Notes: Originally posted on LiveJournal as part of Holmestice 2013 and cross-posted to AO3. nox_candida, I hope you enjoy your gift. Your prompts inspired me to try an alternate meeting in a fusion universe and I've fallen in love with this scenario.

I borrowed the description of John's wand from "Wandlore" by SkaraBrae on AO3. I think it fits healer John perfectly. Thank you for the inspiration!

I am so grateful to my wonderful beta from the Reviews Lounge, Too, Aiko Isari, who read the version posted on LJ earlier this month. I've expanded the story since the last time it was beta-read, so I take full responsibility for any remaining errors and missed Britpicks. (I am always open to CC and suggestions - I'm not in love with the title!)

Thank you also to the kind and generous members of LJ's Holmestice community for the reviews and support, as well as the prodding to continue the story. (I have Chapter 3 in the works, I promise!) Without further ado...

December 2010

Like a ginger Father Christmas, Ron Weasley laid a finger aside his freckled nose. "I'm telling you, Johnny, watch out for this one. Bollocks this up and it's a dead-end career in general practice for you."

"Shut up, Weasley." Layers of bandages swathed one side of the patient's face. The other was rayed with cuts from broken glass, swollen and reddened. Not properly cleaned at that, clucked John.

He pushed sparkly red-berried garlands out of his way to make a note on the chart. St. Mungo's Volunteer Auxiliary always went a little overboard on the Christmas decorations.

"I'll be cleaning and re-bandaging these lacerations after my rounds," he said aloud for Ron's benefit. "And then I'll be ripping those idiots in the Trauma ward a new one for neglecting my patient." John ferociously scrubbed his hands clean at the sink. "So you really can't tell me anything else about this guy?" Ron shrugged in apology. "Fine then. Let's see what the chart says." John kept reading. "Name: John Doe... That's original. Six feet tall, seventy-two kilos. Skinny bloke. Hair, brown. Eyes... Blue?" John frowned at the question mark.

"Blood status: Squib. Ah, yes. Very dangerous." John smirked and raised both eyebrows at Ron. The Auror failed to rise to the bait.

What in hell was a Squib doing in Magical Injuries and Accidents in the first place? And for God's sake, why had Weasley found it necessary to handcuff him to the bed?

John pulled up the cuffs of his green work robes and slid two ungloved fingers around the patient's wrist to ensure it wasn't chafing. Satisfied, he moved to the other wrist and measured the pulse: slow but regular.

As John's hands moved up the patient's warm forearm, his fingers trailed fading green-and-yellow bruises. A ragged strata of scar tissue clung to the inside of the elbow: the marks of Muggle drug use.

John bent fractionally closer to examine the man's face. Deep purple shadows bloomed under his eyes. Broken blood vessels scattered across his cheeks like twigs fallen in a storm.

"Who is this poor bastard, anyway?"

Ron Weasley pulled a packet of Bite-Sized Chocolate Frogs out of his robe pocket and tore it noisily open with both hands. He waved a squirming frog toward John, who declined. "I'm serious, Watson. I'm under orders not to tell you who this bloke really is, but since you're Bill and Charlie's old mate and all- " Ron wiped his chocolaty fingers on his robe and stepped closer to whisper. "This is the younger brother of Mycroft Bloody Holmes."

"Jesus H. Christ!" John reached up to whack the Auror upside his scruffled red head. "Buggering fuck, Weasley. You could have told me that!"

Ron covered a shit-eating grin with the hand that wasn't holding the bag of Chocolate Frogs. Jesus, even as a grown man, Ron Weasley really was as big a prat as Bill and Charlie had always said.

John took a moment to recover. "I thought Mycroft Holmes was a story mums used to scare their kids into behaving."

Ron just grinned back and wadded up the candy wrapper, tossing it into the bin beside the bed.

If you believed the rumors, (and John didn't) the elder Holmes was the single human link between the Ministry and the Muggle government. Placed unobtrusively in minor positions in the magical and mundane Ministries, he ran both like his very own Punch and Judy shows. That's what John's conspiracy-minded mates liked to yammer on about when they were pissed - John would rather play darts or chat up pretty girls, but whatever.

"That's a crock, Weasley. The world's bad enough as it is without this extra layer of mysterious mumbo jumbo."

"Mycroft Holmes is real. I've met him."

"You never."

"This morning. Crime scene."

John burned to know more. The bed curtains swished back. A man with messy black hair and crooked glasses poked his head inside. "Hello, Healer. Sorry to barge in. I'm Auror Inspector Potter."

"Ta," John nodded, feeling like a fool.

"You ready to go, Ron? Wright's arrived to guard the suspect."

Ron grinned. "My modest colleague requires no introduction." Harry rolled his eyes. "John, this is my brother-in-law Harry. Harry, this is Bill and Charlie's mate John Watson: Gryffindor Chaser, '86 through '89."

Harry Potter dropped his professional correctness and met John's handshake with a friendly smile. "Brilliant. Watson, your name's all over the trophy cabinet at school. Ron once made me stay up and study Charlie's playbook the night before a big match."

"Which I recall we lost because you fell asleep at the breakfast table with your face in a fry-up."

The two Aurors had a hard time keeping from laughing long enough to give Wright her parting instructions. John felt a wave of loneliness tugging at his feet just from listening to them.

John had of course heard plenty about Harry Potter from his old friends Bill and Charlie. He'd once asked them whether being brothers-in-law to the Boy Who Lived was a right pain in the arse. Bill laughed and denied it, but John had a keen feeling there was more to the story. He knew the Weasleys. While they were a loud and exuberant pack of gingers, they would have tired of the spotlight very quickly. That had been Fred's place.

Buttresses crumbled under magical shock waves, blasting green and red in the stormy twilight. Giants roared. Dying children screamed.

A gargoyle plummeted to the floor, shaken loose from the safe perch of centuries. Frozen lips were drawn back over its fangs in an open-throated laugh, carefree and blithe.

The spell screamed in John's mind but he couldn't set it free. He was going to die. He fell hard to his knees, the jarring motion finally shaking the spell free from his throat.

"Deprimo!" Gargoyle dust poured down over their heads.

"Watson!" A stone lintel broke from the doorway and teetered toward them. Bill Murray dragged him away just in time. "Arresto momentum!"

The massive stone hovered inches above John and Bill's heads. Together, they lowered it to the floor. Panting, the two Healers leaned back into the wall. John felt the bones of the castle throbbing with pain under the Death Eaters' assault.

John wiped his face with the back of his hand. Beside him, Bill's bloodshot eyes shone out of a death mask of pulverized stone. "Jesus, that was close. You all right?" Bill nodded, panting.

The corridor ended in gray sky. An entire wall was gone. Three redheads surrounded a fallen companion. John recognized them: George Weasley. Percy. Ron.

"No! Fred! No!"

John scrubbed at his eyes with the back of one hand. With the other, he gripped the bedrail to stay upright. How long had he been standing there?

Auror Wright settled in the rigid caned chair by Holmes's bedside. The casual efficiency with which the young Auror held her wand was betrayed by her restless eye movements. She looked as if she expected Holmes to jump up from unconsciousness and perform some crazy contortions to steal her wand, knock both of them out, and leap right out of the seventh-story window. John hid a smile.

Out in the corridor, a phalanx of Hit Wizards guarded either side of the door. Was his patient really that lethal? John turned his shoulders to squeeze through the gauntlet. "Sorry... Pardon me."

Christmas music tinkled softly along the corridor as John progressed along his regular rounds. He grimaced at the saccharine warbles coming from the wireless in the nurses' station. John liked Christmas music but Celestina Warbeck was taking it a little bit too far.

"What have we tonight, my friends?" John smiled.

Nurse Aurelia Hamilton handed him a thick sheaf of parchment, damp from her trembling hands. She never quite looked at the Hit Wizards down the corridor as she replied. "It's Saturday, Healer Watson. The usual."

Upsetting my staff, thought John angrily, that's another one Weasley owes me for this mess. He answered with a teasing grin to put her at ease.

"Couple of domestics, couple of Splinches, couple of kids fooling around with Mum or Dad's wands and blowing off somebody's eyebrows?"

"That's about the size of it, Healer."

John's final patient was a five-year-old boy who came out second-best in a scrum with The Monster Book of Monsters. His pale and sweating mother hunched beside the bed.

"It's all right, Mrs. Chatworth. I've surely seen worse from this book, Charley my boy, I think you got off easy. Just a little nip, isn't it?" The boy snuffled and nodded, holding out his bandaged hand to John. "We'll stay out of Mummy's bookshelves in the future, won't we? Plenty of time to learn these things when you've got a wand and can stick up for yourself. Can you believe that's a school book?"

"A school book?" the little boy squealed. Mrs. Chatworth shook her head furiously.

"Yes, so you'll have to tackle it again eventually. When I was at Hogwarts, we read it in second-year Care of Magical Creatures." John ruffled the boy's blonde hair. "Rest up, mate. Mum, just ring the call bell if he needs anything."

John made his way back to Holmes's room. During his rounds, the patient's unusual features had never left his mind: high cheekbones, a prominent nose. The ghosts of frown lines lay dormant across his pale forehead.

A warning sounded in the rational part of John Watson's mind. He muffled it as impatiently as he clapped down on his alarm clock when the covers were too warm to leave.

John wanted to be there when Sherlock Holmes opened his eyes. He wanted to see whether they were blue or grey or something else entirely.