Note: The first half of this chapter is Harry's POV, however from then onwards it moves back to Sirius.

The first half, Harry's POV, is very much directly inspired by the film 'All of us strangers', which I found to be a beautiful exploration of grief through magical realism, and thought it would be a very interesting approach to take with Harry while he's 'on standby'. Give the boy a break, ya'know?

It was a lovely, warm autumn day at the Potter household. It had been a lovely day each day, for the entire week and a half that Harry had been there, and he was in no rush to see the end of these days. He knew that his fate was in good hands with Sirius. He would have trusted him with his life, and in a way, he had indeed trusted him with it, as he knew he was somehow… stuck in here, until the mission he was given would be completed.

"Would you have killed, Harry?"

Before he opened his mouth to answer, however, the creature already spoke, from the thin lips with wrinkles at their edges, and with the stern voice of Minerva McGonagall.

"No, you wouldn't have. You're not a killer." it answered itself, walking alongside him on a narrow, green pathway. Harry found it odd, how it felt normal for it to speak with the voice and face of his mother, but uncanny to hear it speak as McGonagall, and have her face and voice attached to it. Harry wondered why - perhaps because he actually knew McGonagall, on a certain level, yet his mother's personality, how she'd speak and conduct herself drew a blank for Harry.

"I'll have to learn to kill one day. If I have to defeat Voldemort, I need to learn."

"Do you now?"

They walked like this for a long time, shoulder to shoulder, through an endless amount of fields and small villages, until they reached an almost empty village, identical to all others. Yet from the moment Harry entered it, he felt a jolt of unease.

"I need you to stay here." Minerva McGonagall's voice spoke, as she clasped her hands behind her back and her eyes fixated on a house, a house that felt oddly familiar to Harry.

"Why?"

For a moment, Harry forgot that that was not the creature from the ritual, and almost agreed to it out of habit, for not having House Points deducted.

"So you don't sleep on the street until it is done."

The answer confused him tremendously, yet before he could voice it, he found that there was no one next to him anymore. He turned around, and walked up and down the pathway they had been on, yet there was no one there- not the creature inhabiting the persona of Minerva McGonagall, or anyone else - God, he'd even take the awfulness of Rita Skeeter at this point! He decided to turn back to the house he was pointed at, and entered the gate apprehensively, slowly. There was a light in the living room, and he could see the candlelight clearly as the sun was starting to set. He felt odd, entering a stranger's house. How should he introduce himself? Or perhaps it would just be the creature, putting on an act? No, that would have been strange. The creature had done nothing like that, and never pretended to be McGonagall, or Skeeter, or his mum, or anyone else that it turned into.

"You alright there?"

Harry jolted as he heard a voice - a man's voice, a voice unfamiliar to him, yet so familiar at the same time. He turned, only to see his father behind him, closing the gate that Harry opened.

"Well, what are you waiting for? Come on then." James Potter spoke, as if it was the most normal thing in the world. To be alive. To come home, with his broom in one hand and an enormous stack of muffins in the talk to his son. To welcome him inside a house that Harry had no recollection of.

He followed slowly, apprehensively, as his father, a head taller than him at this point, knocked on the door, and spoke with excitement as the door opened.

"Guess who I found loitering in our garden?" he asked, turning to the side as a woman with red hair and green eyes peeked her head out, and her vexed face cracked into a wide, comforting smile as she saw Harry.

"Hi there!"

"Hi." Harry was still unsure what to make of this, yet he followed his mum's beckoning of 'Well, don't just stand there, come in!', as if it were the most normal thing.

He sat down at the table in the living room, guided by his father's hands on his shoulders. He looked at the pictures on the fireplace, and on tables, and on the walls - of his mum and dad, of his pregnant mum, happy and grinning and with his dad holding her round belly, of himself as a baby, school pictures of his parents, of Sirius and Remus and Peter Pettigrew grinning next to his father, of two elderly wizards whose features resembled his fathers' and his own.

His mum put the kettle on, and they both sat down across from each other, facing him, as a variety of dishes started floating towards them, his father guiding all of them with his wand, before his mother slapped his wrist and told him that he forgot the cutlery.

"He always forgets the cutlery." his mother said amused, turning towards Harry. He watched the glimmer in her eyes as she looked at his father, and how her eyes were slightly wet. As if she "He made you struggle so hard, getting used to spoons and forks when you were a baby. Your dad would always forget them, and you'd just shove fistfuls of spag bol in your mouth."

"How was I supposed to see?" his father asked, sitting at the table. "You loved taking my glasses off and trying them yourself. Now we know why as well." he tapped his own glasses, and Harry nodded, not sure what else to do. He took his cup of tea, and took a sip, moving his eyes form one to the other.

"So, how have things been with you?" his mother asked excitedly.

"Good." He wasn't sure how else to answer. He wasn't sure how much they knew, or if they knew anything. They knew him, that was for certain. They knew he was their son, and despite the oddity of the situation, he found a certain sense of comfort, of true comfort. In spite of the awkwardness he found in talking to his parents for the first time, there was no unease in the comfort he felt. As if it was normal - he came back home, after a long trip.

"Where are you living now?"

"With, uh, with aunt Petunia and uncle Vernon."

"With them? Surely not!"

"What about Sirius?" his father asked, just as surprised as his mum. "We named him your godfather for a reason."

"Well, he- uh… it wasn't possible at the time."

No, it was not. And yet, at that moment… it was, somehow. In the odd limbo he was in, he was both living with his parents and with Sirius. He could hear his godfather's voice in his dreams, as he slept in his childhood room, surrounded by toys he must have had as a child, wearing childhood pyjamas on which anthropomorphic animals would ride on their broomsticks alongside the pattern, which somehow were his size. He found them ridiculous and amusing, and wondered what he must have thought of them when he had first worn them as a baby.

When he would close his eyes and drift into sleep, he could hear the voices around him, he could hear Sirius, and would advise him, following instructions from the spirit that guided him as Minerva McGonagall.

There was an instance, in that first night he slept, where he almost got dragged from his childhood bed - he started drifting out, and out, and out, until the room, earlier basking in the moonlight, slowly darkened, and he felt pulled out of the room, out of the house, as he felt Sirius trying to drag him back. But he fought it, and fought with it, and the next morning, Harry was having pancakes with his parents, as he regaled his father with tales of how he became the Seeker for the Gryffindor team in his first year at Hogwarts.

He could hear them sometimes during the 'day' as well, usually when he was alone, or when his parents were quiet. Whispers at the back of his head. Whispers from Sirius, from Dumbledore, from Lupin, from Sirius's witch friend, even from Ron and Hermione.

'Getting the rest of your life, eh, Harry?'

'Just a few more days, Harry. Dumbledore's got us a lead.'

'I should have never let you do this, Harry.'

'Harry, I defeat the dragon! I mean, you defeated the dragon! I mean, you won't believe it, I barely believe it!'

'We're getting close, love.'

'We'll tell you everything when you come back, Harry!'

'Sirius, you know what happens when no one admits defeat in an unregulated duel.'

'We've found him, Harry.'

'We're here, Harry. You're here. Just hold on a bit more.'

Harry turned on his side, realising now that he was on the couch in the living room. He opened his eyes, looking on as his mum was busying herself reading a book. To his amusement, he found it to be one of Gilderoy Lockhart's.

"Are you close?" he whispered.

"I'm almost done, Harry. Don't tell your dad I'm still reading these, alright?"

"We have a plan." whilst his mum spoke, Harry also heard his godfather's voice at the back of his head, surrounding his temples.

They had devised a plan indeed. A plan to trick Fenrir Greyback, to have him let his guard down, and when he would be at his most vulnerable, to kill him.

Remus left first, as they had not had an exact location pinned on Greyback. And a few days later, a Patronus shaped like a wolf opened its mouth near Harry, announcing that Fenrir Greyback was in Austria, and he repeated the exact location, before the Patronus evaporated in thin air in front of Sirius and Magdalena's eyes.

While Remus was still looking for Greyback across Europe, with quite a lot of money from Sirius's vault at Gringotts, Magdalena purchased the necessary tools from Borgin and Burkes.

"If you don't mind me, saying, miss, you're spending quite a pretty Galleon on one blade there." Mister Borgin couldn't help but find himself commenting as he unsheathed the dagger and presented it to her. "These haven't been used in hundreds of years."

"Awful creatures, these werewolves are. A witch has to do what she has to do to protect herself, wouldn't you agree, mister Borgin?"

"We sell quite a lot of repellents and poisons… more fitting for a lady."

"Do you refuse my money then, sir?" she chuckled, faking offence at his accusations. "Because I can easily take my business elsewhere in this alley." Her fingers lingered on the adorned hilt of the dagger, pretending to push it back towards Borgin.

When she returned back to her house, she threw the blade on the table, next to Sirius. He couldn't care less about it, however, and simply pushed it aside. In fact, by the time she left for Austria as well, to prepare the necessary potions for the final step of their plan, Sirius realised that he had barely seen her even whilst they were both still not only in Britain, but once again sharing her house. Every night, he'd sleep on the floor, next to Harry who was on the bed. Each morning, he'd wake up, lock himself in the bathroom, look at himself in the mirror, at his baggy eyes, and sigh heavily as he spoke in a pained whisper.

"Sirius Black is a convicted felon."

He repeated this to himself on a daily basis, in the utmost of solitude. He whispered it as the last thing as he went to sleep, and the first thing he woke up. He would repeat this to himself each morning, washing his face with water as he looked into the mirror. "A Death Eater who escaped, the only one who managed to. Voldemort's secret spy, his second-in-command. And I need to finish my master's job." He'd killed James, and Peter Pettigrew, and only had Remus Lupin to kill - he was the one who stopped him from murdering Harry, and avenging his master. Ever since they devised the plan, out of sight from anyone, even Magdalena, who knew the plan inside and out. Since then, he repeated it daily to himself. He had to say it.

And he had to believe it as well, if he were to fool Fenrir Greyback. It certainly helped that the entire wizarding community believed it, as far as the depths of the werewolf community in Austria, according to Remus's owl.

He repeated it as he travelled to Austria, alone, in his Animagus form. Madam Rona, the pub owner, under the instructions of Dumbledore, had travelled at the same time as him, carrying a hidden, still sleeping Harry. She was the one who would watch over Harry, both of them at a safe distance, in case neither him nor Remus would make it, and she was to return to Dumbledore with Harry in case everything went awfully wrong. No one had told her the entirety of the plan, yet Sirius could see it in her eyes that she knew something awful was to soon happen in that small hillside village. How awful, however, no one would tell her.

On that fateful day, Sirius told Harry they were there, and told him that they had a plan. Just like Madam Rona, Harry did not need to know anything more - he did not want his godson to worry needlessly. He squeezed Harry's shoulder, and slipped a paper under his pillow, containing his last will and testament. It was not approved by the Ministry, but under the circumstances, it had to do for now, before leaving Harry under the watchful eye of the pub matron turned temporary guardian.

He slipped out of the bedroom Harry was still in, and climbed down the stairs to the main dining room, where he was met by Remus and Magdalena.

They both looked as if they had had an equally dreadful, sleepless night. Remus kept pacing the room, a mug of coffee in his hand, whilst Magdalena seemed resigned, looking despondently towards an open window as she smoked from a long, thin pipe, bright blue vapours emanating from her nostrils. As Sirius looked at them, it slowly dawned on him that this time, it was not only him putting his life at risk. He wondered briefly what would have been worse - for their mission to fail and him to die, or for their mission to succeed, and, say, for only Remus to die?

He shook the thoughts away from his head, and cleared his throat, announcing his presence.

"Ready?"

"Will we ever be?" Remus sighed, straightening his back as his eyes glazed over to Magdalena, awaiting her answer.

"No." she said voicelessly, a despondent look in her eyes as she idly played with the sheath of the blade that would be used to commit the final act.

If their plan could even reach its final act. The number of things that could go wrong was innumerable, and even if everything went according to plan, there was still the fear that Greyback would not go down without an arduous fight. And if not him, any followers that they might have, that would not take his death easily. And there was only a limited number of contingency plans that they could realistically conceive.

It was a multi-layered plan, in which, in this small, isolated village of wizards, a duel would happen. An unregulated duel, from which only one could survive. A duel between the werewolf Remus Lupin, and the escaped follower of Voldemort, Sirius Black. A duel in which each of them would want revenge. Remus, for the death of James and Peter, Sirius, for the fall of the Dark Lord.

Sirius would win, because of course he would - he had to. Yet only after an arduous fight - an arduous, drawn-out fight that would be placed across locations that would pique the interest of one Fenrir Greyback, enough for him to be interested in who would win.

He would kill Remus - or rather, pretend to, and hopefully, the announcement that Sirius Black was continuing his murder spree would draw Greyback to him. Enough that Sirius would invite his new friend, this old follower of his own lord and comrade-in-arms that he had only met by coincidence, to celebrate, in 'a place he knows'.

That place being a village that during the duel, would have a feast, for an unrelated reason. An old celebration, which simply managed to coincide with the date of the duel, as Magdalena found out in her own research. A feast which she would attend, and cook together with the others, and ensure that enough of a potion would fall into the main cauldron from which the supper would be served. A potion which would render the villagers temporarily compliant, and vulnerable to suggestion - the suggestion to celebrate, the suggestion to not recognise Sirius Black, the suggestion to sing, and play, and dance, and serve Greyback wine, and let him feast, and drink, and drink, and drink… and through it all, be compliant to her will.

And during the climax of it all, when Greyback would have let his guard down… The blade would be unsheathed.

"I'll go now." Remus announced, still not having drunk a single sip from the mug of coffee as he put it down. Yet Sirius found himself just as unable to eat or drink, his mind already filling his stomach with the most unpleasant of scenarios.

"Wait, Remus." Magdalena raised herself as well, putting down her pipe as she rushed over to one of the cupboards. Sirius found it odd, hearing Remus's name coming from what was essentially a stranger to him. "There is something else, before you leave. The both of you."

Sirius watched her take out a small package from the cupboard, and unpack a small vial and a gold tablespoon, with her hands trembling, seemingly struck by a sudden reverence for the inanimate. He looked on as she, with her back towards the both of them, slowly opened the vial, as if any sudden movement would scare the potion away, and she measured a full tablespoon, carrying it to Remus with a napkin covering her open palm. Sirius furrowed his brows, wondering what potion would have such effects that she was afraid of spilling a single drip.

Yet Remus, when presented with it, expressed a look of mild surprise, before agreeing to take the potion. Putting his hand on top of her fingers holding the spoon, he swallowed it as if it were a pleasant dessert, his eyes fixated on Lena's, as though they were sharing in a sacred, unspoken ritual.

Yet it was over as soon as it began, and Remus left without another word to either of them. Sirius watched him leave, gritting his teeth until he saw his friend disappear, not realising that Magdalena had filled another tablespoon until he faced the potion with his own eyes. He recognised the smell and the sight of it immediately, and he took on the same mildly surprised look that was on Remus's face mere moments ago, turning his eyes from the spoonful of Felix Felicis to Magdalena as she bent down to his level, napkin in hand to catch any drops onto it.

He did not question how she had obtained it, and swallowed the entire spoonful, as any thoughts of his own death seemed to evaporate from his mind. He felt at ease, and as she placed a finger on the edge of his moustache to collect a remaining drop of the liquid luck, he gripped her wrist.

"Watch over Harry, if I die…"

"When, not if." she chuckled, and for some reason, he found it amusing.

Of course he would die some day, but not that day. Not that day.