Some nameless wiseman once said 'keep your friends close and your enemies closer.' But I must disagree. I'd prefer my enemies to be as far from me as I can manage, as most of them are currently rotting six feet below and I have no inclination to visit them, nor would I enjoy a visit from them. I want to savor the dead-free state of our current home for as long as possible. Sherlock, on the other hand, believes in inviting his enemies over for tea and exchanging flirtatious glances over a live bomb. The corpses he keeps closer then ever. For the particularly challenging murderers, he marks the date of their executions on a special calendar and attends their funerals in his best suit paired with his brightest grin. Sometimes, with the especially tricky murderers, he arranges the funeral and wake himself. I must say, he's suspiciously good at setting up an appropriate and tasteful funeral. They're always very sophisticated and reflective of the more… respectful qualities of the thankfully departed. When I die, I can only hope that Sherlock still lives to plan my funeral and that he puts as much care and thought into it as he did Moriarty's.

As I take my seat to have tea with Sherlock Holmes and Severus Snape, all I can think is that if Snape was ever convicted of murder and sentenced to death, his funeral should be held in a basement. I think he'd like that. He does seem fond of deep, dark and damp places if his office is anything to go by. Like a bat. Or perhaps mold.

"It is ever so good to see you again, old friend." Sherlock purred sarcastically, a malicious smirk tugging at his lips. Snape set a pair of cups full of deep, dark and damp tea in front of each of us before taking his seat behind his deep, dark and damp desk.

I shot a quick glance at Sherlock, remembering his warning from yesterday. He didn't make any indication that he noticed me, but took a sip from his cup to assure me that it wasn't spiked.

"Why are you here, Holmes?" Snape snapped, pushing past Sherlock's false pleasantries with a grimace of distaste.

Sherlock put on a mask of mock confusion. " To teach the children to defend themselves. As you had asked me to in your letter… why else?"

"I thought I made it very clear in the letter that this job wouldn't be to your liking." I chuckle into my teacup. I had read the letter. Snape tried dissuading Sherlock Bloody Holmes from taking a job by telling him there's a murder on the loose and he might die. That's like telling a child not to go to the dentist because they give you candy afterwards.

"Could be dangerous" I mutter out of the corner of my mouth. Snape stares, completely lost as we fall into a fit of stifled giggles.

"I'm hurt, Severus. Truly I am. Do you really not remember all those trips through the forbidden forest? Or our picnic under the whomping willow? Or the time we spiked dogbreath's pumpkin juice." The events are all spit out sarcastically. But I could tell that Sherlock wasn't making up the events. At some point, the two must've been friends. A lot must've changed for them to get where they are now. If I squint past the harsh tension of the current situation and blur some of the years from their faces, I could almost imagine a half pint Holmes wrecking havoc on Hogwarts with a timid Snape in tow. What could've gone so wrong between them? "Did I really give you such a fleeting impression that you've forgotten my love of danger."

"I know you have the lack of self-preservation instincts of the average gryffindor, but I never thought you'd actually be suicidal." I unconsciously tense up as Sherlock's attitude turns cold. I've seen him brushed off worse insults without a second glance. I don't understand why he'd take such offense now.

"Just because I'm not a sniveling coward like most slytherins doesn't make me any less of one." He hisses, almost accusingly. Snape looks just a little pleased with himself to have found a nerve to aim for. But his pleasure quickly plummets as he realizes he's been called a coward. Sherlock quickly locks away his anger once he realizes that he's let it out. "And just f.y.i. I've already tried suicide. Took ages to get all that blood out of my hair. Poison would've been much cleaner than diving off a hospital, now that I think about it."

A strange expression crosses Snapes face and silence descends. It looks almost like… regret. But the moment I recognize it, the flash of emotion disappears into his default expression of discomfort. "I ask again, why are you here."

"Oh, I just thought I'd have a chat. Catch up with an old schoolmate."

"I know you, Holmes. You wouldn't drag yourself and your muggle half way across the castle for a friendly chat."

"Wouldn't I, Snape? It's been a long while. Your memory might fail you. And John's not my muggle. John is John's John." If I wasn't mistaken, that sounded almost like a praise. Sometimes it's hard to tell if he actually considers me a person or just a particularly interesting sheep.

I feel like I'm standing directly between two sides of a cold war. They stare each other down as if each expecting the other to burst into flame. The tones of their voices deepen with every come back. Sherlock's descending deeper into endless velvety blackness, Snape's into a cavern of rotting bat's wings. They'll be going subsonic if this goes on much longer.

"Just answer the question." Sherlock was obviously in one of his infuriating defiant moods. If I didn't step in, this could go on for hours.

"Actually, I'd like to know too." I break the silence that Sherlock had put in place. They both shoot mildly surprised looks at me. "Despite what you think, Sherlock, I don't enjoy being dragged places without knowing where or why. Also, I don't like being ignored every time I say it."

"…What do you know of Loopy?"

"Nothing whatsoever."

"Really? You don't?"

"I haven't exactly been eager to keep in touch him."

"So you're telling me that, despite all of the rumors I've heard otherwise, the shack no longer shrieks." I think they might be speaking in some sort of code.

"God, Sherlock, this sounds like an interrogation from a bad spy movie. Has the eagle left nest?"

The conversation goes on as if I never spoke. But I didn't really expect to be heard. They're too deep into their stand off/exchange of information for a mere mortal to register on their radar. "Yes, the shrieking shack still lives up to it's name, but Remus hasn't been the cause of it for nearly a decade. You kno-"

"As always, I know more than you. In fact, you don't even know what you think you know. Well, this visit hasn't been quite as pointless as I'd expected. The tea wasn't terrible." Sherlock says, as if the tea was the only good part of the visit and even that was just not bad. It was regretfully true. He sweeps out of his seat and I put down my teacup in preparation to follow. "I'd wish you farewell, but I really don't. The best I can say honestly is I hope you'll be lying in a bed of lilies next I see you."

Just as Sherlock opens the heavy wooden door, Snape leaps out of his seat, expression a mess of offense and anger. "Sherlock." Out of shock, rather than actual desire to hear what he has to say, Sherlock pauses.

"Say my name again and I'll cut out your tongue." It's shocking, how much hatred was in his voice. All during the visit, he's been acting like he would towards Mycroft. Spiteful and uncooperative. Doing anything he could to make his opponent's life just a little harder, but not actually out to hurt them. But... The only other occasion when I've seen him that hateful was the time we dealt with a rapist. Except then, he wasn't actually speaking. Just bashing the bastard's face in.

I linger next to my chair, too many questions weighing down the air to move freely. On one hand, I want to run to Sherlock and ask him what just happened. I want to turn the corner to find him laughing deviously before he tells me the stormy pain in his voice was just an act. And if it wasn't, I want to be there to… make a cup of tea and fetch his violin or whatever you're supposed to do when you've got an emotionally distressed consulting detective.

But I'm also desperate for answers to Sherlock's past and I don't think Sherlock would actually give them to me. He's only ever spoken of his past when absolutely necessary. Serial cannibal necessary. Here I've got someone who obviously knew whatever the hell went on way back then because he caused it. But I'm afraid if he tells me, I might kill him. Eventually, an impulse makes my mind for me.

"You." I just about lunge at the paralyzed man. "I don't know what you did to deserve that and if I do, you better run like hell. Because I don't want to murder you."

"And you expect me to fear you, muggle?" He looks down on me with the same look Sherlock uses on Anderson. I feel my mouth morph into what my army buddies call 'the grim grin: omen of imminent death'.

I pull my spare magazine from the specially made gun pocket in my robes, shake out a single bullet and hold it up to his hooked nose as threating as I could. "This is what I'll kill you with when the time comes."

I drop it onto his desk and run out the door after Sherlock, hoping that he didn't get very far.

Favourite line- half pint Holmes wrecking havoc on Hogwarts with a timid Snape in tow just gotta love all that alliteration. It's so refreshing to read. I'm so proud of that sentence.