When trapped in a house for months on end people tend to notice things that would generally be missed. For example Sirius Black couldn't help but notice after he glanced at the Black family tree that were almost as many burn marks as there were names written upon it and that the display case in the corner seemed to hold less and less family heirlooms every time Kreacher shuffled though the doorway. But objects, or lack of objects held little interest over him and soon he began to idly observe the people who moved around him, and being as it was nearing Christmas 12 Grimmauld Place held the entire Weasly family along with Harry and Hermione as well as housing some if not most of the order.
The first person he thought was acting a strangely was Tonks; she seemed far more clumsy than usual and seemed to ramble a lot when talking which Sirius knew to mean that she was nervous. In fact she always seemed to ramble and embarrass herself most when talking to Remus, a small frown puckered across Sirius's forehead as he thought.
Now that he thought about it Tonk's clumsiness also seemed to escalate in Remus's company, like when a couple of days ago when Tonks had been talking to Remus on her way down the stairs and had tripped and would have fallen several flights had he not have caught her around the waist and held her while she regained her balance. Sirius had thought nothing of it at the time but now that he recalled the burning scarlet colour her cheeks had turned it all suddenly clicked into place. Unable to hold it in any longer his face broke into a wide grin and he leapt of the sofa of which had been lounging and bounded off to the kitchen where he had last seen Tonks.
When he reached the kitchen he saw Tonks bent over a roll of parchment carefully finishing what looked like the report on recent ministry activity that she had promised in the last order meeting. As he watched she finished her report with a final flourish and then looking around at the other furled up rolls of parchment gave a groan and slowly began to pull another one towards her. Seeing this he walked into the room and sat directly opposite and stared expectantly into her face. After a minute or two of trying to trying to ignore the man in front of her Tonks finally gave in and giving a weary sigh she turned her eyes up to meet Sirius's.
"What?" she asked and inwardly groaned as his smile grew.
"Well," he answered lightly but still smiling widely " I was just wondering when you were going to tell me what's going on between you and Remus." Sirius watched in satisfaction as he saw a blush creeping into his cousins cheeks.
"I don't know what you mean" she replied hurriedly and in her haste of trying to gather up all of her reports her arm hit an ink bottle that over turned and she stared dejectedly as the ink began to pool on the table. Seeing all of this Sirius gave a lazy flick of his wand and the ink flew back into the bottle.
"oh you know what I'm talking about!" he exclaimed " I'm talking about you fancying Moony! But you know," Tonks looked up at Sirius as his demeanour quickly changed to serious "as your older cousin I need to know these things, I mean who else will ask about his intentions towards you and threaten him if he doesn't have you home in time?" Sirius couldn't help but laugh as he saw Tonk's face pale slightly.
"There's nothing going on!" she spluttered her hair darkening to a deeper shade of red that matched her face "We're just friends!"
" Oh I see", said Sirius leaning forward and giving her a wink "just friends" He said making quotation marks with his fingers around the words.
"Yes we are" Tonk's said firmly and with that she gathered her report and spun on her heel heading for the door "and just so you know Sirius" she called over her shoulder " it's not any of your -" she was cut off by a loose bit of carpet which she had managed to snag her toe on that had caused her to fall. Bracing herself to hit the floor didn't feel a pair of arms wrap around her and hold her upright. Opening her eyes, but already knowing who had caught her, she looked up into the pleasantly smiling face of Remus Lupin. Tonks opened her mouth to thank him when she caught sight of Sirius behind Lupin who was sitting there with a smug expression and mouthed " told you so" in her direction. Quickly turning but already knowing that both men had seen her colour rise to an unnatural shade of red she excused herself from Remus and quickly walked up stairs to her room.
Back down in the kitchen Remus turned to Sirius and shot him a quizzical look and couldn't restrain himself from saying "What happened there?"
"Exactly what I thought would happen, G'night Moony." and with those words Sirius strolled out of the kitchen and went to rejoin the others in the lounge leaving a very confused Lupin to ponder what had just occurred.