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Molly was still making the rounds, saying goodbye to everyone and making them each individually promise that, should any trouble arise, they would owl her and Arthur immediately. You were a tad too old for surrogate parents though you couldn't deny the warm feeling that always settled over you at the feeling of a too-tight hug and kiss on the head. Molly had a way of making you feel happy to be coddled instead of annoyed, as you so often found yourself with affection these days. Everything felt forced and performative and overreaching, like every hug was just you trying to convince yourself that things outside of Grimmuald Place were not what they were. Kingsley passed you in the hallway on his way to the floo, nodding a goodbye as you ignored the staircase and walked into the dining room.
In fifth year you had dated a boy whose family was friends with the Blacks and you'd been to a Christmas party with him here, where you cowered awkwardly in the corner of a room until he snuck you off to the library to make out. At the time you were 15 and Voldemort was dead (or so they claimed) and you had very little exposure to that most noble house of Black and their relatives. Now, in your late twenties, working at the Ministry with Kingsley, you found yourself well-exposed to all the inner-workings of the family drama. Both the Blacks and the Order, and supremely familiar with 12 Grimmuald Place.
"You've got stuck washing up?" You took the short flight of steps down into the kitchen and walked to where Remus was standing over the sink (shirtsleeves rolled to his elbows and suds from the sponge clinging to his hands).
"So it seems," he replied, shutting off the faucet and reaching for the tea towel, wiping his hands dry so he could take a sip of tea from the mug he had sitting beside the sink, "has everyone left?"
"They were when I snuck out," you reached around him, taking the mug and stealing a sip from it, "had to come all the way back here to say goodnight to you."
"Is that what you're doing?" He questioned, taking the mug back.
"It's what I'm pretending to do," you replied.
Your new found familiarity with the Black Family home had everything to do with Remus, who had been staying with his best friend since Mad-Eye and Kingsley had determined the house to be the safest place for Sirius to outlive his fugitive status (and probably for a significant time before that too). The house had become an unofficial gathering for the business of Voldemort's return months prior to the Order's official reinstatement and you had, in all that time, gotten to know the house and it's occupants (Remus in particular) very well.
"It's no use," he held the tea towel out to you, a silent request to dry the dishes he washed, "Molly already knows. Which means everyone else does as well."
"What? How do you know she knows?" You asked. You knew you shouldn't be nearly as surprised as you were by the news, Molly mothered seven children after all. The woman had eyes (and ears) in the back of her head. "Also, why do you insist on washing up the muggle way?"
"It's relaxing." He shrugged, ignoring your other question for the moment.
"Dirty dishes relax you?" You laughed, "you're a very strange man."
"You must be quite strange then as well, seeing as you've chosen to share a bed with me." He said, voice dropping conspiratorially lower, as though he was sharing some kind of secret with you as he leaned in close.
You nudged him away with your elbow, hands full of a plate and the rag you were drying it with. "How did Molly know?"
He shrugged, "I haven't the slightest idea, she came up to me at the last meeting and told me she knew about us. Very accusatory, I might add, as though she had caught me in the act."
"Perhaps she did," you teased, "you're very handsy you know."
"I've never been accused of being handsy before in my life," he replied, "perhaps you're thinking of yourself."
"That must be it," you teased, pinching the bit of skin that appeared just above his slacks as he reached to place some dried plates back in the cupboard. He managed to swat at your hand with his, frowning at you as if you weren't in Sirius' kitchen but in fact back at Hogwarts, some teacher just around the corner waiting to nab you.
"I'm going to set a new pot of tea if you'd like some," Remus offered, tacking onto the end, "since you drank the last of mine." He set the last of the now clean dishes back into their home before moving further down the counter to where the stove sat.
"Depends," you mused, taking the kettle off the stovetop for him and filling it with water.
"Depends," he echoed, "on what?"
"Will you be reading?" You asked.
Peace was hard to come by in a war, even when you were far from the actual fighting. When you'd first moved into Grimmuald Place you felt very much like you were suffocating in the morose silence of the home. There was no peace inside the walls. But then, by a stroke of luck and chronic insomnia, you'd come across Remus in the library, sitting by the fire reading and having a cup of tea. He'd happily made you one and then he read aloud to you and it was the first time since agreeing to help Kingsley and Dumbledore with the Order business (truly the first time since there'd been any inkling of Voldemort's return four years earlier) that you'd felt any semblance of peace.
"Naturally."
You passed off two mugs to him from the cupboard in the far corner. Sirius had 'therapeutically' broken every piece of china that his mother had perserved in the cabinet and replaced them with various (and often truly ridiculous) muggle kitchenware. The mugs you passed on to Remus now were a set that advertised muggle kings and queens of England.
"I read once that Mary Tudor was actually a witch, you know? Her mother apparently was from a pureblood family and it was rather scandalous that she married Henry. It was muggles then, I believe, that Mary was burning at the stake."
"Catherine of Aragon was a pureblood witch? I think you're making things up at this point," you replied, admiring the way the sleeves of his cardigan threatened to fall down over his hands as he worked.
"It's true, or at least the book I read claimed it to be. I've not given it the time to research properly. It also said she killed Arthur," he replied.
"Suppose it said Mary was a slytherin?" You teased.
"Could've been."
"Where's Sirius when I need him to tell you that you're full of shit," you laughed, "off the topic of English royalty though-"
"It's not so impossible to imagine that at least a small portion of the monarchy were witches or wizards." He cut in, insistent to make the point whether he was certain of its validity or not.
"Off the topic," you repeated, stressing the words as best you could, "I've bought you something. And you're talking such nonsense I nearly forgot to give it to you."
"You've bought me something?"
"Yes," you went back to the bag you'd brought that evening, sitting on the chair you'd once been occupying for the meeting, a few non-perishable groceries still sitting inside, and pulled out a container. "It's pumpkin butter, for your toast." You placed the small glass jar on the counter and pushed it toward him.
"Where did you get it?" He asked, lifting it and turning it over in his hands. There were no distinct markings on the outside, just a plain glass mason jar with a lid secured on.
"A market in Bathgate. Went over the weekend to see my mum...she's talking about leaving Scotland, think perhaps she means it this time." You mouth did something resembling a frown (or the beginning of one) before you forced a smile, "as it is, the seller informed me that she grows her own pumpkins and everything."
"Looks very intriguing."
"It's a bribe, so that you'll read more Silmarillion," you explained, leaning against the counter to be closer to him. In truth, he probably didn't need to be bribed to do anything you asked of him, he simply needed to be asked. And sometimes, not even. But he had claimed, after the last evening you spent reading together over a kettle of tea and plates of jammy toast, that he was going to quit reading to you if you didn't stop falling asleep.
"I was only teasing, before," Remus clarified, an especially soft look on his face, as though he believed that you had taken him seriously when he said he wouldn't read with you anymore, "I'm not really bothered that you fall asleep. I know you've been having trouble getting rest."
"Says you, when was the last time you had a good night's sleep?" You questioned, buttering a skillet to toast bread on, "the last time you fell asleep it was sitting up, trying to read the daily prophet over a bowl of porridge."
"Yes, I remember," Remus replied, thinking of the porridgy goop that had stuck to his elbow when he'd accidentally dropped his arm into his bowl.
"We both need sleep then," you replied. "Desperately it would seem."
"How do you suggest we go about getting it? Considering how busy you are during the day and how adverse I am to napping in the afternoon."
"We go to bed at a reasonable hour?" You offer, laughing on the end of the sentence. There hadn't been a night this week that hadn't been overtaken by a meeting. If not a meeting then simply someone (Mad-Eye or Kingsley or someone equally in a hurry) dropped in to give news or request assistance or speak in hushed tones to the three of you in the kitchen about the changing climate of the wizarding world. Even Grimmuald Place seemed unable to shelter you from the chaos that reigned outside.
"Splendid idea, are you suggesting we start tonight?" He asked, glancing quickly at his watch as if to remind you how late it was already.
"Seems a shame to waste perfectly goody slices of bread...and you've only just made tea," you replied. Despite your own suggestion you weren't the slightest bit tired and imagined you wouldn't even begin to be until you had finished off your toast and tea and were bundled in Remus' cardigan listening to him read aloud.
"Excellent point," Remus noted, not ready to fight with sleep either, "shall we head to the library?"
"We should light a fire this time," you suggested, and then, "oh god! You think that's how Molly knows?"
"What?"
"Do you think that's how Molly knows we're together?" You clarified, though not enough because Remus still looked somewhat confused.
"How? I don't know what you're referring to."
"When Arthur flooed in...to see about the incident near Buckingham and we were-"
"Ah," Remus cut you off, his cheeks going red at the reminder, as though he were not a man in his mid-thirties, perfectly allowed to do what he wanted (or who he wanted, in this case) without being shy about it. "I would say so yes."
"Well best to light a fire then, don't want to shock anyone else, even if Molly has put the word out."
"Are you expecting something to happen?" He asked, following you out into hallway, mugs of tea in hand.
"I have two very distinct reactions to you reading aloud Remus," you replied, "who's to say what tonight's will be."
"Merlin's beard."