Disclaimer: Rowling's characters are meeting Moftis's/ACD's characters in my imagination.

Mrs. Hudson bustled to the foot of the stairs, wearing an apron and carrying a large sauce-covered spoon. "What is it?"

"This," Remus breathed, relieving Mrs. Hudson of her spoon and filling her hands with Sherlock's papers instead. "Have you seen these?"

Mrs. Hudson frowned down at her hands' unexpected contents. "No, I never looked. As they say, the less you know . . ."

Sauce was dripping from the spoon onto Remus's entirely too expensive shoes, but he didn't care. "These are plans and diagrams for how to survive a fall from the roof of Bart's."

Mrs. Hudson's hands started shaking, but she did not drop the papers. "What?"

"The fall. Sherlock was planning how to survive the fall."

"But-how could he have known-?"

"He's Sherlock Holmes; he knows everything. He must have somehow figured out that Moriarty was going to make him kill himself, and even that he was going to have to jump off of the roof of Bart's. And he planned accordingly. I don't know which plan he picked-he's got tons of ideas in these papers. Jumping to the roof of another building, landing on a trampoline, building a fire escape, having people catch him on a stretcher . . . We should have guessed! The man's a genius. Of course he wasn't going to die by jumping off of a building."

Mrs. Hudson seemed caught between rapture and disbelief. "But John, it's been almost a year now. Wouldn't he have contacted us?"

"Would he have? He never did seem to care much for other people, not even us."

"He threw that American out the window for me."

"He didn't visit you in the hospital when you had a heart attack!"

Mrs. Hudson shrugged. "He was busy."

"Thinking!"

"He took his thinking very seriously." Mrs. Hudson sighed. "It's what would have allowed him to survive that fall, if you think he really did."

Remus stopped for a moment and took a breath. Did he really think Sherlock had survived? He'd taken the man's pulse, after all. There had been nothing there. But then, there were ways to stop a pulse, weren't there? Remus, especially given his lycanthropy, was aware of just how thoroughly the body could be manipulated without leading to death. Ways that he hadn't thought of in those moments of terror and grief when the black coat had stopped billowing out behind his friend and instead limply covered the broken frame.

Remus took another breath and spoke. "When he called me, right before he jumped, what he said didn't make any sense. It wasn't right. I don't mean it disturbed me; I mean that what he said couldn't possibly have been true. I thought at the time that he was just trying to tell me about his innocence, in code, because he was supposed to say he was guilty. But now I think he might have been telling me that what I witnessed wasn't going to be the truth, either."

Mrs. Hudson pursed her lips. "He did like the truth, our Sherlock. But he was so much more interested in finding it than telling it."

Remus nodded. "I know. But I can't believe he would have made all these plans, only to have them fail."

"You want to believe in him."

"I've seen him do the impossible, time and time again. Am I supposed to believe he couldn't have survived a six-story fall?"

"He never did seem to live by the same rules as the rest of us."

"Or to be vulnerable to the same threats."

"But he wasn't immortal, John. No one is."

Remus sighed. "Believe me, I know. I'm a doctor. I know no one is immortal. Sherlock can't escape death. But he sure as hell can cheat it. After living with him for two years, I'd be insane to not be convinced of that much."

"Where do you think he's been, then? It's been nearly a year."

"Wherever he is, Mycroft knows," Remus said with sudden certainty. "Especially if Sherlock left you money. He's got to be living on something now; family funds are the best bet."

"That does make sense," Mrs. Hudson said slowly. "It would explain why Mycroft didn't call for the holidays this year."

"Mycroft calls for the holidays? I'd think he would hate that!"

"Oh, he does. But the Holmes boys weren't always bent on pleasure, were they?"

Remus thought of Sherlock sitting at home in a dressing gown while sending him off to do the dirty work. Sherlock wearing a sheet to Buckingham Palace and then stealing an ashtray just for the fun of it. Sherlock giggling at a crime scene. Sherlock jumping up and down at murders and shooting holes in the wall just because he was bored. "Well . . ."

"The point is, Mycroft didn't call this year. He always called. Why wouldn't he have called this year?"

"Because his brother was no longer living with you?" Remus suggested.

"That's what I thought, too, at the time. But there was no risk in calling me if Sherlock were dead, was there? And it was the first holiday season after Sherlock's death. Mycroft might have called, for the same reason he always did, this one last time. But if Sherlock weren't dead, and if Mycroft knew, then there was a risk, wasn't there?"

Remus looked at Mrs. Hudson appraisingly. "You have lived with Sherlock Holmes, haven't you?" he marvelled, caught off guard not for the first time by the old lady's ability to deduce.

Mrs. Hudson smiled. "He didn't just rub off on you, you know."

Remus nodded. "Right. So Sherlock is maybe alive, and Mycroft maybe knows." Now for the hard part. After these last nine months of teaching, Remus felt incumbent upon him the responsibility to appear confident and unflappable, to always have a plan. But he didn't know what to do right now, not really, and the only person present was multiple decades his senior. Remus allowed himself to sag a bit. "What do we do now?"

"We start with Mycroft, don't we?"

Remus felt relieved for a split second, because Mrs. Hudson had a plan, but then he realized what she had said, and his spirits sank considerably. Mycroft was so-impenetrable and domineering. He hadn't told them anything yet, so chances were he wasn't planning on giving up any information. A confrontation with him was unlikely to yield anything but frustration. And suppose he didn't know? Then the frustration would be in vain. Remus wanted to whine, "Do we have to?" but he was loath to remind himself so much of one of his adolescent students, so he bit his tongue.

Thinking of his students reminded Remus of something: Mycroft was a Muggle. The first time he'd used the identity of John Watson, Remus had been trying to play the part of a Muggle, so this power distinction had hardly mattered. Now, however, he was much less intent on neglecting his wand, and this opened up some possibilities.

"We ought to meet Mycroft in person," Remus agreed. "I think I know how to arrange this."

Remus thrust the spoon he'd been holding all this time back into Mrs. Hudson's grasp. When she had taken it, he turned and sprinted up the stairs, remembering vaguely the way he'd limped up them the first time he'd visited 221B. Once upstairs, he gathered up his phone and his gun-which he'd left in his bedroom here at Baker Street, before he'd fled to Hogwarts-as well as his wand.

He turned on his phone for the first time in ten months, managed to recall the passcode, and texted two sparse sentences to Mycroft: "We need to talk. In person." When he saw that the message had been sent, he made sure that his wand was safely concealed in his sleeve and his gun was similarly hidden in his waistband, and then he clattered back down the stairs to Mrs. Hudson.

"I think we ought to-" he started saying, before his phone's incoming message alert cut him off. He glanced down and saw a message, equal to his own in brevity: "Step outside in ten minutes." Looking back up at Mrs. Hudson, Remus said, "Mycroft is sending someone. They'll be here in ten minutes."

Mrs. Hudson smiled wryly. "You know the Holmes boys. Always either prompt or so late they shouldn't have bothered coming at all."

Remus nodded and then gestured toward the spoon Mrs. Hudson was now holding. It had long since stopped dripping sauce; what residue was left on its surface seemed to be coagulating. "You should put that back in the kitchen."

Mrs. Hudson looked down at her hands for the first time in a while and seemed to realize that she was holding both a sheaf of documents and a cooking implement. Then she looked further down, at her apron. "I am a right mess, aren't I?" Then she cast her gaze at Remus and noticed his sauce-splattered shoes. "We're both a mess. Come, dear; you can't see Mycroft looking like that." Mrs. Hudson gestured Remus into the kitchen, tossed the spoon in the sink, and then fussed at his shoes with a rag.

Remus sat for a minute, enjoying being taken care of for the first time in months. Then he said, "Are you coming along to see Mycroft?"

"You have been using the word 'we' quite a bit in the past half hour. But I don't have to come if you don't want me to, dear. You knew Sherlock better than I did, and you were the one who went 'round with him, solving crimes. If this requires legwork, I'll just be in the way."

Remus didn't allow himself to smile as much as he wanted to at this information. "You are absolutely a part of the search for Sherlock, Mrs. Hudson, but I must admit I'd rather handle Mycroft alone. I'll only disappoint you with my lack of manners if you come."

"I've seen all kinds of manners, dearie; that's not an issue."

"Yes, but mostly not from me," Remus retorted. "I like that you think I'm not quite as rude as either Holmes."

"It would take some work to outstrip either of them where rudeness is concerned."

Remus smiled thinly. "I know, but I'm about to try to get information out of Mycroft that he is unlikely to want to provide. And I was in the army. Can you see where this is going?"

Mrs. Hudson looked Remus in the eyes. "He's of no use to you dead, John."

Remus nodded. "Oh, I know. And he'll know that, too, of course, and he knows I'm careful. But he hasn't seen me in ten months, and last we talked I was rather cross with him, so I'll see what I can get him to believe about my willingness to use force."

"I don't suppose I can give you any advice that you haven't thought of and will actually listen to, can I?" Mrs. Hudson had finished with Remus's shoes now. They weren't spotless, but they were better.

"I'm afraid not," Remus replied, standing. The clock on the wall showed that nine of Mycroft's ten minutes had passed. He walked to the door. "It was good to see you, Mrs. Hudson."

"It was good to see you, too, dear. I'll start cleaning the flat, now that there's a chance you'll be living in it."

Remus smiled. "I thought you weren't our housekeeper."

Mrs. Hudson cocked her head. "Did you really think so?"

Remus's smile widened. "If you insist on asking-no. I've always thought of you as our housekeeper." With one more nod, he stepped out through the door and onto the street.

A black car pulled up to the curb within seconds of Remus's leaving 221B. It stopped; the driver's side door opened and the woman whose name was not Anthea stepped out. "Long time, no see."

Remus shrugged, less interested in her charms than he had been when they'd first met. "Just take me to Mycroft."

The woman gave a single curt nod. "Get in."

Remus obeyed, and the woman resumed her spot in the driver's seat and started driving.

A/N: Reviews are my lifeblood, but no pressure.