Joanna was cooking a late lunch, seeing as how she really didn't want to waste more money on dining out than she really had to.
Sherlock didn't care one way or the other, especially when he was given a taste of her culinary talent that she had earned the hard way.
(Unspoken was the fact that the food was almost always healthier than anything her aunt forced her to cook year after year.)
Sherlock was trying to figure out who could have possibly killed the banker when Joanna spoke up while doing the dishes.
"Why Chinese?"
"Sorry?"
"Just wondering aloud about why someone would paint Chinese numbers on a wall in an English bank."
Sherlock immediately honed in on his flatmate.
"You know what the symbols are."
"Vaguely, yes. Spent some time in China doing research for a few months, and one of the few things I remember are numbers."
And that was because numbers tended to be universal. Once you had the basic 0 to 9 down, it made communication a bit easier. Not impossible, but easier.
(Mainly because numbers were the first thing EVERYONE learned at some point, if only to count money.)
She could feel his eyes on her.
"Why on earth would you want to go to China?" he asked finally.
"Long story short I was collecting myths from around the world on birds, and the easiest way to make sure the stories are written properly is to go to the source."
Her animagus form was a bird, and it wasn't until she went to China that she discovered what. But she wasn't going to explain that to Sherlock just yet.
Either he was unaware of his magical heritage, or he just didn't care. It was fifty-fifty.
It was obvious he suspected something, but he opted not to ask outside of what numbers were painted on the wall.
Joanna wasn't the least bit shocked to see Sherlock in the theater where she had taken her date. After all, he had bought the tickets online, since she didn't actually have a credit card. As a matter of fact, she rarely carried any plastic, and usually got fed up with the hidden fees to the point she canceled the card and melted it.
She found blowing things up quite cathartic.
"Is that your boyfriend? I thought you said you were..." started Eliza.
"Flatmate, and he's a bit of a busybody. Or bored, hard to tell," said Joanna quickly.
Sherlock had followed her purely for one reason. So he could antagonize the hidden Chinese smugglers who he knew were behind the mystery murders.
Frankly she could have done without her and her date Eliza being kidnapped because she did too good a job at disguising her gender. And really, did Sherlock have to be so damn smug about rescuing a 'damsel in distress'? If he made one more smug remark about it, she was going to drag him into her special "Sex Ed" class!
One week later...
Joanna's eyebrow twitched. That was it. Sherlock was going to SUFFER.
"Hello everyone. My name is Doctor Joanna Watson, and this is my helper Sherlock. Now to forestall any threats of dragging me into court for mental trauma, I'm rather pleased to inform you that every single one of your parents signed a strict nondisclosure agreement along with the standard fee to insure you got into this class. I'm also equally certain that most of you already know HOW children are made by this point, otherwise your parents wouldn't have forced you to attend this all-day class. Fortunately for you, this only takes one day, and it's done in stages so you can still eat lunch and have a break. Are there any questions?" she said far too cheerfully.
"I have one. Why on earth did you drag me along to this?" asked Sherlock, completely baffled.
"You annoyed me to the point I chose to put you through some mental trauma rather than prank the living daylights out of you. Coincidentally I told your brother I'd be putting you through the class and he demanded pictures," said Joanna simply. "Any other questions?"
Seeing there were none, Joanna grinned. This was going to be hilarious, but then again it always was.
"Alright everyone, since there's no point explaining the process of how children are made to teenagers who have probably figured it out by now, instead we're going to focus on the after math."
What Joanna popped into the DVD player would haunt the memories of the teens (and Sherlock) for years to come.
Most of the teenagers who were forcibly signed up were promiscuous (read: too easy) or highly religious girls. There was always the odd boy in the class, usually those who had knocked a girl up, or the parents thought they did.
Again, Sherlock was forcibly made to sit through the class after annoying her during that time of the month one too many times.
Once the tape started playing, it took everyone a few moments to register what they were being forced to watch. All cells were confiscated, the only WiFi to be found was on a heavily secured network that was for staff use only, and the door had been hit with a charm that made them forget where it was.
For the next three hours, they were forced to watch a highly graphic video of a woman giving birth, from dilation all the way to the afterbirth.
Joanna saw the same thing during her rotation in the wing where they delivered infants. Since it was such a small hospital, compared to Barts or St. Mungo's, everyone eventually had to do a shift delivering baby's. There were so few magically trained doctors it was inevitable.
Instead she killed time playing games on her phone with headphones to drown out the screams of pain from the woman.
Once it was over, they took a break to eat something and use the restroom.
But the worst was yet to come.
"So you've seen how a baby is born," she said cheerfully, noticing the pale and ill expressions on everyone's faces. Sherlock was starting to recover, but he was the only one.
Most people were grossed out, but very rarely did they throw up. They deliberately laced the water with a medicine to prevent it. And the parents were always informed of what their children were going through, to warn the teens the full consequences of getting pregnant.
Her grin was absolutely evil as she happily informed them of stage two. Care of newborn infants.
Sherlock had the most disgusted expression on his face as he was forced to help feed, change, and burp fifteen infants under a month old with the class.
He was aware of Joanna grinning and taking multiple pictures of his expression, and then sending the lot of them to Mycroft.
It took them two hours to finish (mostly because they had to be corrected on the way to properly change an infant's diaper, not to mention settle the infants down).
By this point the teenagers were emotionally drained and more than ready to go home. The reason behind the class had been more or less hammered in to them all, as they quickly realized the nightmares of raising a newborn infant.
But to make sure the lesson stuck until they were old enough to be legally considered adults, Joanna had one final stage she enjoyed forcing the class through.
Forcing everyone to help the daycare, which kept an eye on over thirty magical children six and under. Children who were too young to attend preschool. Originally it was for the doctors and nurses with kids too young to attend normal school, but it quickly expanded to acting as a way for the regular patients to go to work and be assured that their kids were in the best possible care. They cared for almost every kid born to muggleborn parents in the greater London area.
Sherlock had a look of pure panic at the thought of being made to care for the children, several of which were already throwing a massive tantrum.
He gave Joanna a pleading expression. She wasn't completely heartless.
"Relax. I'm annoyed, but I'm not unnecessarily cruel to people I live with. You don't have to help with the kids."
The look of pure relief on his face made her snicker.
"I must admit, this class seems to be highly effective in curtailing underage pregnancy."
"Trust me, this is nothing compared to the other Sex Ed class I teach at Barts."
Sherlock looked at her incredulous.
"There's more?"
"Oh yes. For those that don't get the message from this class, there's a second, much worse class. For the rare few who don't get the hint, I take them on an in-depth look at what diseases one gets from being careless and sleeping around without protection. They have to see the effects of things like AIDs, herpes, crabs and HIV up close. Generally they learn to curtail their behavior, at least until college and too much alcohol makes them forget. By that time they're no longer my problem."
Sherlock had the sudden image of how his brother would react to being dragged into this awful class.
She looked positively wicked as she asked "So did you learn your lesson regarding getting on my nerves during that time of the month?"
Sherlock shuddered openly. Forcing him to deal with children... his flatmate was evil incarnate.
Joanna came back from the grocery shopping, only spending two sickles this time, to find Mycroft in the flat. She ignored him and put the groceries up.
"I'm curious, Dr. Watson, as to the exact nature of my brother's infraction that you felt you needed to inflict your class on him."
Joanna didn't speak, continuing to ignore Mycroft as Sherlock opted to say the supposed 'infraction' that annoyed his flatmate so much.
"I ate the last of the mixed ice cream during her menstrual cycle."
Joanna twitched. She had thought Mrs. Hudson had eaten it, as she loved that brand as well.
"Actually it was the minor explosion after a double night shift, combined with the fact I found yet another one of your experiments in the fridge instead of my ready made casserole," said Joanna.
Seeing the looks they shot her, she glared at Sherlock.
"You of all people should have noted that I despise mornings. And I most certainly don't appreciate being awakened at six when I had only gotten two hours of sleep by one of your 'experiments'!"
Sherlock winced.
"And the ice cream?"
"I thought Mrs. Hudson ate it. Though now I know to check around the flat next time it goes missing, or to leave little traps. Don't cross a prankster Sherlock...it never ends well," said Joanna flatly.
After all, she was one of the main reasons why the value of a galleon had suddenly become as low as an American penny.
The wizards and witches had no idea how to handle the idea that a galleon was almost worthless, but a knut was suddenly worth more than gold.
And she had done it purely to get back at the pure bloods, since they were the idiots who thought closing the borders to all foreign wizards was a smart move.
Because of that, they couldn't exchange the sudden influx of gold bullion or galleons for goods, and there was too much gold and not enough copper.
It was easier for the new bloods. They simply flipped 'knut' for 'galleon', since Joanna never touched the silver stock. Most had the common sense to stockpile galleons now, and pay everything in sickles, since they hadn't changed in value at all.
Honestly, the pure bloods were idiots. They kept handing over their gold since they thought knuts would remain high value, unaware that they were merely trapping themselves.
They were going to wait for the idiots to get settled into the idea that knuts were valuable, before flipping things back to the way things used to be.
Likely when they took over the Ministry, or knocked the old bloods off their pedestals.
So give or take a decade.
Joanna started working on dinner, only pausing briefly to inquire if Mycroft was staying.
He left, but the first thing she did once he was gone and she had finished making dinner was sweep the flat. She found no less than ten bugs and five small cameras, which she disposed of.
It took all of a week for Sherlock to discover the benefits of living in the same flat as a prankster.
He found Joanna whipping up a random concoction with a Bunsen burner and a wok, and strange ingredients.
"What are you doing?"
"Making up something special to annoy Sergeant Donovan. Honestly, you'd think she would pick up on the fact I dislike the word 'freak' being spoken in my presence," said Joanna.
Donovan had the worst habit of referring to Sherlock as a 'freak' whenever he showed up to a crime scene. Anderson was almost as bad, but Lestrade had him on a leash.
Sherlock observed her as she worked.
He seemed fascinated by the entire process of her making a mild potion designed to irritate when around a certain trigger. In this case, considering she was adding coffee grounds, it would make working long hours rather difficult. It degraded rather quickly, a week at most. But it would annoy Donovan greatly.
"Interesting."
"I can show you how to make things like this. And it comes with a higher percentage of things blowing up because of a mixture gone wrong," said Joanna, stirring the wok with practiced ease.
His eyes glinted.
"I thought you were against explosions."
"I hate hearing them before ten," she corrected. "Any time after that and I'd be more than happy to create them in a controlled setting."
Sherlock grinned viciously. It was so nice having a comrade who liked to cause explosions in the spirit of experimentation.
With a loud poof, Joanna barely managed to avoid getting too much of the smoke that came off the potion she had just made.
"Coincidentally if I find one more head in the fridge, I'm going to start leaving my own 'ingredients' around the flat for you to stumble upon," said Joanna flatly.
Sherlock snorted.
"I mean it Sherlock. You're going to find newt eyes and rat spleens in the weirdest places stuck in preservation fluid," said Joanna.