Perspective

It was snowing fitfully, and the bakery windows were steamed over, gold light pouring through them out onto the crusts of snow on the pavement. Remus stepped carefully around the patch of ice in front of the door, and then stopped, caught by memory. He reached out with one hand until his fingertips just touched the window.

He turned around and went inside and bought bread and butter, handing over one of the last of his crumpled pound notes without a qualm. The bread was hot, and the brown paper package kept his hands warm on the way back to Grimmauld Place.

Remus ignored the leaden sound of the heavy door slamming closed behind him, and did his best to ignore the high, cracked voice of the portrait in the hall calling after him as he made his way to the kitchen. Sirius was there, as Remus had expected, in the one room that stayed warm and full of light in the evenings. A fire was blazing.

Remus shrugged off his coat and threw it over the back of a chair. Sirius wouldn't quite meet his eyes; he'd been drinking again, from the number of empty bottles stacked untidily by the fire, and he clearly expected Remus to have something to say about it.

Instead Remus only put the warm bread down on the table, tore the wrapper open, and cut a slice and handed it to Sirius. He watched Sirius's face brighten at the smell, and came around to sit on the floor by Sirius's chair, leaning back against Sirius's knees, his hands outstretched toward the fire.

"Surely bread didn't used to taste this good?" Sirius said after a while, with his mouth full.

"Some things it takes a while to appreciate," Remus said.