the_debt_of_time

Breath after breath, he pushed the air into her, stopping only to press his hands
between her breasts, forcefully compressing down multiple times, repeating the process
over and over, silently praying to Merlin and Circe and Morgana and Godric and hell, even
Salazar fucking Slytherin, if it brought the girl back to him.
Just as the light from the jar containing the bluebell flames finally died out,
submerging them into utter darkness, he felt her body tremble beneath his hands.
Suddenly, Hermione convulsed upward, coughing and choking up the water that
had tried to pull her from this world. She gasped loudly and cried out, and he pulled her
against him, quietly sobbing into her mess of thick, wet curls.
"Sirius?" Hermione whispered, her voice breaking as her hands clung to his wet
shirt.
"It's gone," Sirius muttered his assurances, lips pressed to her brow. "Merlin, don't
ever die on me again."
He kissed her forehead, again and again, not caring that he could not see a thing, or
that somewhere above them in the castle, loud, banging noises reverberated. She was alive.
He drew in breath after breath, each one reminding his racing heart: She's alive.
He could hear her whimper as she threw her arms around his shoulders, stifling her
cries in the crook of his neck. Desperate to comfort her, Sirius ran his fingers up and down
her spine, leaving behind soothing trails with his tender strokes.
She let out a loud sob against his skin, and the sound broke him anew. He held her
tight, reassuring himself that she was, in fact, still alive. As if his soul refused to believe it,
he was forced to check again.
Reaching for her face, Sirius cupped her cheeks in his hands and pulled her away
from his shoulder. Though he could not see her, he could feel her breath gently gliding
across the skin of his jaw.
"You're alive." He said the words like they were a prayer, and he could feel
Hermione nodding her head in his hands.
"I'm alive."
The sweet words roughly rasped from her recently breathless lips shattered what
little resolve he had left. Remus had insisted that she would survive this. Sirius believed him,
perhaps, but he had almost lost her, and now, more than ever, he felt the finality of war