AN: This is a one shot, and it is intentionally confusing to read. But stick at it and I'll meet you at the other side!

Broken Seams

Hermione thinks she might want to have sex with him. She doesn't quite know where the feelings derived from, but she knows what she wants, and she wants him. She fancies him, and maybe she always has, since he stepped out from the shadows in the Shrieking Shack, or when he bellowed 'God Rest Ye, Merry Hippogriffs' at the top of his lungs as he stomped up the stairs that Christmas spent at Grimmauld.

He has his back to her, but she can still see the muscles flexing in his arms as he dips the knife into the butter and whips it across his toast. The butter is messy and he licks his thumb of it, swearing under his breath when crumbs fly on to his clean shirt. Always in shirts, she muses; sometimes navy, sometimes maroon or white, but today black. He is mourning for something, or someone, and she can't pinpoint exactly who. Only that black suits him. It's in his bones. She is distracted and fascinated by his hands, the strength of them and the tattoos that spill over his knuckles and fingers. One day, she senses those fingers will lie on her body and touch her, stroke her skin softly, squeeze her arse; somewhere within her she feels like he already has touched her like this, and she doesn't know how she feels about that. The wedding ring on his left hand catches her eye.

He senses her presence, her descent from the staircase into the kitchen, and when he turns around to look at her she smiles. Her hair tells him where she has been, or rather, what she has been doing. It is dark outside, early evening, and she has only arisen from her bed. She sleeps a lot these days. Sirius just grins handsomely and pulls out a chair for her, presents her the toast she watched him butter, puts the kettle on and takes the seat opposite her like she has made his day by being there.

Her mouth is dry and her throat jumpy, but she eats the toast, because he has made it for her; it's cooked to the perfect golden she likes, and he's cut it into triangles instead of squares, also just how she likes. Her heart melts like the butter. He really knows her.

"Thank you," she says.

The kettle clicks and he gets up to make her tea. "Milk and one sugar?"

He doesn't wait for her to answer, he already knows that too, it seems. He dumps the sugar in and stirs. She doesn't know when he started to make her tea, let alone when he knew how she took it. She decides she's going to make him coffee tomorrow. Or tea. She tries to figure out which one he likes better, because she knows it, she just cannot place it. Her head hurts.

"Why do I have such a headache?"

"You came in at three am drunk off your rocker love. I'm assuming the bad head is due to my old friend Ogden's firewhisky. We are both well aware that you're not one who knocks it back easily."

She mumbles something incoherent and he looks over his shoulder with a teasing smirk. "Sorry? I didn't quite catch that."

"I said I can't believe Ginny took me clubbing in the first place. I hate hangovers. Is it too late to say the old cliché 'I'm never drinking ever again'?"

He chuckles and places the tea in front of her, sweet and steaming hot. "This will help, there's nothing a cup of tea can't solve."

"I'll remember that."

His smirking smile fades slightly and he nods. "I hope so."

She takes a sip of the tea, still holding his gaze. "Where's Albert?"

"Harry took him to Diagon Alley, he's dropping him home..." he checks his pocket watch, "any minute actually."

She frowns. "But why didn't you go with them?"

"I wanted to wait for you to wake up," he says quietly. He runs a hand through his long black brown hair thoughtfully, "I'd have been worrying about you otherwise."

"Worrying," she repeats slowly, "about me."

She doesn't entirely understand, and Sirius seems to know this. He stalks round her side of the table, comes up behind her chair and wraps his arms around her. For a moment she stiffens with shock, but then she realises where his manly hands are, where his lips are, so close, and she has to bite her lip to stop any sensual sighs, clench her legs to halt the unladylike things playing behind her lids.

"I'm worrying about you," he whispers, "Is that so hard to believe?"

"Er, sort of…"

She's trying to be funny, and he thinks it's adorable. He draws his lips briefly and wonderfully in her opinion, over her temple before kissing it, and softly murmuring that she is one of his favourites. She doesn't understand what he means by that either. Apparently there is a lot she doesn't understand anymore. It is on this kiss that he releases her from their backwards embrace, and her body shivers from the bone, but she isn't cold. She finds she misses his weight, and perhaps that is her body's way of reacting to missing him. His weight though, and his smell of cinnamon and coffee - she finds it is all familiar too. It's almost as if she is pulling memories from a past life, reaching for bits of him through clouds of smoke. Finding out these things makes her head pang with pain once more, and she drops her head into her hands. What is wrong with her? Why can she never think, or remember…?

Coffee, she thinks, he prefers coffee.

"Drink more tea, love," Sirius says, and pulls her back to reality.

He flicks lazily with his wand to clean the kitchen and whistles as he waltzes around the tiles, and plonks himself back in his chair facing her. She quietly surveys him as she sips her tea. She thinks that maybe he has over stepped the line of 'best friend's Godfather' that they had toed so well for many years. He really is handsome though, 'sinfully sexy' as Ginny used to whisper behind her hands so Harry didn't hear, and he's older than her too, by nearly two decades. His age only attracts her more. There are memories in his eyes, stories behind the tattoos and that scar on his neck. He is a man who has lived, above all, and she's been enraptured ever since that Christmas at Grimmauld when he offered her a fudge cube in the library. Asides from the obvious perks such as his hands and his shimmering eyes, like glass shards glinting in the sun, his beard is her favourite: stubbly and a bit like a goatee, he runs his fingers through it in Order meetings, or when he reads the newspaper. It's manly, and it's something Harry and Ron, or any of the male wizarding population really, could never pull off quite like Sirius does. Something in his blood maybe.

She still wants to sleep with him, and maybe she would have right now, if she had been drunk and confident, but she is sober and scared and still a bit sad, even when she smiles. Sometimes she sees the same in his smiles too, like his lips are mirroring hers. And she doesn't understand.

He still wears the ring that tells all women that he is a married man. She never asks who it is he is married to, because she should know, and yet she doesn't. Her lips murmur names sometimes, like she's reciting a list of potential wives of Sirius Black, and none of them belong with him. And this is the thing. The woman in question is never mentioned in conversation, and he never talks about her. It is like the woman existed, bore their baby and then … didn't. She hears Sirius cry in the night, shout and rage in his sleep, and she knows, without having to ask, that it is about her. And then he strolls around the next morning with his adorable son bouncing on his shoulders and butters her toast and makes her lovely cups of tea.

She struggles to make sense of it all, to make sense of him.

She finishes her tea and forces some words.

"Your wife…"

He was tapping his fingers on the table but now he stops.

"Where is she?"

It is the first time she has brought her up. His eyes are cloudy, fathomless, and his hands are comforting themselves, tattooed fingers nervously knitting together. She imagines him, sitting before her, as this beautiful thing. His body parts are knitted together poorly, as if sewn by a blind man, and when the night falls the seams split and break apart, so all that's left is a beautiful broken body of him that he has to sew up and put together again by morning. He buries the anguish in the darkness, but in the light of day his body bores the scars, and she sees them. He runs a shaky hand through his shaggy hair; she notices he's trembling, and his raw vulnerability makes his voice wispy with emotion. She is ninety three percent sure then, in that moment, that she is in love with him.

"She left for a while," he says, and swallows hard, "and I'm waiting for her to return to me."

Hermione shakes her head, unsure whether to tell him. She decides it's best if she does. "She doesn't love you if she is making you wait Sirius, she doesn't."

She says it simply and he stares at her, his expression is as unreadable as ever. "I love her enough for the both of us. I can't face this world without her."

"But you are Sirius, don't you see?" she shakes her head, "She's been gone for years and you're surviving-!"

"She hasn't been gone, Hermione."

His eyes are wet, but it is not him who cries. She does, because it is another thing she doesn't understand: love. How can he still think his wife is wonderful and so perfect to him when she's abandoned him and their little boy? She reads the bed time stories that his mother should be reading to him, she holds the hand and kisses the hair and loves the boy his mother should love every bit of. And Albie looks so much like Sirius…

There is a knock at the door and fainted shout of 'it's Harry!', and she wipes her eyes and stands up, regarding the man across from her stubbornly. "I've always thought you were a good man, Sirius… reckless on occasion, and at times irresponsible, but good - brave. I've not met your wife, but I assure you I do not hold fond thoughts of her. You deserve happiness, you deserve the greatest love, and you can find it with someone else who loves you completely, who sees the parts of you that you hate and loves them endlessly still."

A part of her thinks she is clearly putting her heart on her sleeve, yet she doesn't let herself dwell on it; she leaves him there at the kitchen table and answers the door with a bright smile that illuminates all the happiness she doesn't feel.

Harry is so handsome now; she is startled and not for the first time at her best friend. He has grown since she last saw him. The days when he was short and scrawny and falling from his broomstick at Quidditch matches against Slytherin feel so close, but his attempt at growing stubble like his sexy Godfather tells her otherwise. It makes her laugh, anyhow.

"I'll get there, Hermione, you wait," he laughs, then raises his eyebrows, "oh, how are you feeling by the way? I hope Ginny didn't go too hard on you last night, even I struggle to keep up with her sometimes. It's the Holyhead Harpies pub socials that have done it, I tell you."

"Oh I know that! No it was fine Harry, it was good fun! Let's not pretend she's not a wino though. My head was banging this morning so I'm holding her responsible…" she grins and notices him exchange looks with someone behind her, and an educated guess is it's his Godfather who she left in the kitchen. She chooses to ignore it and focusses her eyes on the little boy who is desperately reaching out for her in Harry's arms. He's Albert, and he's perfect, and with messy chocolate hair and grey eyes that promise mischief, surely he's a carbon copy of a cute two year old Sirius - the older man himself, but shrunken and baby soft young again. There are cute dimples indents in his cheeks though, and a slight unruly curl to his hair when he is playing in the bath tub, that didn't come from his daddy.

He's shouting her name, kind of, and she picks him up with a kiss and an inquiry to the somewhat obvious, "did you have fun with Uncle Harry?"

"Yes! Can I have a kawidditch broom? I'm three, I'm a big boy!"

"You're two and a half you little monkey," laughs the deep voice of Sirius.

"Mmm, better luck next time baby," she whispers in his ear and nuzzles his hair. She's missed him.

Sirius's boots clonk behind them and he is closer than they think; Albert peers over her shoulder and the man suddenly envelopes the both of them in his arms. The little son giggles, the father beams. His cotton shirt latches to her baggy jumper, his chest moulds against her back, and his heart thuds against her spine. She smiles so much her cheeks hurt.

Albert is tucked up in bed and sleeping soundly when there's a shout from the drawing room fire place. She doesn't recognise the voice, but the deepness suggests it's a male, and the cracklings of the logs tells her it's a head transportation. Sirius gets there before her, and she hears him say hello from the kitchen. Confusion halts her from proceeding further. She thinks she might know who the man is. She struggles to picture his face in her head, but she certainly remembers what they did together… sweaty positions, gripping the bed banister, his rushed whispers of how amazing at something or other she is. Cold dread seeps over her body and consumes her unexplainably and without warning; she's heavy with it and as she walks towards the door of the drawing room she feels every step.

"Hello mate, can I speak to Hermione? It's Alistair, Alistair Pennifold from last night," he says, and his voice is crackly from the flames. "I took her home, and I just wanted to check she's alright and have a chat. Is she there?"

Her temple throbs; the night, and how it all began, comes back to her: the burn of firewhisky at the back of her throat, Ginny's laughter ringing in her ears, twirling in a man's arms and kissing him under the strobe lights. She remembers it now, she remembers him. He had dark hair and stubble; she knows she was attracted to him because she wanted him to be Sirius, and he wasn't. When she was highly intoxicated, it was easier to fool herself into thinking it was her dark Prince, but it was when she fell to a sober state that it became apparent he wasn't. Her heart plummets and she swears under her breath, because she really doesn't want Sirius to know, and she's not entirely sure why she feels so adamantly about it.

"You – you took her home?" Sirius's voice is strained, rough, like he's holding something in.

"Yeah," the man says, "We planned to meet up during the week… is she-?"

"She's not in. I don't know when she'll be back."

"She's-?"

"Not in."

It was a growl fitting for his dog counterpart, and the man clears his throat, sensing danger.

"Can you leave a message then?" he rushes on, "Tell her that it's Alistair and I really enjoyed last night, she was amazing and I can't stop thinking about it. If she wants to I'd love to see her again and take her out, even if it's just for a coffee. Or we can do dinner or drinks, just let her know to get back to me and-"

There's a splash and Alistair is abruptly cut off by wet and loud sizzling. She knows that Sirius has thrown water on the fire; a clonk, and he drops the bucket onto the floor. Then silence.

Hermione feels like she should walk to the room now. It's long, and rather like how she imagined the walk in the moment prior to her judgement. Cheeks pink with betrayal burns her skin, and disloyalty chokes at her throat, and as she always fucking seems to be- she's confused as to why. Why does she feel bad? He makes her heart light, and she admits the world seems to fall away a bit when he holds her, but Sirius is already married. There's a difference between loving someone and being with someone, she scolds herself; she is innocent and this guilt should absolutely fuck off. She hasn't done anything wrong.

But she feels wrong. As if wrongness has been injected into her veins and it affects the way she stands and the way she walks. She's wobbling over the edge of something and her fingers are itching to save her. Maybe she's just wrong in the head. Yeah, she nods, she's just wrong in the head.

Madwoman. Loon. Fruit fucking cake.

He's standing with his back to her like in the kitchen that morning. He's not stirring her tea though, or buttering her toast, but she wouldn't be entirely surprised if he had a knife. He runs his hands over his eyes then grips his hair, and she exhales shakily. No sharp object in sight.

"Did you sleep with him?" he asks.

His voice is so quiet she wonders if he said anything at all. She answers anyway.

"I – I don't really remember."

"Are you lying?"

His eyes aren't naturally as shiny as they are as he stares at her now, locked. They glisten in the dark candlelight of the room, and the wetness she sees there gathers and swells in her own. He rakes his hands through his hair and whimpers no, and she notices the slight shake in his hands, the tremble of his lips. He can't cry over this, and she wants to plead with him not to. She senses he wants to yell, but he's too weak to muster the energy or the emotion. Instead, his voice rises and falls erratically like it's crumbling in his mouth.

"Tell me Hermione. Did you fuck him?"

The word is spat so harshly that her teeth unconsciously snatch up her bottom lip, and she bites.

"DID YOU?" he barks, "MERLIN HERMIONE, DID YOU FUCK HIM? DID THAT MAN TOUCH YOU THE WAY I-"

She's never seen him cry before. Tears are trickling down his cheeks and she thinks of raindrops running down windows and broken seams of his beautiful body. She wants to stitch him back together with her lips and her hands, kiss him where it hurts the most like he kisses her temple. He makes her cry. He makes her heart cry. Most of all she cries because she doesn't know why he's crying in the first place. Nothing makes sense.

"You f-fucked him?" he says again, and this time it isn't spat, it's a quiet, gentle question. He stares at her, begging her to say no, begging her to tell him in her fierce bossy voice that he's wrong and that filthy man never touched her. The words never come.

"Sirius, I don't-" she tucks her hair behind her ear, breathes, "I don't know what I've done wrong."

"No, no, no, no, you fucked him, you fucking fucked him…"

He says it over and over, whispers it to himself, cries it, and roars it to the walls. It echoes through the house, awakens the shadows. She silently prays that Albert nuzzles his nose into his toy hippogriff and sleeps through it. Lovely, gentlemanly Sirius who makes her tea, covers her up and cuddles her in has disappeared now; she sees his crazed Azkaban self. With each blink she expects his striped rags to rot through his skin and the chains of his wooden bar code to rattle around his neck.

He slumps to his knees on the floor, raises his head with his throat exposed and roars to the sky. She's not sure what he says, because each syllable is punctuated with so much pain that it's difficult to decipher. She's just sure that she's losing the little sanity she had, seeing him like this. If she could say something to defend herself she would, but there are no words in existence that she can string together to take that look off of his face. She stands, helpless, and watches him try to hold himself together, only to slowly break apart all over again.

"IT'S ME HERMIONE, IT'S ME!" he bellows brokenly, and he rushes to her and cradles her face, rubs his forehead against hers, "Have you left me completely now? Is that it?"

"Sirius," her voice is meek, "what are you talking about? What have I done to you? What is it that you're referring?! I'm here Sirius! I don't – I never wanted-" frustration is clinging onto her and she screams, "I don't know what I'm saying, I don't know! Talk to me, please-"

Words are invaded by lips. He kisses her suddenly like her lips are air and he cannot breathe. He is possessive and a little bit overbearing, and she realises she doesn't mind all that much. He kisses like she knew he would somehow, and she kisses him back because she knows she should, and she has wanted to for as long as she can remember. Then he stops and stumbles backwards.

"Your tea is on the table," he murmurs, and pushes past her. "Good night, love."

"Sirius?" he's stomping up the stairs and she follows him until its clear he won't look back. "WHAT HAVE I DONE?"

She screams it at his back and struggles with her sobs, but he's already gone. She hears his bedroom door slam. She doesn't go to bed that night. She strips down and showers at three in the morning and rests her head against the cool tiles. Her hair is still damp an hour later when she sits at the table in the kitchen, drinking her tea and wondering if all his kisses are like that.

"What are you thinking about?"

It's late now, or early. Two or three days have passed, and he's barely been able to look at her. Now he's in her room because she can't sleep, because in her dreams she feels the weight of a man on top of her as they make love, but she doesn't know who he is - only that she seems to adore his every molecule and every atom that stretches his body and completes him. She slides her hand down and her tummy is swollen. A cry, tiny hands, lots of cooing and so much love. She feels happy and light in those dreams, and then no more...

There's a war and red collides with purple, the stone walls crack around them and spitting green light of spells illuminate the bags under the eyes of those fighting. The ground shakes beneath their scrambling feet and there are shouts to run. Something smacks her stomach so forcefully that she's knocked back and winded, and it feels like her insides are rattling; there's screaming, and she's not certain if it is her or the others, but certainly she's dying and she doesn't want to go... someone whispers in her ear to stay. She's broken, and she wakes in another place gasping to be fixed.

Now she blinks in the blackness of her room, of Sirius kneeling beside her bed, kissing her temple and asking her what she's thinking about.

"My head," she mutters, "hurting."

Everything is a bit too bright, and she can't see. Her eyes gleam, and she knows she is crying. His hands cradle her cheeks and the tears hit his fingers like a rushing river against its muddy walls. Sirius's fingers won't erode, she tells herself. She senses, hazily, that she has hurt him, but the hammer she hits him with won't ever crumble or break him entirely. She hopes he'll never break. Not like she has, so irreparably. Her eyes fall shut and her head is numb with agony. Dark shapes and bright lights. She wonders if she has bugs infested up there in her mind, breeding in her brain.

She lurches to throw up.

Sirius gives her some water conjured from the fridge. It's cold on her tongue.

"You're going to be alright 'Mione, I promise," he says softly, "cross my heart and hope to die."

She mumbles something, and she thinks it might be that she wants him to stay with her, forever if he could. There's a rustle and she squints open one eye and sees his silhouette; he's pulling off his suspenders, a clink, and he's putting his pocket watch on the bedside table. Wordlessly, he slides into her bed with her and curls his arm around her slim frame, buries his nose in her long hair. It feels familiar. She loves his arm there. She loves him. Every inch, every…

"You feel so familiar," she whispers.

She notices him tense, and he slowly shifts up onto his elbow and hovers over her, inches away. "Familiar?"

He is searching her eyes for something, but she doesn't know what she wants. She only nods. There's lovely warmth radiating from him and she settles into it, watching him as he watches her, as if their eyes are magnets and attracted to no other object in existence. Part of her wishes he would lay down with her properly, face to face and hip to hip, but she likes him above her and looking down too. It makes her think of angels watching from the clouds above, and Sirius, stubbly and smirking, is hers. She pulls him down to engage in conversation, and he relents immediately. His arm wraps tighter around her this time.

"Let's talk deep stuff," she whispers and he rumbles a laugh.

"Alright," he lifts his hand to stroke her hair. "Talk to me. Tell me what's going on inside your head. And I'll listen until you've ran out of things to say, or … until we fall asleep," he tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, "How does that sound?"

"Very unlike you."

She quirks a perfect eyebrow and his lips twitch into a smile. "Maybe you've changed me."

"Hmmm," she says and her eyes flutter.

"Hmmm," he agrees.

They fall quiet and she sleeps for five minutes or so, and then he nudges her with his leg that's intertwined with her own. "Oi, deep chats."

"Right, deep."

She pulls the covers over them and rubs her eyes. "Look... I know that you probably don't want to talk about it, but I want you to know because you deserve to. I think you're inexpressibly lovely, Sirius Black. When I was with that guy the other night…" she feels him tense and she shuts her eyes in mortification, "I was drunk, and the whole time I was thinking of you, and I don't know why. You've never given me a reason to… urm, I don't know entirely what I'm getting at, I just feel like – like part of me is missing. There's a…" she wrings her hands in annoyance, she so desperately wants to tell him, "It's like… a year or two of my life has just dissolved into blackness and I can't explain how. I can't remember things, and when I try I get this throbbing… in my temple... and it hurts so much sometimes I struggle to see. I dream about places I've never been to. I think things that don't make sense. Everything is blurry or broken. And you, I feel like I know you more than… more than I actually do, and I feel like you know me..."

"I do know you, love," he whispers.

"Yes, but I feel like you know me…" she hesitates, then, "you know me more than anyone… even Harry, more than I know myself perhaps. When everything else is floating in my head, you're still there, always… my constant."

He watches her wordlessly. He only moves to kiss her temple, and he takes his time with dragging his lips along her skin, along her hairline, leaving small kisses and tracing them back. His silence is all she needs to know. Tears pool in her eyes as he kisses her because she knows, in her bones, that he's kissed her like this before, but placing when and why was like shooting an arrow into the sky and running to see where it landed.

He reaches her temple and kisses that in turn.

"I think you know about my head too," she muses, "because that's where you kiss me, always, in the same spot on my temple where it hurts the most - like you're kissing the pain away. Is that why you do it?" she places her hand on his arm and his eyes jump to hers. "Is it Sirius?"

He says nothing again, and she knows.

"Can I ask you something?"

She snuggles into his neck and he closes his eyes contentedly. "Anything, love."

"Who is she?"

It's sudden, and he's opening his eyes and looking at her like he already anticipated it. The arm around her loosens as if to slip away and she slaps her hand around it and holds him down. She can feel his ring under her fingers, and it's cold.

"Why does no one mention her? Remus, Tonks and Kingsley know you and they say nothing about her. Where has she gone, Sirius? What did she do to you that meant you still haven't healed after all this time?"

"She's coming back to me."

"Sirius-!" she gazes at him in disbelief, anger hot in her veins, "she's gone!"

"She's not gone, she's lost, she's just fucking lost!"

There's such agony in his eyes that he closes them so she can't see. But she can feel the agony on his skin too, and in his mere presence. His hands tremble on her stomach and her fingers slides down to meet him, seeping into the gaps, craving him and not knowing why. She holds him, and suddenly, but not so suddenly, things make sense; he mourns in shirts of black for his lost wife who left him. He mourns her every night, behind every crooked grin and barking laugh, he waits and mourns in the meanwhile.

"If she was lost, Sirius, she would have found her way back to you by now. She's gone."

"Hermione, stop-" his voice cracks.

"I'm saying this because I care! People change, okay, and love dies… marriages die. Not all the time, but sometimes. You need to move on and find someone else… a girl who won't leave you or her infant son and who won't break your heart." He's whispering for her to stop, and she strokes his cheek soothingly. "And you know, this shouldn't be all sad. You can look back on those times with her and say you've truly loved and lost someone. That's a great thing."

"What would you do Hermione?" he demands abruptly, and rolls heavily into her body. There's a sense of rough urgency in his voice that she sort of recognises. "Would you wait for him, for years? Or - or would you let go of them even though it would kill you?"

She purses her lips and thinks. Her eyebrows always knit together when she thinks. "It depends… on how likely it is that he'd come back to me." She strokes her finger down his beard and it's soft. "Do you think she ever will?"

She wants him to say no, so he can open his eyes and see her instead. It's like he looks, but he doesn't really see. Maybe he still sees her as a child obsessed with elf rights, even though she's twenty three and grown wonderfully into her body. She's a gorgeous English rose, according to Fred and George's cat calls and other sources - but not that she's ever noticed. With soft, pale skin, long lashes, chocolate eyes - smouldering, they've been called, and dark brown mahogany hair, perhaps she fits some english rose criteria, but she feels like she is withering away with weakness from headaches and exhaustion.

How nice it must be to be cherished by someone the way Sirius does his wife; to be loved so wholly that you felt incomplete without them. For a while, she's lost in contemplation, and when she blinks back to her bedroom he's staring at her still.

"I won't give up," he murmurs. "Not ever."

He tells her about her accident in the war, and the potion he puts in her tea that reduces the pain and makes her feel better. He tells her about her memory loss, but not of lost memories. That, he says, she needs to discover by herself. Her heart aches as she listens, and he wipes her tears. She feels numb with devastation. Eventually, she falls asleep with his scent on her clothes, his hand holding hers. He stays, just as he said he would.

It's her turn to make him coffee, and she thinks she's done alright. She remembers how he takes it. No sugar, no milk, coffee as black as his name. She's starting to remember more now; little things, like the Sunday they took Albert to feed the ducks in Hyde Park; Albie was still in his pram then, and she had shouted at Sirius because he threw a whole loaf of bread in the pond. And when Ginny caught the snitch at the league final Quidditch match for the Holyhead Harpies against Puddlemere United; it had lasted for two days, and the crowd went mad, spraying butterbeer and chanting 'Weasley is our King' as she zoomed around the stadium punching her fist in the air. The best bit: Sirius came up behind her and kissed her in the royal box stand.

They were little things piecing together towards a bigger picture; the dark shapes in her head slowly starting to refocus…

She turns and his hand lies on top of hers as he takes the mug off of her. He murmurs a thank you and their eyes linger for just a moment. He sees the smile tugging on the corners of her lips and her finger is tucking a fallen bit of dark chocolate hair behind her ear, and he's thinking he's never seen a smile as better as hers just then. She's just had a shower and her hair is damp and falls in waves past her shoulders, covering the gorgeous humps of her breasts. He can smell her shampoo. He watches her as she moves round the kitchen, seeming to know she's being watched and smiling all the more because of it.

"I really like your hair," he says.

She hums. "No need to be sarcastic."

"I wasn't."

She stops and looks at him, really looks at him, and her toast slips off of the plate and onto the floor. His mouth twitches into a grin. He seems to know that he'll always be able to slide a grin on for her, even on his dark days, and it's too much for him to think about now when she looks like that. She bends over to pick up the toast and her arse is perfect, it's too difficult not to stare, even for a little bit. She makes him weak.

"I've never seen a girl who can make a baggy jumper look so sexy," he remarks, stroking his beard charmingly.

She shoots a glare at him. "Stop it. How's your coffee?"

She stands back up, and she's nibbling a smile on her lips. He grins crookedly and glances down at his coffee. He hasn't touched it yet. He takes a large gulp and swallows, his tongue swipes his lips. "Hmm, it nearly tastes as good as you."

"I said-" and she slaps his arm with an oven mitt, "stop it!" she's shocked, and a little embarrassed, but it fades and soon she's laughing and shrugging. "It's the Hermione touch, Black…"

"Is that so?" he smirks and slaps his knee, "Well come here then love."

It's a Sunday afternoon in spring, and they'd eaten a picnic in the garden with jam sandwiches, and she blew dandelions with Albert on her lap and watched as the fluffy flakes ran away from them in the breeze. He's just turned three, and he's perfect as ever. And Sirius… she feels more in love with him than she has ever been. The flirting, the tenderness he has for her in his arms and his eyes, the soft kisses. They all contribute to the familiarity that she is so close to discovering. He knows it too, and he waits patiently for her in shirts of white, or maroon, or midnight blue.

They retire inside when it gets chilly and she watches Albert with proud smiles as he flies around on his broomstick in the living room, breaking things in his wake. Sirius's barking laughter fills the room as he lies on the floor, trying to catch him.

She dashes upstairs to find her mother's old Polaroid camera. She's sure she left it under the bed somewhere, or on top of her shelf. She searches the room for it, snaps open her old Hogwarts trunk and yanks open draws. She's ruffling through the last one when she finds a box which makes her stop and blink twice.

It's a small ring box, black velvet and beautiful. Her heart thuds hard and her eyes prickle because she knows it. It belongs to the charming man downstairs, whose warm laughter can still be heard from a floor above. Biting her lip with a smile, she opens it with her fingers, half wishing to be met with a sparkling diamond ring the size of her eye, but it is empty, as she knew it would be. His wife would be wearing it, or she would have it in her house at least. She drops the box back in the draw and stands up, frowning slightly. She knows it, and she can't shake the feeling that she's missing something.

"Check your bed, love!" Sirius shouts from downstairs.

She does. She pulls off her covers and discards her pillows and the camera is there, sunk between the mattress and the bed frame. It had probably slipped down there when Albert had been jumping on her bed in his pyjamas. She flips the camera over to check if there's film, and is distracted when her foot touches something further up the bed. In the spot her pillow had lay, glinting at her, was a silver diamond ring. Swallowing hard and squinting, she picks it up with fumbling fingers. She sees there's an inscription in swirling letters, and it bears only one word.

Her name.

She stomps down the stairs before she can even think, and she slips on the stone floor when she reaches the bottom. When she stands up, Sirius is before her bouncing Albert in his arms and asking if she's alright. He's looking to see if she has the camera. She doesn't. She left it upstairs.

"I know Sirius," she says.

He hikes Albert higher on his shoulder and smirks. "You're going to have to elaborate love."

A smile tugs on her lips, and then laughter chugs at her throat, and tears cling promptly to her eyelashes. "I know everything… I remember it all now. And I've never stopped loving you," she whispers, "After all this time."

His eyes widen, and he stares at her. Albert looks from the two with a cute frown on his face.

"Albert Regulus Black, my baby, born on March 3rd at quarter to midnight, he weighed seven pounds ten ounces and already had a tuft of brown hair… the year before on Halloween, our church wedding in London and our three week honeymoon in the Bahamas. You told me you loved me for the first time when we were watching fireworks in the Weasley's back garden. Weekends spent in the Cotswolds," she covers Albert's ears, "-morning sex, shower sex, make up sex… working for the regulation and control of Magical Creatures department, and the war. Duelling with Bellatrix…" she finds it hard to say, and Sirius's adam's apple bobs as he swallows. "Your lost wife…" she says, and wipes her eyes, "she's me."

Sirius stands rooted to the spot, staring at her like he could do nothing more for the rest of his days. "You came back to me," he croaks.

She runs to him and kisses him, and he kisses her back, holding her to him and never letting go for as long as he lives and ever after. Albert gets squished in the middle, but he seems too happy to mind. He wants a little sister. He hears his daddy telling his mummy that she's his favourite, and that he'll love her always; he kisses her lips, her cheeks, her temple and her neck as she laughs happily whispering she loves him too, a love so powerful even a magical curse couldn't make her forget. How right the world was in that moment… how wonderful it was to be broken, when someone could fix you.

AN: i've been wanting to write a memory loss fic for over a year now, and it's happened! It's also my first one to be written in third person present tense, so I hope you enjoyed. If you have any questions talk to me. And if you don't, heck talk to me anyway. I'm sitting at home eating takeaway pizza so come eat with me.