“He kept messing up his hair,” said Harry in a pained voice.
Sirius and Lupin laughed.
“I’d forgotten he used to do that,” said Sirius affectionately.
“Was he playing with the Snitch?” said Lupin eagerly.
“Yeah,” said Harry, watching uncomprehendingly as Sirius and Lupin beamed reminiscently. “Well… I thought he was a bit of an idiot.”
“Of course he was a bit of an idiot!” said Sirius bracingly, “we were all idiots! Well—not Moony so much,” he said fairly, looking at Lupin.
But Lupin shook his head. “Did I ever tell you to lay off Snape?” he said. “Did I ever have the guts to tell you I thought you were out of order?”
“Yeah, well,” said Sirius, “you made us feel ashamed of ourselves sometimes… that was something…”
“And,” said Harry doggedly, determined to say everything that was on his mind now he was here, “he kept looking over at the girls by the lake, hoping they were watching him!”
“Oh, well, he always made a fool of himself whenever Lily was around,” said Sirius, shrugging, “he couldn’t stop himself showing off whenever he got near her.”
“How come she married him?” Harry asked miserably. “She hated him!”
“Nah, she didn’t,” said Sirius.
“She started going out with him in seventh year,” said Lupin.
“Once James had deflated his head a bit,” said Sirius.
“And stopped hexing people just for the fun of it,” said Lupin.
“Even Snape?” said Harry.
“Well,” said Lupin slowly, “Snape was a special case. I mean, he never lost an opportunity to curse James so you couldn’t really expect James to take that lying down, could you?”
“And my mum was OK with that?”
“She didn’t know too much about it, to tell you the truth,” said Sirius. “I mean, James didn’t take Snape on dates with her and jinx him in front of her, did he?”