A Study in Magic
by Books of Change
Warning/Notes: This is a BBC Sherlock and Harry Potter crossover AU. The HP timeline and BBC Sherlock's timeline has been shifted forwards and backwards to match up. One major BBC Sherlock character's gender has changed for the sake of the plot. The story was planned and written before season 2 (but incorporating elements of thereof as much as possible). Readers beware!
Chapter Eighteen: He Solves Crimes and I Blog About It
Arthur Weasley woke up to the smell of frying bacon. He had a moment of disorientation as he stared at the canvas ceiling until he remembered the tent Harry's Muggle parents had set up for him and Molly last night. Molly was out, and Ginny was still asleep in her cot. Arthur eagerly put on his glasses, donned his robes and left the tent.
Arthur gazed avidly at the flat. The party decorations from last night were taken away, leaving the flat in its natural state. Most of the Muggle eclecktronics he'd explored yesterday migrated to the coffee table, including the laptop computer he charmed last night (Arthur suppressed the guilty twinge associated with that memory). The boys were still snoring inside their sleeping bags like so many multicoloured slugs. The kitchen's sliding doors were open, and John and Molly were puttering about, cooking breakfast.
"So this thing is a hob," Molly was asking John, pointing at the metal object that had circular grates, one lit with a small blue fire over which John was frying bacon in a pan.
"Yep," John replied. "Don't worry, it works just fine. Good morning, Arthur."
Arthur felt his cuff grabbed as he tried to get a closer look at the hob. He vaguely muttered a good morning as he stared at the blue flames, dancing so neatly in a circle.
"What do wizards have for breakfast?" asked John. "We don't do anything more sophisticated than eggs and bacon, porridge and beans on toast."
"Oh, we do the same," said Molly. "My lot aren't picky about their food. They just eat a lot."
"Sounds about right. Here, the bread is—oh, f…"
John snapped the breadbox shut and slumped. Arthur and Molly looked curiously.
"…Eyeballs," John muttered with suppressed fury. Then more loudly: "Eyeballs?"
"Just tea for me, thanks," rumbled Sherlock's voice from down the hallway.
"There are eyeballs in the breadbox!" John shouted.
"Experiment," Sherlock replied.
"I got that, thanks," John snapped, "Just wondered if you want them in your tea. Or your toast. Either way, they're going to go."
A door opened and Sherlock flounced into the kitchen, fully dressed and wearing a teal dressing gown. He took the transparent bag full of eyeballs swimming in a clear liquid out of the breadbox and tried to put it in the fridge. John kept the door shut.
"Where else am I supposed to put it?" Sherlock groused.
"The incinerator at Barts," John replied, looking very dangerous indeed.
Sherlock didn't seem to register the danger. Arthur himself was quite puzzled despite the onset of fear. What was so wrong about having eyeballs lying about? Molly always had some at hand for potions. Perhaps John objected to finding them in the breadbox? He asked as much.
John stared at Arthur incredulously. Arthur noticed Sherlock snuck the eyeballs into the fridge during the distraction. John's attention snapped back to Sherlock, who fled, and then to Arthur. After stewing for a few seconds, John slumped again.
"…Too hard to explain," John sighed. "I want to say Muggles rarely have dealings with eyeballs, particularly in the context of edibles, but I'm pretty sure there is some indigenous tribe out there somewhere that treats it as a delicacy. Well then: British Muggles rarely have eyeballs lying about in their kitchen unless they happen to be a serial killer or Sherlock Holmes."
Arthur wanted to ask John what a serial killer was, but Molly gave him a warning look, so he shut up.
Molly and John resumed breakfast preparations. John let Arthur experiment with a machine whose sole function was toasting bread. It was the most marvellous thing: just place slices of bread—packaged and pre-sliced! Muggles were really brilliant!—into the slots, press down the little knob on the side, and the machine toasted the bread for you. It even let you change the level of browning, and popped the toast right out of the slots to make removal easy. So ingenious!
"That's enough, Arthur," said Molly, after Arthur finished toasting an entire loaf.
Arthur glanced at the sitting room. All of the children were up and eating at the table, which was lengthen to accommodate everyone. Fred and George were in their pyjamas and inhaling beef sausages. Percy was chewing on Danish and reading a Muggle paper called The Sun. Ron and Neville were piling bacon on their toast, and Hermione was spreading butter and marmalade on hers. Ginny was spooning porridge into her bowl, but was having difficulty because she was utterly distracted at the sight of Harry, who was lifting up his plate of toast so John could slide a fried egg on top of it. Sherlock re-entered the kitchen with a mug in hand. Arthur felt his heart leap when he noticed the glass kettle that glowed blue and boiled water without a fire in sight.
"What in the world?" Arthur cried, pointing at the kettle.
"Electric kettle," Sherlock said, "Uses inner coils to heat up the chamber. Note the plug."
Arthur gawked as the little button on the kettle's base snapped up and blue light that illuminated the kettle's glass body turned off. Sherlock removed the kettle from its stand and started pouring boiling water into a teapot like nothing astonishing happened (and, Arthur reminded himself, it was probably true). Sherlock clicked his tongue irritably at another Muggle artefact right next to the kettle—it had a tall white body and glass carafe on the bottom.
"Why haven't you made coffee?" Sherlock called out.
"We're out of grounds," John replied.
"We have beans," Sherlock countered, peering into a ceramic pot.
"The blade grinder isn't working," said John while sliding more scrambled eggs into Ron's plate.
Sherlock pulled a face at an object that was presumably a blade grinder (it had a plug! Oh, the range and variety of eclecktic artefacts in this house!), which was coated inside and out with a sticky substance.
"We're ordering a burr grinder," he declared.
John nodded absently, "Yes, dear."
Arthur reluctantly tore his eyes away from the gadgets in the kitchen and joined the others at the table. He was glad to be affirmed of his conviction that having a meal with Muggles was no different from having a meal with wizards. True, the instruments through which the food was made and delivered were different, but the laughing and eating and talking and squabbling over the last piece of bacon was just like the breakfasts back at home.
"Do you have anything planned for today?" asked Molly.
"I planned a trip to London Zoo," said John. "But Sherlock just got a case. It looked really serious."
"A possible double homicide," said Sherlock gleefully. "No murder weapon, evidence destroyed by fire, and the bodies are missing."
John let out a gusting sigh as the children gawked. Molly looked torn; obviously she didn't want the children to hear about gruesome crimes, but didn't want to offend their Muggle host by protesting, especially after all shouting she'd done last night.
"How do you know there was a murder when there aren't any bodies?" asked George.
"Blood," Sherlock replied. "The amount of blood splattered on the walls suggests the victims lost too much blood to have survived."
The girls squealed and the boys except Percy crowed in morbid fascination. Molly started wringing her hands in visible agitation, but continued to say nothing.
"I really don't think this is a fit conversation for the table," said Percy disapprovingly.
"Oh, stuff it, Percy, I know you're interested," said Fred. "So you're going to go and investigate?"
"No," said Sherlock. "This is a six. I don't leave the flat for anything less than a seven."
The children clamoured for more information. Sherlock spun a rather evocative tale of a retired owner of a construction firm living in Norwood, one John Oldacre. Oldacre hired a new solicitor to update his will. The very day this happened, Oldacre's house was set on fire and Oldacre and his partner, Jo Amberley, went missing. The police tried to question the newly hired solicitor, John McFarlane, but he was missing as well. One of McFarlane's neighbours remembered seeing Amberley at McFarlane's flat in Blackheath, thus the police thought McFarlane killed Oldacre and ran off with Amberley, with whom he was having an affair, after burning the evidence of his crime in the fire that partially destroyed the house.
"Sounds pretty straightforward," Arthur remarked, as he noted Molly had forgotten her previous agitation as she got absorbed into the fascinating narrative.
"Of course it isn't," Sherlock snapped. "Detective Inspector Gregory is less stupid than the usual species of law enforcement: He discovered two different types of blood on the scene and realized the amount of blood required to coat the walls and carpet in the way it was discovered suggest two people were killed."
Arthur's eyes went wide. "So the murderer killed two people on the same night?"
"Presumably. The neighbours had no idea something untoward was going on until the fire," said Sherlock, grinning in a disconcerting way. "They heard no suspicious noises, and one of them was an old lady. I love old ladies. They're better than CCTV."
"Couldn't the murderer use something like a silencing spell?" asked Percy.
"Muggle sound-proofing isn't as good as Magic ones," John said. "Some noise will filter through. And Oldacre's house didn't have extra sound-proofing."
The children goggled as the true complexity of the mystery hit them.
"What are you going to do?" asked Ron.
"Wait for Gregory to call back. Ah," There was ringing noise, and Sherlock pulled out his mobile fone from his dressing gown pocket, slid his thumb against the screen and placed it to his ear. "Sherlock Holmes."
Sherlock listened to the caller. Everyone waited with bated breath.
"Who reported McFarlane was missing?" Sherlock demanded.
He frowned when the caller replied.
"Why not his parents? The papers said he lived with them." More muffled replies. "Then the question isn't why McFarlane killed Oldacre. The question is why his father was at his home."
Sherlock's frown deepened.
"What do you mean you don't understand? It's obvious, surely?"
"Not obvious to us," Ron muttered loudly.
Harry and John quirked their lips as John scribbled on a pad of paper.
"Care to explain?" John asked.
Sherlock lowered the fone and covered the lower part with his hand.
"I take it back. Gregory is as dull as the rest of them," he grumbled, and then brought the phone back to his ear.
"Consider the facts, Inspector: none of the neighbours heard suspicious noises coming from the house on the night of the fire when the murders supposedly happened. No one entered or left the premises. McFarlane's workplace reported him missing, not his parents. You yourself discovered McFarlane lives with his ailing mother—singular. The papers drew the inference that McFarlane lives with his parents—plural. This is not an inference drawn out of vacuum. Picture this: an intrepid reporter goes to McFarlane's flat. The reporter knocks on the door and is greeted by an old man who looks remarkably like John McFarlane. The Sun reported a broken father devastated by the news of his son, coming on heels of his wife's illness. But McFarlane lives only with his mother. Who, then, is this man?"
Arthur couldn't imagine who it could be besides the obvious. Neither could Inspector Gregory, judging from the muffled sounds coming from the fone.
"Of course the man was John McFarlane's father. He needs one to exist," Sherlock snarked.
More muffled protested from the fone.
"Wrong," said Sherlock rudely. "An affair between McFarlane and Amberley is only one possible explanation for their meeting. You're just assuming they're having affair because the meeting was between two gay men. I can name several more: blackmailing for example. No, I'm not suggesting this is a blackmailing case gone awry. No, Oldacre's recent money troubles have little to do with the meeting."
"So what really happened?" asked John.
Sherlock let out an aggrieved sigh.
"Oldacre and McFarlane's mother were the ones who were having an affair. Amberley confronted McFarlane, and realized the extent of Oldacre's duplicity after the meeting. So Amberley carried out his plan of revenge. Oh yes, he was planning this for a long time. Run additional tests on the blood samples, you should find anticoagulants. This is the reason why the neighbours heard nothing untoward despite the evidence there was huge fight. There was nothing to hear."
"So are you saying Amberley killed Oldacre and faked his own death?" Inspector Gregory shouted, so loudly everyone could hear him from the fone.
"No," said Sherlock. "There was no murder. Amberley splattered his and Oldacre's blood all over the walls, and then set the house on fire to destroy the more important evidence: photos of John Oldacre. He wanted you think McFarlane killed them as long as possible, so he destroyed the photos to make sure you wouldn't draw the correct inference if and when you arrested McFarlane."
"So where is Oldacre? And what do Oldacre's photos have anything to do with the case?"
"Oldacre is with McFarlane's mother," said Sherlock. "The old man at McFarlane's house was him."
There was a stunned silence.
"So let me get this straight," said John. "Oldacre was having a long-term affair with McFarlane's mother. They had a son, who is John McFarlane. Amberley suspected the affair, and his suspicions were confirmed the moment he saw McFarlane because he looks like Oldacre. Amberley staged a double murder in revenge: he used his and Oldacre's blood that was in storage to paint his house to look like a butcher's backroom. Is that what happened?"
"Yes."
"But why a double murder? And if Oldacre isn't dead and his son is being accused of murder, why isn't he coming forward to the police?"
"That is the question," said Sherlock, running his fingers over his lips. "Why bother staging his own death if Oldacre's death alone would suffice? In that matter, why is Oldacre going along with it, and hiding at the McFarlanes? The longer he waits, the more suspicious he looks, and the case against his son darkens."
The flat drowned in a brooding silence as everyone tried to think the reason why. It was rather comical to see his twin sons look so serious. Percy's brow was clouded and his arms were crossed in a rather pompous picture of deep thought. Ron's entire face scrunched in the effort, and Ginny was pulling at her hair. Harry stared vacantly at his bowl of porridge, and Hermione was muttering to herself. John, on the other hand, just quietly studied Sherlock.
"Could the will have anything to do with it?" asked John.
Sherlock ignored the suggestion and kept talking to himself, eyes closed.
"Or maybe it's the fact Oldacre is a gay man having a heterosexual affair," John speculated.
Sherlock's eyes suddenly lit up.
"Oh," he breathed. "Ooooh, that's brilliant, John, that's exactly it!"
He snatched up the phone again.
"Oldacre and Amberley. What are their affiliations?" A muted reply, "You anticipate me, Inspector. Chess player. LGBT alliance. Yes, it makes perfect sense."
"How?" everyone asked almost at once.
"Amberley played a subtle game," said Sherlock, wriggling in approval. "Oldacre is a well-known and well-respected member of the LGBT community. If he came forward, his affair will go public and his reputation will shatter. If he doesn't come forward, his son is convicted. He loses either way. What does a man do when he has no winning options? Stay in a paralysis. It was very clever—and despicable." He added the last bit after receiving a hard glare from John. "But I believe Oldacre one-upped on him."
Everyone stared.
"Oldacre updated his will," Sherlock explained. "He must've suspected Amberley was up to something. He probably changed the heir from Amberley to McFarlane, so even if Amberley resurfaces, he won't get a penny. Think about it: if indeed the will was updated, then the only person who benefits from Oldacre's death is Oldacre himself: Amberley is foiled, Oldacre avoids a scandal, and he escapes his money problems. I won't be surprised if it was Oldacre who told McFarlane to flee the country. Again, McFarlane fleeing benefits Oldacre: People will continue to suspect McFarlane, which strengthens the case that he's dead."
Arthur felt winded as he took in the convoluted plot. Who would've thought a simple, straightforward looking case had so many subtle and evil motives behind it? And poor Mr. McFarlane, he would've been wrongfully arrested for murder if it weren't for Sherlock.
"So this is what you do," said Arthur in astonishment. "You solve crimes."
"Only interesting ones," said Sherlock dismissively, but Arthur could tell he was very pleased.
"And I blog about it," said John, with a mischievous smile, "Good job, you. That was fantastic. Very subtle bit of reasoning, that. You figured out most of it from the article, didn't you?"
"Of course," said Sherlock, preening.
John chuckled and took the fone from him.
"Inspector Gregory, this is John Watson. Yeah, hi. I'm pretty sure it occurred to you already, but if you want to avoid a big media storm that's not going to help you at all, you'll want to pursue the case from the anticoagulant angle. Handling that stuff isn't easy, and they aren't easy to come by unless you're involved the medical field. Uh-huh. So Amberley either stole it from a blood bank, which adds theft on top of arson, or he had an accomplice who knows how to draw and store blood. Oh, I'm sure you'll do fine. Sherlock said you're smarter than most."
"I did not!" Sherlock shouted, his previous good mood gone like morning dew.
"Oh, yeah," said John blithely, "He was impressed that you figured out there was enough blood splattered around to kill two people. Your data collection was very thorough. He said so: 'you anticipate me'."
"Just that once," Sherlock growled.
"Sure. Bam to you too," John ended the call. "There. That's wraps up the case nicely."
Sherlock, there was no other word for it, pouted like a ten-year-old. John clapped his back playfully before turning to the captivated audience.
"Sooo, zoo?" asked John, with a butter-can't-melt-in-my-mouth-why-would-you-think-of-such-a-thing expression.
Of course, by then the children had no interest in Muggle zoos. They wanted to know other cases Sherlock handled. John pulled up something called a blog—a self-published journal open for public reading from the sound of it—through the computer and started narrating a case titled: 'A Study in Pink'. It was the first case John and Sherlock handled together, and the case that forged their partnership.
"So there he was, all mysterious looking with his cheekbones and texting away on my phone, when out of the blue he asked: Afghanistan or Iraq?"
The children sniggered. Arthur and Molly listen in rapt attention as John continued to narrate another demonstration of Sherlock's massive intellect and corresponding childishness—apparently Sherlock had matured since then, if the way he stopped insulting the law enforcement to their faces was any indication—by retelling how Sherlock deduced John's life story and solved the case of mysterious serial suicides that horrified Muggle London.
"So he got everything right?" asked Hermione breathlessly.
"Everything except for one small thing," said John, raising a finger. "Harry's short for Harriet."
The whole group except Harry (Potter) gasped.
"Harry's your sister!?" Fred howled.
John laughed and nodded. Sherlock rolled his eyes.
"For god sake, I had fifty-fifty chance of getting the gender right," he grumbled.
"You could've just said sibling if you wanted to be politically and syntactically correct," John mocked fondly.
Sherlock scowled. John laughed and wrapped an arm around his shoulders in rough camaraderie. Arthur half-expected Sherlock to shove John away in a fit of childish pique, but he didn't. The scowl eventually faded into a one-sided smirk.
Arthur and Molly relaxed in the kitchen after John directed the children to play something called Mario Kart in the sitting room. Sherlock and John joined them after the children were completely absorbed in the game.
"So how did you two get married?" asked Molly.
Both John and Sherlock took a deep (and noisy) drink from their respective mugs. Inexplicably, Arthur remembered something he observed from his raids and his Auror friends told him about interrogating suspects: the guilty ones often took long thirsty swigs from their cups before lying through their teeth.
"It just kind of happened," said John.
"Oh, come, marriage doesn't just happen," said Molly shrewdly.
Sherlock and John looked at each other.
"Tell us about yours and we'll tell you ours?" Sherlock said, sounding uncertain for the first time.
John looked sideways dubiously, but didn't object. The hemming and hawing fired Arthur's curiosity like no other. What kind of the story could it be that made John and Sherlock so reluctant to talk about it?
Molly took the deal in good faith.
"Well, we were in the middle of a war," she explained. "With You-Know-Who growing more powerful each day and people dying all time, everyone was eloping left, right and center. Arthur and I went ahead and got married right after leaving Hogwarts. We didn't see the point in waiting—we knew we were meant for each other."
"So you two dated at Hogwarts," said John.
"Oh yes," said Molly. Then she sat straighter in eager anticipation. "Now your turn! How did you get married? How did he propose? He was the one who proposed, wasn't he? Or did you? Your lot seems very liberal."
John choked. Sherlock added more sugar to his tea and started swirling the teaspoon with determination.
"Well, he popped question," John stuttered, "At, uh, Barts. In the same lab we first met, in fact."
"Ooooooh…!" Molly crooned.
"It sounds more romantic than it actually was," John muttered.
"What did he say?" asked Molly, her eyes shining.
Sherlock turned completely stone-faced and John turned deeply red. For the first time, Arthur could see John really was a she, despite the unfortunate naming. John floundered, first mouthing: 'It was so embarrassing!' before glaring at Sherlock, beseeching with a mouthed 'Help me out here!', which Sherlock completely ignored. Finally, unable to bring herself to say it, John buried her face in her hands. Arthur wanted to let it go, but Molly kicked him savagely under the table.
"Context," Sherlock abruptly rumbled. "The Moriarty the cabbie mentioned in the taxi-driver case—he wanted to get rid of me. Not just dead, but fallen: my work and reputation ruined, and dead by my own hand."
Molly gasped and covered her mouth. Arthur gaped.
"How?"
"Moriarty set up a kidnapping case and made it look like Sherlock orchestrated it," said John quietly. "He also created a false identity: a jobbing actor called 'Richard Brooke'. Basically he tried to convince the world 'Moriarty' was an actor hired by Sherlock, who faked all the crimes he solved, and finally cooked up the idea of a consulting criminal to make himself look like a genius."
"Preposterous!" Arthur shouted.
Sherlock smirked, a wry twist of bitter self-deprecation.
"A story more palatable than the truth. The police eagerly embraced it. And there are always reporters hungry to publish a story as long as it sounds plausible. An expose article was scheduled for release right around that time."
"So what happened?" asked Arthur urgently. "I can see it was bad situation all around. But if Moriarty succeeded in his ploy, you wouldn't still be working with the police. Also, John, there is no way you would've taken in those lies. You've seen him work."
Sherlock smirked again. This time it looked fond.
"What is it that you said to me, John?" he said. "That night the Yard was preparing a warrant for my arrest. 'I know you're for real. No one could fake being such an annoying dick all the time'.'"
Arthur smiled while Molly was scandalized at the language. John turned pink and muttered: 'Army, thank you, and totally true.'
"So you realized you wanted to marry John when she proved to be the only person who really knew you and stood by your side to the end?" asked Arthur.
This time both Sherlock and John cringed. As Arthur listened to their synchronized groaning, he decided both had an anathema against anything overtly romantic. Arthur could understand. He knew people like that, and it fit Sherlock and John's general temperament.
"…More or less," John forced out behind a grimace.
Later that night, as Arthur flew his family back to the Burrow with Harry and Hermione in tow for their long-awaited visit to their home (minus Molly—she Apparated early to prepare the rooms), he asked Harry a question.
"John and Sherlock, they're not very romantic, are they?"
Harry made a face that eloquently said how the very idea was appalling.
"But they love each other very much?"
"Yes," said Harry with conviction—the kind of conviction that said he was asked that question quite often and usually with varying degrees of scepticism.
"How do you know?"
Harry grimaced. "I just do!" he cried.
Arthur smiled as he stirred the car above the clouds. He wasn't looking for specific reasons, really. Harry's reaction was good enough.
-oo00oo-
Final Notes: I've never been more productive in writing all my life. I love Arthur Weasley. I want to be just like him when I grow up. The thesis went swimmingly with my advisor. Got top grades. Ha! Now I tantalize you with more information on John and Sherlock's marriage. For further clarification, the proposal happened right around the end of TRF, and marriage happened after that. You should also remember Lestrade was their witness :D