Sirius and Amelia married on the twenty-third of August, at Amelia's house in Wiltshire.
The house was a converted farmhouse on the edge of a village that had been Amelia's since her early thirties — not large, not architecturally significant, but with the quality of somewhere that had been lived in by a person who took living in things seriously. The garden was the kind that had been tended for a long time. The walls inside had the specific quality of a house where the objects had been chosen for what they were rather than what they communicated about the chooser. It was, Ron thought, arriving through the garden gate in the early afternoon, very Amelia Bones.
The guest list was small by design.
Sirius had explained this in July, with the quality of someone who had spent twelve years in Azkaban and three years as a fugitive and had arrived, on the other side of all of it, at a very precise understanding of the difference between the people he wanted present and the people who would expect to be. 'Twenty,' he had said. 'Thirty at the absolute max. People I would want in the room if nothing was attached to it.' He had paused. 'Amelia has the same number.'
The Weasley family was there. Harry was there, in dress robes that fit him correctly for the first time since Ron had known him, which was a detail Ron noted with the flat satisfaction of something he had arranged the previous month. Tonks, who had arrived early and had been quietly redistributing the flower arrangements for an hour in a way that was definitely an improvement and that she was definitely not going to acknowledge. Moody, who stood at the edge of the garden with a glass of something and the magical eye sweeping on its continuous assessment and an expression that was not, for once, the expression of a man expecting the worst.
Remus was there — not the Quality of someone newly comfortable in the world, but moving in the specific direction of it, the quality of a person who had spent too many years on the outside of things and was being readmitted and was not entirely sure how to carry it yet.
Susan Bones sat with Neville and Luna on the garden bench near the low stone wall. Susan had the quality she had when she was watching something that mattered to her privately and was not going to perform the watching for anyone's benefit. She had the expression, looking at Amelia coming through the house's back door, of someone who loved her aunt without managing the love into anything smaller than what it was.
Ron found Sirius in the kitchen.
Sirius was at the kitchen table with a glass of water and the quality of someone who had been waiting for this specific morning for longer than he had consciously admitted and was now in the three minutes before it and was sitting with the size of it. He was in dark blue robes — not the formal black of a Ministry occasion but a specific shade, the one he had been in when Ron had first seen him out of Azkaban: the quality of someone returning to the version of themselves that had existed before.
He looked up when Ron came in.
'You're not supposed to be in here,' Sirius said. 'Molly has opinions about the pre-ceremony kitchen.'
'I know,' Ron said. 'I wanted to give you this before it started.'
He put it on the table.
It was a photograph, framed in the same dark wood as the Nile painting from Cairo — the consistent framing he had been using since the camera since third year, the one that had accumulated across the walls of the Wulfhall and the dark-covered notebook and the albums. The photograph was from July of second year: Sirius in the garden of the Burrow, the first full summer after Azkaban, sitting in the garden chair with the quality of someone not quite believing the chair was real. The expression on Sirius's face was the one he had in those early months, the one that was not yet easy but was beginning, in very specific moments, to find ease. The particular quality of someone who had been given something they had not known to expect and was in the first hours of learning how to have it.
On the back, in Ron's handwriting: July 1993. The first summer. For the ones that follow.
Sirius looked at the photograph for a long time.
He had the expression that large things produced in people who were not in the habit of managing them — the expression that was simply the thing itself, present and unedited. He picked up the frame. He turned it over and read the back. He put it back on the table.
'Thank you,' he said. It was the same register as Frank Longbottom's thank you in the hospital — the register of something that was complete in itself and did not require addition.
'You deserved this,' Ron said. 'All of it. You deserved it for a long time.'
Sirius looked at him. The quality in his expression was the one he had rarely — the one that was not the performance of Sirius Black, not the specific charm he deployed for rooms, but the older thing underneath it, the person who had been twelve years in Azkaban and had come back and had been, through all of it, still recognizably himself. 'You know I'm going to be unbearably good to you at every opportunity for the rest of your life,' he said.
'I'm aware,' Ron said.
'Happy about it?'
'Deeply,' Ron said. He picked up the frame and put it back in Sirius's hands. 'Go get married.'
The ceremony was in the garden, which was the correct place for it.
McGonagall officiated, which had surprised no one who had thought about it for more than a moment. She had the quality she had in the moments when the professional architecture of her composure was in full deployment precisely because what was under it was large — the specific care of someone who intended to do this correctly and had prepared accordingly. She had written the ceremony herself. It was precise and warm in the exact proportion that was accurate to both of them, and Ron, standing beside Harry in the second row, thought that McGonagall had understood something about the two of them that was difficult to articulate and had articulated it anyway.
Amelia came through the garden door at exactly the time she had said she would, which was consistent. She was in dark green robes that were not what she wore to the Ministry and were not formal in the official sense but were formal in the more important sense of being exactly right — the robes of someone who had thought about what she wanted to be in on this specific day and had arrived at an answer. She moved through the garden with the quality she always had — the composed, settled authority of someone entirely at home in herself — and the additional quality of something underneath it that was not composed and was not managed and was simply the quality of a person arriving at something they wanted.
Sirius looked at her.
The expression on his face was the one Ron had been watching develop since third year — the slow emergence of it, across two years, from behind the haunted quality that Azkaban had left. The expression of a man who had spent twelve years certain that specific things were lost and was now, standing in a garden in Wiltshire on a warm August morning, in the direct presence of proof that they were not.
Harry, beside Ron, had the expression of someone receiving something they had not known to hope for. Not performed — the specific expression of a fifteen-year-old boy who had spent his life without the people he was supposed to have and was watching, right now, his godfather have one of them.
He had the expression for a long time. He did not try to manage it. Ron was glad he did not.
McGonagall began.
The vows were the traditional form — the old wording, the specific rhythms of something that had been said the same way for long enough that the repetition was itself part of the weight of it. Sirius said his with the quality of a man who had prepared them and meant every word and was not going to look away from Amelia's face. Amelia said hers with the quality of someone who had written the Ministry's most significant legal documents across thirty years and knew what words committed you to and was committing fully.
After, the garden had the quality of somewhere that had held something significant and was now holding the aftermath of it — the specific warm quality of a late August afternoon that had been given an occasion and had been adequate to it.
Tonks cried. She did not attempt not to cry. This was one of the things Ron found most admirable about Tonks.
Remus handed her a handkerchief from his breast pocket with the quality of someone who had brought one for this specific purpose and had known he would need it.
Susan Bones looked at her aunt — at Amelia, who was standing in the garden with her hand in Sirius's and the expression that Ron had never seen on her face in a Ministry context, which was the expression of someone who had put something down that they had been carrying for a very long time and found that the putting down was what they had been working toward — and she had the expression of someone who was very glad and was not going to attempt to be anything other than very glad about it.
Ron took a photograph. Sirius and Amelia, in the garden, after. The afternoon light and the low stone wall and the quality of two people who had found their way to this and were in it.
He thought: this is also what the five years were for.
'Good,' Harry said, quietly.
'Yes,' Ron said.