The Bear and Barnacle

Holmes had been brooding, as he was wont to do after the holidays. He decided a change of scene would do him good and since he had a built-in occasion, why not make the most of it? So he phoned the Ritz in London for reservations and rented a Bentley for the drive. A little sight-seeing after luncheon would be interesting. No doubt the city had changed a good deal since he had last seen it. Odd how he hadn’t been out of Margate proper since he’d unexpectedly found himself here. So, promptly at 10.30 in the morning, the Bentley purred up to the curb outside Holmes’ house. Taking up his hat and stick, Holmes descended the steps and entered the elegant car. His driver (in quite proper chauffeur attire) shut the door and got in himself. They left the curb almost noiselessly, and Holmes sat back, enjoying the smell of the car's leather interior. This was a bit of an extravagant folly to be sure, but one doesn’t turn 156 every day. Five minutes later, the Bentley pulled up outside the pub and the horn blatted discreetly.

She's accustomed to being sent to odd places with little warning or explanation. So when the Crown informs her that she's needed in Margate, Mrs Mina Harker raises an eyebrow then starts preparing to move. By the end of the day, she has her essentials packed in a traveling trunk. By the next day she's selected and secured a flat out of the stack of brochures that were brought to her with word of her relocation. She'll purchase most of her furniture when she arrives, actually less expensive and less of a hassle than shipping her existing furniture, as she's discovered; but a healthy selection of her books, lab, and her bed are supposed to arrive when she does.

Early on Wednesday evening, her hired driver carries two small cases up to the top floor flat while she manages the larger trunk in one hand and a large rectangular case in the other hand. She can smell the closeness of the ocean, only a block away, and the fresh paint in the flat. Tipping the driver, she dismisses him and puts the trunk in the larger of the bedrooms. She considers the other case then carries it to the other bedroom and leans it against the wall commenting while brusquely, "Stay out of trouble for now, if you please."

Mina runs one hand over her hair, still pinned neatly up. Her white shirt is clean, the black skirt unwrinkled, and the red scarf still neatly wrapped once around her throat. In her pocket is a torn page from one those regional magazines that publish places to eat, things to see, and people to admire. Then with a final glance at the address that's been circled and the attached map, she leaves her new residence and strides down the street, wondering just what is going on at this pub.

‘It was not merely that Holmes changed his costume. His expression, his manner, his very soul seemed to vary with every fresh part that he assumed. The stage lost a fine actor when he became a specialist in crime.’ Watson on Holmes A Scandal in Bohemia

Wearing a rumpled brown suit, blue shirt and a blue and orange striped tie, Holmes inspected himself in the mirror. His hair was parted in the middle and slicked down and he’d put on a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles (no prescription). He also hadn’t shaved that day and he looked appropriately seedy but not objectionable. If anyone noticed him, they’d remember the hair and the glasses. And the tie, which looked as if it had come from a novelty shop because it had. Such superficial accents were crucial to a disguise in that they could be easily removed and ones normal appearance restored with ease. Mindful of the precautions already in place, Holmes was merely going to the council meeting to observe. Slumping to conceal his height and armed with his laptop and one of those excessively large (and excessively overpriced!) coffees, he stepped out, confident that no one who didn’t know him wouldn’t recognise him.

"...And stop clapping your hands or I will reach right across this fire and clap them in irons," Severus bellows across the floo line. That's always annoyed him about house elves, and having his face in the flames does nothing for his temper, either. More moderately, he continues, "Better. Now, you understand that you would have to receive clothes from Professor Sprout? I will provide her with the equipment you'll wear in the lab and while doing--well, we'll get to that in a moment--in any case, I will provide the uniform and equipment that you'll wear here, but you'll receive it from her hands. Understood? Good.

"Now, there's another matter: I don't currently have a house to bring you to, so--so help me if you start blubbing again I will tell Filch he is not to allow you to clean one single damned thing for a week are you finished thank you. Now, until I do have a house, there is the possibility of your staying with a friend of mine and doing his cleaning as well as helping me in the brewery in exchange for your lodging. I expect I shall also require your assistance in the magics and other arrangements for the residence once I've acquired one. No clapping, I said! I must tell you straightaway that the gentleman in question is a muggle, and that you will be required to cover yourself appropriately by human standards while assisting both him and me, just as you've done while working in the dungeons before. If the equipment you receive from Professor Sprout becomes unrepairable, you will replace it with your own hands. And you will not be allowed alcohol unless you arrange for time away from your duties in advance. Can you manage that? Good. Here's a portkey," he tosses one into the fire, "which will bring you to the gentleman's home; he wishes to meet with you before any final decisions are made. I'll owl Filch with the time. You are expected to stay sober and be a model of utility for the remainder of your time at the school, do you understand? And for Salazar's sake don't gloat to the other elves about having an individual position; it's showy and excessive and in any case they're happy where they are and won't envy you. And remember that the story for everyone who doesn't already know is that I'm dead and your employer will be my cousin and apprentice Mr. Clayborn; Professor Sprout has all his details and so does Professor Flitwick if you don't like to bother her. I have your compliance? Good. Await the owl, then."

He turns the floo off with a sigh. Minerva's right about how much trouble Winky is likely to be, of course, but if he was going to refuse responsibilities thrust on him with the argument that they'd be an unreasonable bother, he should never have accepted the Headship of the House of brutalized children and spoiled brats, and there's Sirius's cat to think about, too, and Rodolphus (although in a less adoptive capacity, of course). And as much as he hates to admit it, the success of his little brewery is making her spare room a more and more crowded stillroom; he's going to have to either restrict his orders or move. It's something he's been struggling with for weeks, but he'll just have to give his inner Slughorn a strengthening potion to help it stand up to his rather more established inner hermit and arrange for weekly teas, or something of that sort.

He sits himself right on the sofa's godawful throw (still with some satisfaction) with a collection of real estate magazines spread out conspicuously on the table, and waits for Minerva to walk in. A shop with a warehouse behind and rooms up top, that's the thing; nothing fancy. It doesn't matter how sparse the rooms are as long as they're there; there are spells for that, and if he can't take care of them himself Clayborn can hire wizarding contractors.

When he sees the paper that morning, Severus snarls wordlessly to himself, state of mind throwing itself back several years in an instant, and leaves a note for Q asking him to take care of the day's brewing (except for the copper cauldron, which he should just throw a stasis spell on). Twice is coincidence? Sod that. He's still not going to write the 'all afire to be on campaign' note that he's been dying to for weeks, or call in the cavalry, but it is time to do something else. Just because no one's been actually killed yet means... enough to matter, but not to reassure; it's early days of a very familiar pattern.

( Some of the spells, he'd learned from Moody, once they'd resolved their differences.* )

At four o'clock, utterly drained from so many nearly permanent spells, letting the small presence-concealers and deceptions melting away slowly as he's nearly too tired to banish them, he presses Holmes's doorbell. Here's hoping that Albus isn't off having tea in a shop somewhere and can remind him of protections he's missed, that Holmes isn't and can tell him where people who need more protection than he's been able to lay on today live. Not having said a word to anyone all day, when the door is opened, he's not quite too weary to be startled by what comes out of his mouth.

* This had involved a two-hour duel, evenings on end of grading and reading through the Albus And Alastor Knitting And Comedy hour, an ambush on an attempted ambush (wherein Alastor got petrified and his wand stolen and sent up to Albus but not hurt, which Moody found persuasive, although not convincing), and a really dreadful pun involving cocaine and hallucinatory alligators, which had gone on for nearly ten minutes before someone failed to keep an entirely straight face. The final blow had been when Moody, during his recovery period from Crouch's box, had been cajoled by one of Severus's all-time favorite pupils into flying a kite outside, and then taught her a few charms to stop other students stealing her books and shoes. Severus had sent him an obviously-hexed card which, when the hex was disabled, manifested a bottle of really good lubrication for Moody's false leg, and Moody had smacked him so hard upside the back of the head on the way to the Great Hall the next day that he'd thought it was Hagrid. And that was that.

From the Kent Chronicle

Margate- Fire roared through a block of shops on Churchfield Place, causing an as-yet undetermined amount of damage. Declared a total loss however, was Stearns’ Antiques and Collectibles, an upscale establishment that caters to the tourist trade. “It’s a shame really,” proprietor Thomas Stearns said. “Everything’s insured yeah, but some of these pieces were one of a kind.” Fire Chief Peter Brown said the cause of the fire was under investigation and that arson could not been ruled out at this point. “We’re checking everything,” Chief Brown told reporters. He also urged people to stay away from the scene, saying it was dangerous and he didn’t want the investigating team pestered by onlookers.

Firefighter Brian Davis was injured when a chimney collapsed on him. He was taken to Margate Hospital, where he is listed in guarded condition with a concussion.

Stearns, a strong front-runner for a seat on the Thanet District Council, had no comment on how this situation might affect his campaign.

Sherlock Holmes was not a man who was overly concerned with tidiness. In fact, if you were feeling petty, you’d call him a slob. It wasn’t that his house was dirty, it was just…cluttered. Very. He was loathe to throw anything away, and papers, books and newspapers were everywhere. At least there weren’t any bullet –pocks on the walls of this house. Still, he did keep cigars in a coal scuttle (bought especially for that purpose; no one used coal heaters any more) and his unanswered mail was indeed transfixed with a jack-knife to the mantelpiece. The Persian slipper for tobacco had been forgone, as it was now much easier to smoke cigarettes that had been rolled rather than getting loose tobacco. All in all, his house was a mess, but Holmes didn’t mind in the least. He knew where everything was and could lay his hands upon any document with a minimum of fuss. However, today he was expecting company (not clients; clients had to take as they found), so he felt a bit of dusting was in order. Holmes bounded down the stairs, exceeding grateful that whatever malady had afflicted him last month seemed to have cured itself. He glanced around the lounge and started to gather the newspapers into a neat(ish) pile. As he straightened the papers, his eyes narrowed. He felt as if he was being watched. He’d long ago cultivated the habit and it had never failed him. He had no weapon; he certainly hadn’t thought he’d need one. He could, however, throw the newspapers at the intruder and distract him while he went for the poker. Holmes turned, drawing himself into a crouch, papers at the ready. Instead of throwing them however, he dropped them. He gaped at what stood before him. “Watson?!” he inhaled the name. “I say Watson, is that you?!” He started forward and the shadowy form turned toward him, an expression of bewilderment on the familiar face. “Holmes!” he cried, though the voice was rather faint. “Is it really you?”

Zel has managed fairly well to keep himself in practice but he knows that after years of fighting humans, trolls, berserkers, mazoku (including Val and his nearly successful bringing about of the Apocalypse) that he needs more. Jack's too inexperienced and too worried about hurting him to be more than casual practice. And he grows bored defending himself against his own spelled fireballs, rocks, etc. He knows Iago is skilled with a sword- probably not nearly as great as Dora would claim- but the Venetian is too much of an asshole for Zelgadis not to wish to actually injure him and he really doesn't want to have to deal with the fall out of that one. He's seen a few things Xellos is capable of.

So he finally figures "what the hell" and pins a note to the noticeboard in the pub:

Experienced swordsman seeks equal or better for rigorous sparring.
Contact Zelgadis Grayweir
23 Northdown Way

Sherlock Holmes peered into the mirror, having to lean in close and squint a bit. His vision seemed cloudy. He ran a hand through thinning hair. “I should be grateful the whole hundred-six years weren’t dropped on me in one go,” he commented dryly to himself. He needed to go to the pub and see if he was the only one affected by this sudden onset of age. He turned, wincing as his joints protested the sudden movement. Sighing, Holmes made his was slowly downstairs, hanging onto the rail. It seemed chillier than it ought, and Holmes put on his coat and cap, having a dreadful time doing up the buttons. It appeared his fingers weren’t as nimble as they once were. Taking a cane from the stand, Holmes walked slowly of necessity, finding it amusingly ironic that he had on more than one occasion assumed the disguise of an old man. He’d gotten the pace wrong, he thought as he ambled his way along. Arriving at the pub, slightly breathless, Holmes struggled just a bit with the door and carefully negotiated the step up. He had to wait as his eyes adjusted to the dimness within. He scanned the patrons, scowling as he had to squint once more. “Ah,” Holmes murmured to himself, noting the sudden profusion of youngsters in the pub, a couple of whom he was able to identify. “Not an individualised phenomenon then.” He shuffled over to his usual table and sank gratefully into a seat.

As anxious as Holmes was to test his new formula, he knew that using anesthetic gas on men on ladders and wielding acetylene torches would be detrimental, if not downright dangerous. So he went to the pub. ( Read more... )

While she had all the symptoms, Mary would not admit to being driven to distraction while she worked out just what she and Sherlock should do for their promised day trip. It was not daydreaming and it certainly was not just fanciful imagining of just what sort of adventures they could have. With children, the air was thick with magic and all the world was just teeming with adventures to be had. But Sherlock had been so sweet with all of his attention and enthusiasm with the chemistry set, and she wanted to do something really special for him.

Besides, he was oh-so-serious and mature. There was a bit of mischievous appeal in the chance to see him off-kilter and showing him something really new.

After the fresh-fallen snow in the city park, Mary knew just what she was going to do. Sure enough, a day later there was an igloo in the park made by mittened hands and an afternoon of perfect pleasure. It's a truth that, where there are children and clean, soft snow, eventually, there would be igloos. The spirit of adventure that led ot endless treehouses and pillow forts on rainy days left Margate a perfectly lopsided but lovingly made igloo.

It would suit what Mary had in mind perfectly.

She had left him a note to meet her that afternoon in the park and to bring only himself.

Maybe he wouldn't come. Maybe he had a case to find or an experiment to watch, and he wouldn't be able to get away. But Mary believed he'd be here, so she sat on the park bench with her fingers curled into her lap and watched the clouds swirling overhead.

[Mostly for Holmes, but before they go on their day trip, anyone can find her hanging out on the park bench.]

On one of the benches overlooking the beach, black-clad arm fallen and long, white fingers brushing the sand, a man lies comatose. Gaunt, framed by nearly eighteenth-century clothes and sea-salted black hair, his face would look twenties-young (and his style the gothic of an over-meticulous modern histrionic) if it weren’t so haggardly drawn, the shadows under the eyes so deep and dark. It’s a striking incongruity, although, when he first appeared, he looked a seventy with little strange about it. The forbidding, heavy-clothed, over-buttoned outfit hangs on him rather, although it isn’t cut for a heavy man.

He has a nearly foot-long piece of pale wood holstered to one thigh--smoothly carved, well-worn, and just slightly rosy, with a few remaining flecks of walnut-stain lingering in its few deep groves--and a collection of intriguing little textured vials to the other. A few men with more respect for value and their own curiosity than dignity or possession have, since his unceremonious appearance on the bench, tried to handle or even make off with one or the other. All ran away quickly in pain and astonishment, clutching hideously blistered hands. One tried gloves, to no avail, and one paused to land a retributive backhanded blow.

The only relief of blackness on him are the odd and varied stains on his bony hands, and the spectacularly attractive mess of blood, bruised swelling, and bone-white cravat at his throat. He looks like a vampire victim, were the vampire diseased and the body stirred to a froth of outraged rejection. From the twin wounds, rather large to have been from a human mouth, emerge a slow, exhausted trickle of almost clear fluid. His skin is cold, his heart beats, perhaps, once a minute, and his breath, while regular and continuous, is so slowly even as to be invisible too all but the most interested observer. Peeking from under the cravat is the edge of a note, its handwriting crabbed, annoyed, and painstakingly legible.

( To_you_who_have_chosen_to_concern_yourself )

And, upside down at the bottom of the paper, in a quite different hand, less irritated than morose,

“Riddle
Though in theory I’m always behind you,
Your shadow, to prop and remind you,
And you may, as you roam,
Wish to make me your home,
Do not dwell on me much: I may blind you.”

And, folded into a hidden pocket, just showing since the departure of the disgruntled tough, is a sheet of heavy paper, so full of linen fiber as to feel nearly cloth, much and madly scribbled on.

---

“Leave me alone,” he says. “Sod off, I’m dead,” he says. “Reports of my demise have been grievously understated,” he says. “Of course I’m sure, stop wittering,” he snaps. Unreliable bratstard. Wait till he realizes he started waking up on his birthday =.=

Dora doesn't really need long to decide what she wanted to give Mr Holmes. He was always asking her questions and investigating... everything. Or so it seemed to Dora. And The Minister agreed with her; he had a very good sense about these things, given that he was a parrot.

So she trudged off to find Professor McGonagall and ask if her idea was allowed- she had no desire to be in trouble with her. Professor McGonagall knew everything and everyone. And for a few moments Dora wondered if Mr Holmes had investigated her but couldn't decide if he must have or if she would have refused such an invasion. The internal debate came to a draw as both seemed equally likely and The Minister wasn't helping. He only squawked "Birds of a Feather" and something rather rude about cats before flying off again.

Professor McGonagall had agreed that it couldn't hurt and she would owl Dora's order for her. She had even taken the paper money that Dora brought with her for the purchase (money that Dora had earned from charging tourists 2 pounds a piece for having their picture taken with The Minister).

And now she had the two packages, wrapped up in alarmingly cheery paper with pink striped giraffes and green spotted zebras on it. She found Mr Holmes at the pub and scurried over to him.

"Here! I got your name in the gift exchange! I would have had The Minister bring them to you, but Xellos doesn't like him being in the pub and I'm already in trouble for bein' cleverer that Iago e'en though Iago's proud of me- sort of.. mostly! He says I'm sposed to be smart e'en though it was naughty to try to trick him- though I didn't. I just got my ear pierced, and he and Xellos agreed I could pierce one ear once- they just didn't say it had to be my earlobe and I got it up here!"

She points to the top curve of her ear where there is indeed a piercing through it, complete with a sparkling stud that changes between black and purple in the light. "But that's not your gift. These are your gifts!"

Dora hands over the wrapped books to him, one copy of Hogwarts: A History and one of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.

The Joker is idly swirling his mug of coffee in his hands, tilting his chair against the wall of the pub. He chews on one cheek, then the other, and his tongue plays along his lips.

"Do you know", he says out loud to no one in particular, "Do you know what REALLY gets my goat? Yanks my chain? PISSES me off??"

He puts the coffee down and leans forward. "I.Can't.Stand.People.Finishing.My.Jokes. My jokes. Mine. And then they go and steal the punchline. It's...it's RUDE and INNAPROPRIATE."

He picks up his coffee again, and mumbles as he takes a sip. "I mean, really. Learn a little mannners."

“I abhor idleness,” Holmes says, barely looking up from the microscope on the table in his basement laboratory. There is a sharp smell of carbolic acid and a Bunsen burner purrs quietly with a blue flame. “I cannot live without brainwork. What else is there to live for? And now, if you’ll excuse me.” He turns back to his analyzing.

Holmes sits in his no-longer-spotless kitchen. "Art in the blood is liable to take the strangest forms."

Providence, Rhode Island
April 27 1997

( Read more... )

Sherlock Holmes sat up and blinked in surprise. Why on earth was he on the floor? He looked around. He was in the basement laboratory, right where he should be. He frowned. Something had happened, but what? ( Read more... )