Disclaimer: All canon characters, places, plots and situations from the Harry Potter Universe belongs to J.K. Rowling. I make no profit from this.

Warnings: Rated M for language, violence and scenes of a sexual nature in later chapters.

A/N: After years of lurking, I'm finally taking the plunge to publish a story I've been working on for a few months now. The plot for this story has already been worked out and I write ahead before publishing, so several chapters are ready for last edits. I'm hoping to post at least every other day depending on interest. Constructive criticism and love both welcome!

Chapter One: The Returned

oOoOoOo

It was Christmas morning and in the London borough of Islington, a thin layer of snow dusted all the roofs, fences and tiny front lawns of Grimmauld Place. While its inhabitants celebrated the occasion indoors, the street was particularly quiet, disturbed only by the footfalls of a young woman making her way down the sidewalk. She wore a maroon jumper with an initial knitted into the front, a thick pair of jeans, furry boots and a bobbled woolen hat that was barely holding on to a head of riotous curls. She carried a small beaded bag.

The woman came to a stop between the houses numbered eleven and thirteen, and casting a careful glance around to make sure she wouldn't be seen, stepped forward and disappeared into thin air.

On the front step of number twelve Grimmauld Place, Hermione Granger dusted the snow off her shoulders and hat and sighed happily at the familiar blue door in front of her. Four months away from home was a long time.

Hermione took a deep breath and opened the door, smiling at the cacophony that greeted her. From the bowels of the house came sounds of festivity; clashing and clanging from the kitchen, the high-pitched voices of small children playing and whining, and plenty of adult voices humming through it all. Somewhere a wireless was playing 'A Cauldron Full of Strong Hot Love', which in the year two thousand and four, could rightly be called a golden oldie. The chaos was familiar, and as welcome as a warm hug from a friend. As she entered the house a small group of children came screaming around the corner and into the darkness of the hallway, followed by a tall, skinny red-haired man with one ear. Hermione smiled to herself and made her way to the kitchen.

As expected, the kitchen was a hive of activity as it was almost time for lunch. Harry was standing in a corner feeding spoonfuls of mushy peas to Albus. Ron and Ginny were at the table with Rose between them, and Eva and Mrs. Weasley were prepping vegetables near the sink. It was a sea of red hair, even more now that there was a whole brood of children amongst them. Remus and Tonks were whispering to each other in the corner and Hermione was happy to see her housemates again.

"Merry Christmas everyone!" Hermione called above the din.

"Hermione!" There was a rush and she was nearly suffocated with greetings from the people she had come to consider family. There was a motherly, floury hug from Mrs. Weasley while Harry even leaned Albus forward so the baby could plant a sloppy smooch on her cheek.

"The intrepid explorer returns!" exclaimed Remus, squeezing her around the shoulder with one long arm. Smaller arms encircled her knees in a vice grip that would have made her topple over if it weren't for the sheer bulk of people around her. She looked down to see the shining face of her god-daughter, Rose. Ron and Eva's first child was already four years old.

"Aunty Mione did you bring me a Christmas present?" squealed the little girl, prompting a burst of laughter from Hermione.

"Darling that's a bit rude," said Eva, and Ron shook his head apologetically though he was also smiling.

"She must get it from Ginny," he said, turning to look at his sister who graced him with her trademark scowl.

Hermione kneeled to give her godchild and all the other children present hugs, promising them there would be gifts for everyone later that evening.
If the room hadn't been filled to capacity as it was, there was a moment of mayhem as Teddy and James came roaring into the kitchen, an irate Fleur following closely on their heels.

"James Sirius Potter, you slow down right this instant before you hurt someone!" shrieked Ginny. As if on command, the black-haired boy bumped into the kitchen counter and a pile of roasted potatoes went tumbling in the wrong direction. As wands whipped out to prevent the potatoes from landing on the kitchen floor, they was a gurgling sound in the corner and Albus coughed up a splat of green all over Harry's front.

"Eeew!" said Rose, accompanied by an assortment of other small voices.

Hermione wrinkled her nose in empathy but gave in to the urge to laugh. This was what she'd missed so much in the last four months. Being around the people she called her family, the place that had become her home.

Thinking back to when they had been children themselves, Hermione remembered this very room being almost impossibly filled with people, Mrs. Weasley's large meals to feed the many mouths that would congregate at Grimmauld during Order meetings. Compared to that, even, these days the long table still needed extension charms to comfortably fit everyone in. It was so long that when they sat down to lunch, Hermione could barely see who was sitting down the other end.

She smiled at Remus, accepting a bowl of salad from him as it made its way around the table. Ron, sitting across from her had picked up a Christmas cracker and Hermione watched out of the corner of her eye, her suspicions proved correct when her friend and his wife pulled the cracker and it exploded in a puff of pink dust, leaving them both with pointy elf ears. Two seats down George and his gaggle of nieces and nephews burst into laughter. Eva smiled good-naturedly but Ron had a terrible scowl on his face and Harry on his other side was stifling his own laughter. "Mate, it never fails to amaze how your brother tests your own products out on you and you fall for it every time!"

"So," said Remus, politely diverting her attention. "What was Asia like, Hermione?"

"I could tell you, but then I'd have to Obliviate you," she replied, grinning. As an Unspeakable for the British Ministry of Magic – the very secretive research team that worked in the Ministry's Department of Mysteries – there were many restrictions on what Hermione could tell her friends about her job and she had to think carefully around those before she could answer the question. "I suppose I can tell you about the touristy part of the trip," she said apologetically, but her friends were unbothered. "I missed home," she confessed. "How about you all? Remus? Everything going well at the school?"

Her favourite ex-Professor and close friend had returned to their former school as a permanent Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor a few years after the war had ended. The Ministry had become progressive on the subject of magical creatures, but Remus still faced persecution from those who felt that having a werewolf around children was far too dangerous. Despite this, he'd managed to break the 'curse' rumoured to be attached to the position, as he was the first DADA Professor to have maintained the position for longer than a year. As he regaled her with his stories, Hermione could imagine everything as clearly as if she were at the castle again. Thankfully, her happy memories of Hogwarts hadn't been destroyed by the battle that had taken place there.

When it came to Tonks and Harry, both Aurors, they began to fill her in on the latest developments while she'd been away.

"Well, you know how it's been difficult tracking down the remaining Death Eaters?" said Harry. "Well we think there's a whole underground network of Voldemort loyalists, people who didn't fight in the war but believe the same things the Death Eaters did anyway. We suspect they've been working together to help hide war fugitives."

"It's so much easier to stay hidden when you aren't restricted," surmised Tonks. "We thought they'd have more trouble with movement but this explains what we've been seeing, all these rumours and sightings across the country."

A shiver went through Hermione's body, turning the warmth of the day icy. She realised her hands were trembling, and surreptitiously placed them on her lap and out of sight beneath the table. If she had not recognised what was happening, she would have thought a Dementor had entered the room. She felt rather than saw Remus' frown beside her.

Harry nodded. "The Minister says-"

"No Order or Auror talk at the Christmas table, thank-you-very-kindly!" trilled Mrs. Weasley, and they all looked guiltily her way, changing the subject to lighter matters and time whittled lazily away with chatter and what seemed to be an endless offering of food.

They were in the middle of dessert when they heard the front door open with a bang, and the sound of thick-soled boots knocked against the wood flooring with each step the arrival took. A hush fell over the table and Hermione looked around, confused. He appeared so briefly in the entrance to the kitchen that all she glimpsed was a flash of black hair and stormy grey eyes before the man took the stairs two by two. A few seconds later a door upstairs slammed shut.

"Well I never," said Mrs. Weasley.

"What billiwig bit his bottom today," offered George, digging into his ice-cream.

"Uncle George said bottom!" snitched Victoire, pointing at the offender, and just like that the moment was over as multiple conversations resumed.

Hermione, however, was still trying to process what had just happened. In the excitement and activity of coming home to so many people, he had completely slipped her mind. And it occurred to her that nobody had mentioned him once, not even Harry or Remus.

Four months before, the day before Hermione was scheduled to leave the country, Sirius Black had been pulled from the Veil, alive and perplexed, eight long years after he'd fallen in. To him, the time had passed in the blink of an eye – one second he'd been facing off against his mad cousin, and the next, almost hexing the pants off the Auror who pulled him out.

"What's going on?" asked Hermione, concerned.

"Things have been a bit… difficult with Sirius," said Remus with a sigh. "Well for one thing we hardly ever see him unless we bump into him in the house. He's declined every invitation-"

"From us too," interjected Harry. "And we've been trying to give him his space and not push him but it almost seems worse now that it was a few months ago."

"Some nights he doesn't even come home," said Tonks, her bright pink hair turning black. "And when he does, he's usually reeking of alcohol and perfume."

Remus nodded. "Which to be fair isn't exactly out of Pad's repertoire but it's not the same. It's like there's a thundercloud hanging over his head all the time. He won't talk to anyone."

"But the Healer's report gave him a clear bill of health apart from being underweight, which he'd already been when he fell in anyway. I read it myself," puzzled Hermione.

"He's been like that since he got home," whispered Harry across the table to Hermione. "At first he seemed alright, just a bit shaken up. Understandable, yeah? But he was keen on the boys and I really thought we were getting to know each other again, you know? But in a couple of weeks it all changed."

Hermione could see how this distressed her best friend, who had only ever wanted a family of his own, and after losing his godfather twice, really desired a relationship with the man. She frowned. Though Sirius and herself hadn't had the chance to get very close even she knew how important Harry was to his godfather. And after his 'posthumous' pardon from the Ministry, Sirius could come and go as he pleased. What kind of a man could laugh after he escaped from twelve years of unjust imprisonment, but not when he was completely a free man?

By eleven pm that night, all the food had been eaten and all the guests had finally left, flooing to their respective homes, sleep heavy children in tow. Hermione had bite her tongue when a very tipsy Ron wanted to apparate home.

"Haven't you been splinched enough in you life, Ronald?" Mrs. Weasley had snapped. Hermione rather thought a good splinch would teach her old friend a lesson about choosing his nookie spots a little more carefully.

Honestly, Hermione was all for spontaneity and being attracted to your spouse years after marriage and children, but the last thing she'd wanted to see when she popped into the pantry earlier was her ex-boyfriend and his wife in flagrante delicato. The thought the sight of Ron's arse, pale and freckled as ever, would forevermore be burned into her retinas.

As the fireplace flashed green for the last time, she wearily made her way up the stairs to her bedroom. Jet lag had nothing on Floo Fatigue, she'd discovered. Lost in her thoughts on the multiple unwanted side-effects of traveling by magic, she wasn't looking ahead when she reached the second landing and bumped into something large and very hard that smelled like leather and something else quite nice.

She had no time to ponder the source of the scent as her abrupt stop caused her to lose her footing and she teetered horribly on the stair. She would have tumbled all the way back down if it weren't for the hand that shot out and grabbed her around the wrist, yanking her back on her feet. She snatched at her beaded bag before it rolled all the way down the stairs emptying its contents.

"Oh I really shouldn't have drunk all that Elf Wine, I'm so sorry-" She looked up to thank her rescuer and was met by dark grey eyes.

Sirius, standing there, his hand still painfully circled around her wrist, was looking down at her like he'd seen a ghost. Vaguely she realised the scent of leather had come from the jacket he was wearing. She smiled at him, feeling oddly uneasy.

"Hi Sirius," she said, "I was hoping-" but he let go of her wrist like it burned him, and pushed past her.

"I'm going out,"he mumbled and before she could blink he'd thundered down the stairs and out the front door.
Thankfully Mrs. Black's portrait had long been removed from the stairwell.

Hermione rubbed at her aching wrist as she readied herself for bed. Despite the many happy memories of the day, between the news about the Death Eaters and Sirius' odd behaviour, she felt the low hum of anxiety in her bones as she slipped between the sheets. Unsurprisingly when her eyes fluttered open in the darkness, it was still the early hours of the morning. She groaned, disoriented at being back in her own bedroom. She twisted and turned in the sheets for a few minutes before admitting defeat; there was no way she was going to get back to sleep like this.

Tucking her wand into the waistband of her pyjamas shorts, she padded down to the kitchen for a cup of milky tea. Hopefully, that would do the trick. When she entered the kitchen she flicked her hand at the fireplace and it burst into low flames. For a moment she soaked in the ease with which she had performed the wandless magic before she became aware that she wasn't alone. In a split second her wand was out, pointed squarely toward the breakfast bar where somebody was sitting hunched over in the shadows.

"Who's there?" she demanded, but the person simply mumbled. "Lumos." The light helped her see the leather jacket, and dirty boots perched on the chair rung and she realised it was Sirius, home from whatever jaunt he'd been on and by the sound of it, pissed out of his mind. He was looking at her, a sullen, pensive expression on his fact, the tattooed fingers of one hand curled around a glass of whiskey. She started at his appearance, taking a sharp breath. There were dark circles beneath the wizard's eyes, an unkempt beard that obliterated his jawline and his hair was stringy with sweat. Suddenly she wished she'd worn a robe because it seemed that while she'd been assessing his condition, he had been doing the same to her. Trying to look unaffected, she set the kettle to boil. When she turned to fetch a mug, however, she got a fright to see her was standing right there in front of her, inches from her face.

"Merlin Sirius, you gave me a bloody fright!" she swore. His breath smelled stale, of cigarettes and whiskey and she turned her cheek to escape it.

"And who might you be, lovely lass, standing in my kitchen?" he brokenly slurred, his eyes glazed. He doesn't recognise me, she realised.
His proximity and the shock of seeing him again up close after so many years had frozen her and it was only when he wrapped a grubby hand around around the curve in her waist, leaned forward and slurred "You have the loveliest tits darlin'," that her hands came up an shoved him away from her. He lurched backwards dangerously.

"Sirius it's me! Hermione!" she shrilled.

For a moment there were no other sounds in the kitchen except their breathing, hers shallow, his raspy, and the crackle of the fire. He was looking at her again, bewildered. Then his eyes widened and he jumped back, dropping his whiskey. Hermione flinched, silently thanked Mrs. Weasley for her handy slippery-fingers charm as the glass hit the stone floor and bounced, whiskey splattering all over her bare feet and his boots. He swore, rubbing his eyes furiously.

"Bloody buggering fuck!"

Concerned, Hermione reached out to touch his arm, but he staggered a couple steps back, nearly falling over. He held a hand out to her.

"Don't touch me."

"Sirius?" Hermione was trembling a little with adrenalin.

"Don't come near me sweetheart," he was saying, "Gods, a sixteen year old, Pads this is a new low even for you-"

He mumbled a few other things and Hermione picked up the words 'Dumbledore', 'Remus' and 'Azkaban' before she realised what was happening.

"Sirus, I'm not sixteen, I'm twenty-five," she said gently.

Either way he had been a drunken letch, of course, but he was obviously distressed thinking he'd made a pass at a teenager. At her words, his eyes flickered up to hers, and she was shocked to see the depth of confusion and pain in them. His body language changed, losing its languor and becoming like a trapped cat, skittish and unsure. She stepped forward intending to calm him, but he staggered backwards again and tripped over his own foot, cracking the back of his skull against the wall.

"Sirius!"

Hermione rushed over, using an arm under one of his, around his back to support him. Despite being too thin, he was heavy and she somehow managed to half coax, half drag him a few wobbly steps into the living room. She eased him onto the nearest sofa but he fell on his arse like a sack of potatoes. He groaned, leaning forward and holding his head in hands, and she examined the back of his skull, grimacing as she used her fingers to brush through his hair. It was only a surface wound. Relieved, she pulled out her wand and cast a light healing spell. He hissed as the magic did it's work.

"There, it wasn't so bad. Why don't you sit up?" she coaxed.

When he didn't respond, she placed a hand on his back and was surprised to find he was shaking. For a moment she thought that perhaps his injury was more severe than she'd judged but then she heard the unmistakeable hitch in his breath and realised that he was crying. At the age of twenty-five, Hermione had had plenty of practice with drunk, crying men. What unsettled her was the silence of his grief; he sobbed hard, but there made barely any noise to accompany the violent shake of his body. She squeezed onto the sofa beside him, distressed, and hesitantly placed a comforting hand on his back. She was surprised to hear him speak.

"I keep bollixing everything up," he moaned, his voice still slurred. "My whole life, being a bloody waste of space and every time I try-" he broke off breathlessly. "Nothing makes sense anymore, I blinked, I bloody blinked and everything changed again. I don't know how to be me anymore, I don't even know if I fucking want to."

Her heart sank at his words. They hadn't worked so hard to bring him back only for him to wish that they hadn't. A streak of guilt ran through her for not being there at all after he'd come back; although she'd been involved the retrieval process, she hadn't been there for his recovery. Or, judging by the broken man in her arms, the lack of thereof. Not for the first time Hermione found herself ruminating on the lack of proper psychological care for magical folk in the wizarding community. After the war so many of her classmates had turned to ways of coping that despite them surviving the actual battle, had resulted in their deaths anyway.

She realised he had stopped shaking, and by the heavy sway of his body against hers she knew he'd passed out. With effort she rolled him gently onto the sofa, lifting his legs over the armrest. His larger frame was cramped to fit, but it would have to do. She pulled off his boots and summoned a blanket from the ottoman nearby, covering him with it. Before she returned to bed, sans tea, she cast an eye over him and noticed the dried blood on his knuckles. On his cheekbone the start of what promised to be a brilliant shiner was blooming.

"Oh Sirius," she whispered into the silence of the night. She felt quite tired after all.

Sneak Peek Chapter Two.

"You look like you've been kicked in the face by a Hippogriff", she said by way of greeting. He grunted, lifting his eyes to hers. "Well good morning to you too, love."