8
Forging

"Psst."

Hermione, at that barely-lucid and half-awake moment, realized the utter pitfalls of contributing to the world's pool of pranksters.

"Pssst."

Granted, it was less of a contribution and more of a displacement of one prankster from one pool to another, but quibbling over semantics wasn't about to displace Sirius Black from her bedroom.

"Psssssst."

"Sirius," she muttered, half into the early morning air and half into her pillow, "I will throw you right back into the Veil."

"The only veil you and I will be involved in again, love," he said, the mattress tilting as he settled in beside her, "is the veil of ignorance I will lift from your inexperienced palate when you taste this batch of eggs Benedict I've made for you. It was the only legitimate breakfast dish I learned to make in the eighties, and I think my brush with death has only helped me establish the proper ratio of paprika."

Hermione sighed as she fully opened her eyes, pushing curls from her face as she glared at the Marauder, happily sprawled out beside her, his cream-colored cable sweater paired with a black leather trousers and dark green dragon hide boots, ankles propped on her footboard so the soles of his shoes were courteously away from her linens.

He looked entirely too comfortable in her bed.

She pushed herself off her stomach, flipped her hair so it smacked into his face, and settled back down. Sirius only laughed.

"You fried, boiled, and scrambled eggs before," she grumbled, huddling into the warm blankets.

"But I'm talking about a real, legitimate meal, love," he insisted, scooting closer so his shoulder pressed against hers. "Come on, Granger, would you deny a dead man his requests?"

"You're not dead anymore, Black, and technically, you were never properly dead to begin with, so I've no qualms denying you a thing," huffed Hermione, shifting around with a bit more aggression than normal. "You should be basking in gratefulness that I haven't cursed you for breaking into my flat."

"You brought me back to life, and that would entail your life," he said. "I'd naturally be able to bypass your wards."

"Saving your life wasn't a by-your-leave to invade mine, Sirius!" she snapped, purposefully kicking him in the leg as she continued to shift. "Would you let me go back to sleep?!"

"Come on, Hermione, you've already slept, and I've already made you breakfast. Tell me again how I'm the ungrateful one."

"I'm recovering from practically exhausting my soul and magic to bring you back and you are breaking into my private residence and harassing me instead of letting me live my life in peace—"

"Say the word, Hermione, and I'll back off," he said suddenly, sounding serious enough that she flipped her head back over to look at him and getting caught in her curls that she had to claw back from her face. "I know I've beleaguered your general existence enough, and I know I'll feel indebted to you ten—no, million-fold at this point. Just say the word, though, and I'll—"

Hermione sighed and pushed herself up from her stomach so she lay on her side, facing him. "Pay me back by living your life to its greatest extent, Sirius," she said simply. "And I mean that by also trying to preserve it by not waking me at—" She glanced at the clock on her bedside table. "—seven-thirty-eight on my day off just to play guinea pig on an experimental breakfast dish."

He obnoxiously bounced on her mattress so he lay on his side to face her. "Yes, but I must wake you at seven-thirty-eight so that you can help me live my life to its fullest extent, taking advantage of every waking moment I've been afforded thanks to your brilliance and utter tenacity, eh?"

Hermione sighed and narrowed her eyes at him. "You're going to twist and turn everything I say in regards to this, aren't you?"

"I'm all or nothing, sweetheart," he replied, grinning from ear-to-ear.

Hermione sighed and closed her eyes briefly. "And I'm assuming that if I make mention of you ever getting into my bed with your shoes on again, you'll throw that 'all or nothing' statement back in my face in such a way that involves nudity?"

"See? Now you're getting the hang of this, love."

"These damned eggs had better be heavenly, Sirius."

And they were. Much to her chagrin. Even if only because the eggs being that delicious meant the validation of his early-morning harassment.

"And?" he coaxed her excitedly, knee bouncing as he watched her take small bite after small bite, fingers clamped around the coffee mug sitting half empty in front of him. "Have I not reached the pinnacle of the breakfast phenomenon that is eggs Benedict? Have I managed to walk away from death with this skill?"

Hermione continued to chew, slowly and pointedly. "You've managed to walk away with your melodrama intact, Sirius. Yes, you've done a good job."

He looked utterly crestfallen. "Just a good job?!"

"I haven't keeled over now, have I?"

He narrowed his eyes at her. "It's the best bloody thing you've tasted this side of lunch. I know it is. You just don't want to admit it."

"The muffin's a bit too chewy."

"That's a lie from a hell even lower than Bellatrix's."

Hermione snorted and rolled her eyes. "Fine. It's delicious. Will that stop your harping? It's the best bloody eggs Benedict I've ever had, which I doubt says very much considering I'm not the biggest fan of the dish to begin with."

Sirius sighed and dropped his forehead onto her dining table. "You couldn't have led with that at any point?"

"You were the one barging into my flat, raving about your own cooking prowess as if you received an epiphany from the other side," she said, continuing to eat because it was quite good and she wasn't about to let it go to waste.

"How could you not like eggs Benedict?" he nearly whined. "Every other woman I've cooked it for loves it."

Hermione glowered at him, her grip on her fork tightening in indignation. "I will not be compared to your string of harlots from back in the eighties, Sirius Black."

"I bet that's why you picked the Death Chamber, isn't it? Your taste palate is a reflection of your atmospheric preferences."

Hermione nearly dropped the fork instead. "How would you even correlate—no, that's not why I chose the Death Chamber, and my preference of study has no bearing whatsoever on my palate. Sirius, honestly?!"

"Well, then, what the bleedin' hell brought you to the Death Chamber, of all places?" asked Sirius, stealing the fork and a bite of her food.

Hermione sighed and stole his cup of coffee in return. Which was technically her cup of coffee since she'd been the one to buy everything involved. "Honestly, it came down to the Death and Love Chambers."

"I expected you to have been drawn to the Time Room, actually."

"Did you want your expectations or my reality explained?"

"I was just saying," he grumbled petulantly. "You were the one with the Time Turner, for Circe's sake. I would've thought you'd try to—"

"Try to go all the way back into the seventies to try and prevent the first Wizarding War from ever happening?" she finished for him. She shrugged. "I would've. I was so tempted to pursue the Time Room for that very reason, which was why I couldn't go in there. Time is too fragile for me to contemplate dipping a finger, but death and love seemed too strong and concrete to be swayed."

"And yet here I am, a product of your swaying." He stole the mug back for a sip before handing it back. "So why not the Love Chamber?"

Hermione snatched the fork out of his hand and took another bite of the eggs to stall for time to formulate the right way to phrase it all. The answer, she felt, sat right there in the middle of her forehead.

And of course Sirius would be able to see it.

"You went with the Death Chamber because it was the next best thing to the Time Room, didn't you? It'd be harder to accomplish something of worth, but it would forgive your failures. You thought it'd be too easy in the Time Room."

"You make me sound like a right overconfident bitch, Sirius."

"Your words, love," he said, shrugging. He stood up with the now-empty plate and mug.

Anger and frustration and not a little bit of self-hatred mingled in the cold that seeped into her sock-clad toes and into the fingertips she couldn't hide in the sleeves of her jumper.

"You should know by now that even if I could save one person, I absolutely would," she said.

"That sounds a lot more like Harry than you, Hermione," said Sirius, his back to her as he stood at her sink, filling the dishes with water. "Last time I checked, you were the logical one who knew when to cut her losses."

She scoffed. "I researched Magical Law for almost the entirety of my third year to try and save Buckbeak."

"But Buckbeak was still alive, wasn't he?" he asked, glancing at her over his shoulder as he scrubbed the Muggle way.

"And so were you, even if only on a technicality." Hermione put her sock-clad feet back on the tile floor of her kitchen as she stood up and crossed the room to stand beside Sirius at the sink. "I don't understand what you were trying to accomplish this morning, Sirius. Are you trying to guilt me for bringing you back?"

"No," he muttered softly. "I want to understand why you risked so much to save one person instead of more—no, I'm not trying to guilt you, and I know. I know the serious repercussions of meddling with time, but… It stings a little bit, you know? Being here right now only because of a technicality that I don't quite deserve."

Hermione's brain labeled his words as they registered in her ears: survivor's guilt.

He paused his scrubbing to frown at her. "And I know the sacrifices that you've made to accomplish this—the way everyone looked at you last night at the Burrow when you weren't looking back, Granger, don't try to hide that from me the way you hid it all from them. I'm not trying to belittle the work you've done—"

"Well, you're doing splendidly."

"—but I wasn't bloody worth—"

She smacked the scrub and pan out of his hands so she could turn him fully and wrap her arms around him, one arm around his neck and the other 'round his back, trying to envelop his 6' frame with her own 5'4". He dripped soapy water onto her floors before finally moving them to be absorbed by her jumper, embracing her just as tightly.

"You are bloody worth it, Sirius Orion Black," she muttered into his shoulder. "Worth that seven years of blood, sweat, and tears, and I wouldn't take it back for anything."

She felt him take a deep, even breath and an even steadier exhale—one that she realized she had mirrored.

"So you won't put up much of a fight when I tell you we have an appointment with our favorite Malfoy in half an hour to make sure you've still got all the right blood, sweat, and tears after everything you've done?"

Hermione nearly growled.

"Congratulations, Gran—er, Hermione—that just doesn't sound right." Draco cringed a bit, shook his head, and then slapped her file shut, ignoring the way she rolled her eyes. "Granger, you've got a relatively clean bill of health."

He sat on his desk, one Italian-leather-shoe-clad foot hitched up and the other firmly on the ground as he addressed both Sirius and Hermione, who were seated in the small living space in his office.

"Relatively?" echoed Sirius from where he was sprawled out on the settee, looking ready for a therapy session. "From a range between your relation to Bellatrix and Voldemort, how relatively close would she be to the standard for health?"

Hermione grimaced and shifted uncomfortably in the wingback armchair beside the older man, at whom she was presently glowering. "That's a terrible scale, Sirius."

Draco glanced at her appraisingly. "I'd say she's a Nott."

Her glower shifted to Draco.

"The irony," snorted Sirius, summoning one of the knick-knacks from Draco's shelf into his hand and examining it before banishing it back to the shelf and summoning another. "So what would you recommend? Further limited use of magic and additional bedrest?"

"I'd recommend house arrest, but you were never one for benign counsel, were you?" sighed Draco, cocking an eyebrow at the patient in question, steadfastly ignoring the way Sirius had his personal items flying about the office. He tossed her folder onto the desk and crossed his arms over his chest. "Since that's the only way I know to keep you out of your place of work."

Hermione nearly snarled. "I'm not—I haven't been performing any new rituals, if that's what you're insinuating. I haven't even used any magic since I woke up yesterday."

Draco nodded in what he likely thought was a benevolent manner, but to Hermione, it was just shy of patronizing. "I see that. However, your results are still showing some magical drain."

Hermione blanched and hoped her poker face held.

Sirius leaned forward, elbows on his knees. "Where do you think it's coming from?"

"I've got about eight different diagnostic theories stuffing your file, and I'm hoping none of them are right," answered Draco.

"Would you care to enlighten us on some of those theories?" asked Hermione, sounding more unaffected than she actually felt.

"The real question would be if you'd enlighten us to any details once I disclose some of these theories," countered Draco wryly.

Hermione knew then and there that if both of them had been friends during their school years, she would've absolutely hit him at least thrice a week.

"Ah, but that's our Hermione. She's got her own Department of Mysteries underneath those glorious curls."

Sirius, though, she did hit, whipping her coat at him and eliciting his uproarious laughter.

"I will address what I am at liberty to discuss," she said primly.

"Considering all present parties were present to your little death party not even a week ago, Granger, I'd say your meager attempts at adhering to any nondisclosure agreements are moot."

"Draco—"

He held up his hand and then waved off her words. "I theorize the drain to be just leftover from the ritual, so I'm going to give it another week's observation, Granger. If the drain remains, then we can address it properly and thoroughly, eh?"

Hermione pursed her lips and sat back in her chair.

"Meanwhile," said Draco, standing up again and crossing the space between the desk and the settee, brandishing his wand in a gentle flourish that lit up Sirius like a Christmas light.

"If you wanted me to light up your life, baby cousin, you could've just asked."

"All you've done since returning is darken my doorstep, Black," grumbled Malfoy, rolling his eyes, "with your ridiculous puns and childlike need to touch everything—would you put that back, please? That was a gift from a curandero."

"Oh, from San Martin?" asked Sirius, sitting up, his glow shifting from an incandescent yellow to a gentle green. "I tried my hand at delving into the Talocan—the contemporary Aztec spiritual underworld, Granger, you should really read up on it—when this gorgeous bird came to visit in the summer of seventy-nine, but—"

"I would really rather not hear about you plumbing any sort of depths, spiritual or otherwise," drawled Draco, in a perfect imitation of both his father and godfather.

Sirius grinned broadly. "You are catching onto my way of thinking, aren't you? I knew I'd be a good influence on you."

Draco sneered, but it only held a fraction of the heat it once had.

Hermione could only lean against the arm of her chair, kicking off a shoe to tuck her foot under herself and watch the show. In the short amount of time he'd been back, she'd already picked up on the way Sirius had planned to latch himself to his young cousin.

If it was a psychological compensation for his perceived shortcomings in his relationship with Regulus Black and-or a sense of camaraderie with another young man who wished to move out from under a heavy legacy, Hermione couldn't tell. She remained a proponent of both, regardless.

"You should come over for breakfast one day," said Sirius, now glowing a sweet lilac hue. "Hermione and I had a wonderful batch of eggs Benedict—"

"You had better not be inviting people to my flat, Sirius Black," said Hermione, eyebrows raised.

"—since that particular dish might be better suited to your circumstances, you regular double-crosser, you," continued Sirius.

"Are you bloody comparing me to Benedict Arnold?" hissed Draco.

"Would you rather be soft-boiled eggs?"

"I hate you."

"Oh, cousin, we're going to have a marvelous time together."

"How did you describe it again?" asked Hermione, her quill sashaying across the parchment as she crossed out several lines of writing.

Cedric grimaced as he tried to pull together a reasonable explanation, but he was never the best with that kind of thing. "I suppose it's like being on drugs," he answered, though his voice rose on the tail end of his statement as if he was asking a question. "Not that I've got much experience on that front, but I mean that it's all a bit hazy and you're not fully in control, but you're aware of certain things."

Hermione opened her mouth but then closed it again. Her honey-brown eyes slid around the room as she seemingly tried to digest his explanation. She winced as she turned back to the stack of parchment on her lap and noted her findings. Cedric was fairly sure she was adding another "To Be Revised" notation in the margins; he'd seen those quite frequently when she'd passed by close enough for him to read over her shoulder.

He cleared his throat. "So back to the topic—"

"We can change that too," she chirped. "That'd be perfect."

"Nope," he said, leaning back on one elbow and crossing his ankle over the other as he lounged as best as he could on the nebulous "floor" on his side of the Veil. "I'm not letting this go until you simply accept it. I would have asked you to the ball had we spent any amount of time together beforehand."

She rolled her eyes again and pushed herself up from where she'd been sitting on the stone floor of the dais for the last several minutes as she'd interrogated him about the atmosphere of what lay beyond the Veil. She'd moved most of her work into the Death Chamber to better pick apart his spectral brain about all he knew of death and the Veil.

It was amusing and a bit jarring for him to see such a professionally put-together woman in her stylish high heels, perfectly-pressed pinstripe trousers, and pretty blouse shuck her Unspeakable robes, mussing her curly hair in the process, toss it aside, and sit down upon the floor, Indian-style. It reminded him of the several times he'd seen her studying out by the lake, surrounded by sunshine and a veritable storm of assignments and personal research projects.

"Did you forget that we traveled to the World Cup on the same Portkey?" she asked, reaching down to flip open a giant, violet book that looked on the verge of disintegration. Cedric immediately veered his gaze to another stack of books to keep from ogling Hermione's figure. "You dropped from a tree."

He did remember, as a matter of fact. He remembered being quite shy and intimidated by the small battalion of popular Gryffindors, not to mention the fact that that three of them had already built a notorious reputation of being caught up in rumored adventures every single year. He also remembered thinking that the young witch whose Muggle clothes actually looked well-coordinated had pretty caramel and chocolate curls that threatened to spill from the ponytail at the base of her neck.

"We didn't spend time together though," he said instead. "It was to the same capacity as living in the same castle for four years without interacting. I mean that if we'd had our conversation in library earlier in the year, I would've felt compelled to ask you."

Hermione scoffed and flipped through another book, another lock of her hair falling out of its bun. "Because you absolutely would've wanted to spend the entirety of the Yule Ball talking."

"That's always preferable to being paraded around for being chosen to risk your life for spectacle. I had to fight a bloody dragon, and then they make me dance. In front of my peers."

She threw a pointed glance at him over her shoulder. "You literally signed up for it."

He rolled his eyes and sighed in concession of the fact. "Well, yes, but no one said anything about dancing before the bloody Goblet was put out."

"No one said a thing about dragons either!" Hermione laughed, and he grinned at the sound. "Now what did you say you feel when you surface in the Veil?" she asked.

He bit his lip, grimacing once again. "Like waking up being poisoned so that everything looks like it trembles a bit and is hidden behind a very thin, gauze-like material—"

"Like a Veil?"

"D'you want my help or not?!"

Hermione burst out laughing again and turned back to the book in her hand before crouching down to use her thigh as a flat surface to jot down more notes. "You know, at first, I thought you were complimenting me, but you've taken this conversation so far that I'm not sure if you're following it just because you're bored or—"

"Or if I genuinely believe that I would've preferred your company over Cho's and must defend it against the incessant perpetuation of your ideas of adolescent status quo and the social pressures of being an ideal heartthrob and Triwizard Champion?"

Hermione met Cedric's smug smirk with a scrunched up expression of suppressed laughter that she obviously decided not to let loose. "Well, if you keep insisting on this, then I'll have to throw another wrench into your hypothetical plans. Even if you had asked me, I wouldn't have agreed to go with you."

He twitched, jerking out of his lazy position and feeling torn between mild offense and embarrassment at his own assumptions. Hermione hummed cheerfully as she smiled at him and finished off her writing with a flourish before rolling up her parchment.

I've received comments about how this story kind of lost its dark turn since its first iteration, and there's honestly a reason for that. I'm not that kind of author. I tried it, and I couldn't sustain it because I'm full of puns and foolishness, and while I may still try to bring that atmosphere and that headspace back into certain portions of this story, it was incredibly difficult and frankly a little damaging to prolong it throughout a story, at least it was damaging to me. I think it was a primary reason as to why I stopped and got hung up on it—because I was forcing it and forcing it too hard. The heavy emotional atmosphere bled into my other stories, and while I think it was a worthwhile exercise to know I could do it, I think I'd rather leave it off for a short story down the road, not an extended fic like this.

So forgive me. Like I said, I'm full of puns and foolishness.