Even before his vision cleared, even before his feet landed, Sherlock had charmed away both his violin and the stuffie into his room, drawn out his wand, and the beginning of a hex was escaping his lips.
Then his vision cleared and he stopped.
He nearly dropped his wand. His mouth opened—he quickly shut it.
Ironically, this was the only person whom it didn't matter whether he hid his emotions or not—either way, she knew.
"Good morning, Eurus."
His little sister smiled, the same smile that sent a chill down Sherlock's spine in his childhood memories, and did not fail to do so now, nearly five years later.
Sherlock desperately spun his mind around to find a way out of this, but his thoughts were quickly interrupted by another one of the very few people who could do so.
"Eurus," Mycroft said levelly, immediately upon his entry, definitely before he could get a clear sight of her.
"Mycroft," Eurus said back, more ice and more insincerity.
"What do you want?" Sherlock snapped to both of them.
Eurus glanced at Sherlock briefly. "Come on, then," she said sardonically, and walked into the cave.
Sherlock looked at Mycroft, who looked back without emotion, but with a small warmth, a little comfort, in his eyes, that only someone who knew him very well could make out.
He followed Eurus into the cave.
What he saw was expected, but it still made his heart stutter and drop.
Turning his face so Eurus and Mycroft couldn't see, Sherlock half-strode, half-stumbled over to the centre of the cave, where a bloody, bruised, and battered John Watson lay unconscious, a hand limp over a stone basin with wispy black smoke pouring out.
Immediately casting a shield charm around both of them, Sherlock frantically checked his vitals with trembling fingers, although he knew he wasn't dead, because otherwise Eurus couldn't hold anything against him—but still, there was some comfort found in the fluttering pulse.
The blood was long clotted, but he conjured a damp cloth. As he gingerly wiped away the wounds, they began to seem very familiar. Sherlock had a sudden flashback of Charles, after the fight: Sectumsempra.
He snapped his hand into a fist to stop it from shaking.
"You almost told him," Eurus said softly, sing-song. "He almost got through. He was so close."
I know, I know, please stop talking. They both knew.
Eurus kept talking. "He won't forgive you, Sherlock. He'll try, and he'll pretend he's fine with what you've done, and he'll pretend he's fine with you hiding it from him, even though he thought you trusted him, and he trusted you in that, but you still didn't tell him."
Without removing the shield, Sherlock turned back to Eurus.
"Fuck you," he snarled.
Mycroft's fingers twitched ever so slightly. Eurus raised an eyebrow.
"You know it's your fault." She smiled faintly at how Sherlock's face froze, distraught, for a millisecond before quickly turning impassive, before turning her attention away from Sherlock and towards Mycroft.
"You must know by now?"
Mycroft's brow was lined with concentration, and only someone who knew him very well would be able to see the frustration underneath.
"No?" Eurus closed her eyes for a second. "Perhaps this will help."
There was a loud crack.
Sherlock's breath hitched ever so slightly.
"Good morning, mistress," said the house elf. Sherlock flashed back once again, this time to Christmas, the chocolates and the house elf he knew so well.
"Oh—" Sherlock breathed out. "You bastard."
"Sherlock," Mycroft said under his breath. He looked exceedingly pale.
Sherlock made an indignant noise. Was he really going to berate him for dirty language right now?
"I don't give a fuck," he snarled, "John is on the floor and everyone is here and I don't know why you look so fucking shocked."
Eurus studied Sherlock very carefully. "Don't fret so, Sherlock. You're missing a piece." She tilted her head to Mycroft. "Perhaps your brother will elaborate?"
Sherlock slowly turned to look at Mycroft.
Mycroft's head was, for once, not held high.
"A few years ago, I stumbled across a portkey. You know it—you found it a while after. That group you saw, their specialty was creating new spells, from the bright little tricks to the darkest curses.
"The Watsons were the only parents to have a child, and a house elf, too."
Sherlock shoved his hands into his hair and shut his eyes tightly.
"Oh, dear," said Eurus. "You'd better baby it down."
Mycroft averted his eyes from Sherlock, but continued speaking in a manner addressed to him. "You saw them Vow. They were promising to never use that spell, and I made you do so, too—but you found a loophole, and your curiosity got to the better of you. We know the rest." He glanced at John's hand and the stone basin, the pensieve. "He does, now, too."
"It was quite difficult, you know," Eurus said in a lilting voice. "Fitting together all the memories."
Mycroft glanced at Eurus with a tiny look of irritation, and Sherlock marvelled at it, how his brother, even if it was the farthest away from the truth it could get, could still, at that moment, look at Eurus like she was just any normal person who was just the tiniest bit bothering him.
Mycroft cleared his throat. "A couple days after that, there was a fire in this Forest, one that supposedly killed the Watson family. It was very concentrated, but very strong, and it was not broadcasted to outside the Ministry—even you, Sherlock.
"I was certain this was the job of someone in the group. Perhaps they tried to continue the spell, perhaps the Watsons found out and tried to put a stop to it. I was a fool not to realise." He glared at the house elf who stood silent. "The Watsons were quite—ah, superior—to their servants. That one had the most motive. Their house elf."
Eurus shook her head. "You're so condescending—it was no wonder you couldn't work it out."
Mycroft looked pained, but kept going. "He continued the spell, and used it on the Watsons, creating the fire as a decoy. It worked. He wiped their memories and cast them to the muggle world. But somehow, John Watson still had his magic." Mycroft looked back to John, and frowned.
"Would you like to know how?" Eurus turned to the house elf and patted him on the head. The house elf flinched horribly but did not move otherwise.
He spoke in a tiny voice, "I didn't cast the spell fully. It was the candles. The fire triggered his magic."
"Yes, all very fascinating," Sherlock said through gritted teeth. His eyes had not moved away from John.
"You must know by now," Eurus said, cloyingly sweet.
Sherlock's eyes darted to Eurus, then to Mycroft, then to the entrance, then back to John.
"Don't," said Eurus tiredly.
Sherlock's eyes dimmed, and flared with anger. He sat down cross legged beside John, and closed his eyes.
"Five minutes," Eurus declared.
At first he panicked, screamed, and pinched himself multiple times. But then he realised that the tiny little curly-headed boy could not see nor hear nor touch him (and neither could anyone, or anything, else) and he came to the conclusion that he must be 1. dreaming, 2. dead, 3. some weird magical thing he didn't know about, or 4. in a pensieve, and when the tiny little curly-headed boy turned out to be Sherlock, he was quite sure it was that.
Maybe this was a follow up gift, he thought—maybe, Sherlock was finally trusting John enough to let him know what the hell happened, because no one just becomes like Sherlock without something happening.
It proved quite difficult to follow along, however, as immediately Sherlock was whirled off and away, away from the fences and the button and into a strange room.
And when John's eyes met a pair of the kneeling wizards, his heart stuttered, then erupted in a wild frenzy.
But then Sherlock was grabbed and whirled away once again, and John cursed out loud and punched the air, because he just needed one more goddamn second, because those two people back there, they looked very, very, familiar.
He watched the two brothers banter, and paced back and forth through the kneeling pair with Lestrade in the middle.
He watched Sherlock sit in his room and point his wand at the butterfly board.
He watched him do it at the drawer, in the other room.
He watched as someone flashed into view, a bulls-eye on Sherlock's wand, screaming and writhing on the floor.
He watched Sherlock's face morph with horror, and as he turned and fled, hands covering his eyes, the figure on the floor choked and moaned. Even with her features twisted in pain, she bore an eerie resemblance to the boy who had run away.
John felt phantom fingers brushing through his hair and suddenly tightening into a fist upon an innocent, casual mentioning.
Sherlock's sister lay still on the floor.
Then, her eyes shot open and her breath caught. She scrambled up with nothing but a wince, shaking fingers grabbing at her wand. She opened her drawer and pulled out a thick bound maroon book, placing in on the desk.
"W-Wingardium Leviosa," she whispered.
The wand trembled violently.
"Wingardium Leviosa," she hissed, jabbing her wand directly onto the book.
She whirled around and pointed it at her pillow, said the spell once more.
The book and the pillow lay still.
Her face froze, then crumpled into a mask of fury. She grabbed the end of her wand with her other hand, and pulled.
The wand remained straight and sturdy.
With a snarl, she sucked in a breath and tried again.
It snapped cleanly in half. A dragon heartstring dangled down the broken middle. The girl stared at it with hateful eyes.
The little house elf sprinted across the forest floor. His eyes were enormous, and illuminated in them was the reflection of fire, red and orange, curling around the dark green pine trees and turning them into ash. He cried out a spell and a tree next to him burst into flames.
His knobby arms were cradled around a small bundle, which was shrieking with a force that was unbelievable considering its size.
The elf looked over his shoulder and suddenly swerved to his left, disappearing into bushes of tiny black flowers.
Breathing hard, he unswaddled the blankets around the bundle to reveal a screaming baby, face scrunched with confusion and displeasure, kicking out his little legs with all his force.
The house elf looked at him, and his face froze for just a second.
"I command you," a voice suddenly rang out, frighteningly close, "to come back this instant. You will not accomplish anything in this."
Something pinged in John's mind with that voice, and he tried desperately to focus on both that thought and to view this memory simultaneously, but it proved impossible and John surrendered to watching the house elf.
With a glare cast to the direction of the voice, the house elf's face hardened and he looked back at the boy.
"If only you knew what your parents have done to me," he sighed, and brushed back the baby's damp blond hair.
Two people burst through the bushes just as he was finishing the spell, that spell, that goddamned spell John's heard so many times already, and once more now, and once more again.
Cutting off at the last syllable, the house elf whirled around in a blur and immediately yelled it out.
The two intruders collapsed and ceased to move, but their chests rose and fell slowly. John found his feet rooted to the burning forest floor, but even from a distance he could recognise his parents.
The baby was screaming now, so loud and so piercing John wanted to plug his ears had he not been unable to move.
The tiny house elf, dressed in rags, took a deep breath and stared at his destruction. A single sock, much too big and dotted with pink hearts, dangled off his right foot.
Sherlock's sister towered over a small creature.
"You didn't get away," she whispered, "I know about the fire, and I know about John Watson."
The house elf's face turned to horror. He began to shake.
"Please, miss," he whispered. "Those days are no longer mine. Please!" Tears filled his huge eyes. When Sherlock's sister's face ceased to soften, he shuffled back and gave the other a deep bow. "Mistress."
She smiled.
He gasped and opened his eyes, scrambling to a stand. He blinked rapidly as his mind tried to sort out his place once again. He paced the room multiple times. His room.
He squinted at his door, and then he scowled.
"You've been in my room?" he muttered.
John's head throbbed painfully, ebbing away before surging up once more. Subconsciously from all his mornings spent here, he floated his way to his door and down the stairs.
The silence was disturbing. John clicked his tongue, just to disrupt the eeriness, as he made his way to the kitchen.
He stopped when he saw that Sherlock bloody Holmes was sat down at the table.
John was a couple metres away, looking at the other boy and thinking that, if Sherlock had broken into his house, he really would be creeped. But, after what he had just seen, who's to say that he knew him at all?
Sherlock raised his head and looked directly at John.
"Woah," John said, instinctively backing up.
Sherlock's eyes remained on John's. That wasn't right.
"John," he said, voice strangely urgent. "I know you're confused and I know you're trying not to think about what you saw, because you don't want to know about what I did. You don't want to hate me."
John couldn't say anything but, "This isn't supposed to happen."
"You have my word, John Watson, that I am telling the truth. I didn't know what the spell did, I didn't know what I was going to do to my sister, I didn't know your parents were in that group or anything about their house elf or the fire or anything, I didn't know."
John frowned.
"I'm sorry, this isn't…" he squinted at Sherlock. "Hold on."
He walked closer (walked, not floated) and placed a hand on Sherlock's shoulder. It stayed.
"This isn't…"
Sherlock furrowed his brow for a second, and then understood and nodded. "No, I'm real."
"Oh, shit," John said with emphasis. The floor gave out beneath him and he opened his eyes to Sherlock hovering above him, eyes huge and pupils like pinpoints.
"John," said Sherlock, with the same urgency. "You're awake."
"Yes," he responded, propping himself up with an arm and looking around. "Why am I lying down in the middle of the forest?"
Sherlock didn't answer. He had a hand around John's wrist. John watched, thinking that his pulse must be completely bizarre and the most abnormal it can ever get, but Sherlock seemed to either not realise or not care. His fingers were trembling against his wrist.
"Sherlock?" John gave him a closer look.
"Hmm?" Blinking and focusing his eyes back to John, Sherlock nodded again. "Hi."
"Why—" John looked at Sherlock, his twitches, constricted pupils, his overall increase in weirdness, and sighed. "How much cocaine did you take?"
Sherlock lifted a hand and flicked a leaf off the back of John's head. "A lot."
"For fuck's sake," John muttered.
Sherlock laughed, and brushed a strand of hair out of John's face.
John waited for a full five seconds before acknowledging the elephant in the room.
"Okay, what the hell is going on?"
Sherlock's hands were restless, tapping fingers on John's head, squeezing his shoulders, brushing away dust that, even if there were any, must be long gone by now.
"You know more than me, you saw the pensieve didn't you, you know everything I do, and more," he grabbed John's wrists and continued talking, rapid fire,
"Your parents made a spell and their house elf continued it after the Vow and so did I and he did it on you and your parents, and I did it on Eurus, and your parents found out and there was a fire, the candles on your cake, that's why you're afraid of fire, and you lost your memories, and Eurus was stripped and vindictive and she got her revenge didn't she, and you could've been a brilliant wizard but I just had to get Treasure Island didn't I, and now you are hurt," Sherlock took a sharp inhale and John took this chance to raise his hand and gently place it over Sherlock's mouth.
"I'm hurt?" he said flatly.
Sherlock swatted John's hand away. "Yes, you are hurt, again, I'm sorry, I'm sorry." His eyes were wide and wild.
John tightened his lips. "Sherlock, you are insane."
Sherlock began pacing the forest floor, and when John looked closer he saw a bit of a worn path where he was stepping.
"I'm not insane, I'm just high."
"Yes, and way too much," John said under his breath as he watched this extraordinary person thread both hands into his hair and pace back and forth, back and forth, all the while muttering nonsense.
He watched and waited for another full five seconds before quickly walking over and stopping right in front of Sherlock, who immediately swerved to the side, and John made an exasperated noise and grabbed him by the shoulders.
"Please stop," he said slowly and clearly.
Sherlock looked at John for a couple seconds with a disoriented look. John felt a pang in his chest but persevered, holding him steady in his gaze, until Sherlock's eyes focused and his breathing slowed.
"Okay," he said, and sat down on the path.
John studied Sherlock carefully and sighed. He sat down beside him, then changed his mind and shuffled around until their backs were pressing together.
He breathed deeply, closing his eyes. He could feel Sherlock's shoulder muscles tense against him, but he persisted and after a minute, they relaxed.
In, and out.
His heart was pounding way too hard, way too fast, but for Sherlock's sake he kept his breathing slow and steady.
After he felt Sherlock begin to mimic his breaths, he waited another minute before carefully raising his arms up, and covering his face with both hands.
"What the hell," he murmured.
You would think, after so many times, he would be used to this, these rushes, these landslides, of information, but absolutely not. John's head was pounding painfully and he rested it against Sherlock and tried, once more, to sort out his thoughts.
His parents were in that group thing, that strange cult. They were doing the Unbreakable Vow, John recalled. And Sherlock saw them, and tried the spell they vowed on never doing.
Bloody hell, Sherlock, John thought, feeling his back against his.
And he took away his sister's magic. And the house elf took away his. But not completely.
And that house elf looked rather familiar.
He was beginning to understand what had happened; of course he was still hopelessly confused, but at least to some extent it made sense. A bit.
Small world, John thought, and couldn't help but smile, despite everything he'd learned.
"Sherlock?" he said softly.
There was no answer. John turned his head around slightly.
Sherlock's eyes were closed. His breathing was slow, but even in his slumber his brow was furrowed, his mouth pulled into a frown.
John watched for a moment, then very carefully shifted his position back around so they were leaning against one another once again.
He closed his eyes and breathed.
Woo! There we go. I've actually been planning this backstory ever since the beginning. *Very* nice to finally get it all out.
There won't be any more "cases" per se—just the aftermath and O.W.L.s and perhaps some fluff. I hope you enjoyed this chapter!