# 221B Baker Street – Sitting Room – 2:30 PM
The violin's voice sliced through Baker Street with that peculiar blend of genius and impending homicide that only Sherlock Holmes could manage. It wasn't music so much as mathematics having a nervous breakdown—precise, passionate, and just unhinged enough to make the neighbors consider calling the police again.
John Watson sat at the desk that had, through no formal agreement or declaration, become his. Baker Street operated on the laws of chaos and territorial osmosis; you didn't choose your furniture—it claimed you. His laptop glowed accusingly with Sherlock's blog, *The Science of Deduction*, which John was attempting to edit into something that wouldn't terrify potential clients or be cited as evidence in court.
"Right," John began, not looking up, "when you describe finding the victim, perhaps we could leave out the bit about the specific bacterial colonies that had—"
"Fascinating detail!" Sherlock declared, sawing at his violin with the righteous fury of a man certain the world was too stupid to deserve him. "Vital to understanding the post-mortem timeline through microbiological activity!"
"Yes," John said, grimly applying his cursor like a scalpel, "but our readers are mostly people who've lost wedding rings or think their neighbors are having affairs, not—"
"—imbeciles, you mean."
"—forensic pathologists," John finished.
Sherlock sniffed. The violin produced a noise that sounded suspiciously like a passive-aggressive flourish.
"And this bit," John went on, "about the victim's dental work—"
"Indicates class, healthcare access, and possible profession!"
"—is unnecessarily graphic when you describe *extracting the tooth for closer examination*."
The next note from the violin was somewhere between outrage and a threat. Possibly both.
Harry Potter, perched in the armchair that had somehow become his throne (through a combination of charm, stubbornness, and the weaponized pity of being ten), sipped his tea with the calm of a boy who had seen far weirder things than a consulting detective arguing over corpse teeth.
"You could just mention it was done *after* the man died," Harry offered sweetly, not glancing up from *Hogwarts: A History*. "Makes it sound more academic, less… serial-killer-y."
"It was academic!" Sherlock snapped, affronted. "A perfectly legitimate archaeological procedure!"
John looked up, eyebrows rising in slow horror. "You pulled a dead man's tooth out with pliers, Sherlock. That's not archaeology. That's—"
"—efficient," Sherlock interrupted.
"—*illegal*," John corrected.
"The body was in the morgue! Molly gave permission!"
"Molly gives you permission," John said, "because she's trying to stop you from sneaking in at midnight with a crowbar and a monologue about 'science'."
Harry nearly choked on his tea, eyes dancing with mischief. "You should probably thank her, Sherlock. She's the only reason you're not in a glass tank somewhere being studied for *your* bacterial colonies."
Sherlock's eyes narrowed. "You're mocking me."
"Only a little," Harry said innocently. "You make it too easy. You do realize you sound like a Bond villain who got distracted by a microscope?"
John coughed to hide his grin. Sherlock looked genuinely wounded for a moment before returning to his violin, launching into something fast, furious, and unmistakably dramatic—an auditory sulk, in other words.
"Philistines," he muttered. "Surrounded by philistines."
"To be fair," Harry said, setting down his teacup, "I don't think most philistines could tell you the half-life of a corpse in varying humidity conditions."
"Exactly!" Sherlock said, pleased despite himself.
Harry smiled sweetly. "They also wouldn't *want* to."
John snorted. "He's got you there, mate."
Sherlock glared at both of them, bow suspended mid-air. "One day, you'll both appreciate the pursuit of truth without compromise."
"Truth, yes," Harry said cheerfully. "But perhaps with fewer pliers."
John shut the laptop with a definitive click. "There. Edited, sanitized, and possibly even safe for public consumption."
Sherlock gave a disdainful sniff. "You've stripped it of all intellectual rigor."
"I've stripped it of all potential arrest warrants," John countered.
Harry leaned back, smug as a cat in the creamery. "I'd call that a public service, Doctor Watson. Maybe put *that* on the blog."
Sherlock glared at him with the kind of concentrated focus that could theoretically ignite tea.
Harry just smiled, completely unbothered. "Don't look at me like that, Sherlock. I'm almost eleven, and not intimidated. You, on the other hand, are one melodramatic violin solo away from needing a leash."
The violin stopped mid-note, the abrupt silence so sharp it could've been outlined in chalk. Sherlock Holmes lowered his bow like a man defusing a bomb—precise, slow, entirely too calm. His pale eyes focused on some invisible point in space, which, in Sherlock terms, meant the brain had just clicked into one of those terrifying overdrives that usually ended in either a murder solved or a small explosion.
"Harry," he said, voice dangerously even. "Where are my cigarettes?"
From his armchair, Harry Potter didn't even twitch. "What cigarettes?"
"The cigarettes," Sherlock said with a kind of lethal patience that implied he was hanging by a very thin intellectual thread, "which I placed in my coat pocket this morning. The ones I reserve for moments of acute mental stagnation and existential crisis."
"Oh, *those* cigarettes," Harry said, turning a page of *Hogwarts: A History* as though it contained the answer to life, the universe, and how to irritate Sherlock Holmes most efficiently. "Haven't seen any. John, have you seen any cigarettes?"
John didn't look up from his laptop, tone casual and well-rehearsed. "Can't say I have. Though I did notice Harry doing a bit of, uh, reorganizing earlier. Quite the domestic whirlwind, actually. Hoovered, dusted, destroyed several minor bad habits—very thorough work."
Sherlock's eyes narrowed like a hawk spotting prey. "Define 'reorganizing.'"
Harry smiled—a small, dangerous thing that looked far too confident for an eleven-year-old. "You know. Tidying up. Putting things in their proper places. Getting rid of... dangerous clutter."
"Harry James Potter," Sherlock said in a voice that could've frozen boiling water, "where. Are. My. Cigarettes."
Harry looked up at last, his green eyes alight with saintly innocence and pure mischief. "Define *cigarettes*."
"Don't you start."
"Because if you mean those carcinogenic death-sticks that Mrs. Hudson specifically banned from existing *anywhere* in the flat—"
"She banned smoking them *in* the flat," Sherlock snapped. "Storage was never explicitly—"
Harry's imitation of Mrs. Hudson was impeccable—down to the firm-but-kindly menace. "*'Sherlock Holmes, if I find one more packet of those vile things anywhere in this building, I'll confiscate them myself, and you can explain to that lovely boy why his guardian's lungs have given up before he's old enough for Hogwarts.'*"
John coughed into his hand, failing spectacularly to disguise his laughter. "He's got you there."
Sherlock spun toward him, coat tails flaring like an accusation. "Whose side are you on?"
"The side that prefers not to be evicted," John replied smoothly. "You remember the skull incident? Or the kitchen-table incident? Or—God help me—the *bathroom mirror* incident?"
"Creative storage solution," Sherlock muttered.
"She's threatening to install CCTV, Sherlock," John said pointedly. "Real cameras. In here. Constant observation."
Sherlock paused, actually *considering* it. "Could provide fascinating data on domestic behavioral patterns and unconscious habit loops—"
Both Harry and John: "*No*."
Sherlock sighed, affronted. "You two have no appreciation for scientific inquiry."
Harry set down his book with all the solemnity of a tiny professor about to deliver a thesis. "Sherlock. You're brilliant—obnoxiously so, really—and one of the cleverest people I've ever met."
"I sense a 'but,'" Sherlock said warily.
Harry nodded gravely. "But you're also hopeless at being a functioning adult, catastrophically self-destructive when bored, and appear to think 'personal health' is a fictional concept invented to annoy you."
John raised his tea in salute. "Hear, hear."
Sherlock's glare could have melted glass. "This is a coup. A domestic coup."
Harry clasped his hands primly in his lap. "If by 'coup' you mean 'a basic intervention staged by people who care about you,' then yes. Full-scale, well-coordinated coup. Complete with civilian oversight."
"I'm being conspired against in my own sitting room," Sherlock said, throwing himself dramatically into his chair like a Regency widow.
"Our sitting room," John corrected, unruffled. "I live here too. Pay rent. Make tea. Occasionally save you from prison."
"And I live here," Harry said sweetly, "because you're my guardian, which, according to every social worker in London and at least three letters from Professor McGonagall, means your health is technically *my* problem."
Sherlock groaned, folding his arms like a sulking schoolboy. "This is tyranny disguised as affection."
"Correct," John said cheerfully. "We're dreadful people. Wanting you alive and everything."
Harry smirked. "Imagine the scandal if Britain's only consulting detective died of something as boring as lung disease. I mean, really, Sherlock. So anticlimactic."
"I'm *bored*," Sherlock announced, in the unmistakable tone of a man who had decided that if he couldn't win the previous argument, he would at least derail it with maximum dramatic effect. "Utterly, catastrophically bored. London appears to have collectively agreed to stop committing interesting crimes. I've resorted to re-reading my own case notes and playing violin to stave off madness. *Nothing* of intellectual merit is occurring anywhere in this dreary city."
Harry didn't even look up from his book. "You solved a quadruple murder three days ago."
"That was *three days ago!*" Sherlock spun toward him like an actor hitting his mark. "Do you have any idea how long three days is when you're not actively engaged in mental combat with the criminal underclass? It's interminable! A yawning chasm of dullness! A geological era of tedium!"
"Most people," John said dryly, eyes on his laptop, "find three days of peace and quiet to be quite a blessing. You know, time to relax. Reconnect with reality. Breathe."
"Most people," Sherlock countered, "have the intellectual range of undercooked vegetables and wouldn't recognize a stimulating problem if it broke into their homes and left a calling card written in arterial spray."
John sighed, unfazed. "And there's that legendary Holmes charm. So good with people. Can't imagine why you have trouble maintaining friendships."
Before Sherlock could launch into one of his trademark dissertations about how friendship was an evolutionary inconvenience and boredom, and the only true constant of the human condition, when the sound of footsteps on the stairs cut through the flat. They were brisk, light, and purposeful—definitely *not* Mrs. Hudson. Mrs. Hudson's footsteps promised tea, biscuits, and the faint hope of normalcy. These promised news, urgency… and possibly the kind of trouble even Sherlock found interesting.
Andromeda Tonks appeared in the doorway like a force of nature disguised as a professional. Elegant, efficient, and entirely unimpressed by the chaos of Baker Street, she carried herself with the calm authority of someone who'd dealt with trauma, magic, and the Holmes family—and had survived all three. Her Healer's robes were immaculate despite the August heat; her dark hair was coiled into a bun so precise it probably obeyed Ministry safety regulations.
"Sherlock. John. Harry," she greeted evenly, giving each of them a nod before her gaze landed on the violin in Sherlock's hand. "Bach again? Or are we reconstructing a murder through interpretive sonata?"
"The former," Sherlock replied with a touch of injured pride. "Honestly, why does everyone assume my violin playing has ulterior motives beyond art?"
Harry, without looking up from his book, said sweetly, "Because two days ago you played the same seventeen bars for nearly an hour while staring at a wall covered in bloodstain photos. At some point it stops being *art* and starts being *forensic jazz*."
Andromeda's lips twitched, the faintest ghost of amusement. "I'm not here to psychoanalyze Sherlock's relationship with his violin, though I suspect it could fund a research grant."
She moved further in, taking John's desk chair with the smooth efficiency of someone used to taking control of chaotic rooms. John, long practiced in this ritual, migrated to the sofa arm without protest.
"I've received correspondence from Dr. Khalil Rahman," Andromeda began, unfolding a sheaf of parchment from her robes. "He's arriving in London by Friday evening. Much sooner than expected."
The change in atmosphere was immediate—electric. Sherlock straightened, boredom evaporating like smoke in sunlight. John's fingers stilled over his laptop. Harry froze mid-page turn.
"Friday," Harry repeated slowly, like he was tasting the word. "As in... three days from now?"
"Yes," Andromeda confirmed gently. "He's reviewed your case file, conferred with colleagues, and determined that the current window—before term begins—is optimal for full evaluation and, potentially, treatment planning."
"'Treatment planning,'" Sherlock repeated, the phrase rolling off his tongue like a riddle he was already dissecting. "Are we talking theoretical discussion, or actual, physical procedure?"
"Both," Andromeda said simply. "Rahman's bringing a consultation team—experts in consciousness integration and ritual magic theory. Between them, they represent the most advanced understanding of soul fragment containment currently known."
Sherlock leaned forward, eyes sharp and calculating. "Containment implies failure to remove. Removal implies destruction. I dislike vague phrasing."
"Then you'll like this," she said, spreading the parchment across the desk. "Rahman's proposed three possible approaches: enhanced containment, spiritual dissolution, and consciousness transformation."
John was instantly drawn in, doctor mode engaged. "Spiritual dissolution—let me guess. You actually mean *destroying* the fragment?"
Andromeda nodded. "Gradual elimination over three months through sustained ritual. He's performed the process once before—Prague, fifteen years ago. The patient survived with their mind and magic intact. Barely."
Harry finally set his book aside. His voice was quiet but steady. "Barely. That's not a word people use when things go entirely right."
Andromeda met his gaze—steady, kind, unflinching. "Week seven was... difficult. The fragment begins resisting dissolution. Not consciously, but instinctively. It's not sentient, Harry—it's *toxic magic*. When you begin to purge it, it fights to survive."
"Fights back how?" Harry asked, his expression calm in the way that only came from practice. The calm of someone who'd been frightened too many times to waste energy on showing it.
"Pain," Andromeda said quietly. "Your magical core will strain to stabilize as the foreign element is purged. You may experience confusion, hallucinations, emotional instability."
Harry gave a tiny nod, as if mentally adding and probable explosions* to the list. "So, psychological torment, identity crisis, and magical implosion. Sounds fun. Shall I pack a toothbrush?"
"Harry—" John started gently, the concern obvious in his voice.
But Harry was already smiling that small, razor-edged smile that was all too familiar to both of them—the one that said humor was armor and he'd learned to wear it better than chainmail. "Relax, John. It's only my *soul*. I wasn't using all of it anyway."
Sherlock's gaze snapped to him. "Sarcasm as a defense mechanism. Predictable but efficient. You're deflecting fear."
Harry's smirk didn't falter. "And you're stating the obvious again. Predictable but efficient."
Sherlock had risen from his chair in that particular way of his—like gravity was optional and boredom had finally lost the argument to obsession. He began pacing, coat flaring dramatically even though he wasn't wearing one. The air around him practically crackled with *cognitive fireworks*.
"Enhanced containment," he said, eyes flicking from the parchment to Andromeda and back again. "That's the conservative approach, isn't it? Reinforcing existing barriers rather than attempting outright removal?"
"Correct," Andromeda replied, her tone smooth, practiced, and infuriatingly calm in the face of impending chaos. "Lowest risk, shortest treatment timeline. The fragment remains, but under permanent magical restraint."
"In other words," Sherlock said, turning on his heel with theatrical disdain, "Harry remains a walking cursed object. Contained, yes. Controlled, certainly. But never *cured*."
Harry didn't look up from where he was lounging on the sofa, flipping idly through the parchment as though it were the dessert menu of a restaurant he wasn't sure he wanted to eat at. "Thanks, Sherlock, really cheering thought that. Love the confidence boost."
John shot him a sympathetic glance. "There's also this third one—'consciousness transformation'?" He frowned. "It says 'theoretical rather than proven.' That sounds—well, deeply unwise."
"Oh good," Harry said, leaning forward with mock enthusiasm. "My favourite words in magical medicine: *theoretical* and *unwise*. Please, go on. I'm practically tingling with optimism."
Andromeda folded her hands, visibly suppressing a sigh. "It means the process has never been successfully executed on a living patient. The idea is to reconstitute the fragment's magical essence—change its fundamental nature from parasitic to inert. In theory, it would cease to pose any threat."
Sherlock, predictably, was fascinated. "Essentially alchemy of the soul," he murmured. "Transforming a malignant element into a harmless one through redefinition of metaphysical properties. Elegant. Terrifying. I approve."
"Define *terrifying*," Harry said, voice dry as dust. "Because I feel like that's doing a lot of heavy lifting in your sentence."
Andromeda hesitated for the briefest moment—long enough for all three men to notice. "If performed incorrectly," she said carefully, "you could… fracture the host's soul instead of the fragment's. The consequences range from loss of magical ability to—"
"Death," Sherlock supplied helpfully.
"Or irreversible psychological collapse," Andromeda finished.
The silence that followed was heavy enough to have physical weight.
The tension in the room could've been bottled and sold as a particularly volatile potion.
"Right," Harry said finally, with that overly bright tone that in *Potter-speak* translated to *I'm hanging on by sarcasm and sheer willpower*. "So my options are: A) keep the evil soul fragment, but now with extra magical bubble wrap; B) endure three months of excruciating pain until I either triumphantly survive or die in week seven like a particularly unlucky soap character; or C) gamble my existence on a completely experimental procedure that could kill me faster than Sherlock can say '*obvious.*'"
He smiled tightly. "Brilliant. Absolutely fantastic set of choices. Can I pick *none of the above* and just keep my demonic hitchhiker, thanks?"
"Harry—" Andromeda began, the voice of reason wrapped in healer's calm.
"Because, honestly," Harry continued, bulldozing straight through, "I've had this thing for a decade and it's been surprisingly low maintenance. No spontaneous murders, no dark overlord monologues, just the occasional hiss at a snake and some light nightmare entertainment. I've had worse roommates."
Sherlock's voice cut through like a scalpel. "Nightmares?"
Harry blinked, caught off guard. "What?"
"You said *nightmares*. How often?"
Harry's defensive smirk faltered. "…Couple times a month, maybe. Nothing dramatic. Just, you know—cold places, red eyes, murdery ambiance. Perfectly normal nightmare stuff."
"Dreams about cold places and red eyes," Andromeda said with the gentle precision of someone trying not to alarm the patient *while definitely alarming the patient*, "are not normal nightmare stuff."
Harry rolled his eyes. "Well, forgive me for not consulting the Official Ministry Catalogue of Acceptable Nightmares."
"Harry," she said, voice softening. "Why didn't you mention this at St. Mungo's?"
"Because I didn't think it mattered!" His control cracked—just slightly, enough to show the edge underneath the wit. "They're just dreams, not Dark Lord karaoke nights in my head! I wake up, I'm fine, I have breakfast, life goes on. End of story."
Sherlock's tone dropped, all theatricality gone, replaced by unnervingly quiet focus. "For now. But fragments can remain dormant for years. All it takes is the right trigger—stress, trauma, or the re-emergence of their original creator."
He crouched in front of Harry's chair, eyes sharp, voice low. "Harry, I don't need brave. I don't need clever. I need *truth*. Do you want this thing gone?"
Harry looked at him, and for once, the sarcasm didn't come. It was just him—seventeen, too clever, too tired, and entirely human.
"I don't know," he said finally, his voice quiet but honest. "Part of me wants it gone yesterday. I hate knowing it's there. But the other part…" He hesitated. "The other part's terrified. What if getting rid of it changes who I am? What if it's not just some cursed hitchhiker but—what if it's tangled up with *me* now? And I lose… me?"
Andromeda's tone softened instantly. "That's not irrational, Harry. It's one of the most complex magical-psychological integrations we've ever documented. Questioning whether removal might alter your identity is completely natural."
John, ever the steady human amidst the chaos, perched on the arm of Harry's chair. "That's why Rahman's coming early. He and his team will go over everything—risk, procedure, recovery, what it means long-term. You're not deciding anything blind."
Sherlock straightened, his voice cutting through the room like glass through silk. "And to be perfectly clear, the choice is yours. Not mine, not Andromeda's, not Rahman's. Your body, your soul, your call. We advise. You decide."
Harry huffed a small laugh, watery and brittle. "Even if I make the stupid choice? The tragic, emotionally reckless one that everyone warns against?"
Andromeda smiled faintly. "There is no 'stupid choice,' Harry. Just difficult ones with consequences you'll face *with* support, not alone."
She shuffled through her stack of parchment. "Dr. Rahman's also mentioned," she said with deceptive casualness, "that he's been corresponding with Eurus Holmes regarding theoretical frameworks for consciousness manipulation. She's expressed interest in consulting on the case, though her involvement would require coordination with—"
"Absolutely not."
Sherlock's tone could have frozen fire. The word dropped like a guillotine. He was already standing, of course, because Sherlock Holmes could not not stand dramatically when delivering disapproval.
"Eurus," he continued, pacing with barely restrained fury, "is brilliant—possibly the most intellectually capable person in our family—but she's also mad. Not colloquially mad. *Clinically, institutionally, terrifyingly mad*. She's the human equivalent of playing chess with a mirror that occasionally lies."
"She's my aunt," Harry said lightly, though there was an unmistakable edge beneath the humour. "I've met her. She's… well, terrifying and fascinating. Sort of like you, but with slightly more emotional range and significantly worse ethics."
"Thank you," Sherlock said sharply. Then, after a beat, "Wait—no, not thank you! That was an insult!"
Harry tilted his head, all innocent charm. "Was it? Hard to tell with this family."
Andromeda intervened before Sherlock could combust. "Rahman shares your concerns," she said evenly, though her eyes twinkled with amusement at their dynamic. "He's suggested limiting her role to *theoretical consultation*—purely academic correspondence. No direct participation. Eurus' insights into cognitive partitioning could be useful for developing procedural models."
"Which is an elegant way of saying 'let her poke at the ideas but not the people,'" John muttered.
"Exactly," Andromeda agreed.
Sherlock's mouth twisted. "The *concerning aspects* of Eurus' personality include 'manipulates human psychology with the ease most people reserve for card tricks,' and 'treats ethics as a Sudoku puzzle to solve, not a system to follow.'"
"So," John summarized, "we keep her at arm's length but let her scribble equations on the margins."
"Preferably from *behind reinforced* glass," Sherlock snapped. "But yes."
Harry, who had been following all this with visible amusement, finally leaned back, folding his arms with all the casual poise of a small, smirking chaos god. "So to clarify: the woman who once hypnotised a guard into believing he was a goldfish *for science* might be weighing in on the medical plan for my soul?"
Andromeda exhaled through her nose. "In the most theoretical possible sense."
Harry nodded sagely. "Brilliant. Love that for me."
Sherlock turned sharply, coat tails swishing with the drama of a thunderclap. "When Rahman arrives Friday evening, we'll all meet with him—*together*. You, me, John, Andromeda. No hidden agendas, no secret experiments, no spontaneous life-endangering decisions."
Harry blinked innocently. "You make it sound like that's something I'd do."
"It *is* something you'd do," Sherlock said, pinning him with that unnervingly sharp stare. "Because I know you. You'll panic about being a burden, research everything obsessively, pretend you're perfectly fine, and then attempt some ridiculous act of self-sacrifice that you'll justify with the phrase 'It seemed like a good idea at the time.'"
"That's..." Harry paused, clearly unable to argue with the accuracy of the assessment. "That's not entirely wrong."
Sherlock leaned against the mantelpiece, arms crossed, gaze sharp enough to shave with. "Right. Ground rules. Listen carefully, Potter."
Harry leaned back in his chair, knees tucked up, chin resting on his fists like a miniature emperor in repose. "Oh, this is going to be fun."
"First," Sherlock said, his tone slicing through the room with the precision of a scalpel, "you talk to us when you're scared. Not by burying yourself in research, not by hiding behind sarcasm, not by suddenly deciding that solving metaphysical riddles is preferable to speaking aloud."
Harry raised one eyebrow. "So, no dramatic solo experiments in soul magic, got it. Sad. I was about to invent a spell called *Very Big Boom*."
"Second," Sherlock continued, entirely ignoring the interruption, "you do *not* make decisions based on what inconveniences the rest of us the least. Your welfare is not a communal scheduling problem. Your life is not a project for our convenience."
Harry's mouth twitched, trying valiantly to suppress the sarcasm that would always escape, no matter how noble his intentions. "So, if I accidentally turn the flat into a small magical explosion zone, that's on me? Fair. Glad we cleared that up."
"And third," Sherlock said, voice low, dangerous, and oddly paternal, "your health and safety are the priority. Not logistics. Not whether we can fit the procedure between lunch and the postman. Not whether it complicates the adults' social lives. *You* come first."
For a long moment, Harry considered this with the sort of intense, measured silence that made even Sherlock glance at him in surprise. Then he leaned back, shoulders relaxing, and said quietly, "Okay. I can do that. Though I reserve the right to occasional sarcasm—scientifically proven to improve coping, reduce stress hormones, and keep egotistical consulting detectives from getting bored."
Sherlock's lips twitched. Not quite a smile, but dangerously close. "Occasional sarcasm is acceptable. Obsessive deflection via humor while refusing to acknowledge genuine concerns, however, is not."
Harry's grin flickered, wicked but small. "Fair enough. I'll try to keep the *apocalypse jokes* to a minimum."
John snorted softly from the armchair. "Not holding my breath."
Harry gave him a mock salute. "Neither am I."
Andromeda rose with that effortless efficiency of someone whose schedule made quantum physics look casual. "I'll coordinate with Rahman regarding Friday's consultation. Clear your evening. These initial evaluations run long, and there's no merit in speed-reading a patient's soul—or medical history."
John leaned forward. "Anything we should prep? Medical records, family tree, prior diagnostic reports?"
"And magical incidents, injuries, illnesses, anything remotely relevant," Andromeda replied, already moving toward the door with the air of someone who'd already solved a dozen crises today and had six more waiting.
Harry's expression flickered between amusement and mock horror. "Define *anything remotely relevant*."
"Accidental magic, unexplained injuries, unconsciousness, encounters with dark magic, cursed objects, magical creatures capable of eating children alive—"
Harry held up a hand dramatically. "So, everything that's ever made my life interesting. Got it. My medical history is basically an epic adventure series with occasional footnotes on near-death experiences."
"And catalog it as thoroughly as possible," Andromeda said gently. "Thoroughness matters more than speed. And, Harry—" she paused, turning back toward him, eyes warm and steady, "you're handling all of this remarkably well. Most eleven-year-olds would be a puddle of nerves right now."
Harry leaned back in his chair, one elbow propped on the armrest, smirking as he cast a sideways glance at Sherlock. "Well, I've had excellent teachers in emotional compartmentalization. And growing up on Baker Street? Let's just say the chaos is character-building."
John muttered under his breath, "Or character-damaging, depending on your point of view."
"Both," Harry said cheerfully, as if making a very serious observation while simultaneously juggling sarcasm like a trained acrobat. "Definitely both."
Andromeda gave a small, wry smile. "Noted. And let's hope the ratio leans slightly toward building rather than damaging."
Harry snorted. "I'll try to make it a respectable mix. Low risk of permanent trauma, high entertainment value. Classic Potterian efficiency."
John shook his head with a fond sigh, and Sherlock, of course, was already calculating the statistical probability of Harry surviving Friday without turning the consultation into a theatrical performance of sarcasm, wit, and accidental magical chaos.
Andromeda had gone, her departure leaving the flat steeped in that peculiar sort of heavy silence that follows big news nobody can sass away. Even Sherlock's violin hung in the air like a held breath.
"Right," Sherlock said finally, lowering his gaze to the strings with ritualistic precision. "I shall practice Bach until my fingers seize, my brain shuts down, and I cease dwelling on medical procedures I cannot control through sheer intellectual superiority."
John looked up briefly from his laptop. "Healthy coping mechanism."
"Preferable to cigarettes," Sherlock muttered, tone murderous. "Which someone… absconded with."
Harry didn't even glance up from his book. "I *did not* abscond with them. I disposed of them in external bins so that retrieving them would require genuine desperation. Consider it a character-building exercise in delayed gratification."
Sherlock's glare could have frozen the Thames. "You are far too clever for your own good."
"Learned from the best," Harry said, grinning in that uniquely almost-eleven-year-old-but-completely-masterful way, the grin that suggested emotional recovery via sass was already underway.
The violin rose again, somewhere between lullaby and funeral march—a composition that could only exist in the hands of Sherlock Holmes. John returned to editing, fingers dancing over the keyboard with a weary precision, while Harry resumed *Hogwarts: A History*, though it was obvious he wasn't reading so much as temporarily suspending thought.
Light poured through the tall windows, illuminating the cluttered flat. For a moment, they could almost have passed for a normal household: unconventional, frayed at the edges, slightly hazardous—but oddly, improbably solid in all the ways that actually mattered.
The game was still on.
The danger hadn't gone away. The medical consultation loomed like a dark cloud just over the horizon.
But at least… they were facing it together.
Harry, of course, was already planning his sarcastic commentary in advance.
And that, as far as he was concerned, was the point.
---
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