Sirius had arrived on Christmas Eve at half past four, through the main entrance with McGonagall at his side and the specific quality of a man who had been cleared for this visit through every available official channel and was choosing to make nothing of the fact that he needed to be.
He looked well. Better than the Christmas at the flat — the weight more settled on him now, the specific quality of someone who had been rebuilding something for a year and had arrived at the point where the rebuilding was no longer the whole of what they were. He wore Muggle clothes that fit him properly and had his hair pulled back and moved through the entrance hall with the ease of someone who had decided, somewhere in the last twelve months, that he was allowed to be in rooms.
Harry was there.
The moment of Harry seeing Sirius was not something Ron photographed. It was the kind of moment that the camera was not for — the specific quality of a boy who had not had enough of the thing a godfather was supposed to provide and was receiving a small instalment of it in a school entrance hall on Christmas Eve, in the particular way that small instalments of large things could sometimes carry more weight than the large thing itself would have.
He and Hermione found them in the small sitting room off the entrance hall twenty minutes later, Sirius with a cup of tea and Harry beside him in the specific configuration they had when they had been talking — the ease of people who had found a frequency and were on it.
'Ron,' Sirius said. The warmth in it was genuine and uncomplicated. His eyes moved to Hermione beside him — not with surprise, he had been told, but with the quality of someone confirming what they already knew and finding it exactly as described. Something in his expression settled in the specific way it settled when he approved of something and had decided the approval needed no announcement.
'Hermione,' he said, with the warmth he gave things he had decided were good.
'Sirius,' Hermione said, with the composed pleasure of someone who had met him twice and was straightforwardly glad to see him.
They stayed for an hour. Sirius asked about the Tournament with genuine interest — not the careful managed interest of someone navigating a sensitive topic but the real thing, the specific curiosity of someone who had been watching Harry Potter from a distance for three years and was now close enough to ask questions about how things actually worked. He asked Ron about the training with the quality of someone who had been told something and wanted the primary source.
'You planned the training,' Sirius said. 'The whole three weeks.'
'Someone had to,' Ron said.
Sirius looked at him for a moment with the expression he had at the Christmas flat last year — the one that was not quite what he showed Harry but was the adjacent thing. 'Lily would have liked you,' he said. Simply, as a fact.
Ron held this for a moment. 'I think I would have liked her,' he said.
Sirius nodded once, with the quality he had for things that had landed correctly.
They left them to it after that — Sirius and Harry had the evening, and the evening was theirs. Ron and Hermione walked back through the castle in the specific quiet of Christmas Eve, the suits of armour back to their ordinary selves and the corridors decorated with the particular abundance of a school that understood that being away from home at Christmas required something in compensation.
Her hand was in his.
'Lily would have liked you,' she said, quietly.
'Don't,' he said.
She pressed his hand once and didn't.