Magic Consulting Colleagues: Fear Is A Choice (#1)

*UPDATE: This is the FINAL version of this story. I have finished making/fixing all the spelling, grammar, and event errors, so I will no longer change this piece of writing in any way. So if you read the earlier version, I suggest you re read this. Some things have been altered while others have been added. Just a short notice.*

WARNINGS: Language, Violence, Descriptive/Scary Images

Rated: Teen +

Categories: Potterlock, Kidlock, Johnlock

Summary: To be eleven years old and hated by his own sister is one thing, but to have special magic powers is totally different. When John Watson discovers he's a wizard, his remarkable talents are only truly appreciated by his neighbor who lives across the meadow. Sherlock Holmes. When John gets an acceptance letter to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, he finally realizes he can fit in and learn skills with others just like him. But when a threatened evil fate of restoring the darkest wizard of all time back to power comes, Hogwarts uses none other than the dementors of Azkaban to guard their borders. As Sherlock puts it: "Fear is optional. The only way to defeat fear is to fight it."

*I do not own BBC Sherlock or Harry Potter. All characters and related items belong to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Mark Gatiss, Steven Moffat, and J.K. Rowling. This story was written for entertainment purposes only.*

~ Please enjoy and take the time to write a comment or short review on the whole story. I want to get as much feedback as possible about my writing. Thanks!

Chapter One

Different

A young boy stood staring out of his bedroom window, watching two siblings lying in a meadow not far away. That was his meadow. No one ever went into his meadow. Even if no one was permitted to legally buy the piece of land and claim it as their property, the boy still liked to demand it belonged to him. The field was located in between two very distinct neighborhoods, a hill sloping down off in the distance to reveal the boy's expanding hometown below. Usually the brunette never explored the outdoors, as he almost despised nature, but when he was acting odd and made up his mind, that was the place to go; his meadow.

But something about the dirty blond‒haired boy lying in the tall grass below created an exception. The bedroom boy's eyes darted from the brother to the sister chatting together and his hand gracefully lifted in an unaware manner. The ends of his fingertips touched the glassy window's surface, letting a cold temperature surge through the young boy's veins.

The girl in the field below suddenly shuddered violently, panicking and slapping her sibling on the arm. The skinny kid in the shadows lunged towards the window, his face within inches of the glass. He'd been watching this short, blond‒haired boy intently for weeks now, and the decency of his behavioral strategies seemed to arouse the brunette, giving him this urge to meet the younger brother.

The boy sat in the dusty‒tinted grass, rubbing his upper arm and staring up at his abusive sister. The boy in the window glimpsed something in the blond kid's hand. But then when he double checked, it in fact wasn't in his hand at all. It was hovering above his hand. He blinked three times, not believing what he saw. He…this boy…he can't be…it's just not logical…

But the level of advancement he was showing with making the item float and watching his relative at the same time was, quite frankly, unbelievable.

The older sister stood up and backed away from her brother, shouting and holding her arms as far away from her body as possible. Her sibling rolled over to a kneeling position, pleading for her to return to his side and sit with him. But the girl kept backing off. She shouted some more words from her loud mouth, but the letters and syllables were muffled far away behind the glass. She pointed at her brother and then launched her chest forward, bearing her hands in fists behind her back. What a window couldn't hide however, was the outraged look of envy smeared across her face.

The short sibling froze. Whatever was hovering above his hand fell, bounced off his hand and landed in the grass below. The young boy looked alarmed, like something had slapped him across the cheek. His gaze turned towards the ground and he shook his head delicately as he rose from his knees.

He was beckoning for his sister to come back, but she kept refusing. The boy took a few steps in her direction, but she automatically turned and bolted away from her relative. Thirty yards away, she rotated on her heel, shouted one more time at her younger brother, and ran off in the direction of a large neighborhood of houses on the opposite side of the flat field.

The brunette tore his view out the window and turned back to his experiment in his messy room. He held a rather petite Styrofoam ball that was supposed to be a planet in his hand, and he heard it crinkle in his palm. He squeezed it so hard it snapped in half.

He pivoted on his heel and went back to stand near the window. The brother sat alone, curled up with himself, waving and twirling his minute hands in front of his chest. Something was up between the two siblings. On the other hand, most siblings always had a row with each other at some point or another. The boy in the understood because he had an obnoxious older brother who had just turned sixteen.

The eleven‒year‒old decided it was time; time to meet this curious boy. A boy unlike any other. Someone who was like, him. He wiped the mist off the crystalline glass with his blazer sleeve, and adjusted the messy dark brown curls atop his head. He'd never seen such exceptional skill before.

And that's how he knew this stocky built boy would be abnormally interesting and just fitting for such a clever magician like himself.

"What's up Harry?" the younger sibling asked politely, using the girl's shortened nickname. His sister sat staring across the horizon as the sun was beginning to set over a valley, being blocked from view by incredible rolling hills. The sky was a swirl of pink, orange, and navy blue, and the sun gleamed brilliantly like a large light bulb in the shape of a sphere. The boy's jumper absorbed some of the transparent light, giving it an orange glow mixing with the original cream color.

"It's none of your business, John," Harriet snapped back at him. The boy named John crouched lower into the shadows of the tall grass, cautious about how his sister was feeling. Harry's face had a radiant glow about it, yet her expression was the complete opposite.

John sensed droplets of water working their way into the pores of his jeans. "Why are you so upset?" he asked sensitively.

"I said, it's none of your business!" Her tone was rising, so John backed off and let her be. His hand skimmed the ground over the pile of stones located to his right, in between Harriet and himself. He selected a rather flat one and twirled it in his fingers.

The grass behind his back swayed backwards and forwards, moving freely, but there was no wind to be felt on John's face. Harry saw the blades move on their own, and she jerked in her seat.

"How…what is going on?" her voice became frightened, and her eyes became almost as wide as golf balls in their sockets.

"What?" John asked, trying to act normal. But when he rolled onto his back to look, the blades of grass had stopped moving. He turned back to Harry and placed a hand on her shoulder.

"Nothing is there, Harry. It was probably just your imagin —"

"It wasn't my imagination!" she cut him off, throwing his arm from its resting position. "There was no wind, but the grass was moving!"

"It's fine, Harriet. Just ignore it." John chucked the stone in his palm up into the air, catching it again and again. He felt the minerals scrape against his hand each time it touched his palm, leaving small marks of pink on his white skin. Harry looked bewildered, having her mind still on the mysterious grass, but her eyes left her brother and went back to the luminous sunset. Silence was tugging in John's ears, but he broke it when he performed the action he'd wanted to, hoping his older sibling would approve as well.

"Look, Harry," he said, staring at his palm. Harry rolled her eyes and changed her gaze, but she nearly had a heart attack when she spotted what John was doing. Her brother was rather pleased with himself. The stone he'd been throwing up into the air was hovering just centimeters above his scratched up hand. With no force or object to hold it in place, John had done it on his own with special powers he'd had since he was a child. Harriet jerked and scrambled away from her younger brother, and John's expression on his face changed from comforting to confused. Harriet had been told about her brother's abilities, but she acted like they were a disease when he used them for the first time in front of her.

She used her remaining courage to fling her arm out of nowhere and smack her brother on the upper arm.

"Ouch!" the younger kid replied as a reaction, but he somehow managed to keep the rock in mid air. "What was that for?"

"You know you're not supposed to do that, John!" Harriet yelped, wanting to apologize for the hard hit she fired. "You know how it makes me feel!"

"It's not going to hurt you, Harry," John insisted, showing her the floating rock with a sorrowful expression on his face. "It's just a stone."

"Stop it, stop it!" Harry backed even farther from her brother. The eleven‒year‒old boy tried to come closer so she could see, but the thirteen‒year‒old sister didn't approve, and didn't believe it was happening right before her eyes.

"Don't come closer to me with that thing!" she screeched. She was on her feet now. John could see the anger rising in her chest; a spark waiting to turn into a roaring fire. "That's…that's not possible! Nobody can…it's physically impossible! Mummy told you not to!" Words kept pouring out of her mouth like nonsense.

"Come on, Harry, isn't it cool?" John tried to get her to agree with him. But Harry's eyebrows were lowering, and John sank farther down on his knees, cowardly.

"No it isn't!" John had already set the explosion off. Harry was boiling with an extreme hatred toward her brother, and he knew she was going to yell at him. "Don't do that! It's not normal! You're not normal. No wonder you're so different from me…You're a freak!"

John froze. No one, especially Harriet, had ever insulted him the way she just did. His parents had certainly never chewed him out this badly before. He lost his concentration, and he felt the stone graze his arm before landing with a soft thud in the grass. He was upset. His deep blue eyes stared sulking at the ground. He didn't want to talk to Harry. She'd called him a freak. Different.

But he had to say something so she'd forgive him. "Harry," he started again, this time to apologize, looking back up at his older sister. Her hands were grasped in fists and she stood some five yards away.

"I don't want to talk to you!" she bellowed. She spun around and began to run, her bare feet carrying her in the direction of their house. The lights in their neighborhood looked like fireflies from the long distance they were away.

"No! Harry!" John yelled, begging her to turn around and come back to his side. His voice drowned out at the end of her name as he gave up all signs of hope.

His sister skidded to a halt quite a distance away and shouted one more time. John could barely hear her. "And don't do that ever again in front of me!" With a flick of her long hair, she took off. And with each step, she became farther from John's crouching body. When he could no longer hear the pounding of her footsteps, John sniffed and whispered a plea under his breath.

"Harry, please come back…"

John let his body weight collapse and he sank onto the earth under his knees. His sad eyes stared disappointedly down at the stone that he'd dropped. John thought it was cool. He'd definitely known that there was something special about him, but not in the terms of 'freak.'

The words echoed in and out of his thoughts and memories. All these years, John had been doing strange things; making stones float, making things move, and forcing grass to sway without wind, but he'd never shown Harry how spectacular he truly thought it was. His heart sank as a dreadful thought came to mind. John supposed he was the only one in the world who could produce tiny forms of magic with his hands.

The only one in the world.

The blond noted the darkness surrounding him and the black clouds overhead. He watched the remaining view of the sunset; watched as all the colors swirled and blurred until the black took over completely. He rubbed his hands together and flinched as the tiny scuff marks on his left palm pained him. The early spring breeze blew over his face, leaving a bitter chill behind.

One by one, tiny droplets of water poured down from the sky in the clouds above. The rain was cool yet refreshing all the same. John's spine tickled as he felt raindrops slipping into the neck of his jumper and sliding down his back. Within minutes his dirty blond hair was drenched. A few drops of water fell from the edge of his hairline down his face, and he sneezed as one dripped off the end of his nose.

It took him a while, but when he felt his jeans becoming heavier and denser, he finally stood up from his seat. There were several patches of mud scattered on his pants, and he decided to head home before his phone in his pocket would be destroyed.

He stood in the rain for a few moments longer, having a strange feeling that someone was watching him. It was 8:37 before he got up the courage to saunter back home and start the long walk alone.

"Don't argue with me, Mycroft!" Sherlock hissed through gritted teeth. His sixteen‒year‒old brother stood in the frame of the kitchen door, having just gotten home from school for the summer holidays. He tried to push past his older brother, but Mycroft Holmes blocked his younger brother with his legs and arms so he couldn't escape through the open holes of the doorway.

"Get out of the way, Mycroft!" Sherlock growled once more, clenching his hand into a fist. He heard Mycroft's owl, Tirus, screech from behind his back.

"I asked where you were going," Mycroft taunted him in his usual drawling voice. "I have just gotten home. Sherlock Holmes, I'd expect a better greeting than this." His black umbrella stood at his side, acting as a cane. Mycroft carried his umbrella wherever he went for no reason, as the younger brother liked to tease him about the fact that it made him look older and more gentlemanlike.

"What?" Sherlock scoffed. "Did you expect me to bake a cake for you or something?" Sherlock laughed and smirked behind his back. "Besides, Mum and Dad aren't home. You can have the whole mansion to yourself."

Mycroft sank into his left hip, placing his hands on his hips. Sherlock mimicked his older brother, making a mirror image of the taller teenager who pestered him daily. Mycroft went to open his mouth, "You little bast —"but was cut off when Sherlock slipped through the hole between Mycroft's knee and the doorframe. The younger Holmes sibling was used to his older brother's insults, and he dodged the sixteen‒year‒old's school trunk before flinging open the front door and slamming it behind his back.

It had been some two months since Sherlock had seen the blond‒haired boy last in the meadow. Summer was in the air. The scent of a least a dozen various flowers filled Sherlock's nostrils, nearly making him wheezy. He stayed as close to the sidewalk curb as possible, his feet taking him to an unknown location.

He turned the corner at the last house in the row and went around the backside of it. He observed many things about the house, thus knowing details about the people who lived there as well. Paint peeling from the siding (old house), shutters always shut (unsociable), a hose near a rose bush, gardener (probably the mother), two sets of petite footprints in the dirt (two younger children), car unlocked in the driveway (forgetful people)…

Typical Muggles, Sherlock thought. He strolled next to the wealthy family's fenced yard. An angry Rottweiler growled at him as he passed, but he ignored the dog and continued on his way. His feet grazed over the lawn that had not been mowed in weeks as he walked, whistling to himself with his hands behind his back.

He looked up from his path and saw in the distance the hill in which he'd watched the young boy have a row with his sister some months previously. He adjusted the collar of his buttoned‒down shirt and pushed up his sleeves, revealing his skin to the warm air.

When Sherlock reached the top of the hill where the beginning edge of the tall grass grew, the other boy was nowhere in sight. He scanned the surface of the ground with his eyes, trying to make deductions. His legs weaved into a cross‒legged position, and he lowered his body slowly to the ground.

His fingers played with the dirt around him, and he identified every mineral and element in the soil resting in his hand. "Bored," he said to himself, and he threw the dirt several feet in front of him.

The brunette suddenly heard the scuffling of a pair of feet over his right shoulder, and he spun on his hip to see who had snuck up on him.

Those deep blue eyes finally stared at him for the first time.

John lounged casually in his favorite armchair in the living room. It was red, green, and blue plaid; his father's favorite chair as well. John used to sit with his dad in this chair when he was around. Now his father had gone off to serve in the Army, so he didn't come home often. But John's mum had told him and Harriet that their father would be coming home soon for a few weeks. John missed those days when they sat together in this comfy chair, the parent reading a children's book to his descendant. That's how Mrs. Watson discovered the development in their father and son bond.

John finished reading the words on the page. They were sketched into his mind, and they faded away slowly as he closed the book and placed it on the table next to the chair. His stomach grumbled, so he sat up and his feet drifted him into the kitchen. He pulled out a few Oreos from the cupboard and got out a glass cup.

He pulled open the refrigerator door, and a slight feeling of misery passed through his veins. They were out of milk. He returned the glass to its proper place in a 'go figure' way and ate his snack in silence. He saved the last one for a small experiment and set it down on the wooden table before his eyes.

He concentrated intently on the cookie in front of him. His mind raced between the two parts; chocolate cookie and cream. Mentally, he was going to make the treat break apart.

It didn't take much effort. The cookie split perfectly in half, cream and everything. John felt very pleased with himself, and he swallowed the first half joyfully. He made the second half of the delicious snack spin in his palm. His magic tricks had improved in just two months, but he practiced them out of Harriet's vision, because she still thought he had some sort of virus or had been possessed by a demon, or something…

The fantasy faded before his eyes; the sunset coming into view, the grass surrounding him like a maze, and Harriet sitting grumpily beside his figure. Words flashed in his mind. Freak, not normal, different…

John shook his head, flinging the memories from his head. The cookie that still twirled and danced reminded him of the stone he'd shown Harry on the day she'd called him 'different'. He shoved the remaining chocolate into his mouth and went to grab his shoes from his bedroom. He slid his toes under the bands on his sandals, feeling the squishy fabric on the balls of his feet.

He closed the front door gently and started the walk back to the meadow. He hadn't been there since Harry had insulted him, but he got up the courage to return to his special meadow now; the place where he'd debated to go back to for many days since his last visit.

When he reached the clearing and passed the houses in his neighborhood, he saw a figure working its way towards the hill. He squinted his eyes, having never seen the human before, but continued his way to the field anyways. He spotted a hawk in the cloudless blue sky and watched it interestingly as it sailed gracefully through the air.

John hid behind the one random oak tree that was just to the right of the field. The blond peered his head around the tree trunk, getting a sneaky glimpse of the unknown boy. His eyes narrowed when he heard the kid say, "Bored," and chuck a wad of dirt several feet forwards into the towering grass.

John's foot reached out from his hiding place, but he heard a tree branch break beneath his foot. His head was fully out from behind the tree's trunk, and he had only one second before the curly brown‒haired boy whipped around to see what had caused the noise.

This boy John saw, whoever he was, had very sharp cheekbones. They stood out like the moon compared to the stars and were very high placed on his long face. His eyes were also a very bright shade of green with a hint of blue around his pupils. He was dressed in a formal black blazer with matching dress pants, and the buttons on his shirt looked like they were about to burst from their seams. His brunette hair was arranged in perfect curls, which organized from his just off center part; the tiny hairs that couldn't brush behind his ears fell in wisps over his forehead. Before the taller boy could hide what lay, no, hovered inches over his elbow, John's eyes flew to the flower that bloomed smoothly very closely to the boy.

John didn't understand when the boy stood and extended his arm so the flower flew through the air to where he hid, his hips and one leg still behind the tree. It was as if the petals connected to the stem were attracted to John, and the blond made it stop in mid air, his hand slowly rising to greet the flower.

He stared back up at the mysterious boy, who had a grin spread across his face. John couldn't help but show the smile that was tugging at his mouth too. Some hope shot through John's veins, and his heart had a warm feeling in it. He realized then and there, the gears in his head turning rapidly…

He wasn't the only one in the world. No, not anymore.