There's a reason Mrs Hudson can't seem to acquire any tenants for 221C. It's said that the place is haunted. That the evil spirits and vengeful ghosts that wracked the Shrieking Shack for several years live there now. People talk, and as talk gets passed around, new fancies seem to wriggle their way into fable, and now somehow Sherlock Holmes is part of the tale. They say that the moaning and screaming and howling started only a few weeks after the man moved in, and that it's hardly surprising if one considers his gruesome profession and hateful disposition; he must be a magnet for evil spirits.

Of course, some people - some curious, cautious people - spot the anomaly on the timing of the spirits' comings, and attempt to input their thoughts into the story. Nobody believes those fools of course. John Watson is not an malevolent man, so there's just no way that he could have a part in the haunts. John Watson is simply a good man stuck in an unfortunate position - the friend to Sherlock Holmes.

If one should discuss the fear of 221C with Mrs Hudson however, one must be prepared for the bewildering, but no doubt inevitable, giggle from the old woman. She'll giggle and sigh, "Oh, my boys. Not to worry, dear, they've got it under control."

And she'll be secretly glad that the tenant is uninterested, because actually the basement is in very good, and quite frequent, use. She knows the truth. Her boys - especially John, bless his heart - will continue to have to borrow 221C from her monthly for a long, long time, and she won't mind a jot, because she loves them as if they were her own sons. She's never in any danger and she always likes being useful in the mornings, knowing that she loves and is loved in return.


The dawning light filters through the small gap of the basement window where it just reaches the pavement outside. It's not big enough for anything other than an anorexic cat to slink through, but John likes to put up wards anyway. Just in case.

The door is always understandably warded, but it doesn't make it any less infuriating when Sherlock is fiddling with the complicated spell they set and listening to John's moans at the same time. Every month, every bloody month, his stomach twists as he works open that ward. And every month he falls in through the door, his hand still grabbing ahold of the handle even as he flings the door out as wide as it can go, until it smacks the wall behind with a resounding slam. It's at this point he releases his death grip and strides quickly over to his friend, who by this point is usually quiet and still, breathing slowly and audibly.

Sherlock plays his part well, and John doesn't disappoint in reciprocating. By the time Sherlock reaches him, John is a red-stained alabaster statue apart from the tremors that run through his body.

"Wand, gauze, potion..." Sherlock mutters methodically, as he places the vial on the floor and tucks the gauze under his arm. He conjures a blanket and wraps it around the now shivering figure on the floor. He's only just realised himself how cold this basement is. He'll have to badger Mrs Hudson to cast her warmth charms down here the night before, or perhaps...

"Shrlock...?"

Sherlock's attention directs back to John, who is now seemingly awake. Or partly coherent at the very least.

Sherlock smiles. "I've got you, John."


John is sat on his armchair, his legs crossed and his attention seemingly on the newspaper in his lap. His eyes are smudged with dark rings, Sherlock notes, and his pallor pale. The jumper he's wearing is a high neck with long sleeves. His left hand trembles slightly. Obvious signs of a morning after.

Sherlock's eyes trace the hidden gash he knows is running down John's neck from the way he winces slightly as he shuffles the newspaper. He frowns. Looks back at his notes, scattered on the kitchen table amongst the tubes and vials and bunson burners and cauldrons. He frowns again; hums agitatedly; drums his fingers; re-reads over his notes a final time, and then grabs them, scrunches them up into the tightest ball possible and chucks it at the wall opposite. It knocks against the tap before falling dejectedly into the sink. Good. As it should.

"Not going well, I take it?" says John, peering past the top of The Daily Prophet to survey Sherlock. His eyes look pitying. They shouldn't. Sherlock can do this. He knows he can. He's solved countless cases, some hard even for him, so why can't he do this? Why, why, WHY?

Sherlock snarls and throws the closest object next to him in an arc across the room. A shattered beaker joins the paper wad in the sink.

"Sherlock, you know you can't solve everything," John says, his eyes still pitying, "This might just be one of those things that you just can't. I know you're a genius and all, but wizards have been trying to create a potion like this for years, and-"

"I would have thought you'd have a little bit of faith in me, John, as idiotic as that may sound."

That sounds biting. He didn't mean it to. But John just gets him so angry sometimes. He breathes through his nose and glares at the now empty space in front of him. He grabs another block of post it notes, adjusts his microscope and settles himself down again.

There is a moment of silence, during which Sherlock can feel John looking at him, can imagine his face. He feels like he should say something.

"John, I-" he breaks off. He clears his throat. "John, I am trying to help I can't find a cure, at least believe in me enough to create something that will decrease your discomfort."

Now he looks up. John is smiling. Exhaustion still shows plainly on his face, but he is smiling.

"I do, Sherlock. I always believe in you. "


"Where are other body parts? They can't have disappeared! The offending wand never showed any Evanesco or something similar in recent use. If the spell blasted him apart, then why is this finger the only bone of him that remains?!"

Lestrade fidgets awkwardly. "The case is closed, Sherlock. There's no need to look any further into it. Black admitted to murder."

"He admitted to murder. He didn't admit to Pettigrew's!" shoots back Sherlock, fuming. It's just like the Carl Powers case. Why couldn't anyone understand? Why didn't anyone listen?!

Auror Moody steps in. His staff clacks against the marble tiles of the Ministry floor. "Look here lad, Black is locked up and he is staying there. The evidence against him is too strong. So what I suggest you do is clear off the premises before you make a embarrassment of yourself."

Sherlock takes a step forward, seething. "Are you all blind or just idiotic? Can't you SEE what's going on here?!"

"Sherlock," murmurs John, as he flings out an arm to stop his friend. Sherlock walks straight into him, not even acknowledging his presence. "Sherlock, stop. Shouting at them isn't going to get you anywhere."

Moody turns on John. "I shouldn't even have to explain why you shouldn't be here, lad."

John flinches and slinks back, his arm dropping back down. His expression is stony.

Sherlock turns his rage on Moody. "He can be here if he bloody well wants!" He grabs John's wrist and starts tugging them towards the exit, shooting scathing looks over his shoulder. He notes that Lestrade looks uncomfortable. He continues his verbal assault anyway. "If you need to lock up an innocent man just to make the ministry look big, then be my guest! I expected so much better of the great Mad-Eye Moody. And you, Lestrade. Especially you."

With that, he pushes John out of the door, before walking through it himself and slamming it shut.


The words 'Severus Snape' are printed in block letters across the front of the yellowing envelope. Sherlock can read the story without looking at the letter inside; he knows what quill the author used (Phoenix feather, held carefully which insinuates that it's a prized possession, one given willingly though and not that rare for the writer to acquire as he - obviously male, look at the font! - as he wouldn't be using a prized possession willy-nilly); he knows the parchment (imported from India, but bought in Diagon Alley); and most importantly, he knows who Severus Snape is and why Sherlock of all people was entrusted to deliver this letter to him. Dumbledore (obviously, although the letter wasn't given to Sherlock outright by him) knew that Sherlock had questions of his own to ask Snape the Potionsmaster. Ones that had increasingly been needed to be asked. That old man always did seem to have an eye on him, thought Sherlock wryly.

Sherlock doesn't particularly like the greasy professor. He knows what people have said about him is true; Snape had obviously been a Death Eater. He also has a personality that could clash tongues with Sherlock's own. But he puts those thoughts aside as he strides up to the isolated cottage, past the plants that spring up at him from either side of the path.

'For John,' Sherlock thinks as he raps on the door. 'Always for John.'


"I gave you your letter. I got you your information. Now where's mine?" snarls Sherlock.

Snape's upper lip curls in a sneer. "My, my, you haven't been here more than ten minutes and you're already impatient. What happened to that famous Holmes indifference?"

When he sees that he isn't getting a rise out of Sherlock, he sighs and holds up a withering, purple plant. "Wolfsbane," he supplies. "Also known as aconite."

"You're recommending me poison?"

"As much as I'd like to tell you how to put down your dog, no. Not in this case," Snape replies, smirking at Sherlock's look of anger. "In very small, precise quantities, Wolfsbane has been known to calm a werewolf. Beasts that have been in the vicinity of the plants have been considerably tamer and more likely to settle down in that area, rather than wandering and searching for people to maim."

"Is that it?" Sherlock asks. "That's all the information you have to offer me. Merlin, even Anderson could have come up with more in the years of research you've been doing." He stops and smirks. "Or years of service, should I say."

Snape turns still as a statue. "If Dumbledore's word isn't good enough to assure you that I've cut that out of my past, then you are truly idiotic." He waves his hand. "Perhaps you'll have better luck on this potion than I or others have. You do have a test subject after all."

Sherlock makes a non committal noise and turns to leave.

"See that you shut the door on your way out," says Snape, watching with his black eyes.

Sherlock leaves it open.


He had wanted to make it an experiment at first. As soon as he had first set eyes on John Watson limping on his cane, a dozen, no, hundred scientific theories and ideas ran through his head. His very own werewolf. In his flat. In his favour. Oh, the things he could do! He could lock the man up and see if the transformation differentiates or continues when the man is restrained; he could collect saliva and finally discover what it is in a werewolf's venom that makes that bite so fatal and life-changing; he could fiddle with the lights and how and when the man sees that ominous full moon, and if it matters what time the moon rises or if the moonlight streams down into the room, because every single goddamn book has always been so vague on the matter as to when werewolves transform. He could form a new line of answers to the highly undeveloped research on werewolves and shape them in a way so that everyone could see what tragic and beautiful creatures they are, instead of the slobbering wolves that murder mothers and turn children mercilessly, especially under He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named's reign of terror.

He supposes that this very thought was his undoing. His ability to appreciate the natural wonders of these marvellous creatures who against all odds defy nature itself and manifest from man into the powerful beast of Muggle folklore. It was this thought, this very one, that made him sit back and enjoy the show the first time John transformed. It was three weeks after he'd met the man. They had lived together for twenty three days, solved one major case and two little ones (The Case Of Mrs Hudson's Lost Purse and The Adventure Of A Shopping Trip Gone Wrong In Sainsburys didn't quite have the same shazam as A Study In Pink), and had gotten to that point in a friendship where they could sit in comfortable silence and sigh at each other without being offended. In fact, John was the very best friend that Sherlock had ever had.

So when the moon rose and the first scream tore from John's throat, Sherlock felt displeased. No, not displeased. Hatred. At himself. He, who had thought of experimenting, torturing even, his best friend who went through enough agony a month to spare a lifetime; he, who had totally disregarded John's requests for privacy ("No, Sherlock, believe me, I know you like stuff like this, but this is not something you should have to see" he remembered John saying, but he deleted it, and it'd just crept back without him noticing, bloody brain!) but nonetheless silently removed the noise wards and made the wall between them see-through so it was as if Sherlock was in the room with John, only without the danger. So that Sherlock could see and hear absolutely everything. But now he didn't want to, because the noises John made didn't stop, they continued, getting lower and rougher in tones, screams gradually turned into painful howls. Sherlock shut his eyes when John's back cracked, because that was just wrong wrong wrong, it was John now, not some nameless person that Sherlock could afford to be cold about. The crack resounded in his ears like a clap of thunder rolling across the sky.

And then it was over. Sherlock opened his eyes and stared at the creature in front of him. There was not a trace of John in it's eyes; it was not a fairytale. John had gone.

The werewolf bared it's fangs.


A/N

In case you hadn't got it, this is a Harry Potter/BBC Sherlock crossover, in which the time era is the end of the First Wizarding War (1981); John is a recently-turned werewolf, Lestrade is an Auror and Sherlock is a Magical Consulting Detective. And they're all wizards, of course. Where would the fun be in that if they weren't magical? ;D

Sorry for the switching tenses, but I wanted to differentiate between past and present. I hope you all got what was memories/thoughts and what wasn't.