Chapter 7

"John! The child is leaking!"

Sherlock's distressed cry rang through the flat and sent John from sleep to wakefulness in seconds. He rushed out towards the kitchen where the cry had come from, not knowing what to expect. What did Sherlock mean by 'leaking'? Did he mean Harry had had an accident, or that he was bleeding out on the floor? Then he was in the kitchen and there was no sign of blood or disturbing smells. What he did find was Sherlock holding Harry. The hold was awkward because Sherlock had donned the oven mitts and was holding the boy carefully in an attempt to create minimal contact, a hold which was thwarted by the boy himself who seemed determined to snuggle. That was all John managed to notice before Sherlock saw him and thrust the child at him with a look of intense relief.

"Oh good. You're a doctor; fix him."

"What?" John asked, accepting Harry automatically, adrenalin still pumping despite the absence of apparent threats. Then Harry made a snuffling noise and sneezed. John looked and finally realized what Sherlock meant by 'leaking'.

"Good morning, Harry," John said, "Not feeling well today?" Harry didn't answer, just clung to him tightly while snot dripped down his face. "Right. Sherlock, can you give us a tissue?"

"Busy," Sherlock answered. John frowned.

"Busy with what?" he asked, after digging out the box of tissues himself one handed, "Blow." Harry did and John attempted to make the child seem less leaky.

"Decontamination," Sherlock answered as he struggled out of his shirt and gingerly carried it and the oven mitts towards the fireplace. John, briefly, considered stopping him but decided it would be easier to replace the items than argue with Sherlock, and besides his hands were still full of sick boy. He put his hand against Harry's forehead and found it hot.

An hour later, Harry was still leaking and quiet and clingy and doped up on children's medicine and John was getting ready to go to work. Sherlock had spent most of that hour spraying every surface in the house with a product promising to kill all germs and the rest of the hour in argument with John as to whether his pajamas needed to be burnt or merely washed.

It wasn't until John was giving Sherlock the print-off he had just made on how to care for a sick child that Sherlock had, in fact, realized that John's preparations for work didn't include bringing Harry with him.

"Wait, what do you mean you're leaving Sherry with me?"

"I'll be working," John pointed out reasonably, "He'd be miserable there. Even more miserable." He ran his hand over Harry's hair where he sat on the sofa.

"He's sick. You're a doctor. Shouldn't you be watching him?"

"It's a cold, Sherlock, I think you will manage. Just follow the instructions."

"But you're a doctor! You have a super immune system. I just have a regular immune system!"

"You'll be fine," John insisted. And despite his private misgivings at leaving a sick child alone in the care of a man who had spent the last quarter of an hour following him around to spray anything Harry touched, John left.

He had been away from the flat for fifteen minutes before the first call came.

"He's making a huffing, squeaking noise. Your notes don't say anything about huffing squeaking noises." And the phone was held towards the boy so that John could hear. Then the sound of the spray and finally Sherlock again.

"His nose is stopped up," John answered, "It's fine."

"Well, what do I do to make him stop?"

"Hold him in your lap and sing to him."

"That will make him stop?"

"It will make him feel better…I mean, yes. It might take a few days to work but just keep at it." Sherlock hung up. John hoped he wasn't still keeping Harry at arm's length. It had been at the top of his list that Harry absolutely above all else needed cuddles but he had no idea if Sherlock would accept it as a rule or merely as advice. The next call, surprisingly, wasn't from Sherlock at all. It was from Mrs. Hudson.

"John, dear, is everything alright? Sherlock asked for tea but he won't let me in; he said something about quarantine?"

A rather shocked John managed to stammer out an explanation and that Harry's sickness wasn't serious before he called Sherlock himself.

"Really, John, everyone knows old people have horrible immune systems," Sherlock answered when questioned on the quarantine. Considering John had more or less expected Sherlock to foist the sick child on Mrs. Hudson the moment John had left, he found this more than a little surprising.

"You are cuddling him, right?" he asked at last, "How is he?"

"His temperature is still within the safety parameters you left me, he drank half the glass of juice I gave him, and I cannot hold him and play the violin at the same time." He sounded awfully pleased with himself at that, that he had found a way to take care of the boy without touching. "Do you want to talk to him?"

"Is he talking again?" John asked.

"No. But he does seem to listen." So John said hello and barely heard Harry when he did in fact answer.

For the next couple of hours Sherlock managed by sending texts and the occasional picture. One picture was quite cute despite the red nose and cheeks. Harry was sleeping, surrounded by stuffed animals. The text that followed was less cute.

-Do you think I should burn them afterwards? SH-

-Don't you dare, JW-

-We can buy new ones. SH-

-They are contaminated. SH-

-They will wash, JW-

After that was an ominous silence for nearly an hour during which John pointedly did not rush home to make sure Sherlock wasn't burning Harry's toys. When Sherlock called again it was shortly after lunch.

"Sherrinford won't take his medicine."

"Tell him he has to or he won't get well."

"I did. I explained it all to him."

"And…?"

"He exploded the bottle." Sherlock sounded oddly proud of this fact. "And then he started crying.

"He…exploded the bottle?"

"With glutinic energy. It was brilliant. But now he's hiding under the sink."

"And crying."

"Yes."

"I…have another call."

"John dear, there are very strange noises coming from your flat. Are you sure Sherlock and Harry are alright in there?"

"Strange noises? Like…breaking glass?"

"Yes, just now. And before that there were…smashing noises."

"…One moment, Mrs. Hudson, I'm talking to Sherlock now."

"Johnjohnjohnjohnjo-"

"Sherlock!"

"Oh good, you're back; can you pick up ten more bottles?"

"...Mrs. Hudson said you were smashing things earlier?"

"I told you, I was explaining to Sherry about why he should take his medicine."

"And this involved smashing things?"

"Involves more senses, tactile and visual, better for learning and understanding. The bottles, John?"

"One moment…Mrs. Hudson, are you still there?"

"It's quiet in there now…I don't know why Sherlock won't let me in. He told me to leave the tray of soup outside the door."

"He doesn't want to get you sick," John explained, and then, "Mrs. Hudson, do you mind going out and picking up some medicine for Harry? It seems Harry accidently…broke ours."

"Was that the noise I heard? What about before? I was afraid assassins had come after Sherlock; you know how it can be."

"No, no, that was…a lesson in germ fighting apparently."

"I'd be happy to pick something up; I was just about to pop out to the shops for myself."

"Thank you, Mrs. Hudson. Right…Sherlock, let me talk to Harry."

All in all the call went on for a good half hour longer, during which time Mrs. Hudson made it out and came back. John distinctly heard her knocking at the door and Sherlock hollering out at her to leave the bottles, still going on about quarantine. He also heard Sherlock's disappointment that there was only one.

"You are not running experiments on Harry," John informed him sternly when Sherlock sounded ready to make their landlady go back out in the cold again.

"Fine. See, look, Sherry. We have another bottle. Do you want to come out now? … Good boy." Disaster averted and cuddling resumed, John finally went back to his job.

He still had two hours left of work when the next call came.

"Isn't it your turn to watch him yet?"

"I'm at work, Sherlock. It hasn't anything to do with taking turns."

"I have work, too. Lestrade called with a case." John didn't answer for a moment. To be honest, he hadn't expected Sherlock to last as long as he had with a sick child. And it would hardly be fair to imply Sherlock's work was less important than John's. But someone had to watch Harry, and out of the two of them, Sherlock's work could more easily wait.

"Then leave him with Mrs. Hudson," John suggested as a compromise.

"Can't, John, quarantine, do try to keep up."

"Well then, you'll just have to wait until I'm done with my work to go do yours."

"No good, Anderson will have obliterated the evidence, perhaps 'Uncle Greg'…"

"You are not taking Harry outside. It's freezing out and he's sick."

"…One of Mycroft's Marys…"

"And you are not leaving him with a stranger."

"…fine." And he hung up. With a sigh, John weighed going home early with trying to find another babysitter for a sick child. Finally, he picked up the phone again.

"Hello…Harry?"

Meanwhile, Sherlock ran through the options of 'not a stranger' and not removing the child from the house.

-Mycroft. Emergency. Come at once. SH-

Two hours later, John left work. He stopped on the way to pick up more tissues, medicine, and on a whim he found a copy of the Velveteen Rabbit. If Sherlock did manage to get past him to burn Harry's new toys, John hoped he'd at least be able to console Harry with the story.

He wasn't sure what he expected when he got back. Perhaps to find the flat turned into a disaster zone, furniture smashed and glass on the floor and medicine on the walls. Perhaps a mountain of used tissues. Or the exact opposite, to find Sherlock had turned their flat into a giant clean room in his attempt to obliterate all germs.

He also had some vague idea that young Harry would be sleeping or watching a film while his sister Harry did her own thing in the general vicinity.

When he got in, the flat was neither destroyed nor ultra clean, despite the faint odor of the germ killing spray. Harry was sitting on the sofa, cloaked in a blanket and surrounded by stuffed animals, paper and crayons. He wasn't watching a film, though.

"And with that," Mycroft announced, "The wicked stepmother and the two wicked stepsisters left for the ball. Poor Cinderella was left all alone."

"Oh, alas, alas!" John's sister wailed dramatically, "How I wish I could go to the ball!" And she burst into fake tears. On the couch, Harry giggled.

"It was at that moment," Mycroft continued as John walked into the room, "That a strange being appeared."

John couldn't help but feel he could have had better timing than to enter the room right at that moment.

"Uncle John!" Harry exclaimed, reaching excitedly for John's arms. John took him, feeling his forehead and still finding it too warm.

"The icky medicine is fighting the icky germs," Harry told him, "The medicine is icky, I don't like it, Uncle Sherlock says it is stronger icky than germs to kill germs. Germs are dis…distesting…but not me, I'm good. And Uncle Mycra and Aunt Harry, and Aunt Catherine, and and…Mary Poppy are doing a play and…are you the fairy?"

"Well, I see you feel better," John said with a smile. He raised his eyebrow and the host of people standing before him. Along with Mycroft and his sister there was also not-Anthea, who he guessed was going by Catherine at the moment, and a very large dark skinned man in a suit who John vaguely recognized as one of Mycroft's offered nannies.

"You didn't say you found others to watch Harry," his sister said, looking up from her fake crying, "I was a little worried when they all showed up, but Harry seemed to know them."

"I didn't know. Sherlock must have called." A small hand tugged at John's sleeve.

"Uncle John, you inter…interrupt show."

"Right…sorry. Let's just sit here and watch." And he sat down in the middle of the storm of toys with Harry in his lap. Not looking the slightest embarrassed to be caught putting on a play for a sick child, Mycroft took up the book and went on from where he left off.

"A strange being appeared." The man in the suit stepped forward and in a serious, deep voice, announced, "Do not cry. I am your fairy godmother." He had a wand. Otherwise John had never seen anyone who looked less like a fairy godmother. On the other hand, when it came time to transform 'Cinderella's' dress, it really did transform into a sparkly blue monstrosity. Harry clapped.

By the end of the story, the 'princess' Catherine found Cinderella through her powers of deduction and they lived happily ever after.

Before they all left, Mycroft handed John a small bottle.

"Pepper-up Potion," he explained, "It cures the cold. One side-effect is steam coming out of the ears. It is recommended to let colds and minor illnesses run their course; it helps the immune system in the long run to not always fall back on magic. But for recurring illness…"

"Right. Thank you." He still found the idea of magic a bit bewildering. This was the first he had heard of magical medicine. Perhaps it was time he started to look into magic a bit himself instead of leaving it all to Sherlock.

That night, Harry didn't sleep in his closet. He also didn't sleep in his bed. No matter what Sherlock said about contamination, he still fell asleep with a small boy leaking against his chest.