Fic: Sherlock Holmes, Ravenclaw (Part 1/?)
Title: Sherlock Holmes, Ravenclaw (Part 1/?)
Author: timemachineyeah
Fandom: BBC Sherlock, Harry Potter
Genre: Genfic, crossover
Words: 2052
Rating: PG. Potential future PG-13, but probably not honestly.
Warnings: none? Fluff? Sibling rivalry and some bullying, maybe?
Pairings: Potentially eventual John/Sherlock? But it'll be subtle and mostly implied.
Disclaimer: Not my characters or my universe. All praise to Our God Rowling. And Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Moffat&Gatiss.
Summary: When Sherlock was sorted into Ravenclaw, the quiet response didn't carry the pride it had for his brother.
Author's note: After having not written any fanfiction for nearly a decade, this fanfiction comes as the result of an argument with my roommate. Unable to agree on whether Sherlock is a Ravenclaw or a Slytherin, I was eventually compelled to write down my thoughts on why I, personally, feel he is a Ravenclaw. And somehow, in writing down my feelings the essay turned into a fanfiction, and this is the result. Now, I also have two other roommates promising to watch Sherlock only when this fic is finished. So, coming out of fic retirement for this. Enjoy.
~*~
The Holmes family lineage is venerable (to understate it, which they generally do). They are pureblood with meticulous family records to prove it, more for the status it provides than actually believing it to be objectively superior, though you’d never hear them say so. And they are Slytherin going back generations.
They are not loud about their credentials. They do not boast, like certain other families ("You are better than a Malfoy. Prove it, and do not rise to his taunting," their mother had once scolded Mycroft during some social gathering with scones and fancy robes). They are confident enough in their standing that it need never be spoken of.
The extended Holmes family keeps a Death Eater or two among their ranks, but they also keep a member of the Order around. It's a matter of precaution. They aren't much loyal to any ideology. They keep to themselves. But when your station is such as theirs, it's best to keep an egg in every basket, as it were.
The First Wizarding War, though then it was just called The War, had been over for ten years when Mycroft was finally old enough to go to Hogwarts. No one was surprised when the Hat made him Slytherin. Sherlock, just six years old, had heard with only mild interest the quiet but proud cooing of his parents and older relatives over the news. Sherlock had just recently, and without the knowledge of any of his guardians, discovered his ability to change the colors of his shoe buckles if he concentrated on them. He was experimenting with this ability in secret, trying to find out what else he could apply it to and, with precision, exactly how far he could take it.
His father was less than amused when he found everything in Sherlock's room turned a delicate and rather gorgeous shade of turquoise.
When Sherlock was sorted into Ravenclaw, the quiet response didn't carry the pride it had for his brother. They also did not say, “A Holmes child? Not in Slytherin? What a disgrace.” They didn’t say, "It could be worse", "At least he isn't Hufflepuff", or "Thank goodness we've also got Mycroft." They didn't say anything. They didn't have to say it. Sherlock knew well enough to know what they were thinking.
And he didn't give a flying toss. Bin old family traditions; he was thrilled. Everyone knew, if only vaguely, that the resources available to Ravenclaws in their common room were unmatched. The fact that he got to upset his dull family a bit was just a secondary perk.
Mycroft might, Sherlock would only admit to himself in his darkest hours, be as smart as he was. Maybe. Almost. But Mycroft was always using his skills for various deeply boring objectives. He was less interested in the skills themselves, and more in how he could use them to his advantage. The experiment was never for its own sake.
Sherlock didn't care what supposed benefits an experiment could bring him if it didn't also bring with it a new challenge, a new tidbit, something he hadn't encountered before. The knowledge was never the means to anything else. Rather, everything else was a means to knowledge. And that knowledge was just a means to solving even more puzzles and meeting the next challenge, and gaining more knowledge over again. That was where the true joy of it was, the way it distracted him, the way it alleviated his boredom.
Hogwarts, delightful Hogwarts, was full of fresh and stimulating novelties for Sherlock to study and absorb.
In less than a month he became cheerful rivals with the eagle on the Ravenclaw common room door. He could hardly think of anything more excellent than a magical object whose sole purpose was to come up with puzzles for you. The eagle seemed to find him similarly entertaining. Sherlock developed a habit of suddenly needing some small thing or another outside the common room and leaving, just to swiftly return and be presented with a new quandary. The eagle noticed this, and would take these opportunities to come up with especially difficult problems for the surprisingly precocious (even for a Ravenclaw!) first year boy to solve.
Once, though, Sherlock left and the eagle prepared a riddle for him only for Sherlock not to return. The eagle, disappointed at its missed chance to use this particularly clever stumper, went ahead and gave the riddle to the first student who tried to enter anyway.
Sherlock, meanwhile, was begrudgingly waylaid in the hospital wing.
Sherlock was certain his sudden cursing hadn’t been an accident, but rather a well-coordinated stunt of Mycroft’s (it seemed their relationship at school wouldn’t change much from their relationship at home); he was even certain he could prove it fairly quickly. But he wasn’t certain it was in his interest to garner that sort of attention from the professors this early in his tenure at school, even as the victim of the prank. Especially as the victim.
The rabbit ears he had spouted looked loathsomely adorable on him.
Madam Pomfrey left him on his bed to attend to another boy. A third year, Sherlock quickly surmised. Barley hair, and surprisingly soft features for the squareness of his jaw. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, and most of the right half of his torso and his right arm were wrapped in bandages.
“How do you hold your wand again?” the boy was intent and serious.
“You are here to be healed, not take a Charms lesson! Hold still; the potion won’t go active without the spell,” Madam Pomfrey’s voice was stern, but there was the hint of a flattered smile teasing at the corners of her lips.
“Will you show it to me again after?”
“Hold still and I will show you now!”
It was a complicated bit of wandwork. Sherlock watched as the boy followed it with interest.
“Is it hard to be a doctor for all these students?” the boy asked, when Madam Pomfrey had finished.
“When they get themselves recklessly injured and then ask too many questions, yes. Now rest up, Watson, you should be all sorted in less than an hour as long as you don’t exert yourself.” Her glare was threatening. She moved it from the boy’s face to Sherlock’s, “That goes for you as well! Though you’ll likely have to stay overnight before those ears are completely gone, I’m afraid.” She looked at the both of them, “Behave yourselves!”
And then she was gone, and it was just the two of them.
For a moment they both made an effort to look anywhere but at each other, but eventually their eyes met. The boy flicked his gaze up to Sherlock’s tall rabbit ears, “Curse?”
“A library book that hadn’t been checked out in ages,” Sherlock affirmed. Without thinking, he reached up and stroked one of them self-consciously.
“I’ve seen worse,” the boy said, in an attempt at comfort.
Sherlock brought his hand down swiftly. He put on an air of detachment, “It’s not important. Aesthetics have no practical bearing.”
The boy just nodded and looked politely elsewhere, “My name’s John Watson. Yours?”
“Sherlock Holmes.”
“What year are you?”
“First,” Sherlock replied and, acutely aware of his rabbit-eared state, suddenly felt a need to prove he could look after himself, “And you’re a third year. Gryffindor. Muggle-born. You were injured falling off a broomstick. Trying to show off for someone, maybe? Or to show someone up. You’re secretly hoping this will get your out of your Potions essay, but it won’t.”
John’s eyes widened, “That’s... yeah. Blimey, how’d you know all that? Did Madam Pomfrey tell you?”
“She didn’t have to. You’ve got dirt under your nails, lots, and you smell like puffapods. So you’ve recently been to Herbology, and it was third year. Ravenclaw third years had Herbology earlier today with Gryffindor. You’re not Ravenclaw, or I’d’ve seen you around. So you’re Gryffindor. You called Madam Pomfrey a ‘doctor’, instead of ‘healer’ or just calling her our ‘Matron’, so you grew up in the muggle world. I suppose you could be half blood, but muggle-born seems more likely. Your injuries aren’t magical, just gravitational, severe enough to take more than a few minutes to heal and located to one side, so you fell from a considerable height, most likely broomstick. Madam Pomfrey said you were being reckless, and you don’t seem clumsy or particularly vainglorious, so to be egged on enough to attempt a broomstick feat that would cause such an injury... maybe you were showing off? And you’re hoping to get out of your Potions essay because anyone would be; I’ve heard Snape’s come up with a real thrashing for the third years. And it’s Snape and you’re Gryffindor, so you’re certainly not going to get any breaks from him.”
John gaped. When he finally managed to compose himself he asked, “How old are you again?”
Sherlock held his chin high. The dignity of it was slightly lessened by the bunny ears, “Eleven.”
“That was amazing. It would’ve been amazing if you were a hundred. It’s extra amazing that you’re an underclassman.”
Sherlock looked surprised, and then a little bit pleased.
John was beaming, “It was especially impressive because it’s such a muggle skill.”
“What?! No it’s-” Sherlock was taken aback.
“I didn’t mean it as something bad!” John quickly corrected, “Sorry. I forget how those from magical families can take that kind of thing,” John paused, “Which is a bit insulting, by the way. Just, you know, as a muggle-born.”
Sherlock didn’t register the disdain in John’s voice, instead just registering new information, “You’ve heard of the Holmes family, then?”
“What? No. Just, your name. Sherlock. It’s not exactly a common muggle name, is it?”
“I wouldn’t actually know. I’m not all that familiar with the muggle world.”
“Oh,” John looked down and spoke almost to himself, “That’s a shame.” He looked up at Sherlock, “All I meant was it’s cool that you have this thing you can do that doesn’t require magic. Lots of magical people think that if it doesn’t take magic, it must not be meaningful. I... it’s nice that you don’t think that way.”
Sherlock shuffled uncomfortably in his bed, “Who were you trying to impress? When you fell.”
“Oh. Yeah, that.” John looked suddenly sheepish, “I was just trying to get one over on Harry.”
“Potter?” Sherlock sat up a little.
“Oh! No. Harriet. My sister. She’s a seventh year. I always forget that she goes by Harriet while at school to avoid being mixed up with ‘the more famous one’. At home she’s just Harry.”
The conversation flowed, if not easily then at least comfortably, from there. “I hate Umbridge. It’s so dull! I want to do things,” Sherlock opined, while John told him, “I feel bad. My first year I had Lupin. He was brilliant! We got to do all kinds of practical stuff they aren’t teaching any more.” John regaled Sherlock with stories of his parents’ confusion at the things he and Harriet could do as children, and Sherlock told of his longstanding rivalry with Mycroft, and they both laughed.
Too soon, Madam Pomfrey had returned, “This isn’t exactly relaxing and behaving.” Sherlock and John both swiftly laid back in their beds and looked innocent. Madam Pomfrey cocked an eyebrow, “Watson, how’re you feeling?”
John had completely forgotten about his injuries. He tested his arm and twisted his torso, “No pain.”
Madam Pomfrey removed his bandages and made him test his mobility more fully. John gave it his full attention. After confirming his restored health, Madam Pomfrey kicked him from the hospital wing, lecturing him to be more careful.
“You,” she said to Sherlock, “should really take a nap. You’re body’s going to have to put in some effort to eliminate those ears.”
Sherlock took her advice.
Several hours later, most of Ravenclaw house was trapped outside of their common room. Dumbledore had to be called in to help. The eagle was miffed; it was certain Sherlock would have solved this one by now. Dumbledore gave it a stern, if understanding, talking to. Sherlock would notice, later, that the eagle’s puzzles were never quite as good as they used to be, but he wouldn’t guess why.