Arc Two - Chapter Five
Sherlock swerved tightly around a corner, scowling fiercely at the road before him as he waited for his phone to finish dialling. He tore through a red light, making liberal use of the police car's siren to clear the way. The phone rang twice, and he tutted.
Too slow.
"You have reached the private line of Mr Holmes. He is currently unavaila-"
"If you do not pass the phone to my brother in the next three seconds I will not be held responsible for the body count," Sherlock cut off Mycroft's secretary Whatsername with a furious growl.
"My apologies, Mr Holmes, but -"
"Two seconds."
"Mr -"
"They have John!" Sherlock roared, yanking on the steering wheel hard enough that the car threatened to raise off its right wheels as he turned another corner. There was silence over the phone line, allowing Sherlock's harsh breathing to echo around the car. Sherlock valiantly ignored the pounding of his heart in his ears.
"Right away, sir," came the eventual answer from the phone. Sherlock didn't answer, didn't speak again until he heard the smarmy voice of Mycroft Holmes over the phone line.
"What do you need?" Sherlock had never been so glad to hear the disinterest in Mycroft's voice. This was familiar, this was normal.
"The blood, they wrote the note in blood," Sherlock said quickly. "The frog blood they used, you can only source it from the apothecary right at the edge of Knockturn and Diagon. It's not cheap - anything that can be both ingredient and stationery tends to cost more - and it was fresh, I could taste it."
"Must I have yet another discussion with you about appropriate things to put in your mouth, Sherlock?" Mycroft asked dryly, and Sherlock snorted.
"I will gladly sit through that particular lecture thrice over - once this case is solved," Sherlock muttered.
"I will clear the way for you, and one of mine will approach the vendor in the meantime," Mycroft was all business once more, something Sherlock appreciated. "Is there anything else?"
"Alive or dead?" Sherlock asked, tearing through another red light.
"I expect to be able to interrogate whatever is left, Sherlock. I insist upon at least eighty percent mental capacity and for their tongue to remain intact," Mycroft replied softly.
"In that case, I will make do with my hands," Sherlock replied. There was another moment of silence, before Sherlock sighed heavily.
"Mycroft, I will be getting my friend back."
The words were both a promise and a warning. Sherlock wanted - needed - Mycroft to understand the lengths he was going to, the distance he was willing to follow. If Mycroft wanted to curb any part of Sherlock's ferocious enthusiasm, he needed to speak now.
"I should hope so too, brother dear. Mummy keeps asking when she gets to meet your Mr Watson."
Sherlock grinned, all teeth, and hung up.
No limitations, no holds barred.
Time to get John.
.MrH.
John Watson dragged himself into consciousness slowly, making sure to keep his eyes closed and breathing even. He took quick stock of himself, hoping that he hadn't broken anything important. He could feel his arms strapped down to his sides under heavy coarse material. John guessed it was the thick rope that came from an Incarcerous spell, based on the way it seemed to bind his entire torso, tying him to what felt like a wooden chair. He could tell his legs weren't similarly strapped, nor was he blindfolded or gagged.
Amateur.
John wiggled his toes in his boots and tensed his leg muscles surreptitiously. Nothing appeared to be broken or torn. He repeated the subtle evaluation of his body, carefully tensing and releasing each set of muscles up towards his neck. Still no sign of damage. John kept his breathing slow, listening carefully for any sounds other than his own.
Finally, certain of his physical status and positive he was alone, John slowly opened his eyes.
He was in a warehouse that, quite frankly, had skipped tacky and leapt straight into gauche. John wrinkled his nose at the dripping pipes lining the far wall and turned his attention to the faintly swinging lights overhead. They were large and industrial but old, flickering and yellowed. A quick scan of the rest of the empty room gave John the impression that the place was abandoned and possibly condemned. The only thing in the room apart from John's chair was a rusted and worn metal table about three metres to his left and a tyre from what looked to be a tractor in the far corner.
John looked over the large metal roller door that took up most of the wall to his right, estimating it to be a good twenty feet tall and likely quite thick, before turning his attention back to the table. On it lay his phone, wallet, and gun. John could feel the holster biting into his shoulder, so he knew that his kidnapper knew enough about guns to take it off him, but not enough to be able to remove a holster.
John frowned, still staring at his gun. It hadn't been unloaded, or even touched beyond being placed on the table from what John could see. He couldn't see his extra clip, nor the knife he kept strapped to his ankle. He could feel the strap still on his ankle, and a quick rotation of his foot brushed against the sheath, which was distinctly not empty.
A sharp intake of breath, and then a vicious grin.
John's captor hadn't searched him.
Oh, he'd gone looking for what he expected to find - phone, wallet, weapon - but he hadn't patted John down, hadn't made sure that he was unarmed. The mark of an overconfident and inexperienced enemy.
John would make sure there was no opportunity to learn from this mistake.
As quickly as the ropes would allow, John shifted to pat his own pockets, feeling the pen and gunclip there with relish. If they were still there, then that likely meant that the holster strapped to his thigh also remained undisturbed.
John bit his lip, barely breathing as he wriggled his hand over his thigh as much as he could, still bound as he was. There was a hole in the seam of his trousers that he'd been meaning to fix, just large enough for John to slip a finger in to brush against skin. He stretched his finger, brushing against the soft hide of his wand holster, untouched and undiscovered. John held his breath as he felt further down, his heart pounding in his ears until finally, his skin touched a familiar warmth.
John's grin was feral as he caressed the knots of wood he knew better than his own face.
It was his wand.
.MrH.
Smoke, thick and violently purple, belched from the bubbling beaker that hung precariously over a blue-hot bunsen burner. An angry buzzing hum filled the air as Sherlock dropped a hair from John's hairbrush and a toenail from one of the victim's corpses into the beaker and flicked it with his finger, letting the vibrations jolt the sludge within just enough to envelop the new ingredients.
The beaker shuddered and sparks shot towards the ceiling, but Sherlock ignored them, instead turning his attention to the runes scrawled in a quick but precise circle around the burner. A frown glanced across his face as he leant in, squinting at one of the scrawls. He bit his thumb open and swiped the pooling blood in a jagged sweep, finishing the last rune in the circle just in time for the beaker to release another pungent cloud of smoke, this time an alarming shade of blue. The smoke sank, settling on the floor but not dispersing past the rune circle.
Sherlock nodded to himself and reached to the side for a pipette, lifting it above his head to eye the viscous substance within. Reaching carefully over the circle, Sherlock squeezed three drops into the beaker, tossing the pipette over his shoulder to shatter against the wall.
A shrill cry rent the air, overpowering the buzzing of the beaker and the soft roar of the flames.
Sherlock propped his phone between his ear and his shoulder.
"What."
"Is that any way to speak to your eternally helpful brother?" Mycroft's voice sounded more amused than insulted.
"I'm busy," Sherlock bit out, already adding the next ingredient. The humming was getting louder.
"What was... Never mind. I'm sure if you summon a demon I shall be one of the first to hear of it."
Sherlock snorted but didn't deny Mycroft, instead scrawling a few quick arithmancy formulae on the floor next the rune circle in sharpie. If he was accurate - and honestly, when wasn't he - it would be time to add the final ingredient in exactly two point three minutes.
"Did you call for a particular reason, or do you just enjoy interrupting my work?" Sherlock asked, pulling the ransom note from his pocket and eyeing it critically. It would be a close call, but the blood should still be fresh enough.
"Since you asked so nicely," Mycroft was saying. "I heard back from my source. He found the blood."
"And?" Sherlock bit out, before leaning forward to lick the the parchment once more. The gamey tang of the parchment rolled over his tongue, followed by the sharp bitter taste of the blood.
Perfect.
Sherlock glanced at the clock before spitting straight into the beaker, the blood and saliva floating on top of the concoction for a moment, before sinking into the mixture, turning it a glowing, iridescent green. Sherlock gracefully rose to his feet and promptly threw himself behind John's armchair just before the beaker finally gave way, shattering violently outward. The buzzing hum became the chanting of a thousand voices in a language long dead, deafening and then hauntingly silent in less than a second.
Sherlock peeked over the chair and grinned savagely. The ritual had worked.
He didn't have any of the killer's DNA, but he had enough pieces of the thing's he'd tainted in the past three days to track him anyway.
The blue smoke had reacted to the green liquid, and the resulting teal slime had splattered against the runic circle, creating a map of London. Only John's hair remained undissolved, circling a particular blob of slime that Sherlock knew to be the killer's location.
"-lock? Sherlock, are you listening?"
Sherlock glanced down at his phone, bending to pick it up and press it to his ear.
"... swear if you have actually summoned a demon, you are the one who gets to tell Mummy -"
"What did your source say?" Sherlock interrupted Mycroft, eyes fixed on the map, memorising it.
"I have a name." Mycroft sounded smug. Sherlock smirked.
"I'll do you one better, brother dear. I have a body."
.MrH.
A clattering sound alerted John to the fact that he wasn't going to be alone for much longer. Shifting as silently as he could, he angled his hand so his thumb was inside the hole in his trousers. It was a painful stretch, but John was able to rest the pad of his thumb against the small part of his wand that rested outside the holster.
With any luck he'd be able to cast a spell and have it work in spite of the barely-there contact between the wood and his skin.
That done, John let himself slump, dead weight against the ropes that bound him. He closed his eyes and made a show of being unconscious even as he strained to hear what was occurring past the metal door. It took everything he had not to flinch at the piercing screech of metal grinding against metal as the door rolled open, someone entered, and then the door rattled shut again with a metallic thud. John heard footsteps approaching and a scoff of disgust.
"Useless muggle."
The voice was reedy but masculine, immediately grating on John's already frayed nerves. The footsteps continued, past John's slumped form and towards the table on the left. He waited a few more minutes, listening to the man fiddle around with his phone and wallet before John grew impatient and let out a low, pained groan.
John shifted sluggishly and listened as the man cursed softly under his breath and rushed to stand in front of him. John could hear him shifting from foot to foot as he regained his breath.
"John Watson."
John let out another soft groan and shifted again, opening his eyes slowly. He blinked a few times, knowing full well how it should look for a muggle to wake from a stunning spell. He looked up, making a show of examining the room as if for the first time before looking at his captor. He widened his eyes and began to struggle against the ropes that bound him.
The man was unfamiliar and totally average, someone John would have passed in the street and not even noticed. He was also clearly untrained; shifting his weight and gripping his wand tightly. John guessed that the man was older than he was, and probably had been in the muggle world for a long time.
No wizard who'd actually been in the wizarding world during the Second War would be this green.
"Where am I?" John asked, slumping back in his chair as if he'd given up fighting. His captor shot him an ugly, smug smile.
"Nowhere your friends will be able to find you," he promised. John wondered if he thought he sounded ominous.
"What are you going to do with me?" John asked, curiously this time. "Why haven't you killed me like you did the others?"
"Why, my dear John," the man's chuckle was as smug and obnoxious as his smile. "You're a hostage, of course. There's no sense in killing you when you're so much more valuable to me as the carrot at the end of the stick."
"You'll not get away with this," John said, shrugging his shoulders against the ropes. "I'll tell them what you look like, they'll find you and then you'll be locked up."
The man outright guffawed at that, shaking his head in amusement.
"Nothing a little memory modification can't fix," he smiled a sickly smile that made John want to lean back and away from him. Instead he shifted again and asked:
"What do you mean, memory modification?"
Just as John's captor was about to respond a loud clanging sound echoed through the room. The man cursed and span round.
John smiled.
His captor's back was turned, wand out and looking frantically for what had made the clanging sound. John seized the opportunity and hissed out a near-silent Relashio spell, grinning to himself as he felt the ropes loosen and fall from his chest. Quickly and quietly John heaved the rope away from him and stood, shoving his hand into his pocket and summoning his wand from its holster.
It felt warm and comforting in his grip.
The man was turning back to face him. John wasted no time, pulling his hand free and flipping his wand expertly with his thumb so that the handle was centred in his palm and the tip was pointing away from his body. He closed his fist around the handle and swung just in time to catch his captor on the bridge of his nose, breaking it with a crunch.
The man fell backwards with a shout, wand clattering to the floor, and John's leg kicked out the collide with the man's knee cap, breaking that as well. John's captor hit the ground hard, and John flipped his wand back around to cast once more. Without a word from John, the rope slithered across the ground and coiled around the man, binding him at the ankles and the knees before strapping his arms to his sides. John kicked the man's wand to the corner of the room for good measure.
John stood over the whimpering, bleeding man, wand raised and pointed unerringly between the man's eyes. His captor was nearly cross-eyed as he tried to keep the wand in focus.
"I'm trying to decide," John drawled casually. "Whether or not I should interrogate you myself, get the answers I want from you, and just have you disappear -"
The man squeaked.
"Or," John continued. "Should I haul you to the Ministry? You've broken the Statute multiple times on top of all the murder. That's Azkaban, you know."
The man was crying now.
"Who are you?!" he sobbed.
Any answer John might have given was interrupted as an explosion rocked the warehouse. The hulking metal door crumpled and screeched as it was blown off its sliding rail and keeled over with a creak to clatter onto the floor. John and the still whimpering man both turned to look as a slim figure enveloped in a thick black trench coat stormed into the room, wand raised in a perfect Hit Wizard stance. John idly wondered how they managed to make the muggle coat swirl around their legs as imperiously as any pureblood's robe.
"John!"
John froze. He knew that voice.
The dust from the door's demise settled and into the room strode none other than Sherlock Holmes, wand in hand like he'd been born with it. John quickly closed his gaping mouth and nodded faintly to himself. Well, at least that question was answered.
Sherlock Holmes was, apparently, a wizard.
A wizard who had halted suddenly, wand still raised and aimed unerringly at his attempted captor but eyes fixed on John's hand. Or, perhaps more accurately John mused, on the wand in his hand.
Sherlock seemed lost for words, still frozen in place, so John took it upon himself to aim one last kick at the man on the floor before striding over to his friend and pulling him into a hug. He only felt a little smug when Sherlock's free arm absently came up around his waist, as if to return the embrace.
"It's about time you got here, Sherlock," John said cheerfully as he pulled away. "I was getting bored."
Sherlock's eyes were flickering from John's wand to his face rapidly. The man on the floor was moaning softly. Sherlock stunned him without a word, tucking his own wand away in a pocket and ignoring John's raised eyebrow.
"Your wand, I can't believe I didn't notice before, I'm getting slow. Of course it's been a long long time, and you've certainly gone and put yourself through the wringer, look at you. How didn't I see it before it's all so obvious now that I give it thought. Stupid Sherlock, stupid -"
"You're rambling, Sherlock," John supplied helpfully, a faint grin on his face as he watched Sherlock mutter viciously to himself. Sherlock paused, turned back to stare at John with narrowed eyes.
"Which is it?" he asked abruptly.
"Which is what?" John replied.
"Polyjuice seems a bit excessive, and I'd have noticed the smell. So that leaves glamours, regular beauty potions, or minor self-transfigurations. Which is it?"
John's smile fell away from his face.
"I'm not sure what you mean," he said carefully. Sherlock snorted, shaking his head.
"I'd recognise that wand anywhere, even if it has been years. Now come on and tell an old friend just how you ended up as John Watson, Neville Longbottom."
AN -
So... I'm still alive?
It has been a heinously long time, but in my defense I have graduated university AND made two EP albums and done a national tour with my original band in the meantime. I've not been just lazing away ignoring you all, I promise!
So yes, I'm tentatively back with new material and hopefully given my less study-filled lifestyle now I will hopefully be able to get some more updates together for you all, instead of my "once every year or two" schedule recently.
Anyway.
So we now know officially just who John is! I mean, a lot of you kind of already knew, but now it's on the record! I must admit I have quite the soft spot for my man Neville. I look forward to the conversation between him and Sherlock, should be interesting :)
And so I say farewell for now, and should hopefully see you all soon.
Z