"Moony."

Remus looked up from where he lay on his stomach and sighed at the look on Sirius' face. "I'm reading, Pads." He returned to his book.

"Moony."

"No."

"Moony."

"No."

"Moooooony."

"What?"

"Dumbledore's not as mad as we thought."

Remus blinked. "Er. What?"

Bouncing onto the end of Remus' bed, Sirius made an odd sucking noise, and then grinned. "Well, he's still mad, but he got one thing right."

"And what's that?"

"His candy."

Oh, no, Remus thought. "His candy."

"Yeah!" Sirius' eyes lit up. "I thought the man had to be absolutely barking to pass up anything from Honeydukes in favor of Muggle sweets, but—" he closed his mouth for an instant, and then opened it again, displaying a nearly-finished lemon drop on the tip of his tongue. "Thewe fantathic!" he exclaimed.

Remus belatedly realized he was staring at Sirius' mouth, and squeezed his eyes shut for a few seconds before opening them to refocus firmly on Sirius' eyes.

"Padfoot. You're this excited about candy."

"How do Muggles do it?" Sirius countered, ignoring Remus' disbelief. "They don't have any magic and yet they pack so much flavor into one little drop…"

"They can fly without magic, Pads, surely you have faith in their sweet-manufacturing abilities."

"Want a taste?"

Remus blinked again. "What, did you take the whole bowl of them when Dumbledore wasn't looking?"

Sirius laughed. "No, I've only the one, Dumbledore gave it to me when I got sent to his office—complete hearsay, by the way, wasn't me at all—but you can have the rest of this one if you… oh." Sirius frowned.

"I—"

"Sorry about that, Remus, it's dissolved... completely gone," Sirius said. Then his eyes lit up. "Hey, but you can still taste it!"

"What?" Remus asked, bemused.

Sirius grinned. "Taste of it's still aaall over the inside of my mouth."

At the look on Remus' face, he laughed. "S'just me, Moony."

Remus stared, paralyzed, at Sirius' mouth—oh Merlin his lips were so red—and thought detachedly that Sirius was completely misreading his reaction. He was more comfortable with Sirius than with anyone else in the world. Then again, it wasn't that Remus wanted to kiss him, either; he was his mate. It was just that the thought of sticking his tongue inside someone else's mouth to taste the candy they'd just eaten was not altogether appealing.

Yet he still wanted to do it?

Oh, shit.

"I—" Remus closed his mouth, swallowed, and tried again. "I already know what lemon drops taste like. They were my mum's favorite."

Sirius frowned. "But they're Muggle—"

"Halfblood, Sirius," Remus said with a gentle smile, sighing inwardly with relief as his heart rate slowly returned to normal.

Sirius shrugged. "Suit yourself." He leapt off Remus' bed and headed for the door.

"So we've just established that Muggles can make good candies?" Remus asked lightly, ignoring the part of his brain that screamed you've established a lot more than that.

"Sounds about right," Sirius said nonchalantly over his shoulder.

"Where are you going?"

"I decided your plan was sheer brilliance."

Not for the last time, Remus blinked in confusion. "Which plan was that?"

"The one about taking Dumbledore's bowl of lemon drops when he isn't looking." Sirius paused at the door and gave Remus a roguish wink. "Toodles!"

Remus let his face fall into the open pages of his book and groaned.