Why did the bloody Amortentia always have to get involved?
Hermione hated the feeling of no control. When the love potion touched her lips, however slight it may have been, it still succeeded in throwing her for a loop for the remainder of the night.
While Sirius and Frank fixed themselves up and regained their balance, Hermione still lay on the floor, replaying what had just occurred through her head in slow motion.
Without time for hesitation, Sirius grabbed hold of Harper's delicate hands and proceeded to help her up. Herein lies another moment of frozen time for Sirius and the girl whose hand he held.
Hermione tried her best to spring to her feet, to have her mind return to the party without a second thought, but once her eyes met Sirius', there was a new level of emotion that took over her. Never before had she been this nervous around him. Her heart beat louder than the screams of the party, and even Sirius began to notice this. He felt beads of sweat build upon his forehead while a seconds-long moment ended up feeling like an eternity.
"I'm so sorry, you two," Frank said, knocking the two out of their trances. The kind boy took notice of the spilled liquid all over the new girl's shirt. "Oh, Harper, your shirt..."
"No worries, Frank," she spoke, while Sirius nearly sprinted to grab her some napkins.
Upon arrival, Sirius watched as Harper flustered in trying to clean up her shirt. It was absolutely adorable. But, his awareness shifted, and his heart dropped even deeper as the scent of the girl in front of him grew stronger and stronger.
The parchment, and roses, and ginger... I knew it was her.
Left in the dark about the origins of the stronger scent, Sirius felt the anxiousness grow inside him despite having a hunch that Harper was indeed who he had smelled that day in Potions class. He was more aware of how close he actually was to her; how close his lips were to hers. That is, until these new emotions prompted Harper to scurry through the party, away from Sirius and now out of his sight. He felt confused, powerless, and nervous.
Why would she leave?
Meanwhile, Hermione couldn't take what was running through her head. Sure, she had felt intense anxiousness around him before but now? It was so much more amplified, even if she didn't ingest the Amortentia.
She no longer wanted to just be near him by chance, she wanted to bring herself so much closer. She wanted to throw herself into his arms, to be kissed by his lips and held tight.
And before then, when her eyes gravitated toward those very lips more and more, she chose to remove herself from the situation. She darted through the dancing crowd and out of the party to the common room, where everything seemed more peaceful.
But of course, her knight in shining armor was—as always—only seconds behind.
"Harper, what's going on?"
She panted, pacing around the room like a mad woman. It took her a good while to formulate a response to the one causing her extreme nervousness.
"It's, I don't know, Sirius. It's personal," she said, shaking her head. All she wanted was to be close to him, but with each step he took toward her, the beat of her heart picked up speed.
"You can tell me, Harps, you can tell me anything." He hated seeing Harper upset.
His sincerity only led her to internally fawn over him even more, which was the last thing Hermione wanted.
"I can't..."
Her hands gripped tight on the roots of her hair as she paced through the common room. She couldn't comprehend what Emma's drink had done to her mind, her thoughts, her perception... The list seemed endless to Hermione.
What was going on?
In the battle between her head and her heart, Hermione heart took the upper hand. Just as the black-haired boy across the room was doing, she too began to step closer and closer. Slowly her clenched fists removed themselves from her head, her fingers and hands remained still, and her shoulders relaxed ever so slightly.
Why was the space between her and Sirius getting closer and closer? Only moments prior he was all the way across the room...
Though her mind had seemingly no way to stop her heart, a part of her began to calm down.
Is he—is this situation—really that bad? Is the Amortentia really that bad? Yes! This is her heart talking, she couldn't possibly listen.
Amidst this mental war, Hermione noticed something rather peculiar about the situation when staring into Sirius' grey eyes.
He was acting the same way she was. Without being exposed to Amortentia. He too was stepping closer and closer to her, both with the concern for her mental state and the warmth of his feelings hidden in his expression.
Seriously, what in Merlin's name is happening? Does he...?
The whirlwind of someone exiting the secret party room partially shook Hermione out of her trance yet again. Another moment or two and her heart's greatest desire may have been fulfilled.
"Hey," asked a confused Marlene, "why'd you guys leave the party? Is something wrong?"
"Oh, I—I was just checking up on—"
"I think I'm going to be sick," the aching girl blurted out as she sprinted up the stairs with her hands glued to her stomach.
Part of her statement was true, part wasn't. It was without a doubt some form of sickness, just not the kind that would make you upturn your dinner. This kind of sickness was mental: her mind was aching. So, Hermione saw her opportunity and she took it.
She was only moments away from changing Sirius' list of girls he's kissed from eight to nine, and that scared her more than anything else. It scared her because in this moment, it was the only thing she wanted.
Locking herself in the girl's dormitory was the only option Hermione saw fit.
For the boy waiting back in the common room, his mind was running rampant for reasons unlike Harper. There were so many moments during this night where Sirius felt as though time had stopped between him and Harper, both in the little corner of the party room and in the wide-open space of the common room.
And while Harper battled between her head and her heart, Sirius's nervousness was what kept him wary. Never around any girl had he been this nervous, and it scared him.
But the frantic way that Harper was acting scared him even more. It pained him to see her like this, all he wanted was for her to be safe, to be protected. But something was up. She wasn't herself.
Even as she took step after step closer to him and he found himself wondering if she happened to feel the same way as he, he knew that this moment, this night, was not good for Harper.
She's not herself, but why? Could she possibly feel...the same way?
Though his heart wanted more than ever to embrace the new girl and press his lips to hers, to change his list of girls he's kissed from eight to nine, it could wait. Her mental sanity was more important.
So when Hermione darted away as soon as they were interrupted, Sirius didn't chase after her. He figured that a bit of alone time, without a boy, would help her figure out what's going on; a good night's sleep could help clear her head. But Hermione got anything but a good night's sleep that evening. Her disappearance from Marlene's party posed many questions for those who had grown to care for her. Lily had asked James when he had last seen Harper, Marlene began to worry that something was wrong with the party that made Harper leave, and question after question was directed towards Sirius. Just because he had seen her last and had spent the most time with her then, didn't automatically mean he knew what was going on in her head.
Not even Hermione herself knew what was going on in her head.
For the entire morning, she darted left and right around answering questions. Thank Merlin the end-of-term exams were coming up, because it soon became her perfect excuse to leave any situation. A quick, "sorry, I have to study," could get her out of nearly everything, since everyone else was in the same boat as her.
As time passed from the moment Hermione's lips met with the Amortentia-infused drink, the gross, messy feeling in the pit of her stomach didn't fade like she would have expected. Though after that fateful night she somewhat was able to better understand what was going through her mind, it lingered on as if it had been there all along. As if the Amortentia did not create these feelings out of thin air, rather it had brought forth what Hermione had been denying for weeks.
But when she was talking with James, she openly admitted to her affection for Sirius...she had already uncovered what was in her heart and gave up denying it, right?
Clearly her reaction to the slightest touch of that Amortentia was trying to tell her something. Maybe the problem didn't reside in her denial, rather in the bottling of these emotions. Had she really uncovered what was in her heart? Or just believed she did because she made one tiny confession?
Nearly a week after Marlene's party, Hermione had come to this very revelation: she couldn't go on with this infatuation with Sirius if she just kept shoving it under the rug. It was either all or nothing.
If you would have asked Hermione what she would have done in this situation a month ago, she would have answered confidently with the latter. Shoving her feelings under the rug was what she was used to. It was the easier choice. The choice that would allow her to succeed on this mission quicker.
But now, Hermione wasn't sure. Every time she looked at Sirius, she melted. Though nearly every other girl in the school fawned over his appearance (she had both heard stories and seen it firsthand), Hermione had grown to know and understand the boy underneath it all. Underneath the assumptions of half of Hogwarts' greatest pranking pair, there was a caring, intelligent, and loyal person who would lay his life down for the people he loved in a heartbeat. Hermione admired more about him than just what she had heard in stories, making her reluctant to give up these suddenly strong feelings just like that.
And now, she didn't know what to do.
Sirius, on the other hand, was left with just as many questions after Marlene's party. He couldn't stop thinking about if Harper had grown to feel that same was as he, or if he had let his thoughts wander a little too far. By this moment, he had every reason to believe that she was good just like all of his other friends, which is all he could ever want and ask for. So what was stopping him from confronting his feelings head-on?
As Sirius contemplated how to react to what his heart was telling his head, Hermione had other priorities. She was responsible for more than just her studies or her thoughts about Sirius during this time: getting Peter out of the picture was the most vital task back in this time. She needed to sever their ties, and she needed to do it quickly.
Immersing herself with Edgar Vanity's book, however, still remained the roadblock in her little plan. After reading everything through multiple times over, Hermione was stuck with disappointment.
There needed to be something telling in this book, otherwise she had no where to go after it. She felt she was at a dead-end in her list of tasks to complete.
That is, until a small fit of rage allowed for another revelation. Furious in this moment, Hermione threw her "Astronomy textbook" on the ground in the library nook she had created for herself. The book had flipped itself to the last chapter, containing some of the darkest magic the wizarding world had to offer.
Nearly ripping the pages, Hermione grabbed the overpowering book yet again. But instead of throwing it back down on the ground, something about this page had caught her eye.
It contained a biography of Herpo the Foul, one of the darkest wizards to ever exist. Vanity wrote about spells that Herpo that Foul had created himself, beasts that he had both created, tamed, and trained for combat (including the Basilisk), and a list of people victimized by him. She had already read this, why was she reading it again?
But, one particular thing had caught her eye. A mere paragraph that she must have skipped over. A paragraph describing how Herpo the Foul was the first wizard to truly cheat death by taking a part of his soul and concealing it in another object upon killing someone else. It gave him a second chance; an alternative way to scrape through life incase his body perished; an immortality that no dark wizard could resist. This dark, soul-kept object, she read, was called a horcrux.
Hermione shivered in her seat while connecting the dots.
This is how Voldemort has stayed alive all these years, isn't it? All the times that Harry defeated him...and he was somehow resurrected, it was all connected to this.
Through this dark magic, this horcrux, he didn't perish. It has to be the only way.
This knowledge, Hermione knew, was exactly what Voldemort was hiding.
A/N UPDATE (7/19/21): i have been waiting SO long to finally write this scene and i'm so glad it's finally here for you all to read it to! it's such a big step in hermione's journey proud of her! thank you all for 203K! every vote count and all of your support means the world to me. (also this is probably one of my fav chapter titles i've come up with lol)
also comment your predictions!! i wanna see what you guys think's gonna happen ;)
see you next chapter! - callahan