Joanna watched the man bustle about in an excited daze.
"He's not even going to listen to me if I try to claim we're not dating is he?"
"Not in the least," said Sherlock. "Why do you have your mobile out?"
"Tracking."
Sherlock blinked.
"Tracking?" he said baffled.
"The phone number on the case. There's an app for almost anything. Including tracking someone by their phone number," said Joanna slowly.
"But that's so boring," complained Sherlock.
"Well how else will we know we have the right person when whoever it is shows up, and not some patsy they paid to come instead?" said Joanna.
Sherlock blinked, before silently conceding the point.
"There. Don't stare."
"Well I'm not exactly in a spot to be staring, am I? Besides you're doing enough of it for two people," snarked Joanna. She got cranky when she hadn't had anything to eat.
If it wasn't for the fact one of her friends in the support group had gotten her hooked on parkour, she never would have been able to keep up with Sherlock.
It was somewhat gratifying to hear Sherlock's smug tone when he told Mrs. Hudson that she would be taking the apartment. As if it was a given that they'd be flatmates after Sherlock had gotten all the data he needed.
He was still the least grating man she had been around in years.
However finding the police doing a "drugs bust" on Sherlock made her glad that most of her things were still in her old apartment. She learned early on that items would only slow you down. She kept everything important in an expanded duffel bag that she kept in a safe place in the event she had to make a quick exit.
It didn't take much for her to keep an eye out for the cabbie. If the passenger had been from the States, then it had to be the cabbie who had the phone. The app clearly showed that the phone had been in the car once it got far enough away for her to take it out.
And if she had a good enough read on Sherlock, he wouldn't rest if he found the killer. He'd be determined to outwit the man.
"Ow!"
"You deserved it. What the bloody hell were you thinking, putting that pill anywhere near your mouth you idiot!"
"Did you just... slap me?"
"Would you prefer I break out the gun and shoot you in the leg?"
"I'll stick to the slap thanks."
They both heard a snort, and turned find Mycroft.
"It seems you've finally met your match."
From the look on Sherlock's face, it was clear he didn't get the hint. Watson could be good for Sherlock. Where he honed his skills to find clues criminals left behind, Joanna honed her ability to detect threats in a crowd and to diagnose what was wrong with a patient.
She was happy to have her guess about the two being brothers confirmed.
Joanna merely had to look at the date to realize she had the perfect opportunity to send Mycroft some blackmail and tell Sherlock her actual gender.
That time of the month was almost upon her, which meant that he'd figure it out eventually anyway. She just wanted maximum impact for blackmail material.
She rigged a small camera up at just the perfect angle to catch the face of whoever walked in. Mrs. Hudson had left for a few hours, and she had calculated Sherlock's usual duration between when he drank tea or liquid and hitting the bathroom.
Joanna was taking a light shower after a jog, and as she predicted Sherlock walked in, and it took him four point five seconds before he realized what he was seeing. He also completely missed the camera going off. Fortunately thanks to the fog and the fact she was behind some rather obscuring curtains, he didn't see too much. But he saw enough (mainly her profile) to realize that Joanna wasn't actually a man.
"What..."
"Sherlock! Did it ever occur to you to knock," she hissed, wrapping a towel around herself.
Sherlock looked at her, glad for the towel, before he said baffled "You're a woman?"
Joanna rolled her eyes.
"Everyone calls me John because it means I have to deal with less sexual harassment. Let me get dressed and I'll explain everything."
Sherlock nodded almost in shock. He slowly closed the door...and likely went to use the other bathroom.
Ten minutes later, Sherlock was sitting with an odd expression on his face as he observed John...or Joanna, apparently.
"First off, I was born a woman and I let people call me John because it's easier to deal with people apologizing for getting my name and gender wrong than idiots who harass me for being a lesbian. Second, remember the phone you thought belonged to my sister? It actually was mine, and I had a mutual agreement to split up with Clara," said Joanna.
Sherlock's expression didn't change overly much, though now it was more pensive and he seemed more calculating than before.
"You're not mad are you?"
"Not angry, just...confused."
"Confused how you missed it before?" she said wryly.
"No I can understand how I missed it. I normally don't pay attention to the gender of others. There's also the fact you've clearly trained yourself to mask your gender."
It also explained how his part of the flat suddenly got a lot more tidy, and his cabinets full of fresh food. He hadn't seen any dust for days since Joanna moved in.
"You can still call me John if you like. It doesn't really matter to me. I just prefer to wear male-oriented clothing...though occasionally I will wear a kilt to confuse people."
"How good is your deductive reasoning?" asked Sherlock. He had noticed her borrowing some of his books by chance.
"I can diagnose people within five minutes and assess threat levels of potential enemies with an eighty-five percent accuracy," deadpanned Joanna. "I also have something close to an OCD nature when it comes to keeping my space clean and I rarely bring any dates back to my house if I'm sharing it with someone else."
Sherlock hummed in his throat.
Finding out his flatmate was a lesbian with an identity crisis was surprising, but not something that overly bothered him. He could gather from the way she said she didn't bring dates home that she had prior experiences that told her it wasn't the best idea. Likely from other flatmates not being as...considerate...as she was.
The probability was that said flatmates were male.
"Just avoid me during the first four or five days of the full moon and you should be safe from any unpleasantness," said Joanna.
"Duly noted."
Sherlock would only find out after the fact she happened to 'sell' the picture of his reaction to learning his flatmate was a woman to his brother. When he inquired about it, she had a rather mischievous grin on her face.
"I said I wouldn't spy on you. I said nothing about sharing blackmail with your family."
One week later...
"Please scan item again."
"I hate technology," said Joanna crossly.
"Please use alternative method of payment."
Joanna threw her hands up in defeat...figuratively speaking... before declaring "Forget it!"
She was hitting the magically-grown home foods market and butchery.
Time to hit Technic Alley.
It was a magical alley that catered only to the muggleborns or those muggle raised. No pure blood would dare set foot in it because there wasn't a single one of their own 'kind' running the shops. Pure Bloods tended to shy away from technology.
Besides, buying from Technic Alley meant she could use a bottomless bag and make it easier to transport home.
"Joanna! How's the new flatmate working for you?" said Jake, who ran the grocers.
"He's an arrogant, eccentric ass with a bad habit of annoying others and seeing far too much. Best. Flatmate. Ever," grinned Joanna.
"The card reader kicked your arse again?" said Jake knowingly.
"I hate this new technology," said Joanna.
"Give it time. In the meantime, how about some potatoes. Fresh from Ireland this morning," said Jake.
"Load me up," said Joanna.
"Twenty galleons and five sickles."
The price was a bit higher than the store, but she didn't have to worry about pesticides and it was guaranteed fresh. Magic made it easier to transport in bulk at a much lower cost. Besides, what was she going to spend that gold on? Potion ingredients?
One trip to the butchers, and she was hailing a cab back to Baker street. It wasn't that she couldn't apparate, but she preferred having a chance to rest her feet.
"I got the groceries. Though I had to go out of the way when I had a row with the machine."
"You had a row...with a machine?" said Sherlock. He almost looked...puzzled.
"I stood there and shouted abuse for three minutes. It didn't accept my card, so I went somewhere else."
"You could have taken my card," said Sherlock.
"I'll keep that in mind next time. For now I'll put up the groceries. Any requests for dinner?"
"Not really," said Sherlock.
"I got a good deal on some chicken, so I suppose we'll have that for dinner. Did you have fun while I was out?"
"Fun?"
Joanna looked at the sword just under Sherlock's chair. He might have pretended he hadn't moved since she left the house, but he had a different book from this morning and she knew he didn't have a sword. Not to mention the minor damages to the wall and table.
"Ah yes. I sent a message declining the case of the Jaria diamond."
Joanna hummed in her throat, putting up the groceries.
"I need to make a run to the bank," said Sherlock.
"You could have asked to borrow my laptop," she said without looking. She had left hers on the table, and his was in his room. However she had already anticipated his bad habit of not asking before borrowing, so she had added a guest account and changed her password just in case.
She highly doubted Sherlock would be able to guess that the new password was "triskaidekaphobia".
(And yes, that is a real word and phobia. Specifically the "fear of the number 13.")
Once she finished, she sat down on the chair and saw the number of bills piling up.
"Looks like I'll have to schedule a few more shifts at the clinic again," she said tiredly.
Joanna was a doctor at a muggleborn-run clinic. It mixed magical and modern medicine with great efficacy and an almost unheard of level of success rates. The number of deaths since it's founding was under a hundred for the past decade alone.
The clinic had a permanent add in the major papers for parents who had children that displayed unusual abilities. Things that generally indicated accidental magic.
Freaked out parents would make an appointment, and they would tell them what was happening and give a believable demonstration. Then they also warned them about Hogwarts and gave them alternatives to the ancient castle.
They had much more success since Joanna helped to pay for a better placement in the papers.
The number of muggleborns lost to Hogwarts dropped. And it became almost nonexistent after Joanna not only found Hermione's parents, but broke her weak spellwork on them that kept them from remembering her.
They were not happy, and they were more than glad to provide precautionary tales of what happened when children became too enamored with the current system that was desperately in need of an overhaul.
Joanna and the staff did their best to redirect any possible muggleborn students to the school that the 'rejects' made to get back at the very pure bloods who kicked them out after graduation. There weren't magical classes per-say, but there were magical study groups.
Strangely it seemed to work a lot better than large classes that practically crammed homework down the throats of children. Especially since there wasn't a defunct house system with a point system that was worthless to get in the way.
"Ugh, sounds boring."
"You might enjoy it. Tell you what, why don't you join me for my support group in two weeks. You might actually have fun," said Joanna.