bungakertas | Sherlock Holmes and the Thief Of Souls (Reply)

Processing the rest of the crime scene looked like it was about to proceed fairly unremarkably. Sherlock, not remotely interested in the police proceedings, strode out of the shop and demanded to know where the nearest bank was from a very surprised-looking passer-by. He was already striding up the alleyway when John jogged up from behind.

"What's gotten into you this time?" John demanded.

"We need more information about how magic works and we just saw a bookshop full of exactly that. We can hardly pass that up," Sherlock said.

John laughed. "Sometimes, I wish I lived in your brain."

"I'm glad you don't," Sherlock said. "You wouldn't be any use to me if you didn't see things differently." He could have kicked himself for saying that as soon as the words were out of his mouth. He was always so harsh to people, and John took the brunt of it these days.

And then John just shrugged and said, "Fair point." Sherlock studied him for any sign that he was hurt and pretending not to be, but didn't see one.

A large white building loomed up ahead of them with bronze doors that bore the name Gringotts Bank & Trust in stylised lettering. He and John climbed the steps to see a small, humanoid in a scarlet and gold uniform stood rigidly at attention and watched them closely out of the corner of his (at least Sherlock thought he was a him) eyes as they opened the doors.

John tried not to give the small person an odd look.

"We'll put it on the list, I think," Sherlock said. A new set of doors, silver this time with a very ominous poem inscribed on them, awaited. Two more of the small people were standing guard over these doors, but made no moves towards them as they entered.

Inside was a huge marble hall with a long counter. Behind it were a number of the humanoid people, who apparently were the tellers here at Gringotts. They were all busily scribbling down accounts with quills into huge leather-bound books using red and black ink and speaking to people at their desks. But finally Sherlock saw, at the far end, a cage with a sign saying Currency Exchange hanging over the top.

A brief conversation settled everything. The small people were called goblins, a question they apparently routinely fielded from muggles who entered the bank. And though it was necessary to write out a cheque, he and John were able to leave the bank with the capacity to buy a range of books from Flourish and Blotts.

When they returned they found that Hermione Weasley had returned for some reason or other and was chatting with Ron.

"—Have a job to do," Ron said to her in frustration. "They're meant to be here as consultants! How was I to know they'd go swanning off?"

"Lestrade seems to think they're helpful," Hermione sighed.

"We are," Sherlock informed her, striding up. "Terribly so."

"Right, well, not at the moment," Ron said irritably.

"We've learnt everything there is to learn here," Sherlock told him with a shrug. "I'm sure you'll follow all your procedures anyway, but you'll gain no new information."

"Why are you here again?" John said to Hermione. "Is it illegal for muggles to walk down the street or something?"

"Actually, no," she sighed. "Some people seem to think so, however. The Ministry received a number of calls, so they dispatched me to Diagon Alley."

"To do what?" John asked suspiciously.

"To 'provide a Ministry presence at the scene,'" she answered with a slight grin. "Other than that, nothing at all."

John shook his head. "All governments really are the same."

Sherlock left them talking and began scouring the bookstore for anything that might be useful in providing some context for this strange world he was now dealing with. Beginning Magical Theory, Intermediate Magical Theory, and Advanced Magical Theory by Adalbert Waffling were easy enough. Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them by Newt Scamander looked useful as well. On Dementors by Galatea Merrythought and The Rises and Falls of Lord Voldemort by Andromeda Tonks rounded out his choices. Out of curiosity, he also added a copy of Gringott's Bank: A History Of The Bank And The Treaties That Created It. The shopkeeper, who had expected it to be some time before he could make another sale, was overjoyed to take his money and offered him a complimentary copy of Harry Potter at Hogwarts, A Photo-Journal by Colin Creevey which Sherlock took.

By the time he rejoined John, they were speculating on how the killer had obtained a more complete list of Death Eaters than the aurors had.

"The worst part is, there are some people out there we can't protect," Ron was saying.

"Or interview," Sherlock put in. "Are you ready to go, John?"

John gave him an odd look. "Sure. Why not?"

"It's too bad Snape's portrait wouldn't know who all the Death Eaters were," Ron said with a sigh.

"How do we leave, then?" Sherlock asked Hermione.

"Follow the alley that way as far as you can go. The archway exits to the Leaky Cauldron which exits onto Charing Cross Road," she informed them. Sherlock turned and was just taking a step to leave when she turned to her husband and said, "Do you know, I wonder if that portrait might know?"

Sherlock turned back around. "What do you mean 'the portrait might know?'"

"Wizarding pictures move," Ron shrugged. "Our portraits can talk, some of them."

"And Snape's a former headmaster. His will definitely be able to," Hermione put in.

"Why didn't you mention this before?" John asked.

"Because he's a bloody painting!" Ron protested. "He isn't a real person, he's just a clever pretense at what Snape used to be before he died! The only way he could know what Snape knew at the end was if the artist used something from just before Snape died to animate the painting."

"He did," Hermione said, looking wide-eyed.

Ron stared at her and then his own eyes went wide. "The pensieve memories."

"Do you put up with this from me all the time?" Sherlock said, looking at John.

John grinned. "You're much less irritating." He turned to the Weasleys. "What did we just work out?"

"The artist who painted Snape's portrait used a set of memories to animate it that were taken literally the moment he died. As he was dying. Whatever Snape knew, that portrait knows. We should have interviewed it already," Hermione explained.

"I'll call Hogwarts and have it sent down," Ron said.

"Ron," Hermione sighed. "You still haven't read Hogwarts, A History?"

Her husband gave her a nauseatingly roguish grin that made Sherlock want to slap them both. "And deprive you of the opportunity to tell me what's in it, oh jewel of my heart?"

"The portraits of the headmasters are magically bound to serve the current headmaster of the castle. And since the portraits in the castle can't do that unless they are in the castle, they are magically fixed to the building. A duplicate portrait in another building can be moved around," she said.

"But they only made the one of Snape," Ron finished. "Then I guess we'll have to go to Hogwarts for the interview."

"When?" Sherlock demanded.

The resultant flood of instructions had him buying another book (Hogwarts, A History, which was highly recommended by Hermione Weasley) before they left, with John still protesting that he wasn't entirely sure you could walk through the barriers between platforms nine and ten at King's Cross, and even if you could, shouldn't it be Platform 9&½ ?

But eventually the two of them managed to get out of Diagon Alley and through the Leaky Cauldron to find themselves standing in front of a familiar patch of solid brick wall.

"Oh," John said. "Of course."

But a moment later, the brick wall seemed to melt sideways…or tear apart from itself…or something to reveal the dirty-looking entrance to the Leaky Cauldron.

"Apparently now that we've been inside, we can see the entrance," Sherlock said.

"It can only be found by those who already know where it is," John mused.

"What?"

John laughed. "Pop culture reference. Don't worry about it."

As soon as they returned to their flat, the two of them buried themselves in the books. Sherlock started with Beginning Magical Theory while John buried himself in The Rises and Falls of Lord Voldemort. Aside from reporting interesting discoveries, swapping books, or ordering food (the last being entirely John's responsibility), neither of them spoke for the rest of the day.

They stayed up all night, reading. Sherlock hadn't expected John to stick with him, but with fascinating material like this, even his flatmate's usually rock-steady sense of order had to give a little ground. And this time, unlike when they'd stayed up comparing Lukis' and Van Coon's books, John was perfectly alert and focused the whole time. Sherlock asked him the next morning over his toast what was going on.

"It doesn't happen very often," John explained, "but sometimes, if what I'm reading is interesting enough, reading a book is as good as sleep for me."

"That must be useful," Sherlock said mildly, inwardly an incandescent emerald with envy.

"Not terribly," John shrugged. "It's only happened three times in my life, counting this one. Pass the jam, would you?"

Sherlock scowled and went to get a shower without touching the jam. Granted, they had learned a good deal of fascinating things. Not only about how magic worked, but about how the world that used it worked as well. Harry Potter was a good deal more famous than he had let on, and as John had pointedly observed the previous night, these people were a political disaster in numerous ways. They'd had three wars with "Dark Lords"—two of those was being with the same one—in as many generations. All over essentially the same issue. And yet another was now materializing on the continent and threatening to encroach onto Britain. Again.

But none of that excused something so unbearably amazing as being able to substitute reading for sleep. His flatmate was truly the most irritating man in the world. That's all there was to it.

They had to detour to Lestrade's office quite early. He and Donovan were tied up with tracking down the Lestranges and couldn't go to the school. So Sherlock had been ordered to drop off any books he felt might help them along, which John insisted included Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them and Hogwarts, A History. Still, despite this irritating side trip, they arrived at King's Cross railway station at 8:15 AM. They then spent thirty minutes trying to find the right patch of wall, even after the very detailed description they'd been given.

It looked very solid indeed, as brick walls go. Sherlock hated himself for being so pedestrian as to flinch at hurting himself, but he did not much care to throw himself into a brick wall again for these magic people.

"Here goes," John said quietly. Then he shut his eyes and strode confidently into the wall. And vanished into the bricks.

Sherlock scowled. First it was that he could occasionally substitute books for sleep and now it was that he fearlessly walked into walls. For someone so ordinary, John Watson could make him feel stupendously inadequate at times.

But because it was John, Sherlock just followed his lead and shut his own eyes before walking towards the brick wall with a bravado that was not at all genuine.

He emerged into a rail platform that would have looked utterly Victorian if not for the fact that the steam engine on the track was the same shade of green as the geometrically improbable car that had picked them up yesterday. A sign above read hogsmeade 9:00 AM. A nearby counter was selling tickets which Sherlock bought for fifteen sickles each before the two of them boarded the train. A few moments later, the conductor gave the all aboard (which sent them both into fits of unashamed giggles), before the train pulled out.

They stopped at a few places here and there, traveling northwards the whole time, before finally pulling into Hogsmeade at about 6:00 PM. Sherlock and John nearly trampled at least two people in their haste to get outside and stretch their legs at last. After getting directions from a woman named Rosmerta in a local pub, they managed to successfully navigate their way to Hogwarts. And they were about fifty feet past the gate, a huge wrought-iron affair with winged pigs on either side, when two pops behind them caused them to turn.

Potter and Wealsey were coming striding up the path from the gate.

"Good evening," Harry called. "We didn't expect you two to beat us."

Sherlock nodded. "Yes, that train ride was interminable."

"It's much better when you can take the Express," Weasley nodded.

Sherlock and John made no comment at this, and instead started down a long walk around an enormous lake. The only highlight of that portion of the trip was Potter and Weasley were surprised when Sherlock and John were unsurprised at seeing the giant squid in the lake.

"You already knew?" Ron demanded.

"Comes from a long line of giant squids bred and trained by Hogwarts," Sherlock shrugged.

"Acts as a lifeguard for the lake," John agreed.

"All of which is in Hogwarts, A History," Sherlock added.

"You sound like Hermione," Ron said.

But finally, after a walk that seemed far too long, they reached the enormous Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Ron was reaching out to open one of the doors when they swung inwards together revealing a round-faced man behind them with a brilliant smile on his face standing in an absolutely magnificent entrance hall.

"Welcome back," the man said.

Sherlock recognised this man as Neville Longbottom from that photo-novel (which was turning out to be much more useful than he'd expected it to be) and in the flurry of greetings and introductions that followed, he gathered that he had recently been made Professor of Herbology here.

Sherlock managed to count all the way to twenty-five before he opened his mouth to demand they get on with it when Longbottom brought the subject up himself.

"I have missed working with you two, but I suppose it's good you have someone here when you need them. Do you remember where the Slytherin common room is?" he asked, giving Potter and the Weasleys a wink.

"I think we can find it," Potter said with a laugh.

"Don't worry about that," a new voice announced. They looked up to see a woman with dark hair striding towards them. "Carina Coxwell. I'm the head of Slytherin house."

"Very pleased to meet you," Sherlock said, temper finally snapping. "Can we please get on with it."

Coxwell led them, with minimal further ado, past that grand staircase in the entrance hall and down a flight of steps into a maze-like series of passageways underneath the castle. Finally, they stopped before a completely uninteresting patch of stone wall.

"Frangipani," Coxwell announced in a clear voice.

For a split-second Sherlock felt as bewildered as John looked until a door—invisible until that moment—slid aside and revealed the entrance to a long, low-ceilinged room covered in green décor.

They entered, Ron remarking, "Looks just like we left it."

Coxwell laughed. "The students are at dinner at the moment, so you'll have the room mostly to yourselves. Professor Snape's portrait is over that mantle."

They had to walk most of the length of the room to reach it, Sherlock noting that the main motif on display seemed to be a snake. Some of them even moved and hissed.

"Cheerful sort of folks, I can see," John muttered.

"They're not so bad," Potter said, "but the decorations could use a wider colour set."

"I suppose I am somehow to blame for this delegation assembled before me," an irritated voice sneered at them.

Sherlock realised that up until this moment, he hadn't actually fully appreciated the concept of "we're going to interview a portrait." It was hung in a very odd spot. Over a fireplace about three-quarters of the length of the room from the door, and none of the chairs in the room faced it, exactly. This fireplace was clearly here only to provide extra heat, should it be necessary. Aside from the grand fireplace at the far end of the room, this was the only smaller installation to have a portrait hung over the mantelpiece. This picture was deliberately placed in a manner that made it easy to overlook.

But that was nothing to his astonishment at the portrait's occupant. It was a bit like looking into a very strange mirror. His voice was different, certainly, to that of the man in the painting. The one that issued from the picture frame was more of a bass than a baritone. And they looked nothing approaching similar. But they spoke with many of the same cadences. And in the eyes of Severus Snape, Sherlock could see a keen intelligence he did not often encounter in others. And a disdain for the general ignorance of the human race.

Too bad he was dead.

"Hello, Professor. We need to ask you some questions," Potter said.

"Oh, excellent. For a moment, I was worried you might wish to spend time with me or something else equally inane," Snape returned.

"Being dead hasn't improved your mood much," Ron sighed.

"You are welcome to try it, Weasley, and discover if you can do better."

Sherlock's eyebrows went up. On second thought, perhaps he didn't have quite so much in common with Snape. "We need you to furnish us with the names of every Death Eater you can recall," Sherlock informed the portrait without any further preamble.

"Why on earth would you want that?" Snape demanded.

"Because someone's killing them," John said. "Only, they seem to have a more complete list of the group than we can get our hands on."

At this, Snape actually looked surprised. "Killing Death Eaters? Why?"

"I would imagine the queue of people with valid reasons to want Death Eaters dead forms around the block at least twice," Sherlock informed Snape in a surly voice.

"I hadn't realised we were sharing this information with muggles now," Snape said. "Things must have changed quite a bit indeed."

Potter briefly outlined the facts of the case and Snape, in return, rattled off a list of names.

"Is that all of them?" John asked.

"The Dark Lord trusted me entirely before the end," Snape said. "The list is complete. I am sure."

"It contains six names we did not already know," Sherlock told them. "We'll need to speak to those six right away."

"You're sure it's only six?" Potter asked him.

"Yes," Sherlock replied.

"What makes you so sure the murderer is a Death Eater?" Potter asked.

"I am not sure," Sherlock answered, "it is, however, a strong possibility and must be tested."

"You really do sound like Snape," Weasley suddenly said. "I hadn't realized it was that strong a similarity before."

Sherlock rolled his eyes, then turned and left the room without waiting for the others to follow. John caught him up quickly, though.

"What's gotten into you?" John asked.

Sherlock made a non-committal sound.

"You were angry at that Weasley bloke," John observed as they strode down the corridors back towards the entrance hall. "Why?"

Sherlock frowned. He didn't want to have to say it out loud. To admit to John that the comparison to Snape got under his skin.

But John, who was deceptively ordinary-looking and sharp as a tack in his own way, was already coming to the correct conclusion.

"You don't like that he thought you two were similar. You're not similar," John told him.

"What do you…of course we're similar!" Sherlock said, deciding John hadn't reached the right conclusion after all.

"No, you're not," John said. "You're both brilliant and rude. Or he was, rather. But just because you share one or two traits with somebody doesn't mean you're like them. I care about my patients, and so does Mike, but we're not really that similar."

"What is your point?" Sherlock asked, now utterly baffled, and how did John do that, anyway? No one ever baffled him. Ever.

"He may have been on the right side of the war by the end, but you would never have been on the wrong side in the first place," John said.

Sherlock's heart sank. "I'm still not a hero, John." They'd reached the entrance hall and he was about to exit the building when John's voice stopped him.

"You like murders for the puzzles," John replied, "and everyone knows that, but that is not the end of the story. You told that woman what the jade pin was worth just so you could see her reaction. Not because you liked her or anything, but just because you wanted to see somebody light up like that."

Sherlock opened his mouth, but couldn't think of a thing to say because John was—damn him—actually right in all his observations so far.

"You don't care much about people in general, but if you'd wanted to avoid being bored you could've gone into some other field that required a lot of brain-work. Chemical research, military research and development, rocket science. Government, if you went the same route as Mycroft. And we both know that you could've started doing the crimes yourself. You're smart enough not to get caught but you wouldn't ever be bored because the police would always be coming for you."

Sherlock had to wonder if this was how people felt when he told them things he knew about them from his own observations. Defenseless and slightly frightened. But unbearably curious as to what the man in front of him knew that he hadn't recognised. He remembered running a train of thought along exactly these lines several times. But he could never bear to carry out the conclusions he'd reached and he had never understood why. And here was John about to tell him.

"You chose to solve crimes knowing that most criminals are idiots. That the challenging cases wouldn't be constant. That means that some part of you—maybe not a big part, but big enough, anyway—wanted to help people. At some point, consciously or not, you turned all this over in your head and decided you couldn't stand the thought of being the one who hurt people, the way that you see the murderers doing, and you didn't want to solve puzzles just for the sake of intellectual exercise. You wanted to solve puzzles in a way that improved people's lives.

"Maybe that doesn't make you a hero, but it certainly means you're not a villain. You would never have joined the Death Eaters. You wouldn't have even thought about it."

Sherlock stared at him. He couldn't think of a single thing to say.

John sighed. "You don't believe me, of course. But you will. One day you're going to wake up and realise that I'm right, and then you'll think I'm the most annoying human person in history for getting there before you did and you'll start playing Lady Gaga at 3:30 again."

Sherlock scowled. "I only did it the once."

"I did not need to hear a violin rendition of 'Starstruck' the night after I'd spent six hours crouched in an alley watching a perfectly innocent man play with his cats."

Sherlock elected not to hash out his reasons for that particular set of stakeouts, again, and said "I'll just play 'The Song That Never Ends,' then."

John gave him a long-suffering smile and suddenly everything was back to normal. As if John hadn't just given him a glimpse of a radically different and yet oddly-the-same Sherlock Holmes that he believed was inhabiting Sherlock's body. He couldn't possibly be correct, but he was so certain of it that he had now moved completely on from that train of thought without pausing for questioning it. That indicated confidence in his conclusions and Sherlock trusted John as his barometer on a person's character. If he had said those things about anyone else, Sherlock would've believed them.

It might be nice not to worry about being the villain.