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Dumbledore arrived the morning after the Order meeting, early enough that Sirius was still sitting at the table in his boxers when he turned up. Dumbledore hadn’t been at the Order meeting — rarely was, what with having an entire school to run, and countless other irons in as many fires besides — and it was never good news when he turned up. Well, the time he offered Remus a job was excellent news, but otherwise he had a spectacularly poor record.
The only surprising part of it all was that Dumbledore framed it as if Remus really did have a choice — as if he could actually say, “no thanks, I’d rather not live for weeks at a time on the downs without my wand or hot showers or my husband while I attempt to infiltrate a group of werewolves who would not hesitate to rip me limb from limb if they suspected I were a spy”.
Obviously, Remus did not say that.
Sirius looked like he very much wanted to say something far ruder, but held his tongue and settled for passing through anger, sadness, frustration and then back to sadness. It was Remus’s choice, and he would respect that, but Remus knew as soon as Dumbledore left he’d been grumbling about how he could respect it but he didn’t have to like it.
The rest of the day was spent in a sort of aimless, anxious movement — there was nothing to pack, and nothing to really put in order, but it felt like he should be doing something.
Sirius spent the time ranting about Dumbledore’s disregard for Remus’s safety and concocting absurd plans to keep in touch with him that were both far too convoluted and too risky to implement.
“I’ll be fine,” Remus said, kissing Sirius so he would stand still. “Have you ever known me to die?”
Sirius’s laugh sounded more like a choked sob than anything, but he smiled, so Remus counted that as a success. “That’s unfair,” Sirius said, “you can’t use my own words against me.” It was what he’d always said in the early years of the war, before all their friends had died. Back when they felt immortal (though Remus had never really had the same sense of it as James and Sirius; the way his bones creaked and the tug of the moon ruined that illusion long before the war took it from them). As the war ground on and people began to fall, he stopped saying it — both because it was no longer comforting and because they’d been pushed apart by the secrecy and fear that had permeated everything back then.
This wouldn’t be like that. Remus wouldn’t repeat the first war, not even if Dumbledore told him to. Sirius knew where he was going this time — and the first mission would just be for two weeks. He’d done worse.
Two weeks wasn’t such a long time. He’d be fine.