It isn’t like her to not get back to him. He knows she’d be busy today but she always lets him know what she’s up to or when she gets home from wherever she is when they don’t spend the day together.
Her silence — going on ten hours now — is deafening and has started to get to him. Normally, he lets her have her space but something inside him is telling him something isn’t right. Anxiety, a post-war effect, begins to fill him like an hourglass.
Making up his mind, he grabs a handful of floo powder and throws it in the fireplace to floo call her only to be thrown back forcefully, landing on his elbows. Almost disoriented, he leans forward, shaking his head. Anxiety turns into full-blown panic and he stands up quickly, grabs his jacket, and Apparates outside her flat.
“Hermione!” He calls out, knocking gently on her front door. “Hermione, it’s me. Please, let me in, honey.” His knocks grow louder and louder, bordering on banging. He tries alohomora on the doorknob but it doesn’t budge. Just as he begins to look around for another way to get inside, the door opens with a soft click. Sirius steps in slowly, apprehensively, with his wand out in defence. It’s dark inside save for only a lone candle lit in the centre of the coffee table.
He’s about to call for her again when his animagus senses pick up the soft sobs coming from upstairs. Still cautious, his wand before him, he takes the steps upstairs one at a time quietly. Sirius finds her bedroom with the door slightly ajar and makes his way in, the door eerily creaking as he does so. When he has full view inside her room, he sees her buried under the covers of her bed, crying. He throws his wand to the side and quickly runs to her.
Sirius sits on the bed, pulling down the covers only to find her in the foetal position, her back turned to him. She lifts her head to look at him and promptly crawls onto his lap, throwing her arms around his neck.
A new wave of sobs rattles her body, her tears wetting his shirt and hair, but he doesn’t care. He cradles her, holding her close, so close, he wishes she could climb inside his body so he could protect her forever inside his chest, near his heart. Sirius whispers a slew of “I’ve got you, sweetheart” and “You’re okay, I’m here” into her hair, cushioning her head with one hand and caressing her back with the other.
He holds her as she calms down, until her sobs become soft whimpers and hiccups and her whimpers turn into even breathing.
She lifts her head to look at him then flicks her eyes down to his shirt. “‘M sorry. Your shirt’s all wet now.” She mumbles, tucking her quivering bottom lip between her teeth.
Sirius shakes his head, cradling her face in his hands and kisses her nose. “I couldn’t care less about my shirt, tiny,” he reassures her. “Please, tell me what’s wrong.”
She huffs out a breath, trying to even her breathing, the gestures blowing his hair away from his face. She looks down before replying, “It’s so stupid. I’m being a stupid woman.”
“You’re anything but stupid, Hermione. If you don’t want to talk about it, that’s fine, too.” This time, he places a kiss on her forehead. “I can leave if you’d rather be alone. I was just worried about you.”
At the mention of his leaving, Hermione tightens her grip around his neck. “No,” She blurts out. “I don’t want you to go.” Her voice hitched a little, threatening to cry again.
“Shh, shh. It’s okay. I’m not going anywhere.” He soothes. Sirius kickes off his shoes and readjusts himself on her bed, leaning against the headboard. At the same time, Hermione keeps her place on his lap, settling between his legs, resting her head on his stomach.
He gathers her hair in his hands, running his fingers through her curls from the top of her head to the ends and back again. He does it over and over, letting her decide whether she wants to talk about it or not, letting her know without speaking that she’s safe here, now. Hermione lets out a contented sigh at the feeling of his fingers against her scalp.
They stay that way for a while, until finally, she breaks the silence. “I was having a good day, you know?” She begins, voice steady but soft and even. “I was out running errands. Shopping like I usually do, at the same market I always shop at,” she pauses, taking a deep breath. “I was trying to do everything quickly because I was so excited to see you tonight,” another pause. “I just needed one last thing before I was ready to head up to check out.”
She stops speaking for a long moment, and he glances down to find her staring blankly up at the ceiling. It looks like she’s concentrating on the ceiling lamp as if the lamp itself would surge out the words she’s trying to say instead of electricity.
“It was shampoo,” she continues. “All I needed was a bottle of shampoo. The same shampoo I buy every time, placed at the exact same spot every time. Nothing’s different. It’s always the same. Aisle six down to the left. Same spot every time.”
He continues playing with her hair, daring not to interrupt her stream of consciousness. The way the words easily flow out of her like water from an undisturbed lazy river.
“I grabbed the bottle the same way I always do. The same shampoo I always buy from the same spot every time and…I don’t know how I never noticed it before. Her shampoo. My mum’s shampoo.”
Sirius pauses his ministrations at the mention of her mum. They’d talked about this before. About losing their family to the war. He knows that Hermione’s situation is a little more delicate because while her parents are still physically alive, they’re no longer a part of her life. They have no recollection of ever having a daughter.
While her parents are living their life, making new memories, stress free and happy in Australia, Hermione has to live with the memories of the family she once had. Of the birthdays and holidays they once celebrated, of the first time her dad taught her to ride a bike, the first time she cried to her mum over a boy breaking her heart, of the smiles on their faces when she lost her first tooth.
It got so bad that at one point, she begged Harry to get rid of all her memories of her parents. Harry held her, letting her have her moment to grieve, but then he reminded her that while those memories hurt, someday, maybe she might need them to comfort her when she needed her parents the most.
Sirius admires her bravery for doing what she did. He’s always supported her decision because he would’ve done just about anything to have been able to save his friends and brother from their deadly fate.
He knows she struggles with her grief because – as she’s put it many times before – she feels like an imposter for grieving people that are still alive. Feels like she deserves all the pain and suffering.
“At first I was confused because I’d never seen it before. Then I started to wonder if-if maybe it was always out of stock o-or I don’t know, maybe they started carrying that brand but I just never saw it before. Not once.”
“And I’m standing there, confused because it's something I would’ve noticed before. I’ve seen that bottle so many times. In the corner of the shower of my parents bathroom. Blue with purple writing and purple swirls and it smelled of pine trees.” In that moment, Hermione closes her eyes and takes a deep breath as if she could physically smell the shampoo.
“I’m staring at the bottle and it’s now sitting in my mum’s shower in the corner and it feels like she’s going to reach for it, the way I think she always did but she didn’t and I felt numb. I couldn’t move until someone asked me to and I realised I’d been crying. I had to get out there. I probably looked like a complete idiot and all I could think about was getting out of there. Leaving everything behind and leaving and I did,” she shifts a little, sliding down a bit more as if she were trying to hide again.
“I thought I was doing so well. I thought I’d moved on. I thought I…I-I miss them so much, Sirius,” her voice trembles. “I guess I’ve just been hoping it would go away, that I wouldn’t feel this way anymore.”
“I don’t think it ever will,” he murmurs. Her body tensing under his touch. “But I think that’s sort of oddly comforting, in a way. When Regulus died, I was so mad at him. I was in denial for a while. I kept telling myself that he did it to himself, you know? He was the one that chose that life and he knew the consequences.”
“I refused to let myself think of him and when I did, I quickly reminded myself that Regulus is the only one to blame for his death. But then I started thinking of him more than usual, then often until I thought about him every day.”
Sirius lets out a sombre deep sigh. “I hated him for turning my denial and anger into grief. For making me think of when we were children and I’d play the piano for him when he’d cry or when he’d sneak into my room at night because he was scared of the dark. It was easier for me to hate him and be angry at him than face the reality that I missed my brother and that I should’ve done more.”
Hermione curls her knees up to her chest, wrapping her arms around Sirius’ thigh like a koala.
“That wasn’t your fault,” she mumbles.
“It wasn’t, you’re right but I did to him what my family did to me when he needed me the most – I turned my back on him,” he explains. “I don’t want you to live the rest of your life afraid of missing your parents, sweetheart. Harry’s right. Let your memories of them comfort you when you miss them the most. That's how we keep them alive.”
“All that grief and pain is love we still have left for them. Building and building and building up inside of us until it has nowhere else to go and it spills over like tea from a boiling kettle,” Sirius can see tears streaming down her face again and his heart breaks.
“So, you cry and you grieve and you get confused because the love that you never thought about when they were here but becomes so loud and bright when they’re not….it no longer hears us telling them we love them because they’re not here for us to tell them. It doesn’t know where to go anymore.”
“It hurts too much,” she whispers.
“I know it does, tiny. I know it does but sometimes it won’t. Sometimes you’ll smile when something reminds you of them and other times, like today, it’ll hurt so much you can’t breathe. Grief isn’t linear. There’s no manual, no guide. All we can do is wake up in the morning and do our best. For ourselves and for them.”
Her tears have dried and she’s breathing evenly through parted chapped lips, staring at the wall ahead of her. “I love you.”
Sirius thought that the first time they’d say that to each other would be during a more romantic setting but what’s more romantic, more intimate, than saying I love you when you're at your most vulnerable? When your feelings are so raw, so genuine, that it just can’t be helped because it’s real and it’s true.
So he says it back “I love you, too,” because it’s true and it’s as real as the warmth of her body against his leg or as real as her hair threading between his fingers as he runs his them through her hair.
It’s as true as the reality of the fact that they both have lost people they care most about and as real as the fact that they now have each other to navigate the long and winding road that is grief.
“I’m tired,” she barely whispers, her eyes closing, lashes kissing her cheeks.
“Go to sleep, sweetheart. I’m not going anywhere.”