CHILDREN

TRIGGER WARNING: MISCARRIAGE CONVERSATION AND PREGNANCY CONVERSATION, ALSO CONVERSATION ABOUT DEATH AND KIDNAPPING. IMPLIED TORTURE.... I MEAN, MIA'S BACKSTORY.

Anne hadn't cooked breakfast in a long, long while. Still, she realised as she cooked that it was the first time that she actually enjoyed doing it; she didn't seem to be scared of messing something up and burning something slightly too much, she was still trying to do her best, of course, but she knew that Sirius and James would still eat whatever she cooked with a smile on their faces, even if it taste horrible.

Pancakes with butter. Waffles with honey. Toast with beans. Everything she had managed to learn to cook growing up was being put on the table and receiving a charm to keep as warm as possible while the family was still getting ready for the day, having no idea it was Anne in the kitchen with Mia just as supervision in the doorway of the kitchen.

"They're going to love it," Mia promised. "You'll see."

"I'm not that good of a cook, Harry was always better at it than me," Anne admitted. "Maybe you can tell me where I can get better so I don't make any more mistakes."

"You didn't make a single mistake that I could have noticed, Annie, stop cutting yourself short," Mia dismissed. The older woman walked to the stairs and peeked up at it, but there was nobody coming down yet. "With Coco sick, it's sort of hard waking those boys up. They always go back to sleep."

"We'll see what type of Aurors they'll be," joked Anne.

"Wonderful ones if I have anything to do with it," she answered. "SIRIUS, JAMES, FLEAMONT. GET UP NOW! BREAKFAST!" she took a deep breath after almost tearing her voice apart and turned to Anne, smiling a bit. "Now... let's set the table, shall we?"

Anne almost ran to put all the plates, cups and food on the table in the most organized and prettiest way possible to make it pleasant to look up and to eat from as well. There was certain happiness with the result, but the nervousness from their reaction was certainly winning from that.

"I can't believe they'll start their training today already," Anne commented as she put the jug of orange juice and the jug of pumpkin juice on the table. "They got accepted so quickly. Frank Longbottom said it took him a month and half to get an answer back from them."

"Well, they are my sons," Mia said as if that was explanation enough. "Though it sounds terrible and very wrong, the people in there had their eyes out for their grades since they were in sixth year and said they wanted to be Aurors."

"How very Slytherin of your contacts," Anne teased.

"I was a Slytherin, after all, a social network is just as important as talent and skill," Mia answered. "Before I retired, I did put good word out about young James and his friends, always saying they were growing too fast and getting too good at magic for their age. I never lied for them. I never asked anyone for a favour. I just threw information on the table and allowed those hungry people to do whatever they wanted with it."

Anne sat down on the table near Mia as she waited for the boys to get down.

"Why did you retire anyways?" Anne asked. "You're just two years older than Monty."

"Well, I..." she hesitated. "It's a bit of a difficult story."

"You don't need to tell me if you don't want to," Anne said.

There was certain desperation in her voice, never wanting to hurt her grandmother in any way. Anne had trusted Mia with a lot of things because she didn't pry, she didn't even look like she wanted to. Mia was just always there, always willing to listen and understand, but never thirsty for revenge, only for protection.

"No, it's alright. I just need a moment to put it in words," she answered as her eyes became slightly foggy. She wasn't even there in that table, her memories were somewhere else, stuck in her worst nightmares. "I started as an Auror at nineteen after getting bored of planting potion ingredients. I thought I was going to be a mediocre one, get by just fine, you know, but never sticking out. As a Slytherin, I was good in going with the flow."

"I can't imagine you as submissive to the people around you," Anne admitted.

"Never submissive, just easily swayed," she answered. "Something about taking a stand sounded wrong for me, so I just went unnoticed for the most part – well, I had Monty by my side, yes, but never he was a dirty supervisor and gave me any special treatment, if completely honest, he expected even more from me."

"You were already together at that point?"

"Yes," Mia said, smiling at her granddaughter. "And he was so mean! Such a perfectionist. It was unbearable to be under him in the pyramid, but still he was so good and kind that I couldn't help but see the man I had fallen in love with whenever he talked to victims and witnesses."

"I suppose that kindness rubbed off on you," she said.

"I suppose. He taught me that nobody gets left behind," she explained.

Anne was reminded of one of her first interactions with James as her father – he had promised nobody would be left behind, especially not his daughter, and she had cried like a child inside. He had been raised right, she knew that, but only now she understood how and why he had been raised to be like that.

"And?"

"And I was obsessed with the career. I wanted my parents to be proud of me and I wanted to make sure they would never look down on me again for changing my mind from what I wanted to do when I was seventeen, I mean, who know what they want to do for certain when they are a child?" she asked. Anne nodded. "So I did my best in everything I did. I climbed up the ranks, I crawled my way out from gossips once our relationship was exposed and I proved myself time and time again, as any woman at that time needed to do to survive in any job. Until I got pregnant."

"You had James late, I know that much," Anne said.

"I was forty-six when I got pregnant," she explained.

Anne's body grew cold. Mia had been more than fifty when James had been born. Whatever pregnancy she had been talking about was not James'.

"I see," was all she managed to utter out.

"I didn't know at first, I thought I had been sick and I didn't want to be seen as weak, so I went out on the field and didn't tell anyone I was feeling so weak I could barely move too fast without getting dizzy," she explained, voice lowering and eyes getting further away. "I took a hit that time when I wasn't fast enough to move out of the way or defend myself. It wasn't anything serious, I believe it was just a Stupefy, but I didn't realise I was already miscarriage before I was hit. I thought I was going to die. I didn't know what I was hit with at first, so there was the confusion and the pain and then the blood... so much blood everywhere."

"But you were alright."

"After a week, yes," she answered. "At least physically. I never forgave myself for not knowing my body well enough. If I had gone to Healers and paid more attention. If I had taken care of myself enough, I would've noticed my period had stopped and that my cramps weren't followed my relief after the medication – I had been in labour two months and a half into the pregnancy."

She was young and couldn't even grasp the idea of mourning something you didn't even know you had, but Anne had lost the life she could have had with Remus once before. She thought the pain might have been the same – mourning something that could have been good, but there was no more.

"I told Monty, but not anyone else," Mia admitted.

"Why?"

"Because I didn't want the pity that came with the miscarriage," she answered. "Losing a baby is horrible, Anne, but losing it and everybody knowing it it's just twice as terrible. Every look, every question... they always bring you back to the moment and to the thought that people are worried because they don't expect you to be alright. They'll forever see you as broken or as mourning." Anne nodded. "So I did my best to live on... and I need for another five years. That was when I almost died."

Anne leaned forward. Just thinking about Mia hurt made her heart sink to her stomach and the smell of food in front of her become nauseating.

"Were you hit by a spell?" Anne asked.

"I was kidnapped," Mia corrected. "Somebody threw a Crucio on my back and I fell in the middle of the battle. I didn't have time to scream before I was taken. I was kept under their hold for two weeks and they unspeakable things to me, and I thought I was going to die there without seeing my husband once more. But he came, stormed in the gang's headquarters and carried me out like a novel hero. I never seen him so angry before."

"Monty is capable of getting angry?" Anne asked, surprised.

"That day he was," Mia said. "The criminals were supposed to be found alive to follow trial, but at least half of them were killed by a bombarda he threw to get inside. But I had never seen him being as kind to anyone before – he took guard as I went to the bathroom because I was afraid of doing just that alone. He was... I fell in love with him all over again, every single day I fell in love with him."

Anne ended up smiling, though it was a horrible story.

"I'm sure Monty felt the same," Anne mumbled before she could stop herself.

"He did. He didn't leave me alone for a single second and wrote to me three times a day while I stayed at home for the next three months, recovering, and he had to go to work," she explained. Anne chuckled as Mia giggled. "While I was recovering, I got pregnant again and this time I couldn't bring myself to go back to work – not after losing one, not after everything I went through... It took so long for me to even allow myself to be touched by my own husband, how could I trust other man once more? So I asked for a special retirement."

"I'm sure Monty was happy about it, having you safe at home," Anne said.

"On the contraire, my dear, he thought he had lost his partner, because there was no one he trusted as much," Mia answered. "It took three weeks to make him stop being cold with me, just when I told him I was pregnant."

"Dad," Anne guessed.

"Yes, your dad!" Mia said. "I thought he was a girl, did know you that?" Anne shook her head. "He was so calm in my belly, and reacted so strongly to Monty's voice once I could feel him moving that I was sure it would be a girl, but then... there came James, bringing surprise to all of us and not for the first time."

"Did you want a girl?"

"I wanted a healthy child," Mia said. "I wanted James to survive the night, and then the next night I would pray for him to survive just a bit more. The doctors didn't think he would; I was already old enough for him to be considered in risk, but he pulled through... and now I have three boys and a little girl."

"Not all by blood," Anne teased.

"Doesn't make me stop asking the gods every night for them to survive one more night," Mia said. Anne didn't think she had ever seen someone love as passionately and as freely as Mia did. She wanted to, one day, understand how her heart and mind worked completely so she could be the same – there was an admiration that could never be put in words about how Mia knew her feelings and understood others' feelings without as much as a hitch. "Destiny took a child from me to give me back in more than a single child," Mia said. "And the best granddaughter I could ask for."

"I'm your only granddaughter," Anne teased, trying not to feel too emotional.

"Doesn't stop you from being my favourite," Mia dismissed.

Remus couldn't stop fidgeting.

He was sitting in the music room while reading while Mia tried her best to teach Anne the piano, though the younger girl certainly had no musical talent at all. In another moment, the noises would certainly annoy him, but he couldn't bear the thought of being alone at the moment, so he tried his best to read the fantasy book in his hand, but he couldn't concentrate and he couldn't find himself in a light enough mood to joke around with Mia and Anne as he would usually do.

He felt useless and worried.

Worried, he knew instantly to why. The Auror training was known to be ruthless and it always had at least half of the recruits giving up on the first three months, but she also knew the determination in Sirius and James, and neither would give up, even if they needed to do so. Even in their life depended on it, they wouldn't give up on getting to the end of the training, especially if that meant making Monty very proud.

Useless, however, it took half of the afternoon to understand. He felt like he was being useless and a burden for Mia, who was housing and providing to him without hesitation or complaint, and there he was, lying there, unsure of what do and not even working odd-jobs to take up his time.

There was a part of his mind that told him that Anne was doing the same and that he shouldn't be that upset about being a normal teenager after finishing school; he was just eighteen after all and there wasn't much to be expected of him, especially when he was a werewolf, everybody knew people like him couldn't hold a job for too long. But another voice whispered that it was different, Anne was Mia's real granddaughter by blood and not just a friend of her son's and the boyfriend of the first adoptee and that meant that she would have preference.

So, once more Remus was uncomfortably shifting in his place on the chair.

"Mia, I'm terrible at this!" Anne complained. "Take one look at Remus and you'll know it. Look at how he hates the noises, he looks like he's about to jump and run away and it's not doing that out of politeness."

"He's not. Are you, Remus, dear?" Mia asked.

Remus looked up at them

"I'm sorry?" he asked, confused.

"I made him deaf," Anne pretended to cry.

"See," Mia said. "He doesn't mind."

"Are you bothered by my very clear lack of talent?" Anne asked, ignoring her grandmother's smile.

"You're doing a great job," he lied, still confused to why he was suddenly involved in the conversation.

Anne turned to her grandmother.

"See," Anne said. "He hates it."

Remus closed the book and put it aside without too much thought.

"I've been thinking of finding a job in a muggle place," Remus blurted out suddenly. "Less questions once things start getting too obvious and less chance of people hating me for being a werewolf. Sure, I had the very odd 'queer' problem, but... I think I can deal with it; you know, something like that."

Mia looked away from Anne and took her hands away from the piano, turning to look at him with careful eyes.

"Remus, dear, you don't need to do that," Mia said. "Take your time. Just because Sirius and James already had a career in plan, it doesn't mean you need one."

"Not a career, just a job for now, to keep me busy and get some money," he explained, dismissing her worries. "That's what Marlene is doing. She's working in the front desk of a jiu-jitsu academy."

"The academy she studied on for years," Anne explained. "It's not easy for people like us to get jobs on the Muggle world, Remus. Are you certain you are ready for not using magic around them?"

"I don't use magic all the time," he said.

"But you have a holster for your wand on your hip even when you're walking around the house," Mia said. "You'll probably have to hide it or leave it here while you work, you are of that, correct? Notice-Me-Not Charms don't work on wands themselves, so it might not work too well on hiding you carrying a stick around."

"Just a few jobs here and there, a gig, even," he said.

"If that's what you want, I won't say anything against it, Remus, but you don't need to get a job and I want you to know that. You're allowed to rest before you go blindly looking for something," Mia explained. "This is your house."

He wanted to say that it wasn't. That was her house. The Potter Manor, and he wasn't a Potter.

"I just don't do well with staying without doing anything. I cleaned our bedroom like three times since the seventeenth and I can't think of any other way of arranging the library, I mean, Monty seemed very confused, but he didn't say anything about it," he said, flustered as he got up from the chair he had been sitting and shoving his hands down his pockets. "Maybe a work in a factory or on a general store. Nobody takes attendance too seriously. Just something for a few months."

Anne couldn't understand his eagerness to work. Sure, it did serve as a distraction, but she couldn't imagine herself focusing completely in something like a temporary job – she would need all the time in the word to make up plans.

All the scheme she had on her bedroom wall in the dormitory was now near her desk on her own bedroom; all the names were separated on chess pieces once more and she had began cocooning plans for getting the last three Horcruxes. She had written the information Narcissa had passed to her to Dumbledore as well and he had promised he would talk about in the next Order meeting (which would be that very night).

"I can help you then," Mia said. "In the kitchen, there are a few Muggle papers from this week and last week. We can search for jobs in there together."

Remus smiled gratefully as he walked out of the music room to get the papers.

"Did you know?" Anne asked. "You don't usually get Muggle paper."

"He has being stuck inside without his friends, he would have to get out and seek the world around him at some point," Mia answered. "I know my children, Anne."

It was the first time the Order was using the Potter Manor as headquarters for a meeting.

With Sirius and James sleeping at the trainees' dormitory (they would only use it once twice a week, having a schedule with the other trainees for stakeout operations training), the adults weren't all that worried with the children being present – Remus was up in his and Sirius' room reading the papers and Anne was already part of the Order, sitting on the chair between Monty and Mia.

"Thank you all for coming, I'm sure the last-minute meeting has been a bit inconvenient," Dumbledore started. "But Anne has gathered information that needed to be shared in absolute secret, so letters were not a good way of passing it."

Anne took the hint that she needed to find another way to contact him, his mail no longer being safe, apparently. She thought back on her letter, happy that she never went into too many details or mentioned who had been her source.

"I have a very good source inside the Inner Circle who told me the Death Eaters have gotten very good contact inside the Ministry," Anne said.

"We all know that," Moody said, rolling his eyes. "We just need to know who now, girl."

"If you give me time, I'll tell you names, Moody," Anne said, glaring at him. "Mister Crouch has been doing several favours to get in contact with Voldemort himself, has been humiliating himself and offering anything, including his son, as a payment for someone to get him in good terms with him, but Voldemort still thinks he talks too much – I asked my source to innocently ask Voldemort to get Crouch closer to the cause; with any luck, he'll spread information without us needing to go after it."

"It's a good opportunity, if it works," Frank Longbottom said. "I have a friend, Maddison Holmas, she works with him and always complains about him to me. She might end up telling me what he says."

Alice Longbottom rolled her eyes, clearly not enjoying that Frank kept contact with that Maddison girl. Anne understood why Regulus needed a social network and why her silly jealousy was getting in the way, Alice was way more mature than her, showing her jealousy only when they were alone and not getting in the way of his job.

"Good, do start showing more interest whenever she speaks about him," Dumbledore said. "Tell her that you think those parts of the story are funny, laugh too loudly."

"Flirt back, he means," Alice said, bitterly.

"Indeed, Madame," Dumbledore said. "Flirt back, Mister Longbottom. Miss Holmas is a very lonely girl, she'll talk to you about anything if you give her opening enough."

Frank nodded, getting the orders and putting them away in his mind.

"There's someone else though," Anne said. "Mister Yaxley. Horrible man, but a charming one."

"He's new," Monty said. "I've seen him walking around a bit lost and ended up helping him around today. He did say he met you, complimented you all the way – a bit uncomfortable, I must admit."

Anne blushed, hating that now everybody on the table knew that she, too, had been flirting around to get her information. How pathetically hypocrite of her, she thought as she nodded to herself.

"Well, Mister Yaxley is to be marked with the Dark Mark soon enough, but he's not in the Inner Circle yet. He has few friends here in England and spends most of his time in France with his little sister, whom expressed a great interest in one of my male sources, I asked him to humour her for now. She's young, just fourteen, might tell a lot without much of a filter," Anne said. "He's not a danger, I feel. Might get out of our way soon, but he's of a good financial support to their cause."

"The man is their bloody wallet," complained Emilia.

"Yes, but he doesn't seem to notice that," Anne said.

"Let's keep it that way. Maybe he'll change sides once he realises that he's just being used by them all," Mia said. "If he does, somebody will need to get him a way out. Somebody he knows, like Anne."

She shifted on her seat; she felt a bit uncomfortable.

"I doubt he'll change his mind at all," Monty said. "His first sentence to me was 'a shame your protegee is a half-blood', so... even if he changes his side, I don't want him anywhere near my girl."

"Alright, then, if it comes to it, somebody else will contact him," Dumbledore agreed. "You said there was more."

"Yes, they have another contact inside the Ministry," she said. "Mister Fawley. His daughter just got engaged to the youngest Lestrange brother."

"He's twenty-one," Arthur said. "And she's seventeen."

"Well, it's not like she has a say in it, Arthur," Fabian said.

"And what department is Mister Fawley in?" Molly asked.

"Surprisingly, Muggle Control," Arthur said, distasteful. "He sits three desks away from me and is usually quiet. He's a terrible person, always glaring and rolling his eyes whenever someone puts him to work; he just assumed that he wouldn't have to work much if he was dealing with Muggles."

"That would work for him," Anne grumbled. "Fortunately, Elizabeth is a friend of my contact," she tried her best not to grimace. "He's still in contact with her after Hogwarts, so I might be invited to the wedding."

"Isn't the other Horcrux in the Lestrange vault?" Gideon asked, looking at Fabian.

"Yes," Fabian asked.

"It might be a good opportunity to get it," Dumbledore said. "We can find a way in."

"Finding a way in is easy, the problem is finding a way out without anyone noticing," Anne said.

The first time had involved a lot of breaking and a lot of fire with the help of a half-blind dragon. Doing the same, she supposed, would get too much attention.

"About it, as well, there has been no movement in the vault in weeks," said Fabian. "That's a lot for them. They usually get into the vault every week or so, then every two weeks, but this month, they didn't show up at all."

"The guards?" Dumbledore asked.

"Well, they're still going, but... they leave early here and there, especially Friday and in the weekends," Fabian continued.

"They're getting sloppy," Moody said, nodding, nosily drinking the water. Anne cringed at the unpolite sound. "When they fuck up, we get it."

"There are curses inside the room, though," Anne said. "We need a Curse-Breaker to go in before us, look around and then get out. Once we have the counter-curses, we can deal with it. But we also need the key and a way through the goblins."

"I can deal with the Goblins," Fabian dismissed. "They don't care much about our problems, wizarding problems, I mean. If I say it's about a war, some might look the other way. I've became friends with one of them and he's been trying to get a better job inside Gringotts – about that... Regulus Black will start the Curse-Breaking Internship, so we might need to keep an eye on him. He might know more than we do and might have access."

Anne looked away, trying not to react to the name.

"He might not, though," Anne dismissed. "And, even if he did, I doubt he would talk to you about it. No, stay away from him as you normally would before he gets too suspicious about you."

"She's right," Gideon said, nodding to himself as he looked away to Anne and towards his brother. "He's a suspicious boy, Sirius' brother all the way. If you ask too many questions or become too friendly, he might talk about you. You don't want people to know you're in the Order just yet, they might stop putting information out if they know you might use them."

"Anne and your brother are correct, Mister Prewett," Dumbledore said. "Regulus Black is not to be disturbed."

Regulus was a lot more useful to Dumbledore if he was ignored, but a lot more useful to Anne if he was safe. For one time, a surprising time, both wishes aligned in a single one that might embrace both plans for his life.

"We have one last subject in our schedule," Monty said. "James and Sirius, my sons, said they want in."

"They're very young, Potter," Moody said, frowning.

"They're willing."

"They're children!" Moody said.

"So is Anne, and here she is," Mia said, pointing at the young girl beside her. "And you seem well with her being here."

Moody scoffed.

"That girl is a lot of things, but not a child," he said.

She understood that he wasn't talking about the two boys being children because of their age, but because of their attitudes. She was slightly uncomfortable about it, even if Moody was just calling her mature – or imply that she was losing her mind somehow, because that was what she was feeling.

"Both boys are talented and determinate, I have to admit, but I must agree that they're very young and might not be the best moment to recruit people as young as them, fresh out of school," Dumbledore said, glancing at Anne. "Maybe once they're done with Auror training might be a better time."

Anne understood, surprised, that he was trying to get some approval from her. He was trying to save her friends from their destiny; if they were never in the Order, they would be safe, and with that much she had to agree. Still, she knew those boys well enough to know that there was no way they would stay the whole war away from the fight, Auror training completed or not, and it was best that they had the backup of the Order than fighting in the front lines without the allies.

"I disagree," Anne said.

Dumbledore looked at her.

"Alright?"

"They are going to fight, no matter what we do. With or without the Order, they will jump in the fight either way," she said. "They might as well be trained for it in the Auror training, but have he support from the Order. They're safer with us than rogue."

"Yes," Mia said.

"Indeed. I know my sons," Monty said.

Dumbledore watched Anne for a moment and Anne nodded once.

"Next meeting, then, James Potter and Sirius Black-Potter are invited to come..." Dumbledore looked up at the ceiling of the house. "Mister Remus Lupin might as well come," his lips twitched. "He already heard the whole conversation, anyways."