A/N: Amy's POV

I brushed my fingertips across the thick page of the Daily Prophet that told me of the town the Death Eaters had leveled the night before in a raid. Yesterday, it had been a town that over a thousand people had called home. This morning, it was an empty, charred wasteland with bodies still strewn where the Ministry hadn't finished burying the remains.

This wasn't the first such case, but it was the largest so far. I pushed the paper away, feeling slightly sick to my stomach at the thought of the pictures I was trying to forget.

A sharp tapping sound at the window turned disgust to fear for a brief moment, before I realized that it was the wind pushing our alder tree's longest branch against the kitchen windowpane. I hissed out a sigh of relief and made a mental note to ask Sirius to trim back that branch. If it grew too much longer it might go through the window during a windstorm.

I knew from the monitors that all three girls were sleeping soundly, peacefully, and almost silently, but I left the kitchen to walk by their rooms, just in case. In case of what, I didn't know.

Marginally satisfied that the girls were sleeping soundly, I went back to the kitchen, reheating my tepid tea with a quick wave of my wand and settling in once more, waiting for Sirius. There was so much anymore that I didn't know, so much he wouldn't or couldn't tell me. The idea of raising three daughters in a war that seemed to stretch on forever looked much worse now that we had them. I pressed my hands against the warm sides of the cup, feeling the porcelain grow slick against my skin from condensation. Or was I sweating?

I set the cup down and wiped my hands on my skirt. I had pondered changing into pajamas, but if Sirius wasn't too beat up when he came home I was half-hoping to seduce him. It was too cold for a negligée, and my dress was the best balance of sexy and comfortable that I could muster for the moment.

The clock on the wall behind me chimed that it was quarter past eleven. Sirius had said to expect him home by ten. I gripped my hands tightly around the teacup again, not drinking, not even lifting it to my lips. I almost wanted to contact Moody again, ask him if he knew where Sirius was, if Sirius was well, but I had done that last week. He told me that if there was a problem and they knew about it, he would come to me straight away. Otherwise, I wasn't to worry.

Easy for him to say.

Of course, the fact that no one had come to tell me Sirius was dead or dying told me that he was probably reporting to the Order and it was only a matter of time before he came home.

I hissed out another sigh, thinking of the paper three days ago with a list of people missing, presumed dead. Men, women, a few small children whose parents were alive and well and terrified. One comfort I could find was that no one had been missing or dead from Hogwarts since Mary MacDonald, so my sisters were as safe as anyone anymore, probably safer. I wanted to be able to say the same for me, for my husband, for my daughters. Lily had hinted the last time she brought Harry over for a visit that I should ask Sirius about taking the girls into hiding.

The thought was a tempting one, but I couldn't leave my friends, and I knew Sirius wouldn't and couldn't leave the fight. Maybe if we had a more specific threat on us, but as far as I knew we weren't any more targets than any other blood traitors in the Order.

I tried taking a sip of my tea, feeling the war liquid slip between the lip of the cup and the flesh of my upper lip, warming my whole mouth. I set the cup down again and stood sharply, pacing into the front room, wringing my hands together.

An entire town gone. The anxiety I usually felt about such things only seemed to grow worse since Sirius told me the Order was winning. So many things were telling me that he had lied to me, as repulsive as the thought was. I knew Sirius. I knew he wouldn't say something like that to me unless he truly thought it was the best thing, but I wished he didn't think me so fragile. Just because I hadn't joined the Order, just because I hadn't seen what he had seen….

I didn't want to see it. I shouldn't have to. None of us should have to.

I froze for a moment, wondering if I'd just heard one of the girls beginning to cry, but as I sat silently I realized it was my imagination. I breathed a sigh of relief, running through our set of restorative potions in my mind in case Sirius came home looking like death itself again. It was too easy to imagine things in this climate, to let my mind be carried away by the worst things it could dream up. Reality wasn't too far off, after all.

The clock struck half past and I began to pace again, running my fingers through my hair. There was nothing good to be had about all this waiting except that perhaps Lily was at headquarters and was sending him back to me healed for once. I simply paced up and down the floor until I could hear the sound of his motorbike approaching. For a long moment, I thought I'd imagined that too, but when I heard the sound of the door unlocking I whipped out my wand, just in case.

Sirius's gray eyes greeted me as the door opened, tired and bloodshot. He smiled weakly at my pointing my wand at him.

"Is this our new greeting?" he said sadly. "Good to see you too, darling."

"Prove you're you," I hissed, letting my eyes scan him for wounds or burns or anything like that, but mercifully, if he'd been injured he'd been healed again as well. Lily, probably. "Prove it."

My hand was shaking slightly, and I prayed he couldn't see. But I had to be sure. Every time Sirius had been coming home more and more beaten up, sometimes with so much blood loss that someone else delivered him unconscious. It was only a matter of time before they either delivered his body, news there was no body, or the man coming home to me was a spy replacing my dead husband.

He took a step toward me and I held the wand a little higher. He frowned.

"Amy," he said softly, "calm down. It's me. Everything's alright."

"Prove it," I choked out, trying to blink away the tears forming in my eyes.

I felt so weak as he crossed the room. My hand trembled, my wand still pointing at him, but my throat closed around the incantations I had planned to use. He put his hand on my wrist to lower my wand arm and leaned in, using his other hand to wipe tears away from my eyes before he kissed me. My lips were sure it was him, the way they burned at his touch, so familiar. I dropped my wand and wrapped my arms around his torso, burying my face in his neck.

"When I was twelve," he whispered, "I told you boys had cooties when you told me you thought the Ravenclaw Quidditch captain was attractive. You wouldn't touch me for three weeks unless I'd just come from the shower."

I laughed a little into his neck and said, "I had forgotten that."

We stood there for a long moment, his arms around me, warm and tight. Finally he pulled away and said, "I need a drink."

He went into the kitchen and I heard him shuffling through the cupboards, probably looking for firewhiskey. I took a deep breath to steady myself before following him into the kitchen. I sat down in front of my tea, frowning at the cup. No doubt it had gone tepid once more. I didn't bother warming it. Sirius poured himself a glass of firewhiskey and sat beside me, taking my hand in his free hand. He downed his glass.

"I'll talk to Mad-Eye about more protections for the house if that would make you feel better," he said before kissing my cheek. "I'm sure he could come up with something."

It would most certainly make me feel better, but I said nothing, feeling his dry lips press to my cheek again.

Seeing him whole after a mission felt strange, wrong in a way. As far as I could tell, he wasn't even bleeding. The last time he had come home, James had deposited him on the sofa, unconscious with blood seeping out of four gaping wounds on his arms, legs, and chest. He'd had a concussion to boot. James wouldn't, or maybe couldn't, tell me how he had sustained the injuries, and Sirius was equally reluctant once he had been healed and revived.

"I've been reading the paper again," I whispered. "So many people killed yesterday. How many more were killed today?"

Sirius tensed, turning away.

"A fair few," he said stiffly. He poured himself another glass of firewhiskey and stood up, pacing the room with the drink in his hand. I watched him pace the same path I had spent over an hour pacing. I folded my hands, felt the sweat on my palms, and unfolded them to wipe them off on my skirt. Then I folded them again to keep them from shaking. Sirius was taking deep breaths like he had something to tell me, something he thought I wouldn't want to hear.

"Sirius," I whispered, "tell me about it."

"About what?" he snapped, his face a strange mix of fear and anger.

I closed my eyes. If I was wrong, it was a terrible accusation to make, but if I was right he needed to speak about it, and nothing short of saying it would bring it out of him.

"About the people you've killed," I said, feeling the words hang on the eerie silence that formed between us as soon as I finished speaking. It felt like ages before I opened my eyes to find Sirius collapsed on the floor, face in his hands shaking. "Love," I said slowly.

"Amy, I'm so sorry," he whimpered, and I crawled onto the floor beside him, letting him rest his head in my lap. "I'm so sorry."

"Don't be," I insisted. "Don't you dare be sorry."

He was trembling as he told me, with some prodding, about each and every person he'd killed, and I closed my eyes. I petted his hair and tried not to cry as I realized what the war was doing to my husband. I could never tell him, never really tell him, how terrified I was because he spent so much energy being strong for everyone. I needed to be the one being strong for him, the one person he could break down to like this. I could always tell Lily I was afraid. There was no need to hurt him more than he already suffered.

Sirius cried himself to sleep with his head on my lap, curled up and shaking as I soothed and comforted him the best I could. I leaned my head against the textured kitchen cabinet behind me and didn't bother trying to get comfortable. I could nap when the girls napped tomorrow afternoon. For the moment, I wanted to hold a vigil over Sirius, to watch over him and protect him in my way. It was all I could do to repay all the ways he had protected us. Maybe he would have sweet dreams for once.

The following morning, I pretended nothing happened, and Sirius seemed relieved that I hadn't brought up the issue of his having killed dozens of people already. Almost as soon as he left, though, I asked Mad-Eye over, partially not wanting to be alone, partially wanting someone to talk to about the terrible night I'd had.

"You look like hell," he growled when I let him in. I gave him a wry smile and he said, "A lovely sort of hell. Hell never looked better, but still."

"Didn't sleep," I said, pouring him tea and sitting down next to him while the girls crawled around, playing almost calmly. They were obviously close to naptime. "Let me put them down for a nap and then we'll talk."

To my surprise, Moody insisted on helping, putting Aludra down for her nap all by himself while I took care of the twins. He was sitting on the sofa, sipping his tea when I came back, feeling the exhaustion finally hitting my body like a wave.

"You should really take better care of yourself, Black," he said sternly as I sat down again, stretching my legs. "Hard to be vigilant in this sort of condition."

I rolled my eyes and said, "Bit hard to be constantly vigilant while asleep, isn't it?"

He hummed a thoughtful agreement and I clicked my tongue. That man would never be reasonable about safety, but I supposed it was better to have someone that cautious in the Order, or perhaps my friends would all be dead.

"Sirius and I had a chat last night," I said after sighing heavily. "He told me…he told me about all the people he's killed."

Mad-Eye's forehead wrinkled in a way that would have been raising eyebrows, had he any obvious eyebrows left to raise. He said, "Black, that's really not a conversation he should have had with you. No wonder you didn't sleep."

"I asked," I said quickly. "In his defense. And anyway, he needs to talk about these things, and you can't tell me he's talking to James, because I'm sure he's not."

Mad-Eye sighed. He licked a scar on his upper lip and then said, "And you want to talk to me about how you feel because you don't feel like you can tell him."

I shrugged, knowing that I did need to talk about this, but that I didn't know where to begin. Finally, I said, "I knew it would come to this, you know. Someday, he was going to have to kill someone to make it home alive, I just never realized how many…."

My voice broke as I thought of all the times he had used Unforgivables and other Dark Magic in order to kill Death Eaters. I had always known that he was capable of those things, that he had no qualms about using them in a fight if he had to. But it made me feel unclean, knowing my husband had done things like that and then come home without a word about it.

Mad-Eye said nothing for some time and we drank our tea in near-silence. I wondered if there was more I could say, or if I had already said too much.

"I'm afraid," I said softly.

I couldn't even form the thought fully in my head. I wasn't afraid of anything in particular, not of the war, not of the Death Eaters, not of my husband. But there was this general feeling of fear that ate away at my insides sometimes, and it attacked with a vengeance after Sirius's talk of the people he had killed.

After a long pause in which Moody set his empty cup on the side table, he said, "Black, your husband is one of the best duelists I've ever trained. And maybe this will come as a shock to you, maybe not, but I guarantee you're better." I blinked, admittedly surprised. I had always assumed Sirius let me win when we would duel, not that I was actually better. "When Sirius duels, the fire is from his anger, rage, hatred. And that's a powerful tool, especially in a war like this. But you and Evans, your fire is protective instinct. Nothing in the world is more powerful than that, and you have the finesse to be quite a force." He smiled a sinister, crooked sort of smile and said, "If it weren't for your daughters, I would want you fighting with us. There's nobody in the order now I'd rather at my side except Albus in the face of a crisis."

My cheeks flushed and I murmured thanks at the compliment. I couldn't explain why to myself, but his evaluation of our dueling made me feel strangely better. I was still afraid, and I still worried about Sirius, but nothing seemed as present, as bad as it had before we had our talk.

He took his leave and assured me that he would check in periodically as he could, making sure that I had someone to talk to every once in a while about whatever was troubling me. He kissed my cheek with his strangely shaped lips and left me in a mostly-silent house. I did laundry to keep myself from feeling useless before I finally collapsed, falling asleep on the sofa.

I woke to Sirius smiling down at me, smoothing hair out of my face.

"Did the girls wear you out, love?" he asked. He helped me sit up and kissed my chin.

I smiled, pretending nothing unusual had happened the night before and said, "I suppose they did. D'you want some tea?"

"Don't worry about it, darling," he said. "I'll get it. You just rest."

He kissed my nose and went into the kitchen. I closed my eyes and frowned as soon as he left the room, gripping my cold feet in my hands. If I hadn't known just how much he needed me, I wouldn't have been able to smile at him right then. Just knowing what he'd done, even his eyes had looked different.

But it was something I was just going to have to live with.