Sirius's flat was on a narrow street in Islington, four floors up, with a window at the front that looked out over the rooftops and a fire escape at the back that he had already used twice for reasons he described as 'taking in the view' and which were more likely the same reason anyone used a fire escape at three in the morning, which was that the inside had become temporarily insufficient.
Ron understood this instinct.
The flat itself was warm and slightly chaotic in the specific way of someone who had spent twelve years in a cell and was now, with the focused intensity of a man with something to prove to himself, in the process of discovering what he liked. There were books on every horizontal surface — not organized, not curated, the books of someone who had walked into Flourish and Blotts in August and bought what caught their eye and had been doing so every few weeks since. There was a motorcycle print above the fireplace that Ron suspected had been purchased within the first week and was possibly the first thing Sirius had ever bought for a home that was his. The kitchen table had a crack in it that Sirius had repaired badly with a charm and then left, apparently having decided he liked it. The sofa was enormous and slightly too large for the room and was clearly the sofa Sirius had wanted rather than the sofa that fit, and it was covered in a blanket that had the specific worn quality of something that had been used every night since the day it arrived.
Harry had slept on that sofa for two nights already and had the comfortable, settled quality of someone who had found that a place felt right and had stopped analyzing why.
Ron took a photograph of the room on the first evening before anyone told him not to. The books stacked on the kitchen counter. The motorcycle print slightly crooked above the fireplace. Sirius in the armchair with a mug of tea, not aware of the camera yet, looking at Harry across the room with an expression that was still learning how to be ordinary. Harry on the sofa with Crookshanks — who had decided, with the sovereign authority of a half-Kneazle, that the enormous blanket was partly his — reading something with his feet up.
He took the photograph and lowered the camera and Sirius looked over.
'For the record,' Ron said.
Sirius looked at the room — at the crooked print, the too-large sofa, the books that had no particular system — and then back at Ron.
'Yes,' he said. 'Alright.'
Ron took two more.
This years Christmas morning arrived with the quality that mornings had when you were in a place that was new and trying and therefore more present in itself than an established home — every detail more visible, the fire Sirius had lit before anyone woke more carefully tended than it needed to be, the small tree in the corner decorated with a combination of Muggle tinsel and wizarding ornaments that moved and the whole effect more earnest than tasteful and all the better for it.
The Weasley jumpers were opened and worn by half past eight.
Ron's was deep blue this year — his mother had been paying attention since September and the blue was the blue of his room, which was not a coincidence and which hit him somewhere quiet when he held it up. Harry's was gold. Both of them were thick and slightly over-engineered in the way his mother's knitting became when she was expressing something she wasn't going to say directly, the cables on the front worked with the focused intensity of someone who had spent the autumn revising their model of what these boys needed and had put the revision into wool.
Harry held his for a moment before putting it on. He smoothed the front of it with the flat of his hand, once, and said nothing.
Ron looked away and gave him the moment.
Sirius watched this from the kitchen doorway with the mug of tea and the expression that had been learning how to be ordinary and was, in this moment, not quite managing it. He was looking at Harry in the gold jumper with the quality of someone who had spent twelve years holding a version of a person in their head and was still, eight months after Azkaban, adjusting the image to match the one in front of them. Harry was thirteen. Harry had James's face and Lily's eyes and a jumper knitted by a woman who had been feeding him for two days with the focused efficiency of someone who had identified a deficit and intended to address it.
Sirius put his tea down on the counter and went and sat on the floor near the tree, which was where he sat when he wanted to be at Harry's level without making a production of it.
'My mother never did the jumper thing,' Sirius said, to no one in particular.
'Your mother didn't do most things,' Harry said.
'True,' Sirius said. He picked up one of the presents from under the tree — the flat, wrapped one that had arrived with his own owl three days ago — and held it out to Harry.
Harry looked at the package. He turned it over. It was light.
'Open it,' Sirius said, with the careful casualness of someone who had been thinking about this gift since October.
Harry unwrapped it. Inside was a card — Sirius's handwriting, which was the handwriting of someone who had learned to write in a different era and had strong opinions about the proper formation of capital letters — and underneath the card, a receipt from a broom manufacturer.
Harry read it. His face did something that took a moment to resolve.
'A Firebolt,' Harry said.
'Delivery January,' Sirius said. 'They don't ship over Christmas. I tried.'
'A Firebolt,' Harry said again.
'You saved my life,' Sirius said, with the directness of someone who had decided that this was a fact and the gift was proportionate to it. 'In July by visiting me, writing to me. I'm aware the scale is difficult to match. I did my best.'
Harry looked at the receipt for a long moment. Then he looked at Sirius.
'Thank you,' Harry said. The two words had the weight of something larger behind them. Both people in the conversation knew it.
Sirius nodded, once, and went back to looking at the tree.
Ron photographed neither of them during this, which was a considered decision. Some moments were not improved by being recorded.