It isn't like the muggle wars I learned about at my old muggle primary school.

There is seldom blood to rinse away, and no grimy, muddy, smoke blackened skin to scrub. The killing curse is too quick and clean for any of that. But I'm still standing in the shower an hour after the latest battle ended, still scouring my skin.

I'm shivering uncontrollably, despite the almost unbearably hot water pouring over my weary body.

I don't know why anyone can see the wisdom in a bloody war. It never achieves anything except lots of damaged souls.

I'm one of them.

Until a few weeks ago I had sunk so low I was even starting to wonder why I was trying so hard to win this war.

I was disconnected from all of it, and nothing felt real anymore. I could barely even dredge up my old hatred for Voldemort and all the idiots who stand with him. When I tried to remember, and strengthen the feeling it only made me feel deader inside. As if a poisonous serpent had crawled into my chest, coiled tight around my heart, and wasn't allowing me to feel much of anything.

A lust for vengeance does slowly poison a man. I know that now.

I just couldn't see beyond the next battle then, the next onslaught of curses even, or the next body I would see crash lifeless to the ground.

One of ours, or one of theirs? It didn't matter which, I still wouldn't feel anything more than quietly sickened, regardless of who had just been reduced to another corpse.

Different people cope in different ways with the uncertainty and horror of these days.

Ron took to drinking, just a glass too much at first, but before long he was obliterating this waking nightmare in a wash of spirits, and now spends his leisure hours drunkenly reminiscing about the good old days when he had saved almost every Slytherin attempt to score, and how he had scored with Parvati after that last winning game.

Strange to think those good old days are barely a year passed.

Hermione took up residence in the library, as if the answer to everything was hidden between the pages of a book. But that wasn't new. Her reading companion was though. When she glowingly announced she was marrying Remus and having his child even Ron swam out of his alcohol-induced haze for long enough to eye the pair with disbelief.

Was it really just five years ago that Remus was simply her best-loved professor, and not the one she loves best?

Alcohol just makes me sick, and I felt sure the one I loved would never view me as a potential partner in life. So I took refuge in calculated indifference and slowly my pretence became reality and I just stopped caring. I operated automatically; buttering my toast, tying my shoelaces, murdering my enemies.

I did my best to lose myself, but at the same time there was some tiny part of me left that desperately wanted to feel. It didn't matter if it was pain or pleasure. It would be something to remind me that there was a shred of humanity left in me.

I had more lovers in a single year than most wizards do in a lifetime, because when I was busy concentrating on someone who didn't matter, I could forget who I was and yet still feel. It became the ultimate escape for me.

Hermione scolded me for it.

Remus frowned disapprovingly.

Ron raised a glass in salutation.

Sirius tried to talk to me.

I ignored them all. Even Sirius.

Most of all Sirius.

Because Sirius was the one real danger to my heart, and the only true threat to my tenuous grasp on a life lived without feeling.

But even when I was busy disregarding his attempts at more than casual conversation, I would gaze at him whenever he looked away. Before I tried to sleep at night I would stare at his photograph as it smiled that dangerous smile I love, that smile I wished I could kiss.

I loved to look at those quicksilver eyes, darting, sparkling, there is so much life to find in them. The light in them never dims now, and it gives me hope. If Azkaban couldn't squeeze the life from him, then surely not even this war can destroy him. He is constant, unwavering, like the dog he can be.

I tried my hardest not to love him, or lean on him, or at least not more than a godson should, but he had made a new place for himself in my heart long before I knew the truth and depth of my own feelings. When I knew it, it was already too late. He had trodden out a hollow in the very center of my heart, a place for him to rest. A space that would always be his to fill or leave achingly empty at will.

I covered the hurt that loving him brought, but I was set on a path to self-destruct. I took too many needless risks in battle; even I knew that, but I couldn't seem to stop myself. I didn't care enough to stop myself, because a cruel voice in the very back of my mind always told me that nobody would really be devastated if I was gone.

Ron is happiest now in the bottom of a bottle, he doesn't register much else.

Remus and Hermione have each other, and their unborn child.

I knew Sirius would feel guilty that he hadn't protected me, but I wondered sometimes in my darkest moments if Sirius only loved me because I'm all he had left of his best friend.

Then I usually dismissed the unworthy thought.

Sirius is a man who would only give his love to those he deemed worthy. He is too brutally honest for pretence and would likely gift you with his scorn if he found you wanting.

Even if my father would always hold more of Sirius's heart, at least I had a small corner of it to call my own. I took some comfort in that for a while, but it wasn't enough compared to what I felt for him.

I would almost have welcomed death not long ago, because at least then, it would all have been over, I wouldn't have to drift around not feeling much of anything anymore, except a cold empty despair that Sirius would never love me the way I loved him and revulsion at my unjust jealousy of a dead man.

It is clichéd, but it took a close brush with death to make me feel alive again.

Three weeks ago we were fighting in the grounds of Hogwarts itself, darkness was falling fast, and a budding moon shone dimly in the frosty sky. As the last rays of light faded from the heavens we were slowly pushing the death eaters back towards the boundary. They were beginning to panic, I could already taste our small victory that day, as most of the opposition not captured or dead were hurrying back to where they could apparate to safety.

Then I saw it.

For a moment I felt an overwhelming rush of a myriad of emotions; rage, shock, guilt, pain and horror all twisted in my breast, and I know that nothing short of Voldemort popping up in front of me dancing the hula would have stopped my headlong dash towards the scene about to unfold on the shores of the motionless lake.

I slithered through slush and ice, with only one thought in my head. I didn't notice the curses fired at me as I ran. I didn't see anything but the three men standing by the water.

I was just a moment too late for what I intended; because as I reached them Sirius collapsed and lay sprawled on the ground, pillowed on snow that rapidly bloomed crimson in a halo around his dark head.

I got there just in time to prise a silver hand from the throat of a werewolf. It is fortunate for Remus that Hermione is such a bossy new wife that in view of the cold weather she had forced him to wear an unreasonably large scarf that covered him from collar to nose, he was lucky that day and took no damage from the silver.

But Pettigrew certainly took damage from me. I almost forgot I was a wizard, I could feel a sharp pulse thundering in my head as I faced him and all I could focus on was beating the man to a pulp.

As I launched myself at him in a flurry of kicks and punches, suddenly all I could do was feel.

Agony, disbelief, hate, all roiled through me and a sob escaped my lips with every breath.

I had never wanted to hurt another human being so much.

We struggled together for a few moments before plunging together through the wafer thin layer of ice that crusted the edges of the lake.

I was so cold, all the breath stolen from my lungs in an instant, and I floundered, unsure which way I should struggle, my heavy saturated robes blanketing me, wrapping me tightly in their icy embrace. I was so heavy, and suddenly so tired and I let myself sink, I didn't fight the tangled weeds that came swirling around my leaden limbs. I was beyond giving a damn as I drifted into the depths of the lake. The giant Squid could eat me for all I cared.

Then there was a sharp tug at my robes and I was suddenly shooting upwards and burst to the surface spluttering. I sucked frigid air into my lungs and feebly flapped my waterlogged arms in an attempt to swim.

I didn't need to swim, my rescuer towed me to the edge of the lake, and then his bruised paws were splashing and wading over sharp rocks in the shallows, before he dragged me up the bank and collapsed beside me.

Sirius punched through my fragile defenses that night as we lay on the shore of the icy lake. His hands shook as he pushed back my hair and tenderly traced my jaw. He pulled me into his arms and begged me to be okay. I felt a single warm drop fall from his wet face, to burn on my chilled skin, and knew the droplet was not lake water, but a tear.

I somehow found the strength to lunge up and kiss him then, as I had wanted to for so long. Hard and brutal, as I might kiss any other man I was trying to forget or remember myself with. I tasted blood as I plundered his mouth and dug my fingers into the chilled flesh of his shoulders. I wanted to make sure he was real. I wanted him to be mine.

Then he was returning the kiss, just as savagely, his elegant fingers twisting painfully in my hair, and his teeth clashing with mine.

When Remus cleared his bruised throat to remind us of his presence I couldn't even summon any sense of shame.

I was too shocked.

I had dared to kiss the man I have loved for too long, and more surprisingly still, he had kissed me back.

But that messy, desperate embrace on the freezing cold shore, with the lifeless body of Peter Pettigrew bobbing inelegantly a few feet from us was three weeks ago. I was rapidly developing hypothermia and Sirius was dizzily sporting the hideous gash that had produced the blood that frightened me so, and yet it is the most powerfully good moment I can find in my memory.

The shower curtain is suddenly swept back now and he enters the steam filled cubicle. His chest blankets my back and as he reaches past me to lower the temperature of the shower he brushes a feather light kiss to my neck. I can breathe again now, and perhaps finally I can find the warmth I need.

I turn and burrow into his chest, I let him hold me for a moment, savoring yet another day that we have both survived to be together and at long last the shuddering of my body eases.

Then such simple contact isn't enough, I'm starving for him. This kiss is as hungry as our first, yet infinitely more loving.

My hands explore his body, tracing the line of his belly before my fingers creep lower and he arches into me, helplessly revelling in the sensation of my touch. I love that I can make him feel this way.

Our mouths lock together, firm but tender, our tongues duelling. Our hands caress and our bodies push against each other.

He wraps strong arms around me, and lets me rest my weight against him. My hand rests gently over his thundering heart, and his often hard, mercurial eyes are steady and soft as they gaze lovingly into mine.

I don't forget myself when I make love with him. I find myself.

He makes me want to keep living.

I still take chances on the battlefield, but not ones so likely to take me from him, because I badly want to see tomorrow now. I want all my tomorrows to be spent with him.

I know what I'm fighting for now, it is tangible. Perhaps all I ever needed was a reason to fight that wasn't about responsibility or doing the right thing, maybe I just needed a reason that I could understand in a way that touched the soul.

I've been lucky enough to be given that reason, and where before I muddled through, often feeling lost and directionless I can close my eyes now, and still see my guiding star.