HEYA! This fic is still not dead! Imagine that!

A brief note that all of you should read to make things less confusing, there are two flashbacks at the very beginning and very end. But both of the flashbacks are sorta the same flashback, just cut in two and wrapped around the present. So this chapter is sorta like a present sandwich. Where the past is the bread.

When Sherlock disappeared into the night after their first meeting, Sirius felt certain he'd never see him again. The event was so bizarre, it seemed unlikely to happen again. In fact, if it weren't for the burn mark in Sirius's robes from Sherlock's odd tobacco stick, he would've passed it off as a strangely intense dream. Still, though the boy was little more than a bizarre memory, he fascinated Sirius. Would he seem as... inhuman by day as he had that night? Were any of the rumors true? If so, was there a way of helping him, like Remus? Why had he never seen him around school before? Sure, he didn't make a habit of fraternizing with slytherins, but he should have at least noticed him in the hall. The questions whirled in his mind like circling hawks.

So when he caught the scent of smoke during lunch by the lake, he couldn't allow the opportunity to slip through his fingers.

"Excuse me, I need to... relieve myself." He said as he extracted himself from his circle of friends. Lily scoffed when he turned towards a clump of trees rather than the castle. "I'll turn into a dog first, if it please your grace." He mocked lightly, dipping into a low bow which earned him a lovely little giggle. He smiled to himself as he followed the scent of smoke until it mingled with a thin, sweet aroma. He found the smoker sitting in the shade of an oak tree with one ear pressed to buzzing trunk.

Sherlock stared off past the idyllic landscape, his colorless eyes glazed and half-lidded. He lifted the cigarette to his lips and Sirius knew instinctively that his presence was acknowledged. "If you're here because you feel some obligation to spout sentimental nonsense at me because of one night, don't waste your breath." Sherlock muttered, releasing a cloud of smoke as he did so.

"No, not at all. I was just..." He lost track of what he was meant and how to say it. Curious if you actually existed? Wondering if you were in possession of a human soul? "Is that a beehive?"

"Mm."

"Should you really have your head on it?" Sirius was far from cowardly. In fact, he could be considered a bit of an adrenaline junkie. But jumping into dangerous situations on a whim was different from leaning leisurely on a huge, humming heap of it.

"The smoke calms them." Sherlock sighed. "Well. I say calm. Really, it throws them into a panic to protect what's most precious. The hive, the queen, the brood. But it makes them less likely to sting. Not that they're particularly likely to sting anyways. Statistically, they're less dangerous than peanuts."

"Oh." He allowed himself to take a few steps closer. Sherlock watched him warily with his strange, colorless eyes. Sirius took a seat in the soft grass a couple steps away. "What's that mean? 'Statisiscatlly'?"

Sherlock rolled his eyes. The daylight dulled the sharp edges of his face and made him seem more real. But still, there seemed to be something... off that niggled at the back of his mind. Like watching a cat missing it's whiskers."Nevermind. Forget it." Sherlock turned his gaze away and when back to listening to the beehive. It was like a door had been shut in Sirius's face.

"Are you alright?"

There aren't very many open seats at the quidditch game. The stands are crowded with cheering students staring up at the players, whizzing about like colorful flies. It's hell trying to navigate through them. Most of them aren't pleased about me blocking their view, others aren't pleased about me existing. A few of them even laid claim the few remaining spare seats out of spite. Little bastards.

"John! John Watson!" I hear a thin voice in between the cheers and catch Neville's gap-toothed smile. I push closer and find him sitting in the front row. Next to him is a pale girl with a dazed smile and enough leeway to seat three people on either side of them.

"Hey, are these taken?" I ask, shooting a smile at the pair. The girl smiled vaguely at the space a few feet in front of his nose before turning back to the game.

"No, not at all." Neville shakes his head, causing his ears to flop. "People don't like sitting near us, so there's always plenty of elbow room." He said it so casually, it stung. I sat down next to the pale girl and tried to locate the players of the game. The keepers were the most obvious. They stayed close to the hoops at all times. The seekers, on the other hand, never stayed in one place. They vanished and reappeared in entirely random spots like hummingbirds.

"They think wrackspurts are contagious. Which doesn't make sense at all." The pale girl said to my general vicinity. I had to agree. "Frankly, I wouldn't want to sit next to anyone who thought wrackspurts were contagious."

"Yes, that is... absolutely ridiculous." I should ask Sherlock if he's got a vaccine for wrackspurts. Just in case she's wrong.

"That's Luna, she always talks like that. About pesky heewas and things. It makes for very interesting conversations." Neville explained. I guess wrackspurts may not be a strange wizard disease. Half the crowd cheers as a goal is scored, but Neville and Luna groan. "It's hopeless. The only way Gryffindor has a chance is if Harry finds the Snitch."

"Well, either he will or he won't. Either way, I hope he does it soon." Luna replied wisely, pulling her soaked scarf tighter around her neck. She turned her wide-eyed gaze to me. "You're professor Sherlock's cat, aren't you? I almost didn't recognize you in normal clothes."

"I-I'm not actually a cat."

"Aren't you? Well, excuse me for misspeaking. It's not up to me to judge what species you should be. If you feel most comfortable as a muggle, then that's entirely your own business." Luna smiled whimsically, making me feel a brand of awkwardness I've yet to experience before now. I try to focus on the game to shake off the feeling, but I can hardly see the players through the fog and still don't entirely understand what I can see. "I'm terribly sorry about your owner, by the way. Frightful business."

That sounded ominous. Something couldn't have happened in the time I've been away, could it? No. I'm over-reacting. This is just a strange kid and the chills going down my spine are just the rain. "What?"

"Professor Sherlock? I thought you'd already know." Luna said, staring inoffensively at the sky, where the Gryffindor team continued to lose spectacularly. "He's lost his soul."

"No. He's got one. I've checked." I sigh, trying to plan new ways of shutting up Snape and his stupid rumours. I can't really blame her for believing something a professor said. But I'm not going to pretend this isn't getting annoying.

"Just because you've got something now doesn't mean it was never lost." Out on the field, a glint of gold flashes through the pouring rain. "Now, he's found it." I can't tell whether she meant the snitch or Sherlock' soul.

"Oh! Harry's going after it!" Neville shouts, a broad grin spreading across his round face. I squint to try differentiating one red and yellow figure from another, but it's raining so- There! He's going so fast, but the snitch is going faster. He's tailing it like a hawk, predicting it's every turn. God, how're they not freezing to death out there? It's getting colder by the second. Both the snitch and the boy fly straight up at a dizzying speed, disappearing into the thick clouds. "He's going to get it!"

There's a scream and it isn't from the audience. Something's wrong.

I see a dark figure in the edge of my peripheral vision. It seems like we all turn in unison to get a better look, the audience, the announcer, the players. Everyone but Harry Potter, who's unconscious and falling quickly to the ground. Once I see his silhouette, I know it's him.

Sherlock catches the boy in his descent, just as an army of dementors float down from the cloud cover. That's when the crowd begins to panic.

"Luna. Neville. Get out. Try to take as many people as you can with you." Sherlock seems to have himself handled and all of these students need to get out before someone gets their soul sucked out. They both seem a little paralyzed, but they catch on quick enough.

I chance a glance at the sky, where Sherlock's trying to shake off the dementors trailing him. He's fast, but so are they. And they're just as determined in their pursuit as Harry had been after that snitch just moments before.

No. There's no use. I can't do anything for him now. I need to get the kids out.

I go to work herding the frightened students. They all know where the exits are and many of them are beginning to realize that they should be getting to them. The hard part is getting them organized.

"One at a time. Don't shove! Hurry hurry!" I direct the students out of the stands, making sure to establish some sort of order. Some of the younger students are too scared to move, so I have to guide them out personally.

All the while, Sherlock's fending off the relentless onslaught of dementors. He can't reach his wand while keeping control of the broom and carrying Harry Potter, so all he can do is circle around and around, trying to avoid getting caught while keeping the monsters away from the audience.

And all I can do is get everyone out of the way and hope for the best.

"I used to love bees." Sherlock said, his voice entirely devoid of emotion. "Just seeing a worker going about her business would brighten my day immeasurably. Listening to a full hive, buzzing with so many tiny lives, once filled me with an inexpressible amount of joy. Now, it's..."

Sirius leaned in, paying close attention as Sherlock took another drag of his cigarette.

"It's like hearing someone speak through a brick wall. Everything's distant. Muffled. Dull." Sherlock closed his eyes and pressed closer to the tree. "Pleasure, pain, sadness, joy, embarrassment, pride, fear. Nothing gets through but the barest of whispers. Does that sound 'alright' to you?" Sherlock turns to Sirius, meeting his eye for the first time since he sat down. There was something pleading about his gaze.

"Maybe... you should have Madame Pomfrey check your ears." Sirius suggested, jokingly. The tree gave a more lively response than Sherlock. "Stupid joke. Sorry."

Sherlock smirked superficially over the wall of blankness. Sirius buried the instinct to cringe at the wrongness of it. His smile hadn't seemed so empty the night they met. Perhaps it was the dark, or the rampant hormones, or the adrenaline rush of sneaking a slytherin into the gryffindor dormitories that masked it.

"You know, the rumour mill has been churning up the craziest stories about you. I never believed any of it. It was just too impossible. Like surviving a killing curse. It just doesn't happen." Sirius still wasn't sure which parts to believe. The boy in front of his wasn't entirely... whole, that was for sure. But he wasn't some monster, either. The animagus looked closely at the strange, empty boy and didn't see the mysterious, dangerous predator of their first meeting. Instead, he saw an injured animal, cold and lost and tired of fighting. It reminded him of Remus directly after a full moon, when he's naked, scratched up and ashamed of all the things he didn't do. "Everyone talks about you like some horror story. But you're not. I mean, you survived where no one else ever has. That's not a curse, that's a victory."

"Victory…" Sherlock laughed humourlessly as he stabbed the cigarette butt into the damp grass. He rose to his feet and shook his robes out. "It's so odd how all you...people are so eager to tell me what a dementor's kiss is when I'm the only one who knows for certain."

"Leaning leisurely on a huge humming heap of it" Alliteration is my existence.

Whelp. I made the big reveal. I was planning on waiting a few more chapters, but screw it. It was now or never.

I'd like to thank all of my loyal readers for... you know. Reading. Also reviewing. Those are always lovely.

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