Chapter Text
It took some careful negotiation on Mycroft’s part to provide Linny with both a reasonably acceptable uniform and a form of compensation that she would appreciate. There was a bit of a hairy moment when he had to explain that they would need to continue having his regular domestic staff come in for appearance’s sake, but a reminder that they had to continue to appear unmagical made her straighten with apparent interest. “It is being a challenge,” she mused. “I is cleaning, but leaving cleaning for . . . you is saying maids and domestic staff?”
He was relieved that her atrocious grammar was not a function of lesser intellect, but of severely curtailed education. And that education was the hook that allowed him to provide her payment. Upon showing her the computer, and advising her to be careful about magic around it lest it be damaged by the magic, Linny was promptly fascinated. “It is being floo call and letters and library all at same time!” she exclaimed.
Anthea had leant over. “Would you like me to teach you how to use it?”
“Linny is . . . Linny is being able to use Master and Mistress Holmes’ things?”
“If you are careful, which I believe you will be, and promptly give it back when I am in need of it,” Anthea told her.
When Linny discovered online courses in very short order, Mycroft was able to negotiate paying for her to take the courses in lieu of regular wages. She had already proved worth her weight in gold when, upon cleaning his personal office while Anthea had left with Ellouise to begin finding other magical children, she had discovered two tiny transmitters hidden in gifts from foreign diplomats. After some discussion, they were moved to a position in the eaves of the house where they would pick up nothing of interest, but would continue to broadcast the expected location.
By the next day Mycroft already didn’t know how they’d done without her when she saved Ellouise from a self-created misfortune as the baby had got hold of a tablecloth while the adults’ backs were turned and nearly dragged a whole pot of still near-boiling tea over the table’s edge onto herself.
John arrived without Sherlock in tow that afternoon. “So, while Sherlock is distracted with potions practice I thought I should catch you up on a few things. Firstly, I’ve stopped by Saint Mungo’s, the magical hospital, and Mycroft, you have an appointment Tuesday morning next week. Clearwater has your case, and she wanted me to warn you that until she’s run a few more intensive diagnostics she doesn’t want to make any definite statements about the diagnosis. That said, she also seemed very confident that her team should be able to recover a few more memories as well as avoid any too-significant upsets in the architecture of your mind.”
That was very good news overall, and even better, Tuesday was a day that had nothing that couldn’t be moved to another time. “It is much appreciated, John,” Mycroft said.
It was also interesting to note how relaxed the doctor was, his native accent peeking through.
The next Tuesday John met them outside an empty storefront with a vibrating Sherlock in tow, (if Mycroft hadn’t known that John was no doubt watching Sherlock like a hawk he might have been concerned about his brother’s sobriety) led them through a ridiculous pantomime and into a hospital that looked like it belonged in a Monty Python sketch. “My brain hurts,” muttered Anthea dryly to him.
They were led up to the Janus Thickey ward for those with serious spell damage. “John!” Sherlock exclaimed, pointing out a blond man gesticulating wildly.
John rolled his eyes. “I still don’t know what you want with Gilderoy Lockhart, Sherlock, but I promise you, he’s been a useless lump ever since he made a massive obliviate backfire on himself. Actually,” John mused, “He was always a useless lump.”
“How did you make his acquaintance?” Mycroft asked, curiously. The man was significantly older than John.
John winced. “He taught defense at Hogwarts for a year, if you can call it that,” he said.
Sherlock shook his head. “He should have continued his specialisation in cosmetics,” he informed them. “His various skincare and cosmetic tips in those works of fiction of his are quite excellent.”
The doctor looked extremely amused as he said, “Well at least I can stop worrying about what you wanted those things for.”
“Which things are those?” Mycroft asked, now feeling wary.
John rolled his eyes. “I was concerned when I saw Sherlock buying the complete collection of his books which are filled with ridiculous tripe that he claimed were his adventures fighting dark creatures.” He inclined his head thoughtfully, “See, I wish I’d known that you could trust his cosmetic information. I would have at least paid attention to those parts of the books instead of joining the Ravenclaws in setting them on fire at the end of the year.”
“I might have known, Watson,” said Healer Clearwater. “Was it your idea?”
“Not at all,” John replied smoothly. “I believe it was an offhand comment by Ron Weasley. The only reason he didn’t participate was that the family needed to resell the books for the money. I think Potter and Granger showed up, though.”
“Hermione Granger burnt seven books?”
“I’d have thought you’d be more surprised by Roger Davies,” John said. “Though I’ll admit I didn’t know him well.”
She shook her head at him and said, “Welcome to St. Mungo’s Mr. Holmes. Please come this way. I must admit, Mr. Holmes, I had to fight for the privilege of treating you as some of our more theoretically-minded healers always want in on treating a non-magical person.”
“Is there that much of a difference?” Sherlock asked.
Both healers went to speak at the same time, but John immediately ceded the floor. “Please,” he told her. “It’s your specialisation.”
Healer Clearwater smiled briefly at him, then said, “For some things it makes little difference. However, those are usually small fixes, broken bones, burns, certain kinds of spell damage. However, in some cases our treatment uses the innate magic of a patient for treatment, and treating a muggle requires . . . adaptation of the spell so as not to attempt to draw on resources that aren’t there.”
“Would that cause a failure of the spell, or would it draw on another source?” Sherlock inquired.
The two healers winced. “There is the smallest amount of magic in every living thing,” John said. “Unfortunately, it seems to be essential for ongoing health and welfare of a living organism. The spell would suck up what little was there and use it up all at once, like if you tried to run a laptop off a AA battery. The spells wouldn’t work and there have been cases where an incautious spellcaster put the muggle into a coma.”
Sherlock, in that way others saw as insensitive, bulled forward. “What are the alterations to the spell?” he demanded.
Clearwater looked perturbed. John, who was more than fluent in Sherlock’s tendencies translated. “What he means is, ‘please reassure me that you have competently altered the spells for treating my brother, as I will be very distraught were something to happen to him due to rank incompetence.’ Which isn’t much more polite, of course, but we try not to ask the moon.”
“Ah,” said the woman.
“John!” whinged Sherlock.
Mycroft’s brother was distracted by a lengthy, quite technical discussion of how the spells were altered. It was quite reassuring in its way, to hear that all this magic had rules and rationales behind it. It boiled down to casting a first spell that would redirect the energy drain to the caster before casting the acting spell. He was separated from the others and taken to an examining room with various Norse runes written on the walls, floor, ceiling and the door itself. “What is the purpose of the runes?” he inquired.
Healer Clearwater paused, before saying, “The wards are for a variety of things. Some of them are to keep any effects of spells from outside the room, outside,” she gestured at the door. “Some of them act to mute sound going in and out, privacy you know. A few of them are to calm the patients as it is much more difficult to treat someone who is upset, and a few of these are to prevent the wider effects of a spell from leaving the room.” She eyed him a moment, then said, “If you would like Healer Watson to join us, I can ask him in.”
It was tempting to have a trusted medical professional present, but Mycroft shook his head. “No. If he’s not there my brother will doubtless manage to get himself arrested by poking his nose where it shouldn’t be.”
“Very well,” she said. “I’m going to start by casting a few diagnostics. These are more detailed than the ones Watson and I did at your home, and should give me a better notion of what we’re looking at.”
A few minutes later she had parchment in front of her, filled with notes and diagrams. She was frowning rather intensely at one. “You appear concerned,” Mycroft stated, inquiringly.
Healer Clearwater looked at him, then said, “This indicates the obliviate spell pinpointed some area of your memory that was quite distant from the other parts. The bulk of these cover a time period over the last, maybe, six years? And yet this one is from literally decades back.”
That all but confirmed John’s theory. “My brother did receive a letter from Hogwarts. While I was away at boarding school when he and my mother were visited by Ms McGonagall, he wrote me with the contents of the letter, and my mother wrote me, informing me of events and that I was to discourage further contact. At least, that is what Sherlock has told me. I cannot recall those events myself.”
“Gibbering incompetent Gryffindor,” snarled the woman. Her use of the word made it clear she was using the house as a term of opprobrium. “The failure of the spell has left the memory mostly intact, but it’s . . . hidden. Masked. I can’t . . .” She trailed off. “Pardon me, I need to consult with someone else, because we may yet be able to rescue a few more of these memories.” With that she hurried out the door. It was only a few minutes later that she returned carrying a silver bowl, and with a man who had blonde hair, brown eyes, the green robes of a healer and was oozing smugness. John followed them in, firmly shutting the door behind him and leaning on it with the air of someone keeping something at bay. When the doctor rolled his eyes demonstratively, Mycroft realised he was closing Sherlock out.
“Hello,” said the smug man. “I am Healer Cadwaller. I am here in order to assist with your memory.” He was talking down to Mycroft. Talking down. A flash of ire seized him.
“He’s non-magical, Cadwaller, not a Goyle,” drawled John, who was leaning against the door in a studied posed of bored nonchalance and speaking with that native wizarding accent. “And the only reason he doesn’t know about magic is because one of those idiots in the DMLE flailed his way to a barely successful obliviate.”
Cadwaller’s eyes snapped up to John. “Watson?” he gaped. “What are you doing wasting your time on a mu – muggle?”
“Spending time with people who are civilised enough to hire human waitstaff for the restaurants and have decent access to something more sophisticated musically than the caterwauling of Celestina Warbeck,” John said. “And are also apparently intelligent enough not to risk being caught using foul language by their coworkers,” he added. The delivery, though not the word choice, was a pitch perfect imitation of Sherlock at his most scathing.
“Muggles have restaurants?” asked Cadwaller.
Clearwater sighed. “If you weren’t the expert at the treatment uses of this thing,” she gestured with the bowl, “I wouldn’t have you here at all.”
John interrupted. “The bowl is called a penseive, Mycroft, and it literally holds memories. There is another use for it, but for the moment, what they plan to do is try to remove a few of your memories, place them in the penseive for safekeeping, then clear out what can be cleared in terms of the spells and put them back in.”
There was a thump on the door, causing John to roll his eyes and begin rapping out a message on the door in Morse Code. ‘Shut up Sherlock’.
Another thump followed by the beginnings of a rant in Morse Code caused John to sigh. “I’m sorry Mycroft, but I’ll have to be outside.” He opened the door, shoving Mycroft’s shockingly anxious-looking younger brother back. “Sherlock, you have got to try acting like-“ the closing door cut off John’s lecture.
“I see why Watson had to stay outside,” Clearwater said. She turned to Mycroft. “Is he always that . . . importunate?”
“Yes,” Mycroft told her. “Shall we continue?”
And so they did. It was fascinating to watch. The pair of them used their wands to extract silvery liquid that was apparently one of Mycroft’s memories, place it gently in the bowl, then cast several spells, after which the memory would be placed back in Mycroft’s head. Following which more spells would be cast. Mycroft used the time to examine his own memories, now finding holes in his own internal mental structure that he hastened to resolve with the now-clear remembrances.
Cadwaller seemed to become more and more upset as time passed, while Clearwater was intrigued by something. It was Cadwaller who broke first, stomping to the door and dragging John in, who was followed by Sherlock, Anthea right on his heels. “Watson! What have you been playing at! You’ve been teaching muggles occlumency?”
John blinked at him, then looked at Mycroft. “I really had no idea that method of loci stuff bore any resemblance to occlumency,” he said, “No wonder you’re both so creepy when you want to be.” Then he turned to Cadwaller. “I haven’t, but I also fail to see what about teaching someone how to organise their own minds has offended you.”
That was a terrible sentence, Mycroft mused while he looked expectantly at the green-robed man. “Muggles can’t do occlumency,” snapped Cadwaller.
“True,” John said, “But they can think, and it’s entirely possible for a person to want some sort of internal, mental filing system.”
“Do you have one, John?” Sherlock asked eagerly.
John shook his head. “I had too much going on to spend the extra time. Based on my intentions of getting out of the Wizarding World at the time, I learnt a few occlumency shortcuts and took the calculated risk I wouldn’t need to deal with a serious legilimencer.”
“Not the point! Muggles shouldn’t be doing that!” he gestured in Mycroft’s direction.
“Why?” Mycroft asked him as mildly as he could. “Do you have some sort of moral objection to my thinking?”
“Clearly,” muttered Clearwater.
Cadwaller ignored everyone but John. “Look, John, I don’t know what you’ve been doing the last fifteen years, but you cannot tell me in all seriousness you have come to believe that tripe that muggles should be treated the same as wizards. Just look at how they live!”
Mycroft had never been a victim to prejudice, something he was well aware of. This new experience was . . . startling.
“How they live?” John inquired. “What part of how they live indicates their inferiority?”
“The filth, for one!”
John nodded, then hummed contemplatively. “Have you ever seen a normal middle class muggle or just the farmer who owned the campgrounds for the World Cup?”
“I don’t need to,” snapped Cadwaller.
“Well, if you’re going to sink into completely baseless prejudice, and a textbook telling a story from nine hundred years ago does not count as a rational base, could you please get on with this? It’s not as though Mycroft actually has the ability to stop a legilimens. In fact, given the degree of organisation you have implied, his mind would be far easier to parse,” John pointed out in a statement that appeared to somehow comfort the other man and was deeply upsetting to Mycroft. “I assume we can trust your professionalism in this?” John added.
Sherlock smiled darkly. “Yes. I would so hate to have to speak to someone at the DMLE about this. Especially since my brother has already been brought to the attention of someone in some authority there.”
“Yes, Harry Potter and I had quite a civilised conversation,” John commented.
Cadwaller winced and finished his job while Healer Clearwater kept a close eye on him. At last they were finished. There were some inconsistencies in terms of his interactions with Auror Stephens, the sense that he was meeting the man for the first time when it was clearly not so, his surprise at learning of magic when he had Sherlock’s Hogwarts letter to go by, but the cognitive dissonance was easy to resolve with the understanding of the tampering with his memory, and a small headache he had barely been aware of over the past several days fully dissipated.
Clearwater practically threw her colleague out, then said, “This all appears to have been resolved. Some of your memories may take some time to settle, but any such issues should clear up in a day or two as your mind becomes used to the new shape of things. Have Healer Watson contact me if something arises, but I believe I should not need to see you again for this.”
“I do appreciate it, Healer Clearwater,” Mycroft told her. “And things are much clearer now, thank you.”
As they left the strange hospital, Mycroft let his younger brother cross-question him about his experiences. When it became particularly wearing, as Sherlock was wont to be, he snuffed out Sherlock’s incessant questions by stating, “As you do not recall the event of it being done to you, I suspect that the experience of a competent casting of the spell is not an experience I can provide data on.”
Sherlock blinked. “When was this?”
“A case I believe you do not recall,” Mycroft told him. “The Goldstein murder. It was taken from NSY by what is now clearly aurors, and you never complained to me about the issue again. I had thought you’d deleted the notion, to avoid being irritated by it, but it seems clear now that your memory was interfered with.”
Sherlock looked stricken. “I-“
John cut him off. “I can ask around, but Sherlock, I know you. You probably lunged at the poor auror, going on about magic and evidence and murder and didn’t once tell him or her that you’re a muggleborn wizard with no training.”
As Mycroft could imagine just such a thing happening he let the pair of them argue, simply enjoying the reduced tension that came with so many little things he had been unaware of leaving him. “You look better,” Anthea told him, leaning in closely.
“I feel better,” he informed her. “I had not realised how many actions were being affected by those compulsions and how much I was struggling with these gaps in my memory. Some do remain, but they are explicable and I am not being forced to think around them as I was.”
John interrupted. “Mycroft, do you need me to answer any questions? Sherlock wants to go diving into his mind palace and I need to get the shopping.”
“Are we out of milk again?”
“Of course you’re out of milk,” Anthea told Sherlock with some asperity. “You’re always out of milk. It’s a running joke with everyone who knows you. Do you have a brownie living in your home?”
John got an arrested look on his face. “I am an idiot. Mycroft?”
“Go on,” he told the doctor. “I have some work I would like to catch up on, now that I am not working around these mental blocks.”
Anthea shook her head as they vanished around a corner. “I hadn’t expected there actually was a brownie in 221, but even Sherlock can’t use that much milk.”
They left for home, discussing the complexities of entry into the wizarding world, now that they had the opportunity to see more wizards in their natural habitat, and whether and when they should take Ellouise with them when meeting other families with magical children.
****************
The hospital visit had been most illuminating, including and perhaps most especially in relation to the poor regard wizards held for the non-magical. When they returned home, John immediately left to do the shopping, and Sherlock went to check on the experiment under his bed. Mipsy was there, clearing away dust, and he hurried to pull out the previously undisturbed plate of toenails covered in various types of nail polish, soaking in water drawn directly from the Thames.
“Oh! Master Holmes!” exclaimed the elf. “I is not expecting you. Mipsy is taking off the shield now.”
That was concerning. “What is it the shield does, Mipsy?” he asked.
She looked at him, clearly worried. “It is being for preservation,” Mipsy said. “I is knowing Master Holmes is wanting his experiments left alone.”
“Preservation?” Sherlock asked. “Do you mean that it is keeping my experiments in stasis?”
“I is not knowing what ‘stasis’ is,” Mipsy now looked miserable.
He could hardly be angry for a mistake of that nature, if stasis was what is was, so Sherlock explained, “Stasis is when something is kept exactly the same. As if it were frozen in time.”
“Oh, yes, Master Holmes,” she replied nodding. “It is making sure that the experiment does not change so that when Master Holmes returns he may go on as when he stopped before,” she looked anxiously at him. “Has Mipsy been wrong?”
Well, that was both illuminating and meant clarification was needed. “Unfortunately, Mipsy, the point of this one was to see what happened if it was left alone. I appreciate your effort, but most of my experiments are meant to see what happens after time has passed.” He thought a moment. “Why don’t we go around to all of them now and we can decide how to mark those as separate from items that need a preservation spell.”
“Master Holmes is not angry?” she asked, eyes wide. “You is as good as Master Watson!”
“Why should I be angry?” he inquired. “Your efforts were well-meant and did not disrupt the experiment, merely delayed the outcome. You did not know that I wished specifically for a lack of preservation, which error rests on myself for not informing you.”
She smiled. “You is explaining what you is wishing for each experiment, then, Master Holmes?”
“I will,” Sherlock told her.
As they walked around the flat, Sherlock discussed with her what her abilities were regarding preservation and protection. After some false starts she was even able to properly sterilise equipment for later use. Then he found himself involved in a lengthy explanation of bacteria and viruses and how they worked. By the time John had returned from his thrice-weekly argument with the chip-and-pin machine, the flat was cleaned, Sherlock’s experiments were appropriately delineated and protected, and Mipsy declared, “I is speaking to Linny! She is liking knowing about *bacteria*.” With a crack the little creature vanished.
“Why were you discussing bacteria?” John inquired as he put the groceries away with his usual ostentation. Sherlock ignored the attempts to force him to participate in such things, as he always did.
“Did you know that a house elf, if trained, can properly sterilise things?” the detective asked.
John blinked a moment in surprise. “No, but I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. Are you using her services for such things as well?”
“I don’t see why not,” Sherlock said. “She seemed to enjoy the challenge. Incidentally, I will need more test tubes.”
“Oh yes, incidentally,” John replied, amused. Then he proceeded to tempt out the brownie living in their flat and communicated with it by means of broad gestures that it needed to stop stealing their milk, and John would buy it proper cream and put it in a bowl for the creature's use. After which he poured a bowl of cream and the little creature which bore a rather great resemblance to some plush toys Sherlock had seen before in shops happily settled in to drink.
“The thing about brownies,” John commented, “is that they are far more trouble than it’s worth to get rid of. If you try to force them out, they effectively curse your home with bad luck before they leave and it can be years before it wears off. And you wouldn’t find it very interesting when every single experiment you do fails miserably due to innumerable factors you wouldn’t be able to plan for. Meteor strikes aren’t out of the question.”
Well, a meteor strike would have been interesting, but he wouldn’t want to cause Mrs. Hudson the trouble.
The next few weeks were delightful as John gave Sherlock lectures about the ways in which magic worked, and Sherlock learnt a variety of spells, potion-making techniques and the basic functions of runes and rituals for warding. He also made the acquaintance of Daphne Greengrass. While John was struggling with reacquainting himself with his family’s estate, arranging for Harriet Watson to have the assistance of a house elf and acting as go-between for Mycroft on various political endeavours (in between his usual shifts at the surgery and helping Sherlock on cases) Sherlock had quite an equitable exchange with Ms Greengrass on the topics of wizarding culture, history and lifestyle as compared to nonmagical ones.
She and John had a regular debate going as to how Sherlock would have been sorted had he gone to Hogwarts. Her contention was Gryffindor because of how reckless he was – she may have been dragged into one of his stakeouts – and John insisted on Ravenclaw, because Sherlock’s recklessness had nothing to do with heroism and everything to do with, “The blind need to know all the facts and prove he’s right.”
“But given how Slytherin his brother is and how very much he acts out against Mycroft, Gryffindor is almost inevitable,” she pointed out.
John had grinned, “But you’re forgetting that Mycroft isn’t a wizard, so Sherlock wouldn’t have a particular House to act against. I grant, if they’d both been wizards it might have gone that way, but . . .” John had paused. “Well, there’s the muggle factor, but there’s also a personal one that militates against it as well.”
Sherlock, remembering his childhood idolisation of Mycroft, the way his brother had seemed the only one to understand him, had silently agreed. Indeed, based upon the implication that one might negotiate with this sorting hat, had he been following Mycroft into Hogwarts he would likely have tried very hard to be placed in the same house.
However, now, after weeks of waiting, Sherlock was going to be allowed to follow along on an Auror’s investigation and he wasn’t going to waste time maundering about such things.
John had contacted old friends and called in a favour or two, and now Sherlock and John were in a small Welsh town meeting up with the investigating officer. The woman who approached them in her red robes was remarkably not drawing attention. “John!” she exclaimed, smiling.
“Marianne, it’s good to see you again,” John replied. “This is my friend, Sherlock Holmes, the muggleborn detective I told you about. Sherlock, this is Marianne Beaton.”
Despite what Mycroft and John thought, Sherlock was able to learn from prior mistakes, and with the intention of making a good first impression on these people who had not known him before but that he intended to work with as he did Scotland Yard, said, “Pleasure to meet you. Based on John’s constant concern about my reaction, this is a relatively minor incident?”
She nodded. “This way,” said the auror and gestured down the street. “The idea was for you to get an idea of how we investigate and such, and this way we can both get our feet wet without anything significant at stake.”
“Understood,” Sherlock said. He was still getting used to the way these things worked after all, and until he had learnt all the details of how wizards varied from the non-magical in terms of tells, evidence and how their abilities allowed them hide evidence, better to observe. “Do you have a spell on over your robes to make them unremarkable?”
Ms Beaton shook her head, a slightly derisive smile crossing her lips. “No, most muggles just don’t seem to notice it.”
John sighed softly, shooting Sherlock a wry look. “It’s not that they don’t notice, Marianne, they’re all noticing. They’re just assuming that you’re dressed in a costume for some reason, such as a fancy dress party.”
“Not entirely true,” Sherlock said, eyeing two young men across the street. “Those two appear to believe us to be in a cult.”
The auror looked startled. “How can you tell?”
“I read lips,” Sherlock answered carelessly.
She mouthed the words in silent repetition, then said, “I don’t believe I’ve heard of such a spell.”
Before Sherlock could say anything too acerbic in response, John stepped in. “He means looking at the shapes a person’s mouth forms when speaking and using that to determine what they’re saying.”
“Oh, mouth-watching,” she said. “It hadn’t occurred to me, but of course a muggle would need to develop that sort of skill without listening spells.” She shot an admiring look at him. “I’m impressed. It’s not easy, especially at this distance. I know I couldn’t do it, but then I’m terrible at it.”
Her admiration was genuine, and the note that wizards had different terminology for such things was set aside for later investigation. “So, what is the crime being investigated,” Sherlock asked.
“Muggle baiting of a quite minimal kind, but the man apparently has some sort of mental . . . issue,” she said. “I’m not completely certain of the details there, but this was the sort of practical joke most muggles shrug off and are simply irritated by, and it sent Mr. Gordon into some sort of panic. We’re here to find out who did it, and also to be sure it was simply a practical joke that happened to strike a vulnerable point, rather than something seriously malicious.”
They arrived at the house, and Sherlock, glancing through the windows had already picked out sufficient detail to see that the man who lived there had been taken to hospital recently and suffered from some variant of diagnosable paranoia. “So what was it that was done to his keys that sent him to hospital?” Sherlock inquired after the door had been unlocked with a quick spell and they walked inside. He was already noting the several identical keys, located on a key hook by the door, on a coffee table, by the television, a glance showed two more in the kitchen.
“Someone cast a spell that caused his keys to shrink to nothing. It wears off after a few hours, but they did it a few times and he became quite upset.” She was casting spells, one to pick up any traces of spellcasting that only noted the residuum on the keys and that someone had apparated into and out of the building several times, one that highlighted any objects that had been misplaced and a spell that recreated a diagram of the interior of each room with exacting precision on a piece of parchment. “The misplacement spell, what precisely does that do?”
Ms Beaton shrugged. “It’s of somewhat limited use, but objects that are in frequent contact become, from a magical perspective, associated with each other. This spell doesn’t work for people who constantly rearrange items or who do not place items in particular places, but it can sometimes help you in discovering key evidence that has fallen behind a sofa, or something that has been misplaced that you wouldn’t normally notice, like a mug someone uses for his toothbrush being used for tea. You wouldn’t find the mug remarkable if you saw it on a counter, but the spell would tell you that it had been taken from its normal position in the bathroom.”
As Sherlock circled the room, he noted that it appeared that two people lived in this home, but that those details were being concealed. Rather ineptly to Sherlock’s perspective. The couch had been disarranged as though another person had slept on it. Hastily searching through the laundry and then the cupboards, he found sheets that bore the faintest scent of sweat, but folded with the perfect precision only managed by the perfectionist housewife, a store employee, a machine or by magic. The degree of cleanliness of the house was of a somewhat indifferent housekeeper - suggesting someone had used the sheets, then folded them with magic and put them back into the cupboard to conceal their use.
“Do you have any information that indicates who was living with him?” Sherlock asked the woman, who had been watching his search with some perplexity.
She blinked. “All our information indicated he lives alone, although he apparently has a close friend nearby who visits frequently. Why are you asking?”
“Based upon the evidence, the used sheets that have clearly been folded using magic-” he paused as she cast her spell and indeed picked up the very faint traces of magic use, “And the indications that another person has been living here and hiding his or her presence, I would presume that this person has been quite deliberately and maliciously trying to convince the victim that he is far more mentally ill than he is. In fact, I would go so far as to consider the possibility that he was never ill to begin with.”
As Sherlock led her through his interpretations of the data he had collected from the misplacement spell (a very useful piece of magic and one he intended to master), Marianne Beaton’s face grew grimmer and grimmer. “Once we have spoken to that friend of his,” she said, “Just to see whatever further information we might gather, I shall have to call in specialists in rituals to determine the magical signature in greater detail.”
“You cannot use the sweat or other epithelials on the sheets or sofa to narrow the search parameters for the person?” Sherlock inquired. While the trace amounts of DNA that might be found would not necessarily be of use to Scotland Yard, he rather thought that magic ought to be able to provide some sort of improved tracing mechanism.
She shrugged. “Perhaps, but usually it is quite difficult to make any sort of genuine trace of something as generic as sweat back to a person, unless it is in sufficient quantity. It will be looked for, but I can’t guarantee anything will be found.”
That was unexpected. “But surely there are trace amounts of DNA in the sweat,” he said. “Perhaps not enough for nonmagical means to determine at this stage of technological development, but surely magic could be used for this.”
“DNA?” she asked. Then she turned to John. “What sort of muggle notion is that?”
Sherlock was about to snap, when John shot him a warning look. “DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid is the coding in our bodies that make us who or what we are. So, DNA is what tells our eyes that they should be blue or brown, or how tall we are. Muggles have the means of using hair, blood, spit . . . whatever tiny bits of a person you could name, to see the code. It takes a very long time to map the whole code for one person, but it can be used to match someone with something. Say, a hair found at a crime scene can be matched to a person using his or her blood.”
Ms Beaton blinked a moment, then gave John a wry smile. “When you wrote and said he’d be more than capable of working around our abilities, you weren’t exaggerating. Muggles have advanced enough to use it as a trace?”
“Not so much a trace,” John said, “As comparing two samples for a match. They find a hair at a murder scene, then compare it to a suspect, find the two samples are from the same person, which allows them to confirm that person was at the scene or in contact with someone – much as you were describing before.”
“Still,” she said, looking intrigued, “I should speak to someone in the Department of Mysteries to see if some of this muggle research into – what did you call it?”
“DNA,” Sherlock supplied.
The auror nodded. “Right, DNA. I should ask if there is any way for that to be practically applied, magically.”
“Department of Mysteries?” Sherlock asked John.
“R&D of the Ministry for Magic,” John replied succinctly as they arrived at the home of Mr. Gordon’s supposed friend.
Sherlock, now accustomed to seeing the telltale signs of magic, saw the eavestrough around the roof did not appear to be held up by fixtures in any way. Some plants that he recognised from his reading of wizarding botanical texts were in the front garden. Ms Beaton quickly flicked her wand as they approached, clearly casting a spell on herself.
The man who opened the door to her knocking wore baggy clothing and quite the longest suit jacket Sherlock had ever seen. He also very promptly shoved a hand in his pocket, his hand shifting inside as though gripping at something. “Can I help you with something, ah - Miss?” he asked.
Impulsively, Sherlock spoke. “That would be ‘Officer,’ would it not?” he asked rhetorically. “Of course, you meant to say auror, but stopped in your bid to convince us that you are an ordinary nonmagical person. But no one would be foolish enough to call a uniformed police officer ‘Miss’ in this day and age. It’s simply asking for trouble.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about-“
John spoke from behind them. “Then you’ll have trouble explaining this,” he said, holding up an evil-looking potato with arms, legs, an angry face, which was clutching one of the magical plants very tightly. Then it bit John, who swore vociferously and dropped it. “Bloody hate gnomes,” he said.
High-pitched swearing from inside the house came in response and the man swung his head around to look at something behind him. Sherlock spied its reflection in a glass cabinet door, reflected from a mirror elsewhere in the house. “Is that a jarvey?” he inquired as mildly as he could.
Auror Beaton looked quite irate. “As our information indicated you were a muggle, this suggests you’ve been hiding that you’re magical from Mr. Gordon as well as the authorities. It’s quite suspicious.”
“Even more suspicious is the fact that Mr. Gordon had apparently had a pet ferret at one point, recently enough to still have some of the paraphernalia about,” Sherlock said.
Marianne Beaton said, “I think that’s quite enough at this point to lay charges, don’t you think, Mr. Donleavy?”
The man suddenly looked desperate. “It’s just a muggle,” he pleaded. “I was just having a bit of fun!”
“Making a man who was perfectly fine believe he was going mad is a bit of fun?” John asked, incredulous.
In a statement of the precise illogic John had previously spoken of, the man said, “Well, if they can’t see what’s in front of their noses-“
“Is that before or after your blatant violation of laws intended to keep the non-magical in ignorance of magic?” Sherlock asked.
Marianne Beaton suddenly smiled beatifically. “That’s all but a confession, and certainly enough for me to come into your house and borrow your fireplace,” she said. “John, would you be so kind as to ensure this gentleman does not escape while I call someone in for the arrest?”
The man wound up for some sort of spell, but Sherlock was in equal parts disappointed and impressed when John silently flicked his wand twice, first causing the other’s wand to fly from his hand to John’s, and the second turning the other upside-down and binding him in conjured ropes to hang from the ceiling. “I wanted to see what he was going to try,” the detective complained while the auror disconcertingly stuck her head into an emerald green fire.
“I doubt it would have been very interesting,” John said. The dangling wizard made an indignant sound. “A stunner, a binder and then either apparating or legging it to somewhere he felt safe to apparate from.”
The look on the face of the upside-down man said that clearly John was right, so Sherlock went to look at the Jarvey and spent an enjoyable half hour picking up some undignified language to use should he have to disguise himself in the wizarding world as the sort of person who would use such language habitually. He would have thought that the aurors’ arrest would be interesting, but it was the same as a normal police arrest, save that they literally floated the man off the ceiling, still bound, read him his rights and then one of them, rather carelessly Sherlock thought, held what appeared to be an old shoe on the man’s chest and silently apparated them away.
After sitting through a few tiresome questions from the aurors, proving them to be just as unobservant as the nonmagical police force, Sherlock and John were finally allowed to leave. Finally, Sherlock was able to ask, “Why was that auror holding a shoe to Donleavy’s chest when they apparated away?”
“That wasn’t apparation, Sherlock,” John said, “That was a portkey. It has the same practical effect, near-instantaneous transportation, but it works more like a ridiculously speeded-up Knight Bus than like creating a sort of wormhole leading from one place to another. The advantage is that the spell on the shoe does all the work and you don’t need to worry about leaving bits behind when you activate one. On the other hand, it’s a much more difficult spell to get correct, and it’s much harder to be licensed for that.”
That explained the carelessness of his actions. Sherlock then proceeded to ask John about portkeys, something his education thus far had not disclosed, and John made several snide comments on Sherlock’s failure to read the books that had been purchased that were about wizarding transportation. He nonetheless answered all of Sherlock’s questions including the information that travelling by portkey was like taking the Knight Bus if you removed the bus part of the equation.
*************
John had duly provided Anthea and Mycroft with books written by the most prejudiced of pureblooded wizards, with the warning that this was representative of only a small part of the population in terms of vitriol, but fairly representative in terms of sheer, undiluted ignorance of the part of the population not from mundane origins.
Reading the history books and cross-referencing them was an exercise alternately in hilarity, anger and disbelief. The descriptions of nonmagical life were only accurate insofar as medieval peasants were concerned, though infrequently they went so far as describing life in a Victorian poorhouse. The motivations attributed were laughable, and in some cases a bare modicum of logical thought would have clarified that, as in the one expression of disdain over a mother becoming irate that her child’s arm had been broken and the assumption that, as it was easy to mend for a wizard, she had no right to be so incensed. The logical inconsistency of the author’s confusion that a ‘muggle’ could not see magic was real *after he had been assaulted with that memory spell* within a single sentence was mind-boggling.
Anthea put the book down a moment for a break from this unremitting illogic. “Mine is, I assure you, quite as bad as yours,” Mycroft said, placing his own book on the table. “I can understand why John chose to avoid these books.” Went unsaid was the fact that some portion of the population saw nonmagicals this way, and if the culture changed as slowly as John had stated, there was likely to be a significant bias to work through.
They were killing some time with some last-minute research while waiting for John to arrive for their tour of the magical world. The front doorbell was rung and the butler who had been on holiday the day the whole mess had begun answered it and brought John into the library. He had a remarkably dramatic pram with him, all green and silver satin with what appeared to be genuine silver ornamentation for a baby to play with. There was a coat of arms that Anthea had only become familiar with that morning as she and Mycroft had perused a remarkably inbred genealogy of pureblooded Britain. “This was your childhood pram?” she asked, amazed at the ostentation. It wasn’t technically in bad taste, just wholly unnecessary.
“Not mine,” John said, “Can’t you see those are all unicorns and fairies between the snakes? This was Harry’s. Mine was centaurs and goblins.”
“Of course,” Mycroft said as he promptly transferred Ellouise from the much more restrained pram to John’s. “I assume this is to show we are … connected in some fashion?”
John shrugged. “If we promulgate that I’m taking you on as a client family – something that was occasionally done back in the middle ages for particularly powerful non-magical families with a muggleborn child – it will give you at least some of the weight of the Watson name behind you. Some of the more powerful pureblood families today don’t like to admit that the reason they can’t trace further back than some point is precisely that that was where a muggleborn was sponsored by an older, established family.”
“Is there any particular power or obligation others would expect us to have?” Anthea asked. The fact that John was throwing around a concept that was current centuries ago as something that would bear weight in the present was to be expected, and yet she was still attempting to adapt to this paradigm.
Frowning in brief concentration, John said, “I would say certain social obligations would be expected. While my family was traditionally Slytherin and what someone might call dark-inclined, we were usually seen as relatively neutral. So you can expect that you would be expected to toe a fairly conservative line of thinking, but at the same time express no open anti-progress biases. That said, as long as you balance your time between so-called light and dark families – which is where more power tends to reside – you won’t be seen as bucking the expectations the association would have.” He smiled wryly at them. “Rather like giving leave to party members to vote with their conscience, one expects a certain amount of staying to the party line nonetheless.”
The reading had made clear what a nebulous concept a dark or light family was, but it was nonetheless treated as a significant characteristic, so Anthea made a mental note of the significance.
“I must admit,” Mycroft said, “I am intrigued that we are not taking some form of wizarding transportation.”
John winced. “Frankly, most of it is miserable. Economy class airline travel is nothing compared to travelling by floo, apparation or portkey. No matter that it takes longer, a car is much more civilised.”
Thus they took the car to Charing Cross Road and John pointed out the grubby pub which both of them had literally been unable to notice before that moment. “Is there any way to defray these illusions?” Anthea asked him.
“I was planning to create some sort of protective talisman for you both,” John said. “I’m just working out some of the details of the spells needed to properly counter the muggle-repelling wards.” They were led into the pub, which was filled with people, then past and into an alleyway. He then pulled out his wand, tapping the bricks showing the lengthy period of repeated wear from such activity and pulled them into the street beyond. They were greeted at once by a woman a few years younger than John.
“And you must be Mycroft Holmes and Anthea,” she said. “I’m Daphne Greengrass. Welcome to Diagon Alley.”
John gave the woman an affectionate look. “Daphne’s family and mine have been associated for ages,” he said. “They’re genuinely neutral on matters, unlike mine who mostly pretended at it.” He glanced off to the side, spotting two men with white-blonde hair and an air of arrogance that had the indefinable air of coming from money rather than competence. “I suppose I’d best go pretend that I don’t want Malfoy dead in a ditch,” John said. “I really don’t want to have the family start being associated with Gryffindors. That sort of righteousness is bad for letting you keep your head down if you want to.”
John left to speak to the pair, putting on a similarly entitled air to their own. Anthea was hard-put not to snort with laughter as her lip-reading revealed John to have made quite a set-down to the pair on the matter of their cunning. Greengrass openly chuckled at the looks on the faces of the two Malfoy men. “There’s really very little they can say as the Watsons have always been scrupulous about not being caught as less than neutral, whereas Malfoy and his ilk never could get it into their heads to stop parading around their connections to dark magic. I grant it’s helpful for intimidation, but they’ve boxed themselves in when it comes to being able to act pragmatically. Those of us closer to the conservative end of things always knew the Watsons weren’t squeaky-clean, but no one could prove anything and those who weren’t so close to things never realised they weren’t just another grey family.”
“Perhaps you could clarify something for me,” Mycroft asked, “There seems to be a problem of definition for this dark families and light families problem.”
“You mean that dark can mean either socially conservative or ‘playing with evil magics’ while light can mean socially progressive or condemning those magics?” Daphne shrugged. “There’s a lot of consistency between the two sets, conservative and dark magics, progressive and anti-dark. The difficulty is more the conflation of the two together by those who either don’t know or don’t care enough to work out the difference.”
Anthea shook her head. If there was one weakness both Holmeses suffered from, it was an inability to follow the sort of imprecise terminology used by the so-called common man. Sherlock had painful tendencies to over-literality - though he did use that as a weapon at times – and Mycroft was often overly concerned with determining exactitudes of meaning from people who weren’t entirely clear on those precise ideas themselves. “I’ve said it before, Mycroft, you’ll have to determine the socio-political outlook of the person, then apply the appropriate shade of meaning.”
John had returned. “Are we talking about dark and light families again? Just assume if they’re a light family that the meaning is a socially conservative evil person and a normal person, if you’re talking to a so-called dark family it will mean a proud tradition and history as compared to the incoherent and unthinking rabble, a neutral family will mean biased in favour of other people who are normally labelled the same way and the ordinary people who don’t have particular axes to grind will usually just mean either Gryffindor or Slytherin with some sort of power behind them.”
Mycroft let the discussion go for the moment, choosing instead to follow John as he walked them through the Diagon Alley crowds. He had been attempting to catch up on wizarding politics, but the conversation with Ms Greengrass was delightfully informative. Her family apparently had a seat in the Wizengamot and she was one of those who actually read legislation brought before the parliament and while she was clearly inclined to a conservative perspective, she was also sufficiently reasonable as to paraphrase neutrally.
John meanwhile showed them to various shops and Mycroft was distinctly intrigued at the Mediaeval atmosphere of much of the clothing, while the shop aesthetics tended to the Victorian. The bank where they were taken so as to change the pounds in his wallet into wizarding currency was seemingly pulled directly from a fantasy novel. The whole area was a headache of overstimulation and Mycroft was quite grateful he and Anthea had chosen to go at a time when there were not hundreds of school-aged children running about.
They left with a promise from Ms Greengrass to contact them by owl post and several books more on various wizarding topics for their library.