A Study in Potions
The girl stood in the darkened doorway, looking into the flat nervously. She was here only because of a newspaper article she had read recently, and the entire business was beginning to look rather grim, to say the least. For starters, there was something that looked suspiciously like a bone from a human arm sitting on the table in plain sight, with a little sticky note beside it reading, 'Molly- 12:07 p.m.'. Secondly, despite the promise of the small lady showing her in, the man she wanted to see was nowhere in sight. The girl wondered briefly if he knew the lady well. "Excuse me?" She asked. The lady turned, smiling kindly. "Are you the housekeeper? How do you know them?"
"I am most certainly NOT their housekeeper!" The lady exclaimed vigorously. The girl was taken aback.
"I'm- I'm sorry. I didn't mean to offend you." The lady smiled again.
"Oh, that's quite alright dear. It's a common mistake, believe me. I'm the landlady, Mrs. Hudson. Did you want a cup of tea?"
"No, thank you. Is he out?"
"Who, Sherlock?"
"Yes, I've come to see him."
"Right! So you said. I presume you'll be wanting John, too. They're both out at the morgue. They go everywhere together, John and Sherlock. It's adorable really. John is always insisting that he's already got a girlfriend but honestly I don't think…" Their voices carried down the hallway and into the dark rooms of 221b Baker Street, echoing faintly off the walls as they walked inside. The girl shivered slightly and tugged her sweater closer. Mrs. Hudson was still talking, gesturing to the walls with dismay and commenting on brooms and mops and how she'd tried all kinds of different cleaning detergent to get out the bloodstains but nothing seemed to work. The girl couldn't help but think that she sounded awfully housekeeper-like for someone apparently so opposed to the idea. She sat down on the sagging couch and hugged her knees, noticing with concern that a yellow smiley face had been spray painted on the deep green wallpaper and then brutally attacked with something that looked awfully like a gun. A violin case sat on a small chair next to a window overlooking the drizzly grey London street, and a music stand which appeared to have very complex sheet music written by hand resting on it.
"Writes his own music, does he?"
"Oh, yes," Mrs. Hudson replied, sounding rather as if she were discussing a gossip magazine, "He does it when he's thinking. Now, I don't understand how composing such complicated music can help you think about other complicated things, but it works for Sherlock. He does love to play violin, does it all the time." Mrs. Hudson paused, listening. The girl did too, her curly hair bouncing gently as she turned toward the sound of the front door opening. "Ah!" The landlady exclaimed, brightening. "They're back! Are they expecting you, dear, or are you just popping in?" Muffled sounds of an umbrella being closed reached the girl's ears. She responded absentmindedly to the question.
"No, I phoned earlier. They know I'm coming." Mrs. Hudson looked surprised.
"Sherlock answered his phone?"
"No. My call went to a message. I explained the situation and said I needed to come by later, and then I got a text from a completely different number that said…" The girl hesitated and pulled out her phone. She tapped the screen a few times and then continued. "Aha, here it is. 'Sounds intriguing, stop by at 1 PM. You know the address already. Bring crumpets.'." Mrs. Hudson grew rather flustered at this last comment.
"He could've asked me to bring some when I went to the shops earlier! I asked if there was anything he wanted, and of course he said no…" There were quiet voices in the kitchen.
"Yes," The girl said, "That occurred to me too. I texted back and asked why he couldn't simply get the crumpets himself. He said that his housekeeper only buys the store-bought, whole-wheat kind."
"That's ridiculous. I buy the healthy kind."
"He said you called them that. I brought some, anyhow." The girl reached into a small beaded bag that hung over her shoulder. Mrs. Hudson heard several very heavy things knocking loudly against each other inside of it, which was strange, considering the bag's diminutive size. "Oh, drat. I've knocked over the books. And I had them all stacked by subject." The girl muttered angrily. The landlady raised her eyebrows. Finally, the girl pulled out a paper bag of rather squashed crumpets from its depths, reaching her arm all the way inside to do so. The strangest part of the whole affair was the fact that the bag shouldn't have been deep enough for the girl's entire arm. The landlady overlooked this. Having Sherlock Holmes and John Watson as tenants would acclimatize anybody to various levels of shock. The paper bag crinkled loudly, and somebody stuck his head into the room where Mrs. Hudson and the girl sat. John looked happy.
"Mrs. Hudson, we've run out of…" He trailed off. "Who are you?"
"I'm-" The girl began, but she never finished. Another voice cut her off.
"In her late teens. Curly brown hair, she's got a heavy bag, probably books. She finds Mrs. Hudson's company very boring but is far too polite to say so. Her parents are dentists, but she's been away at boarding school for quite some time. She's homesick, but not extremely so. Someone named Pansy Parkinson thinks she has large front teeth, but someone named Ron… hmmm… Ronald… let's see. Oooh… what's this? He wrote her a note… She's good friends with his mother, certainly, that means she's friends with the whole family as well. Got a ginger cat. She's bought the crumpets, just like I said. Reasonably clever. What on earth are O.W.L.s? Sherlock stuck his head through the door after John. "I was right."
"How… how do you…?"
"You're obviously in your late teens. The texting abbreviations you used point to young, but old enough to travel across the city by yourself, not so young that you need your parents with you. A strand of hair caught on the coat rack, curly and brown, nobody else here has similar hair of the same length, and we've just bought that rack so it can't have been from a previous occasion. I can see the marks of fingers on the walls, scuffs on the table, that means you were bored but pretending to pay attention, so you're clever but also polite. Cat hair on the wall paper from where you've been dragging one knee. It's shin height, so it could have been a small dog but the length and colour is obviously a cat. Ginger. You bumped into this chair with your bag, it's shifted slightly and no one was sitting here. That means the bag was heavy and unwieldy, most likely because you are studying for something called O.W.L.s and are reasonably intelligent so it was full of books. You left another bag in the hallway, and you dropped a business card. The business card has a younger version of you on it with two older people, you aren't a model for dentistry because of your large teeth, and you aren't smiling, so it must be that your parents are dentists. Why would a late teenager have her parents' business card? It reminds you of them, but also you're away a lot and studying, so you forget their number and you need a reminder. Homesick and at boarding school. Two notes, one from Pansy, obviously a bully at school, about your teeth. You don't like her but she slipped it into your bag so you ripped it up and crumpled it when you found it because you had nowhere else to put it. The second note's from a boy named Ronald Weasley… asking you to somewhere called 'Hogsmeade'…! He's drawn folded it up and put a ribbon on it, obviously in love with you." The girl flushed. "I can see you haven't found that one yet. You've got a hand-knitted sweater in here with your name, obviously for you by somebody who cares. Not your mother, she's too busy. It's got a note still on it from when they gave it to you, so you appreciated the thought but thought it hideous and slightly too large. It must be from a family friend, hmm… 'Mrs. Weasley'. That also seems to be Ron's last name, so it's his mother. And-" John interjected.
"That's enough, Sherlock." Sherlock looked disappointed. "Just… who is she?"
"A Miss Hermione Granger." Sherlock didn't smile. He turned to the girl. "When do we begin?"