Chapter Text
Feb 1980
Remus has to abandon a night out with some of the other Order members the evening he’s called for a meeting with Dumbledore. He’s putting on his coat by the door when Sirius shouts him from the front room where four or five other Order members are already round and getting started on soaking their fear in alcohol and setting it alight before hitting the local pub.
They’ve only been at it half an hour or so but they took rather quickly to shouting obnoxiously over one another’s stories.
Remus glances down the hallway at Sirius, perched on the back of the sofa with a bottle of beer between his fingers. He's tying his scarf around his neck and frowning at Sirius' profile when Frank turns around on the sofa below Sirius, almost like he sensed Remus looking, and they make direct eye-contact.
Frank smiles and holds up his bottle, giving gives it a little tempting wiggle as he mouths ‘Just have one?’, but Remus just smirks and shakes his head back.
"Lupin, don't stand me up like this," Frank says out loud, giving away Remus' presence in the hallway, and he feels obliged to move to stand in the doorway and wave at all of the faces that turn to greet him.
There are less of them than last time, and he knows it doesn't do to dwell on that sort of thing, but it's hard to ignore the fact that he might not get another chance to have a drink with half the people in this room ever again. And 'half' is being optimistic at this point. He shakes his head to clear it, but also to decline. “I’d love to, but I’ll probably be late if I don’t leave now.”
He checks his watch and then lets his gaze flicker to Sirius, who is sitting quietly, still gazing down at his beer bottle and avoiding Remus' eye, as he's done since that afternoon's disagreement.
“We were only briefed two days ago, what could he want to speak to you about?” Sirius had put down the burger halfway to his mouth to wonder aloud.
“If I knew I wouldn’t be Flooing to Scotland in the night to find out, now, would I?” Remus replied coolly.
“I thought Dumbledore was going to be away from Hogwarts this week?”
Remus squeezed his eyes shut momentarily against the start of a headache, and then returned to stirring his cup of tea. “Well, that’s where he asked to meet. He must have come back early.”
“Do you think it’s something urgent?”
“I would hope so, otherwise it would be rather cruel to call me out at such an odd time on a night that’s supposed to be relaxing.”
“Or convenient,” Sirius muttered, before finally taking a bite of his burger. Remus replaced his cup on the table with a pointed clatter.
“What does that mean?”
Sirius shrugged, not wanting to start something he knew he hadn’t the energy to finish, but the look in Remus’ eye told him that he had unfortunately already started.
“I’m not sure you ever really want to come out with us when we have these nights. I mean, I just can’t remember the last time you didn’t ditch out for something that was a meeting, or an appointment, or-“
“Or a full moon?” Remus snapped.
“I wasn’t including those times; I know they can’t be helped. There always manages to be something else stopping you.”
“You think I’m lying.” Sirius all but flinched at the tone in Remus’ voice.
“No! That’s-“ Sirius growled, irritated by the downward spiral of the conversation. “Not lying, just making excuses. But you don’t need to; you can just say you don’t feel like it instead of inventing a meeting with Dumbledore!”
Remus pushed his chair back from the table with a screech and stood up. “Dumbledore has asked me to meet him tonight to discuss Order business and, regrettably, that means I can’t join in your festivities. If that seems too odd to believe, you can feel free to invent another story to tell everybody.”
With that, he stormed off. Sirius heard the front door slam, but he knew Remus would just be letting off steam in the garden. He pushed the rest of his lunch away and sighed into his hands.
It took two hours for Remus to return to the house, but in a signature Marauder-sulk, he simply made several rounds of toast and some tea, and took it to his room.
Sirius had to knock on his door with the excuse that he couldn’t locate the teabags to make a reconnect. Remus wordlessly stalked into the kitchen with Sirius at his heels and pulled them from the same battered old tin beside the bread-bin where they had been since they moved in. He pushed them a little hard into Sirius’ hands, but Sirius caught his eye and swore he spotted a flicker of amusement beneath the exasperation at the obvious gesture before he returned to his room.
“Well, you should come find us when you’re finished, Remus,” Dorcas tells him earnestly from where she sits cross legged on the floor behind the coffee table, and the others nod.
Sirius does too, very slowly, but he stares pointedly at the carpet as he does so.
“I’ll try to, if I can,” Remus nods back.
He’s ready to leave now before the tension between the two of them becomes noticeable to the others, but as they all smile warmly in farewell, Sirius is analysing the label on his beer bottle.
In frustration at this, Remus grabs the bottle and takes a large swig from it before thrusting it back into Sirius’ hands.
“Save me one just in case,” he adds smugly, as Sirius smirks up at him, a little baffled and appeased.
And with that, Remus leaves
*
Dumbledore is facing away from the door, in the shadows of the far end of his office, when Remus enters.
“Sir,” Remus greets him, moving further into the dim and crowded room. He manoeuvres around the tables of artefacts and stops in front of the desk, having never stepped foot beyond it in his life.
Dumbledore glances over his shoulder and nods his acknowledgement to Remus, an odd gesture coming from the grand and gracious man, then beckons him closer when he notices he's stood so far away.
Remus hesitates, but there’s an atmosphere of urgency unlike anything he was given the impression of when called to the meeting, and so he strides past the invisible line beside the desk that marks his youth without another thought.
“I’m afraid, Remus, that this is as pressing a matter as you've undoubtedly feared, coming so soon after our last meeting.” Remus’ stomach lurches. “I must ask you to do something I wished you would never have to do, and furthermore, I must ask that you go about this business clandestinely.”
“Of course, Sir. Order business is always-“
“No, Remus.” Dumbledore lowers his head so that he is eyeing Remus from over the rim of his spectacles, and shakes his head minutely. “Not like other Order business. Do you understand?”
“Professor?” Remus probes.
“You must keep this only to yourself,” Dumbledore says gently, but firmly. “No one else.” This time Remus hears it: Not Sirius. Not James. Not Peter.
“What do I have to do?”
“You don’t have to do anything, Remus. I'm asking you, as a last resort, to do something frankly quite dangerous. You can refuse and I will, of course, not think anything less of you. However, the task has the potential to gain us valuable intel. It could turn the tide in our favour; what you achieve could make all the difference for us.”
Remus feels a pang of irritation midway through the speech. They both know he won’t say no; he can’t. Dumbledore probably banked on that.
“Why me?” he asks anyway.
“For starters, you are experienced and adept at fabricating a cover for yourself, which will be of utmost importance during this mission.”
It takes Remus a beat to realise what Dumbledore is referring to. “You think I'm a good liar?” he translates, and the hint of bitterness is hard to disguise in his own voice.
“I hope you're not offended, Remus. You’ve honed your ability to lie your way through situations out of necessity, and no wrongdoing of your own. You now have the chance to put that ability to great use.”
“Other than making up convincing stories, what do you think I can do better than any of the others?” he asks sincerely, because half of the Order are better duellists than Remus, they have more skilled Legilimens among them, and of course none of them are incapacitated for a week out of every month with-
And then the penny drops.
“Oh.”
Dumbledore frowns, almost regretfully, and reaches out to touch Remus’ arm.