AWARDS for this fic:

1st Pace Winner "Best Must Read" Mischief Managed Awards 2018
2nd Place Winner "Best Novel" Mischief Managed Awards 2017
Runner Up "Cotton Candy Award" Enchanted Awards Summer 2017
1st Place Winner "Best Fluff" Marauder Medals 2017
Runner Up "Best Non-Marauder" For Hermione, Marauder Medals 2017

Lay with me, I'll lay with you
We'll do the things that lovers do
Put the stars in our eyes
And with heart shaped bruises
And late night kisses, divine

Toothpaste Kisses / The Maccabees [2007]

Life since returning from the veil had been…. an adjustment for Sirius Black. Though it wasn't taking on board the changes that affected him, after all, this wasn't his first attempt to reintegrate himself into the world that had passed him by. That was going as smoothly as it could, and even if he said so himself, he was doing better this time. At least he thought he was.

No, it wasn't that the world changed, more that he hadn't. Sirius hadn't aged a day since entering behind the mythical archway, and it had been five years. If anything he looked better than he had before, less haunted, less hollow, though looks, as he was all too aware, were deceiving.

Three years after the final battle Sirius woke in his childhood bed at Grimmauld Place, his mind fully alert and primed for combat. Even now, six months later, no one was any the wiser as to why or how he was sent back, though many gave theories, long, boring theories. What they seemed to find the most challenging, the Healers that had poked and prodded him relentlessly, was that his mind was intact after a such a prolonged period. Sirius had explained that as far as he could tell, he had been awake but not alert. None of their charts or books could explain how his sanity had not splintered without stimulus of any kind. Sirius had wanted to scoff at them. He had already spent over a decade in Azkaban, a fate that had prepared his mind to survive in the suspension of life behind the veil if not with ease, at least without further mental scarring, he had enough of that. It helped that it hadn't been cold there, wherever he had been.

But now he was out, thrust back into the real world again, and for the first time in his life, there was no conflict, no living under the shadow of an imminent war, no hiding out for fear of legal recriminations. It should have been comforting, and it did help, he owned that part of his recklessness last time was down to the desperation and fear that had built up while he was locked away in that old house, unable to do anything. And yet the wizarding world at peace was... unsettling.

Sirius had only known two things in his life, running from the horror of his birth family to make his own and then fighting with all that he had to protect them. All that remained of both were now gone and Harry, little Harry, that he had held in his arms as a baby was going to be a father himself.

Sirius was in the kitchen at Grimmauld talking to a patient Harry when Hermione arrived; he barely looked up, the young witch was often there, despite having her own place, her presence being even more common now Ginny was pregnant and needed help.

"What's wrong?" Hermione asked, looking between both men locked in quiet disagreement.

"I've asked Sirius to be the godfather," Harry said smiling, though Sirius could see it was a little strained.

"Oh that's lovely," Hermione replied, dropping into the seat in front of him to pull things out of her bag until she stopped, looking up curiously as she clocked the atmosphere in the room. "Or it isn't?" she queried hesitantly.

Sirius huffed, crossing his arms over himself defensively. "I'm not sure I'm fit for the job poppet, didn't exactly do a stellar job the last time, did I?"

"Still," Hermione said in her politest tone, ignoring his question, "I can't believe you would turn it down." She eyed him carefully before rummaging in her bag again. "I remember when my dad got asked, he spent days walking around the house making Don Corleone jokes."

Harry shared a small laugh with her, and Sirius sat forward. "What?" He was used to missing stuff, not understanding the context of a conversation, he had spent so much time out of the loop it barely annoyed him anymore, though he always asked.

"Oh, sorry Sirius, you know so much about the muggle world sometimes I forget you weren't born there. It's a muggle film reference, The Godfather," she explained patiently.

"Never heard of it," he replied, forgetting the reference immediately, kicking his boots up onto the table and leaning back in his chair, waiting for her to scold him.

"My dad liked it," she all but whispered.

Shit, Sirius thought, immediately dropping his feet back down to the kitchen floor missing Harry hiding his smile behind his fingers. "Well, maybe we could watch it or... something," he suggested falteringly. Though he spent a lot of time with Hermione, it was rarely just the two of them, and he didn't want to make her uncomfortable.

Her face brightened instantly, and he had to fight down the urge to smirk at his ability to lift the clouds away from her expression. "Sirius I… that would be lovely thank you."

He exhaled steadily as she turned back around, giving himself a mental pat on the back, crisis averted. Her parents were still a very sore spot, Harry had told him, amongst all of the information he had had to update him on, that they had never been able to get their memories back. Sirius sometimes forgot with Hermione being so mature and in command of herself that she was essentially on her own, last of her line, not that she would appreciate the pureblood terminology. He supposed in a way; they had that in common, Harry, too, so many of them now.

With Hermione happier again Sirius sat back in his chair and lifted his mug to shield his subtle observation of Harry and Hermione's conversation. Their easy friendship reminded him so much of himself and James, though himself and his friend had been cut from the same cloth the two young people in front of him were very different people and yet they had found their other half in that same way, soulmates of a kind,

Since coming back from the veil, Sirius discovered that most people had changed very little. Despite the horrifying magnitude of everything that had happened humans were resilient creatures, Tonks was still clumsy, Remus still easy to rile, in essentials the sphere of folk around him were much the same as they had ever been. Obviously, the changes in the trio had been the most pronounced; they had been little more than kids when he had... gone. Of the three Hermione was the most drastically altered, at least from his perspective. Remus couldn't understand what he was talking about when he raised it, but Sirius rationalised that it must have happened in a series of increments in front of the werewolf, where he was smacked with all the changes in one hit. At first, it had made her presence the hardest to adjust to.

When Sirius had met her as an awkward young teen, he had teased her, mimicked her shrill lecturing and scoffed at her bleeding heart. Remus had always defended her, pretty vehemently if he remembered correctly, but that had only pushed Sirius further, taking it as further proof that she was everything he assumed she was a bossy little teacher's pet.

He was bitter then, and he knew it, in the back of his mind at least, but it didn't make him stop. Hermione was safe to argue with, she stood her ground, occasionally literally; planting her feet before him when he would rage at her, and even though he detected the slightest glimmer of a crush from her behaviour she had never once held back from speaking her mind.

Now he was back he was around her more than he had ever been before, and he saw her through new eyes. She was still safe, still loyal, still frightening bright in a way that made him wonder how she carried on around the rest of them without going stark raving mad but he didn't find her irritating anymore. At least not in any of the ways he had before.

She had no expectations of him, the Hermione of now was a laid back Hogwarts Graduate. Without the weight of the wizarding world on her shoulders she wasn't so tense, so paranoid, so determined over Harry and his safety. It didn't mean she wasn't as bossy as she had been before, he did not suppose that would ever change, but she didn't have anything to prove to the world anymore, or even if she did she no longer cared about it. Sometimes when he looked at her he still saw her as a kid, more hair than witch, leaning up on her tiptoes to shout at him, bemoaning his treatment of Kreacher and resting her hands on her slim hips. He had hated it then; he had been 'free' so little in his life he'd had no tolerance for being nagged. Her face pinched in disapproval had reminded him, painfully, of a young Lily. He realised now how far off that assessment was.

The worst thing about all of his new observations was that he realised with a sprinkling of horror that he missed it. Missed the way her eyes used to spark when she railed at him for drinking or smoking, or both. More relaxed or not she still did it to Ron and Harry, chiding them along to work, reproaching them for the state of their houses. Was it weird to be jealous of chastisement? He leant back in the chair again wondering if he was developing yet another kink.

It was a week after himself, and Harry reached an impasse in Godfather appointment discussions when he turned up at her house. He had been trying to get out of Grimmauld as much as possible. While Harry was happy to leave the request with him, Ginny was not and though he might have wanted Hermione's reprimands he had no secret yearning for the redheads being heaped onto him.

He stumbled out of the floo and dusted himself off before looking around; he hadn't been to her home before. Despite being 'officially' back for six months most of his social time had been at Grimmauld, Harry's house. He had sent off a quick owl earlier begging for her assistance in escaping for the afternoon, and she had accepted, no doubt rolling her eyes to her heart's content to his pleading.

"Hermione," he yelled into empty space to announce himself, smiling when he thought of how his mother would spin in her grave at such manners. A muffled reply came a few moments later, sounding faintly like 'coming'.

Sirius grinned, he could picture her, lip between her teeth and ink splodges on her palm as she furiously tried to write down her final thought before she came down.

He walked into the kitchen while waiting for her to come down, opening a few doors experimentally, and pausing to spin to look around properly. It wasn't what he had been expecting her place would look like, though now he was there he couldn't recall what he had previously had in mind. It was certainly better than Grimmauld, not that the building had ever been home, just where he lived.

Harry and Ginny had done a lot to it, the old place was barely recognisable, even some of the archways and doors has been resized, but no amount of shifting internally could change the shell. For him, all of the furnishings, bright and cosy as they were, could not mask what had been there before. In the same way, a glamour charm was never completely effective if you knew what it was covering, when he walked around his childhood home the memories shimmered at the edges of his vision, projecting an austere coldness that was no longer there.

As he walked around the airy space filled with soft colours and plush furnishings he couldn't help but wonder if maybe he should just bite the bullet and do something like this. Get his own space, one where the past wouldn't be able to get him.

He sank into a chair at the brushed wood kitchen table lost in thought. Moving out would mean being on his own, he wasn't sure he was ready for that yet. He leant his arms across the table taking in the fading light from the window overlooking the neatly kept garden. Maybe Hermione would let him come around more often?

Soft footfalls on the stairs had him turning, and Hermione walked in wearing a thick jumper, looking just as soft and warm as everything else was there, and he was momentarily distracted from the weird book she was holding over her head.

"You ready to be educated Mr Black?" she said in a teasing tone and Sirius stood up straighter, slightly surprised by his reaction to her words.

"Lead the way," he called dryly.

Watching a film turned out to require something of a production in terms of prep. Hermione came in and out of the cosy living room several times, carrying various bowls of food and finally, once she seemed to have brought in every blanket or cushion from the whole house, she crouched in front of what Sirius knew was a telly and fiddled around with a shiny disc for a while.

When the noise started to boom from the screen, she ran back quickly with an eagerness that made him swallow a bark of laughter, flicking off the lights before settling amongst all of the blankets and clutching a bowl of popcorn on her lap. Sirius took a little while longer to get comfortable, stretching in numerous positions before he gave in and kicked his boots off, sliding down on the sofa and grabbing his own bowl of food. Hermione's face was fixed on the screen from the moment she sat down, even through, what he would later find out, where just the previews for other films. Her focus was so fixed that she occasionally raised her hand to her mouth only to miss and attempt to push a fluffy white treat into her cheek. Sirius thought he might be too distracted by her to concentrate, but in a few minutes, he was swept away, leaning forward, elbows on his knees so he could watch the screen more easily.

It was compelling, fast paced and he lost himself entirely in the story, that was until he became aware of Hermione again, or rather how uncomfortable she was. Her shoulders were tense, and she was shooting little looks at him every few minutes, clearly thinking she was being covert but failing miserably.

When he couldn't stand it anymore, he turned around. "What's wrong kitten?"

Hermione flinched, her cheeks pinking slightly at being caught. He wondered for a second if she would try and fib but she looked resigned. "Err... I hadn't considered the plot entirely before I made the suggestion," she coughed, "Michael… returning home as a hero and being reluctant to join the family business… I..."

He looked at her searchingly for a moment and then the pieces all aligned in his head; he would have laughed at her if she didn't look quite so earnestly afraid that she might have inadvertently upset him. "I wouldn't worry about it; I barely paid it any attention."

"Are you sure?" she asked in a small voice her fingers gripping into the cushion in front of her.

"Didn't even make the connection till you just mentioned it poppet," he said offhand and picked up another handful of the chocolate buttons from the bowl in front of him.

"Oh, I should really know when to shut my mouth."

He did allow a laugh to slip out that time, "It's fine… honestly."

"Ok," her eyes darted to the screen, "there is still about half an hour left can I get you another drink?"

"Yeah sure," he accepted eagerly, grateful for the break of tension.

As the little witch left the room, her orange familiar took advantage of the open door and walked in, his path a carefree saunter until he realised there was another person in the room and he changed direction immediately, marching up to Sirius and climbing into his lap. He walked back and forth on his legs for a few steps before he collapsed into a pile of matted fluff.

"Hello old friend," Sirius said as he scratched under the cat's neck.

He was still getting reacquainted with Crookshanks when Hermione came back in with the drinks and settled herself down. Raising an eyebrow at her cat and leaning her head back against the sofa.

Sirius tried to settle back into the film, but Hermione's worried eyes were taunting him, that kind of thing was just so like her; being so aware of someone else's feelings but the provocation was so small, he didn't want her treating him with kid gloves. He wasn't damaged, well, he wasn't a basket case, not yet at any rate.

Before long the film ended and the gratingly repetitive loop of the menu screen seemed to shake Hermione from wherever she had gone in her mind. She leant over to reach for the control and turned the screen off, plunging the room into semi-darkness.

"So," she began awkwardly, as she stepped up to turn on a side light. "Harry says that you still don't want to be the godfather."

"And he's dispatched you to change my mind?" he queried, managing to just about keep the bitterness out of his voice, for some reason the thought that her acceptance this afternoon might have been part of a 'set up' angered him.

"No," she replied, gathering a whole heap of soft furnishings and depositing them on the chair on the other side of the room. "I just wondered why that was all," she shrugged resuming her earlier seat, and Sirius felt his irritation deflate, she was a shit liar, one of the worst; her denial was honest.

"It's a tremendous responsibility, Hermione." He replied hoping to find a way to make her understand, "I know they've asked you to be Godmother, aren't you worried?" he asked, employing a deflection trick of old. His reasons were as numerous as they were well known, he didn't want to discuss his failings again.

"Of course, but I was kind of hoping you would be there to help." Sirius looked up, his eyebrows drawing together in confusion. "Well," she continued giggling slightly at his shocked expression. "I thought we would even each other out, my homework planners and colour-coded revision notes your miniature motorbikes" she finished with a grin.

Sirius tried to smile, shutting out the image of a child under both influences, fairly sure that the little boy his mind conjured, with curly dark hair and grey eyes, wasn't a Potter. He cleared his throat, "that's all well and good Hermione, but you're focusing on all of the positives, what about if something goes wrong? The godparents are expected to step in then, provide care and support and… well…"

"Sirius," Hermione interrupted softly, looking at him with kind eyes. "Nothing will ever happen to Harry and Ginny."

"You don't know that," he responded, pushing the words up against the weight on his chest, "Harry's an Auror and Ginny, she plays Quidditch professionally, any number of things could happen to either one of them. What if it's left to me again and I fuck up?"

"You can't live your life by what if's Sirius and even so, there are two of us now, if anything…." she shut her eyes, not even able to vocalise the worst case scenario. "In any case, I would be there too to help. I would feel a lot better about it if you were going to be too. Partners?"

Sirius looked at Hermione steadily, taking in the resolve that had settled into her dark brown eyes as well as her posture. "Partners."

A/N: this was initially a one-shot for The Mixtape that morphed slightly and no longer worked as a single update. This will be a short multi-chapter.