A/N: Had a rough weekend and ended up tucked in bed, reading up really old fanfiction and missing the good old times. I essentially disagreed with plotlines from an incredible author whose last story is from before I started, and issued myself a challenge of seeing the outcome of different plot choices in an alternative magical universe to hers. I thought I'd get over it all in my own mind, the plots wanted to spill out onto paper, as they so often do. I am giving my own try at Magic Universe of which I know nothing, except that it gives for incredible natural phenomena descriptions and utter implausible, fast-paced scenes. So, if I am utterly ridiculous at this, my apologies in advance as, as always, I have very little idea of what I'm doing anyway. -csf

Disclaimer: Add any of the usual disclaimers here, I meet them all. I own very little and these characters do not make the list, regrettably. Also, I do not profit from writing or posting.

1.

There had always been hints of magic around Sherlock Holmes. The eyes, so strange and alien and utterly impossible to pinpoint their colour. The stealth of movements in a crime scene or a chase where the detective was all fluid motion, elegant feline meets trained ninja. The sheer dumb luck that had kept him alive even before a certain army doctor had limped into his life by serendipity. So it really was a surprise when the magical creature in the Baker Street Duo ended up being the unassuming, quietly competent, bland looking, tea addicted John Watson.

Moreso as the gift of Magic did not reveal itself from birth, or at the teenage years when all the hormones go wild, nor even after a near death experience such as the one that got John honourably discharged from duty in the army. Nor did it reveal itself gracefully and fully formed as perhaps one would be at literary liberty to attribute to someone like Sherlock. No, it came and went, seemingly at random, much to the embarrassment and confusion of one (retired) army doctor and his consulting detective.

John cannot pinpoint even when it started. Perhaps it had been there all along, but John was unable to sense it, to spot its effects, and it had taken a genius scientist with a penchant for the Improbable to link tiny sprinkles of magic around John to the Spell caster himself.

It could further be noticed that Sherlock took his sweet time making these scientific observations, but then again, when it comes to John, Sherlock's scientific analysis is biased as heck, and Sherlock misses the glaringly obvious more often than not. It's just that John is a black hole of the universe, a bend to the physical laws and defiant to predictions any day of the week, let alone when one factors in Magic.

And also, John is a bit more than stubbornly reluctant to being experimented on, but that is a bridge that Sherlock will cross when he gets to it.

.

Here is the current situation, on a perfectly ordinary day in 221B, a rainy Sunday morning. John has just made a pot of fresh coffee, more for the benefit of his flatmate than his own, as he has noticed that with another case closed for the Yard, Sherlock has taken to that common activity all mortals engage in – sleep. And sleep he has; for fifteen hours straight, as his sleep-deprived body was much in need of respite.

By the time the consultant detective has exited the bedroom with bare feet over the cold wooden floorboards, John had been up for a number of hours, disinfecting the home laboratory and washing up the dishes, while classical music played on the radio (he blames Sherlock for expanding his knowledge and love of classical instrumental music, that, essentially, is not quite the best background theme for cleaning a kitchen as you can't karaoke it for the lack of lyrics). John could, and did, however, sometimes dance along to the music in the safe knowledge that when his flatmate is out for the count in bed asleep, nothing short of Doomsday can awaken him.

'You made the kitchen sparkle,' Sherlock mumbles sleepily, as he first glances around the too bright space. Even the deep sea toned wall tiles now scintillate to the morning sun.

John smirks, but is compassionate by nature and just hands a hot cup of coffee to his friend slumping himself at the kitchen table.

'Eggs or porridge?' he volunteers.

'Surprise me.' Grabbing the morning editions of the papers, Sherlock conveys his need to ease into the morning, his big brain probably still rebooting after the nocturnal updating and defragging.

John goes to the fridge and cupboards and rethinks the request to "surprise" Sherlock, seeing they are out of eggs, porridge, bacon and just about everything else. Take away it is, then. John thinks of ordering Chinese given that it's now so close to lunch time, but he knows that Chinese food's time has now past. Chinese is for the conclusion of a difficult case, a celebration. They missed that ritual due to more pressing matters last night.

For Sherlock the doctor starts to toast out of some stale bread, and for himself he starts the kettle going, eager for another cup of tea.

The flat is still immersed in a fragile stillness and quiet, as the two friends share the kitchen as if they had lived together all of their lives. That is, at least until there is a knocking at the downstairs door and they hear Mrs Hudson welcome DI Lestrade.

John glances at Sherlock, who has tilted his head behind the newspaper sheets, as the only indication that he too is curious as to what brought the inspector to them so soon after the conclusion of last night's case.

Footsteps encompassing two steps at a time bounce up the stairs energetically, and soon the familiar face of the haggard Yarder beams at them from the landing, silently asking to be allowed in, but more than that, checking upon the two occupants.

'Not too early, am I?' he asks John, showing a bag of groceries in his hand.

John would have welcomed him even without the thoughtful gift.

'Finally being perceptive, I see,' Sherlock recognises, as a rare compliment to the inspector. 'John, I'll have the eggs now.'

Greg Lestrade passes him the carton, but the also looks darkly at the heavy bruising on the other man's temple, courtesy of a couple of assailants in the counterfeiting ring last night. 'Have you got that checked out?'

'Yeah, Sherlock saw to that as soon as we got in, like he promised. It's all fine now, just the looks of it will take some time to fade.'

Greg noticed the impressive array of deep purple and reds would have put a lesser man off the Scotland Yard informal assistants list.

'Right. It didn't seem fair to get you guys another case just yet as you John need to heal, and Sherlock here needs to rest. So I brought you something out of the ordinary, really. Something I found stashed at the old Yard archives. Thought you could look at it as a homely puzzle, better than those board games you like to combine into impossible Frankenstein-ed editions of your own.'

Sherlock firmly places down his newspaper at last. 'Nothing wrong with playing Cluedo with the Monopoly board. Why confine the game to a mansion when you can have a whole city? A chance for so many more murder weapons and suspects?'

By his side, John grins, amused, siding with the inspector just up to the moment that Sherlock senses something amiss and rapidly glances his way, and John hastily turns frying eggs into scrambled eggs just to avoid the genius' scrutiny.

Squinting back at the inspector, Sherlock notices: 'We're busy, come back later, inspector.'

John doesn't look up from the stove but hisses under his breath: 'Play nice…'

'Must I?' the detective decries dramatically before a long-suffering sigh. He then pierces the inspector with an iced look and demands: 'Show us your case, Lestrade.'

'It's hardly a fully fledge case, but you see—'

'Lestrade.'

'Fine. I found a Magic manual, so to speak. John is worse for wear from yesterday's counterfeiters, and you need a distraction so that I don't have to worry about a break-in into jail and those crooks being found with more than similar trauma in their locked cells by the warden, so I think we could just give this a go, mate.'

The detective rolls his eyes and looks over to his flatmate, relaying the message that John is the one to explain his reaction to the inspector.

John turns off the stove, pours the scrambled eggs on top of the toast and brings it to his flatmate place at the table.

'Sounds fun, but Sherlock doesn't believe in magic. Neither do I, for that matter, seeing that I'm trained as a physician.'

Greg shrugs, nonplussed. 'But you believe in Cluedo and Monopoly, so why not give this a quick try?'

The blond man squares his jaw. Something in the inspector's insistence has caused a strange glint in his usually affable eyes. He reaches for what appears to be a very old leatherbound book and opens it casually in some random page.

'Spells, it seems. Let's see… Incantamentum —'

The book vanishes from his blunt fingertips, as Sherlock snatches it away. It's his baritone voice stating the first enchantment in 221B's kitchen. 'Incantamentum ad reditus.'

'Sherlock, you're reading the title, mate. Spell for returns, it says. What does that even mean?'

'Latin is a dead language, a bit hard to translate directly to modern English, but there we have it. Incantamentum ad reditas… See, Lestrade? Nothing happening.'

The inspector jumps at that. 'Well, give it time!' he protests.

'How long? An hour? A year? A lifetime?'

John snatches the book back to his hands and mutters: 'It helps if you read it properly, Sherlock. Your Latin pronunciation is a bit thick… It's reditus, not reditas.'

'It's a dead language, John.' The blonde man shrugs. 'Besides, since when do you know Latin so well?'

'I'm a doctor, it comes with the nasty long named diseases. And it says here Incantamentum ad reditus ad vitum, see?'

'It's not very specific, is it? What are we meant to bring back to life? These runny eggs? The skull? Your army career?'

'Oi!' John snapped, Sherlock having touched a nerve. The detective has the grace to look abashed for a millisecond in plain sight of his flatmate.

Lestrade grabs back the book, studying the page with a confused look. John grins, grabs one egg out of the carton and closes his eyes solemnly repeating the words and adding a qualifier for the objective of the spell in neat, if medically informed, Latin.

The kitchen feels suddenly warm as if enveloped in the soft glow of a warm summer day, a soft breeze whizzing through and agitating the doctor's hair and the hem of his jumper. The scent of thick snow spreads paradoxically around them.

John opens his eggs in shock as the egg slick surface morphs into a cocoon of feathers, warm and centred by a fast heartbeat that reverberates around the small creature, pale yellow and frenetic. Next thing, the fluffy feathered ball squeaks and pecks and John's fingers, and John drops it, luckily on the kitchen table and not further onto the floor. The creature – a chicken to all appearances – gets itself up, shakes its feathers and flaps its underdeveloped wings, before starting to search for food and pecking the table. Then, suddenly, just as it appeared, the enchanted creature disappears with a crack of sound (a flat G tone) and an eggs wobbles on the scarred wooden table surface.

'Geez, what was that? All I said was Incantamentum ad—' John starts again, but Sherlock nimbly cover his mouth with one of his huge bony hands. John thinks better than to protest against a good precaution.

The inspector clears his throat. 'Not sure what you used to clean this kitchen or if it's okay for us to be breathing in its fumes, John…' he starts.

'You try it,' the detective urges Lestrade, passing him the book. He looks quite alive now, his grey eyes strong and piercing, collecting data.

'Ugh, are you sure?'

'Quite sure. We must test the hypothesis.'

'Okay. Wait, what is the hypothesis?'

'That John has just performed magic before our very eyes.'

The inspector doesn't know what to say so he says nothing, just fakes his best smile. It comes off crooked. 'Incantat— Incantamentem— No, Incantamentum. Incantamentum ad reditus ad vitum … fadsgasdgazgfazdfgx.'

Nothing happens. The egg remains an egg. It could be because the inspector clearly does not need to know Latin to be a great detective inspector.

Sherlock tries himself, his wiry frame almost vibrating in uncontained expectation. He uses the flourishes of the best Latin that a Public-School upbringing could provide.

Nothing happens again.

In a strop, Sherlock gets up from his chair and walks off. 'That's not fair and I'm having the first shower, John!'

He bangs the bathroom door shut after himself.

John might have been the only one to notice that Sherlock has pocketed his phone to run some research on John's newfound abilities. And that means that Sherlock has taken the evidence of his own eyes very seriously, that John may indeed have some unbeknown magical powers.

John looks at the inspector, who is now cracking the egg open over Sherlock's abandoned coffee cup. Just a runny egg falls from the shell.

What on Earth has just happened?

John shakes his head to dispel a growing headache.

From the bathroom door, Sherlock's head emerges as he shouts: 'Thanks, John, that really was a breakfast surprise!' And the door slams shut.

.

TBC