Threes

My second fic. No ships intended except a brief mention of Hermione/Ron.

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Hermione was shivering. She hadn't thought to bring her jacket out with her. It was summer, but the foggy London air still got chilly at night. She sniffed a little and blew her nose on her handkerchief, but she let the tears wend their way down her face. The house behind her was full of people, but she was lonely.

After a few minutes, the door she'd been leaning against opened and she barely kept herself from falling back against the opener's legs.

"Oh...there you are."

She looked up to see the dark figure of Sirius Black silhouetted in the doorway.

"Ron's looking for you."

She sniffed again. "Yes; I expect he is."

"Are you all right?"

Hermione nodded, but she wished she could tell someone how much was not all right. She didn't really understand it herself.

Sirius loitered on the doorstep a while before asking gently, "You want I should leave?"

"Oh...no, you can stay if you like." It was his house, after all--besides, she somehow felt a kinship with the former prisoner tonight.

Sirius moved outside and closed the door behind him before sitting on the back steps next to Hermione. They looked out at the small, fenced-in garden behind Grimmauld Place. "Want to talk about it?" he broke the silence at last.

Hermione sighed. "It's silly."

"You and Ron been fighting?"

"No. It's not that kind of thing." Hermione was a little embarrassed that Sirius seemed to think she and Ron were a couple. Not that she didn't like Ron that way, but she didn't want it generally known yet. Not until Ron showed a little more...feeling? Initiative? Something. "It's Harry."

"Oh..." Sirius sounded quite surprised.

"No--" Hermione said quickly, "I told you, it's not that kind of a thing!"

"All right. What about Harry, then?"

"I...I miss him. A lot. I realize it's only been a few weeks, but last year was so awful for him, and so much has been happening, and we haven't been able to tell him anything."

She had expected Sirius to say she was being silly. After all, she had little right to miss Harry when she'd been with him so much in the past four years and Sirius had been missing him since Harry was a year old! But all Sirius said was, "I miss him, too."

"It's great that Ron and I can be together," she went on, not minding too much that she was rambling, since Sirius seemed so willing to listen. "He's been really great. But it's always been the three of us. Since our first year at Hogwarts. We met on the train and everything. No matter how great it is for all of us to be here together, it's not the same without Harry. I feel like I just can't wait any longer. It needs to be the three of us again."

The door opened again, and this time it was Remus Lupin who stood in the door and said, "Oh, there you are."

Sirius smiled up at him, and Hermione wondered how much brighter the smile would have been before Azkaban. "Right here, Moony."

"We were afraid you'd sneaked off to rescue Harry on your own," Remus told him.

"Don't think I haven't thought of it," Sirius said, an almost playful growl coming out with his words. "But I'm not that far gone yet. If anyone's worried about us, we're enjoying the night air within the Fidelius Charm, and they're not to worry. If we do happen to plan a rescue, we'll let you in on it, don't worry."

"In case you've forgotten, my friend," Remus drawled, "the rescue has already been planned. We just need to wait a little--"

"Wait!" Sirius said suddenly. "Wait for what? Till we're old? This is cruel."

Hermione was a little surprised at the outburst, but she remembered that Sirius had been in prison from age twenty-one to age thirty-three. She'd never heard that prison did much to help emotional maturity, especially not a wizard's prison like Azkaban in which the guards fed on the good feelings of the prisoners. She supposed that Sirius's self-control was most likely stuck in the young adult phase.

Maybe Remus had thought through the same ideas, because his response was very patient. "You know it's not up to me, Padfoot. We all want him here, but Dumbledore knows best." He patted Sirius's shoulder. "You'll have him back soon."

Sirius didn't answer, but went back to staring at the back garden.

Remus turned his gaze on Hermione. "Don't let him stay out here to long, please," he said with a soft smile, as if Hermione were the responsible adult who was being relied upon to guard Sirius's well-being.

She nodded, not sure what would make an appropriate answer.

When the door had closed behind them, Sirius looked up at the sky and took a deep breath. "I think..." he said slowly, "that friends are best in threes."

Hermione looked up at his profile, his face so careworn and his eyes with a far-away look, as if he were remembering battles of long ago. He was half savage beast, half lost child. Slowly, she reached over and put a soft hand on top of his rough one on the step.

Without looking at her--almost absent-mindedly, it seemed--Sirius turned his hand over and curled his fingers around hers. "We should go back inside," he murmured. "You're shivering."

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