller scrapes heal. Another short maneuver with the wand and his body relaxed into the covers, his expression just a little less pained.

"Damn you," she told nothing in particular. Maybe it was the magic. Maybe it was him - it - or maybe she was just being bitter with the world again for putting her in a place she never wanted to be.

Hermione sighed.

"I need some more hot chocolate."

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.

She thought, at first, that she might go to bed. He certainly wouldn't notice. And it wasn't as though she would be doing anything, staying up and staring at him. But, as she'd noted before, her long-lauded common sense had long since gone down the drain. So she came back with a novel and sipped her hot chocolate from the new mug, sitting in the chair on the other side of the coffee table.

And after a few hours of staring at a page and trying to understand it, she gave up. Hermione looked back at the man asleep on her couch.

He was... the same. Exactly the same. The same just-revived face, cheekbones recently come up a notch from emaciated, pale skin slowly returning to a more healthy tan. His pitch black hair had been recently cut - very badly, she remembered that day he'd tried to do it himself. And... it felt like him. The same strange feeling surrounded him so that you knew when he was behind you and you knew who it was before he even spoke. The connection a tightly knit group of people had had was still there, even with the death of so very many of them.

Hermione sighed. It would have been so much easier - so much easier - if she could have just found one thing wrong with him. A little strange looking in just one place so that she could safely say it was an imitation, albeit a good one. Because no creature or spell could create a perfect duplicate - not even a boggart, which pulled it straight from your mind. It was too much to hold at once, too intricate and intangible to imitate.

And as she stared, she could still remember when he had been more than a memory...

"What if, one of these times, I'm not there?"

She looked up from her side of the table where she'd been looking at her sandwich. Sirius was sitting quite still, his eyes centered on the coffee that swirled in his cup.

"What if, one of these times, someone dies and I could've been there to stop it?"

Hermione realized he was talking to her. She sighed and looked away.

"You know you can't go out," she told him, sympathizing as she did.

He frowned, but it was only at the coffee cup. "I know," he told her.

"Should've waited," she muttered unhappily. "You would've been there when it counted, damn you." Maybe she wasn't being fair. At this point, though, she wasn't even sure if she was sane, talking to the all-too-solid ghost of a man who was laying unconscious on her couch after nineteen years.

Her eyes scanned him again, desperate to find something out of place now, anything. But she couldn't. Nothing but his damp hair that fell in all the right places, shadowing all the right places, where he'd once looked so frightening. It was then that she took care to notice that he was returning to being a handsome man - he had once been, hadn't he? - and that the strain had almost left his face.

No doubt he would have something clever to say when he woke up. If it was him.

Hermione yawned, stretching tiredly as her body protested her sleeping habits. She could stay up for days if she wanted to, it seemed to say, but it would be shortly curling up, covers or no. But she'd resisted sleep before, she'd done it for what seemed forever before, and this was nothing new.

She turned toward the window and realized then why she was so tired. The sun had risen, just barely, somewhere through the clouds. The light that filtered in through the window was dim and damp and gray - it did almost nothing to lighten the stormy sky outside, while it did less than nothing to lighten the living room.

A sound behind her made her jump in surprise, twisting back around in her chair.

He was staring at her now with the same eyes - eyes that remembered Azkaban - dark and haunted deep inside. But they were clear now, and awake, and there was no flicker of recognition.

"Who are you?"

She froze.

What to say? What could she say? She hadn't seen this man for nineteen years. Hadn't spoken to him, hadn't tried to understand him, for at least that long. In fact... the last memories she even had of him were of a faintly surprised man, descending into darkness.

Sirius studied her with his eyes, perhaps trying to read her before he would have to talk to her.

After a moment, his lips quirked sardonically. "Do you, perchance, have a name?" he asked. "Or will I have to guess?"

Well. There was a question. One she probably should answer.

But... nothing would come out.

Sirius seemed faintly annoyed, but he continued nonetheless. "Why don't we start somewhere simpler, then. Where am I?"

She swallowed, and her voice came back. "My home," she managed. "On my couch."

"Ah. So I see." His gaze flicked over the utterly plain, utterly muggle clothes she was wearing, and she could feel his opinion of her drop lower. Oh, I see. Not part of the family, but not quite outside their prejudices.

It almost snapped her from her stunned silence. Almost.

"And..." he continued slowly, as though talking to a child, "Where would your house be?"

Oh, now that cinched it.

"Excuse me," she told him, suddenly quite articulate once more. "I did have some aspirin for that little gash across your chest, but perhaps it should wait until you find your manners." She spun away, tightlipped, and moved toward the kitchen.

That... ingrate! No, the fact that she was a friend didn't matter. The fact that she hadn't seen him in an eternity, the fact that she'd thought him long dead like everyone else, none of that mattered. She'd taken him into her house - she'd broken her taboo to heal him - and he had the nerve to treat her like some brain dead creature because she was a muggle!

"Half breed! Mudblood! Abomination! How dare you besmirch my house with your filth-"

The outburst was unexpected - Hermione gasped in horror at the portrait she'd uncovered, an older woman whose face had twisted into a mask of rage. The woman screamed at her hoarsely, and she cowered back in shock and fear and shame...

"Get out! GET OUT! Get your dirty blood away from my house!"

Her mouth worked soundlessly, and she looked around desperately for somewhere to run - somehow, she'd done something wrong and it had led to this-

"OUUUUT!" the woman screeched.

Hermione realized she was now huddled in the corner, hands over her mouth.

"Would you SHUT UP already?"

The woman in the portrait was momentarily stunned to silence. An angry stomping came from the hall outside the door - and suddenly, it slammed open and a furious Sirius Black moved directly in front of the portrait.

"Look, you hellish woman, if you don't stay quiet for once-"

"YOU! You shameful creature, you disappointment! You are no son of mine-" Sirius slammed the curtain shut.

All was quiet for a moment, as he leaned against the wall, palms set against it on either side of his tiredly hanging head. Hermione froze in her corner, not quite certain what to do.

"My, what lovely relatives I have. It's a miracle I sleep at all..."

She swallowed, wanting now, more even than before, to shrink into nothing on the ground. Sirius sighed and turned around.

He froze.

"Ah- Hermione?"

She managed to nod, hands still over her trembling mouth.

"O-oh," he said uncomfortably, "I suppose you were the one that set her off... I thought Kreacher had pulled back the curtain again..."

There was an awkward silence.

Sirius looked away and took a reluctant stride toward her, holding out his hand. She took it shakingly and stumbled to her feet.

"I...hope you didn't pay any attention to her," he murmured uneasily. "She's just like that." He glanced at her sideways. "You didn't take her seriously, right?"

Hermione managed to nod. "Y-yes. I was just... scared." What a liar she was turning into these days... must be Ron and Harry...

"Oh good." His face visibly relaxed. "You shouldn't, really. You're one of the best witches I've known - don't think Moody and the rest won't back me up on this." He smirked and she let the air out of her lungs in a kind of relief.

"Yes, thanks, I- I think I'm good." He looked at her intently, as though gauging something, then let her hand go.

"Well, if you're hungry, dinner's downstairs. Molly's really outdone herself this time..."

She'd stopped at the window. She was staring again, chin on her knees, as the rain kept coming down. She was so tired, but it really didn't matter anymore. If she slept, she dreamt, if she woke, she remembered, if she starved herself of sleep, it almost went away as she concentrated hard on staying awake. If she stayed awake...

"I'm sorry."

Hermione blinked wearily. "Yes, well. I'm tired. It's been... a long night."

She looked up to see him leaning against the kitchen wall and cursed herself. Of course he would be hurting, he still had a great burning mark across his chest. Dolt.

"Oh, just sit down," she sighed. "I'll - I'll go get the aspirin."

He stared as she passed, and she felt that same sensation, the feeling of being weighed somehow. Maybe he was wondering about her sanity. "You haven't asked my name, I've noticed," he said quietly.

She paused. Tell him.

"I know who you are," she said.

His eyebrow raised. He was obviously skeptical. "Somehow, I doubt that."

She ignored him and went for the bottle. But she took two for herself before handing him a pair of pills as well. The effort involved in finding and filling a glass of water was much more than it should have been. She was waning.

"Bottoms up," the woman muttered as she handed it to him. He smirked and downed the tablets and she found herself suddenly wanting to tear that awful smile off his face, to tell him why he shouldn't be amused, why he should be dying inside like her.

But she held it in.

"I'm going to sleep," she announced in a weary tone. "Just... don't kill anything." And, almost as an afterthought, "I wouldn't leave, either."

Not staying to see if he connected her warning with her knowledge of him, she walked to the couch and tangled herself in the blankets he had left behind, eyelids drooping already as she curled herself into a warm little ball.

She dimly heard him lower himself gently into the chair, a tiny groan escaping him as his body bent the wound in two.

"Not as bad as it should've been," she muttered to herself, drifting and hearing their voices again in a jumbled twist of chords...

"What?"

A tattered veil that just barely fluttered - voices she couldn't hear, but she could hear them now and she knew what they were saying...

She rode a roll of thunder further into darkness.

Lost. Looking for a way back. Oh, if only they could hear her when she called...

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Doom... death... oh my dear, you have the grim!

Can you believe her? What a bunch of bunk. Who's she think she's kidding, fifth time today...

Hermione?

Hermione?

Come on, Hermione, wake up, don't die Hermione, you can't die yet-

"Are you awake?" a half asleep voice called.

It's not fair to leave me like this, Hermione, you know what it'll do to me...

But what about me? What about when you left me all alone?

"Suppose not..." His hand moved to shake her gently.

Hermione muttered a curse, wishing she could find her damn wand so she could make him shut up and stop bugging her.

"Look, I'm sorry, I'm afraid I have a rather pressing need to know where I am."

In a cold room, where there was no breeze, but the curtains whispered silently...

"Or you could lay there like an inanimate lump. Far be it for me to make you get up from your bloody couch..."

His eyes were wide and shocked and just a little resigned... but she only had to see them for a second before they disappeared behind the tattered veil...

"You can't," she whispered wearily. "You can't do anything. You're dead."

His hands had been reaching for her again, to shake her some more. Now, however, they stopped, pressed lightly against her side.

"What?" he asked.

Hermione buried her head in her arms. "Leave me alone."

His hands pulled away hesitantly, then turned more certain. "I suppose I shall, then. Thank you ever so much for your warm hospitality (he snorted here) and I suppose I will be going now."

There was something wrong with this, she knew. He shouldn't be going out.

But she was too tired. And he was too gone and too frightening and too wrong.

So she went back to sleep and found that she could almost pretend he'd never come back at all.