Chapter Text
In the end, Harry's part in the scheme of the Sherlock Brothers is minimal. He and Mycroft brandish themselves as bait for a couple of hours in a painfully public outing, a dinner in a horribly expensive restaurant and a walk afterwards, noticeable and seemingly carefree. Later Harry can't quite remember at what point in the park they’d been taken down – it was so smoothly and unnoticeably done, that even in his memories later on his awareness merely slips into darkness without him paying much mind.
He doesn't wake up until it's all over. "They knew of you. Not all, obviously, not even as much as I know, but they knew your reputation as a medium and suspected that it wasn't all there was to it," Mycroft explains later, as Harry fights the tranquilizers in order to wake up fully, in a room he doesn't know but which seems comforting. It smells familiar – it smells like the Bastard. "They didn't dare to risk it."
It makes sense – it's what Harry would've done. They, whoever they are – or were, at this point past tense is probably more accurate – had probably suspected that they couldn't just snag Mycroft without Harry making trouble, and they couldn't leave him either, not knowing how well Harry can trace people – and, at this point, there is no place on earth Mycroft could hide from him. Or be hidden. Logical to bring Harry with – and keep him out cold and harmless throughout.
"So," Harry speaks, knowing already that he's going to slur probably for an hour or so, and not really caring. Self-respect is a nice thing to be able to ignore, and the fading haze of the tranquilizers help him a long way there. "'at 'appened? An' 'ere are 'e? 'erlock?"
Mycroft, thankfully, seems more than capable of deciphering the slurring. "We are at my apartment. Well, one of them," he says, one hand carding through Harry's hair, other holding his pocket watch. The man peers down at it with a calm, somewhat amused expression. "Sherlock is currently not here – he's being chewed out by your friend, Inspector Lestrade and, in approximately ten minutes John will arrive at the station, where he will no doubt proceed to punch Sherlock. I have already arranged there to be a medic in the station, to take care of him in case John breaks his nose and feels uninspired to help him afterwards."
Harry blinks up at his lover, vaguely realising that he's lying down on a sofa – with his head in Mycroft's lap, and his feet on top of a pillow. It's a very nice place to be, in more ways than one. His own sofa is nowhere near as spacious, for one, or so soft – or has Mycroft in it, stroking his hair. "Huh," Harry says, blinking. "'m 'ensing you not tellin' me 'at 'appened," he slurred, but not with annoyance. He was entirely too comfortable and too loose to be annoyed. And a bit too high.
Mycroft smiles, closing the watch with a snap and looking down at him. "The procession of events was fairly linear. We were captured, you were kept unconscious – they threatened me by threatening you, trying to make me reveal Sherlock's position, which I obviously did not reveal. At the crucial point, Sherlock arrived with the cavalry, as it was. Or, to be more truthful, he gave Scotland Yard bit of a bomb scare, and in the attempt of trying to stop a terrorist attack, they ended up taking down the last of a Britain's greatest criminal empire. And saving our lives, though they were not in any real danger."
Harry snorts softly at that. He would bet, given half a chance, that they had been in danger, perilous, nerve wrecking danger, and that Mycroft would never confirm it. "'astard," Harry mumbles at the man, lifting a limp hand and clumsily taking hold of the man's tie. "'y aren' 'e in the 'tion?"
Mycroft blinks. "Why aren't we at Scotland Yard?" he confirms and Harry nods. Considering that they had probably been held hostage and would've been tortured or something, it would've made sense that the police would've wanted to have a chat with them. Why isn't Harry at a hospital, for that matter?
"I do not make appearances at police stations, and I figured that you wouldn't be much use to anyone before you woke up," Mycroft answers gently freeing Harry's grip on his tie, and grasping his hand instead. "You have been seen to by a specialist, mind you. The tranquilizer used should have no ill effects, once it runs its course. I have observed that you do not have any particular fondness for hospitals, so I figured that you might as well recover somewhere comfortable. And in good company."
"'astard," Harry says again, this time with a lopsided grin.
Mycroft smiles. "It is not myself only that I mean," he admits, and glances away from Harry, and to the floor beside him. Confused, Harry glances down again, to find Dexter and Horatio lying in front of the couch, both alertly looking up at him. "I took the incentive of having them brought here," the man slowly easing his fingers through Harry's wild hair says, and Harry notes that Mycroft, unsurprisingly, has his feet tugged beneath Horatio's flank.
"Than's," Harry slurs with a smile, reaching one hand and feebly patting Dexter's forehead. "Goo' boy," he mumbles, and the Great Dane closes his eyes, relaxing. "'ow lon' do I 'ave of 'e 'anquilis'er?" Harry asks.
"You should start feeling more alert in a couple of hours," Mycroft answers.
"Mm…" Harry nods, and closes his eyes. It's not bad, as medical conditions go. Nothing like poisoning, having bones removed, breaking bones, or carrying a foreign soul in one's forehead. He can handle a bit of tranquil and paralysis. "'m not 'elping you wi' kidnappin's again," he says dully. "e'cept to resq'."
"Yes, I believe that would be for the best," Mycroft agrees.
He sits there, stroking Harry's hair, for the entirety of the two hours until the drug runs its course, and Harry can move and speak normally again. Harry doesn't feel like getting up just yet, though, and Mycroft doesn't move until he does. Except to stretch himself out on the couch beside him, but Harry definitely doesn't mind that.
It's either early morning or evening when Harry wakes up – he's lost hours in between, but that's not too surprising, considering that he’d spent who knows how long tranquilised and hadn't really known what time of day it was when he had woken with his head in Mycroft's lap. He doesn't really care though – time for him is an abstract thing, these days.
There is nothing abstract about the warm body curled around him from behind, or the weight of Mycroft's arm around his waist, or in the soft huff of warm breath against his neck, or the way Mycroft instantly knows he's awake, and bids him hello with a kiss to the side of his throat. "Feeling better, my dear?"
"Yes, much," Harry admits, turning a little and smiling. He likes this – the quiet little niche in the universe that Mycroft's arms close him in. "Hi, Bastard. How's Sherlock's nose?"
"Well and truly broken I imagine, but I cannot be sure. I shut off my mobile hours ago – yours as well."
Harry lifts an eyebrow at that and turns around completely, to press against the man's chest. "You did, huh?" he asks, fully aware of how very special that is. For Mycroft the instant communication of a phone and such is probably as important as the air he breathes. "What if something important happens?"
"Enyo will be more than capable of informing me of it in that case," Mycroft answers, smiling. His hair is a bit of a mess and there is a soft, rested look about his face. He's been sleeping too, Harry assumes, but it's something else about it. Like some subtle, ever present weight had been lifted and it was only noticeable in its absence. It's a good look on the man, the relaxed smile and the heavy lidded eyes.
And instantly, Harry knows why. Three years, Mycroft's brother had spent not only pretending to be dead, but hunting down a criminal organisation. It had never really been said, but Harry can see it now, can backtrack it. Sherlock's nemesis, and most of the summoning Harry had done for Mycroft, techs and businessmen, agents and who knew what else, people who had done something and ended up dead for it. He's gotten so used to it, so much so that he hadn't even thought that, really, there was something a bit odd about it all, people getting sniped and assassinated and burned to smithereens in the UK of all places. And the marathon session of summonings, the hunt for lost information and to stop the leak…
Harry blinks, and looks at Mycroft more seriously. Some, he knows, some of the summoning had nothing to do with whatever mission Sherlock Holmes had been on, but yes, most of them did. Therefore it wasn't just Sherlock, but Mycroft too who had been on a mission. A mission, which, at it's worst, had sent the man into days and days of sleeplessness, and eventually to crash on Harry's bed. Now, it is over, and more than that, Sherlock is back, and Mycroft, who does care for his brother and worries for him constantly, can relax.
The realisation of it, as soon as it comes, fades away, unheeded and unimportant. Shaking his head, Harry leans in and pecks a close-mouthed kiss to the corner of his Bastard's mouth, and then sits up. Mycroft frowns with displeasure, but lets him, shifting up himself.
"I suspect you wish to go home?" the man asks.
"Just the bathroom," Harry says, and glances around. Horatio and Dexter snore away beside the radiator underneath the window while Mycroft's apartment spreads all around him, foreign and familiar and interesting. No, he's in no hurry to leave, not before he's snooped through everything as keenly as Mycroft's snooped through his place. "And I wouldn't say no to something to drink, it tastes like dead things in my mouth."
"Then I will make some tea. The bathroom is through there," Mycroft says, pointing. "Do you want something to eat, perhaps?"
"Nah, I don't think I can keep anything more solid in just yet, maybe later," Harry says, and as the man flashes him a slight, worried frown and looks a bit guilty all the while, the wizard grins. "No need to look like that," he says.
"If I had not suggested that you joined me in Sherlock's trap, then you wouldn't have –"
"No, no. Really, you don't need to apologise now," Harry repeats and then grins a feral smile at the man. Had Sherlock not interrupted them when he had, they'd probably still be in Harry's bedroom, and despite feeling a little dizzy and having something of a headache, Harry's nothing if not looking forward to picking up from where they had left off. "Trust me; I'm already going to make you pay for it. Dearly."
Mycroft blinks at him, first worried, then confused, and then with a slight flush coming to his cheeks. Coughing, the man looks away, standing up and smoothing a hand over the wrinkled front of his shirt. "Very well," he says, trying for calm and collected and falling short. "I… I shall put the tea on, then,"
"Get me some aspirin while you're at it, would you, Bastard?" Harry asks with a smile, and heads to the bathroom.
Something's changed. It almost seems like the whole of London is suddenly more colourful, livelier – more exciting than before – and it's all thanks to one Sherlock Holmes. His return from "death" makes the front pages, and people talk about it on the street corners and in cafes, and Harry realises that Holmes hadn't just been something in the circle of his acquaintances, but he had been somewhat famous. Mostly, because of his and the Scotland Yard's triumph over the nameless criminal organisation Sherlock's nemesis had ruled, and then because of his dramatic death, but also because, somehow, Sherlock Holmes had been involved in just about every major and minor crime investigation, a whole lot of private investigations and he had several royals indebted to him.
Sherlock was, according to Mycroft, the best in the business. And, apparently, everyone knew it.
"Mostly thanks to Doctor Watson, of course. Him and his blog have quite the widespread readership," the man muses. "I believe he's been offered numerous book deals and some movie deals as well over the years. He's turned them all down so far, however."
In the small group of Harry's acquaintances, Sherlock's return is all they talk about for a while – several coffee breaks with molly is spent mostly gushing over the whole thing, while the woman went from being angry at Sherlock and sympathetic towards John, to being relieved and happy and then knowledgeable, because of course Sherlock Holmes would do something like this.
"He hadn't been to Bart's yet, but it's only a matter of time," she informs him, with a little bit of cream foam on her upper lip. "He always does, after all."
"Oh. Why? Actually, no, please, don't tell me," Harry quickly says, his mind already swarming with plausible and implausible possibilities, and figuring that easiest way to figuring out what was true or not would be to actually see it in action, and not really wanting that either. There was something about Sherlock that made Harry think that watching him from a distance and with a blast screen in between was really the best way to go about it.
Harry shakes his head. "Have you seen him yet?" he asks instead.
"No, but I saw John's re-opening blog. It was… colourful," she grins, and then digs out her mobile to show him. It is, indeed, very colourful. And explicit as far as curse words go. And more than a little smug about the fact that Sherlock's nose was, indeed, well and truly broken.
Harry snorts softly and shakes his head, making mental note to look into this blogging business. He can't really handle computers to save his life, but he hasn't really had any interest in trying to learn.
A couple of days later, Harry meets Lestrade at Scotland Yard for a small consultation – a couple of kids have gone missing, and Lestrade wants to know if they're dead and if so, where they are. The kids are still alive and Lestrade takes barely enough time to thank Harry before he rushes out, ordering another search, wider, more thorough, of the area where they had gone missing. While he goes, asking where the hell someone named Anderson is, Harry is left sitting in his office, not entirely sure if he's free to go yet.
"Hey, Mr. Medium?" a voice asks, and glancing up Harry sees the dark skinned female Lieutenant leaning to the office door's frame. "Did you know?"
"Did I know what?" Harry asks, lifting a single eyebrow at her, and giving her a wary look. She's the one who’d insulted Sherlock Holmes with the same name the Dursleys had called Harry, and ever since then Harry has done his best on every case to avoid her. At the station, though, it's harder and trying to slink out wouldn't be taken too well, so he endures it just this once.
"That the Freak wasn't dead," she says, and scowls at him as he glares at her.
"What's your name?" Harry asks her, instead of answering.
"Donovan – Sally Donovan," she answers, folding her arms and looking at him with narrowed eyes.
"Tell me, Sally Donovan, why do you call Sherlock Holmes that?" Harry asks, leaning a little back in his chair. "What is it that he did to earn that particular title?"
She lifts her eyebrows and then snorts. "You've never seen him on a crime scene. Give him a dead body and he gets a boner and a half. He's a freak, he's a psychopath – he gets off on the whole thing, on people killing each other and him getting the chance to it figure out. He finds it fascinating, that people do it, how they do it, how they try to get away and how he can bring them down. And one day just watching and seeing won't be enough for him, and he'll be the one leaving bodies behind for others to find."
Harry blinks, and then lifts his eyebrows in turn. "Huh," he says, folding his arms. "You think so?"
She thinks about it and then sighs. "Nah," she admits, and steps into the office, closing the door behind her. "I did. The first time I saw him, it was over the broken body if this sweet little kid, a seven year old little girl with golden hair who had been raped, gutted, and left in a dumpster. And god, he was so happy about it all, the freak, he was almost jumping up and down with glee, right there, on the crime scene."
"Okay," Harry mutters, and he can imagine it a bit too easily. "I can see how that would be… yeah."
"Yeah," Donovan agrees. "But, well. That was a while ago. Long before he faked his death, obviously, and long before he met John. And after that, after meeting John, he… became a bit better. Though you didn't hear it from me," she says and shakes her head. "Now though, he's definitely a freak forever. Doing that to John, jackass deserves more than having his nose broken."
"So, it really was broken," Harry asks, interested. Not that he didn't believe it before, but it doesn't hurt to have multiple sources.
"Yep. Right there," Donovan nods, pointing. "I'll regret my whole life not having my mobile at hand, I should've taken a picture." She shakes her head again and looks at him. "So. Did you know? Did you know he wasn't dead?"
Harry shrugs and stands up. "Not really my business one way or the other," he says, and gives her a look. "Just so you know, though. Sherlock might endure being called a freak, maybe he even finds it funny, the Holmes family is weird like that and with a few tries they take insults as compliments. But if you call me that even once, I will make sure you will never again sleep peacefully."
She blinks. "Duly noted," she says, folding her arms. "Could you really do that?"
"Oh yeah," Harry grins at her, walks past her, and out of the office.
Harry meets Sherlock for the second time nearly a week after the first time – and thankfully, no interrupted fun times are included. Before the meeting, Harry had suspected that it would happen with John there, maybe during one of their weekly doggy walks, but it doesn't. Instead, Harry meets John and Gladstone with Dexter and Horatio on Saturday as usual, and he meets Sherlock the day after. Not that the meeting with John had gone any easier without the world's only consulting detective there.
"Did you know?" was all John had asked, and Harry's guilty, apologetic sigh was all the answer he needed. Thankfully, the man hadn't felt inclined to punch Harry's nose out of order, but the look he had given had spoken volumes. Libraries, even.
"I knew about Sherlock's mission. Not all, but Mycroft told me some, and the ancestor I summoned in Sherlock's place told some more," Harry said to him. "I could… relate to that. Trust me, though, it wasn't easy, seeing you the way you were, and knowing that the source for all your angst was still, well. But some things are bigger than the unhappiness of one man."
John had sighed and not said anything else, but he hadn't walked out on Harry either, so maybe that was good. In a way Harry is sure that John understands, and not only does he understand, but he understands, accepts and had probably forgiven Sherlock and all the others involved the very second he had punched the detective. But John is a man with something of a temperament, and the personal hurt could and had overcome the logical part of his mind that had been trained as a soldier and served his country. It will take him a while, before he can ease down from that.
In the mean while though, Harry doubts the man can stray too far away from his long lost opposite piece of the puzzle that is Sherlock and John. The doggy date is short, not just because the slight gap of things that one had known and hidden from the other, but because John keeps glancing at his watch, his mobile, shifting anxiously and eventually getting up out of sheer nervousness, and heading back without saying anything – too uneasy to stay longer than his concern for Gladstone's health and exercise demanded.
How Sherlock manages to pry himself away the following day, Harry isn't sure, but the man does, breaking into Harry's apartment in the early hours of the morning, and planting himself securely on the corner of Harry's couch. Harry finds him there when he comes out of his morning shower, but doesn't bother with more than an annoyed glare and irritated huff, too used to having Mycroft do the very same thing to really feel upset.
Besides, the miserable look Sherlock wears so poorly, the reddened nose and the band aid over it, make it very hard to stay mad at the man.
"Alright, then," he says instead, after getting something to wear, cleaning his fogged glasses and drying his hair. Sherlock is watching him with steady, slightly mistrusting eyes and he knows that it’s not a social visit. With this man there is probably no such a thing as social visits. "What do you want?"
Sherlock doesn't answer at first; instead he fiddles with the bag he’d brought with him and shifts where he sits. "According to the records my brother made for you, your name is Harry James Potter, you were born the thirty first of July in nineteen eighty, to Jane and John Potter, and that you are a medium. Not all of that is correct, there is no chance that you are anywhere near your thirties and the names of your supposed parents are so general as to be fairly painful."
"The Bastard had to make most of that up. My official records were the carrot on the stick when he hired me to work for him, and he didn't know much about me at the time," Harry shrugs. "What of it?"
Sherlock blinks at him, lifting his eyebrows. "…the Bastard?" he asks suspiciously.
Harry grins faintly at that, shrugging again. "He didn't tell me his name, so I made one up for him. For months the Smarmy Bastard was all I knew him as," he explains without too much guilt. He's rather fond of the name these days, and really, nothing else would ever fit Mycroft so well, not in his opinion. "He's probably always going to be the Smarmy Bastard for me."
"The Smarmy Bastard?" Sherlock asks, and suddenly he looks absolutely delighted. "Brilliant! And he lets you call him that?"
"Doesn't seem to mind, I suppose," the wizard answers modestly and then becomes serious again, because there is a reason why Sherlock is there, and Mycroft, despite being the man's brother, is not it. "What do you want, Sherlock?"
The man says nothing at first, and from anyone else that pause could've been taken as hesitation. The Holmes brothers though use pauses to gauge reactions and plot the conversation ahead, like masterful chess player plotting the future moves by dozens and hundreds. "I know there are supernatural things in the world. Mummy has a type of ESP which made my and Mycroft's childhood… difficult," he says thoughtfully, still reading Harry more than he's really speaking, using every word as a way to test the scales and see if he can tip the balance. "And I have met several mediums, psychics, espers and whatnot. Mycroft has the bad habit of employing them."
"Alright," Harry says and gives him a sympathetic smile. He has a feeling about this, now. Mycroft can accept the existence of the supernatural for the simple reason that he can, probably in one sitting, think of half a hundred uses for it all. Mycroft doesn't bother with hows or whys because he is, on the inside, a believer of the result, and the result alone. Sherlock is obviously not like that at all – not according to what Harry has heard of him, and not according to what he can see now. Sherlock is the believer of cause and effect and he needs to know the how and the why, and as precisely as possible.
It's all in the man's face – Sherlock is itching to dissect Harry and see what makes him tick.
"So," Harry says, leaning against the hand rest of one of his armchairs and folding his arms. "You've heard of me from the Bastard and maybe from John, and now you want to know how it works, how I can do it. You're here to figure me out."
Sherlock says nothing, just stares at him. Harry smiles, and shakes his head. "You should be home, Sherlock. With John," he says, and when the man frowns, opening his mouth to object, Harry snorts. "Yeah, I know. You're not like that, but you still broke his heart. Hell, you broke the hearts of everyone who knows you, with the exception of the Bastard who knew you weren't really dead. You should be there, mending the bridges you nearly burned, not here trying to see if you can get into my head." If it was him, he certainly wouldn't have given a crap about Harry, no, he would've been on his hands and knees begging for forgiveness from the people he had fooled so badly.
"Tch," Sherlock answers, shifting where he sits. "I see why he likes you. Mycroft that is. He has certain tastes, and you didn't fit them, not really, medium and super powers aside. I see it now, though," he gives Harry a disgusted look. "You have intuition."
"Don't say it like it's a curse word," the wizard says with a laugh, and walks over to sit beside the man, lifting his feet onto the coffee table and crossing his ankles comfortably. "You have time to try and needle me into a confession later – I'm certainly not going anywhere," Harry says. "So why are you here, really?"
The man doesn't answer, and when he looks away it is actually real hesitation that makes him do it, not the need to plan more moves in the verbal chessboard.
"Let me guess; John's a bit different," Harry answers. "He's watching different shows on telly and his evening rituals have new steps and have lost old ones. And of course there's Gladstone too, right? You're not the same either, of course, you've been out, you've seen things, experienced things, and John doesn't quite get the whole thing. And you're realising that not only were you gone for three years, but you also missed those three years. Life went on without you, and the seams don't fit. That niche you had with John, it isn't as comfortable and snug as it used to be."
The man gives him a look which is equal parts frustration and disgust. Harry grins at him. "Trust me, I've got enough experience with things like this. You have no idea how many widows and widowers come to me, to talk with their lost husbands and wives, only to find that they don't quite remember them right, and that the life they've been leading in the meanwhile isn't so easily understood or accepted by their loved ones, and that somewhere along the way, they have drifted apart even while thinking that nothing's changed." He shrugs his shoulders. "It's not quite the same, but I bet it's something like that. You came here, because it it's one of the questions nagging in the back of your head, and it's easier to do something, to take the initiative, than just sit and think and know that you can do nothing."
"Alright, if you know so much then you know what I should do," Sherlock says expectantly, folding his arms with a huff. "Tell me, oh high and mighty medium, what should I do?"
"Go home," Harry answers simply. "Take Gladstone out. Phone or text John, and meet him during his lunch break. Talk. Listen."
Sherlock huffs with disgust. "Boring," he says.
"I know. And it's annoying too, difficult and excruciatingly awkward. But if you leave this thing to fester – and John's the sort of man who will let his hurts fester if that will make it easier to move on – it will come back, worse than it is now," the wizard says. "And that niche you had with John, it's still there, you just need to compromise a little to fit again."
"I hate psychology," Sherlock mutters to himself and looks away. Harry just shrugs amiably and watches with interest, as the man turns to his bag, to dig something out of it. Something round, wrapped in white wrapping paper. "Mycroft doesn't make mistakes, not with his employees and definitely not with his… companions," the detective says, and hands the ball shaped thing to Harry. "But I need a confirmation."
"Okay," Harry mutters, and unwraps the surprisingly heavy thing which is most definitely not a ball. No, not a ball at all, he muses, while turning the white, clean human skull to face himself. "Right," he says, determinately not thinking about where Sherlock could've gotten a skull from, or why was he carrying it around in a shoulder bag like it was your common luggage. "What do you want to know?"
"Why he did it," Sherlock says simply, looking at the skull with mild frown.
Harry considers asking for more for a moment, to know what the man means, who the skull belonged to, and so forth. He decides against it, knowing it's like with Mycroft and his driver’s licence copies – and that the skull is really all he needs and that simple question like why did you do it could unearth more than more detailed one could.
Swinging his feet down and settling the skull to the tea table, Harry seeks the ring, finding it easily in his jean pocket regardless of the fact that it had been in his hoodie pocket when he had gone to shower. He's used to the Hallows teleporting back to his person when he's left them behind, though, and merely slips the ring with the Stone onto his finger.
Shame is why Victor Trevor had killed himself, and Sherlock leaves almost immediately after getting his answer, taking the skull gently with him as he goes.
The buzz of Sherlock comes and goes and things settle – except they don't, not for Sherlock and John who fight and circle each other like a pair of wolves, looking for weaknesses, at least according to Mycroft, Molly and Lestrade. Harry doesn't really pay too much attention to it, except to listen when John feels like ranting about how impossible Sherlock is, and offer remarks to Sherlock who, in the guise of trying to mentally dissect the wizard, comes to him for advice. And, of course, endure Mycroft’s summation of the whole thing, and amusement about the fact that Sherlock, lifelong enemy of all things psychological, had found his counsellor in Harry of all people.
"Well, I always did know it would take someone from another world entirely," the man muses, with very badly disguised amusement and pleasure about the whole thing. Harry merely rolls his eyes at the man and orders him to pass the salt. The man is pleased though, in more ways than one, Harry knows as much. He doesn't say as much, but they both know that Sherlock's not really all there, not exactly as… level as most people, and it soothes Mycroft's mind that his brother has, somehow somewhere along the way, decided to open up.
Even if he had selected one of the worst persons for the job of being the one to open up to – and that in case of Sherlock Holmes, it wasn't as much opening up as it was Harry taking shots in the dark until he hit the latest thing that Sherlock was having problems with. Emotional problems, usually.
Sociopath, they called him. Very Merlin damned confused, is what Harry prefers.
But, as consuming as Sherlock with his problems is, he is just a little bit in between, and for the most part Harry's days are still full of summonings, of dead souls and spirits and now occasionally of mediums, with the new flavour of some psychics and even one esper child thrown in. Harry is beginning to realise slowly that his original estimation that the world he's stumbled into has no magic is wrong. It has no magic like he knows it, no hidden magical world with its own laws and governments. Instead there are shadows living in the midst of the magicless normalcy, and they had decided different names for themselves. No witches, or wizards, but telepaths and readers, clairvoyants and espers, ESP users, and what not. And, the more Harry meets them, the more he's starting to realise that he's barely scratched the surface.
The esper child is an eye opener, really. Jake Lionel, an eleven year old thin little boy with terrifyingly blue eyes and his eyes set on the continent, where he watches his runaway father living a happy life with his new wife and new – normal, non-supernatural - kids. There is little Harry can do about the kid, abilities like that aren't something he's familiar with in either of the worlds he knows, and really he's not entirely sure why his mother had brought the boy to him, to a medium, before the mother, Alisa Edgar, tells him.
"There was another esper in our family, according to the family lore – my great great grandmother," she explains. "She wasn't like Jake, she could only see through walls and such, but I was still hoping that maybe she could offer some advice on how to control this. We've tried everything from meditation to hypnosis so far and nothing's really done the trick…"
After arranging the talk between Gwyneth Barrymore and her two descendants, Harry takes a long moment to think, to really think about the world he's living in now. There is more to it than he's realised. No Diagon Alley, no Hogwarts, but something. Something special.
Something that he doesn't quite feel connected to, but still, which he is suddenly a part of. And not just part of, but becoming pretty well known for in the circles of people with varying supernatural powers. He's different from them, he has gifts and he follows rules they don't have, but still. He is a medium here, first and foremost, and after months and months it's really starting to feel… right.
"Did you ever have a career in your world?" Mycroft asks him one day, as they fix dinner at the man's downtown apartment – which has an infinitely better kitchen than Harry's flat does, as well as better stocked fridge. Fridges, even. "You were a little over twenty, right? Were you studying for something, perhaps?"
"For a while. I was intending to become an Auror – a law enforcement officer," Harry answered. He could've became one fresh from the war, Kingsley had offered the position to him happily, with the Chief's chair looming soon ahead. Harry had declined. "I went through some training, I even had a personal trainer for a while, but… I didn't become one." He shrugs his shoulders, thinking back. Aurors had been… not quite what he had thought. "Too much politics," he explains.
"A law enforcement officer, indeed? It doesn't quite seem like you," Mycroft notes, while delicately chopping some vegetables. "You're… I'd expect a person with your temperament to be a therapist of sorts."
"Well, that only came after lot of trial and error on this side," Harry snorts, thinking back to his first summonings, his first customers. "I was really more an Auror than I was anything else when I came through," he admits, looking down to the sauce he's stirring and frowning slightly. "Too much, I think."
Mycroft gives him a look, perceptive and all-seeing, detecting what Harry's not saying and aiming right at it. "What happened?" he asks. "The day you came to this world, the day you stumbled out from between worlds. What did you do, when you found yourself stranded?"
Harry takes a deep breath and shakes his head. "Stupidity," he answers. "I was confused, lost, irritated and a little scared. I knew instantly that something was wrong, but then, waking up naked will do that to you," he sighs, and maybe one day the memory will make a good joke, will make him smile. How he found himself lying on a street, naked as the day he had been born with only the Invisibility cloak to hide in, with the Wand he had left in Dumbledore's grave and the Ring he had forgotten in the ForbiddenForest on his finger.
The Deathly Hallows hadn't been willing to be left behind by their Master, and they hadn't allowed themselves to be abandoned since.
Mycroft says nothing, just looks at him expectantly, and Harry continues. "I looked for my people for a week or so. I got a bit ragged by the end of it, and I did some… not so good things to keep going. Stealing is easy with my powers and it was even easier to justify it to myself… but it still wasn't right. And the less I found, the more I started to realise that I was neither in the world I had left behind, nor the one I had been aiming for, the more I took. Things I didn't even need, like clothing and stuff. Eventually money too."
Mycroft frowns a little at that, turning to him. "What made you stop?" he asks quietly, and the undertone was there. Harry had stopped, after all, and not only had he stopped but he had turned himself into a homeless wretch overnight, and hadn't strayed from that unspoken vow since. And he never would.
"I did something unforgivable," Harry answers, hesitating and then turning the heat of the stove down, not wanting to burn the sauce. "I found a… woman, who was the living reflection of someone I know. A little older than I knew her, a little different, but still so, so much like her. She even had the same name," he sighs and smiles. "Hermione Granger. Back in my world, she was one of my best friends, a budding spell creator and one hell of a researcher. On this side, she's a very well paid lawyer."
He feels Mycroft's hand on his back and looks up, a little surprised to find the man so close. "What did you do, my dear?" the man asks, serious and understanding and probably already guessing most of it.
"I was… scared, desperate, too happy to see her and too willing to ignore the obvious, the differences and the fact that she didn't know me, that she was different, that she wasn't the witch I knew her as. And I… I didn't…" the wizard sighs and puts the spatula down, leaning into Mycroft slightly. "I wanted her to be able to help me so bad that I scared her. Really badly. I didn't take no for an answer, I told her she'd just forgotten, maybe her memory had been erased, that she just needed to try harder. I showed her what I could do, and I scared her half way to death. And when she tried to call the police, I stopped her."
"Harry…"
The wizard looked away. "Four days after I found her, I realised that there was terror in her eyes every time she managed to look me into the eye, and she rarely did. She was too strong to cry, but the tears were always there, in her eyes. She thought I was a psychopath, that I was going to kill her or worse. I… woke up, that is how it felt. I woke up, I realised what I was doing to her, I realised what I was doing. I've never hated myself more." The memory of that woman, the Hermione Granger who wasn't Hermione, sitting across from him with stiff posture and terrified eyes, still makes him feel like he deserves to die.
"What happened to her?" Mycroft asks softly, rubbing a hand up and down along Harry's spine.
"I… I apologised, over and over, but by that time it was too late. She was scared to death, and the best thing I knew I could do, was to leave her alone and never see her again," Harry shrugs and smiles self-deprecatingly. "But I also knew I had done more than enough damage already. Four days she had been in my presence and so terrified for the most of it. It's enough to give a person mental scars, and I didn't want that, I didn't want her to become deathly terrified of young men showing interest in her or something like that. So I… I took it away from her, to give her peace of mind back to her. I made sure she would never remember me. Then I left."
Mycroft hums softly, pulling Harry to his chest and not saying a thing for a long moment, while Harry reached out and awkwardly stirred the sauce in the faint hope of salvaging it. "You stopped stealing," the taller man finally says. "Stopped using your powers."
"Well, I used them for survival, but in the smallest ways possible. To extend the food I had, to make my clothing warmer on colder nights, impervious to water… that sort of things. I tried to manage by honest ways, though, to buy the things I needed. Did my best trying to get jobs and whatnot, but it wasn't easy before the whole medium thing started. And, of course, before you swaggered your way into my life," Harry answers, and looks up to his lover's face, leaning his chin on the man's chest. "What do you think of my high moral fibre now?"
"I understand it better and respect it all the more," Mycroft assures with a small smile, and pecks a kiss to Harry's lips. "You need not expect judgement from me. I have done far worse things along my career, and will continue doing them for years to come."
"I know," Harry agrees and smiles.
They finish making their dinner, and then eat slowly, enjoying the fruit of their combined labour before retreating to Mycroft's comfortable living room, where Dexter and Horatio laze about. Harry's not surprised to find them curled together by the radiator, not only is he getting used to their habit, but he's also starting to become more aware of them – in the way he had been aware of Hedwig, long ago.
It's not all that surprising. Harry's been expecting it since he witnessed the miraculous calming effect the two had, and how they had started to become even more keen about the pain and suffering of the people around them. He knows that if he would take four year old Dexter and six year old Horatio to the vet, the vet would find them miraculously half as old as they really were. Magic was a kind thing like that, when it came to familiar bonds – kinder in this time, because before Horatio had been living what was probably his last year, and now he's growing ever stronger and younger. Even if not in any way more energetic, the lazy thing.
"Tell me honestly," Mycroft says, after starting a fire and settling down, with Harry's feet in his lap and the remote control for the telly in his hand. The telly is still shutoff – he won't turn it on except for the news, and that won't start just yet. "Do you think you could ever get to the world you wanted to go to?"
Harry looks up to him and then smiles. "No," he says, leaning back against the cushions and wiggling his toes slightly under Mycroft's hand. "It took twenty seven witches and wizards to open the pathway, and as many to maintain it. I could never manage it alone, even if I knew how. And I doubt anyone's looking for me, on the other side."
"Really?" Mycroft asks. "I was under the impression you had great many close friendships. A family, even."
"I did. But they won't go looking for me because they think I stayed behind, on my original world." It's more than likely, after all. Harry hadn't really wanted to leave his birth world. He had liked the place, and really, he hadn't been scared of the plague, the Haze. He had lost so many people than he had actually been looking forward to dying, and being reunited with them. Ron and Hermione had known that – as well as the fact that Harry had decided to go in the end not for himself, but for his friends, for the warriors from the war, for the Weasleys.
Harry had been among the last to go. Actually, he had been the last. And maybe his stumble had been caused by that very thing, because the pathway had been collapsing and closing in, but still. For those on the other side – for Hermione and Ron who should've already been safely through… it would've looked like Harry hadn't even tried, that he had stayed back without ever entering the path. And thinking that his friends would've let him go, would've understood and wouldn't have tried to come back or get him – they would've let him do as he wanted, and go down with the other wizards and witches who had stayed behind, intending to face the Haze and their fates on their own terms…
Harry hadn't really allowed himself to think about it before – it was too painful to think that his loss could be rationalised so easily. Now though, now it's a soothing thought to have. Not that he's been abandoned – because that's not it at all. No, it's that his friends, where ever they are and whatever they are doing, probably have moved on from him. Moved on with their new lives, accepting his absence and, hopefully, being none too worse for it.
Harry himself might never get closure, never know how it all had gone, if it had worked, if the other world had accepted them and if they had managed to rebuild their lives. But the hope that the others had, and that him not being there wouldn't hurt them, that is nice. More than nice. It's comforting.
"You… you don't want to go anymore," Mycroft says softly, looking down to him. "No, you… you've, what, accepted this?"
Harry smiles up at him. It's one last lingering concern Mycroft has – that Harry would just jump ship and leave the reality the man belonged to. Of course, Mycroft would never say it out loud, but it is all there, and Harry is getting very good at reading the man, and the things he isn't saying. Maybe he is even building a sort of ESP about it. Shaking his head and still smiling, the wizard sits up and reaches to take the man's face in his hands, to kiss him.
Harry's life might not be what he had planned, his career might be as far from his plans as possible and he definitely hadn't planned for Mycroft, but that didn't mean it was bad. It was actually rather brilliant. Strange and exciting and a little unsteady and absolutely brilliant.
"Bastard," Harry murmurs, pulling back with wet lips and a tingling tongue, smiling. "Do you really need to watch the news?"
"No, I suspect they won't have anything I have yet to be informed of," Mycroft answers readily and drops the remote.