John was chanting freezing charms under his breath now, telling himself that it worked for Wendolyn back in the days of witch hunts, so it could work for him, but he didn't think it was making a difference. Maybe if he'd had his wand, or been able to bloody think it would be working better. It's not like wandless magic was possible outside childish outbursts of accidental magic.

Still, it seemed like that could be possible. If you could do it instinctively at five, well … who said instincts didn't work when you were 40? Didn't mothers lift cars off their trapped children? What did he have to lose? And so, unable to do anything else, he forced himself to concentrate on freezing charms. They were supposed to make the flames tickle rather than burn, right? Surely he could do that. And, if all the wood piled around him burned away to ash, think how easy it would be to just get up and walk away.

If only he had more air …

#

The screams were suddenly loud in his ear as Sherlock stumbled, staggering as he and Harry landed (appeared? manifested?) next to a derelict house.

Or where a house should be, he thought, looking at what appeared to be an empty lot. Except, judging by the look Harry gave it, it wasn't. Sherlock suppressed a sigh at the illogic of the wizarding world, hiding things in plain sight, like the Leaky Cauldron's entrance to Diagon Alley.

At any rate, why was Harry looking there? John had been kidnapped by muggles and therefore couldn't be held behind a magical barrier.

No, this was a witch hunt, which meant … he spun on his heel, looking for the source of the smoke, and then grabbed Harry's arm. "Over there."

Harry looked, taking in the crowd of some thirty people. He nodded even as Sherlock moved forward. "Wait," he told him.

"What?" Sherlock couldn't believe his ears. John was being roasted alive and Harry expected him to just stand there?

"There are too many people to get him out safely, not until we have reinforcements."

"But…" Sherlock shifted his weight to move toward the fire, and found his feet pinned to the ground. He glared at Harry, but found the wizard looking past him, at Mary.

"I'm sorry, Sherlock, but you'll just get yourself killed if you go in there right now. There are too many of them. Have you never faced a mob before?"

Just then, he heard John's voice, faint over the crackle of the fire. "Help!"

"Oh my god," said Sherlock, barely able to breathe.

He felt a hand on his shoulder, and then Harry's voice in his ear telling him not to worry as Harry stretched out his wand and cast a spell with a series of nonsensical syllables. "Freezing charm," he explained, except the flames continued their ravaging dance. Sherlock started to ask but Harry was already explaining. "It doesn't stop the flames, it just protects one from the heat. Wendolyn the Weird used it during the witch trials centuries ago—she enjoyed the sensation so much, she let herself be burned as a witch many times. It's one of the few things I learned in History of Magic."

"But…" Sherlock was unused to finding himself speechless. His mind was racing. Heat wasn't the only danger from a fire. Smoke inhalation was actually more deadly. And what if the mob discovered its victim was unharmed? There were any number of torturous ways Sherlock could think of for a mob to kill a man. John was in danger, and Sherlock couldn't even move his feet!

Harry somehow knew his frustration and nodded, eyes intent on the scene in front of them, watching for any change in behaviour from the fanatics dancing around the bonfire. "I've sent for back-up. They'll be here any minute. We're not going to let anything happen to him, Sherlock."

"The smoke, though…"

Mary was at his other shoulder now. "Good point," she said, pointing her own wand and sending something like a breath of air shooting toward the fire. For a moment, Sherlock caught his own breath, knowing what a burst of oxygen could do to a fire already so large, but nothing happened. Or at least, nothing he could see.

He couldn't hear John anymore, either. The delighted screams of the crowd around the fire were too loud. Delighted screams, he thought, feeling once again disgusted by the mass of humanity. How can you take pleasure at burning an innocent man alive? He had called this a witch hunt, but … Sherlock tried to put his worry for John aside, to force his brain to think. ("It's the new sexy," chanted The Woman in his brain but he shoved her away with a curse for distracting him.)

"If they're muggles, why would they try to make you think John had been taken by wizards?" Sherlock asked Mary, who was peering through the trees, intent on the scene.

"What?"

"The note was written on parchment in a bad imitation of a wizard's note. But why? If they are rabidly anti-magic enough to burn a man alive, why would they even bother? Why would their note not have been off of a computer? Or a text to your phone?" He stared toward the fire, trying not to think about his best friend engulfed in flames. "Why would they even care what we thought?"

He was scanning past the crowd now, trying to see through the dark and smoke. Was that … a camera?

He grabbed Harry's arm just as the other man started to move forward. "It's a trap," Sherlock hissed at him. "I don't know which of us it's for, but this is all being recorded."

Harry was looking at it now, eyes burning with anger. "Who would do that?"

"That's the question, isn't it," Sherlock replied, eyes once again at the bonfire. He wished he had evidence that John was still alive and well in there, as impossible as that seemed.

"This is all very good, boys," Mary's voice cut in, "But how are we going to get John out of there?"

"I'm open to ideas."

Which was when John started yelling again, and Sherlock lost his head.

#

John was coughing now, not quite able to catch his breath through the thick smoke. Except … the air suddenly didn't feel quite so hot. Maybe his wandless freezing charm was working?

And then the air, somehow, miraculously, freshened so that he could breathe.

He thought about using his newfound oxygen to yell for help again, but something held him back. What if the freezing charm suddenly worked because there was someone out there casting it for him? Along with a breathing spell? If the cavalry was already here and working on a plan, he shouldn't distract them.

Or …

One mustn't underestimate the element of surprise. It sounded like quite a crowd of revellers out there, and his rescue team was probably greatly outnumbered. It would probably help if John were acting like the fire-lighters would expect, wouldn't it? His sudden silence would be suspicious.

And, really, all he could do was keep their attention on him, to let Sherlock or Harry or whoever was out there time to work.

And so he took a deep breath of the blessedly fresh air and gave another yell.

"Help!"

#

"John!"

Sherlock couldn't help it. Knowing it was a trap, knowing better, he still couldn't stop himself from yelling John's name.

Which, of course, made far too many eager faces turn their way.

How could he be so stupid? He heard Harry cursing on his right and could feel the heat of Mary's glare on his left, even beyond the heat of the bonfire in front of them.

So, fine. He couldn't force himself to be wholly rational when John was quite literally in a bonfire not twenty feet away. No matter what some people might think, he was human, after all.

This was still a trap, though, and he wasn't going to bring Harry and John's office nurse down with him, though, and so he lunged forward, as if just arrived. "John!"

He could hear Harry casting some kind of a spell behind him, but he couldn't hear what it was. He didn't care. Now that he was moving, now that he could hear John … he couldn't help himself. He threw himself forward, completely disregarding the threat of burns to himself. Freezing charm or not, it was an atavistic, instinctual need to get John as far away from those flames as possible. Now. If not sooner.

#

John coughed, feeling air brush across his face. He panicked as he realized he couldn't see anything. He fought to open his eyes, a little frantic as he realized that he couldn't remember closing them. He felt like he'd been buried under a wall of water—hot, smoky water—because everything felt oddly distant. He could hear, but everything was muffled. He could see, but everything was blurry. And still, he couldn't move.

"John!"

With a huge effort, he forced his eyes open, relieved to see open sky rather than burning branches.

Even better, a familiar silhouette leaned over him, calling his name. With his foggy vision, John couldn't be sure, but he didn't think he'd seen Sherlock look so concerned since The Pool.

Somehow relieved by this, he let his eyelids close again.

#

Sherlock saw John force himself awake through sheer willpower and, disregarding the riotous crowd around him, leaned down. "John?"

His friend blinked up at him for a moment, dazed, and then focused on his face. It was just for a moment before he passed out again, but it was enough to reassure Sherlock. John was out of the fire and not irretrievably damaged … assuming this crowd didn't turn into a mob now that their prize was no longer roasting.

He watched John fall under again, and told himself that it was all right. He had just been roasting in a bonfire. Unconsciousness was a perfectly reasonable response.

No, the concern right now was the crowd. Sherlock was marginally surprised that they hadn't interfered as he'd pulled John from the flames. They had been so eager, so vocal about the witch-burning just moments ago. Why would they take his extraction with such equanimity?

He looked back over the crowd to where he'd left Harry, unsurprised the wizard was out of sight. (Sherlock could admit that he outright coveted the man's invisibility cloak. It would have been so helpful during his three-year crusade.)

No, Harry was … somewhere. And Mary, he noted with approval was standing on John's other side, guarding both him and Sherlock's back with her wand. It was just … Sherlock didn't know what to do next.

The crowd was still surprisingly placid, not that he was exactly complaining at the lack of rampaging. He pulled out his gun from his pocket and held it, the firearm all too comfortable in his hand after the last two and a half years. He wasn't as good a shot as John, even after all this time, and his ammunition was limited, but still—he would defend John to the best of his ability.

The tension grew as thick as the smoke in the air as they all stared each other down, and then, from the back of the crowd, a voice. "All right. What's all this? A bit early for Bonfire Night, isn't it?"

Then, pushing his way through the crowd, came Harry—except, instead of wizard's robes, he was wearing a police uniform.

He exuded calm authority as he strode forward, and the revelers parted before him. Even Sherlock could feel the mood shifting even further away from a mob mentality. There was almost a sense of shame as they all shuffled their feet and edged away from the fire.

Harry, meanwhile, had pointed to a man in front, holding a torch. "You! Are you responsible for this fire?"

"Well, I…"

"You have a permit?"

"I … yes, of course, but …"

"I'll need to see that, then," Harry said, voice firm. Sherlock was impressed at his arrogance. He had mastered the officious police officer act as if he'd been taking lessons from that blustering idiot of a Chief Superintendent who had tried to arrest John all those years ago.

As the other man patted at his pockets for his permit (and, really, how does one get a license for a bonfire to be used in a witch hunt?), Harry let his gaze sweep over the suddenly quiet crowd, coming back to rest on Sherlock, Mary, and John as the fire crackled and roared with loud pops as branches popped. "Is there a problem over there? That man looks hurt."

"No, no," said the leader quickly, "Just overcome with excitement, I think. We think the heat got to him."

"Mmm," said Harry, looking down at the permit. "I'm sorry, but this isn't in order."

"It's not?"

"No," and now Harry's wand was in his hand. "No license is going to give you permission to try roasting a man alive."

Sherlock tensed, readying himself for the fight he was sure was about to come, but none of the crowd was moving. In fact … he couldn't move, either. He could glimpse a robed figure outside the crowd, though, and realized. Aurors. Of course. The popping noise he had thought was the fire. They had contained the belligerent crowd, freezing all the muggles in place.

Magic certainly had its uses.

He tried to check on John, but couldn't move his head. All he could do was stare Harry's way and watch as he conjured restraints for the bonfire man. That done, Harry looked over at Sherlock. "How's John?"

Sherlock gave a mental sigh at Harry's lack of observation, but supposed he could make allowances—he'd been concentrating on other things. At any rate, it was only an instant before he said, abashed, "Oh, sorry," and waved his wand.

Released, Sherlock immediately looked down at John. "Alive," he reported even as Mary pushed her way over.

"He's unconscious, Harry," she said, running some kind of diagnostic spell with her wand. "Breathing is strong, but he's coughing. Cut on his head. Doesn't look like he's burned. Nothing too serious, I don't think."

"Thank Merlin," breathed a voice behind him, and Sherlock turned, gun half raised, to see Ron, his hair almost a match for the riotous flames behind him. "What happened to him?"

"What happened," Sherlock said, acerbic, "Is that somebody tried to burn him alive."

"Stupid muggles," said Ron. "I'll kill them. I thought witch hunts died out in the twentieth century."

"More like the 18th," came Hermione's voice, slightly breathless as she flung herself down to check on John. "Which you'd know if you ever stayed awake in History of Magic."

"As if that were possible, being taught by a ghost."

"A ghost?" Sherlock asked, unable to stop himself, even as he watched the two women working on John.

"Yeah, unfortunately. One of the most boring ghosts ever. The only kind of eternal sleep Binns was interested in was the kind he could inflict on his students. I remember when Harry's nightmares were the worst, Binns' class was about the only sleep he got. Lucky for us, Hermione kept good notes."

His voice was casual, friendly, but Sherlock was relieved to see that his posture was alert and ready.

Nobody was getting near John without going through him—either of them.

#