Hogwarts

Incantations

When Umbridge finally let them leave, John’s hand was bleeding badly, something he considered to be child abuse. He didn’t want to report it to Dumbledore though; he didn’t want to sound like a baby. Sherlock walked right beside him, and as soon as they were a reasonable distance away from the office and the horrors it contained, they stopped to investigate their wounds. 
“What on earth was that?” John demanded, trying to stop the bleeding from his hand by wrapping his sleeve around it.
“It’s abuse, that’s what it is, Dumbledore will not approve.” Sherlock decided. John looked at his hand to see that it was bleeding equally, but out of much neater, cursive cuts.
“You have nice hand writing.” John observed. Sherlock took John’s hand without warning that sent a kind of shiver down John’s arm that he hadn’t felt before. Sherlock studied the marks on the back of his hand, frowning.
“Yours is deeper, how come?” he asked.
“I guess I press harder on the quill.” John shrugged the only logical explanation he had. They had written more or less the same amount of sentences. Sherlock held his wand up to John’s hand, took a deep breath, as if afraid he would mess up, and muttered a spell under his breath. Yellow light erupted from the wand, wrapping around John’s hand and the bleeding stopped immediately.
“There we go.” Sherlock said, his cold hand releasing John’s.
“What did you do?” John asked in amazement as Sherlock did the same thing to his own hand.
“A little trick I learned from a medical book I read a couple of years ago.” Sherlock said simply.
“Why were you reading medical books?” John asked.
“Why not?” Sherlock shrugged.
“I guess I’m not going to get in trouble with Umbridge if I can help it.” John decided.
“Sometimes it’s unavoidable, but yes, I think I’d take Filtch before her.” Sherlock decided.
“I assume they work together with that, Filtch was always one wanting to bring back torture as punishment, I heard he had shackles built in his office to hang kids by their toes.” John said.
“I doubt that’s true.” Sherlock decided.
“I don’t want to find out.” John said with a small smile. Sherlock smiled back, and John could say that his real smile was a lot different than the sarcastic smile he flashed at everyone when he corrected them or made a smart remark. This one was genuine, it was sweet, but his eyes didn’t match up. His eyes showed anger, pain, sadness, more negative emotions than John could have put up with.
“Sherlock, why were you in the Forbidden Forrest anyway?” John asked. Sherlock’s smile disappeared.
“That’s none of your business.” He said quickly.
“It could be.”
“It really couldn’t.” Sherlock decided.
“I know it’s personal, and you might want to keep it to yourself, but this isn’t the kind of thing you go through with someone and come out as alone as you were before, I’m here for you.” John said before he could stop himself. But really, he found that he did care about Sherlock’s wellbeing, he didn’t deserve whatever bad treatment he was getting from people. Sherlock got a little bit red in the face, looking at the floor and mumbling something that John couldn’t understand. John found that adorable. Wait, why did he find that adorable, no that was not cute, definitely not cute.
“Sorry?” John asked.
“Um, thank you, but maybe I’ll tell you other time okay?” Sherlock said.
“Ya, that’s fine, definitely.” John agreed, not wanting to pressure Sherlock into telling him he didn’t feel comfortable with sharing. There was an awkward silence for a little, both of them collecting their thoughts for a moment.
“So what do you know about my idiot brother and your friend?” Sherlock asked.
“Well, you know as much as I do, he actually admitted, that, um, happened, but I didn’t tell him I already knew.” John admitted.
“I’m guessing you were watching them weren’t you?” Sherlock asked with a bit of an awkward smile.
“I’m guessing the same goes for you.” John pointed out.
“Fair enough.” Sherlock decided.
“Do you actually think they’ll get together?” John asked.
“Didn’t they already?” Sherlock asked.
“No, like actually go on a date.”
“Oh, I don’t know, I honestly had no idea about Mycroft being gay.” Sherlock admitted. John could feel his face getting hot even though he had no reason to.
“Ya, Greg too.”
“Well, I guess if they actually like each other, it’s enough to change someone.” Sherlock shrugged. Now John could feel the conversation slipping from casual to way too awkward, especially when they were standing kind of close. It wasn’t like John had any interest in Sherlock; it was just an awkward topic with for any two people really.
“So, I guess we should get to our common rooms then, I don’t want to go through yet another detention again.” John decided. Sherlock didn’t look too disappointed, but John could sense a hint of it in his face.
“Yes, I guess so; I don’t think my hand would like having more engravings.” Sherlock decided with a small smile.
“See you tomorrow then, I don’t know what classes we’ve got yet, but I can imagine we’ve got some together.” John said.
“See you later.” Sherlock agreed. John gave him one last smile and turned to walk back to the portrait hole which was the opposite direction of the Ravenclaw door, whatever it was, John didn’t even know. He didn’t hear footsteps behind him, and could just feel Sherlock’s sad eyes on the back of his head, watching him walk down the hall. It was a relief to turn a corner. When John got back to the common room Greg was sitting in a chair in front of the fire, reading a book. That was definitely an odd sight, he hadn’t seen Greg read in a while.
“So how’d it go then?” Greg asked.
“You have no idea what I just went through.” John groaned.
“What did she make you do?” Greg asked. John looked around to make sure no one was watching, then showed Greg the back of his hand, which, although it had stopped bleeding, hadn’t been washed off since the old blood.
“Oh my god, what the heck happened?” Greg exclaimed, standing up from the chair and letting the book fall to the floor.
“Some sort of quill I guess, it used my blood to write and carved whatever I wrote into my hand.”
“That is sick! Dumbledore has to hear about this, that’s just not right.” Greg decided.
“No, I can’t tell Dumbledore, Umbridge has really close ties to the ministry, I doubt there is anything Dumbledore can do, and even so it’s nothing to fuss about.” John decided, even though he was lying to himself. He didn’t want to look like a baby in front of Dumbledore, complaining about a quill hurting him, it was purely childish.
“You should probably go wrap that up.” Greg decided.
“Sherlock did some sort of spell to stop the bleeding, I don’t know how safe it is, but so far it’s working.” John said.
“Then at least wash it off, it looks like you murdered someone.” Greg decided. John nodded and headed to one of the bathrooms, washing the wound out with water. The message was disturbingly accurate, it was his hand writing, definitely, it was almost like he had written with a blade. John wondered if what Umbridge was doing was even legal, which he doubted. John looked at himself in the grimy mirror; he looked older, a lot older than the last time he actually paid attention to his reflection. A new year meant new challenges obviously, and so far sixth year had been a lot more difficult than all of the other years. With the homework count and the drama going on, plus Umbridge of course, John would have a bit of difficulty keeping up. He went back out to the common room, told Greg good night although it was still early, and went up to the dorms. He changed into his pajamas and climbed into his bed, sitting against the head board and reading Quidditch Through the Ages for the millionth time. The words simply mixed around as his thoughts wondered to topics other than the 1746 Quidditch World Champions (England yet again), but to the events of the night. Other than the cuts, he thought to that sudden, random thought that Sherlock acting shy was adorable. What on earth led him to think that, Sherlock wasn’t adorable, he was the school loser that scowled and didn’t talk to anyone, that’s how John knew him before anyway. In fact he barely knew Sherlock existed until the Whomping Willow incident. Sherlock seemed shocked though, at John saying that he was there for him, like he wasn’t used to people standing up for him or caring about him. It was a real shame too, because even though John didn’t know him too well yet, he could see that Sherlock had a good heart, but a lot of internal sadness. Joh could imagine how Sherlock could be the target of bullies, he kind of remembers an incident last year when a pack of Slytherins had ganged up on a Ravenclaw, but John couldn’t see much and he didn’t want to get involved. Now he would be willing to bet that Ravenclaw had been Sherlock. He made a silent vow to himself to stand up for Sherlock if the bullying happened again, this time John would be there to defend him.