Disclaimer: I do not own Sherlock and co. They belong to BBC and Moffat.

This story is split in two parts. The first part is all about John and Sherlock's friendship and is set most of the time in Hogwarts. The second part begins in the their Sixth Year and well, I can't give much away but the setting isn't the same anymore.

Prologue:

Beginnings

For Sherlock Holmes, everything began the moment he was born.

No one had anticipated that things would become so hectic, of course. Mycroft had been born without a problem. He had cried little when the matron held him in her arms, and had barely made a sound weeks after his birth. Mycroft had assumed his little sister would be just like him: smart, quiet, and very serious.

All of his assumptions were proven wrong.

He did not have a sister. Instead, he had a wrinkled, rosy-skinned creature that his mother told him was his little brother. She was actually shouting it as the baby, now washed and wrapped in a dark blue blanket, was screaming in her arms, his little limbs flailing as if he wanted to hit everyone around him. And perhaps he did because even though the matron had told him the baby still wouldn't be able to see, it seemed as if his brother was glaring at all of them. He had Father's eyes, only they were not cold. They burned with fury.

"You can touch him," his mother said, handing the baby to the matron who looked as if she would rather battle with a dragon than deal with his brother. Mycroft could not help but share her feelings. Still, he put on a brave face and held out his arms. This proved to be a mistake because as soon as the baby was placed in his care, his screams escalated until Mycroft was forced to drop him to cover his ears. Thankfully, he landed on the mattress, unharmed, but still screaming.

And this was when the lights went out.

The darkness lasted for two minutes in which the matron, panicking about the baby, accidentally knocked Mycroft to the ground. Later, an owl would drop by with a letter from the Ministry, informing the Holmeses that the blackout had not only happened in their home, but had also been experienced by most of London. This letter was followed by a representative, a second in command of the Minister of Magic, who wanted to take his brother away. Later, their father would roughly escort the politician out of the house, threatening him that he would curse him if he ever proposed the idea again. And much later, when Mycroft woke up to a quiet but still scowling Sherlock, he would find letters from all twenty wizarding schools sitting on the dining table, all of which were addressed to one Sherlock Carlton Holmes, wishing him a happy birthday.

For John Watson, everything began on the twenty-fourth of July.

It was a Friday morning, cold and cloudy just the way he liked it. John generally liked Fridays. Fridays meant no school tomorrow which, for an eleven-year-old who disliked his peers but pretended to like them to survive in such an environment, was heaven. But as it was the summer, John needn't worry about. During the summer break, Fridays meant he could play rugby with some of the boys in the neighbourhood. Fridays meant he could go downtown to the arcades. Fridays also meant that he could go and visit his father.

His father lived in the town next to theirs with his older sister Harry. He and his mother had split up when John was five, and they were not on speaking terms. She had forced his father and sister out of the house when Harry, age eight at the time, began to exhibit strange behaviour. It was not that she was rebellious (this would come later). It was because she somehow made strange things happen without meaning to. It had all been very weird to John until his father took them aside and explained that he was terribly sorry he had kept it so long, but he was a wizard and it appeared, Harry was also magical, like him. John had not believed it at first but when a week later, his father and his sister moved away, John finally allowed the truth to sink in. His mother, who had always been conservative, had not taken the news well.

"Don't let them turn you into one of them, John," she often told him whenever he came back from his father's place.

John did not think he could, even if he wanted to. He had never made something act the way it shouldn't, not like Harry who, at age nine, had somehow turned the television into an aquarium, complete with several goldfish and one little toy diver tucked behind a plastic treasure chest. He had asked his father why this was so and he had explained that it was like Punnet's squares. "My parents weren't magical," he'd told John. "It skips some generations." Then he'd looked at him pityingly, as if waiting for John to burst into tears and ask why he couldn't do the things his sister could.

But John never longed for the world his father and his sister lived in. It wasn't that it wasn't amazing. They had taken him to a place called Diagon Alley when Harry bought her school things. John hadn't been able to stop looking at everything. He had poked and prodded to the annoyance of an assistant in a bookshop called Flourish and Blotts. The wizarding world was absolutely fascinating, and John had been tempted more than once to brag about to it to one of his classmates. He wondered often if any of them knew that magic really existed and how many wizards and witches were strolling the streets with non-magic people like him.

But what kept him from longing for it was his mother. John loved his mother despite her prejudiced thoughts towards her daughter and ex-husband. He liked how she would knit him a new sweater every year and how she would brush back his hair and tell him that he would make a good doctor one day. He liked that she encouraged his dreams to become a doctor like his uncle, to the point that she even bought him some second hand medical books. And John did not want her to look at him the way she looked at Harry, her eyes filled with a combination of disappointment and bitterness. He did not want to look at her the way Harry did: hurt, anger, hatred. John loved his father, his sister, and his mother. But his father already had Harry and John did not really want to leave his mother alone. She needed him more.

His mother was not an awful person. After all, she still allowed him to visit them, albeit grudgingly. She would even give him fare for the bus, though it would be handed with a warning. It was merely a squeeze of his hand but it went unspoken. Don't let them tempt you were the words.

So he got the surprise of his life when, upon entering the living room of his father's house, he found his whole family sitting in awkward silence. His father sat in his favoured chair while Harry lounged on the sofa, her face an odd mixture of tension and happiness. John fixed his eyes on his mother. She sat opposite Harry. Her face was blank but her body posture was rigid. Her hands, which were resting on her lap, were curled into fists, clenching the hem of her skirt tightly so that her knuckles burned white. In the middle of them, sitting on the coffee table was an open letter. It was not an ordinary letter, either. John just had to glance at the paper to know that it had come from Harry's school.

"John!" It was Harry who broke the silence. She leapt from the chair and gathered him in a bone-crushing hug. "Congratulations," she whispered, her breath soft against his ear. He wrenched himself away.

"What are you talking about?"

"You got a letter from Hogwarts," she told him, her eyes filling with pride. She touched his cheek, pinched it lightly. It still stung and he swatted her hand away. "I can't believe it."

"That can't be right." It was wrong, he thought. Maybe it was a joke Harry had put up. It wouldn't be beneath his father to join in. But then, his mother was here. Why would she go here? Unless Harry was telling the truth. Unless he actually was a wizard and he just hadn't noticed it yet. But maybe the school had made a mistake. He hadn't displayed any signs of being capable of magic ever! Helplessly, he shook his head. "Can't be right," he repeated.

"Read it," his father urged. The paper was handed to him, heavy in his hands. The paper was shaking and it took a moment for John to realize that his hands were unsteady. He forced himself to keep still before he let his eyes fall on the letter.

Dear Mr Watson,

We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry—

He did not have to continue reading to know what would happen. One look at his mother's face and John already knew that things would go downhill between them.

For his father and older sister, John Watson's life began on the twenty-fourth of July. For John himself, it was the beginning of the end.

More A/N: I have no idea why I wrote this. I woke up and all of a sudden, I potterlocked. Wtf?