CW: some triggering sexual abuse brought up in this chapter.

Something that a lot of people got very wrong about Antonia Zabini was that each of her husbands died because she wanted their money. That's what the Prophet always said so that's what everyone believed. However, she had genuinely loved every single man that she'd married. She'd fallen in love countless times with countless men but there was one common thread that made it easy for her to fall out of love with them as quickly as she'd fallen in love with them.

That common thread was her son.

There was never anything that Antonia would love more than Blaise. Not money. Not fame. Not her beauty. Blaise was the only constant that Antonia needed in her life. While each of the men that she'd married had been perfect gentlemen up until their wedding day and had been perfect father figures to Blaise, that always changed a few months after the marriage had been made official. The longest that they had made was a year and a bit before everything went downhill. Blaise had started to grow up knowing that he needed to lock his door or keep it barricaded whenever he went to bed and he started to hate that he was such a light sleeper. If someone stayed round, Manda or Draco or Theo, Antonia always sent her husband away for the night. 

At Hogwarts, Blaise was always reluctant to sleep in the same dorm as the rest of the boys so Manda had always let him sleep in the same bed as her. This then changed one summer when they were twelve and Manda was spending the summer with the Weasleys after she had been interrogated that year about her father.

She'd been shaken awake by Mrs Weasley, mumbling a soft apology but that she had a friend downstairs who looked immensely shaken up. Manda had quickly shrugged on her dressing gown and made her way downstairs, her frown growing deeper when she saw Blaise shivering on the couch. She made her way over and slipped her hand carefully in to his, the two silently making their way up to Charlie's room since it was the room closest from everyone and they didn't want to wake anyone else up. It wasn't like Charlie was home anyway to protest about it. 

They never talked about what it was that had happened but she knew that Antonia had figured it out just as quickly as Manda had because the next week they were attending another lavish funeral and the pictures were in the paper. Manda didn't see Blaise for the rest of that summer, Antonia having taken him to Italy to see his grandma, but Blaise also stopped sleeping in Manda's bed when they got back to school. He stayed in his own bed and he avoided being around Manda when the sun started to set. 

Ever since then, Manda worried about Blaise quite often which was always insanely obvious by her hair turning a soft sage colour, a colour that was pretty much only reserved for when she was thinking about Blaise... which was something that only George knew.

So when they were all making their way downstairs after being called for dinner, George didn't interrupt Manda's thoughts when he saw her hair colour. This colour of Manda's hair was typical at Grimmauld Place so people weren't that shocked when they did find her hair that colour instead of its usual bouncing blonde. The only person that the sage coloured hair bugged was George purely because when it came to Blaise and Manda, there was just something about their relationship that just didn't sit right. Maybe it was their intense co-dependency on each other or the fact that Manda would sometimes drift at random points in the day. At one point, Manda had just stopped talking to Ginny and left to go find Blaise based off of a hunch feeling that she'd apparently had that something was wrong. George knew better than to bring it up though.

Manda and Blaise's relationship was not something that was a simple topic of conversation. They were family, and George knew better than to get involved in family, especially Manda's family.

Another very common occurrence in Grimmauld Place besides Manda's sage green hair, was for Snape to storm out of the house with a sour look on his face after every single Order meeting that he attended. This always put a smile on each of the Order kids' faces and the large majority of them had to keep back little giggles. Manda let out a soft sigh when she felt Noah start to get fussy in her arms when they stopped at the bottom of the stairs, silently thankful for Fred now distracting him by pulling silly faces as they all waited for the Order members to shuffle out of the house at their own pace. Usually the kids were made to wait but it seemed like they might be learning a lot more than usual since only a handful of the members glamoured their appearances.

That night they were all eating in the dining room, Molly having said something about how they all needed to sit down and eat like a family. Naturally, this had caused an argument between Sirius and Molly about what that actually entailed because he felt they were doing that down in the kitchens as well. Thankfully, Liz had quickly cut in, calmed Sirius down and they'd worked out a compromise to eat in the upper dining hall once a week. Not many understood how hard it was for Sirius to be in that house, let alone to sit in the same places that he'd had to sit as his family so Sirius and Liz were always the last ones to sit down and nobody had a designated seat either which seemed to help calm him down quite a lot.

When the kids reached the bottom of the stairs finally and were making their way to the dining room, Manda was met with the sight of her father rubbing the back of his head with a cheeky smirk on his face that went away rather quickly whenever Liz looked in his direction. Liz occasionally shot her husband a glare, not falling for any of his fake hurt or fake guilt on his face. After all, they wouldn't have worked out for this long if she couldn't. Remus just rolled his eyes and took his godson from Manda's arms, his eyes softening and a smile spreading across his face as Noah stopped fussing the second that he was close to Remus. Manda sent her godfather a very grateful smile as she sat down in a random seat, her hand running through her blonde hair.

"You're lucky that Snape isn't coming to any meetings during the school year," Liz told her daughter as she sat down again and rubbed her slightly swollen belly.

"Why?" Manda asked with a raised eyebrow. She was more confused about why that would make her lucky rather than why Snape wouldn't be going to Order meetings. She guessed the Order meetings thing made sense. He couldn't exactly be seen leaving school grounds every five minutes to go to Death Eater or Order meetings.

"Because your father doesn't know when to keep his mouth shut," Liz told her, shooting Sirius a look that he returned with an innocent smile on his face. Once Liz wasn't looking at him though, Sirius sent his daughter a mischievous wink.

Manda let out a soft laugh and both father and daughter sent Liz an innocent smile when they both got a quick glare sent in both of their directions. She knew better than to take the conversation further than things were already in regards to this conversation. It looked like Liz was more than exhausted and after how bad her pregnancy with Noah had been, Manda wasn't surprised. Manda tried not to think about what might happen to her and her siblings if anything happened to her parents. She wasn't entirely sure that she'd be able to handle it. Whoever ended up looking after them would all depend on who was still around and maybe Manda would be of age by then so she'd be made their guardians. How she was meant to manage that was beyond her.

Eventually, Manda was pulled out of her thoughts as each of the kids realised that the adults were being a bit too quiet. There usually was an air of calm quiet after a meeting as each of the adults tried to muddle over their thoughts of everything that had occurred during but this time it was different. There was an uncomfortable stillness surrounding them all that Manda couldn't quite place the reason for. It had to do with a lot more than whatever it was her father had said to Snape, that was for sure.

"So... what exactly happened in that meeting?" Harry asked with a frown, glancing at each adult sat at the table.

Liz and Molly both shared a look. It was a specific type of look that concerned mothers seemed to have whenever they knew something could harm their children. It was a look that Manda was slowly becoming used to seeing followed by annoyance when both women realised that there wasn't exactly much that they could do to resolve the situations that their children found themselves in. Remus and Sirius, however, shared a conspirators look that was not lost on Arthur because he decided to distance himself from the pair and help Molly with dinner. Manda glanced over at George since it was their parents that were acting the weirdest but all he had to offer was a shrug which kind of summed up how everyone was feeling about how the adults had reacted.

Everyone in the room stayed absolutely silent at Harry's question and each of the children in the room tried to make it look like they weren't itching to know the answer. The only sound in the room came from Noah babbling to Kingsley about a drawing that he'd somehow done, most likely with crayons that Remus kept on him in case he ever had Noah.

"Some of us are concerned that Snivellus-"

"Sirius."

"Severus," Sirius corrected to avoid his wife's anger, "isn't able to provide the information that we expected from him based off of his... station in the Dark Lord's ranks."

"Then what does that mean for us? I thought that he was the only spy we have?" Hermione asked with an obvious frown on her face.

"He is, yes," Kingsley answered, taking his attention away from Noah to cover up Sirius' usual grumblings whenever Snape was a topic of conversation. "There haven't been any other opportunities that arose for us to be able to have another spy so currently Severus is the only one we have."

"He doesn't have to be though," Manda pointed out. "Not if you actually thought through every single person that you have available."

"What do you-"

"Absolutely not!" Liz snapped before Kingsley could ask what it was that Manda meant. "Do not even think about it! We all know what you were about to suggest and I swear if anyone in this room says the words then you're banished from this house!"

Kingsley carefully excused himself to go and tell Molly and Arthur to hurry up with dinner so that a Black family argument didn't break out. Everyone knew that food was the perfect distraction for a pregnant woman so hopefully distracting Liz for a bit would give everyone time to think with a clear head. Sirius just stayed silent, a frown on his face as he watched his wife and daughter stare each other down. Everyone else avoided looking at the mother-daughter duo but Sirius couldn't seem to take his eyes off of them. The pair just looked too similar for Sirius to look away.

Yes, Manda had been raised by Narcissa and Lucius but that didn't mean that she didn't still have some of the same mannerisms as Liz and Sirius, her even having some from Remus as well. Those mannerisms that she inherited from her father seemed to come out more when she was feeling playful and mischievous. It was in the way that her eyes would light up or it was in the carefully hidden winks that she would send people behind an authority figure's back. When it came to the mannerisms she inherited from her mother though, they usually came out when Manda was angry or stubborn. Right now they looked almost identical. It was in the way that they both scrunched up their noses when they were annoyed or the crease between their eyebrows when they were waiting for their opponent to back down and just admit that they were right.

There were two big reasons that Sirius stayed completely silent. The first was that he didn't exactly want to have to get involved in the discussion (if it could be called that) between his wife and daughter, not without knowing exactly where he stood on the matter. If he didn't go in with a proper game plan and thought out argument then they would surely eat him alive. The second was that while Sirius may be an overprotective father that was trying to make up for more than a decade worth of abandonment, he was also a strategist who thought through every single possibility. He would be lying if he hadn't thought about the possibility of using Manda as a spy whenever Snape had come back with terrible news and barely any information.

Sirius frowned and ran a hand through his hair, glancing over at Remus for some sort of guidance. Remus was always good for guidance... but apparently not in this situation because all that he was able to offer Sirius was a wary look and a shrug. Nobody really knew how to handle Liz when she was angry so it was getting harder to handle Liz and Manda at the same time.

Sirius turned his attention back to the two women that he cared most about in the world, one of them pregnant with his unborn child and the other the child that he was trying to make amends with. He chewed on the inside of his cheek before he cleared his throat and spoke.

"Maybe um... maybe Manda has a point."