Story Prompt: From Potter to Watson

prompt(s):

• Can you write a story on how John and Sherlock got married and how they met Harry?
• Young Harry doing accidental magic and how Sherlock handled it?

I’ve already written a short on how Harry met John (and Sherlock later) for background purposes. So here you go…

From Potter to Watson

Harry woke up to fuzzy whiteness and pain. He felt the tube stuck down his throat and the burning sensation in his lungs. The smell of nurses’ office penetrated his nostrils. A medical instrument that measured his heartbeat was at his side. A bag of clear liquid was hanging on a stand and was connected to his arm through a clear tube. Drawn curtains were around his bed, but he could hear voices. He was alone.

Hours passed. At some point, a pretty black woman who introduced herself as Sally Donovan told him the Dursleys were dead. Harry didn’t know how he felt about the news, so he said nothing. Sally didn’t look altogether surprised at his lack of response.

More time passed. Except for the nurses and doctors checking up on him, Harry was left alone. No one visited him, no one talked to him and no one touched him except to poke needles into him. His doctor, though kind, sounded like a bored waiter.

He hadn’t opened his mouth for days when the social worker came.

Harry didn’t answer any of her questions. At last, the social worker gave up and told him she was trying to find a family who could take him. A foster home.

Harry shuddered at the prospect. Uncle Vernon had told him all sort of horror stories about foster homes and used to threaten to send Harry to one if he didn’t behave.

After the interview, the social worker, Sally from earlier, and a man with salt-and-pepper hair (more salt than pepper) talked just outside of earshot. Harry got a sense they didn’t know what to do with him.

That was when the large seed of fear and panic festering in Harry’s stomach grew out of control.

The Dursleys were the only family he had, and they were dead. Marge Dursley, Uncle Vernon’s sister, despised him and would refuse to take him in, and Harry would rather be sent to an orphanage than live with her. Harry heard nothing afterward, so he figured the social worker couldn’t find anyone who would take him in.

The message was clear: no one wanted him.

When Harry arrived at this conclusion, he was gasping and shaking and hiccuping back sobs. He was terrified. He had nowhere to go outside the hospital. He didn’t know what would happen to him. His future looked bleak and uncertain, and no one seemed to care. At best, he was a duty the adults couldn’t ignore and would be glad to get rid of. He’d been lonely and treated like a burden before, living with the Dursleys, but this was nothing compared to the sense of abandonment he felt that day.

Harry was blinking away hot tears when the curtains around his bed drew back and someone wrapped up in bandages walked into view.

“Hi,” said the person. “I’m John.”

Harry blinked. He tried to place the face and came up blank. The person didn’t seem to mind his lack of response.

“I just wanted to say thank you,” said John. “You saved my life at the zoo.”

Harry was bewildered. How could he have saved John’s life? He’d been a hostage, repeating the words his kidnapper whispered in his ear…

No, wait. He’d seen someone run to the building he’d been kept in, and had desperately wished himself there. The next moment, he’d found himself in the person’s embrace. Then everything had gone hot and bright and pain. He had a memory of staring at the person draped over him, bleeding from the eyes, nose, and ears before he’d blacked out.

Then Harry realized why John looked familiar.

“It was you,” he whispered through a throat as dry as sandpaper.

John smiled sadly. “Sorry we couldn’t save your Aunt and Uncle.”

Harry let out a pathetic mewling noise. Soon he was crying. He didn’t understand it. He’d hated the Dursleys. It had been his dearest dream for an unknown relative to come and take him away. But when the reality of his utter loneliness hit him, he wished he had the Dursleys than to have no one at all.

John reached out and stroked his hair. Harry started sobbing in earnest. He had no memory of someone touching him like this and it was as terrifying and alien as it was wonderful.

John kept stroking his hair and hummed a lullaby he didn’t know.

Harry cried himself to sleep.

00000

John came to visit every day. Around that time, the nurses stopped giving Harry the drugs that dulled the pain.

Immediately he got besieged with nightmares. They were so terrible Harry was afraid to go to sleep. Some days, he couldn’t tell if he was alive or dead when he woke up. Other days, he was sure he would have been better off dead, like the time he had a nightmare where a crowd of police officers accused Harry of killing his relatives as he stared at their charred bodies smelling like overcooked bacon.

The third time he woke up screaming silently at the horror of it all, John gathered Harry in a tight embrace.

“Do you hear that?” John asked quietly.

Harry didn’t speak. But once his breathing calmed down a little and his heart stopped galloping like it was trying to tear out of his chest, he listened.

And heard it: the sound of John’s beating heart. He also registered the warmth enveloping all around him and John nuzzling his hair. He couldn’t remember being held like this, like a mother would. Harry felt himself shedding fresh tears.

“Dead people don’t have beating hearts,” said John, after a long quiet beat. “They aren’t warm either. As long as you can hear this, as long as you can feel this, you’re okay.”

Harry listened to John’s beating heart long into the night.

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Harry got better very fast, after. So did John. Their speed of recovery amazed and delighted their doctors.

Not Harry. Getting better meant leaving the hospital and leaving the hospital meant…

Harry shied away from thinking what that meant. His future beyond the hospital was murky, but one thing he knew: he’ll have to say goodbye to John.

So Harry clung to John and followed her everywhere. Everywhere. Even the toilet. John, rather than telling him off, kept him close, always touching.

The nurses stopped trying to persuade Harry to return to his own bed. They also gave him sad, pitying looks.

Harry willed time to stop passing, but as it was typical, it seemed to gallop at double-speed.

Then the day arrived.

“There you are,” Mr salt-and-pepper murmured as he entered John’s private room. Trailing behind him was the social worker.

“Good news,” the social worker said, too brightly. “We found a family to take you in.”

Harry’s stomach was a ball of panic. He buried his face in John’s hospital gown. No. No, no, no.

The monitor next to John let out a horrible static noise and then went silent. Despite his shut eyes, Harry could perceive the lights in the room blinking on and off.

“Harry.” John’s voice was calm. The arm around his shoulders tightened its hold. “Harry, look at me.”

It took a moment for Harry to muster the will to crack open one eye and shift his face a little.

John was looking him with blazing eyes and stubborn set of jaw. The first of many such expressions, full of determination and dangerous promise.

“I will find you,” John said in a low growl. “I will find you and bring you home.”

“Promise?” Harry whispered, his voice hitching pathetically.

John nodded once.

“I promise.”

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It took John two months to fulfill her promise of bringing Harry home to Baker Street.

It took her less than an hour to find him once Sherlock got involved.

“Did you just turn your guardian’s toupee blue?” Sherlock demanded, the day he and John barged into his latest foster home, the fifth in that many weeks.

Harry froze with terror. He’d gotten a week in the cupboard the last time he’d done something like this, when the Dursleys were still alive. His other foster families shuffled him off for lesser infractions. Would this man reject him, too, and convince John he wasn’t worth the effort?

Then Sherlock’s eyes, there was no other word for it, sparkled. His smile was wide and made him look more than a little unhinged.

“Do it again! This time make it purple!”

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John still wasn’t sure how she and Sherlock weren’t abysmally failing at the whole raising traumatized and supernatural child business. The ‘supernatural’ part alone should’ve caused concern. Yet somehow, most likely through divine intervention, she saw no signs that said they were ruining Harry. In fact, he seemed to be making great strides.

It was baffling.

“Oh, well, hello there. Long time no see.”

John recognized the burly man in a white apron, sensed no danger from him, but nevertheless shielded Harry from view.

“Hi. Angelo, right?”

Angelo, the Italian restaurant owner from the Study in Pink (dear God, that was almost a lifetime ago) beamed at her.

“How is Sherlock? Haven’t seen him for a while.”

“Fine. The usual. You know.”

Angelo nodded sagely. He noticed Harry.

“So, who is this?”

John expected the question but didn’t have an answer prepared. Most people made assumptions. Others knew and kept their peace. Angelo was the first person who asked.

“This is my son, Harry,” John blurted before she could stop herself.

Aw, sh** John thought as she felt Harry freeze behind him. They didn’t discuss this. Too presumptuous. Too early. She was a horrible mother. Child Services was going to take Harry away this time, she knew it.

John braced herself and looked at Harry.

And blinked. Harry was staring at the ground in awe, noiselessly repeating ‘my son’ to himself, like he couldn’t believe his ears.

He looked so happy.

Huh.

Next prompt: How did Sherlock and John got married?