It isn't that he doesn't see through them. But somewhere along the line he seems to have decided - as everyone must in the end, even the redoubtable Molly, when dealing with Fred and George - that resistance is futile; that it's easier simply to go with the tide, to let We had nightmares, Remus and We're comfortable, Remus, and it's too far to our rooms become the regular sacrifice of two-thirds of his bed, to let You look tense, has Snape been after you again? and You promised you'd tell us the story about James' birthday and the house elf heads become evenings spent before the fire with the twins curled contentedly beside him. Easier and more pleasant - Remus might be straight but he isn't blind, nor is he insensitive to the aesthetic value of drowsy, startlingly identical blue eyes, or hair turned dark, rich mahogany by the firelight.
(He does, however, put his foot down when he returns from discussing warding strategies with Harry and Draco to find his rooms redone in scarlet and gold with wolves rampant on every finial. He had quite enough of scarlet and gold during his seven years in the relentlessly bichromatic Gryffindor Tower, he explains to them, and he does rather like wolves but not enough to scatter them over every surface like Dolores Umbridge and her pinafore-wearing cats. We're sorry, Remus, they say, and aren't; we'll ask first next time, they say, and are already plotting some other way to bring him to within half a step of the grave.)
At breakfast, the twins enchant the scrambled eggs to explode if Crookshanks sneezes on them, and only unenchant them when Remus patiently defends the cat's right to sneeze anywhere he sees fit. During tea, Fred distracts Harry while George slips a canary cream onto his plate; Harry, possessed of some Weasley-attuned sixth sense, catches them at it every time and deliberately eats everything on his plate except the canary cream, but the twins never stop trying to turn him into something inconvenient. After dinner, Fred sits quietly weaving a Jacob's Ladder between his fingers with lines of thin, bright magic while George, leaning against Fred with his legs in Remus' lap, reads aloud from a thick tome on spell traps; they make fairy tales of the dry text, spinning wild stories about how a certain incantation came to be, how wand movements were developed, who first discovered that coriander could be spelled inside toadstools with lethal results and how the discovery had led to the goblin revolts.
Sometimes, oddly enough, Remus hears James' and Sirius' voices in the twins' like the sound of the distant sea. Even more oddly, it's at those times that he finds it easiest to let James and Sirius go.
Three nights before the full moon, Remus will come back late to his rooms and find his bedroom transformed with rich, jewel-toned silks and hanging lanterns and the twins curled together under transfigured sheets, pale skin glowing in the dim light and blue eyes flashing like quicksilver from mischievous to serious to inviting and back again. When that happens, he will sigh in good-humored resignation, set his heterosexuality on the shelf for the night, and let twins and tide take him where they will.
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