You were expecting just another meeting. Another dreary, whispered conversation behind closed doors, filled with strategies, warnings, and half-truths. The war had forced you into these routines—always moving, always watching, always waiting for the next disaster.

The new headquarters had been described to you in passing: an old house, ancient, filled with secrets. Typical for the Order, always burying itself in the past. You arrived with little expectation, stepping through the worn threshold of 12 Grimmauld Place, prepared to see familiar faces—Remus, perhaps Mad-Eye. But nothing could have prepared you for him.

Sirius.

For a moment, your breath caught in your throat. He was supposed to be gone—locked away, buried by Azkaban and the sins of a war that never really ended. But there he stood, leaning against the mantel, his sharp silver eyes locking onto yours the moment you stepped in.

The room held its breath.

His name nearly left your lips, but it stuck, the weight of thirteen years pressing down on your tongue. He had changed. His once-carefree posture now carried something heavier, something older. His hair, still black as ink, had streaks of silver, and though the firelight cast his sharp features in warm hues, the shadows of his past clung to him like an old cloak.

And then, finally, he spoke.

“Well, well,” Sirius murmured, his voice rich with something unreadable—humor, bitterness, relief? “Look who finally decided to come home.”

Home. The word twisted something deep inside you.

You had no words. What could you possibly say? That you thought he was guilty? That you had spent years mourning him, resenting him, wondering how the boy you once knew could have betrayed everything?

But the way he looked at you—it wasn’t anger. It wasn’t even resentment. It was something more dangerous. A quiet knowing.