Chapter Three

The Game is On

Heading up to Defence Against The Dark Arts from the Great Hall the next morning, John turned to say something to Sherlock and realised that the boy was no longer walking beside him. He stopped walking, and blinked a few times. "Where'd he go?" he muttered under his breath with a shake of his head.

Carl who had been walking beside John, turned around and shrugged. "You know him," he said. "He would have run off with some pressing idea that can't wait for break."

"Yeah… he does."

Sherlock just got to class in time, slipping into the chair beside John just as the bell rang. "Where'd you go?" John asked him quietly. Sherlock mutely held up a folded piece of paper, and John gave a troubled frown. "Again?" he said with a sigh, and Sherlock nodded. "How'd you know he'd left a note?"

"I presumed he'd been the cause of the exploding corridor last night," he answered as the class got to their feet, and Professor Lestrade pushed the desks to the side of the room, as they were going to be duelling. "I figured he'd leave a note to talk about what he was planning, I was right."

"What's it say?" John asked, as they lined up on opposite ends of the room, and the teacher went up and down the lines giving them corresponding numbers with someone on the other side of the room.

Sherlock passed the note to him, and John unfolded the piece of paper. It gave directions to a room, the directions were quite vague, and with a glance at Sherlock John could tell that he was unravelling them as he stood there. "Fifth floor, second corridor, first room on the right." John just stared at him, he shouldn't be surprised, this was Sherlock after all, but he never did cease to be surprised. Sherlock smirked at him, sensing his wonder. "Think about it," is all he told him. And John stared at the note, and did think about it, and still didn't get any closer to figuring it out.

"You're brilliant you are," he told Sherlock, right before his number was called, and he went off to duel Molly Hooper. John won.


"Uh, Sherlock, transfiguration is in the other direction," John pointed out as when they reached the staircase instead of going down the stairs to the transfiguration classroom, he headed up.

Carl hovered on the staircase, a few feet away from John. "I'll see you in transfig John," he said with an amused shake of his head.

"I know," Sherlock said, still heading up the staircase. John sighed, glanced at Carl and shrugged before following Sherlock up the stair case.

"You couldn't wait through another period before we went charging up to the fifth floor?" he asked, hoping that Professor Hudson wasn't going to murder them, or give them detention.

"She won't," he said.

John blinked, he was sure he hadn't said that out loud.

Sherlock glanced at him and smirked. "No, you didn't. But that is the only reason you are worried about being late, you don't actually care about missing part of the class," John opened his mouth to protest but Sherlock just gave him a smug look and John shrugged. "And to answer your question, no, because the faster we figure this out, the less of the school that is going to be exploded." John was half expecting that answer to end with some part of the school exploding. "And she likes us, she'll just wave off our lateness like she always does."


"…it's a teddy bear."

"I had noticed that yes," Sherlock answered crouching down next to it, they had opened the door to the classroom to find a lone teddy bear sitting in the middle of the room, the bear looked old, and well loved, missing an eye with a rune drawn onto it's left foot under said foot a piece of paper had been tucked.

"Hang on…" John said, as Sherlock pulled out the piece of paper. "I've seen that bear before."

"Glad you didn't go straight to class now?"

"Huh?" John tore his eyes away from the bear to glance at Sherlock.

Sherlock held up the note. "Just reading what it says. Where've you seen the bear before? …who brings a teddy bear to Hogwarts," he sounded scornful. As he didn't understand the sentiment of people.

"Carl."

"…Carl has a teddy bear?"

"That is his teddy bear," John said, in any other circumstance that would have been an amusing sentence to say. This one, not so much. It was a bear that Carl kept in his trunk. He'd brought it to school as a first year to remind him of home, and he never took it out of the trunk and left it at home as years went past.

Sherlock shot up suddenly. "This note isn't just because this is more interesting than class, Carl's bear, Carl is in transfiguration. We are going to be glad we didn't go to transfiguration if the classroom blows up."


The boys skidded into the transfiguration classroom, the door flung into the wall and back, John held out his hand to stop it swinging back into them. The class swivelled in their seats to stare at the two boys.

"Boys!" Professor Hudson exclaimed staring at them.

Both boys ignored her, quickly scanning the classroom, they came to the same conclusion at the same time and turned to face each other. "He's not here," and without another word ran out of the classroom.

"Boys!" The transfiguration teacher yelled after them. She didn't follow them because she presumed they were up to their usual tricks.

"Two floors between the defence class and here," John said as they stopped in the hallway to confer.

"We can't go around pulling open every door," Sherlock said. "That would take far too long then we have, considering how many rooms even an eight of a floor has. That note was a red herring."

"Well we can't just do nothing!" John exploded. "There must be another hint, another clue, something."

"Shh," Sherlock shushed him, and the other boy looked offended, he went to say so but Sherlock waved his hand at him and screwed his eyes shut, picturing the bear in his mind. Every little single detail he had noticed. "Runes!" He exclaimed, and tore off. John followed.

"What?"

After more than five years of dashing around the school, and up and down stairs, the two could run pretty fast, though they still hadn't developed the ability to have long conversations whilst they were doing it.

"There was a rune on the bear's foot, drawn on, recently, I could smell the ink. Didn't think much of it," he stopped talking to regain some of his breath, as he skidded around a corner nearly flying into a sixth year Hufflepuff as he did so.

The girl yelped, and John apologised for Sherlock. "Shouldn't we get a teacher?"

"No time, but runes, ancient runes classroom. That's between the two floors."

"Brilliant," John breathed, and they ran the rest of the way without speaking, each pulling out their wands as they went. John keeping an eye out for teachers in case they went past one. He was regretting not telling Professor Hudson before they charged out of class, but nothing could be done of it now.

And Sherlock had always liked doing things on his own.


A few feet away from the door, Sherlock flung his wand at it, flinging it open and causing it to smash into the wall. John had been half hoping they could stop in front of it and open doors like normal people, he needed a moment to catch his breath.

As it was the two came to a halt in the classroom. And there sat Carl Powers, sitting on a desk in the front, holding a beaker of clear colourless liquid in one hand, and a solid substance in the other.

Glancing at them both Sherlock had a sinking feeling that the beaker was water, and the solid substance was an alkali metal.

"Carl?" John said hesitantly, lowering his wand. Sherlock didn't.

"No," Carl replied, and there was something in the way he spoke that didn't sound like his voice. "But he's already figured that out," both boys turned to stare at Sherlock. Carl calmly, John frantically.

"Imperio," Sherlock hissed, wrinkling his nose, he hated that spell. After his experience in first year, he hated it.

"Cleverer than you look," Carl said, or whoever was controlling Carl.

"What's he holding Sherlock?" John asked worriedly, turning back to his friend.

"They are muggle chemicals," Sherlock answered. John went to move forward, but Sherlock grabbed onto his shoulder to stop him. "Don't," he warned. "You don't want him to trigger adding them together." John turned to him quizzically but Sherlock didn't explain. "What do you want Richard Brooke?"

"Hmm, what do I always want Sherlock Holmes?" he asked in a singsong voice.

John snarled. "Leave him alone," he hissed. "Imperio can't do that can it?" he asked Sherlock. "They can put their thoughts into a person, they can't speak through them can they?"

"I don't know," Sherlock admitted quietly.

"Answer the question," Carl hummed.

"Answer mine," Sherlock retorted.

"Your answer is my answer."

"Accio beaker!" John shouted, causing the other two to jump. Much to John's and somewhat Sherlock's dismay, the beaker did not go shooting out of Carl's hand and towards John. It stayed where it was.

All three of them turned to look at the beaker.

"Please," Carl snorted, or rather Richard Brooke snorted. "I'm not stupid enough to make it that easy, though, come any closer and he'll drop it." To make the threat more threatening he moved his hand, so the one holding the solid substance was directly above the beaker.

Sherlock hissed impatiently. "You want to be entertained, and you do that by trying to make me dance, which doesn't work by the way because I like the puzzles. What do you want?"

"It's all fun and games until someone gets hurt."

"Someone gets hurt every time Brooke, it's still fun and games," he ignored the look that this got from John, because he always got that look when he made such comments, John really should be used to it by now.

"Oh, for you maybe, but it's not much fun for Johnny here if his friend gets blown to bits, and it's not much fun for you when Johnny gets hurt."

"Don't!" John went to run up at Carl, and Sherlock grabbed onto his arm.

"John!" he exclaimed. "Don't."

"Told you not to move Johnny boy."

Carl dropped the metal.

"Carl!" John yelled.

Sherlock yanked John out of the classroom, and they tumbled into the hallway, Sherlock flinging up a shield as they hit the ground just as the metal hit the water and exploded.


Sorry for the delay in the update, school's been busy. I also do Chem at school, hence the Chemistry reference. For those who don't know, alkali metals are in the first group of the period table, and as you go down the periods they get more reactive with water. And so adding an alkali metal with water causes an explosion. (Especially if using say, caesium.) /Chem lesson of the day.

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