“So, Sirius and Professor Lupin,” said Ron, conversationally, “they seem pretty close. Must be nice, being reunited with one of your best mates like that.”
Harry and Hermione exchanged a look. Ron’s expression grew puzzled.
“What? What is it this time?”
Hermione rolled her eyes, in her very familiar way, and said, “They’re married, Ronald.”
“They’re what?” Ron gawped, looking between Hermione and Harry like they’d been keeping some great secret from him. “Did you know that, Harry?”
“Yeah,” Harry nodded at him slowly, clearly taken aback by his ignorance, “it’s been months, Ron. I thought it was obvious.”
First Ron’s gaze, then all three, shifted to the room across the hall, where the men in question stood together just inside the doorway. The pair stood very close, heads bowed as they murmured to each other so that their foreheads almost touched. As they spoke Remus unfolded his arms and laid a hand tenderly on Sirius’ forearm, his thumb dipping under the cuff of his rolled-up sleeve. A brief glint of light bounced off the modest gold band which adorned his fourth finger, comfortably, like it belonged there. And there was something in the way they looked at each other; a kind of intensity, almost a fierceness, that was always present when they looked at each other, but never at anyone else.
Suddenly, Remus’ speech cut off mid sentence, and as if he sensed the three pair of eyes now intruding on his conversation he looked up. For just a moment he seemed to colour slightly, before he sent the door closed with a quick wave of his hand.
“Blimey,” said Ron, who had the decency to look somewhat shamefaced, at least.
Harry leant over and nudged him in the ribs.
“I hope you can learn the difference between best mates and married,” he told him, with as much severity as he could muster while trying not to laugh. “Or we might have a bit of a problem here.”
In the room across the hall, with the sound of laughter on the other side of the door, Sirius and Remus quietly kissed one another goodnight.