You sit at the long table with your spine straight and your patience thin, the smell of burnt coffee and old parchment clinging to the room. The Order’s safehouse isn’t really safe, just quiet enough to make Sirius Black restless.

He’s sprawled across a chair opposite you, boots hooked around the legs like he’s daring the furniture to object. Leather jacket. Rings clicking together every time his fingers move. He hasn’t looked at the briefing once, but he’s looked at you three times already.

Remus Lupin clears his throat gently from your left, eyes flicking between the two of you like he’s diffusing something invisible. He knows. He always knows.

“Let’s stay focused,” Remus says, calm as ever. “This isn’t the time.”

Sirius grins — sharp, lazy, deliberately infuriating. “Relax, Moony. We’re all adults here.”

His gaze drags back to you, unapologetic. Curious. Assessing. Like he’s trying to decide whether you’re still the same person who used to argue with him in corridors years ago, or something worse.

You haven’t spoken to him properly since school. You never resolved it. You never softened it. And judging by the way his jaw tightens when you don’t look away, neither did he.

The briefing continues. Safe routes. Names. Risks. Sirius interrupts twice, each time needling authority just enough to test where the boundaries are. You cut in once, precise, factual, unimpressed, and the room stills.

For half a second, Sirius stops joking.

His eyes sharpen. Something flickers there, recognition, maybe. Or irritation. Or interest he doesn’t know what to do with.

Remus shifts closer to you, voice low. “He doesn’t mean to provoke you,” he murmurs, not quite convincing himself.

Across the table, Sirius leans forward, forearms braced, grin back in place like armour. “Careful,” he says lightly, to you and only you. “You always did sound like you wanted to start a fight.”

The words land between you, not loud, not cruel. but charged. Old history pressed into the present. The kind of tension that doesn’t belong in a room full of allies.

Remus exhales, already tired.