Lupin arrived at half past eleven with a box of Honeydukes chocolate and the slightly formal quality of someone who was not entirely certain they had been correctly invited and was managing the uncertainty with dignity.
Sirius opened the door and stood there for a moment and then stepped back and the dignity resolved into something simpler. They stood in the doorway for a few seconds in the way of people who had been through something large together and were arriving, carefully, at the ordinary side of it.
Lupin stepped in, set down the chocolate, and scanned the room with the habit of someone who had spent years assessing spaces before committing to them. His eyes found Ron with the quick directness of someone who had been thinking about a conversation for several months.
'Walk with me a moment,' Lupin said, to Ron. Not an order. A request with intention behind it.
They went into the hallway, the door mostly closed behind them, the noise of the sitting room reduced to a murmur.
'You knew,' Lupin said. 'Since the train.'
'Yes,' Ron said.
Lupin was quiet for a moment. 'You never said anything.'
'It wasn't mine to say.'
Another silence. Lupin had the expression of someone weighing something carefully. 'The sessions,' he said. 'The Patronus work. The message casting. You could have asked for a different teacher.'
'I didn't want a different teacher,' Ron said. 'You know what the charm costs. Nobody teaches it better than someone who understands what they're defending against.'
Lupin looked at him for a moment longer than was strictly necessary. Then something in his posture settled --- not quite relief, but the release of a tension that had been waiting to either confirm itself or dissolve.
'The Wolfsbane,' Ron said. 'You're getting it from Snape. If anything disrupts that supply---'
'I know,' Lupin said. 'I've made contingency arrangements.'
'Good,' Ron said. And then, because it was true and because Lupin was the kind of person who needed to hear it plainly: 'I'm glad you're here. At Hogwarts. Teaching.'
Lupin's expression did something complicated. 'So am I,' he said. 'More than I expected to be.'
They went back inside.
'You're here,' Sirius said.
'You sent three owls,' Lupin said.
'Two owls,' Sirius said. 'Crookshanks must have sent the third.' He added with a grin
Lupin looked at the cat, who was arranged on the too-large sofa with the sovereign indifference of an animal that had opinions about everything and expressed none of them.
'He's very communicative,' Sirius said.
Lupin looked at the motorcycle print, the too-large sofa, the books on every surface. His expression did something quiet that he did not comment on. He set the chocolate on the kitchen counter and sat down in the chair nearest the fire with the ease of someone who had once known how to be at home somewhere and was cautiously trying the feeling again.
The flat settled into the particular rhythm of a Christmas afternoon — the fire going properly now, the gifts distributed and some of them already in use, the specific warm noise of people who had no particular agenda and were not trying to fill the silence so much as simply inhabit it.
Hermione had commandeered the kitchen table and had the index open alongside two reference texts she had apparently brought in her bag on the theory that Christmas was not a reason to stop working, it was merely a reason to work somewhere with better heating. She was cross-referencing with the focused pleasure of someone who had been given a tool that fit and was using it immediately.
Ron brought her tea without being asked.
She looked up, registered the tea, registered Ron, and then went back to the text with the slight adjustment in her expression that happened when she had noticed something and was not commenting on it. Her ears were still faintly pink.
'You're going to read the whole thing today,' Ron said.
'I'm going to read the whole thing in the next two hours,' Hermione said, 'and then I'm going to reorganize my notes for the spring term.' She paused. 'This footnote on the 1847 Muggle-born registry act cross-references something I've been looking for since September.'
'Good,' Ron said.
'Extremely good,' she said, which was Hermione for the same thing at higher intensity.
He went back to the sofa. Ginny was beside him with the bottle in her hands, turning it in the light. The glass was currently a soft blue-grey, the color of someone thinking about something pleasant.
'What are you thinking about?' Ron asked.
She looked at the glass. 'Egypt,' she said. 'The roof. That last evening.'
The glass stayed blue-grey.
'Good memory,' Ron said.
'Yes,' she said simply, and held the bottle up to catch the firelight.
Kreacher was in the kitchen.
Sirius had said nothing about this when the elf had appeared that morning, which was itself a form of communication — the specific quality of someone who had a strong and complicated feeling and had decided, for today, to set it down. Kreacher had arrived without ceremony, assessed the kitchen with the focused attention of someone who had maintained a household for decades and was now managing a flat, and had begun working with the quiet efficiency of someone doing what they were built to do.
Ron found a moment in the kitchen mid-afternoon when the others were occupied — Harry and Sirius on the floor near the tree with the photograph between them, Lupin reading in the armchair, Hermione still at the table — and stood at the counter beside Kreacher, who was managing three things simultaneously with the practiced ease of someone who had been cooking for a great house for a very long time.
'Kreacher,' Ron said quietly.
Kreacher looked at him. The assessment was brief and not unfriendly — the look of an elf who had met people outside his family before and found them, occasionally, less objectionable than expected.
'There is a locket,' Ron said, keeping his voice low. 'In the house on Grimmauld Place. Regulus brought it back. I know what it is.'
Kreacher went very still.
'I'm not going to try to use it or take it from you,' Ron said. 'I want it somewhere safe and warded until the time comes to end it properly. Somewhere it can't hurt anyone who finds it by accident.' He paused. 'I'm asking, Kreacher. Not telling.'
The kitchen was quiet. From the sitting room came the sound of Sirius saying something to Harry that made Harry laugh.
Kreacher turned back to what he was preparing. For a moment Ron thought that was the end of it.
'Regulus Black,' Kreacher said, barely above a murmur, 'asked Kreacher rather than told him. Once. At the end.' A pause. 'The young Weasley also asks.'
'Yes,' Ron said.
Bring it to the Room of Requirement at Hogwarts,' Ron said quietly. 'Second week of January. I'll speak your name when the room is prepared.'
'When the young Weasley calls for it,' Kreacher said, 'Kreacher will bring it. Not before.' He looked at the pot in front of him. Kreacher nodded once. 'Kreacher does this for the master's memory. Not for Sirius Black. Not for the Potter boy. For Regulus.'
'I understand,' Ron said. 'Thank you, Kreacher.'
The elf made no response to the thanks. But the quality of the silence that followed was different from the one before — the slight shift of someone who has made a decision and is settled in it.
Ron went back to the sitting room.