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to see you shift by 1electricpirate
Fandoms: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
29 Jul 2012
Tags
Summary
“How does it work? There has to be some mechanism behind it, surely. How does it work?”
“How does it … Magic, Sherlock, it’s magic. It doesn’t have a how, it just is. It just … works.”
In which Sherlock is a greedy, nosey parker and John has the patience of a saint. Vignettes from the process of acclimatisation.
Series
- Part 2 of More Things Than Are Dreamt Of
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Bookmark Notes:
Bloody hell,” John curses, looking up from the table to stare helplessly at Sherlock. “I’m a wizard.”
Sherlock returns his look blankly, reaching across the table to snatch his tea. “Yeeeeees,” he drawls, still eyeing John carefully as if he’d lost his mind. “Yes, John, and you have been for most of your life, this isn’t news …”
“No, I mean, oh, shut up,” John snaps, flustered, trying to calm himself down again. “I meant, I’m living like a wizard. I haven’t used magic like this since I was eighteen!”
“Is it a problem?” Sherlock asks, still singularly nonplussed, snatching John’s toast from his plate.
“No,” John says, frowning and rubbing his hand across his forehead. “No it’s just … different.”
Sherlock splutters crumbs at him as he asks “Good different or bad different?” around a mouthful of toast; John scowls and uses his wand to vanish the crumbs off of his face, wincing again when he realises what he’s done.
“Different different,” he surmises, staring at his wand as if it might decide, on a whim, to up and bite him.
“What’s the problem, then?”
John falls silent and thinks about it. He’s avoided it for so long, magic, because he knows how he is – he knows how he was, back then, when it was thrilling and new and glorious, and he couldn’t get enough of it, the pure delight of it running through his veins and across his skin. He remembers the looks he used to get from his classmates, jealous and wary and cruel. He got used to life without it, over the years, but he can’t say he didn’t miss it; he can’t honestly say it didn’t ache, sometimes, or get so pent up somewhere within him that he would have to shift into the lynx and curl up somewhere until waves of desperate frustration broke and ebbed.
Sherlock watches him closely, of course, but he’s never jealous and he’s never, ever scared, even when John has him dangling upside down from the ceiling with nothing but a few words and a flick of his wand. Sherlock always wants more, bigger, better; he wants John to push his limits and test his abilities. He loves it when John snaps and sends the book he’s asked for flying across the room with nothing more than a glare and a pulse of pure, aggravated magic. He listens eagerly when John describes how it feels to reach out beyond himself into the surging currents of white noise magic and manipulate it with nothing but the strength of his will, as he was taught to by the same old woman who gave him the amulet that rests over his heart nine days out of ten. He drinks it all down, every droplet of information John can give him about his magic, his skill, his power, and is still always thirsty for more.
John sits at the breakfast table and watches Sherlock skimming the Daily Prophet and realises, really realises, for the first time in the eight months since Sherlock tried to jump off of St. Bart’s, that he can actually have the best of both worlds.
He can sit here and make the tea make itself, and Sherlock will just watch with hungry fascination for a moment before turning back to the Prophet before tossing it, idly, on the pile with the Times, declaring it boring and trite before launching into the details of the latest double murder-suicide that Lestrade has turned up for their amusement. He can chase after Sherlock across London with a gun against the small of his back and his wand in his pocket, just in case. He can do all these things because Sherlock – in spite of being the brilliant, rational, logical child of science that he is – has spent the past eight months in a state of thorough and perpetual overhaul and reorganisation, and John has only just fully realised the full ramifications.
“What if I gave it up?” he asks; Sherlock looks up at him and tosses the Prophet aside to land soundly on his discard pile. “Magic, I mean. What would you say if I wanted to give it up again?”
A frown creases Sherlock’s face; he rocks back on his chair and steeples his fingers under his chin. “I don’t know that I’d say anything. I’d certainly be disappointed, but I can’t make you do anything you don’t want to do – that much has been abundantly clear since the day we met.”
“Why would you be disappointed?” John asks, leaning forward. “Because of your experiments?”
“Well,” Sherlock begins, one eyebrow raised as he seems to consider the problem he’s faced with. “I can’t deny that there are no small number of ideas still waiting to be investigated, but no, I don’t think that’s the main reason I’d be disappointed. There are also infinite numbers of experiments to be conducted without your magical aid. I would probably simply shift my main interest back to those.”