Hermione knocked tentatively on the door of the flat to which her cousin had kindly directed her. There was no response. She knocked again, somewhat more forcefully. When there was still no answer, she used the key that had been provided to let herself in.

The front room was a shambles. It looked rather as though a bomb had gone off. The closest she had seen was the common room after Gryffindor won the Quidditch Cup in her first year. It was obviously lived in, and didn't look like anyone had tidied in months, at least. There were dirty mugs and half-empty takeout dishes on at least half the horizontal surfaces, teetering piles of newspapers, magazines and maps, a wall covered in clipped articles, and a human skull on the coffee table, surrounded by tiny piles of what, on closer inspection, appeared to be about fifty different types of cigarette ash. The skull, on closer inspection, was real, and had clearly been lifted from a laboratory's mounted specimen. She wondered why anyone should steal such a thing. It wasn't as though a loose skull was a particularly useful object.

There was a desk in the corner, buried under a slew of hand-written pages and cut-up newspapers. The bookshelves were filled largely with forensic non-fiction: everything from forgery analysis to fingerprinting techniques to interrogation manuals to anatomy and chemistry texts, while even more such literature had migrated to join the coffee mugs on every available surface. She found an overturned box of what appeared to be loose crime-scene photos in a corner, and the rather large dining room table was taken up with a number of… experiments, she supposed she could call them, though the notes scribbled on various scraps of paper nearby did not precisely scream 'scientific rigor' to Hermione. A violin lay abandoned on the sofa, and the remains of an overturned tea-tray had been half swept under the lone armchair.

"Hello?" she called out as she made her way carefully through the chaos. She spotted a hallway with three doors leading off of it, but decided to explore whether the kitchen was quite as much a disaster as the living area before she checked to make certain that her cousin hadn't died in his bedroom.

As it turned out, he had not, for on the floor of the kitchen (which wasn't quite so overwhelmingly untidy as the living space, though not, apparently for lack of trying), lay the single most-strung-out looking person she had had the misfortune to see since Sirius Black had turned up at the Shrieking Shack in 1994. He actually looked a bit like post-Azkaban Sirius, with his dark, unkempt, greasy curls, high-cheekbones and emaciated frame. She knew he was in his late twenties, though he looked a bit older from his gaunt features.

"Sherlock Holmes?" she asked loudly. The man did not respond. She could see he was breathing. "Oy! Cousin!" Nothing.

So she did what any sensible girl would have done: she filled the nearest coffee cup with water and flung it in his face, from a safe distance of course. He came to with a start, and she was glad of the distance, as she was only just fast enough to avoid the little glass bottle he hurled at her before he even focused on her face.

"Sherlock Holmes, I presume?" she asked, raising an eyebrow at her estranged cousin.

He gave her a long, assessing look before he said, in an utterly disgusted tone, "Tell Mycroft to shove off and let me go back to sleep." And he lay back down on the floor as though this was the most normal thing in the world.

"Sorry?"

"I don't know you," he said without opening his eyes. "White, female, twenty-four, perhaps twenty-five years old; middle to upper middle class, parents probably doctors – no dentists, perfect teeth; originally from somewhere… southeast of here, Maidstone, perhaps, but recently returned from several years, possibly up to a decade living in Scotland; educated, well-mannered, and smart enough to wake me from a distance; you stand as though you believe you have some right to be here, and you seem just slightly too buttoned-down to know how to b&e, so most likely the landlord or my brother gave you a key. Rent's paid up, so it wasn't the landlord. Fact that you woke me despite your obvious manners suggests that you are here on some sort of mission, qed, Mycroft has sent another of his minions to try to convince me to return to the fold and play the good little boy for mummy and father, or whatever it is he's on about. Feel free not to tell me."

Hermione couldn't help but giggle at his indignant tone. "Close, but not quite."

Sherlock sat up again, glaring at her more closely. She righted a chair and took a seat, uninvited. "Mycroft did give me the key, but I'm not a minion. I'm your cousin, Hermione Granger." Sherlock's eyes narrowed.

"Prove it."

Hermione hesitated, but complied. The habits of war are hard to break. "Well, I don't know that I can. I mean, documents can be faked, you know, and we don't share any secrets. But the first and only time we met was twenty years ago. I was three, and you were far too old to be wearing that sailor suit Aunt Patty had forced you into. You refused to be introduced as William, which is your middle name, I suppose? And declared yourself a pirate, and spent the entire day sitting in a tree. My mother and your father had a stupendous row, about what I haven't the foggiest idea, and we never visited again."

"Why are you here?" Sherlock asked, only slightly less suspicious.

"Oh, come off it, have you been high all week?" Sherlock's expression changed slightly, suggesting not. "What, then? Do you mean to imply that Mycroft didn't tell you he'd told me I could stay here for a bit whilst I figure out something else in the City?" An angry flare of his nostrils indicated that this was the case. "I don't believe that man. Where's your telephone? Ah, nevermind," she said, spotting it and dialing the number Mycroft had given her. Sherlock gave her an incomprehensible look, and laid back down again, apparently deciding to wait until Mycroft had explained himself to ask or answer any more questions or show off more parlor tricks.

She added, while she was waiting for the call to ring through, "And it's closer to fifteen years in Scotland, and I resent the fact that you think I'm too straightlaced to break into your grubby flat. I'll have you know I – Mycroft? Mycroft Holmes! This is your cousin Hermione, speaking. – Yes. Yes. Did you or did you not actually ask your brother if I could stay with him? I see. Well, I don't rightly see that it matters who pays the rent. It's a matter of common courtesy, isn't it? I mean, the very least you could have done was give the poor man some warning. No. No. Yes, that's exactly what I mean… You didn't say you wanted me to babysit! He's got to be at least three years older than I am! So what? So he's a grown man! He doesn't need me or you or anyone else checking up on him! Yes, of course, he was passed out on the kitchen floor when I got here… Well that's his choice, isn't it? No, that won't be necessary. We'll work it out between ourselves. No. Thank you, but you've done quite enough. No. Good bye, Mycroft!"

"Well," Hermione said to her apparently-sleeping cousin, "That could have gone better."

"Oh, no, I'd say you actually came out ahead in that one. How long are you staying?" her cousin asked, still lying on the floor, eyes closed. Apparently he had either decided to trust her, or that he didn't mind having her around if she would yell at Mycroft for him.

"Mycroft said I can stay as long as I like, so I suppose until I get fed up enough with your mess to leave, or you decide I'm irritating enough to poison."

"Your bedroom's the one that's empty," Sherlock said, waving vaguely in the direction of the hall.

Hermione noted that he hadn't denied that he would consider poisoning her, but smiled anyway and went to have a closer look around her new rooms. She supposed she'd get settled in, and worry about tidying the living area and the kitchen, and perhaps forcing her mad cousin to eat something later.

…

Sherlock Holmes was quite rudely awakened by approximately six to eight ounces of water hitting him in the face, and a low, female voice saying, "Sherlock Holmes, I presume?"

She was approximately five foot six, with long, curly brown hair braided back out of her face, brown eyes, and a thin frame, perhaps 110 or 115 pounds, but healthy-looking enough. Perhaps she was as young as twenty-two, but from the lines around her eyes and forehead, he would say slightly older, or else had spent many years under enormous stress. Twenty-four or twenty-five. Fit, since she managed to dodge the morphine vial, and the way she moved and held herself suggested a fighter, not one of those ridiculous girls who only goes to the gym to lose weight. There was something about her presume that suggested time spent in the north, though she was obviously from the south to begin with. She wore slacks with sensible shoes and a maroon jumper over a white collared shirt. She had scrubbed the ink-stains from her hands and painted her nails to cover any staining, probably, since the shade matched her jumper but she wasn't wearing any other makeup and her hair was just barely contained. So, an office job, something high ranking, if they still used fountain-pens regularly, but with some kind of combat training. Add to that she was standing in his kitchen as though she had every right to be there, and she had obviously been sent by Mycroft.

"Tell Mycroft to shove off and let me go back to sleep." There, proof he was not dead, and still in his right mind, more or less. Perhaps she would go away.

"Sorry?" …Or perhaps not. Stupid girl.

"I don't know you," he explained, and began rattling off enough about herself to hopefully unnerve her and get her to leave. "White, female, twenty-four, perhaps twenty-five years old; middle to upper middle class, parents probably doctors – no dentists, perfect teeth; originally from somewhere… southeast of here, Maidstone, perhaps, but recently returned from several years, possibly up to a decade living in Scotland; educated, well-mannered, and smart enough to wake me from a distance; you stand as though you believe you have some right to be here, and you seem just slightly too buttoned-down to know how to b&e, so most likely the landlord or my brother gave you a key. Rent's paid up, so it wasn't the landlord. Fact that you woke me despite your obvious manners suggests that you are here on some sort of mission, qed, Mycroft has sent another of his minions to try to convince me to return to the fold and play the good little boy for mummy and father, or whatever it is he's on about. Feel free not to tell me."

She giggled. He supposed that's what he got for being nice and not talking about her obvious lack of field experience and the likelihood that the wariness to approach him to wake him was due to a bad experience on one of her few field missions before being reassigned to her desk-job. "Close, but not quite." What?

He sat up again, scrutinizing her more closely. No, all the signs were consistent, and he was certain his interpretation was the most likely explanation. She righted a chair and took a seat, uninvited. "Mycroft did give me the key, but I'm not a minion. I'm your cousin, Hermione Granger." Sherlock's eyes narrowed. He did have a younger, female cousin, he recalled, but no one in his family had mentioned Emma Granger in at least twenty years.

"Prove it."

His supposed cousin hesitated, and he wondered why. "Well, I don't know that I can. I mean, documents can be faked, you know, and we don't share any secrets." Ah, that explained the hesitation, but her willingness to respond to a security-question protocol and her quick understanding of its weaknesses suggested that she was, in fact, one of Mycroft's. "But the first and only time we met was twenty years ago," she continued. "I was three," highly unlikely, given her current apparent age, "and you were far too old to be wearing that sailor suit Aunt Patty had forced you into. You refused to be introduced as William, which is your middle name, I suppose? And declared yourself a pirate, and spent the entire day sitting in a tree. My mother and your father had a stupendous row, about what I haven't the foggiest idea, and we never visited again." All true, aside from the fact that William was his first name, but Mycroft could easily have supplied those details. He decided to act as though he possibly believed her.

"Why are you here?" He asked, in a slightly less suspicious tone.

"Oh, come off it, have you been high all week?" He most certainly had not. He had finished with a case not three days ago, and waited until the monotony of life had settled back in before turning to the morphine. "What, then? Do you mean to imply that Mycroft didn't tell you he'd told me I could stay here for a bit whilst I figure out something else in the City?" He had not. Well, he might have tried, but Sherlock supremely doubted he had even bothered to call. He knew Sherlock wouldn't answer. "I don't believe that man. Where's your telephone?" the girl said, even as she looked around the room. "Ah, nevermind." She spotted it on the floor under the window and dialed the familiar tones of Mycroft's office. Well, he would give her this: This was the most pleasant conversation he'd had with any of Mycroft's agents in well over a year. At least she seemed to have some ability to read people and interpret his responses accurately, even if she did talk altogether too much. He laid back down again, content to eavesdrop from a supine position.

She continued to talk while she was waiting for the call to ring through: "And it's closer to fifteen years in Scotland (boarding school then, with mostly British teachers), and I resent the fact that you think I'm too straightlaced to break into your grubby flat (hmmm… perhaps she wasn't one of Mycroft's then… or else she had been criticized in the past for failure to think outside the box). I'll have you know I – Mycroft? Mycroft Holmes! (Damn Mycroft's timing. That sentence had the potential to actually have been interesting.)

Sherlock amused himself by filling in his brother's half of the conversation based on her responses. "This is your cousin Hermione, speaking. – Yes. (Ah, hello, Agent X. Did you find the flat alright?) Yes. (He's still alive?) Did you or did you not actually ask your brother if I could stay with him? (How is the setup proceeding?) I see. Well, I don't rightly see that it matters who pays the rent. (It is none of Sherlock's business who I allow to stay in the flat: I pay the rent. He has no power to throw you out.) It's a matter of common courtesy, isn't it? I mean, the very least you could have done was give the poor man some warning. No. (Does he look to be believing this play?) No. (*Loud sigh audible to Sherlock on the floor through the line*) Yes, that's exactly what I mean… (I suppose we must continue with this farce?) You didn't say you wanted me to babysit! (Very well, then. Sherlock is simply not responsible enough to mind his own rent or make any decisions regarding his own life. You are there to look out for him.) He's got to be at least three years older than I am! (So? What difference does that make?) So what? So he's a grown man! He doesn't need me or you or anyone else checking up on him! (You have seen him, yes? Spoken with him?) Yes, of course, he was passed out on the kitchen floor when I got here… Well that's his choice, isn't it? (If I don't send people after him, I worry he will overdose and die in his sleep.) No, that won't be necessary. (Do you require backup?) We'll work it out between ourselves. No. Thank you, but you've done quite enough. (Well, then, ring off in a huff and be done with it.) No. Good bye, Mycroft! (If that is all, I really must be getting on with things. Good luck, Agent X.)"

"Well," his supposed cousin said, settling the phone back into its cradle suspiciously gently for such an "angry" dismissal of his brother, "That could have gone better."

Fine, let's play the game. "Oh, no, I'd say you actually came out ahead in that one." Seriously, he doubted Mycroft's minions were allowed to call him Mycroft very often. It would be a mark of notoriety among her fellow minions. "How long are you staying?" he asked, still lying on the floor, eyes closed. It wasn't as though he could exactly call the bobbies to throw her out, after all. He would just have to drive her away, or perhaps poison her if she was too persistent. Non-fatally, of course, if she proved to be as intelligent as she seemed so far.

"Mycroft said I can stay as long as I like, so I suppose until I get fed up enough with your mess to leave, or you decide I'm irritating enough to poison. By the way, your arsenic experiment's gone off." Good, they were on the same page. Perhaps he would actually be able to hold a decent conversation with this one. And she had obviously been nosing around for a while before she woke him if she had found his notes on the arsenic experiment. He'd abandoned it nearly a week ago, when the case arrived. He should re-start it… perhaps after coffee. And more sleep. He couldn't have been out for more than an hour, and he'd been up for at least two days before that.

"Your bedroom's the one that's empty," he said. It wasn't as though it mattered. She would doubtless poke her nose into everything, anyway, if she hadn't already. She walked out without another word, and did not wake again until she dropped a piece of toast on his face about five hours later, judging by the shadows on the floor. He flinched into alertness, and then ignored the offending bread-item for several minutes, hoping it would go away. It did not, and so he eventually sat up again.

"Food," he informed his supposed cousin, "Is revolting."

She was sitting at the table, reading what appeared to be his favorite text on biochemistry and drinking tea. "Hmmm… an unfortunate but necessary requirement of the animal body," she noted, turning a page.

But Sherlock was no longer paying attention, because he had realized that the girl was sitting at his table. "What the bloody hell have you done with my experiments?" he staggered to his feet. And then he noticed that the entire kitchen had been tidied. Clean coffee mugs had been stacked in a pyramid to dry, and all of the counters were clear, and the overflowing rubbish bin had been taken out. There was a kettle on the range, and a cup of tea sitting near where his head had been, still warm.

"I've disposed of the ones that had gone off," she said, not looking up from the book, "and moved the ones that could be salvaged to the coffee table."

"What have you done with my ashes?" he asked in horror. It had taken him weeks to acquire all those different brands.

She pointed at a small basket filled with hand-folded envelopes of what appeared to be some kind of heavy specialty parchment. He picked one up to see that it was sealed with a tiny daub of wax, and labeled with a number corresponding to a diagram of the coffee table, indicating its previous position in relation to all the others. "Assuming you even knew which pile was which to begin with, you ought to be able to sort it out," she said, turning another page.

Sherlock tore his gaze away from the little envelope of ashes to look around at the rest of the room, and gave a tiny involuntary scream of panic. Everything had been moved. He wouldn't be able to find anything. His desk had been organized, and all the books were on the shelves, which was impossible, since he knew he had more books than shelf-space, and his skull was on his desk and the couch was covered in neat stacks of papers and folders labeled in the same flowing hand as the ashes and the diagram in his hand. She had retrieved all of his chairs from their various resting-places, and there was a plant in the window. And there were curtains! And carpets. He made an incoherent stuttering noise, and the horrid girl finally looked up.

"If you're not going to eat, you really ought to drink your tea. I mean, judging by the look of you, it's probably only been about, what, two days, since you've eaten? Three? But your liver and kidneys need water to process whatever drugs you've been taking, and – oh for the love of light, sit down before you fall down. It's all sensibly organized. You're supposed to be rather intelligent, aren't you? You'll figure it out in no time at all."

"You have to leave," Sherlock said abruptly.

"Beg pardon?"

"This isn't going to work. Not at all. You need to go."

"I most certainly do not need to go. I've only just got your mess sorted. And anyway, if you could have had me thrown out, you would have done the first time I woke you."

They engaged in a staring contest for several tense, silent minutes, Sherlock's fury matched equally by Hermione's placid determination. When, after several minutes, Sherlock continued to say nothing, Hermione broke the silence. "Let's talk about these," she said, pointing at a small collection of vials, powders, and syringes she had accumulated at the foot of the table. At a glance, it looked like everything he had cached around the flat.

Sherlock returned to the kitchen, fetched his teacup from the floor, then took the seat she had indicated. Perhaps, if he was compliant, there would be some way to get out of this without being arrested, or worse, without her telling Mycroft.

"What do you want from me?" he asked, hiding his anger well, he thought.

She smiled. Either she was genuinely pleased, or a very good actress. "Well, my classes start in two months, so I'll often be out of the flat after that, unless I find something better first, of course, but until then, I suppose I just want you to let me be and don't get caught doing anything that might bring the Yard barging in, like dying or getting arrested while high. I'm not really sure why you think I'm here, but Mycroft seems to think I'm going to babysit you, and that's simply not the case." Ha! "As I told him on the phone, you're a grown man. It's none of my business how you starve or poison yourself, provided you don't actually frame me for your murder." That was a possibility. If Mycroft thought him dead, he might stop sending minders after him…

"Let's see… other ground rules… Stay out of my room and I'll stay out of yours. I'll clean when the mess bothers me, since it's obvious you haven't the slightest inclination. If you want me to save your experiments, you need to take proper notes so I know what to leave and what's rubbish." Sherlock was somewhat offended by this. His notes were perfectly adequate! "I keep terrible, irregular hours, though I don't suppose you'll mind. I mostly keep to myself. I, unlike you, do eat, and therefore cook, so I'll be keeping food in the ice box. You're welcome to help yourself to anything if you suddenly decide you're not anorexic. Kindly restrict your experiments to the lower shelves, and leave the upper ones for food. I'd rather not have biological substances unknown dripping into my jam, thank you very much." She… didn't mind the experiments in the fridge? Well, maybe he could work with this one after all. "Oh, and I'm borrowing your library. That's non-negotiable." Obviously, since she was already reading one of his books. "Do you have anything to add?"

"I'm not anorexic. Eating slows the mental processes. And my notes are perfectly adequate for my purposes."

"You told me food was revolting, despite the fact that you clearly haven't eaten in at least two days, which screams anorexic in my book. Unashamed anorexic, but nonetheless." She slid a paper across the table at him. "Those aren't coherent. I don't even think they're all related to the same experiment. And while you may be right about the effects of eating large, heavy portions, I regret to inform you that things start getting a bit muddled somewhere around the twenty-four hour mark without some form of caloric intake, and then you only think you're thinking clearly."

He sneered at her. Perhaps that was true for normal people. He, however, had trained himself over long years to ignore such 'requirements' of his body. "I suppose you would know." He ignored the notes. He preferred not to admit that he could not recall exactly to what they pertained.

She shrugged. "I suppose you think I'm saying this as some spoiled office worker who's never done a real day's work nor wanted for anything in her life. You don't know nearly as much about me as you think you do, Sherlock. I spent eleven months on the run about four years ago. Food was scarce. We were lucky if we ate every other day. So yes, I would know. Besides, the brain is the most energetically expensive organ in the body. You can run and fight when you haven't eaten in five days, even a week: adrenaline will see you through. But any plans you come up with at that point are pretty well guaranteed to be worthless." Interesting. She didn't seem to be lying. And she knew the sort of image she projected, and that he could read it. He wondered if she knew she dodged like a fighter.

"Anyway, it's not terribly important. Just be aware that I'm not planning on forcing you to take care of yourself, if that's how you've managed to make it this far." And with that, she went back to her (his) book.