Sirius Black had always known that he was more than capable of living up to his family name. There were many people he would willingly die for, like a good little Gryffindor. There were a few he would just as willingly kill for.

Today felt like a maybe-I-am-a-murderer day.

What he didn't know, braced astride his crash-landed motorcycle with wand aimed in a slightly shaking hand, was whom, exactly, he may need to kill.

There was smoking rubble where James's home had been, but there was no James. No Lily. No Voldemort, for whom he'd spent the entire trip mentally practicing his mother's darkest spells. Snivellus was there, and the most likely candidate for the curse burning the tip of his tongue, but he was currently being throttled by a woman's hair.

Homenum Revelio, whispered Sirius.

Four figures lit up. Snape, the woman who was apparently very angry with Snape, the blond guy with the weird flame-edged coat, and the sniffling but tentatively cheery Harry in his arms.

No James. No bodies. No Dark Mark.

Stupidly hopeful, Sirius pulled out his mirror.

"James Potter," he breathed.

Hey, Padfoot, said James-in-the-mirror. Then kept talking, even though Sirius was gasping Prongs! like waking from a nightmare. Lily helped me charm this message into our mirrors. If you're seeing this, I'm well and truly dead. Pause. James looked straight at him, smiled a wry, crooked smile. Ah well, some you lose.

Hope shrunk back into horror.

And some you win. When I struck up conversation with a devilish-looking punk on the Hogwarts Express when we were eleven, that was a win.

James started to say something else, got choked up like he was starting to cry, and just smiled a warm, full smile instead.

The mirror went blank.

"Sil-ius Black?" said a strange, polite, too-close voice, and Sirius jumped, wand flying up to point straight into the blond man's face, which was peering curiously over his shoulder. He hadn't heard him move. Must have been too focused on the mirror - focus, Sirius, you have to -

"Pad'oot!" cheered Harry.

Feeling too much and thinking too little, Sirius instinctively reached for his godson. Leaving himself wide open. If this man was a Death Eater -

Before he could aim his wand again, Harry was in his arms.

"This man," said the stranger, pointing at the mirror, which reflected a blank black sky. "He... Ah, language...go, going."

Sirius stared. The blond man rubbed at the back of his spiky yellow head, muttering incomprehensibly. Sirius heard "En-glish" and what he strongly suspected was a curse word. Snape was also cursing. He'd just been tied up in sharp-looking wire, and the owner of the homicidal hair squatted casually next him, turning his wand over and over and looking decidedly unimpressed.

With a massive pop of displaced air, Hagrid arrived, grim-faced and thunderous as Sirius had seen him only once or twice before. And suddenly Sirius's arms were empty again, and the blond man was standing protectively in front of the wild-haired woman, Harry in one arm and - was that a knife?

"WHERE IS HE? WHERE IS HE? I'LL KILL HIM MESELF, THAT BLASTED SON OF A SNAKE'S REAR END - oh, hello there, Sirius, terrible night, this - GIVE HARRY HERE, YOU DEATH EATER SCUM - "

"I don't think he's a Death Eater," Sirius interrupted. "I don't know what he is, though."

"Speak English, you miserable fiend! You could a minute ago!" screamed Snape. His captor shouted something-not-English and bopped him on the head. It must have been quite a hard bop, as Snape's face went slack and his eyes rolled up, unconscious. Then she held her arms out with another stream of definitely-not-English, and to Sirius's horror, Harry was placed in her outstretched hands. Sirius reached for his wand, which was… not there.

At long last, Sirius let lose the stream of curses he'd held back all night. Good old muggle profanity. He'd known those words would come in handy some day.

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iIi

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This was, Minato decided, not the alternate dimension he would have chosen, given most other choices.

Between the language barrier that'd made itself known as soon as the last bits of the celestial energy faded, his two belligerent hostages, the unknown but clearly maleficent aura of the head wound on the very small boy he'd sworn to protect, and the clearly destructive flashes of light and energy an old man with a long white beard and questionable fashion sense was shooting at his chakra barrier with one of those funny little wooden sticks, he had a great deal to figure out and, most likely, very little time to figure it out in.

(Another clone poofed out of existence, having purposefully run afoul of one of those chakra-like beams of light, and Minato briefly experienced what it might be like to hiccup to death through its memories.)

Out of the two ends of this soul-swapping deal, however, Minato strongly suspected he and Kushina had won the better half. And on that slightly guilty note, Minato bit deeply into his thumb.

Kuchiyose no jutsu!

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ili

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Hiruzen accepted a scroll from a frog with the assumption that the marked-urgent message was from his student. News of Konoha's disaster must have reached its spy-master's ears, and the Sandaime was not looking forward to confirming Jiraiya's worst fear.

Minato was dead.

Except not? Because the scroll he was reading was written by Minato.

"Blasted overachiever," grumbled the Sandaime, hope burgeoning at the end of a heartbreaking night. "Hold," he called to the T&I specialists, who had just finished tying two very terrified-looking people to interrogation chairs. Hiruzen read the scroll again.

"Dies and sends notes about the experience," he grumbled, too low for his not-even-pretending-not-to-eavesdrop minions to be sure they were hearing right. "Sends 'representatives'. To fulfill a special mission. The most important mission in the village.Upstart boy. He knows I won't have had time to officially take back the hat yet… Attention! You've received an order from your Hokage - no, the fourth, dead one - "

And that was how Lily and James Potter became a very new, very special division of the ninjas hidden in the leaves.

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