A/N: Well, I'd been intending to add the conversation with Harry in this chapter but then looked at my notes (yeah, I have notes) and realized that part would fit better in the general tone of next chapter (kind of seemed like an appendix in this one). So, here's a whole Sirius & Mia chapter.

It was clear enough that sleep didn't want anything to do with her that night, Mia concluded later on the night of the battle as she lay in her bed with Sirius. It was sometime around three in the morning and there were still too many thoughts – the bad kind of thoughts – haunting her mind and not allowing her to rest even though she felt so helplessly tired.

She knew she had to think of something else or she'd go mad. Nobody but… she swallowed hard just from thinking of it. Nobody but Dumbledore had been killed from their side, which was always a positive thing. Some injuries, sure, but they were more uncomfortable than serious: the worst of them had been Kingsley Shacklebolt, who'd broken a few ribs thanks to his stunt of refusing the Felix Felicis so other less-experienced members of the Order and the DA could have it instead. Some had seen his action as selfless and brave while others, namely Elizabeth, who'd been in charge of healing him, had called it a 'pigheaded and plain stupid move' – it wasn't like he'd been the only one doing it, since Mad-Eye among other sounding names within the Order had done the same…

Outside of it, the few injured students that had escaped to the Hufflepuff dorms had been healed by herself and, surprisingly, Izzy too. Her daughter had shown herself quite useful with the healing and had mastered the basic bruise-removing and minor laceration-treating charms, among other ones, quickly enough to both surprise Mia and to help a number of her colleagues. Who knew, maybe Izzy would find her way in the career her mother had grown tired of, Mia mused to herself, feeling slightly proud of her. But while those students had been patched up easily enough, Harry was another case…

There was no denying that he'd been looking better physically by the time she and Sirius had left the school: less pale, bruises and cuts healed and more… reactive. But there was still a haunted look in his eyes – a look she'd seen before, back when he'd watched Cedric being killed in the Triwizard tournament. It seemed almost like a mirror of that situation, except that instead of it being a boy he was slightly friendly with that he'd watched dying, it had been the man who'd essentially become his mentor… He must be feeling terrible, Mia knew. But at least he was getting his rest now, after Ginny had 'talked him into' taking a dreamless sleep potion shortly before Sirius and Mia had came back home, around midnight.

Helping with the searches throughout the whole castle to make sure no Death Eater that hadn't either been killed or captured had stayed behind to surprise them and making sure all students were accounted for (only Malfoy, as expected, had been missing from every count) was what had kept them in the school so late. Some had stayed even later but the need to get Alex and Mary from Molly's care had spoken higher. It came to Sirius and Mia as a blessing that those two had already been asleep by the time they'd picked them up from the Burrow and, consequently, had made no fuss when placed in their respective bed and cot for the night. And then, with the kids in bed and the house dead silent, they'd had gone to bed themselves.

In normal circumstances, she admitted, she and Sirius would have talked that night's heavy events through before; they would have made sense of it all together; they would have comforted each other afterwards; then they would have gone to sleep with the weight resting on their chests lighter. Yet, none of it came up. Later, they would ask themselves why. It wasn't because they were angry at each other or anything – it seemed the most natural answer was that both their minds still needed time to process the events that had taken place earlier before speaking of them… They just didn't seem to be able to talk about any of it yet and hoped sleep would clear their minds.

Needless to say that wasn't the case. For her because sleep didn't come at all; for Sirius, though she didn't know it at the moment, because sleep came filled with images of Pettigrew laughing at him, glorious from getting his end at his own terms… then, Bellatrix doing the same for getting her chance to escape… and finally Dumbledore's body being hit by the green light and falling down from the high tower over and over again. Mia sighed – the universe didn't really seem willing to give them a break, even for just a few miserable hours.

The wakefulness was getting more and more annoying by the second: fighting the urge to keep tossing and turning to try and find a position that would lead her to the so desired slumber was incredibly frustrating, yet Mia didn't want to wake her husband just so he'd have to go through the same.

At some point, she just couldn't take remaining immobile in the bed like that any longer and sat up, slipping out of it carefully before pacing a little in the room, trying to stretch her limbs, nearly numbed from the stillness. Walking around didn't help with the overdrive of thoughts in her mind but at least she could fight the tension that had taken over her body since that afternoon.

Eventually, she approached the window and opened the thick curtain covering it in order to peak through the glass into the street. It was empty, as expected, with several Muggle cars parked by the pavement. Did the owners of those cars have any idea of what was happening to the world? Of the danger they were in? Did they have any idea that the only man who the source of such danger feared had met his end only hours before? Probably not, she concluded, wishing she could be just as blissfully ignorant as they were.

It was like that that Sirius first saw her when he woke up from his unsettling dream. At first, still feeling the tension of the nightmare and with his eyes closed, he'd searched for her form on the bed, only to find an empty space by his side still warm from her recent presence. It had taken him a moment of confusion and opening his unfocused eyes to spot her there, by the window. A mere shadow against the street lights, yet one that he would recognize anywhere.

It wasn't working for her just as it wasn't for him, he thought. Avoiding the subject of what had happened that afternoon wasn't making it easier to deal with – it was just delaying it… That realization was his wake-up call: it was time they went back to dealing with things the way they usually did.

She didn't see him when he got up, so thoughtful her mind was, or even when he walked in her direction. It was only when he was standing right by her side, his hand reaching towards her cascading dark hair, pulling several strands of it to behind her back and exposing her neck to his soft kiss that she reacted to his presence. He'd almost expected her to tense when she felt him there but she didn't. Instead, Mia sighed and reached for his hand in order to shift it so his arm would surround her waist to bring them closer together.

"Are you okay?" he asked her in a mere whisper directed straight into her ear like he was murmuring a secret.

Mia didn't speak – just nodded without looking at him, her eyes still fixed on the outside.

"Liar," he whispered back – he didn't need to be facing her to know that was a fact. "If you were okay, you'd be in bed sleeping like everyone else is at this hour of the night."

"You are not in bed sleeping either. Why aren't you?" she asked in return, this time turning to face him. Her hand touched his jaw softly in a caress. "Are you okay?"

He shrugged in return, taking her hand into his. "I've been better. Troubling dreams."

"Dumbledore?"

"Among others," he told her, pulling her towards the sofa so they could sit. He turned on the lamp resting on a table near his side of the sofa but made sure the light was dim – it was just so they wouldn't be talking in the dark. "Do you feel up to talk about it now? What happened this afternoon…"

She sighed, bending her legs over his lap as she took a lounging position on the sofa. "Not really. But, honestly, I think I need to or else I'll go barking mad. Do you feel the same?"

"More or less," he responded, pausing afterwards for a few moments. "It's hard to believe he's gone, isn't it?"

Mia nodded slowly, her face solemn. "I think part of me believed he would outlive us all. I could just picture him there at the staff table, welcoming our… great-grandchildren to the school decades from now. Couldn't you?"

Sirius smiled sadly this time. "The bloke was timeless. I thought he'd last centuries."

"Do you think he knew?" Mia asked suddenly, looking at Sirius suddenly. "He'd been so different lately, like he was fighting against time. In a way it seemed he was preparing us all for a world without him. He said it so himself months ago."

"I dunno. I suppose he didn't see himself as a… superior entity the way we all saw him. That thing with his… hand." He motioned with his own, stiffening a little. "The corpse-looking one, I mean. An… 'injury' like that must make a person more aware of their…" He gestured again, unable to find the correct word.

"Mortality?" she asked.

"Exactly."

They remained silent for several seconds reflecting over that, Sirius's fungers absently tracing patterns on his wife's knee as he just looked at the infinite. He was brought back by her sigh, just in time to see her brushing a tear away from her face.

"It kills me that the last time I actually had an actual conversation with him was just to yell and accuse him of not being trustworthy because he hadn't told us about the Horcruxes on purpose," Mia confessed faintly.

Sirius sighed, seeing that thought was a large part of what was eating her up – he knew it was up to him to make it right for her. "Mia, he kept something important from you concerning your son – you had every right to be angry at him over that. You were hurt."

"I was too hard on him," she whispered, resting the side of her head against the back of the sofa. "I should have forgiven him when he tried to make it right by keeping us as informed as possible afterwards. Now I'll never have the chance to do it."

Her husband reached towards her hands, then, holding them in his own. "You weren't too hard on him, love. You were doing your job as a mom. One of the best I know, by the way, and definitely the only one I love with everything I've got." He brought one of her hands to his lips in order to kiss it to prove that fact. "By hiding the Horcruxes, Dumbledore was standing on the way of you protecting Harry, so you told him off and gave him a cold shoulder afterwards – big deal, Mia… If anything, that would have made him proud for having given Harry to someone who doesn't take crap from anyone, no matter how important they are, when it comes to being there for him."

She shut her eyes closed for a long moment and then reached forward to wrap her arms tightly around her husband's neck to keep herself from crying – she just hated doing it. He gathered her close in return, rubbing her back softly without saying a word – the closeness was enough for now.

"I'll always be in debt with him for that…" she confessed, her breath colliding with the side of his neck as she spoke. "Giving me Harry, I mean. And for so much more too: he saved my life when he sent me away; he was there for me when I came back with the kids; he helped setting you free… I could go on and on with this."

"I don't really think he kept track of people's debts to him," Sirius assured her as she pulled away slightly, returning to her former position, resting across the sofa. "Especially when they were his friends. But even if he did, I'm sure you raising Harry all this time would have repaid them all. We'll all keep repaying him by fighting back as hard as we can like we did today."

She nodded slightly, wiping the few hot tears that had fallen down from her eyes with the back of her hand again. "I always thought Hogwarts was impenetrable," Mia murmured. The fact that Death Eaters had been able to enter it made her feel so… violated. "I always thought that was the safest place for anyone to be."

"Who didn't?" Sirius asked numbly in return – neither the Order nor the Aurors still knew how the Death Eaters had gotten into the Room of Requirement and from there infiltrated the school. Sirius knew Malfoy had been behind it, though, judging by his godson's year-long suspicions about the blonde boy. How, however, was the mystery behind the whole thing. "They must have been planning the attack for a while. That was why they were so quiet. Calm in the middle of a war is never a good sign…"

Mia sighed. "They'd been intending to kill Dumbledore during this attack all along, hadn't they?"

Sirius nodded. "Yeah. They started retreating as soon as the word that he was gone spread. It didn't go so well on their side, though. I heard Mad-Eye saying he'd killed another one from their side and so had one of the Aurors: that makes four Deaths on their side. Add another four captured and that makes one hell of a loss for them. At least we can say that much."

From her spot, Mia looked at him silently for several seconds before speaking. "I'm sorry I had to ask if you'd been the one killing Wormtail," she told him. "It wouldn't really matter if you'd done it after all he's done."

"Yes it would," he replied in a matter-of-factly tone. "Killing someone for revenge changes you. I won't deny that I was tempted to just do it and be done with it but I couldn't because I didn't want to change myself like that. I didn't want to lose my family."

"You wouldn't have lost us," Mia told him without any hesitation. "You'll never lose us."

He smiled a little at her admission, at how much faith it showed her to have in him. But she needed to know the truth. "Would you have looked at me the same way if you knew I'd been cold enough to kill an unarmed man who was trapped in a room unable to defend himself? Because that was what he was in the end, a traitor or not."

She took a moment before speaking. "I would have still loved you." That was all she could promise him, faced with that reality. Truth was, she couldn't even imagine Sirius doing what he'd just illustrated, so she couldn't imagine her reaction to that either.

"But we wouldn't have been us, would we? Wormtail wasn't worth changing that," he told her, looking away as he absently reached for her hand again. "His blood wasn't worth tainting my hands with."

"No, it wasn't," she agreed softly. One year earlier he hadn't thought so and that had caused such a rift between them… It meant a lot for her that he regretted that mistake enough to learn so much from it –it had even made him grow as a person, she believed. Yet, something in his eyes told her he was still troubled – he might have made the right choice but justice had managed to not prevail that day… He needed to share his ghost just as much as she needed to share hers. "Tell me about it. Tell me how it happened," Mia requested, softly.

And that was what Sirius did. He told her everything he could recall from the moment they had gone on different directions to his final meeting with the enemy he'd once seen as a friend, trying to find his way through the memories that were blurred by the confusion that the battle had generally caused: how the Felix had sent him one way or another, strategically guiding him through the fight; how he had chased Wormtail for Merlin knew how long, only to end up with him trapped; how he had finally confronted him with the facts that had taken place decades before and how Wormtail had justified them with his unrequited hatred; and, finally ,how Peter Pettigrew had decided that death was a more desirable fate than being imprisoned for the rest of his life.

"Maybe I'm just being petty, but him dying doesn't really feel like justice after all he did to us and to Lily and James," Sirius said, his tone frustrated as he spoke, his eyes looking down at his lap.

Mia sighed and reached forward to touch the side of his face. No, it really didn't feel like justice – he'd kept the man she loved locked in a nightmare for over a decade, he'd gotten her best friends killed and had intended the same fate for her. But justice didn't always prevail in real life – only in fairytales and stories one told their children… "You're not being petty. At least he won't be able to hurt anyone else where he is now," she said softly. "We can always hope that over there there's a place for people like him to be punished."

A dry chuckle followed her words. "That's what I was wishing right before…" he paused, looking at her. "Before I saw Dumbledore falling from the Astronomy tower. I saw it through the broken window. It was so unreal…" He took a deep breath and his eyes darted away. "He was already gone when he fell – Harry told me so himself. Snape had already done his job." He spat the last part, disgusted at the thought.

It made Mia uneasy too. "I always imagined that, despite him being so nasty to Harry, there had to be some… good in him. Just enough to justify Lily having been so close to him when they were kids," Mia confessed. "It's true that a part of me never did and never would be able to fully trust him – not when you and Harry had so strong feelings against him. But this…"

"This was too cruel, even for him," Sirius finished for her, almost matter of factly. "Even I can see that and I've hated the guy since I first lay my eyes on him. Harry said Dumbledore had been disarmed and was clearly weak from something that had happened during their out-of-school adventure. Snape must have seen that too and killed him anyway without thinking twice. He's got to be an even bigger cold-hearted bastard than we thought he could be to do something like that."

Mia sighed – either that was the case or something was very wrong with that story… It reslly didn't matter, did it? They've been betrayed, anyway, in the worst of ways. "I can't even begin to imagine what Harry must be feeling now after having seen that," she said, concerned. "He looked so… helpless when I first saw him with you. He looked better afterwards but still… a person can only take so much."

"He feels guilty too," Sirius stated – he knew guilt batter than anyone didn't he? For years at Azkaban the guilt he'd felt for switching places with Wormtail as secret keeper, leading to his best friends' deaths, had nearly eaten him up, so enhanced it was by the Dementors' presence – it had taken him much longer to realize he wasn't the one to blame because of them. "I could just tell by his face. He's blaming himself for this."

"He shouldn't feel that way. Nothing that happened could have been his fault," Mia replied immediately. "If anything, he helped everyone but warning us ahead of time. Saved many lives by coming up with the Felix Felicis strategy."

"That's true, love, but it doesn't matter, as crappy as that sounds. It's survivor guilt: it doesn't have to make sense. He lived, Dumbledore didn't – that's enough for him to blame himself." And it didn't help that Harry had a natural tendency to blame himself for bad things, either they were his fault or not – it came with the burden of the prophecy he had on him and everything that had happened to him so far. Thus, it was inevitable that, after having to stand watching, frozen, as his headmaster was murdered, he'd be projecting scenarios where he could have done something, even the littlest thing, that would have saved him.

Mia knew he was right. She could remember now that it had happened back when Cedric Diggory had been killed too and everything in that memory made her feel so… powerless. "What do we say tomor… I mean, later today when we speak to him about what happened? Do you think he'll even be ready to talk already?" she asked

Sirius shrugged and answered both questions at once. "I have no idea. He's a tough kid, though – hopefully a long night of sleep will be enough for him to get his head back together." Or at least as close as it could get, he added in his mind.

"He needs to we'll be here to help with anything now that Dumbledore is gone," Mia whispered.

Her husband had to chuckle. "Love, the kid would have to be out of his nut to not know that already."

She sighed – yeah, she'd always made sure to show him that. "Did he say anything about what he and Dumbledore did outside the school? About the Horcrux?"

Sirius shook his head. "All he did was mentioning some potion Dumbledore took. That was what weakened him." He huffed. "Why would Dumbledore take some potion that would weaken him?"

"Maybe he was tricked… or didn't have a choice," Mia suggested, suddenly becoming worried. "You don't think Harry drank it too, do you?"

"He didn't say anything about it," her husband said, thoughtful. "Besides, if he's been weakened too, I doubt he'd have been able to chase Snape halfway through the castle the way he did… I think he's safe."

"Is he?" Mia whispered, sighing. She sat up on the sofa and reached further to rest against her husband's side – he was nothing but receptive, wrapping his arm around her and placing a reassuring kiss on the top of her head.

"He's as safe as he can be," Sirius said, trying to sound confident, even if just for her. "The school is being patrolled by half the Order and the Auror department. We'll figure out how the Death Eaters got in and we'll make sure it doesn't happen again. You'll see we will, even if I have to spend day and night working on it by myself."

Mia didn't respond. She just remained there, silent. Though part of her still believed that everything was going to change from then on, his reassuring words did their job settling her down. That massive weight in her chest, the one caused by the whirlwind of thoughts in her mind, just felt so much lighter felt after sharing it with Sirius – she should have known trying to avoid those thoughts would only make things worse. It was true that talking about what had happened didn't change the outcome of it – the fact was that, no matter by how many more deaths, injuries and captured they had topped the enemy, they had lost the battle that night along with their leader – but it made it easier to bear. "Thanks for listening," she whispered, looking up at her husband.

"Thanks for listening too," he replied, getting up and offering her his hand to help her up too. "Come on, let's try and get some sleep – you look exhausted and I'm not feeling all that fresh either. I suppose we weren't meant to get any rest without talking this through first. The universe seems to agree we're in this together, no matter what."

That made her sigh as she accepted his hand and got up, motioning towards her side of the bed as he walked to his own. "You know, I hated it that we had to go on separate ways in this fight despite what we promised each other last year," she told him as she slipped under the covers. "I couldn't stop wondering if you were okay."

Sirius nodded as he settled in bed too, lying on his side, his head propped up by his elbow. "I hated it too, believe me, though I have to admit I was glad to know you were at least somewhere safe where you wouldn't get hurt like you did last year. And speaking of which," he added, recalling something he'd completely forgotten in the midst of their talk, "I ran into Bella during the battle – it wasn't pretty for her."

Mia blinked at him a few times in confusion. "What do you mean? Was she captured too?"

He shook his head. "I wish. I can assure you, though, that she'll at least be feeling pretty crappy for a while after the flight I made her take. My money's on a big contusion in that messed up head of hers, among other equally uncomfortable injuries," he told her, feeling rather proud of himself for it. His face shifted to a confident look, then. "Nobodyhurts my wife and gets away with it. Nobody. It wasn't nearly enough compared to what she did to you but…"

He couldn't finish the sentence as she suddenly shifted to her side, closer to him, and interrupted his speech with a kiss. She wasn't sure why she'd done it but it didn't really matter – she guessed she was glad he'd made sure Bellatrix paid for what she'd done to her. She'd never forget that short moment when she'd wondered if her baby was dead because of her, which thankfully had been proven wrong.

He ended up rolling half on top of her and the kiss lasted for several seconds, sweet and fierce at the same time and, by the time it was finished, Sirius found it hard to even remember what he'd been talking about.

"Thank you," she whispered to him, looking up.

"You're welcome," he replied absently, a silly smile on his lips.

Only the streetlights illuminated the room as he'd turned off the lamp near the couch but it seemed to be enough for her to see as his hand reached down to touch her face tenderly while he struggled to balance himself on her so he wouldn't crush her. Soon, his touch became a caress and the caress became an invitation that was silently accepted. Before long, Sirius saw himself bringing his lips down closer to hers until they came together once again. It was amazing how they couldn't really bring themselves to care about what was going on with the world as their lips moved together. They were each other's escape – that was no news.

The kiss grew more passionate than before. Hungrier. And then it became much more than a kiss as their clothes started to disappear, giving way to each other's touch. They could just lose themselves in it, wishing that the passion wouldn't just make problems disappear from their minds but make them go away altogether. Regardless, together they could let go of it all, even if only temporarily. It was enough at the moment.

Much later, as they lay together on the bed, sleep finally came for both of them, allowing them to rest free of nightmares and worries this time, so deep was the exhaustion.

They couldn't even care that the rest of that day was bound to be hard in more ways than one…

A/N2: Well, it wasn't half as fast-paced as the last one but, well, Sirius and Mia needed their time to deal with things together (I hadn't intended this to get so long but, well, sometimes scenes get a life of their own...). I hope you all liked it! Feedback is, as always, welcome. Review!