A knock.

Someone was knocking, softly, yet insistently, perfectly in time with the beating of her heart. Knock-knock, beat-beat, beat, knock, beat, beat, beat. She stood, standing in the center, as though she were the axis in the circular room, the wooden floor laid so that the planks spoked out. Slowly, she turned; looking up at the silo of book-lined walls disappearing into a greying distance far above her head, there was no ceiling only a small opening of black night and silver stars almost beyond focusing.

The knocking continued and she walked towards the sound, a door shut in the curving wall. She reached down into the loose, velvet scarlet dress she was wearing, between her unbound breasts and fished out a small skeleton key hung on a gold ribbon tied around her neck. She bent over and fitted the key into the lock beneath the crystal door handle, twisted it home with a click, then removing it, tucked it away again. She straightened, turned the knob and pulled the door inward.

He smiled at her from the other side, across the threshold. Black darkness falling away from him on every side. She reached out with a hand, as though to save him from a fall, and he grasped hers tightly and with a movement so masculine and forthright she almost swooned, he stepped into the room and gently shut the door behind him.

"It worked," she whispered.

He nodded. "It would appear so."

They stood, very still, looking at one another.

An alternating flush of tears and laughter rushed through her head, into her face, her eyes and mouth filling with emotion. Everything inside of her was tumbling towards him, the weight of it pulling her, drawing her; she could barely breathe through the feeling of vertigo. She was spinning on the edge of him.

And still he stood.

Until, finally, he lifted his hands and opened his arms.

It was fierce. And full of furious love and longing. He pulled her against him, so tightly it should have hurt but it was only passion no pain and his head came down and his mouth found hers. His shoulders had hit the door and his hands were on her waist and in one fluid motion he turned with her and it was her shoulders against the door, her back pushed against the wood, his chest pressing against her own, his hands dropping lower to her hips and pulling there possessively. He was solid and yet moving with a kind of strength that did not overwhelm but complemented her own passive movements.

She gasped out of their kiss and he moved his mouth down into her neck, his tongue laving along her collarbone, out to her shoulder, nosing the material off her arm, his hand coming up to the other side of the collar and pulling the material down. She pulled her arms out and free and caught the back of his head, her fingers combing through great, silken hanks of his hair.

"Is this really happening?"

"No, it's a dream."

Then her hands were inside his jacket, pushing it off, tethering his arms as he moved to shrug it loose, her fingers working the buttons of his shirt, then pushing that after the sleeves of the coat. He pressed his hips hard against her, holding her fast and yanked the shirt and jacket off and tossed them to the floor before dipping his head to one of her uncovered breasts and her own head rocked back and her eyes closed and she groaned his name. His hands spread wide on her ribs and pushed the dress down and he followed with his mouth, the fabric of it sliding over the flare of her hips then pooling around her bare feet.

She pulled him back up to her and she kissed him. Reaching down between their bodies, she slid her fingers into the waistband of his trousers, the button fly straining and with both hands she unbuttoned him and the material petaled open and she had the velvet steel smoothness of him in her hand and he kissed her deeper. She pushed at the material, at his jutting hipbones. He went down on his knees in front of her, his hands smoothing over the length of her thighs and then his mouth was on her and she cried out.

He stood slowly, her arms around his neck, his hands sliding behind her knees and pulling her legs up. She wrapped them around his waist and just that easily he was inside her, the side of his face hard against her ear. And he smelled of soap, and a woodstove fire, the peaty firewhisky and cinnamon. And he was moving in her arms, moving inside her body, his broad shoulders freckled and naked beneath her hands, his own hands wide and strong, holding her, his mouth against her ear, moaning her name over and over.

She closed her eyes, and he was already there, pulling her by the hand up the endless flight of winding stairs, the first step anchored in the middle of her dream room, past the books, up to the opening far overhead, out into the night sky, the stars welcoming them, the stairs still circling upwards. They were climbing higher, he was urging her on, his fingers tight around her own, he would not let go, his voice calling her name, calling her, and still they climbed and the stars exploded on either side. And she was falling, and he was catching her and a warm, thin blackness fell over her head like a veil.

"Hermione."

A low-pitched whisper, her name in the voice of a siren, she stirred and fought the urge to surface, to open her eyes. She did not want to turn away from that voice, return to the small, canopied bed in the Gryffindor rooms, the sleeping, snoring girls, the smell of feminine sweat and torrid, frustrated dreams hanging like cobwebs in the corners.

"Hermione." The whisper again, followed with a firm press of mouth on mouth, lips brushing lips, the cool-warm air of breath, and teeth against teeth.

She slitted her eyes open, inside a canopy of ginger waves, and dark eyes. She reached up and he was solid, in her arms, and she urged him down to her.

He laughed low. "There you are."

He leaned back pulling her towards him. His back was against the door, his long legs sprawled open, she was between his knees, her bum on the wooden floor and somehow it reminded her entirely of the feel of the summer-warmed green she had sat on the summer before with him. She laid her head on his chest, brushed her cheek against the dark hair there and ran the tip of her tongue over the largest inked symbol. She smiled as he growled at the touch. She sat up, his arms went tighter around her and she looked into his face.

"Well, there's an advantage to losing one's virginity in a dream – it was perfect."

He blushed and she leaned up quickly and kissed him. He laughed, "I felt pretty confident about the mechanics of it, more so now, but must warn you that subtleties may have been lost…"

She blushed and looked down. He still had his boots on, and the trousers were bunched around his ankles. She sat up and leaned away from him, over his legs, and untied one boot, tugging it off, and then pushing at the trouser leg while he kicked it free. She did the same with the other foot, tossing the pointy-toed boot to the side. His hands were at the small of her back and a shiver ran up the length of her spine and out the edges of her shoulders and tingled down into the peaks of her breasts. She shuddered. And he pressed his mouth to a spot right between her shoulder blades.

"Are you still sixteen?"

"This is a dream, Sirius, not a fantasy." She went up on her knees and turned to him, catching his hands in her own. "And what is my fantasy age then?"

"I don't know, haven't thought about it like that. I suppose an age where we wouldn't have to meet like this, where you could just come and live with me. But not…so much older that you see me for the pathetic pensioner I am…"

"Sirius, don't. Don't do that."

She held his gaze, unblinking and he nodded. "And, in all actuality, meeting like this, here," he looked around at the candle-lit room, the book-lined walls, the red and gold overstuffed furniture, the dark cabinets and then back to her naked form, "isn't too bad, is it?"

She felt her flesh warm under his hot perusal. She shook her head no. He stood and offered her a hand, helping her to her feet. He wrapped her into his arms and they stood together for a long moment. Reaching down he scooped up her dress and his trousers. They dressed quietly and then he took her by the hand and led her to a sofa, pulling her down beside him. A low coffee table stood there, a glass bowl on its surface, laden with grapes and a small plate beside that stood piled with thick squares of dark chocolate. Sirius crossed his bare feet on the tabletop and grabbed a handful of grapes; she took a large piece of chocolate, breaking it into bite-sized pieces in her hand. She folded her legs beneath her, leaning towards him and fed him one of the pieces; he ate one grape, and then pressed one between her lips.

"I really like the way you dream." He smiled at her and she fed him another piece of chocolate.

"This is all thanks to you."

"Mmmmm. In a way, I suppose. But you mixed the potion and performed the spell. I want to ask how many more summonings," he hesitated, "you think we can get out of it…but I'm not sure I really want the answer to that, either."

"Then I won't tell you. It would be an estimate, anyway."

"Don't tell me and I'll get to be surprised every time you summon me." He smiled so broadly she leaned in and kissed him.

"I love it when you smile," she whispered between his lips.

"Do you know, do you have any idea, how long we've got here?"

"I don't. I did as much research as I felt safe doing, you know things are terrible at Hogwarts now, so many of the books are not available and I didn't know how to recruit the boys into helping me locate the one book I needed."

"I've wanted to talk to you about that, well about Harry and Ron. You. The three of you."

She furrowed her brow and he smoothed it with a finger. "You must be joking. Sirius, please, not that again. Not now," she said quietly.

"No, not that. But along those lines. The boys are clever and brave, but it's you, Hermione, who thinks in ways they don't think. You remind me of us when we were your age. In a good way, a better way. Harry relies a lot on his emotions, Ron, amazingly, moves forward with this astonishing faith, but you, you put it all out on the table and look at it, study it, work it out like some complex Arithmancy problem and the answers you come up with are so unique, well, even," he rolled his eyes, "Snape's been impressed."

"Really?"

He nodded. "This thing, this situation, this war, I guess, is going to require something from each one of you, and I know that you can give what's required. I don't want you to feel alone in it, or unappreciated. It's hard for me to admit, sometimes, but we, the Marauders, we weren't like you lot. We didn't really give a toss about anyone but ourselves. Funny how thinking about that for a decade will haunt a person…sometimes I had to become Padfoot just to get some rest."

He looked away from her and she watched his face move through emotions she knew she would never completely understand, she reached for his hand and he squeezed his fingers around hers.

"But what I'm trying to say is that even if your efforts seem to slip into the background, or not be lauded in some way by the others, know that without you…Well, prophecies aside, I think, and I'm not alone in this, that you're integral, Hermione. An integral part. And if I can encourage you to keep devising and deducing and scheming, then I want to do that."

"That's what you want to do, Sirius?"

"And more. But listen, for a moment longer, the twins, Fred and George, if you can solve problems in the manner that they do, but with your cleverness, if you can keep doing that…" he trailed off and kissed the tips of each one of her fingers. "Hermione, I believe in you, more than I think I have ever believed in anyone before."

"Come here," she pulled him to her and he followed her body down into the down cushions of the sofa with his own body, his mouth finding her mouth. The candles burned low, shadows crawling up the walls and into the open sky above, the stars misty behind the morning dawn.

-----------------------------

"Hermione," Remus's voice was low-pitched and achingly melodious in the twilight of the ward. "I have something that belongs to you." He opened his wide-palmed hand and there lay a rumpled bit of parchment folded in the manner that she had grown intimately familiar with. She closed her eyes. "I haven't read it." She turned her head, looking at him closely and saw tears threatening on the edges of his own eyes. "It's not entirely my business, although I do have a good suspicion of what it is, and perhaps," his voice suddenly grew weary and thin, "I should have made it more of my business. No matter now." He leaned forward, over his knees and very earnestly looked into her face, "I'm sorry, Hermione. Truly sorry. For all of us, for him, for Harry, but for you. For you. As happy as he has been this past year, well, I want to thank you for that. If it's untoward, I don't much care, any longer. I'm glad he was able to feel hopeful and have something to hold onto."

He reached for the box of tissues on the metal bedside cart and pulled out two, handing her one. "Thank you," she whispered. They both wiped at their eyes in shared silence.

"So, this was found in your pocket when we brought you in to St. Mungo's. Professor Snape, ah," he looked over her head, his lips pursed against some emotion she couldn't quite recognize, "for reasons known only to himself, attempted to open it, unfortunately…and ah, well, it had been charmed with a repellent for the particularly nosy, which rather gave away the game."

She laughed through a sob. Remus smiled sadly. "I took the liberty in removing the charm, safe as houses now. " He thrust it at her. "He must have slipped it into your pocket at the Ministry. In that first room, Ron, Ginny…you. Oh, dear Merlin. You were unconscious, it was awful…and he went a bit wild." She slowly reached out and gestured for his hand, he took hers in both of his and she sat up and hugged him gently. He nodded into her hair and rocked her tenderly and for the first time in her life, she cried herself empty.

For hours afterward, she lay curled on her side, both her hands pressed to one breast, the missive open and curling against her damp skin.

My dearest H. I'm waiting for you on the edge of every dream. Forever yours, S.

"Sirius," she begged into the dark. "Oh, Sirius." And through the gloaming and into the dark forever night that hung outside the hospital window cranked half open beside her bed, turning away from the lights in the corridor, willfully dampening the whispered murmurs of the living, she closed her eyes and reached out for his hand, for his touch, the brush of his fingers, the warmth of him, the crooked, assured smile, the way his shoulders would hunch and his lower back bend, the muscles taut and strung with excitement beneath the layer of his golden flesh under the skim of her sweating palms, his mouth open and descending, his eyes closing softly at the touch of her lips. She felt the tears behind her eyelids and they burned and burned and burned. "Oh, Sirius," she begged again, "come back, come back. Are you dreaming there? Come back to me. Come into my sleep."