Fic for delugedpapercup: There is more to a mirror
Title: There is more to a mirror
Recipient: delugedpapercup
Author: coloredink
Characters/Pairings: John/Sherlock
Rating: PG
Warnings: None
Summary: What mattered was finally, now, finding the perfect present for John. It was a matter of pride.
Notes: Thanks to rubyofkukundu for a swift and thorough beta.
Sherlock woke up on Christmas morning to the expected pile of presents at the foot of his bed: a book on the history of the Ministry of Magic from Mycroft (boring); a pair of new gloves from GrandmËre (appreciated, but boring); twenty Galleons from his parents (boring). They never got him anything practical, like rare Potions ingredients or a book of curses or something explosive.
Then he spotted, underneath the discarded paper and tissue, another present. It was clumsily wrapped, with too much tape, in red and gold wrapping paper, and unexpectedly heavy for its small size. It was pliable under his fingers, but harder inside, like a pouch with something in it. Sherlock tore off the paper to find a black nylon pouch which, when unzipped, revealed a dozen shining stainless steel instruments: needles, forceps, scissors, a cartilage knife, and a scalpel.
Inside was a note: Heard you might appreciate this. It's a dissection set. Muggle students use them to cut open frogs. - JW
Sherlock stared, heart pounding, his mouth suddenly dry. Then he leapt to his feet and stared wildly around the room, groping for his wand on his bedside table.
Sweets, Watson loved sweets, especially wizarding sweets, which were still novel to him despite five years at Hogwarts and many, many trips to Honeydukes. Meanwhile, Sherlock was always purchasing them and then forgetting to eat them afterwards. He found a box that had once contained an assortment of ice mice and crammed in every treat he could find, levitating every chocolate frog and treacle fudge and liquorice wand from its hiding place under his bed and in his bookbag and the backs of his drawers, until the box was full to bursting. He finished it off with a bow and ran downstairs with it clutched in his hand.
Sure enough, he found Watson in the hallway adjacent to Ravenclaw Tower, managing to look as if he was just passing through.
Watson brightened. "Did you like--"
"Here," Sherlock panted, and shoved the box into Watson's hands. Watson undid the bow with a curious expression, while Sherlock watched with held breath. He had to know; the sweets were stuffed in there every which way, a few of them probably crushed inside their wrinkled wrappers.
"Wow!" Watson exclaimed. "There must be a little bit of everything in here! Thank you!" And he popped a toffee in his mouth.
-----
They hadn't known each other very long yet, that was the problem. In fact, they'd only really become friends a few weeks before Christmas, when Watson had fallen off his broom during a Quidditch match and broken his arm. Sherlock had not only supposed that it wasn't due to clumsiness on Watson's part (he'd been on the Quidditch team for four years, and he suddenly forgot how to fly a broomstick?) but had ascertained that it was tampering, and had even discovered the culprit: a Ravenclaw prefect, the jilted ex-girlfriend of Gryffindor's Keeper, who'd tampered with Watson's broom by mistake, it being the same model.
Sherlock had not had a chance to properly observe. They were in different Houses, different years, different classes. How was he supposed to know that Watson was going to get him a present? And he didn't have to reciprocate, it was true, but...well, it was what was done, that was all. And Sherlock didn't care about what was done, true, but he rather wanted to keep Watson around. Watson appreciated Sherlock's brilliance, shared his Herbology notes in exchange for chocolate, and wasn't a bleeding idiot like most of the other wizards in the school.
He resolved to do better next year.
-----
Next Christmas, Sherlock was the one to pace back and forth in the hallway. He'd found John's gift at the foot of his bed, a textbook on microorganisms (fascinating! how tiny life could be, and how clever the Muggles who discovered it!), and now he wanted very badly to see how John had liked his own gift. He wasn't a terribly late riser; he ought to be along any minute now--
"Sherlock!" John emerged from the other end of the hall, clutching Sherlock's present: a brand-new Nimbus 2000, with a gleaming mahogany handle and a brush of perfectly trimmed twigs. But John's face was bloodless, while his lips were bitten red. He thrust the broom at Sherlock. "Was this you? This was you, wasn't it."
"Yes," Sherlock said, surprised. "Wasn't there a tag?"
John shook his head and pushed the broom into Sherlock's chest. "I can't accept this."
"What?" Sherlock's arms came up around the broom and hovered without quite touching the wood. "Why not? Is there something wrong with it? I did the research, a lot of Quidditch players are--"
John shook his head again. He wouldn't look at Sherlock. "I can't. It's, it's too expensive. I know how much these cost, Sherlock--"
"Oh, that doesn't matter, I've got loads of money."
"No." John squeezed his eyes shut. "That's, that's not the point. I can't afford anything this, this nice for you in return--"
"That doesn't matter!" Sherlock exclaimed, desperate without knowing why. Something had his heart in a hot, tight grip; it made him want to squirm away and bolt back to his room, where he could huddle under the covers, safe. "Why should that matter? You like it, don't you?"
John didn't answer. He just shoved the broom into Sherlock's chest again, eyes still fixed on the floor. "I can't take it."
Finally, finally, Sherlock let his hands close around the handle. John let go of it as if it burned, and took a few steps back, still without making eye contact. "Do...do I need to give back the book?" Sherlock asked.
John's gaze snapped up to meet Sherlock's. "What? No, no...you can keep that." He gave Sherlock a brief, unconvincing smile, turned, and jogged away.
Sherlock stood there for a long time, clutching the broom in his hands, before he went back to his room. Once there, he swung the broom against one of the columns of his bed. The handle was very well-made indeed: it took four great cracks before the handle shattered, showering splinters all over the floor and his covers. He flung the brush onto the floor and stomped on it, scattering twigs and twine every which way. When finally there was nothing left to destroy, Sherlock collapsed onto the bed, still heaving with angry breaths.
Having friends was agonising. Why had he ever wanted one?
-----
Now it was John's last year at Hogwarts, while Sherlock still had one year left to go. How had he survived Hogwarts before John's company? John accompanying him on trips to Hogsmeade; John practising Potions using Sherlock's cauldron, brows beetled in concentration, his tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth; John rolling his eyes and muttering sarcastic comments under his breath about Professor Trelawney.
Well, that didn't matter. What mattered was finally, now, finding the perfect present for John. It was a matter of pride.
It had to be something of little or no monetary value, since John's presents for Sherlock were inexpensive Muggle things. (Or so Sherlock assumed; John came from an impoverished Muggle family, or at least impoverished compared to Sherlock, who was accustomed to eating with real silver and always having a house elf at his beck and call.) It had to be something John did not already have--that wasn't difficult, since John had hardly anything--but something that he wanted.
But John didn't seem to want anything. He was perfectly happy with his threadbare Muggle jumpers and his secondhand cauldron and his borrowed books, and really just seemed thrilled to be at Hogwarts at all. Despite a career spanning nearly seven years, John was still amazed by wizard photographs and riding a broomstick and the art of transfiguration and the existence of unicorns. John loved magic, but how was he supposed to give John magic as a gift?
-----
Dust covered every surface and even seemed to hang suspended in the air itself, turning the light dim and fusty. The desks had been pushed against the walls, chairs stacked on top of them, so that a large, clear space remained in the centre of the room. And at one end of that space was something tall and flat, draped with a white sheet. Sherlock led John into the room, John's steps unhesitating despite the necktie around his eyes, until they were standing in front of the sheeted thing. "All right, you can take it off now."
John tugged the tie from around his eyes and blinked. "Where are we?"
"Just a classroom," said Sherlock. "That's not the important bit. That is." And he pulled the sheet off the object.
It was a mirror, twice the height of a man, decorative curlicues carved around the edges of the gold-gilt frame. John peered into the glass and blinked.
"Now," said Sherlock, "what do you see?"
"Our reflections?"
Sherlock just barely managed to keep his face neutral. Did it not work with Muggle-borns? If so, there were all his plans, ruined.
"Wait," said John, and Sherlock let out his breath. "My reflection just moved on its own. It's..." His gaze tracked up, up, up to the very top of the glass. His face flamed. "Oh. Um."
Sherlock peered into the glass. His own desires appeared to have changed since his first year. John's reflection was in the mirror with his, his arm linked with Sherlock's. It was strange to see the difference in their heights like this. Sherlock had always had to look up at John, but last year John's growth stuttered to a halt, while Sherlock sprouted until he loomed over nearly all his classmates, knocking over chairs and end tables with his too-long limbs, his wand a fragile twig in his massive hand.
John looked away. His ears were still pink. "Is, is this some kind of trick mirror?"
"It's magic," Sherlock replied, not taking his eyes from the glass. In the reflection, John had his mouth on Sherlock's neck. "Obviously. Look at the top."
John had to crane his neck to read the flowing script carved around the top of the frame. "Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi." He frowned. "What does that mean?"
Even the Sherlock in the mirror rolled his eyes. "Try harder, John."
His friend read it again, silently, mouthing along with the words. Halfway through, he paused and read it again, his gaze this time moving from right to left. "Is that...that's just backwards, isn't it?"
Sherlock beamed. He knew John would work it out. Wizards had grown accustomed to letting magic and house elves do all their work. They'd forgotten how to think, securing secrets with backwards scripts and storing magical artefacts in empty classrooms. And half their spells were in butchered Latin! But Muggles were clever: without any magic to do things for them, they had to be smart.
"Then..." John's eyes moved up again, to something at the top of the glass that Sherlock couldn't see. The flush, which had faded from his face, flared up again, redder than before. He swallowed, adams apple bobbing in his throat. "What about you? What do you see?"
John in the mirror had his head on Sherlock's shoulder. Sherlock swallowed. I don't see anything, he wanted to say. But he glanced at John, who looked very anxious indeed, and thought of the way John kept glancing at the top of the mirror, as if there was something--
something
hanging
from
the ceiling?
Oh. Oh. Sherlock had brought John here with the intent of showing John a bit of magic, a mystery, and perhaps to find out what John wanted for Christmas, but this--this was better.
He grinned, as delight suffused him to the very tips of his fingers. "I know."
"You know?"
"What you see in the mirror. It's mistletoe, isn't it? Hanging right above us."
John gave Sherlock a blank, vaguely terrified look. When Sherlock's smile turned smug, John's expression turned exasperated. "You twit. You see it too, don't you?"
"Of course not," Sherlock said, though in a manner of speaking, he did. His reflection was now snogging John's. He decided to try making them match.
It was a quick, nervous kiss at first, a quick peck to the corner of John's mouth, and John moved at the same time, so that they almost knocked heads. Then John tilted his head, stretched up just a bit, and went in for a proper snog. His fingers brushed first against Sherlock's jaw, then curled into his hair. Sherlock, for his part, didn't know at first what to do with his hands, and settled for placing them around John's biceps. John really knew how to kiss: wet without being messy, assertive without being pushy. It made Sherlock feel stupid, and also furious at every single person that John had kissed before.
Then John broke it off. His lips were red, and high spots of colour marred his cheekbones. "How was that, then?"
"Acceptable," said Sherlock.
John smacked Sherlock on the arm with his open palm.
Sherlock laughed and pressed his forehead against John's. "Happy Christmas," he said, impulsively, and then felt foolish. What did he think this was, some happy romantic comedy story?
He could feel John laugh in his arms. "Happy Christmas."
---end----
Recipient: delugedpapercup
Author: coloredink
Characters/Pairings: John/Sherlock
Rating: PG
Warnings: None
Summary: What mattered was finally, now, finding the perfect present for John. It was a matter of pride.
Notes: Thanks to rubyofkukundu for a swift and thorough beta.
Sherlock woke up on Christmas morning to the expected pile of presents at the foot of his bed: a book on the history of the Ministry of Magic from Mycroft (boring); a pair of new gloves from GrandmËre (appreciated, but boring); twenty Galleons from his parents (boring). They never got him anything practical, like rare Potions ingredients or a book of curses or something explosive.
Then he spotted, underneath the discarded paper and tissue, another present. It was clumsily wrapped, with too much tape, in red and gold wrapping paper, and unexpectedly heavy for its small size. It was pliable under his fingers, but harder inside, like a pouch with something in it. Sherlock tore off the paper to find a black nylon pouch which, when unzipped, revealed a dozen shining stainless steel instruments: needles, forceps, scissors, a cartilage knife, and a scalpel.
Inside was a note: Heard you might appreciate this. It's a dissection set. Muggle students use them to cut open frogs. - JW
Sherlock stared, heart pounding, his mouth suddenly dry. Then he leapt to his feet and stared wildly around the room, groping for his wand on his bedside table.
Sweets, Watson loved sweets, especially wizarding sweets, which were still novel to him despite five years at Hogwarts and many, many trips to Honeydukes. Meanwhile, Sherlock was always purchasing them and then forgetting to eat them afterwards. He found a box that had once contained an assortment of ice mice and crammed in every treat he could find, levitating every chocolate frog and treacle fudge and liquorice wand from its hiding place under his bed and in his bookbag and the backs of his drawers, until the box was full to bursting. He finished it off with a bow and ran downstairs with it clutched in his hand.
Sure enough, he found Watson in the hallway adjacent to Ravenclaw Tower, managing to look as if he was just passing through.
Watson brightened. "Did you like--"
"Here," Sherlock panted, and shoved the box into Watson's hands. Watson undid the bow with a curious expression, while Sherlock watched with held breath. He had to know; the sweets were stuffed in there every which way, a few of them probably crushed inside their wrinkled wrappers.
"Wow!" Watson exclaimed. "There must be a little bit of everything in here! Thank you!" And he popped a toffee in his mouth.
-----
They hadn't known each other very long yet, that was the problem. In fact, they'd only really become friends a few weeks before Christmas, when Watson had fallen off his broom during a Quidditch match and broken his arm. Sherlock had not only supposed that it wasn't due to clumsiness on Watson's part (he'd been on the Quidditch team for four years, and he suddenly forgot how to fly a broomstick?) but had ascertained that it was tampering, and had even discovered the culprit: a Ravenclaw prefect, the jilted ex-girlfriend of Gryffindor's Keeper, who'd tampered with Watson's broom by mistake, it being the same model.
Sherlock had not had a chance to properly observe. They were in different Houses, different years, different classes. How was he supposed to know that Watson was going to get him a present? And he didn't have to reciprocate, it was true, but...well, it was what was done, that was all. And Sherlock didn't care about what was done, true, but he rather wanted to keep Watson around. Watson appreciated Sherlock's brilliance, shared his Herbology notes in exchange for chocolate, and wasn't a bleeding idiot like most of the other wizards in the school.
He resolved to do better next year.
-----
Next Christmas, Sherlock was the one to pace back and forth in the hallway. He'd found John's gift at the foot of his bed, a textbook on microorganisms (fascinating! how tiny life could be, and how clever the Muggles who discovered it!), and now he wanted very badly to see how John had liked his own gift. He wasn't a terribly late riser; he ought to be along any minute now--
"Sherlock!" John emerged from the other end of the hall, clutching Sherlock's present: a brand-new Nimbus 2000, with a gleaming mahogany handle and a brush of perfectly trimmed twigs. But John's face was bloodless, while his lips were bitten red. He thrust the broom at Sherlock. "Was this you? This was you, wasn't it."
"Yes," Sherlock said, surprised. "Wasn't there a tag?"
John shook his head and pushed the broom into Sherlock's chest. "I can't accept this."
"What?" Sherlock's arms came up around the broom and hovered without quite touching the wood. "Why not? Is there something wrong with it? I did the research, a lot of Quidditch players are--"
John shook his head again. He wouldn't look at Sherlock. "I can't. It's, it's too expensive. I know how much these cost, Sherlock--"
"Oh, that doesn't matter, I've got loads of money."
"No." John squeezed his eyes shut. "That's, that's not the point. I can't afford anything this, this nice for you in return--"
"That doesn't matter!" Sherlock exclaimed, desperate without knowing why. Something had his heart in a hot, tight grip; it made him want to squirm away and bolt back to his room, where he could huddle under the covers, safe. "Why should that matter? You like it, don't you?"
John didn't answer. He just shoved the broom into Sherlock's chest again, eyes still fixed on the floor. "I can't take it."
Finally, finally, Sherlock let his hands close around the handle. John let go of it as if it burned, and took a few steps back, still without making eye contact. "Do...do I need to give back the book?" Sherlock asked.
John's gaze snapped up to meet Sherlock's. "What? No, no...you can keep that." He gave Sherlock a brief, unconvincing smile, turned, and jogged away.
Sherlock stood there for a long time, clutching the broom in his hands, before he went back to his room. Once there, he swung the broom against one of the columns of his bed. The handle was very well-made indeed: it took four great cracks before the handle shattered, showering splinters all over the floor and his covers. He flung the brush onto the floor and stomped on it, scattering twigs and twine every which way. When finally there was nothing left to destroy, Sherlock collapsed onto the bed, still heaving with angry breaths.
Having friends was agonising. Why had he ever wanted one?
-----
Now it was John's last year at Hogwarts, while Sherlock still had one year left to go. How had he survived Hogwarts before John's company? John accompanying him on trips to Hogsmeade; John practising Potions using Sherlock's cauldron, brows beetled in concentration, his tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth; John rolling his eyes and muttering sarcastic comments under his breath about Professor Trelawney.
Well, that didn't matter. What mattered was finally, now, finding the perfect present for John. It was a matter of pride.
It had to be something of little or no monetary value, since John's presents for Sherlock were inexpensive Muggle things. (Or so Sherlock assumed; John came from an impoverished Muggle family, or at least impoverished compared to Sherlock, who was accustomed to eating with real silver and always having a house elf at his beck and call.) It had to be something John did not already have--that wasn't difficult, since John had hardly anything--but something that he wanted.
But John didn't seem to want anything. He was perfectly happy with his threadbare Muggle jumpers and his secondhand cauldron and his borrowed books, and really just seemed thrilled to be at Hogwarts at all. Despite a career spanning nearly seven years, John was still amazed by wizard photographs and riding a broomstick and the art of transfiguration and the existence of unicorns. John loved magic, but how was he supposed to give John magic as a gift?
-----
Dust covered every surface and even seemed to hang suspended in the air itself, turning the light dim and fusty. The desks had been pushed against the walls, chairs stacked on top of them, so that a large, clear space remained in the centre of the room. And at one end of that space was something tall and flat, draped with a white sheet. Sherlock led John into the room, John's steps unhesitating despite the necktie around his eyes, until they were standing in front of the sheeted thing. "All right, you can take it off now."
John tugged the tie from around his eyes and blinked. "Where are we?"
"Just a classroom," said Sherlock. "That's not the important bit. That is." And he pulled the sheet off the object.
It was a mirror, twice the height of a man, decorative curlicues carved around the edges of the gold-gilt frame. John peered into the glass and blinked.
"Now," said Sherlock, "what do you see?"
"Our reflections?"
Sherlock just barely managed to keep his face neutral. Did it not work with Muggle-borns? If so, there were all his plans, ruined.
"Wait," said John, and Sherlock let out his breath. "My reflection just moved on its own. It's..." His gaze tracked up, up, up to the very top of the glass. His face flamed. "Oh. Um."
Sherlock peered into the glass. His own desires appeared to have changed since his first year. John's reflection was in the mirror with his, his arm linked with Sherlock's. It was strange to see the difference in their heights like this. Sherlock had always had to look up at John, but last year John's growth stuttered to a halt, while Sherlock sprouted until he loomed over nearly all his classmates, knocking over chairs and end tables with his too-long limbs, his wand a fragile twig in his massive hand.
John looked away. His ears were still pink. "Is, is this some kind of trick mirror?"
"It's magic," Sherlock replied, not taking his eyes from the glass. In the reflection, John had his mouth on Sherlock's neck. "Obviously. Look at the top."
John had to crane his neck to read the flowing script carved around the top of the frame. "Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi." He frowned. "What does that mean?"
Even the Sherlock in the mirror rolled his eyes. "Try harder, John."
His friend read it again, silently, mouthing along with the words. Halfway through, he paused and read it again, his gaze this time moving from right to left. "Is that...that's just backwards, isn't it?"
Sherlock beamed. He knew John would work it out. Wizards had grown accustomed to letting magic and house elves do all their work. They'd forgotten how to think, securing secrets with backwards scripts and storing magical artefacts in empty classrooms. And half their spells were in butchered Latin! But Muggles were clever: without any magic to do things for them, they had to be smart.
"Then..." John's eyes moved up again, to something at the top of the glass that Sherlock couldn't see. The flush, which had faded from his face, flared up again, redder than before. He swallowed, adams apple bobbing in his throat. "What about you? What do you see?"
John in the mirror had his head on Sherlock's shoulder. Sherlock swallowed. I don't see anything, he wanted to say. But he glanced at John, who looked very anxious indeed, and thought of the way John kept glancing at the top of the mirror, as if there was something--
something
hanging
from
the ceiling?
Oh. Oh. Sherlock had brought John here with the intent of showing John a bit of magic, a mystery, and perhaps to find out what John wanted for Christmas, but this--this was better.
He grinned, as delight suffused him to the very tips of his fingers. "I know."
"You know?"
"What you see in the mirror. It's mistletoe, isn't it? Hanging right above us."
John gave Sherlock a blank, vaguely terrified look. When Sherlock's smile turned smug, John's expression turned exasperated. "You twit. You see it too, don't you?"
"Of course not," Sherlock said, though in a manner of speaking, he did. His reflection was now snogging John's. He decided to try making them match.
It was a quick, nervous kiss at first, a quick peck to the corner of John's mouth, and John moved at the same time, so that they almost knocked heads. Then John tilted his head, stretched up just a bit, and went in for a proper snog. His fingers brushed first against Sherlock's jaw, then curled into his hair. Sherlock, for his part, didn't know at first what to do with his hands, and settled for placing them around John's biceps. John really knew how to kiss: wet without being messy, assertive without being pushy. It made Sherlock feel stupid, and also furious at every single person that John had kissed before.
Then John broke it off. His lips were red, and high spots of colour marred his cheekbones. "How was that, then?"
"Acceptable," said Sherlock.
John smacked Sherlock on the arm with his open palm.
Sherlock laughed and pressed his forehead against John's. "Happy Christmas," he said, impulsively, and then felt foolish. What did he think this was, some happy romantic comedy story?
He could feel John laugh in his arms. "Happy Christmas."
---end----