Lost and Found

Chapter 13 - Snow

It was the strangest feeling. A lightness in his chest where he'd once felt so heavy he could barely walk. A little murmur in his heart that told him he could kiss her again, and maybe she'd kiss him back. But then, of course, the logistics of this idea got in the way. Hermione. Hermione was not- could not be- someone like that to him. It was impossible. Just that week ago, he would never have thought that way-

Or would he?

He found a coat near the door, waiting - Hermione had enlarged it for him. His hand went to the stubble on his chin in a confusion he knew he shouldn't feel. Hermione had been fifteen. There was no way he would have... well, but the fact of the matter was that he was even now grinning like a madman, just at the thought that he'd been important to her. Was still important to her. And that she was waiting outside.

Sirius opened the door cautiously.

He knew the moment he exited the door that he would be hit. It was one of those things you just knew, like when a storm was coming, or when a cat was getting ready to bite you. He, unfortunately, had experience with the latter.

Nevertheless, the wet wad of snow was thrown quite accurately - it impacted on his chest, sliding slowly down the coat she'd left out for him.

Sirius grinned.

Hermione laughed loudly from behind her solidly made fort and failed to catch the arced snowball that was tossed expertly over her defenses. Sirius moved immediately after the startled curse reached his ears, picking up some more ammunition as he rolled away (probably getting himself infinitely wetter in the process than a snowball would have made him... but it was the principle).

He heard the barrage of snow hit places where he'd been just moments before, and pulled himself up into a crouch, throwing his own weapon with the practice only a Marauder used to years of magical snow dueling could muster. Hermione let out a squeak of surprise as water leaked down her front - and one of her snowballs hit him in the back.

No.

Wait.

She wasn't behind him.

Sirius turned in surprise, but cursed as he realized there was nothing there.

The whisper carried over the air.

"Accio snowball."

A snicker as another one hit him in the face.

"Cheating!" he told her, not really irritated but putting up a good show of it. "I don't have a wand!"

Hermione only laughed harder. "Wingardium Leviosa!" A whole drift of snow began to rise into the air - he was impressed, despite himself, because that spoke of an immense concentration-

Whumf!

Snow. Flakes of snow all over him, dusting his hair, catching in his eyelashes.

Hermione stopped laughing and blinked, staring at him with an odd expression.

He didn't wait to see why.

A screech of laughter assailed the mischievous Padfoot's senses as he bounded over the fort in one long stride, then took down his enemy, sitting heavily on her chest. Hermione lost her breath, gasping as she simultaneously tried to laugh and push the large dog off.

After a few minutes of torturing the woman with her well deserved punishment, Sirius turned back - only to find that he was really not in a much better position than before.

Well.

If you were given the advantage...

"Surrender?" he breathed into her ear with a grin. Hermione jerked back from him involuntarily, swallowing and turning just the slightest bit pink. And for the moment, he forgot all about everything else, and he was back at Hogwarts again, using his wiles to make the girls lose their nerve in their annual girls versus boys snowball match. Sirius raised an eyebrow as though daring her to try something again, with him very clearly the dominant victor.

Her eyes looked into his searchingly, though. Looking for darkness, wondering where the spark of youth and bliss had come from, and trying to decide whether she liked it or not.

And he was back.

He knew his eyes had turned back into dark pools, now, refusing the light and wondering why he was rolling in the snow with a woman who had never been a part of their snowball fights-

Now, though, there was a determined set to Hermione's face.

"No."

He found himself flipped over, then, directly into the snow fort (which wasn't quite as tightly packed as would have been nice...) Hermione rose to her feet easily and kicked a bit more of the ruined pile of snow onto him.

"All talk, nothing to show," she told him with a chuckle.

Because, he realized, she had liked it. Having him happy, and maybe having him lavish his attention on her as though she were a sixth year girl. In some ways... maybe they were both still that age.

Sirius tackled her.

.

.

.

.

.

Two slightly malformed snowmen and another snowball fight later, the two sat in the kitchen, toweled down and in some comfortable pj's. Hermione, of course, had gotten them both hot chocolate.

"You do know we're likely to catch colds, yes?" Sirius asked humorously as he cupped the warm mug in his hands.

Hermione shrugged - and gave a sneeze. "A little late for that particular assumption, isn't it?" She sipped the whipped cream from the top of her drink, and he realized she was right.

Brunch was a matter of course, once they found they'd wasted away the morning playing in the snow and watching a blizzard whip itself into a frenzy. He caught Hermione in a moment of weakness as she used magic to make the meal prepare itself - but she insisted that it was because she didn't want to get sick by straying out of range of the fire.

He, personally, had no problem with her staying. Because he was beating her quite spectacularly at Monopoly.

"That's Boardwalk, Hermione, three houses so far. Time to pay up."

She glared at him and counted her money out. "I still can't believe you picked up both dark blues..."

Sirius smiled to himself as she realized she didn't have enough money.

Hermione looked up at him sourly. "Well. Monopoly's a stupid game anyway..."

The snow kept falling.

.

.

.

.

.

"Checkmate."

Because, in the end, it really came down to chess.

Hermione smiled as Sirius' king shouted angrily at him - "I told you to send in the bishop, but you didn't listen! How do you ever expect to get anywhere when you're pushing your queen at every little-"

Sirius frowned and grabbed Hermione's wand before she could act. "Silencio."

She couldn't help but giggle at the miniature king's expression. It stopped its silent tirade to glare at her, and she mouthed an apology at it.

"Can you blame me, losing with these things all badgering me?" Sirius muttered. But he was avoiding her eyes, like he'd taken to doing throughout the day at the strangest times.

"Oh look who's talking," Hermione said sourly. "I thought I was doomed when my queen ran off with your knight."

Sirius shrugged. "Your fault, really. Shouldn't have been setting up your own soap opera while I worked on my next move."

She shot him a dirty look. "That was because you took half an hour on it!"

He ignored her and turned his gaze to the window, where the sun was setting on a town of white, throwing crimson and violet shadows across the landscape. The dancing light entranced him for a moment, and Hermione herself found she could barely glance away.

It had been so long since she'd simply looked at the sunset. It was one of those things you could only enjoy with a friend.

Suddenly, Sirius rose from the fire and offered her his hand. Hermione blinked, but took it - and he drew her toward the back sliding glass door. She raised an eyebrow as he opened it, letting in the biting cold air.

"Um - playing in the snow is one thing, but we'll catch pneumonia if we go out at night in our pj's," she told him with a suspicious look.

Sirius shrugged. "I'll keep you warm," he told her - and she noted that his eyes had once more darted to the floor.

His suggestion was, of course, crazy.

So was her answer. "Okay."

What on earth had prompted her to say that?

Sirius seemed to regain his confidence at this, and he grinned at her in that rakishly handsome way of his before pulling her inside his heavy cotton robe and moving toward the ladder to the roof. After shunting aside some snow, they settled in to watch the stars begin to appear, slowly and hesitantly, as the sun disappeared below the horizon and into twilight.

Normally, Hermione would never have done something so reckless, but Sirius seemed to have that same effect on her that Harry and Ron once had. A certain disregard for rules - and, well, stupidity - seized her while she was near him. And, what was worse, she liked it.

She shivered as a stray wind teased its way across her chest, and Sirius slipped his arms around her, pulling her into him and closing the robe over both of them. She let him and even snuggled closer to the heat.

It's funny, how he's always warm...

Hermione frowned at the déjà vu that idea gave her, but pushed it away and curled her feet under the heavy cloth. It was no surprise that she was utterly comfortable around Sirius, even in the strangest of situations. He was... he was her friend. And sometimes, just sometimes, a little more.

A confidant. A secret crush, at one time. Someone to always take my side, even if I'm wrong...to protect me...

The last sent a little thrill through her, and she smiled to herself. Sirius, the knight in dark robes, sweeping in to swear at screaming paintings. What a funny thought, but, in some ways, how utterly true.

Maybe, she thought as she leaned into him even more, Maybe my queen had the right idea... running away with the knight... The thought sent a little leap into her heart, and she was sure that, for once, she was warming up.

Sirius was uncharacteristically silent, but it was a comfortable kind of silence, the kind you didn't even try to fill with meaningless words. She knew he was at peace, up here beneath the sky that had so long been denied him. She looked up at him momentarily and was struck immediately by his wistful, unguarded expression.

"That one," he said, looking at a certain bright star in the sky. "That one's me."

Hermione followed his gaze to where she knew she would find Sirius, the dog star.

"Brightest of them all," she said with a wry smile. "But obviously, it never got to your head."

His arms tightened around her as he laughed. "Of course not." His laugh was one of the things she liked most about him, and she would never get sick of hearing it. Of the times when that haunted look left them, and he was happy.

She loved making him happy.

Connecting this realization back to her earlier years, she could now see why she so loved their chess games. Those times, too, he would smile.

All for her.

"I don't know, though," she told him, feeling the corners of her mouth turn up mischievously. "Canopus is looking rather healthy lately..."

Sirius scoffed. "Canopus hasn't got anything on me. It's pitiful."

Hermione found herself remembering, perhaps for the first time in her life, something she'd learned in divination. The only reason she'd bothered to pay attention, in fact, was because she'd heard the word "Sirius" and bolted upright in her seat, immediately non-drowsy and looking for information on the infamous convict that seemed to have it in for Harry.

Sirius, the dog star, part of Canis Major - when born under this star's influence, one is expected to be rich, wealthy, well-connected. Natives of the star tend to be faithful to the extreme, and passionate when focused on an objective. However, they are also impetuous, and sometimes violent...

Faithful, she'd thought then. Absolute rubbish. Sirius Black had betrayed Harry's parents. Divination, wrong again.

When in the eighth house, it promises a heroic death, with honors beyond the grave...

She should've paid attention better. She should have known, when the star was in the eighth house...

"What are you thinking about?" he asked her curiously. He'd apparently noticed that her face had gone strained.

"Meeting you for the first time," she said truthfully, and he seemed to deflate just a little.

"Oh come on, Hermione, that was in the past... well, I mean, it was only two years for me, but quite a bit for you-"

"No," she said absently. "I rather liked you when I met you. Not- not immediately, of course, but just a little later..."

Sirius was quiet for a moment. Then- "What on earth was there for you to like about me?"

And she didn't hesitate. "You were devoted. Even after- you know - you still did what was best for Harry and everyone else, you let him talk you out of killing Pettigrew-"

"A mistake," groused Sirius, suddenly very bitter. "Peter was the reason so many things happened..."

"No," Hermione reproved him immediately. "If he hadn't resurrected Voldemort, someone else would. Besides which, Dumbledore said something about a wizard's debt to Harry. We might not have been aware of it, but I'll bet he had to save his life back at some point."

Sirius sighed. "Aren't you always the voice of logic? You don't know how much I hated him... twelve years of clinging to my sanity by remembering over and over the things he did and the different ways I could kill him..." Hermione found she really wanted to steer away from this subject. But even as this hit her, she realized he needed it. And she did understand, even if he didn't know it.

Bellatrix...

The name sent shivers down her spine, and conjured a picture of a surprised, elegant, and green tinged face.

Her hand came up to his and closed on it reflexively, drawing on that strong core of inner strength, the pillar of support he had constantly been for everyone but himself.

"Do you know," Sirius said quietly. "I still remember some times with him almost happily. We pulled off so many pranks with him... he even came up with a few himself..." There was a betrayed pain, an emotional nakedness in his voice that made her ache with him. "He couldn't always have been like that," he told her desperately. "He was Wormtail. He became an animagus for Remus, he helped us make the map, he- he even listened to me when I complained about my family. He always listened, and it's so strange to remember, but he never told secrets... even when you cried..."

Hermione felt her heart breaking as she imagined Harry or Ron doing something like that to her. Or worse, if she had- but no. It hadn't happened, and if there was one thing she could be grateful for, it was that they'd died true to each other. Even as a tear slid down her cheek, biting at her skin in the cold night air, she felt a little of the weight on her heart leave her. And, at the same time, she felt a strange, subdued elation at the fact that Sirius was telling her something so close to his heart, sharing it and trusting that she would understand.

"Isn't it awful that he told the one secret we needed him to keep?" he whispered. And his hand clutched hers, slightly chilled despite the fact that it had always been warm before. He'd given all his heat to her.

"Tell me he's dead," he pleaded suddenly. "You caught him, didn't you?"

Hermione swallowed, and let her head fall back against his chest. "Yes. We found him - an Auror had killed him as a rat, because they knew the truth by then-" A small rat, so tiny and so charred, it belied the fact that the man inside of it had wrought so much destruction, killed so many, destroyed so many lives... a front toe cut off, and that was the way they'd had to recognize it, because Tonks had been so vicious with her cousin's betrayer...

"So it's over," Sirius sighed. "At least I don't have to worry about visiting him in Azkaban. I- I don't think I could manage that."

Hermione shook her head slowly, watching as a stray flake of snow drifted down from the sky. It had started to snow very lightly, a sprinkling of large, lazy flakes that glinted in the starlight. "From what you said," she told him, "he was dead long before that. The one you knew, that is."

Sirius contemplated this for a moment, then brought his hand up to brush some of the snow lightly from the top of her head. She shivered at his touch, gentle and almost affectionate.

"I suppose you're right," he said finally, the hand moving down to take hers again, touching her cheek for just a moment by accident as it went. Hermione shuddered again, and he seemed to take this as an admission of cold. "We should go in, before we catch pneumonia," he teased her in a deep voice, but she surprised him by putting her cheek to his chest and pulling the robe further around them. Then-

"Accio blanket," she whispered.

Something slipped through the crack she'd left in the door, and moved to settle expertly over them, still hot from being next to the fire. It warmed them both nicely and immediately.

Sirius grinned. "That'll work too," he said.

She looked up at him, staring seriously into his eyes. "I'll never tell your secrets either," she told him. "None of them."

He seemed surprised at this, and then, inordinately touched. Then, as he looked down at her, she saw a moment of indecision cross his face - he leaned down, and his fingers came up to brush her face. Tingles shot through her skin from the light pressure of his fingertips...

Sirius pulled back. "You... had an eyelash," he told her uncomfortably, looking away. She realized she'd forgotten to breathe, and hurriedly took in a breath of cool air.

"Thank you," he said a moment later. "For- for everything."

Hermione decided not to ask what was troubling him. There'd been quite enough soul-baring already that night.

Instead, she leaned closer to him and let her eyes focus on the single, most brilliant point of light in the sky.

"You're welcome."