Ron holds up the robes mournfully, and then sighs. Remus, writing an owl carefully at the table, looks over. "What seems to be the trouble?"
It's another universe, a whole other universe where things turned out not much happier, but just enough that Remus is writing an owl to the one person he still loves in the world, and Ron is moaning about his brown dress robes for seventh year instead of worrying where Hermione went when she never came back to Grimmauld Place. Another universe where what colour Ron's dress robes are still matter to someone, still matter to him, instead of where the Death Eaters will show up next and how many of them there'll be at the Ministry this time.
"Look at them," Ron says. They're pretty bad. Remus tries to hide his grin. These children learned the hard way, but not fast enough to break. "They're, they're."
Remus finishes for him, "they're brown, Ron. It's not the end of the world."
Ron looks at him like, of course it is. Remus tries, unsuccessfully this time, to hide his grin again. Of course, to a nearly-eighteen young man who wants to impress his best friend who happens to be a pretty young woman, ugly dress robes are the end of the world. "I tell you what," Remus says, standing - Sirius's owl can wait a while; he's only in Bath, after all - "I'll fetch you Sirius's robes. The two of you are about the same height."
In another universe, people dropped by Grimmauld Place more often, than less, and it got cleaned out, and the cleaner it got the cheerier it got, and the cheerier it got the happier the inhabitants got, until it really did feel like a home, instead of a temporary prison and permanent tomb. Ron immediately drops the second-hand robes on the table, and follows Remus up the stairs eagerly. Nothing yells curses in the hallway; the front drawing room curtains are open, sun shining in.