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The Bookshop

Summary: Bouquet in hand, Sirius feels slightly more prepared to see her. A lot has happened in the last five years, and the two have a lot to catch up on.

Notes: Harry Potter universe, famous!AU, rockstar!Sirius x reader, oneshot; part two of The Linguist. Let me know if you like it! Part three coming soon ...

Part 1!

Fistfull of flowers collected and paid for, Sirius continued down the cobblestone alley, eyes peeled for his destination. He had visited Teliska & Rook’s Rare Books once before, when Y/N had first acquired a job at the small shop, but unfortunately hadn’t had the chance to revisit the cozy corner of Paris since. 

Sirius’s heart stuttered for a moment as he rounded another corner and spotted the bookshop; the sign’s gold lettering was crisp as ever despite the faded evergreen color surrounding it and the bay windows framing the tall oak door could probably do with some dusting, but otherwise, the shop was just as Sirius remembered it. He squinted at himself in the reflection of a bakery window, fixing his hair and rolling his shoulders back to fix his posture, holding the bouquet tightly in his left hand. With a breath that Sirius hoped sounded more confident than he felt, he made his way to Teliska & Rook’s Rare Books.

The heavy door opened with a groaning creak and the light tinkling of bells, and Sirius was immediately hit with the scent of old books. He nearly sneezed as a cloud of dust furled up from the ground, rubbing his nose furiously to rid himself of the feeling. 

Once he had recovered his bearings enough to look around, Sirius was surprised at the familiarity of everything. The shop was organized in the same manner it had been nearly five years ago, with one corner designated to modern reads, another serving as home to a cluttered cedar desk where patrons could check out, and the rest of the small building crammed full of bookshelves that reached from floor to ceiling. 

Closing the door behind him, Sirius tentatively stepped into the shop, which seemed alarmingly empty, and peered around. Truthfully, it seemed as if no one had stepped foot in the place in years. Sirius peered down one aisle of bookshelves, then another, until his eye caught on a familiar spine. Twelfth Night. Y/N’s favorite. She always found the classics a bit ridiculous, as her Muggle mother had made her read them all when she was of age, but Twelfth Night was “far too funny not to like”.

Sirius’s lips quirked up into a little grin, and he slid the volume off the shelf, opening it to a random page. To his mild surprise, this edition came with illustrations, though, upon closer inspection, Sirius guessed it wasn’t bought that way. Its previous owner seemed to have doodled the scenes in the margins, turning the book itself into a piece of art.

“Sérieux Noir?” An elderly man—Teliska of Teliska & Rook, if Sirius’ memory served him right—peered around the corner of the aisle in which Sirius stood, wide eyes magnified by Coke bottle glasses. “Sérieux, c’est toi?”

Sirius grinned. The man was very French and never could grasp that his name was ‘Sirius Black’ rather than ‘serious black’. 

“Oui, Monsieur. It’s been a while.”

“So it has, mon fils, so it has!” The lean man hobbled down the aisle towards Sirius, squeezing his shoulder with a falcon’s grip once he was within range. He looked to the bouquet in Sirius’ hand. “I assume you’re looking for our Y/N?”

Sirius smiled subconsciously. “Yes, I was.”

Teliska smiled knowingly. “She’s in the back. Elsie’s been getting sicker lately, so Y/N’s been drowning herself in work. You know how she gets.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Sirius said as the old man guided him down an aisle, then down another towards the back of the shop. “Tell Ms. Rook I send my love.”

Teliska peered at Sirius, magnified eyes holding a grave sort of look, but nodded nonetheless. “I will.” The odd pair stopped at a plain oak door with a brass knob tucked away in the furthest recess of the bookshop, and Sirius’ palms began to sweat. He wiped them hastily on his trousers, exchanging the bouquet from one hand to the other. “She’s just through there. Working on repairing some ancient tome for the Sorbonne. They’re working her to the bone these days—far too much for what they’re paying her  …” 

Teliska muttered on as he hobbled back towards the front of the shop, and Sirius watched the old man’s thin frame as he went, silently begging him to turn around, come back so he could put off the meeting he knew awaited him beyond the oak door with the brass knob. 

But the old man was out of sight soon enough, and Sirius was once again alone in the bookshop, surrounded by books and dust and everything Y/N loved. He faced the oak door again and bit the inside of his cheek. Why was he so nervous? He and Y/N were never really together, so why did he feel bad? What did he even feel bad for?

Sirius huffed out a sharp sigh and forced himself not to think. Just open the door. Open it. And he did. 

If the rest of Teliska & Rook’s was dusty and crammed with books, the back office hadn’t been dusted since the store’s opening and had to be waded through due to the sheer volume of books piled on the floor, in cabinets, on shelves and countertops—any and every square inch of would-be free space was occupied by a book. This time, Sirius did indeed sneeze when he was hit with a waft of dust, cringing immediately after at the harsh disruption to the otherwise silent back office. 

Shutting the creaky oak door as gently as possible, Sirius blinked several times at the maze of stacked books that lay between himself and where he knew Y/N’s desk resided. He was a relatively thin and quite well-built young man, but these narrow, precariously constructed corridors of books weren’t exactly something he had expertise in navigating. Nevertheless, Sirius would try. 

Each step was made with bated breath as Sirius expected any second for half the books in the room to come crumbling down around him, and each time they didn’t was a small miracle. He snuck about the back office for several minutes, trying to find his way towards Y/N’s desk until finally, he came upon a small clearing in the paper forest.

Y/N sat hunched over her desk, eyes focused on the ancient, half-rotted book in front of her as she traced line after line with a latex-clad finger. Sirius found himself unable to move for several moments, simply watching the young woman read through the ancient text, scribbling away what he assumed was the translation without so much as looking at her hand. 

It was only when Y/N’s focus switched from the ancient text to her own notes that she noticed a pair of black combat boots planted at the mouth of the book maze, and her head whipped up to look at the intruder. Sirius and Y/N simply stared at each other for several minutes, Sirius anxiously awaiting Y/N’s reaction to his presence, before Y/N’s shoulders dropped, and the corners of her mouth drew barely upwards.

“Sirius.”

Sirius took the fact that she didn’t seem to despise his very presence as a good sign. “Hi,” he said, and immediately regretted sounding so dense. “I—I brought you these,” he said hastily, an even poorer attempt to rescue the conversation from its already awkward start, and thrust the fistfull of flowers out at Y/N, who huffed out a small giggle. 

“Oh, thank you,” she said simply, rummaging around her desk until she found a small drinking glass filled with water that was probably a day old. She took the flowers from Sirius’s hand—Sirius was struggling more than he had anticipated to keep from hugging the living daylights out of her—and placed them in the makeshift vase before turning back to him. The two stood awkwardly across the small office from each other, the books keeping them from maintaining any real personal space, and Y/N coughed lightly. 

“Can I … can I give you a hug?” 

Sirius blinked dumbly. 

“Ye—of—yeah! Yeah, of course—! Of course.”

Y/N smiled, and the two met in the middle, embracing each other tightly. Sirius sighed into her hair, nose pressed into the crown of her head, and felt his heartbeat calm. They were fine. There was no need to worry—though his throat did swell up slightly when thin fingers found their way over his shoulders and towards the top of his spine. 

Sooner than Sirius would have liked, Y/N pulled away, gazing up at him with a lovely look in her eyes. Now that he had a good look, Sirius began to notice the little changes Y/N had taken on over the years: her hair was, oddly, shorter, as well as choppy, as if she had cut it herself; her eyes were lighter from the sun; the skin at the outer points of her eyes just barely hinted at crows feet. 

“It’s good to see you, Sirius,” Y/N said, lips closing around her beaming smile. 

“It’s good to see you, too,” Sirius said, much more softly than he had wanted as Y/N stepped out of his arms and resumed her spot at her desk.

“How’s your tour going so far?” she asked as Sirius found a wooden stool and dragged it up to the desk’s side. 

“You know about that?” he said, a sudden pressure in his chest beginning. 

Y/N’s brows furrowed. “Sirius, I know I spend all my time on the other end of a book maze—” she motioned to the mass of books he had traversed, “—but I don’t live under a rock.”

Sirius laughed, an embarrassed blush descending on his ears. “Right, right. I mean, I don’t like to assume. You never know.” Y/N nodded in understanding. “But it’s going well. Yeah, it’s fun. Remus has been working on something he won’t show the rest of us—we all think he’s seeing someone on the side—James is finally getting somewhere with Lily—”

“Really?”

“Yeah.” Sirius chuckled. “It’s a miracle, truly. We’re all amazed. And … did you hear about the whole deal with Peter?”

Y/N nodded, and Sirius was thankful there was minimal pity in her expression—though there was something he couldn’t quite identify. “How are you all doing after that?”

“Eh, as good as can be expected,” Sirius said with a shrug. “Dorcas’s been on drums for us ever since. She and Marlene are still going strong.”

“Of course they are,” Y/N said with a hint of pride. “The relationships I put together always last.”

Sirius laughed lightly, eyes drifting through the room without really seeing before they landed again on Y/N. 

“And what about you? How’ve you been fairing?”

Y/N shrugged. “Ah, you know, the usual. Helping around the shop, doing some freelance work for the Sorbonne.”

“Mr. Teliska said something about how they don’t pay you enough,” Sirius mentioned, eyeing her with brows raised, and Y/N sighed, irritated. 

“Okay, listen,” she started, and Sirius laughed. 

“Had this conversation a lot now, have you?” he said, and Y/N rolled her eyes. 

“You’ve no idea.” Once Sirius’s giggling subsided, she continued. 

“Ivan thinks that because I’m basically doing research for the Sorbonne, I should be paid as much as a researcher—that I should be paid a salary—but, as I’ve explained to him countless times,”—Sirius began to laugh once again—“I simply don’t have the level of education that the Sorbonne is looking for in their faculty and therefore can’t be paid a faculty salary. I simply don’t have the financial means to go to school again.”

Sirius’ laughter had barely subsided when Y/N was finished, and he nodded understandingly. 

“You know, I could always just give you the money,” he suggested.

Sirius had never heard Y/N laugh so hard in his life. He laughed as well, though to a much lesser extent as he watched her hair bounce through peals of giggles.

“Oh please, Sirius,” Y/N said, delicately wiping a tear from her eye. “That’s absolutely ridiculous.”

“No it’s not.”

“Yes it is,” Y/N insisted, letting out an incredulous breath. “Sirius, I am absolutely not going to take money from you. And I don’t have to work at the Sorbonne anyway. I’m getting by just fine with what I’ve got.”

“Y/N, life isn’t about getting by, it’s about enjoying yourself,” Sirius said, and Y/N shook her head. “Love, you can’t expect me to not try to help you when I’ve got the means to.” The pet name slipped without Sirius’s permission, but he stood his ground as Y/N sunk further into her chair. He knew her well; at the beginning of their friendship, she would have insisted on refusing, and he would have asked if she would do the same in his position, and she would go silent, and Sirius would have won. But Y/N was the smartest person Sirius knew. She didn’t need to go through the whole conversation to know what would be said.

But Y/N’s mildly defeated look made Sirius’s mind itch uncomfortably; he didn’t want to make the rest of this visit awkward or weird in any way.

“Have you eaten today?” he asked, commandeering the conversation away from whatever it was before. Y/N peered up at him, biting her cheek.

“I had a coffee this morning,” she mumbled, and Sirius’s face fell into a disapproving frown. 

“Merlin’s beard, Y/N.”

“Do you want to get lunch?”

“Will you eat something if we go get lunch?”

“Yes.”

“Then let’s get lunch.”

Y/N nodded and the two stood, Y/N finding a thin jacket and Sirius standing at the mouth of the book maze as he watched her pack her purse. 

“Ready?” she asked, throwing the strap over her head. Sirius simply nodded, and Y/N drew her wand from her pocket. With a simple wave of the thing, the books blocking the floor between the two and the door flew into the air, some stacking onto other already-precarious piles and others floating close to the ceiling, creating a sort of paper-and-ink trellis under which Y/N walked. Once at the door, Y/N peered back at Sirius, who was looking at the floating books, jaw hanging open. 

“Why didn’t I think of that?”