Chapter 41: Clavis est remissio
The decorations had gone up and the pumpkins had been carved. Halloween was approaching and this was quickly followed by the cold weather.
The school was abuzz with excitement as they prepared for a day out. Just in time for Halloween, a Hogsmeade weekend had been scheduled.
Hermione, on the contrary, was preparing for a quiet day in the castle. Hogsmeade had always been a special time for her and Sirius, and she remembered that most acutely in the lead up to this trip, mostly because there would be no chance that she would be going with him, at this time, or any other times.
Now that so much time had passed since their disastrous break up, Hermione was more able to cope with what had happened between them. Still, she caught herself off-guard on numerous occasions thinking about, and fantasising about how wonderful it would be if Sirius were to come along, and sweep her off her feet again.
Hermione began to feel her head throb with the amount of over-thinking that was going on in her brain.
‘Stop it, Hermione,’ she thought, ‘there’s no use thinking like that. It’s not practical.’
Hermione was completing her homework in the common room. This was to the great consternation of those around her as she kept trying to shush their game of Exploding Snap. Needless to say, her constant disapproving looks did not work.
For the tenth time that evening, Hermione had had to vanish an inappropriate word from her parchment. She looked over at her quill. It appeared to be the usual one that she used.
She looked around at the others in the common room. Everyone else seemed to be deeply absorbed in their own things, so it could not be them that kept changing things on her piece of homework.
Hermione gave up the search, and continued writing her essay for awhile longer. He quill began to malfunction again. She watched with wide-eyed awe as the quill began to create discernible sentences.
“Will...”
“You...”
“Go...”
“To...”
“Hogsmeade...”
“With...”
“Me?”
Hermione stared down at the parchment on which her essay was written. Was this some person’s idea of a cruel joke? Who in the name of Merlin would think that was in any way funny?
Hermione felt that familiar prickling sensation at the back of her neck. Feeling entirely and completely creeped out, she whipped her head around, hoping to find the culprit of this twisted act.
She saw that Lily was concentrating on her own essay. Estrella was nowhere to be found, but then again, neither was Remus. Alice was sitting on a window seat, chatting with Frank and Kenneth.
Heloise decided to join the Marauder’s on this particular evening. Hermione flicked her eyes over to where they were sitting, but her eyes lingered for a fraction of a second too long. Silver eyes locked into brown, before Sirius quickly turned away, as though he had seen something obscene.
Hermione was quite familiar with his gaze, having spent many a night staring into their molten depths over previous summers. This time she noticed something almost indefinable, and suddenly Hermione knew who had charmed her quill. It was the one who had given it to her as a gift in the first place.
She dropped the quill in question, in surprise, as though she expected it to commit some other horrible act.
Her eyes sought out his in the crowded common room, with a new sense of urgency. She had to validate her hypothesis. However, hard as she looked, she could not find him.
‘Perhaps, he really did do it, and thinks that I don’t want to go, and now he’s embarrassed,’ thought Hermione in a rush.
‘Maybe he doesn’t realise that I would actually love to go with him!’
‘Well I have been a bit distant with him since “that thing”.’
Hermione always referred to the scene with Severus, and their subsequent falling out as ‘that thing’. Hermione was not one to run away from her problems, but it seemed to make it easier to deal with if she separated herself from it.
Deciding that she could no longer concentrate on her homework, or form any kind of cohesive thought, she gave up, slammed her book shut and moved out of the portrait hole, in search of some fresh air.
Hermione did not have any particular destination in mind when she set out for her walk, and she, not surprisingly, found herself to be gravitating towards Hagrid’s hut.
She had been visiting Hagrid semi-regularly over her time at Hogwarts, and was extremely grateful for her his calming presence in her life. There were many barriers that prevented them from having the kind of relationship they once had/had in the future, but Hermione could not think of any way that would remedy this. How do you explain to someone that you know they have a sixteen-foot tall brother that goes by the name of Grawp? It was better that people did not know, even if that meant that Hermione had a greater burden to bear. With time she had found ways to cope, and there were people who knew her real story and were always willing to listen, and to help.
Ma and Pops had been an inexhaustible source of comfort and support. But even they did not know the full extent of Hermione’s pain. Hermione used the same reason that she had used all those years ago when she first arrived in the 1970s. After all, what mother would want to find out that her child, both biological and surrogate, and their families, were brutally slaughtered? It would have been cruel on Hermione’s part to let something like that get out.
Hermione knocked on Hagrid’s door, and he bustled out in a flowery pink apron, not too dissimilar to his flowery pink umbrella. She had a faint smile at this, and followed his enthusiastic invitation to sit inside.
After talking over tea and scones (Hagrid was the only one to take a scone), Hermione left the hut with a feeling similar to as if the weight of the world had been taken from her shoulders.
She almost skipped back to the castle; She felt as light as air. That was until she spotted Sirius coming from the opposite direction.
There were no trees, or anything to hide behind, so Hermione had to resign herself to the fact that she could not ignore him. She would have to, at least, say hello. However awkward it may be.
As he got closer, she noticed that he did not appear to be his usual self. He almost appeared to be nervous, as though he was afraid of someone coming along and catching them together.
“Errr..hi,” he said awkwardly, uttering his first words to her in over a year, “how have you been?”
“Fine,” said Hermione, surprised that he was willing to initiate a conversation with her given that the last thing that he had initiated with her was an argument.
“How are you?” she replied.
“I’m fine too...listen – did you get the message I ‘sent’ you?” he said in so much of a rush that Hermione had to double check that she had heard him right.
“Did I get the message that you sent me?” she repeated to him. He nodded.
“Would that happen to be a message that was charmed to appear on my Transfiguration essay?”
Sirius nodded once more, not trusting his mouth to be able to produce any kind of comprehensible sound.
“Yes...yes, I did get the message.”
Hermione said nothing more that might indicate a reply to the actual question that he wanted to ask.
Finally he plucked up the courage and just asked her.
“So...would you like to go to Hogsmeade with me? It will be nicer than going out alone, or not going at all.”
Hermione had to agree with him on that count, and although she had not given his offer any serious thought, she could not help but agree to go with him.
“I would love to go to Hogsmeade with you, Sirius”
HPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHP
“Are you ready to go?”
Sirius had descended down the stone stairs, into the Gryffindor common room. Hermione looked up from the armchair that she was sitting in.
When she did look up, she saw that he was dressed rather handsomely in tight black skinny jeans, with a brightly coloured, purple t-shirt. This just about screamed the name of the muggle band that it was promoting, and it was not in any way diminished by the black leather jacket that he was sporting over the top. She had to admit that he was looking very attractive, dark hair spilling over into his translucent grey eyes.
Sirius smirked when he noticed that Hermione was staring at him. When Hermione’s eyes had travelled down to his lips, and she sae the smirk, she hastily shut her own mouth and scrambled in her brain for an answer to his question.
“Sure...let’s go.”
They stepped out of the portrait hole one after the other, and continued their journey down to the village.
HPHPHPHPHPHPHP
Hermione felt rather content as she was getting ready for bed that evening.
She recounted her day with Sirius as she brushed her teeth. She lingered over the moments where they showed genuine care for one another. At first, their conversation was very stifled and it was constrained to comments about the weather, and other such matters. However, as the day progressed, they were well on the road to their old selves.
Hermione did not let her desires get ahead of the reality of the situation. While she had stopped being angry at him a long time ago, their trust in one another was yet to be restored. Having thought that, she had an inherent feeling that the seeds of trust had already been planted with their somewhat renewed friendship. and for now, Hermione was happy with that.