Title
Clever Man, Red Robes
Author
Sar'Kalu
Summary
AU. Divergence post-Baskerville. Jim Moriarty is a man who notices things and he definitely notices when people walk around in funny clothing that doesn't suit them, not the least of which are the robes. Thus when he see a man in red robes driving a car in the middle of London, he's going to follow. The only problem is that wizards don't really enjoy being noticed; as Jim finds out...
Disclaimer
Sherlock is the intellectual property of the BBC, Mark Gatiss, Stephen Moffat; and Harry Potter is the intellectual property of J.K Rowling, Bloomsbury and Warner Brothers Movies; and their affiliates.
Rating
T: violent themes
...
...
Jim was a clever man.
More than that, he was an observant man who paid attention to his surroundings. He had lived in and around the Greater London area for nigh on twenty-five years now and he could not fail to notice that strange things happened on certain days.
While many people would dismiss such things as fancy, Jim was, quite frankly, unable to. His dark eyes that shone with keen intelligence (and madness, some might argue) noticed a lot of things that ordinary people simply didn't.
On All Hallows Eve (he disliked the idea of Halloween, too American and gauche) there were people that appeared on the side streets of Charing Cross Road wearing old fashioned robes and pointed hats or clothing that didn't suit them at all.
Sometimes they celebrated, sometimes they acted as though they were in mourning and at other times, well, he had no idea, not really, but he'd almost suspect them of having cult-like observances as they handed out pamphlets with names, dates and faces on them.
Christmas was different again, with people wandering about in heavy wool cloaks and shiny buckled shoes that looked tailor made and thus unordinary to the extreme. Not even Sherlock wore tailor made boots; nor for that matter did the Ice Man, Mycroft Holmes.
He had been wondering about these people; these events for years; but had never really had much of an inclination to reach out and touch them. First there was the network and making a name for himself; then there was the carefully planned murder of his mother and father who he hated; then there was the recruitment of Sebastian and hadn't that been a terribly good idea; and then there had been Sherlock and his brother, and the mess he made for them and their dogs.
Now it had been twenty-five years since he first noticed the oddness and the first time he had been able to follow a man from inner city London driving a car in a red cloak without the person mysteriously popping away to the sound of a backfiring car; and Jim was going to get his answers now!
The man parked his car and slipped from the drivers seat and payed for his all-day ticket and Jim watched as he meandered quite comfortably towards the backstreets of an industrial zone, looking quite out of place. Jim despite the wariness of his instincts, got out of his own car and followed the man, one hand in his pocket on the handle of his gun, and the other on his mobile thumb pressed to the speed dial of his phone in readiness to call Sebastian.
The man in the red cloak, that actually wasn't a cloak Jim realised as he got closer but was more of a robe, stopped out the front of a red phone booth and pulled a long thin stick from the inside of his robe and tapped the pane of glass with the tip.
Now Jim could have done several things here, he could have walked away after seeing a strange man in strange clothes act more than a little strangely in a strange area; he could have followed the man in the red robe and mimicked his actions by observing and deducting that the man was going to work and was dialling a number on the phone despite the fact that the phone booth clearly didn't work, if the graffiti was nothing to go by; of Jim could have called Sebastian and back up before entering the clearly unknown area after following a stranger in a red robe.
Jim did none of these things.
"'Ello, mate," Jim hailed the other man in a thick cockney accent that didn't really suit him but was better than his usual Irish, because while he was Irish, he wasn't proud of it and being Irish reminded him of his parents whom he hated. "You gonna be long?"
The man twisted in mild surprise and Jim registered the stick being pulled up slightly before it quite suddenly disappeared into the voluminous robes and he was fixed with a pair of dull green eyes hidden behind boring black plastic glasses. Jim relaxed his hand on his phone and pulled it from his pant pocket to show that it was empty and he was apparently harmless. He wasn't, but the red robed man didn't know that.
"You shouldn't be here," the man stated with easy command and Jim almost felt like obeying except he hated taking orders and he really was very contrary and mad and thus ignored whatever strangeness the other man was trying to work on him and smiled instead.
"I jes' need to use the phone, mate," this time he spoke in a Scottish accent, forgetting his previous commitment to cockney but it wasn't like the man was a detective and he'd hardly notice things like that because he was boring and he wasn't Sherlock.
The man in the red robe raised his eyebrow in curious interest, his eyes gleaming with hidden intelligence before they fell back into their flat dullness. Jim didn't catch this at all, he was too intrigued by the man and his attire and just what was he doing here anyway?
The man smiled and backed out of the phone booth, "go right ahead," he drawled as he gestured for Jim to slip inside.
Foolishly, he did so, too convinced of his own superiority and this man's own ignorance because he could read people like Sherlock could and it never once occurred to him that people could lie with their body language like that. It was supposed to be impossible.
Of course, Jim also didn't know that everything about this man, from his dull, flat eyes and shiny buckled boots and bright red robe, was wholly and completely impossible to begin with. Like Jim, this man with his flyaway hair and round glasses of black plastic, was a part of that small percentile of people who were ridiculously and insanely intelligent. Only, unlike Jim, this man didn't flaunt it.
Jim had barely enough time to rest a hand on the receiver of the phone before he quite inexplicably felt his eyes roll backwards and darkness overtake him.
…
…
Harry knew today was going to be shit.
He looked at the strange muggle that reminded him all too much of Tom Riddle and shivered in disgust. The man, Jim, was not nearly as intelligent as he would like to believe himself to be and was horrifically obsessed with a poor man named Sherlock, who he considered to be the pinnacle of pretty much everything.
He sighed and flicked his holly wood wand and levitated the muggle in a marginally upright position and squeezed in beside him. Nimble fingers darted over the dial pad and pressed 6-2-4-4-2 and Harry caught himself as the lift masquerading as a phone booth shuddered and dropped at an alarming rate.
The lift slowed to a stop at the atrium where the bustling metropolis of the Magical World's political base came into view. As he stalked passed, the bobbing, unconscious form of the muggle behind him drew many a bewildered stare and Harry felt a headache bloom just behind his left temporal lobe. Today was going to be a shit day.
Entering one of the cross-section lifts, Harry hit the button inscribed with the number '2' and determinedly ignored the many staring people in the lift next to him. It was Auror business, this; not any of theirs. The lift 'dinged' and Harry stepped out, Jim the muggle following close behind.
Harry paused long enough to drop the stupefied muggle in an interrogation room before heading towards Robards office. His captain is sitting behind his desk with his face in his hands. Harry is well used to this position from his boss; he was apparently a trying employee who, while worth his weight in gold, was really fucking annoying from a paperwork perspective.
"Potter," Robards grumbled, giving his best Auror the evil eye as the dark haired man flopped into the chair in front of his desk. "Please, please, tell me you haven't kidnapped a muggle off the side of the street á la Voldemort?"
"Not like Voldemort, no," Harry prevaricated, his eyes avoiding his increasingly pissed Captain's gaze.
Robards groaned and let his head drop forwards and hit the solid wood of his messy, paper cluttered desk with a 'thunk'. "Dammit, Potter, why today? Just, why?" Robards groaned again and hit his forehead on his desk surface twice more. "You only just got back from holidays!"
"Nice," Harry muttered sarcastically, "that was about as holiday-ish as my seventh year at Hogwarts. I was shot!" Harry glared at his still grumbling boss. "Shot!" He repeated as if Robards didn't already know.
"You were stupid." Robards volleyed back, his tone sharp. "You got in the way of a MET case and you paid for it with a bullet hole in the ass."
Harry affected a wounded look, "some sympathy would be nice."
"You have my sympathy," Robards returned dryly, unamused. "Now, about this muggle…"
Harry held up a hand very quickly, "before you say anything…" he trailed off and waited for Robards short, sharp and impatient nod before continuing: "he's a criminal and he knows about magic. Not explicitly, but enough to be a danger; and he would be a danger. He's smart and has a vast network that spreads across all six continents and it would cost him very little to expose us and then use magic for his own needs and desires, none of which are wholesome!"
Robards narrowed his eyes, "this man, what is his name?"
"Moriarty."
…
…
Jim woke in an interrogation cell.
It wasn't the first time he'd woken in an interrogation cell but the last time had been with Mycroft and that hadn't been awful because the Ice Man secretly loved him, loved the challenge he presented, and more importantly, Mycroft had loved to air off his utter genius; and he was, Mycroft was a genius.
Mycroft just wasn't Sherlock. Which meant that Jim found him boring and dissatisfying to mess with. Not the least of which that Mycroft actually… made him nervous. Not scared. Never scared. But wary. Cautious. Careful.
The door -grey, plain, not wood- swung open and Jim smiled brightly at the dull eyed man that entered. Green eyes, black hair, curious mark on his forehead barely visible beneath his hair, and round glasses perched ignobly on his nose. Behind the man whom had led him to wherever he was now, stood another man. Sandy and grey flecked hair, keen brown eyes, a broad chest and shoulders that denoted power both physical and political.
A curious duo, Jim realised with narrowed eyes and his smile became more squinty and mean, showing his displeasure. "Hello," Jim said in a creepily low tone of voice, leaning forwards and ignoring that he was at a height disadvantage where he was on the floor. He knew that he was cleverer, nastier, and faster than these two men could hope to be.
Jim had no idea that he was hopelessly outclassed. That his sentence had already been passed because this was the second time that he had been woken up; the last time resulting in a deep memory wipe of the past two days.
"Hello, Mister Moriarty," the dark haired man smiled cooly, his eyes sharpening into focus that suddenly reminded Jim of Mycroft, except that this man didn't like him, didn't owe Sherlock his fun and games and was most likely more dangerous than he had previously thought.
"Who are you?" Jim questioned suspiciously as he pulled himself to his feet, feeling surprisingly sore all over his body.
The dark haired man continued to smile pleasantly. "It doesn't matter, in ten minutes you won't remember anything at all."
Jim felt forbidding sweep his body, "what do you mean?"
"It had been determined that you are far too dangerous to allow to continue," the older, sandy haired man announced without so much as a by-your-leave. "The past two days have been spent disabling your network and terminating those people who are considered security threats. All that is left is you."
The dark haired man's smile stretched further, "I'm sure you can understand our position, Jim; and I do apologise, but the memory wipe will probably leave you with a below average intelligence."
Jim found himself scrambling backwards until his back was pressed flat against the wall but the room was tiny and there was nowhere to go. The sandy haired man clapped his colleague on his shoulder and left the interrogation room, leaving the door open for a tall, thin woman with nut-brown hair to enter.
"Wipe everything," the dark haired man ordered, his arms crossing his chest and his bright green gaze pinning Jim where he sat in sheer panic. "It will mean your job if he ever regains his memory."
The woman mouth thinned but she drew a long, thin piece of honey gold wood from her sleeve and pointed at Jim anyway. "I hope you know what you're doing, Potter."
The dark haired man, Potter, nodded jerkily with his face harder than granite. "I do."
That was apparently enough for the woman and she swished her stick in a complicated movement before intoning: "Obliviate" and everything went dark…
…
…
Robards stood in his office, waiting for the go-ahead. An enormous stag materialised in his office glowing pearly white and the very personification of nobility. "Is it done?" He asked. The stag met his dark eyes gaze and nodded once, not speaking, before dematerialising into a cloud of white vapour. Robards smiled wryly, amused.
For all Potter's genius when it came to learning difficult magicks, he still had yet to learn the messenger patronus charm. It was oddly endearing.
…
..