A sudden night rain fell like shredded grey drops slanting in dense sheets against the lead-coloured windowpanes.
Droplets burst on impact and traced winding paths down the window frame, pooling into a small, murky puddle along the sill.
The summer heat had been pressed back a few degrees by the downpour, yet a clammy warmth still crept through the gaps in the door.
The effect made the whole room feel like a sealed glass jar—so stifling that breathing itself became an effort.
At opposite ends of the long table, Sirius Black and Severus Snape sat like two stiff statues, each staring fiercely at opposite walls.
What they both felt was loathing.
And as the minutes crawled by, that loathing did not diminish.
It grew.
When Sherlock and Harry pushed open the door, the creak of the hinges cut through the silence like a blade.
Harry instinctively tugged at his collar. Despite the rain, the thick summer air had left him faintly damp with sweat.
Sherlock raised an eyebrow. His grey eyes swept over both men in a single glance, and the corners of his mouth curved up—barely, but there.
The mutual contempt was unmistakable. He found it quietly amusing.
Not ten minutes ago, he and Dumbledore had finalized it: Harry would begin formal Occlumency training under Snape. Snape had been reluctant at first—not out of spite, but out of a conviction that the exercise was futile. What was the point of teaching Harry to seal his mind if the boy was being walked toward his death regardless?
But Sherlock had proposed a new solution, and Snape had changed his mind. There was, after all, precedent for success—Lockhart had proved that much.
After that, Dumbledore and Remus had departed for Hogwarts. Snape, who should have gone with them, had stayed behind.
Harry had already known about the Occlumency lessons, so Snape's request for a private word didn't surprise him. What he hadn't anticipated was Sirius planting himself firmly in the doorway and declaring—in a tone that tolerated no argument—that as Harry's godfather, he would be present.
Harry found himself caught between two uneasy possibilities: on one hand, the very real chance that Sirius and Snape would come to blows—the two had nearly had it out earlier that very day over Remus's situation, and only Harry's intervention had kept things from escalating.
On the other hand, the thought of being alone with Snape for a private lesson sat uneasily with him as well.
In the end, he'd done what he always did when the ground felt uncertain: he brought Sherlock along.
Standing beside Sherlock made him feel anchored in a way nothing else quite did. And if it truly came to a fight, Sherlock could stop them.
Sherlock, for his part, had no reason to refuse. Or rather—he was curious. He wanted to see what Snape would say to Harry with both himself and Sirius watching. Put simply, he suspected it would be entertaining.
And so, it was. The moment they walked in, the tension was already pulled stretched enough to snap.
At this rate, had they arrived any later, there might have been hexes flying.
Harry couldn't read a room as finely as Sherlock could, but even he could see it. This was obvious enough that even Ron would have caught it. He glanced sidelong at Sherlock and found him watching the scene with open amusement, plainly in no hurry to intervene.
Left with little choice, Harry broke the silence himself. "Ahem."
At the sound of his voice, Snape turned slowly. Beneath the curtain of greasy black hair, his dark eyes were cold and deep as still water. His gaze paused on Harry for a moment, then swept briefly to Sherlock by the window, before settling on Harry's face.
"Sit down, Potter." His voice was flat, but it carried the weight of a command that expected obedience.
It was a perfectly ordinary sentence. Yet somehow, it was enough to rile Sirius immediately.
Sirius shoved back in his chair with a screech of wood against flagstone. "I'd ask you not to give orders in my house, Snape." He tilted his chin toward the ceiling, voice heavy with contempt.
A flush rose across Snape's pale face. His fingers clenched, and his lips moved as though preparing a retort—but he swallowed it back.
Harry crossed quickly to Sirius and sat beside him, watching Snape from across the table with a faint, careful unease.
Sherlock did not sit. He drifted to the window and drew one fingertip across the cold glass. A thin trail of moisture remained where he touched it—the faint condensation left by summer rain. His expression was lightly amused, his gaze moving between the three of them like a man watching a play unfold from the best seat in the house.
"I was supposed to speak with you alone, Potter," Snape said, his eyes cutting briefly to Sherlock at the window—something almost cautious were flickering in them. He considered, and thought better of including Sherlock in his next barb.
Instead, his customary sneer settled into place. "But since Black insists—"
"There is no 'but.'" Sirius cut him off raising his voice. "I am his godfather."
"By all means, stay," Snape said, with a thin curl of contempt. "At least it gives you something to feel involved in."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
Sirius let the chair legs strike the floor with a crack.
"Nothing much. Only that twelve years in Azkaban—years in which you were entirely useless to him—and yet here you are, the devoted godfather. How touching."
Snape drew out the word devoted with precision, his eyes were growing colder as he spoke.
It was Sirius's turn to go red.
This was the thing he could not defend—the wound he'd never quite closed. He had not been there for Harry. That was true. And even if the man saying it was Snape, the charge still landed, because it was his own guilt speaking back at him through another man's mouth.
Snape noticed the shadow that crossed Sirius's eyes, and his smile sharpened.
He turned away from Sirius and fixed Harry with an appraising look. "I am here on Dumbledore's orders. The Headmaster wants you to begin Occlumency this term."
"Yes, I know," Harry said. He paused, then added: "I'll work hard at it."
Snape: ∑(⊙_⊙;)
Sirius: ( °Д° )
They were both taken aback, Snape most of all. He stared at Harry for a long moment, his gaze travelling from his hair to his eyes, as though verifying that the boy in front of him was genuinely Harry Potter.
"Pretty words are easy, Potter," he said at last. "If your ability were half as impressive as your arrogance, I'd have nothing to worry about."
Harry's brow tightened.
Did this man have to make everything a jab?
In the past, he would have snapped back without thinking. But since learning more of Snape's history, something in him had changfed—he could no longer look at this man in quite such simple terms. He glanced toward Sherlock at the window and found Sherlock watching him with interest. Harry drew a slow breath, and said nothing.
Seeing Harry hold his tongue again, Snape's smirk deepened.
"One private session per week. You are not to tell anyone—is that understood?" He leaned forward slightly, lowering his voice to something edged. "Oh—and that includes the great Detective Holmes over there, and the devoted godfather as well. I trust you both have the good sense to appreciate why."
"We don't need you to tell us that, Snape," Sirius said sharply.
"Why can't Dumbledore teach him himself? Why does it have to be you?"
"I imagine the Headmaster reserves the right to delegate unpleasant duties," Snape replied without a flicker of expression. "I assure you, this was not my idea."
He turned back to Harry. "Tonight counts as your first lesson. After term begins, come to my office at six o'clock on Monday evenings. If anyone asks, tell them it's remedial Potions. Anyone who has witnessed your performance in my class will find that entirely credible."
There was no way around it—Quirrell had been right about Snape all those years ago. The man seemed constitutionally incapable of making a simple statement without turning it into an insult. A perfectly reasonable instruction, and he still had to sharpen the end of it.
It was enough to make anyone dislike him on pure principle.
But this was only the beginning.
Snape turned his gaze back to Sherlock and Sirius, his voice thick with disdain. "As for the extraneous parties—kindly remove yourselves. My time is valuable, unlike those of you who apparently have nothing but leisure."
Sherlock gave a soft laugh.
He was just about to respond when someone else moved first.
"Let me be direct." Sirius rose from his chair in one motion.
At over six feet, he had a significant height advantage over Snape—something that hadn't registered while both men sat.
Sherlock noticed it precisely: Snape's hand had slipped into the pocket of his robes, fingers curling around something there.
Sirius looked down at Snape from that height: "If I find out that you've used these lessons as an excuse to make his life difficult, I will come for you."
"How very moving," Snape said. He appeared to have collected himself against the pressure of Sirius's height, his voice smooth again, cold and composed. "You must have noticed—Potter does take after his father quite remarkably."
"He does," Sirius said, with unmistakable pride.
"Then you'll know that he has his father's arrogance, and that criticism runs off him like water."
In three sentences, Snape had contrived to give offence to all three people in the room.
Sirius had had enough.
He stepped forward, each footstep with fury—and drew his wand.
Snape raised his own.
For a moment, both men stood with wands levelled, the space between them charged and silent.
Sirius's jaw was clenched, a vein faintly raised at his temple, his breathing was no longer steady.
Snape's expression was ice. His gaze moved between Sirius's face and the tip of his wand.
Harry felt the anger at what Snape had said about his father, but he knew this could not be allowed to happen. He scrambled across the table and threw himself between them.
"Sirius—don't—"
"I warned you before, Snivellus." Sirius's eyes were fixed on Snape, burning with fury. His face was less than a foot from Snape's, bearing down on him from above. "Dumbledore may think you've been reformed—but I don't—"
"Oh? And why haven't you told him so?" Snape's voice dropped to something low and poisonous. "The way you told Potter to switch his Secret-Keeper from you to Wormtail?"
"What did you say?"
The danger in Sirius's eyes shifted into something colder.
He would have accepted this from Harry. The suggestion to switch the Secret-Keeper from himself to Pettigrew had been his idea. It had led directly to James and Lily's deaths—he knew that, and he lived with it. But he would accept that charge from Harry. Not from Snape.
Not only that: having the wound torn open again, by this man, in this way, left him with a rage that had nowhere clean to go.
"My, my—what sterling judgment," Snape said, his voice was very soft now, every word placed with surgical care. "Twelve years in Azkaban, and it seems they taught you nothing about thinking before you act. If anything, it's only made your recklessness worse."
That was the last of it.
Sirius raised his wand.
"No!" Harry cried. He lunged from the table and planted himself between them. "Sirius, don't—"
"Are you calling me reckless?!" Sirius roared, trying to push Harry aside.
Harry held his ground.
Snape's mouth curved. "I believe you are, yes," he said, content to stoke the fire.
"Harry—move—"
Something snapped in Sirius. He shoved Harry hard to the side.
Harry stumbled back several steps. The moment he found the wall at his back and saw that he was no longer between them, he did the only thing left to him—he shouted the name with everything he had.
"Sherlock—help me!"
What happened next was over before it had a name.
A figure broke from the shadows at the window without sound like a predator uncoiling from cover in a single explosive movement.
No flash of a spell. Only the clean sound of air splitting.
Sherlock Holmes moved.
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