The Prime Minister slumped heavily into his chair. Now that the becloaked man was gone, he no longer had to pretend that all of this was just normal, that of course it made sense for a man to come spinning out of the Prime Minister's fireplace in a haze of green fire, spew a lot of information that was impossible to follow, and then disappear into the flames again. The Prime MInister no longer had to act unaffected in the presence of magic. He could drop the polite mask of the politician, thunk his head on the desk, and moan.

That was the proper way to react to a conversation with a wizard.

The Prime Minister had learned of the existence of wizards and witches his second day in office. His secretary had just closed the door, leaving him with his afternoon tea, when green flames suddenly burst to life in his fireplace. Leaping to his feet, the Prime Minister sloshed half off the cup of tea down his front just as a regal-looking gentleman emerged from the flames.

He introduced himself as Kingsley Shacklebolt, the Minister of Magic, because, you see, magic was real, as were wizards and witches, something known by only a few muggles (a word that sounded rather rude to the Prime MInister). Shacklebolt had stayed quite a while, after first using his wand as some sort of reverse vacuum to suck all the hot tea out of the Prime Minister's clothes, leaving them pressed and clean. The Prime Minister was allowed to ask any question he wanted, and the wizard responded readily. Yet every answer seemed to leave his head even more muddled than before. Kingsley had smiled gently and said, "Don't worry. With any luck, you'll never hear from me again."

Apparently, the Prime Minister was not in possession of such luck.

This time, the Minister of Magic had been deadly serious. There was no room for befuddlement: Kingsley had asked the Prime Minister to repeat back what he had said so he knew the muggle understood. There was no allowing for questions this time, either. As soon as the wizard was satisfied that the Prime Minister understood the gravity of the situation, he had merely nodded once and said, "I shall be in touch," before once again disappearing into the bright green flames.

The Prime Minister took seven deep breaths. He laid his hands on the table, which made it easier to pretend they were not trembling. He cancelled all his afternoon appointments.

There was only one thing that he could think to do, a phone call to only one person equipped to shoulder the information the wizard had just shared.

His fingers shook so badly it took three times for him to dial the correct number. It rang far too many times. The growing nausea in the Prime Minister's belly only began to abate when, at last, the man in question picked up—

"Mycroft Holmes."

It was not surprising to John Watson, when he pushed open the door to 221b Baker Street, to find his friend Sherlock Holmes on the couch, eyes closed, hands steepled under his chin. It was well-known to all members of their circle that this was the pose Sherlock assumed when deep in thought, moving through the halls of his mind palace, searching for the stored information that would let him crack the case.

What was surprising was that this was the exact pose (and clothes) Sherlock had been in when John left. Two days ago.

"Sherlock!" John shouted.

There was no movement.

If they were on a case, that would be one thing, but John knew Sherlock wasn't. Their last one had wrapped up two days ago, rather anticlimactically. A Moriarty copycat had hacked into all the media channels, sparking panic among the Scotland Yard and a reprieve for Sherlock, about to be exiled. Sherlock had been rattling off his plan (one of the members of his homeless network, Bill Wiggins would hack into the TOR network to find an IP address, as Sherlock and John searched out any loose ends from his mission to destroy Moriarty's criminal network) when the call came from Detective Inspector Lestrade. The suspect had been apprehended. Walked into to New Scotland Yard of his own volition and confessed everything. Every aspect of his confession corroborated with the evidence. It was him. And that was that.

Sherlock had been quiet on the ride home from NSY. John asked about Sherlock's thoughts on the case, his feelings regarding its conclusion, even his dinner preferences, but all his questions went unheeded. Upon arrival at Sherlock's flat (formerly Sherlock and John's flat), the famous detective plunked himself on his couch and assumed the pose that, from the looks of it, he'd been in ever since.

"Sherlock!" John tried again.

Nothing.

Huffing loudly, John clumped into the kitchen and set about making tea.

Three days ago, John had moved the last of his things out of the flat. That was all it took for the kitchen to become a disaster area. Sherlock's experiments were an invasive species, infiltrating any space that became available until specimens and cultures and actual dead body parts infected any horizontal surface. Where John had kept the tea he found a tray of test tubes, each holding liquids of various greenness. Jars of crystallized chemicals were where the sugar used to be (what the hell, was that nitrogen triiodine? John warily used a pipette to push it further back into the cupboard). John smirked at the sheet of granite that had been laid over the gas stove burners, on top of which there was a set up of six Bunsen burners. Sherlock undoubtedly would point to the necessity of having two additional heat sources. John thought it more likely that Sherlock didn't know how to turn on the stove.

Sighing, John shoved a bunch of petri dishes aside on the kitchen table and thumped open the bag of provisions his wife Mary had made him pack. When it came to his best friend of six years, whom his wife had only known for eight months, she had been right. Again.

After scrubbing out the electric kettle and rinsing it several times (it looked miraculously ok, if a bit dusty), John set the water to boil. He turned around to find himself nose to nose with Sherlock Holmes.

Lean and pale, with an angular face and fierce blue-green eyes, Sherlock Holmes could be considered sort of hot, the way you might find a vampire sort of hot just before it attacked your neck and sucked your blood and left you ravaged and trembling and exposed. He wore bespoke suits over impeccably tailored dress shirts, though at the moment the jacket was replaced with a silk dressing gown.

"Christ, Sherlock!" John said, jumping back, banging against the counter, and nearly knocking two empty beakers to the floor.

Sherlock gazed at John with increasingly narrowed eyes. His works were pointed and as fast as thought:

"You are John Hamish Watson. Your birthdate is March 31, 1959. You trained at St. Batholomew's Hospital as an army doctor, served as Captain with the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers. From 2007 to 2010 you were stationed in Afghanistan, where you were shot in the shoulder, inevitably leading to you invalided home."

John blinked. "Yeah. I know all that Sherlock. I know you know all that. Jesus, when's the last time you slept?"

Sherlock ignored the question. "You have a blog, wherein you regularly demonstrate your appalling sense of grammar in detailing the cases I have solved—"

"And not solved."

"—Which for reasons only the internet can explain is strangely popular and as of eight days ago had 1,275,734 visits. You have a bewildering capability to attract women to you-"

"Wait, bewildering?"

"—Which has led to a series of atrocious girlfriends, each more insipid than the last, until you somehow managed to seduce a woman of great intellect and courage—"

"I am so telling Mary you said that."

"—Who yet has not incidentally made a series of questionable choices in life, perhaps the most inexplicable of which was choosing you to be a lifelong mate."

John blinked. "Are you kidding me? That's what's most inexplicable? She shot you!"

"And had a perfectly sound reason for doing so."

"Well she had a perfectly sound reason for marrying me!"

Sherlock arched an eyebrow.

"She loves me!"

Sherlock was unimpressed. "Right. Love." He said the l-word the way another person might say "pus-filled boil."

His intonation might have made any other person disbelieving, or raging, or some combination of the two. And indeed, within his first few days of Sherlock's acquaintance, John would have reacted this way. But he'd now known the man six years. He'd seen the actions that belied the words.

Snorting, John said,. "You can't fool us anymore, Sherlock." He poked his friend in the chest. "You saved all our lives too many times for us to still believe that you don't care."

Sherlock's chin pushed up. "Caring is not an advantage," he grumbled.

"Yeah, we've all heard Mycroft say that a thousand times," John said, picking up the tea tray and carrying it out to the sitting room. "Sometimes, I don't know which of you is the bigger idiot." He plunked down into his chair and looked up to find Sherlock staring at him, mouth parted in horror.

"Did you just call me an idiot?" he said.

"No," John said, taking a sip of his tea. "I called both you and Mycroft idiots."

Sherlock narrowed his eyes. He crossed his arms, glared down at John in his chair. John remained uncowed. If anything, he looked amused. Gritting his teeth, Sherlock sucked in a breath, then said rapid-fire:

"From the trace scent on your jacket, you went to the florist yesterday, inevitably to buy flowers for your wife, roses, the most romantic of flowers, interesting because you are the one who has just forgiven her, not the other way around-ah. She won't yet have intercourse with you. You have returned to your shared home, but now she resents that it took you so long (she has a point) hence the lack of marital relations which did not commence last night, despite your attempts at seduction. In fact, from the crick in your neck and the bags under your eyes, she made you sleep on the couch, so yes, I see exactly what you mean, she loooves you."

John was on his feet, fists balled at his sides, jaw clenched so tightly the ache had spread around his skull.

"You going to punch me now?" Sherlock said sardonically.

Nostrils flared, John took in slow, shaky breaths. "Do you want me to?"

Something flickered in Sherlock's eyes. He blinked. "Don't be ridiculous."

John's eyes widened as Sherlock spun away, crossing back to the couch. "You do want me to punch you. What the hell—what is wrong with you?"

Sherlock resumed his thinking position, steepled fingers under chin, lips pursed imperiously. "Don't be stupid, John, nothing is wrong with me." He closed his eyes.

John stormed over toward him. "Don't you dare, don't you dare disappear into your mind palace. First you tell me what I already know you know about me and then what you have no goddamned business to know. You're wearing the same clothes as when I last saw you two days ago, you haven't eaten or slept—it's like you're on a case, but the case was solved three days ago, they arrested the fake Moriarty, it was all just some stupid hoax."

Even with John waving his arms about, Sherlock was unresponsive. He sat in repose, though there was no question of him falling asleep. He radiated with some fierce intensity, a desire so strong and focused it would not cease until what was wanted was found.

"Sherlock! Sherlock! Goddamn—fine. Do it your way." John stomped toward the door. "But I'm leaving."

He wrenched the door open, about to slam it behind him, when-

"It's gone." Sherlock's voice was quiet.

John paused. He stuck his head back through the doorway. Sherlock's eyes were open, though staring straight ahead. His expression had dropped, like a public mask removed. If John didn't know better, he would have said that Sherlock looked… lost.

"What's gone?" John asked.

"From my mind palace." A crease appeared between Sherlock's eyebrows.

"Something's gone… from your mind palace?"

"Mm." The crease deepened.

John stepped back into the room. "What is it that's gone?"

Sherlock snapped his eyes to John. "Well obviously I don't know what's gone from my mind palace, because it's not there for me to know what it is!"

"Right." Sherlock flopped back into the couch as John regarded him for a moment. Then, before he became too tempted to mentally catalog a list of Sherlock's dickhead failings, John crossed toward his chair. He picked up the two cups of tea. "How do you even know something is gone?" he asked, walking over to Sherlock and holding out a mug.

Absentmindedly, Sherlock took it. "Something's off." He shook his head slightly. "Something's wrong, and I don't know what it is, I've looked at it from every angle, but it's not there. There was something I knew but now I don't know it anymore. I don't know what it was, I just know I don't know it!"

Now it was John's turn to frown. "Something you knew and now you don't anymore? Sherlock…" John looked almost pitying. "That happens to everyone."

"It doesn't happen to me," Sherlock snapped. "I lose nothing from my mind palace unless I purposefully delete it."

John was careful not to sound patronizing. "Maybe you deleted this?"

"It was for a case, John, the fake Moriarty case. I never delete anything from a case."

John's eyes widened. "The case we just had? You forgot something from three days ago?"

"I didn't forget! I never forget, it's just gone. I had it, it was in my mind palace, and now it's gone.

John nodded as if he understood. And he did, sort of. From the beginning of their friendship, John had found Sherlock's mind palace astonishing (if obnoxiously named). Using the information he had stored there, Sherlock solved cases in seconds and deduced the secrets of strangers in less than that. It was why he was the world's only Consulting Detective.

But at the same time… as John knew from experience and his medical studies, over time, minds faltered. People got old. Brains got forgetful. Sherlock was pushing forty. Probably the greatest mental acuity he would have in his lifetime was now behind him.

"I'm not getting old, John," Sherlock said, glowering.

John had stopped questioning how Sherlock could read his mind years ago. "Nope. Definitely not."

Scowling, Sherlock took a sip of his tea, only to nearly spit it back out again. "What is this? Orange pekoe tea? This is Mary's tea! Why do are we drinking Mary's tea?"

"Because she guessed—rightly—that I wouldn't get a cuppa unless I brought it from home," John said. "You replaced the tea in the cupboard with some collection of... fungus."

Sherlock leapt to his feet. "Did you move it? That's an experiment!" Abandoning the tea, he strode off to the kitchen. John followed, not bothering to hide an eye roll.

Leaning against the door frame, John watched as Sherlock darted about the kitchen, assessing the damage (not that there was any, Christ, all he was doing was trying to make his friend a cup of tea). Sherlock didn't seem upset anymore. The problem with the mind palace had been compartmentalized and filed away. Sure, he was still groaning and sulking and pulling faces at the state of his experiment, but that was standard what-do-you-mean-the-world-doesn't-revolve-around-me stuff. Normal. Manageable. Not of the caliber that would make John scour the flat for illicit drugs.

Still. John was cautious. "Let's order take away. I'm hungry."

"Go home and eat dinner with your wife, John." Sherlock had transferred the green test tubes from the cupboard to the kitchen table and was now peering at them, head tilted, nose practically touching the glass.

"No, it's alright, I'll call Mary. She won't mind."

"Yes she will. She's angry with you."

"You said that, not me!"

"And I was right." Sherlock stood, snapping a pair of safety goggles over his eyes. "Please, it was entirely too dull for me to get the two of you back together the first time, I refuse to do it again."

John's mouth opened, ready for some pointed name-calling, but a laugh came out before he could help himself. "Arsehole." John crossed his arms. "You would too do it again."

Sherlock pressed his lips together. "Hm. Well let's not test out your little theory, shall we?" He bent back down over his work.

John grinned. "No, let's not. I'm still ordering take away for you." John opened an app on his phone and began to type in an order for nearby Chinese.

"Fine," Sherlock said, not looking up.

"And when it comes, eat it."

"Fine! Go, before Mary wonders where you are."

"She won't mind." John confirmed his order with a few more taps to the phone. "Not when I tell her you said she was a woman of great intellect and courage."

"John—!"

But John Watson was already halfway down the stairs, laughing his head off.

It was only two minutes after John left that Sherlock heard a different set of footsteps mounting the stairs. Not Mrs. Hudson's, his landlady who lived on the first floor. Heavier, a man, in dress shoes from the slap of the sole. Arriving so soon after John's departure could be a coincidence, but no, the universe was rarely so lazy. This visitor had been waiting outside, then, waiting for John to leave first so Sherlock would be alone when the request came, so that no one else know of this weekday evening summons—

"And how is my brother Mycroft doing," Sherlock said, still focused on his experiment, when a nondescript man stopped in his doorway.

Sherlock could hear the smile in the man's voice. "Why don't ya come ask him in person."

'Because I loathe my brother's company. Tell him I decline."

"Won't be possible, Mr. Holmes."

Sherlock stood suddenly, snapping his goggles up to his forehead. In less than a second, his eyes raced over the man, cataloging each detail: Irish ethnicity, expensive haircut, shoes polished by the man outside the chip shop (god, another boring government lackey) manicured nails, tailored suit—

Sherlock stopped short. What was that, there, under his jacket, right at his hip, too high to be something shoved in a pants pocket, very thin, like a pencil—

He snapped his eyes up to his visitor's. Placidly, the man blinked back, looking not quite at Sherlock, but just over his shoulder.

"Fine." Sherlock whipped the goggles off, tossing them on the counter. "I shall be delighted to accompany you."

The man nodded once. Eyes narrowed, Sherlock shrugged into his coat, the black Belstaff that for the love of God was just a serviceable, quality article of outerwear, not some ridiculous trademark as designated by those idiots working for the tabloids. He followed the lackey out to the black limo street waiting on the street. It promptly whisked them both off to a building not often mentioned on a street not always mapped where resided the office of a man whose position in the world was not quite ever understood.

The man in question stood, waiting, one hand resting on an umbrella more expensive than another man's entire wardrobe, when Sherlock swept into the room.

"Mycroft," Sherlock said.

"Brother dear," Mycroft Holmes replied. The corners of his lips were pulled up slightly in such a way that no one would ever mistake it for a smile. "How kind of you to come."

"How kind of you to act as if I had a choice." Sherlock glanced back to his escort, who had remained in the room after Mycroft's PA shut the door.

Interesting.

"Yes," Mycroft said, reading his brother's mind. "Our meeting this evening requires the presence of two others. This—" he gestured to the Irishman "—is Oliver Wood, one of Britain's more accomplished..." In a rare fit of discomfiture, Mycroft searched for the word.

"Spies?" Sherlock suggested.

"Citizens," Mycroft said, his look toward Sherlock becoming more of a pointed glare.

"Ah." Deliberately, Sherlock made no introductory gesture to this new acquaintance. Instead, he got straight to the point. "Mycroft, why am I here?"

Before Mycroft could begin to expound on Sherlock's appalling manners, there was a knock on the door. He settled for merely throwing a glare at his younger brother. "Our other guest arrives."

At Mycroft's nod, Oliver opened the door.

The woman standing there was petite and slim, with fair skin and dark curly hair pulled back into a twist. She was dressed more casually than the three of them, dark jeans over boots, cropped jacket over a—

Sherlock's eyes darted back to her jacket. There is was again, at her hip, that blip, that same thin blip, just like Oliver Wood's, something near the pocket but not in the pocket, something hidden—

"Sherlock," Mycroft said with that tight non-smile. "Meet Hermione Granger."