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It had been a yeae of this, a year of Sirius hiding in his room despite him having his freedom now. Hermione had been volunteered to be the person to make sure that he was eating, drinking (water, not the firewhiskey that he had hidden under his bed like some rebellious teenager), that he was bathing… Hermione was furious that it had been her that had been nominated for this thankless task but she knew why it had to be her, why it couldn't be anyone else. She had no-one else left - her parents were lost and Harry was dead. Orphaned and abandoned, Hermione had been forced into Grimmauld Place with one of the people that she quite honestly resented.
She might have been able to stand it if Sirius left his room once in a while, if he would at least spend some time with her, but as it was she resented him because he was wasting the sacrifice that Harry had made for them all. Her best friend, her brother, had sacrificed himself so all of those lost in the battle could once again live. Somehow Sirius had been brought back too, which Hermione was sure had something to do with the Veil but she'd not had the chance to investigate yet.
She'd tried the whole 'Harry wouldn't have wanted you to spend your second chance like this' but Sirius had only gone on to say that this was his third chance and he could spend it however he wanted. Hermione had also desperately reached out to Remus but his presence seemed to have made Sirius worse.
Hermione was at her wit's end and part of her said that she should just leave. He could come out of this when he was ready or not at all, but she couldn't continue to watch him do this to himself. She got it, she really did. He had lost his best friend and then his best friend's son - she'd lost her best friend too. Her heart also ached for the loss of Harry and she too wanted to disappear into the nothingness that was Grimmauld Place, but she knew that she couldn't do that to her friends.
"I'm going to go and stay at the Burrow for a bit." She announced to Sirius one afternoon when she brought his soup to his depression cave.
Sirius snapped up at that - she didn't think that she had seen him move so fast in all the time that they had been here. It was almost as if he cared that she was leaving him. "Why?"
Hermione dropped her eyes down to the spoon she had been turning over and over on the lap tray. How was she meant to tell him that she couldn't be around him anymore? She knew that it would break him, though of course she knew that he couldn't actually be any more broken than he was.
She heard him pull in a slow breath when she didn't answer him straight away. She knew that she owed him an explanation but she didn't know how to say the words so instead she decided to phrase things just that little bit differently.
"I need a change of scenery." Hermione said quietly. "I need to.. I need someone to look after for a change. I'm exhausted."
Sirius shifted on the bed, moving so that he was closer to Hermione now, his hands suddenly clasped around hers. "I don't want you to leave me." His voice was desperate and barely above a whisper but Hermione knew that she couldn't change her plans just because she felt bad for him.
"I know." She whispered, dropping her forehead to his hands for a moment before she sat up again and met his gaze. "But I have to do this for me."
There was a flash of something that crossed his eyes that Hermione wasn't quite able to read. She hated that she was hurting him but this wasn't personal either; she couldn't pour from an empty cup. "Fine." He whispered as he snatched his hands away from her again and fell back on her bed. She watched as he stared up at the ceiling before sighing and getting to her feet.
"I'll see you at dinner time." She whispered before she left the room. She would pack her bag tonight but wait until the morning before she left so that he could wrap his head around it all before she abandoned him completely.
**
There was a scream in the middle of night that woke Hermione with a start. She scrambled out of bed, tripping over her own feet as she ran down the corridor, not even bothering to knock on Sirius' door before she threw it open. His sheets were on the floor as he lay writhing in what looked like agony. She knew that he suffered from nightmares and this wasn't the first time that she had ever found him in such a state. It was one of the reasons that she had second guessed going to the Burrow, but she had made arrangements so that he wouldn't be alone after all.
"Sirius." She whispered as she knelt on the bed, her hand on his back as he continued to tremble. "You're okay. You're safe. I've got you." The thought that Ron wasn't going to be able to comfort Sirius like this briefly flashed through her mind before she moved to wrap herself around him. She was second guessing all of her decisions but that was nothing particularly new; she was never sure of anything anymore which was her own little reminder of the war.
Hermione held Sirius close, her lips pressing to the back of his head out of instinct as she hoped that he would snap out of his nightmare soon, that he would wake up soon and she would be able to make him feel better. He had trauma, everyone who had been through the war did and he had been through two.
They lay there for a while until Sirius stopped shaking and slowly stirred under her touch. She removed her lips from his head, knowing that she had probably overstepped some imaginary line somewhere there but her intentions had been good and that had to count for something. Or at least she hoped it did. She untangled herself from him as she sat up and he turned to face her.
His face was pale white and streaked with tears and his eyes were desperate, as if searching her own for something though Hermione didn't know what that something was, let alone whether she would be able to give it to him. She held his gaze for a few moments regardless before she gently swept a stray strand of hair back from his face.
"Feeling better?" She asked softly, though she wasn't sure that she wanted to hear the reply, not when it was most likely going to make her want to stay. She had already decided that she wouldn't stay at the Burrow for long, maybe a month, just so that she could clear her bead and get some country air in her lungs.
Sirius just shrugged before he moved to grab his sheets off of the floor, pulling them over himself. Hermione hadn't even realised that he wasn't wearing any clothes and had this been any other situation then she was sure that her cheeks would have been glowing pink.
"Ron will be over today." Hermione continued, deciding to fill the silence before it could hang between them and make things even more awkward and even more desperate.
"My new babysitter." Sirius' voice was cold and Hermione couldn't even blame him for acting this way - he was twice their age and yet they were the ones looking after him. The thing was that no-one could trust him to be alone yet. She hoped that the day would come where they could but it didn't seem to be on the horizon any time soon.
"You like Ron." Hermione pressed on, hoping to put at least some of Sirius' anxieties about the change over to rest.
"How much I like the boy is irrelevant." Sirius sighed and Hermione watched as he got to his feet. He opened his curtains and stared out into the muggle street below where London was starting to wake up. "He's not you."
Hermione blinked a couple of times as she tried to figure out what exactly that meant. She supposed that she and Sirius had been here together long enough that he had probably formed some attachment to her but she didn't think that her presence mattered all that much to him, especially when he spent most of his time hiding out in this room and she was using others.
Sirius was bent over the windowsill now, his back completely to her so there was no chance of her being able to read his expression, not that he was easy to read in the first place. For a person with so many emotions, he was particularly good at being able to hold them close to his heart at all times.
"Maybe I could come with you." He said so quietly that Hermione was almost convinced that he hadn't said it at all. He truly was an anomaly that she was never going to fully understand, that no-one was ever going to fully understand.
"To the Burrow?" It made sense, she supposed, but there was no way that Molly was going to let him hide out in a bedroom for the foreseeable future, though maybe that was exactly what he needed, to be forced out into the world again and see all the things that he had been missing while he'd been dead and then here. It had been decades since he'd been a properly free man after all.
"Yes, Hermione." He was facing her again and suddenly her hands were in his and he was squeezing them tightly. "To the Burrow with you."
Hermione stared at him for what she was sure was an unseasonably long time. There was a tug in her chest that was telling her that she needed to let him, that she needed to keep him close to her so she moved to wrap her arms around him. He needed her but she needed him almost as much.
She’d never realised how much she needed Sirius until just then and she knew that she couldn’t leave him behind here now. She knew that Molly wouldn’t mind too much about having an extra guest, though she would probably mind that Hermione was now planning to keep Sirius as close to her as in the same bed. She had no idea if that would be allowed, or even if that was what Siirus wanted, nor did she exactly know where these feelings had come from, and yet she knew that they had been there under the surface for a while.
“I can come?” Sirius asked quietly after a few moments of silence and Hermione realised that she should probably have answered him verbally, that he deserved a verbal response.
“Yes, Sirius. You can come.” It might not have been her place to invite him but she couldn’t help it.
And then Sirius’ lips were on hers and her eyes widened for a moment before she relaxed into the kiss, her heart hammering in her chest as she tried to make sense of what was happening, but then she decided that there was absolutely no need to make sense of anything. They could help each other out, physically and emotionally.