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They landed in Hogsmeade.
Right in the middle of the street, in fact, materializing with a loud pop and stomach-wrenching drop that just about dropped the world out from underneath his feet. Still hand in hand with possibly the biggest marvel and absolutely bloody idiot in the entire world.
John took an utterly flabbergasted Sherlock Holmes by the arm in a seedy bar in Paris, forcibly interlacted their fingers as tightly as was humanly possible, and disapparated before Moran's bullets had time to fly or Sherlock's indignant cry was anything more than a squawk.
The wholly dumbfounded look on his brilliant friend's face was one that he wished he could take a snapshot of, print it out, and save in his wallet.
And John-
John grinned.
He'd watched Sherlock Holmes step off a rooftop and crack his skull wide open on the pavement below, he'd watched his heart stop beating, he'd watched his funeral on bloody youtube, and now he'd walked into him blond and thin, drinking in Paris as if on nothing more than a vacation, and-
Of course he had.
Of course he was alive.
Of course Sherlock was here.
The certainty and confidence and rightness shot through ever fiber of his being, and a glorious, sing-song warmth unfolded in his chest until tears stung in his eyes and he didn't even care.
He had to have been insane to ever even once think otherwise.
"Sorry about that." He wasn't sorry. He was on top of the world, tears stinging on his cold cheeks, his stomach dropped out from under him and his head light and empty as air and Sherlock's hand was in his. And Sherlock stared down at him, two glazed, utterly uncomprehending, glorious eyes, he looked vacant and lost and dumb, he was alive, and John sobbed and beamed all at once and for the first time in a month, he was happy.
"Haven't done that in a bit," he choked. "Ever, actually. Paris to Scotland, that's... oh, that's- ill-advised, Sherlock, oh, you stupid shit," he was laughing again, and fuck, but he wasn't sorry at all.
Sherlock continued to stare at him about as blankly as if John had just sprouted three heads and informed him they'd teleported to the moon.
Already pale, so sodding pale, but underneath the bone-white chill his face faded green. A terrible, ill pallor, the blood drained from his face and his eyes wide, and John saw it and switched his hold to his shoulders, instead. "This way, it's okay, you're fine," and they'd just barely gotten out of the way before Sherlock sagged to his knees and vomited into the snow.
He didn't care. Oh, god, he didn't care. Sherlock was throwing up and dumbstruck and down for the count, and it probably made John the worst doctor in the world, but he didn't care.
He reached for Sherlock then just sagged himself, back on his heels and head between his knees and trembling from head to toe. God. Oh, god. "You're fine," he said again, but not to Sherlock; now he heard it himself, and shit- "You're fine, Sherlock; most people get sick their first time. And... that was a hell of a first time- oh my god-"
Paris to Scotland. Paris to Scotland. He'd never apparated so far before. It had been a terrible idea, he now regretted it entirely, lightheaded and dizzy and the cold crunch of the snow tilting under his feet; he really shouldn't have gone so far. It would've been a bad idea alone, but with Sherlock in tow...
God.
Sherlock.
"You mad- bastard," he spat, laughing and sobbing all in one. "Take it easy. I'm going to fucking kill you, Sherlock, I'm going- sit down, you stupid, you rubbish- I am going to kill you, you understand-"
"John," Sherlock rasped.
John didn't see the blood until Sherlock was facefirst in the snow, his ashen cheek pillowed against a tiny hill of ice crystals and blue-white eyes already half-mast and glazed as glass: down and out for the count. All cold white and black and blue, sodden hair and coat flared about him as a dead body broken on the sidewalk, a halo of dyed brown around the bruising white of his face. And then. Then. Red on the white.
Blood, spreading in the snow.
John's world lurched sideways, and for just a moment, he was back on that sidewalk, too.
Splinched.
That was all.
That was all it was.
It wasn't even a surprise. John knew it, and he had it told to him again and again, chided by Madam Pomfrey, McGonagall, McGonagall again, demanding to know just what in the world he'd been thinking, apparating that far, taking along a Muggle. I'd take twenty points from Gryffindor if it still mattered, young man, she'd said, and honestly, he'd deserved a dozen times worse.
Splinched.
That's all.
Sherlock's right arm had nearly been torn straight off. A crippling injury. A life-changing one, had they still been in central London. No more violin. No more experiments; not a single one that needed two hands. Chronic pain. Scarring for life.
But they were not in central London.
They were in Wizarding Britain instead, and all Sherlock needed was a few days rest to be good as new and just as stark raving mad as before. Sherlock. Splinched. Injured. His fault. Didn't care.
Holy hell, did he not care.
Splinched.
That's all.
Sherlock wasn't the only one, to have left a bit of himself behind in France. Oh, John hadn't even realised it, not at the time. Not until his fingers had started to go numb and he'd looked down to see the blood dripping from underneath his sleeve.
He'd sustained a tear in his arm, at the elbow, neither as deep nor as dangerous as Sherlock's. It was fine, of course. Not unexpected. Paris to Scotland. Side-along apparition. Sherlock's first time. A whole cataclysm of bad factors spilled together into the perfect storm; they were both alive, Sherlock was still alive, the bloody mad git, and John did not care that he currently had a hole in his arm as big around as his fist and John had, by all rights, put it there.
He sat on the bed adjacent to Sherlock's, watching Madam Pomfrey seal the torn skin shut, and he stared at the fall of his hair, his pale, drying, recently dyed hair, not a single curl wet with blood, and wanted to burst into tears.
"You should get some sleep yourself, young man," the mediwitch chastised. She tapped her wand once on Sherlock's pale shoulder; his chest rose, and fell. Rose, and fell. "Let yourself heal up, before you start worrying about looking after this one."
He's my friend. Let me through.
"I'm... fine."
She frowned at him, her eyes narrowing again, but all John had it in him to do was shake his head, and say it again. "I'm fine like this, Madam Pomfrey," he swore, and he was.
And he smiled, and his shoulder ached, and his throat was thick with tears, but he looked at Sherlock and he fucking smiled, because he'd grabbed his miracle, and he wasn't letting him go.
He sent an owl to Mycroft.
Didn't have to. Could've routed it through Muggle postage. Probably should've, if he really thought about it.
But John rather liked imagining the look on Mycroft Holmes' face as an owl pecked at his window, so he sent the clumsiest owl he could find and signed it with love. Wished he could send it with a camera, to add that snapshot next to the one of Sherlock's face, upon apparating across a country and a half for the first time. Hopefully, the feathers left all over his office, and the screeching that would wake him up at two in the morning, would get the message through that the grudge had been lodged, and if he knew what was good for him, he would never leave John out of the loop again.
Dearest Mycroft,
I found him.
What the fuck?
Love,
Fuck You
It was rude. It was mean.
It was, he knew, not at all Mycroft's fault.
Sherlock Holmes did not do anything at all that was not his own choice. He absolutely, certainly did not do anything just because his brother had told him to do so.
This secret, and this plan, and the suicide and horror and the anguish that had driven John facefirst into a ghost in a seedy bar in France, had been Sherlock's doing.
And he didn't-
Oh, god.
He just didn't care.
"I think I've made an enemy of Mycroft, now," he said to Sherlock, chin resting on his fist. Something warm and infectious and healing, burned inside his chest. "And I'm still very mad at you, for the record. But I figure you'll at least be proud, that I'm siccing wild birds on your brother. If you're nice about it, I'll teach you how to do it, too, someday."
If you're nice.
If you're alive.
If you stay alive.
If you don't do this to me again.
Sherlock's gaze passed over him, sleep-heavy and glazed, a sliver of silvery eyes that slid sideways.
It wasn't at all like- that. The sidewalk. The blood. Sherlock's eyes: open and dull, light faded to tired, unfocused grey, sliding straight through him. A knife between the spaces of his ribs, his lungs, out his back. It wasn't that. Not at all.
"Go back to sleep," John forced out, and he broke Sherlock's gaze, because he had to. "Not yet. Sleep a little more, Sherlock."
"'hn," Sherlock muttered, obstinate, indignant, but his eyes slid shut, and John returned his face to his hands and focused on breathing.
That first night in the hospital wing, John spent fifteen minutes, tossing and turning in a bed of his own, before calling it quits.
He relocated back to the chair beside Sherlock's bed, curled up close enough to use the sheets as his own pillow, and breathed easier.
"Thank you," he murmured, to Sherlock's limp hand. Long, pale fingers, spread out against the sheets; curling upwards and empty. "For being here with me. For being alive."
Sherlock breathed, and John slept well for the first time since London.
McGonagall came calling the next day.
"I always did think you wouldn't settle down- even in the Muggle world." She straightened sheets down and whisked curtains aside with a stern flick of her wand, letting sunlight in to cut through the ward in a harsh beam of brilliance. Oh, he had missed magic. "I certainly never thought I'd find you here like this, though."
John slid his fingers firmer through Sherlock's, the squirm of his hand a reassuring pulse, and grinned back.
"I've missed you too, Professor."
McGonagall came to a halt across from him, hands interlaced behind her back. She looked down at Sherlock, utterly impassive. "This is the Muggle that's the talk of Hogsmeade, then. The one whose brother is the Prime Minister?"
Oh, fantastic. Mycroft was already more well-known in Hogwarts than he was in London. The prat was going to be just thrilled.
"Just about, anyway. He makes the actual Prime Minister look like a figurehead."
McGonagall made a sound approaching a laugh, soft but immediate. She sat down across from him on the other side of Sherlock, and for a moment, John was ten again. Meeting his future Head of House for the first time, self-conscious in his dreadful sitting room as this strange, impossible woman looked down and said, you're a wizard, John Watson. "I'm not surprised at all. You were such a trouble-magnet in school- you were never meant for a normal life. Not even in the Muggle world."
"Normal? Sherlock Holmes?" John knew she meant no offense, by it- how could she? All she knew of Sherlock was what she could see here: this strange, lanky, well-connected git, sleeping between them, but an odd mix of pride and the urge to protect swelled up within him, and he tightened his hand around his again.
A casual, inoffensive assertion of normality; a headline calling him a fraud and a freak.
Right about now, it was all the same, to him.
"No. Sherlock isn't- has never been- normal. I knew that the day I met him." He tossed Sherlock's hand between his own, hanging loosely off the bed; a bit like a ball, to be thrown back and forth. "He's raving, Professor. You know the type, he's- god. A Ravenclaw who aces every N.E.W.T. the Ministry offers save Divination, just because he's bored, and spends his spare time writing up a bloody dissertation on why Divination as taught at Hogwarts is a load of bollocks. Then just drops off the map when he graduates to go study sphinxes in Egypt or wandlore in Russia."
"Hmm. Is that what you've been getting up to, then?" McGonagall interlaced her fingers, offering that same slight, knowing smile as before. Clearly, she intended to stay a while. "Studying sphinxes?"
"Eh, something like that." If sphinxes shot at you while you investigated crimes.
Maybe he'd take Sherlock to Africa, he mused. He'd surely love to meet a real sphinx.
McGonagall was looking down at their hands. Sherlock's still caught in John's, limp and unresisting; his thumb pressed to the inside of his wrist; Sherlock, so often trying to turn onto his side, seeking him out even while asleep.
Just a few weeks ago, John wouldn't have been able to stop himself. He'd drop Sherlock's hand as if it had burned him, stuffing it back under the sheets, and snap I have to measure his pulse; I'm his doctor. He'd push his chair back, he'd stand up and away, he'd refuse to so much as look at Sherlock, he'd maintain with a vengeance that he was Not Gay.
John didn't know how to analyse his feelings for Sherlock right now, and he didn't care. Maybe it meant something, that the assumption no longer bothered him. Maybe it meant something really obvious that he right now, all he wanted to do was hug and kiss and cradle this brilliant man and never let him go.
He didn't really care.
Half of London already thought he was Sherlock's partner in literal crime, and the other half was sure that poor old John Watson was an idiot that had been hoodwinked by a fraud. They all thought Sherlock was a liar.
He was pretty sure he could bear a few people theorising that they were shagging behind closed doors.
Sherlock was alive, and that was what was important.
"I'm glad that you have a friend," McGonagall said, when John never went on himself. Her gaze shifting off his hands to return to Sherlock's still face. "Even if he is as- interesting as you say. I know that you and the magical world didn't part on the best of terms, but I did always hope that you'd find something that made you happy."
John merely shrugged. He didn't want to get into it, now; the long, topsy-turvy path it had taken him to get from Hogwarts to here. Charming his way into Muggle medical school, going to Afghanistan, getting shot, coming home. "Sherlock's special," he said instead, looking away.
God, what a massive understatement that was.
Sherlock. Special.
"I knew he was... something unique, the day that I met him. He's brilliant and more than a bit mad and- magical. In his own way. He is a Muggle, but the things he can do, Professor... I can't even describe it. Sometimes it's more magical than anything I ever learned here. He-" He stopped, willing down the tightness constricting in his chest again; the shocked grief and amazement and relief all stabbed into one. "He's saved my life."
And I don't just mean from Moriarty.
Most wizards would've turned their noses up, at that. A Muggle? Special? More special than a wizard? Oh, well, sure, perhaps a Muggleborn like John, here- but McGonagall only nodded without question, without looking askance at him or Sherlock for how they'd been born, and that was enough.
"To quote Albus... sometimes we find that it is Muggles who are capable of the strongest magic." She still wasn't looking at him, but at Sherlock, and when her gaze did shift back to him it was with the smallest of knowing smiles. "I know the wizarding world did let you down, in more ways than one. I'm glad you were at least able to find something good in the Muggle one."
Something good.
"Oh, Professor," he sighed, "you're going to love him."
Another moment passed in silence, and then- well, not even John, with his renewed devotion and relief and joy at finding Sherlock alive, could let that stand.
"After you hate him," he amended. "He's- an extraordinary loathsome person, to be quite honest. It takes a lot of digging to get to something to love underneath. But if he manages to not drive you to transfigure him into a tea cozy-"
It's there.
You'll find it.
That bit about Sherlock that was... magic.
It wasn't even his intelligence. Not really. That alone made him one in a million, but that was not what made him radiant and brilliant as the stars that he'd deleted. It wasn't the way he could look at John and not remember the solar systems, but in an instant deduce Afghanistan or Iraq?
Sherlock was so much more than that in ways that he didn't have words for.
John had been shot in Afghanistan, and met Sherlock with a bad shoulder, a limp, a hand tremor. Wizards did not have bad shoulders. Wizards did not have limps. Wizards did not have hand tremors. A proper wizard would've been shot in Afghanistan, taken a stroll through St. Mungo's, and memory charmed and confunded his way right back onto the battlefield.
John had never seen a magical healer, because he hadn't wanted to hear there's nothing we can do, because there's nothing wrong with you.
Medicine had failed him, and it had been embarrassing. Magic would've failed him, and it would've been pathetic.
Sherlock, on the other hand, had cured his psychosomatic limp and tremor in one night.
He hadn't done that with his IQ.
McGonagall was still watching him, a little oddly, and John replayed the words in his head. Huh. More magical than anything he'd learned at Hogwarts? Something to love underneath? Sentimental nonsense, Sherlock would say- though it was obstinately true. Maybe his feelings for Sherlock could do with a bit more analysis than he'd first thought.
Later.
When he'd managed to calm down just a bit, from the earth-shattering revelation that Sherlock was alive, and he still didn't have a fucking clue as to how.
The third night, Mycroft's answer came back.
John alternated between reading the crinkled missive, hunched over and shoulder aching, each damming line forming a cadence with the rhythm of Sherlock's breaths, and scratching the owl about the ears, from where it perched quietly on his best friend's arm.
He read about Mrs. Hudson and Lestrade.
Oh, Sherlock.
He read about Moriarty's network.
He read about snipers, Agent Lazarus, and a staged suicide.
Oh, Sherlock.
John read the letter three times through, one after the other. And when the last of the words- the important ones, the facts between the fluff, the only ones that mattered- had been committed to memory, he set fire to the paper, and let it burn to ash.
Then, he went outside, buried his face in his hands and a chunk of wool sleeve in his mouth, and screamed.
When the need to hit something no longer burned quite so badly around his heart, he went back into the castle, and reclaimed his spot by Sherlock's side.
Sherlock was supposed to not be here.
Sherlock was supposed to be in St. Mungo's, in the restricted ward for Muggles with magical injuries. Sherlock was supposed to be under sedation- sleeping draught, he supposed; it'd been a long while since he'd traded in his Hogwarts education for Muggle medical terminology. Sherlock was supposed to have absolutely no idea what was going on, and when the wound in his arm was healed, be tapped on the head with a memory charm and dropped off back in Muggle London- where he was still declared dead, by the way- while John was put through the wringer for torching a dozen different international statues of secrecy and apparating one of the world's most dangerous Muggles straight into Hogsmeade.
Sherlock was supposed to be six feet under rotting in an early grave, because not even magic could heal catastrophic intracranial injury, un-snap a spine, and get a heart beating again once it had stopped.
Sherlock also, however, happened to be the younger of brother of The (Muggle) British Government, and the best friend of an ex-auror who was still owed quite a lot of favours. And- as was bloody typical- also somehow the luckiest bloke on the whole continent.
So Sherlock was at Hogwarts. Alive, recovering well. Alive. Sleeping still, just for now. Until the ministry's paperwork had been sorted out, recategorising Sherlock Holmes as a Muggle that was now in the know. That was allowed to be here.
Sleeping.
Alive.
John looked forward to the day Sherlock was let to wake up. He was going to treasure the look on his face then with absolute, abject glee.
"No," John chastised, rolling his eyes yet again at round of rustling, caught out of the corner of his eye. "Not yet, Sherlock." He caught the hand trying to roll sideways, to search, and it was just meant to calm him down, but a lump formed in his throat at the warm hand in his and when he pushed Sherlock's hand back down, it was to thumb the pulse at his wrist and not let go. "I said sleep, I said. Few more days, Sherlock."
Thump. Thump. Thump.
He's my friend, let me through.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
He was selfishly, stupidly grateful. Grateful. He was glad for the break, that Sherlock was being kept asleep, so John could- could, this. Just sit here silently, left alone to feel the steady thrum in his neck, his breaths against his hand, the restless searching of his closed eyes. Because he really was mad as all fucking hell at Sherlock, and sitting here in the wake of it he knew there was a part of him that was never going to be okay with what Sherlock had put him through. He didn't care about snipers, he didn't care about Moriarty, he didn't care how ridiculously, absurdly selfless it was, Sherlock had used him to sell his suicide and that had been just a little bit selfish, too.
But he looked at Sherlock now, asleep and safe and alive, and he could swallow that anger.
"You magnificent fucking twat," he whispered, voice raw. Sherlock's forehead was hot, when he swept aside a tangled curl, and fondness swelled in his throat and cracked his ribs. He always did react poorly to anesthetic. "I'm going to kill you, you know?"
A low groan caught in Sherlock's throat, one that edged into an angry sort of whimper, like an unhappy dog. "J'hn," he sighed. Another flicker of quicksilver eyes, half-mast and bloodshot. "J'hn... not s... safe. John, what're you... 's not-..."
"Of course it's not safe, you idiot." John re-caught Sherlock's fluttering hand in his own, squeezing it in the air and space between them. "Why do you think I'm here?"
The thing was-
It wasn't safe. If Mycroft's information was correct, it actually wasn't safe.
Which was fine. It was all fine, of course-
But John wasn't the only one in danger.
"You'll stay here, Sherlock. Okay? Just for a little while." He reaffixed the blankets, tucking them inch by inch to be perfectly exact. "I've told Madam Pomfrey all about how you like to run off, so she's going to be keeping an extra close eye on you until I get back. You really don't want to piss her off."
Sherlock's brow furrowed in his sleep. He tried kicking at the sheets, long legs writhing, a whimper building in his throat that had nothing to do with pain. "John," he tried, "John. Don't... ngh."
Stubborn, obstinate idiot.
Arrogant, smug bastard.
You wonderful, fantastic man.
"Sorry, Sherlock, but I have to. I'll tell you all about it when you're better, but tonight- tonight I've got to finish what you started. Just a little bit." He smoothed a shaking hand down Sherlock's long sleeve, fixing it, too, tugging the cuff neatly all the way down to his wrist. He was fussing and couldn't help himself, fixing wrinkles, straightening blankets, thumb curling about Sherlock's hand-
No. John forced himself to a stop closing his eyes. No. Not tonight. Focus, Watson. Breathe. "You're going to be fine, understand? I just-"
"No."
"Sherlock-"
He turned over with a mighty grunt, heaving and wheezing and trembling, his heavy hand smacking into John's as a dead weight. The sweat on his face was shiny and sticky and he grappled for purchase, gripping through the blankets, whining, insistent. "No," he rasped again. "You'll stay. 'S not safe, you... you." He nodded once, nuzzling at John's hand. "You'll stay here."
John's heart swelled in his constricting throat until it stung to breathe.
He was still mad as all hell at Sherlock- wanted to scream at him and shake him and hit him, to hold im down and make him answer, how DARE you-
And it just didn't even matter.
This wonderful, fantastic man.
"I'll be back very soon, Sherlock. You stay put- for once- you stay put, and you wait for me. I'm going to fix this." John lingered, unsure, his heart in his throat. Sherlock. Breathing through his mouth, curled angrily on his side and around John's arm as if it was a precious treasure that he had to keep safe. Distressed, clearly; not because he was in pain, not because he didn't want to be alone, but because he didn't want John to be alone. This amazing man who had fallen for him. Who had made John watch him die.
Sod it.
"You wait for me," John ordered, finger held up for emphasis, right in his face. Sherlock went glassy and cross-eyed, just about, trying to look at it. "And this time, I'll come back to you."
I've got you, he didn't say, and smoothed his hair back and kissed his forehead, and he meant it.
He hadn't been able to catch Sherlock at St. Bart's.
So the least of what he could do now, was be there to stop him from falling again.
John apparated back into London in the dead of night, and wrapped up the details what Sherlock had been about to give his life to ensure in the space of a single evening.
Charms had never been his strong suit, but then again, magic had never been Moriarty's. Moriarty's plan had backed Sherlock into a corner by putting the gun in his hands and giving him only one choice if not to pull the trigger, but somehow neglected to account for the fact that Sherlock's best friend could make people bulletproof.
He just sure hoped Lestrade didn't get himself shot at any time before this was over, because boy would John not be able to explain himself out of that one.
He charmed them both, did his very best to not let it sink in that Lestrade was asleep in a closet of an office at Scotland Yard at half past midnight, or Mrs. Hudson was under a throw on the couch in 221B, small and curled up and a cashmere blue scarf curled up as a pillow.
And then, just like that-
He left.
He left to keep them safe. Just like Sherlock.
But John also knew exactly what it felt like to be left behind, and this time, he made sure they both knew they weren't.
Hang in there, for Lestrade.
It's a mistake to theorise without all the facts, for Mrs. Hudson.
Unsigned. Scrawled in charmed invisible ink that would disappear, just after the note had been read.
He knew they'd get the message.
It was a special sort of hell, to leave those that had believed in Sherlock Holmes with him behind.
It wasn't hard at all, to go back to Moran.
"I'm going to give you two choices. Well- it's really only one, if I'm being totally frank about it."
Moran's hand was inching across the bar countertop. Carefully, slowly, perfectly at ease, utterly casual. His eyes never left John's face.
John crushed a smoking crater the size of his fist into the wood with nothing more than an errant wave of his wand.
Whatever it was Moran had been reaching for, it wasn't there now.
"Option-" he started again, icy smile spreading, "number one." John approached further still, closer until he was barely even a step away. Moran's wide-eyed gaze glued on his wand, face as bloodless as Sherlock's had been on the snow. "A Ministry wizard is going to be along, in a few minutes. Government wizard, a friend of mine; you know how it is. He's going to give you a little memory fixer-upper. And you're going to let him."
"Am I," Moran said. His affect was flat and cold, like a snake rearing silently to strike.
John flicked the tip of his wand again, and Moran flinched so badly he nearly fell out of his seat.
"Yes," John aid. "You are. And my friend's spell is going to misfire, you see. You're not going to remember me, you're not going to remember Moriarty- you're not going to remember your own name. From there on? I don't really know. Maybe you'll be lucky enough to get a fresh start- maybe one of the people you've wronged will finally catch up with you after all." He broke off to smile again; just a small, ice-cold, delighted smile. "I really don't care what you get up to, just so long as it's not bothering us."
This man had had a gun on him.
This man had had a gun on him that day at St. Bart's.
This man was one of the reasons why Sherlock had jumped.
John wanted to blast that wordless, silent smirk right off his fucking face.
"That's option number one," Moran filled in, head tilting to the side. He did not reach for a weapon again, but nor did he look properly threatened.
John smiled back again, and nodded.
He could hex his teeth down his throat. He could shove a hole right down through his stomach. He could make him hurt.
"Option number two," was all he did, instead. "Is that I take you up to the nearest three story building, I push you off the edge, and I enjoy every second of watching you fall. Because I have now spent the last few weeks of my life seeing Sherlock fall everywhere that I look, and believe you me- I am really- really hoping- that you'll choose option two."
John left Sebastian Moran behind, a list of names earned on the merits of Veritaserum stuffed into his pocket, and the man himself drooling, insensate, and without a single clue as to his own name.
He hadn't been lying, about wanting to drop Moran off the edge of a fucking building.
But Sherlock was his priority, and right now, Sherlock needed him not to be here.
John said goodbye to Paris and Sebastian Moran all in one, and apparated back to Hogsmeade with the crack of a gunshot.
And then, for the first time since he'd met Sherlock, blond and bruised and brilliant and breathing, John settled himself back down in the hospital wing, and knew that everything was going to be okay.
The first thing he did, when he'd calmed down enough to do it, was attend to his hair.
It had been dyed, in the intervening weeks since the fake suicide and the day that John had found him hunched in Moran's presence, a living, solid ghost. Dishwater blond and straight and shorter, just short and light enough that he'd survive a first look and might even a second.
That, John determined, was not on.
"Hold still," he murmured, on autopilot more than not. "If I end up dyeing your face and not your hair because you kept rolling around, I won't apologise."
Sherlock mumbled something. Low, indistinct. Possibly another protest; possibly just his name, again. The constant search for reaffirmation that John was still here.
"Aguamenti." He tapped his wand once, a gesture that he'd never quite forgotten, no matter how many years it had been, but the warmth of the successful spell was dwarfed and silent and pathetic underneath just the thought of the look he'd find on Sherlock's face, the first time he saw it for himself. Yes. Yes. "That's it, Sherlock, still. Shhshh; just for a little longer."
Another mumble.
Sherlock's hair was soft in his fingers, each curl limp and cooperative in the way the man himself could never be. He supported Sherlock by the neck, using stacks of pillows and a warm blanket, and washed through them, each and every one.
He'd never seen Sherlock like this before.
He'd never been with Sherlock like this before.
He'd never touched Sherlock like this before.
"Your plan really wasn't a good one, you know," he said, sometime into it.
The stubborn detective again made a garbled little whine of protest, his throat working and lip quivering. He tried to glare at John, two half-lidded silvery irises that passed over him and away.
John rolled his eyes. "Here." He tugged off his scarf, and Sherlock was only too glad to accept it in return. He tugged at the bundle of wool like a cat with a toy, pawing and blinking and curling lazily, and just like that was as content as could be.
If only a sober Sherlock was so easy to occupy. Perhaps the walls at 221B would be less bullet-riddled.
"What... what was your plan, Sherlock? Hm? You were just going to handle this, all by yourself?" John passed his wand through an errant wet curl, coaxing it to darken from grey-blond to honey-brown and straight to jet black, the magic slipping through his fingers like sand. "Something this dangerous, all on your own. Sure, you had Mycroft for backup, but you never get enough of complaining about how useless he is. You were all on your own, Sherlock. Can't even imagine all the trouble you'd get into, without me there to pull you out of it. What happened to being lost without your blogger?"
Sherlock pressed the scarf to his face, and breathed.
Like a child clutching a stuffed animal. Or...
"You were going to get into such trouble, you know?" John caught his free hand in Sherlock's. Thump. Thump. Thump. He wasn't sure if he'd ever be able to exist apart from Sherlock again: somewhere else and separate, where he couldn't feel that pulse under his thumb. Thump. "You could've died, do you know that? You ridiculous, brilliant bastard, you could have died out there, and then what? We'd never have known. Me, Lestrade, Mrs. Hudson; you did all this for us and then if you'd gotten hurt or killed, we'd never have found out, would we? We'd keep going on thinking you died that day at Barts and never known what we had to thank you for."
Sherlock surely would've planned it that way. It was a bit funny, on the surface level, a bit ludicrous. A bit impossible. Sherlock was a drama queen and a show-off and a massive prick, and to die as a martyr in a blaze of glory- oh, it was just so very like him, wasn't it? Just the sort of thing he'd do.
It wasn't, though.
Dying on that rooftop to Moriarty's plan wasn't clever. Getting shot by the remnants of his network, a thousand miles away from London and bleeding out into the gutter, wasn't smart. Standing in between everybody that he cared about and Moriarty's postmortem bullet wasn't genius.
It was good.
Sherlock would risk his life to prove he was clever, and would die before he let a single soul glimpse past his High-Functioning Sociopath bullshit to grasp his genuinely kind, genuinely good, core.
And if Sherlock had died-
John squeezed his eyes shut. Oh, god. If Sherlock had died out there. If John had been one day earlier to that bar, if he'd never found him, and Sherlock had kept going all alone, if Sherlock had died and John hadn't gotten this cold, skilled hand curled loosely in his- no, god no-
Sherlock would've been so much happier to die as a disgraced fraud who'd killed himself, than let his selfless sacrifice be the last and only thing he was known for.
Always had to play the sociopath.
"I'm sure you'll argue otherwise, though. And I might even be tempted to believe you, for a bit. What if you had made it back? You're Sherlock Holmes, you can do anything; what if you'd actually somehow pulled it off and finished the job and came back home? Yes?" John tilted his head, ending the spell for a minute. Sherlock was sleeping fitfully now, not just because of the sleeping draught, the scarf bunched under his cheek and mountained near his parted lips. Even asleep, his fingers clenched like iron, when John tried to let go.
"And how were you thinking that would end, Sherlock? If everything went right, and you won and you survived and you came back home alive- how long-" He fought down the sudden lump in his throat; the swell of betrayal, the raw and wounded core of hurt. "How many years was this going to take? How many years was I meant to stay behind, thinking I'd let my best friend die?"
Sherlock's chest rose and fell. Up and down. In and out. Breathe.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
"That's... what I mean by lucky." John blinked again, batting back the burning in his eyes. His throat stung. "Because if you'd pulled it off, and showed up back in London years from now- if you'd left me behind like that for years, then just popped on up out of a cake and said surprise!... I don't know if I could've forgiven you."
Thump. Thump. Thump.
John curled backwards again, leaning down until their foreheads almost touched. Sherlock's face was warm and his eyes flickered under his lids and each breath was a cadence felt against his skin, every tiny facet of his existence something that proved I'm alive, and John kissed his forehead again on impulse, because he couldn't bear not to.
Each breath of Sherlock's catching in his throat, and-
Oh, hell.
"I'm so sorry. I'm sorry," he choked, and he barely even knew why. Sherlock's hair lightened again, the colors shifting like an amorphous rainbow, blurring into ginger and then green and then blue, with one glamorously pink curl plastered over an eye, and John's throat tightened until he didn't know if he wanted to laugh or cry. "I'm terrible at this, Sherlock. Transfiguration, human transfiguration, it's not- god, look at you. You're a mess. I'm making such a mess. It's the color of your eyes, now, that's not any better at all-"
Sherlock's wet, now rainbow hair spilled over his fingers, and John sagged to laugh into the crook of his neck until he was breathless and in tears and he'd never been so happy in his life.
John healed.
Twice as first as Sherlock, as a matter of fact. He healed until the wound was a barely noticeable itch at his elbow, a scar that'd be gone by the month's end, while Sherlock stayed restless and unhappy, tossing and turning and fighting the magic through sheer stubbornness alone.
John healed, and Sherlock healed slower, and John quieted him and nudged him back into sleep over and over, and he tried not to think about what was going to happen when Sherlock was finally awake.
"He's always like this," he told Madam Pomfrey, astride another application of dittany, in which Sherlock's mouth quirked and he tried to toss his feverish head and low, plaintive noises came from his throat and wouldn't be quieted. Couldn't help himself. "Anesthetic makes him ill. It's a common reaction, in Muggles, and he's got just- the most incredible cross tolerance-" He stopped for a moment, frowning to himself, or he tried to, but it crumpled against the relief in his chest and softened straight back into a fond smile. "That's not a good thing, actually, that's not incredible at all. It's horrible. He's half incredible and half horrible, that's what he is."
He wasn't really sure, why he was saying all this. Why the words just kept spilling out, and with every passing thought the knife's edge of hurt in his throat sharpened but he still just couldn't stop. It felt like two years ago, now, when Sherlock had been brand new and novel and amazing, and he'd explained Afghanistan or Iraq? and all John had been able to think was fantastic.
Fantastic.
Fraud.
John's smile slipped.
Maybe that was it.
He wanted to show Sherlock off.
Show him off to the world at large, set him loose to blaze as brilliantly as a star. He wanted to walk right back to London, into fucking Donovan's office, and he wanted to stand Sherlock down in front of all the headlines calling him a fraud and make them all see every last bit of him as incredible as he was. As brilliant. As amazing. As good.
He'd known Sherlock wasn't a fraud, god, he'd never believed it- that second of doubt, in Riley's flat, that sickening, horrible flicker right in his gut, that what if- Sherlock had stamped it out himself in that final phone call, he'd looked up at Sherlock and heard his tear-choked confession and he'd known it was a lie, but-
"Sorry," he told the mediwitch. He still wasn't. He wasn't ever going to be sorry again. "I know you don't- that this is all just-" He cleared his throat with a gruff shrug, trying not to sniff, to smile, and he curled his fingers tighter around Sherlock's and couldn't let go.
"Oh, it's all right, dear. The both of you look as if you've been through the wringer." She patted Sherlock's scarring shoulder, one firm pat over the snake of a forming scar, red and angry and twisted, the skin bloodied, bruised, healing. Healing. "You know, you're almost all healed up, yourself. If you'd like, you can finish up. I'm sure you'll do fine."
Sherlock's pulse continued to beat, under his hand.
"I can do it," he murmured.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
"You'll like her," he said to Sherlock, when the mediwitch had left him alone, the dittany solution in his hands and one out cold genius by his side. "Madam Pomfrey, I mean. She won't buy any of your bullshit, but she will make you tea and tell you you're a reckless idiot who needs to take it easy. She's... a lot like Mrs. Hudson, actually. Now that I think about it."
Mrs. Hudson. One gun, one bullet for him: another gun, another bullet, for her.
John's hand wavered again. He breathed in harshly once, the inhale quaking in his chest, glaring at Sherlock's pale, thin shoulder, the fragility of bone under his hands, the snake of a scar to match John's gunshot starburst.
Three bullets. Three lives.
One rooftop.
And fucking hell, here it went again.
"You know when I made a decision, Sherlock? About all this?" John put the dittany aside for a moment, instead nudging a hip onto the edge of the bed so he could sit easier, so he could turn his back, feel the steady warmth and constancy of his best friend's life beside him without having to look. "I'm a wizard, that's right, Sherlock Holmes, and you've made it really bloody hard to keep that a secret, by the way- but I decided that I'd stop the night at the pool. When you had the chance to run, save your own neck, and you didn't. You didn't even think twice about it. That was... that was part of it, I guess, I- I hadn't realised what a stupid, selfless arsehole you really were until then, but it's... that wasn't it, you know."
There was another faint shifting, behind him. The absentminded nudge of a knee at his back: either shuffling in sleep, or Sherlock's dozenth attempt to shake off the sleeping draught, and wake up.
John chose not to find out which one it was.
If the bastard was awake, then he deserved to hear it.
"It was the look on your face. When you first saw me and thought I was him, Moriarty. You..."
It was only months after that, that John had heard the words from Sherlock's own mouth. Alone protects me. But he'd seen it in his face, that cold night at the pool; the explosives, the flicker of moonlight off the wavering surface of the water, the red gleam of the light between his eyes.
Alone protects me, he'd said, because if no one got close, he couldn't be hurt.
John was still allowed to be close.
"I could've saved myself. You know that now, I suppose." He absently smeared the remains of the dittany solution down, patting the cool cream across the wound just to feel the warmth of his skin in contrast. "I could've apparated out of there- that's how we got here, like this. Apparated. I promise, it actually doesn't normally end like this... I could've saved myself at any time. And I probably should have, if I wasn't just as crazy as you, you lunatic. But I couldn't leave you behind. And- that was it. That was when I decided."
Someday, Sherlock's life or well-being was going to come down to a question of John's secret. Something would happen to him, some horrifying kidnapping, some devastating injury, some crippling assault, and magic would be able to save him when all the brilliance in the git's great big head could not.
When it came down to it, it wasn't even really a question.
Of bloody course he'd do it.
John closed his suddenly stinging eyes, and because it was all he had, felt the beat of his heart just there at the point in his throat.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
"So... here goes, then, Sherlock. On that rooftop, you told me that you had lied to me. You told me that it was all just a magic trick. Which was actually really damn ironic, you just didn't know it at the time, but. It was."
He took another deep breath.
Here it went.
"I've lied to you. It was all just a magic trick. And I'm not going to apologise for it, nor am I going to start magically cleaning up your latest toxic mess, just because you're too lazy to do it yourself. But next time you throw yourself off a rooftop in front of me, I'll catch you. Because I'm a wizard, Sherlock."
He hadn't had his wand, the day Sherlock had jumped. He'd been forced into leaving it in his bedroom for months, now, because Sherlock had been starting to eye his left arm more and more suspiciously to the point of alarm and John had had no idea what he would say, if his brilliant friend had one day yanked up his sleeve to find his wand waiting. John had left his wand behind, when he went to Afghanistan, and he left it behind in his new warzone as well, and it had been nothing more than a fresh start.
Then, Sherlock had died in front of him, and a piece of John had died with him. Because I have the power to stop this but I don't have my wand. I left it behind for you, Sherlock, I left it behind so you wouldn't know, and now you're dying in my arms because you thought you couldn't trust me and I can't stop it.
Not ever again.
Not EVER again.
Another lazy knee nudged the small of his back, fingers flapping against his skin, and that was it. John glanced back around and met bleary eyes once again. Because of course he was awake, of course he was trying to listen, and John had never been so happy to see his absolute idiot of a best friend fight through medication just to be a stubborn arse.
"I know it's not safe," he croaked. Sherlock's hand struggled against his again, and he caught it, enfolding it before he could tug at John's sleeve so hard he was knocked over onto his stomach. "I know that, and I don't care." He sniffed, drawing closer still, leaning down until their foreheads were almost touching, until he could feel the heat and warmth of Sherlock's heart beating in time with his. "You're not doing this alone, do you understand me? You great mad idiot, do you understand how it felt, knowing you'd killed yourself and I wasn't enough to stop it? I couldn't do it, Sherlock. I couldn't live with that. Not again, you'll never do that again, do you understand?"
Sherlock did not answer.
John let him, quicksilver eyes flickering back into an uneasy sleep beside him. But as he let Sherlock lapse into silence, he stayed there with him, too, pressed downwards to share the pillow and listening to Sherlock breathe.
That was what made the decision, once and for all.
He would protect this.
This stupid, moronic, brilliant man; this raving madman of a genius that had stepped off a roof for John; this selfless idiot that was at once the worst and best person that John has ever known.
Sherlock was always the extraordinary one, between the two of them. The genius, the brilliant one, the shining star.
And John would protect this, because he could be extraordinary too.
He pulled back once, just a little. Framing the pale face in his hand, thumbing the same line he had before, the line that he'd seen splattered with fake blood.
Jim Moriarity's not going to know what hit him.