a/n: Yay another one! Ok, I know this isn't all correct logistically, but I feel that that's ok because it's an AU. Furthermore, it's my AU so what I say goes! I'm going to say that they are 17. Dedicated to the person who I have dubbed my own personal John (you know who you are) because for some reason the messages we exchange about this really get me motivated to write. So with that out of the way, I'll say that I get all hyper and giddy when i even get a hit on these things and I am obssessively checking the numbers every few hours. You people make me so happy!
Disclaimer: I own it as much as my Tenth Doctor's Sonic Screwdriver works as the real thing.
The high school they went to had a small Crime Club type of thing. The members of the club looked through newspapers discussing who was likely to be behind various crimes, and occasionally the Yard sent over an officer with a usually simple, already solved case for them to work out. Of course, this was an effort to scout out possible future recruits, but the school dismissed it as a chance to foster an interest in the field of Criminal Investigation. There were somewhere around 20 students in the club; which also acted as a supplement for the Criminal Justice course.
Sherlock was not a member of this club. He went to the meetings-to laugh at the other student's attempts and to show off a bit- but was not signed up as part of the club; the teacher sponsoring the club had given up on trying to make him leave. This doesn't mean, however, that they didn't try to keep Sherlock from getting into the meetings. They tried using different classrooms, changing the time of the meetings suddenly and forgetting to inform Sherlock, they tried scheduling their meetings to coincide with Sherlock's many detentions. They tried using as many ways as they could think of, but they all failed; leaving the group to resign themselves to a fate of Sherlock Holmes.
On most of these meetings, nothing particularly interesting happened- until the field trip .
The club had thought that they would be able to get away from Sherlock for a bit by scheduling a Club Members Only field trip. Unfortunately for them, what would happen on that field trip would be interesting. The Yard had allowed them special access to a crime scene. And, of course, it was a murder. Naturally, Sherlock found a way to sneak onto the bus and stay undetected until they were already there and being shown around by an unfortunate rookie by the name of Lestrade.
Since the evidence had already been collected, those who wanted to get an up-close look at the body were told to dress in the blue suits, and were allowed to examine the body in closely-watched pairs. This was where the really interesting bit happened.
Sherlock was in the last pair allowed in. He and the unimportant girl entered the crime scene, and Sherlock immediately started mentally cataloging everything important about it in typical Sherlock fashion. The body , according to what Lestrade had said, had been hanged and then the rope had been cut, allowing the body to drop to the floor. When Sherlock and the girl both bent down to examine the body, something miraculous happened.
"Hanged. Dull."
"Poisoned."
Everyone in the room froze, heads snapping to the two forms bent over the body. The two looked up sharply at one another, shocked at first. Then the two fixed each other with an annoyed glare before again speaking simultaneously.
"Poisoned? What do you mean, poisoned?"
"What? You didn't notice?"
Everyone was still amazedly looking on, while the students, who had heard this exchange, looked aghast at the possibility that the Great Sherlock Holmes could be wrong. The ME working the scene snapped out of it and laughed at the girl.
"Trust me, he was hanged, I've seen it before; I can recognize it."
The girl looked at him and responded, "I meant no disrespect to you,I'm sure it was an honest mistake. But I know the signs of Nightshade Poisoning."
Sherlock shot her a bored glance, " and how would you know that?" His response was a raised eyebrow.
"Haven't you ever been curious about what you were named after?"
Sherlock looked at her skeptically, "you're named after Deadly Nightshade."
She smirked, "Bella Donna Harkness. Before you ask, my dad's a botanist with a fairly demented sense of humor. He thought it would be funny."
"And your mom agreed to that?"
"What? No, course not! Dad got to the birth certificate first, and before Mum could do anything, it was really too late. Not that I hate my name. Quite the opposite, in fact. I inherited Dad's sense of humor." Sherlock seemed to accept this, then went back to look at the body. After a few seconds, he let out a soft curse, and Bella (or, Belle, as she liked to be called) grinned.
"I can't believe I missed that; but I don't know that you're right, so you can stop smiling like that."
"'Don't know that I'm right!' What does that mean?"
"It means that I can't tell which killed him: the hanging, or the poison! This killer's good- confusing."
"I'm sorry," input Lestrade," why does it sound like you're praising a murderer?"
"He probably is!" called Anderson.
"Oh go find some soap and let me think, Anderson!" The students giggled and Anderson blushed as Sherlock stood. "I honestly can't tell, not without further data. Either he was hanged right after dying from the poison- possibly to throw off the Yarders- or he was the poison was administered, and had just enough time to spread through his body and begin working enough so that his deat didn't affect the poison's effects."
"But the poison is way too far along for that, Sherlock. I mean unless the killer- oh," she broke off with a horrified expression on her face. "Oh...no, but- that was meant as- I was only kidding, but..." She was mumbling to herself, obviously puzzled and horrified. Sherlock was just annoyed.
"If you would quit muttering to yourself and either share or shut up so I can think, it would be greatly appreciated."
"Oh, sorry, it's just that... you're right. This killer is good. Very good. Because this was obviously very well planned out; it had to have been. The timing would have had to be extremely precise. How long would you say he was from dying from poison?"
Sherlock stared at her before comprehension seemed to dawn, "less than a minute, from what I can see. Are you saying what I think you're saying?"
"The killer poisoned him, and then waited until he was seconds from death. The victim was then hanged." Belle finished with a disgusted look on her face; Sherlock was, well it's Sherlock, you can imagine it; everyone else had a mixture of shock and slight awe on their face.
After a few minutes of staring, the DI in charge seemed to come to his senses. "Alright, that's enough! Lestrade, show 'em out." All the student's were shepherded to the bus, shooting wary glances to Belle and Sherlock, who both walked side by side, deep in thought. They didn't seem to notice that they both automatically sat next to each other and were silent all through the trip back to the school. When the bus parked, however, they silently got off the bus, smirked at each other and ran off to lunch before the teacher could get Sherlock to punish him for sneaking on the trip.
John was in the lunch room already with his girlfriend Sarah, who occasionally sat with the two boys, when the two got there. They sat down, introduced Belle, and recounted the events of the trip. The recounting was mercifully held off until John and Sarah had finished eating through light slaps to the back of Sherlock's head, courtesy of Belle, whenever he started to talk about it.
From that day on, Belle was a part of their little group, a fact that John was grateful for as it meant he and Belle could share the weighty task of keeping Sherlock busy. John also noted that Belle had an interesting way of training- because there was no other word for it- Sherlock by providing him with a slap when he did something bad. It was always a pleasure to see her get up in the middle of class, make her way across the room to to deal out the blow, and then sit at her desk as though nothing had happened while Sherlock pouted and looked out the window. Sherlock and Belle both received letters of thanks from Scotland Yard a few weeks later when their revelations at the crime scene had proven to be correct and had led to an arrest. Sherlock had initially received a detention for sneaking onto the trip, but Mycroft came in and had a mysterious talk with the principal, during which the principal changed his mind in light of Sherlock's assistance to the police. And everything was great until the fountain in front of the school exploded, but that's another story.