Author's Note: With my newfound time during this quarantine, I whipped up a short little plotbunny to be the 25th chapter of this story. Hope you enjoy! I do not anything, and I am not making any money off of this!
"Erm... excuse me? John?"
John looked up from his Transfiguration essay to see Molly Hooper, a Hufflepuff girl, looking at him nervously.
"Yeah?" John prompted.
"Erm... Your friend, Sherlock is..."
John sighed. "What'd he do?"
Molly took a deep breath. "Well, I was walking by the Potions classroom—it's empty right now, y'know, no Potions classes on Fridays—and I heard some loud noises coming from the classroom, and I went to investigate, and Sherlock was in there causing all sorts of explosions... Erm... I thought you might want to..."
"Stop him before he gets detention for the fourth time in two weeks?" John guessed, putting down his quill and getting up.
"Yes." Molly said, wringing her hands.
"Don't worry about it, Molly. Sherlock's used to getting in trouble." John told her.
She laughed, still sounding anxious. "Yeah, that's true. I just...worry about...him." Molly shrugged, her face flushed, and then walked away.
"Thanks Molly!" John said to her retreating back, and then to himself he muttered, "I worry about him too."
John heard the explosions two corridors away from the Potions classroom. Curious students were flocked around the entrance of the room, and John grimaced as he walked through them.
"What the hell is he up to, John?" asked a fifth-year Ravenclaw.
"Shouldn't you be keeping an eye on him, John?" a Slytherin girl asked, sounding annoyed.
"I'm not his keeper." John responded, making the students laugh.
"Yeah, he just follows you around like a nervous bowtruckle." said the Slytherin girl, prompting the students to cackle again.
The onlookers scattered when John opened the door and a javelin of purple sparks shot into the corridor. John heard the students laughing to themselves as they thankfully left the scene, apparently uninterested now thinking that John would be able to stop Sherlock's antics.
The Potions classroom was a shambles. Dark blue slime dripped off the cabinets, glass beakers lay shattered on the ground, and it looked like every ingredient in the cabinets had now found a home on the also slime-ridden tables.
John rubbed a hand down his face like a care-worn parent discovering yet another mess their unruly child had made. Sherlock hadn't looked up when John came in, but when John cleared his throat to announce his presence, Sherlock gave John a cursory glance.
"Busy." Sherlock said by way of a greeting. Sherlock consulted a book lying open in front of him, muttered, "Not enough juice", then grabbed a handful of oval-shaped beans and began chopping them haphazardly.
"Sherlock, what the hell are you doing? Your audience has left, but they could return at any moment with a professor." John said, walking over to Sherlock and dodging the glass on the ground.
Sherlock didn't respond, but John was used to having one-sided conversations with Sherlock.
"Making the Draught Of Living Death again? The one you made in class the other day wasn't perfect enough?" John asked his busily chopping friend.
Sherlock dropped the knife he was holding and grabbed his wand instead. He proceeded to shoot another javelin of sparks across the room in a fit of pique.
"No! It's never right! The potion should be transparent, and look at it John, look at it!"
John shuffled over to the cauldron on the table, trying not to laugh at Sherlock's frustration and the way he was dealing with it.
"It's pink." John said after leaning in to look at the cauldron's contents.
"Yes. Pink." Sherlock said, ruffling his dark head of curls. "It's pink because I can't get these sopophorous beans to release the amount of juice that the recipe calls for!"
"And so, because your potion in class didn't please you, you decided to ruin the Potions classroom trying to make it again?" John asked, gesturing to the slimy surfaces and broken glass.
Sherlock looked around disinterestedly and waved his hand in a flippant way. " I can clean this up easily. Only Muggle-Borns think a disheveled room is a problem."
John rolled his eyes. "I'll ignore that blatant Muggle-Born discrimination. Are you almost finished with this insanity?"
Sherlock grunted noncommittally.
"Fine." John responded to Sherlock's non-response. "I guess I'll do what I can to keep the professors walking the corridors away from this room. If you get one more detention, you won't be able to go to Hogsmeade anymore to people-watch at The Three Broomsticks."
Sherlock waved him away with an impatient mutter and continued to inspect his bubbling cauldron. John sighed in a wearily fond kind of way and left the room.
Sherlock wasn't at dinner, which wasn't too unusual. John went to bed hoping that Sherlock wouldn't blow up the castle sometime in the middle of the night with his potion-making.
John felt like he'd only been asleep for a couple seconds when he was shaken awake.
"John! Wake up, I've perfected it!" Sherlock shouted.
John just pulled his blanket over his head in an attempt to hide from the conscious world for a little longer while the other boys in the dormitory groaned in annoyance and exhaustion.