Ordinarily Extraordinary

By CreateImagineWrite

For Dani, the most beautiful girl in the world. She always knows what to say.

John Hamish Watson looked to be a fairly ordinary bloke. No nonsense, dressed in practical, if a bit bland, clothing, with a medical degree and a friendly smile, he was the last person you'd expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious. He just didn't seem to hold with such nonsense.

Once you got to know him, though, you realized that he hid a soldier's body beneath his out of fashion jumpers, and that his occasional limp wasn't the result of a good old-fashioned rugby injury or the like, but rather from fighting for Queen and country. And, Christ, if you ever saw him with a gun, well, you'd know that there was more to John Watson that met the eye.

And then you met his flatmate, and you started to wonder if you knew anything about him at all.

Sherlock Holmes was everything John wasn't. He was a remarkable genius with social skills so abysmal it was probably a good thing his intellect (and John's reprimands) had been superior enough to stop anyone from murdering him in retaliation – at least so far. He wore high end suits and flipped his collar up and appeared to have a penchant for the colour purple, and silk, let's not forget the silk. Add in a rather alarming attraction to murder scenes and a brother whom he introduced as the British Government, and, well, you'd think that the Holmes brothers would be the ones hiding the secrets.

You'd be wrong, or at least partially wrong, that is. The Holmes' had their share of secrets, but so did John, and his greatest fear was that somebody (read: Sherlock) would discover his. In short, the ex-army doctor wasn't silent about his violent past just out of a desire not to think about it, but also because John was an honest man, and he didn't enjoy telling lies, even half-lies.

So when an owl flew through the living room window, dropped a letter next to the skull on the mantelpiece and flew out with a kind of terrified squawk – John didn't blame it, he wasn't quite sure if the fumes from the beakers in the kitchen were that safe either – John was exceedingly glad that Sherlock had run out of the flat several minutes prior, shouting about, what was it – "The calculator, John! That's it!" And, quite honestly, he hadn't thought that an accounting instrument had been worth running out into London in his pyjamas.

Setting down his tea and newspaper, he navigated his way through the mess of books, photos, and stolen evidence that littered the floor and picked up the envelope. It was made of heavy parchment, and was sealed, as per traditional fashion, with a green blob of wax, stamped with – the Hogwarts Crest. John blinked and raised an eyebrow. He grabbed what looked like a letter opener but might've been a scalpel from the coffee table and slit the envelope open. In fancy black script that looked suspiciously like it had been written with a quick quotes quill set to calligraphy, it read:

Dear Mr. Watson,

You are cordially invited to the 15 year reunion of the graduating class of '98,

To be held at 5pm on Saturday, July 25th in the Great Hall.

Dress is formal Wizarding wear.

Hoping to see you there,

Minerva McGonagall,

Hogwarts' Headmistress

John read it over a couple times and then sighed. Right, the reunion, they had mentioned that during the graduation ceremony. It had been a bit of a hectic graduation ceremony, given the Battle of Hogwarts and all, but it had been mentioned. But then he'd joined the Aurors, been deployed to Afghanistan, and well, he'd quite forgotten. Fifteen years will do that, he supposed.

He stepped back over the mess of objects on the living room floor – Sherlock's current, soon to be recent, case had been a rather long one – and sat down in his armchair again, rubbing a hand over his face. John had thought that this part of his life had been over, to be quite honest.

He was a Muggleborn, born to no-nonsense Muggle parents who hadn't believed John was a wizard until Dumbledore himself had shown up on their doorstep. It had one struggle after another, going to an obscenely expensive boarding school no one in his primary school had ever even heard of, being gone for most of the year, coming home with his trunk full of quills and half-finished potions and scrolls of parchment. His parents had never approved. His mother was an English professor, his father a business man. He'd taken Muggle summer courses, just to keep them happy, and even managed to graduate both Muggle and Wizarding School with honours. They still hadn't ever really forgiven him for being anything other than normal.

Still, John had done well for himself. He had been comfortable with Muggle technology since birth, so he'd never had the problems the half-bloods or purebloods in his year had. And he'd been a Hufflepuff, so his interaction with Harry Potter, Savior of the Wizarding World, had mostly been in Herbology and during the ridiculous amount of battles they'd all gone through. They'd been in the same Auror training classes when they got out of school (or gotten free of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, in Potter's case), and last he'd heard, Potter had been appointed the youngest Head Auror in history at 27, had three kids and accumulated a record for taking down Dark Wizards. John hadn't been around for that.

Sherlock had been correct in his deductions. John had been in Afghanistan for several years. His cover had been as a doctor, and he'd had the relevant experience, two years of training at Saint Mungo's before he'd joined the Auror Program. He'd used more magic and Confundus Charms than he cared to think about, holding men together on the battlefield. But his real mission had been to take down a band of Afghani wizards who were getting a little too interested in Muggle nuclear weaponry.

He'd been with a group of four other wizards, distributed throughout the ranks. When they'd gotten their orders, they'd Apparated to an underground base out in the desert. It had taken two weeks to find the entrance and get into the place past all the wards. But when they'd gotten through, it had gone bad, fast. Their shields hadn't worked against some of the curses, and he'd been trying to heal a fallen comrade with a dark spell cutting off his airway when he'd been hit with some sort of modified Crucio. They'd taken out the band, but two of their number had died, and John had spent three months in Saint Mungo's, injured to the point that magical healing was tenuous at best.

The spell had targeted his magical core, going through his wand arm. His shoulder had been completely wrecked, and the Crucio elements of the curse had been inconsistent, targeting certain areas of his body worse than others, namely his leg. The Cruciatus was a mind spell, it did no physical damage on its own, but his mind remembered the pain. His limp, as Sherlock had correctly deduced, was purely psychosomatic, and he could certainly thank his flatmate for that particular cure.

The modified parts of the spell had literally ripped his magical core apart. The three months in St. Mungo's had stabilized it to the point that he didn't explode things when he touched them, but he had no control over his magic. He'd resigned the Aurors, taken the severance package they'd given him, and gone and finished a proper Muggle medical degree. But then, as a civilian, unable to give any employers any job experience beyond his involvement in the war, unable to cite his magical training, he'd been unable to land a single job, nothing that would pay well enough to allow him to live in London.

And Sherlock had been right about one other thing, he wasn't going to his family for help. He couldn't admit that he couldn't handle his own life. Call it stubbornness or pride, it hadn't let him give up, even when his severance package came close to running out.

And then he'd taken a walk, needing to just think, to decide what he was going to do, and then there was Mike, and some crazy scientist in a trench coat, and next thing he knew he'd shot someone and been offered a place in a flat and then been kidnapped by his new flatmate's brother and he'd had literally no idea what had happened.

He'd never been happier. Sherlock might not be the most normal flatmate, but John had never really liked normal anyways. He'd gone to school with Harry Potter, for God's sake. His life had never been normal. It was good. It was fine. He could do without the interrupted dates and the occasional frozen head left in the icebox, but it was good.

He turned the invitation absently in his hands. Still, it couldn't hurt to go see Hogwarts. Last he'd been there it had been a ruin, struck through with pockets of dark magic.

He stared at the parchment for a bit longer, then shrugged. Why not?

He dug his wand out of a box full of knickknacks, told Sherlock he was going to visit some old friends, walked a couple blocks, and summoned the Knight Bus. It was the only form of magical transportation he could manage. The last time he'd tried to Apparate, before he'd resigned himself to being a sort of magically unbalanced Squib, he'd ended up blowing a hole through a brick wall, and he didn't really have a Floo he could use, so the Knight Bus it was.

He was sad to see that Stan Shunpike had been replaced, the man had never been the same after his time under the Imperius and the momentary stint in Azkaban. Ernie was still there though, talking a mile a minute and driving as crazily as he always had.

John didn't end up getting violently ill this time though, so he took that as a plus as he shakily stumbled off the vehicle in Hogsmeade. The little town at the foot of Hogwarts was just as magnificent as always, and the castle, Christ, he hadn't realized how much he missed the castle. He wandered up the road, ever familiar from years of Hogsmeade weekends, feeling nostalgic. Everything was exactly as he remembered it. He could even see the Giant Squid moseying around in the lake. He didn't meet anyone. Everyone must've decided to take the Floo or Apparate to the gates. That was alright. He didn't think he was quite up to talking to anyone quite yet.

The gates were wide open, welcoming, and he saw, as he walked up the path towards the Entrance Hall, a giant figure that could only be Hagrid clapping someone on the back as they entered the castle. He winced in sympathy, the half-giant had never really known his own strength.

Then, "Watson, John Watson! Is that you?!"

John whirled around and grinned. "Seamus!"

The Irishman grabbed him around the wrist and practically dragged him through the doors. "Guys! It's John!"

And suddenly he'd been pulled through the doors into the Great Hall and practically thrust into a chair, welcomed by surprised greetings and beaming smiles. At least a dozen people clapped him on the back, and he felt a bit winded by the time a deep, familiar voice said, "Merlin! John? John Watson?"

He turned, and took in the wild messy hair and unmistakable scar before Harry Potter dropped down in the chair beside him and clapped him heartily on the shoulder, his wife dropping into the neighbouring chair a little more gracefully, just as beautiful as she'd always been.

"Harry! Ginny!" he greeted.

The Savior of the Wizarding World just shook his head wordlessly, staring at him. "Merlin, John, I haven't seen or heard of you in years. You dropped off the map! After that mission…" His brow furrowed. "I came in and someone told me you'd just gone."

John flinched internally, this wasn't exactly the starting topic he'd wanted to go with. He glanced away and suddenly realized that the entire table had filled, and all of them were staring at him expectantly. He coughed, feeling self-conscious, and then he was saved as McGonagall stood up at the professors' table and called for attention.

"Ladies and gentlemen, my former students," she smiled around at them all, "I'd like to welcome you to the 15th anniversary of your graduation, or at least your intended graduation, for some of you." She looked rather pointedly at John's table, and Harry and a few others chuckled. "It has been an eventful 15 years, and I must say I am proud of each and every one of you. We have, in this room, a Head Auror, a renowned Potions Master, the first advocate for magical creature rights, several Quidditch stars, and no less than three professors." She smiled as if she had been the one behind it all, and John supposed she had some right to. "You are a remarkable group of people, even more remarkable for having become so in the wake of the War. This night is your celebration of life, of accomplishment, and of success. Enjoy!" She flourished her hand, in a way completely reminiscent of Dumbledore, and suddenly the tables were filled with food.

John definitely had missed that. The Headmistress sat down, and chatter started up again.

"Who's the Potions Master?" he asked, smiling and spooning a helping of mashed potatoes onto his plate.

"Draco, I believe," Harry said.

John raised an eyebrow. "Since when do you call him Draco?"

Harry flushed slightly, and Ginny answered for him, "Since his son became best friends with our son. It's a new rule."

John barked a laugh. "A rule?"

Harry grumbled something under his breath, and his wife smacked him lightly. "It's not so bad, Harry, Scorpius is a lovely boy."

John wondered whose idea that name had been. Then again, he lived with someone named Sherlock. Perhaps he couldn't talk.

Harry grumbled something else, and then turned to John. "Don't think you can evade the conversation, Watson," and there was the Head Auror voice, "I want to know where you've been all this time."

"Yeah," Seamus piped up, "Right awful of you, disappearing like that."

"Last I heard," Justin Finch-Fletchley said, leaning around him, "you were in the dark magic detox ward at Mungo's. I tried to go see you, but they said your magic core was unstable."

John sighed. He'd gotten on with Justin, when they'd both gone into Healer training, before he'd dropped out and joined the Aurors instead. "Still is unstable," he said, frowning at his plate.

Harry frowned. "What?"

John noticed that his hand tremor was gone. Since when did talking to old friends equate to a dangerous situation? "Never recovered," he shrugged, "too much dark magic. Can't do so much as light a match anymore."

There was dead silence for a second. Then, "Jesus, I'm sorry, mate."

John took a deep breath narrowed his eyes, trying to break the mood. "Don't start your saving-people-thing on me now, Potter. I'm fine."

The man raised his hands and laughed, moment broken. They went back to eating, and other conversations started up around the table. He listened, noting that Hermione was the "first advocate for magical creature rights" without surprise. And it looked like Ron was the captain of the Chudley Canons. And Neville was one of the professors. He smiled. This was nice, seeing them, even if he wasn't truly one of them anymore.

He got through half his plate before Seamus turned to him and asked, "What are you up to these days then, John?"

He smiled, "I'm a doctor."

Seamus grinned at him. "Really? How Hufflepuff of you."

John punched him lightly. "Don't stereotype, Finnagan."

"Hey, I'm dragon-taming up north. We can be stereotypical together. You in London then?"

"Yeah," John said, "My flatmate's a bit insane, but it's alright."

"Your flatmate?"

"Yeah, Sherlock Holmes, he's a detective. I've been shot at more times hanging around with him than I did in Afghanistan, honestly."

Seamus guffawed, and then frowned, "Wait, did you say Sherlock Holmes?"

John blinked. "You know him?"

"Who doesn't know him?" Harry asked from his other side, apparently having been listening to the conversation. "He's cut the London crime rates in half. It's been a bit of a chore keeping the magical cases away from him, but it's undoubtedly worth it."

John gaped at him. "You've been keeping the magical cases away from him?"

Harry snorted. "Obviously. That man is a menace to the Statute of Secrecy. We've had to Obliviate him three times."

"I thought we'd just been lucky!"

Harry shook his head. "Not even I'm that lucky. Though, if he's living with you, we might consider letting him in on the secrets. I have cases I'd like him working on, Muggle or not."

John imagined it. Being able to say 'Merlin' without having to brush it off as something he picked up during the war. Talking to Sherlock about his past. Telling him it wasn't a bullet wound. Being able to talk about magic. Showing Sherlock magic. "I cannot honestly tell you if that's a good or bad idea," he told Harry.

"That's what his brother keeps saying," Harry grumbled. "He says either he'll end up being cursed to oblivion within three seconds of deducing someone or he'll end up with his hands on some dark object and die."

John winced. "Can't say I disagree."

"Surely he's not that bad."

John sighed. "He leaves rotting body parts in the fridge," he deadpanned.

"What?!" Ginny looked horrified.

"And he experiments around the flat. I found a half decomposed corpse of a sheep in the bathtub once."

"Ew, ugh, stop it. I'm going to be sick."

John laughed. "Sorry."

"Sounds like a menace, mate," Seamus told him.

"It's alright. We've established a labelling procedure. And there's a shelf for only food." He dug into a steak with vengeance, having been far too used to pushing aside jars of eyeballs to find the milk in the morning to be put off by a bit of disturbing conversation.

Something hit then. "Wait, did you say you know Mycroft?"

Harry nodded. "He's the Prime Minister's security, practically Prime Minister himself, really. We've got at least ten Aurors in his team."

John gaped at him. "Really?"

"I'm surprised he hasn't talked to me about you. He's usually very keen on discussing wizards he comes across." He blinked at John then. "Unless… have you managed to hide it from both of them?"

"Uh… maybe?"

"Wow, all I can say, mate, is that you must be a genius yourself. I didn't think anything could get past those two."

John really hadn't thought about it that way. He smiled.

Several hours later, trudging through Hogsmeade towards the Knight bus stop, he felt lighter than he had in a long time. He'd talked to so many people. Every one of his friends in Hufflepuff. And he'd had more friends in Gryffindor house than he'd recalled. He certainly hadn't expected Harry to remember him. He was just John, not the Saviour of the Wizarding World, after all. But he had. They'd dragged the full story of his time in the hospital out of him by the end of the night, and the sympathy had made him ache a little more inside than he'd have liked, but it was alright. He'd even spoken to Malfoy, who was happily married and much less of a jerk than John remembered him being. He supposed that finally being rid of the Dark Lord in your house could do that to people. It had been nice.

He managed the sickening trip back into London, feeling a little grateful to be back on familiar ground, and wandered slowly home while the summer sun slowly lowered itself over the horizon.

When a familiar black car pulled alongside him, though, he didn't even feel surprised.

Mycroft was actually sitting in the backseat this time, legs crossed neatly and umbrella balanced against his knee.

When the door closed, he said, "You're a wizard." He sounded disgruntled, like he couldn't believe this had slipped him by.

"Yes, no, sort of," John answered.

"Explain," the man who was the British government practically growled, looking a lot like Sherlock when John wouldn't let him experiment with something, like he was on the verge of pouting but considered himself above that.

"Can't do magic anymore, got cursed in Afghanistan."

"Ah," Mycroft sighed. "That's how I missed it."

"Not going to accuse me of being a dark wizard or something," John teased, knowing full well the man wouldn't understand the sentiment.

"Hardly. At least I know there's someone to ensure he stays away from the magic side of things."

"No, I don't quite think he should be there either."

Mycroft eyed him shrewdly. "You talked to Potter then."

"He's a friend."

"I don't want my brother getting cursed," Mycroft said, cold and without inflection. And that was about as close to sentiment as he got.

"I wouldn't let that happen," John said, just as calmly.

"Good," Mycroft said, suddenly bright. "I expect I'll be speaking to you about this again, Dr. Watson. Do tell my brother to answer his phone occasionally."

Then the car stopped and John was out on the sidewalk, less than two houses down from 221B Baker Street, watching the car move away. "As if he listens to me," he muttered.

He walked the rest of the way, got in and called a hello to Miss Hudson, and ran up the stairs. And then Sherlock was on him, all bright intellect and madly waving arms. And wait, was that five patches. And he was yelling, "The game, John, the game is on." And he'd been pulled out the door and into the cab and there were villains and murders and far too many guns.

And, as he ran, breathless with adrenaline, side by side with this madman in a trench coat, he thought, it wasn't quite magic, but it'd do. It'd definitely do.

End.

Disclaimer: I own neither BBC's Sherlock nor Jo's HP. They are both amazing and I love them.

Inspired by this . /hphotos-frc3/t1/1970563_10100118133727067_480538995_

Hope you loved it! Reviews are love!