Methods Beyond Magic

"Professor?" asked a fourth year, sounding rather concerned.
"Hm?" Sherlock hummed, realizing where he was. He was standing in front of the class, going over a picture of a grindylow on a dusty old projector, which was the best technology the school could cough up in its stubborn ways. They were focusing on underwater creatures of magic, put more simply as what is dwelling in our lake. Sherlock had been staring blankly at the floor for who knows how long, going in his head once more about how to approach John later that evening.
"Sorry, Grindylows, fascinating little...creatures..." he muttered, tapping his hand against his desk in thought.
"Professor, are you alright?" asked another student. There was a sort of nervous silence, the students all eyeing each other as if they had no idea what to do in this situation.
"I'm fine, I'm fine just a little bit..." he waved his hand around in the air as if that were to sum up his feelings. The students looked a bit confused, but Sherlock thought that was the best visual representation he could provide.
"So, grindylows....fascinating, um, these fingers here more like tentacles, those are for strangling their prey. They are carnivores, so they eat whatever they can get their hands on, fish, snails, they're even known to group up and take down larger prey, such as a human." Sherlock pointed out. There was a small gasp around the room, and Sherlock smiled proudly. "So, the next time you feel like taking a swim in the Black Lake..." he warned, and a collective shiver passed through the class.
"And now the head, those horns...." Sherlock's sentence was cut off with a small bang, making him jump so badly he almost tripped over his desk. He looked around the room for the source, but of course, they all looked as surprised as he did. That was until a stream of smoke issued from that stupid projector, and Sherlock just sighed.
"Bloody ancient these things, why don't we invest in more practical technology?" Sherlock sighed.
"Well, you better get someone up to fix that." a girl in the front row decided, fanning the air with her book to keep the smoke away. Sherlock sighed in defeat, walking over to the projector and waving the smoke away to see what was going on. There was no visible problem, and he had no idea how to attempt to fix such a stupid machine.
"Well, I suppose..." he sighed. There was only one person that could fix something with so many wires and electricity, the same person that had fixed the record player.
"Yep." John decided not five minutes later, straightening up after poking around inside of the projector. "It's broken." He sighed.
"Wow, no way?" Sherlock asked, pretending to look surprised. The class giggled apprehensively, not sure whether or not they were allowed to laugh at the teachers. "Can you fix it?" Sherlock asked.
"Course I can fix it, it'll take a bit, just like the..." John started.
"The record player, yes, you and your wires." Sherlock sighed.
"They're actually not too difficult." John shrugged. "Any muggleborns in here, know how to work some wires?" he asked the class. A couple of students nodded kind of nervously, as if ashamed of their heritage.
"See, there we go, future mechanics." John pointed out.
"Look at you interacting with the students; you should just take my job." Sherlock insisted with a small smile.
"Keep breaking things like this and I just might have to." John agreed. A small pack of girls in the front row burst out into giggles, obviously trying to keep them as quiet as possible. But when someone tries to hide their giggles, suddenly it becomes a lot more obvious. "Did I do something funny?" John muttered to Sherlock.
"No, they're always like this." Sherlock assured out of the corner of his mouth, and John nodded.
"Oh yes, it's your fan club?" John asked.
"I don't have a fan club." Sherlock snapped.
"Yes you do, those girls follow you around like you're a mother duck." John whispered. Of course, the whole class could probably hear them, or at least pick up snippets of their conversation.
"I'm not...I'm trying to teach a lesson." Sherlock hissed.
"Well, that's going to be quite hard without a projector." John insisted.
"How about you hold up a picture and I can point at it?" Sherlock offered.
"There are messes to be cleaned." John insisted.
"Come on, help me out here, it's only fourth period." Sherlock defended. John sighed, looking around rather nervously, but nodded.
"Fine, one time, but just because you're so bloody helpless on your..." Sherlock ended John's sentence by slapping him in the arm, making the stupid caretaker giggle himself and cower into a little ball.
"Mr. Watson has ever so graciously volunteered to help out with the class, just until he can go get his little red tool box and fiddle around with the muggle rubbish inside of that thing." Sherlock decided.
"It's not that difficult." John insisted.
"He will keep his mouth shut, but will hold the picture, so you all have a visual representation of what kind of creature we're actually facing. Maybe I can go down to the Black Lake a catch one later, so then we can all pet it's head and name it Gilbert or something." Sherlock suggested. The students laughed, and John gave him the weirdest of looks.
"It's my class, don't judge." Sherlock warned.
"It's hard not to." John insisted. Sherlock pulled the waxy picture of the grindylow from the projector, a boring photograph that didn't even move, so as to label the structures more affectively.
"Here you are, just hold this." Sherlock decided, handing John the picture.
"What is this thing?" John asked with a laugh.
"Don't pretend you don't know, I know you've got a date with her over the weekend." Sherlock insisted. At this the class exploded into laughter, and John just looked at the floor, trying to hide his smile from Sherlock. The rest of the lesson went surprisingly well, John was a good makeshift projector, he held the picture high and helped Sherlock point to the structures, maybe even learning a bit himself. But, being opposing forces, Sherlock and John just couldn't seem to agree on anything, and were always making some sort of snide remarks. The class seemed to love this feud, especially the girls, who started to giggle whenever John and Sherlock's eye contact lasted for more than ten seconds. When the bell rang, the whole class moved to the hallway, where they joined the never-ending flow of students going down to the Great Hall for dinner.
"Do you want to eat first?" Sherlock asked.
"Nah, this won't take long." John shrugged, getting on his knees and opening up the projector once more. It was still smoking a little bit, sparks flying and little pops coming from the interior.
"You can fix it though?" Sherlock asked.
"Oh yes, you'd be surprised." John agreed.
"Why would I be surprised? I know you can fix things, I know you're an able bodied young man who can put some wires back together." Sherlock shrugged.
"That's not how wires work." John laughed.
"You did a good job, helping with the class." Sherlock decided. The rush and noise from the hallway started to die down, and soon Sherlock could tell that they were completely alone. This whole projector incident, it was quite helpful.
"Well, you did a good job teaching it." John agreed, looking very concentrated as he did something in the inside. Sherlock didn't even know what he was doing, only that his eyes squinted and his eyebrows interlocked, forming a rather unattractive unibrow on his forehead. Somehow though, Sherlock found this very amusing, like John was a little kid who was focusing a little bit too much on his new Lego set.
"So, you know a lot about muggle stuff. Do you mind me asking how? I thought you were a half blood?" Sherlock asked.
"I am a half-blood, but my muggle mother thought that I should be taught the workings of both worlds." John admitted.
"Is that why you don't use magic?" Sherlock asked.
"I don't use magic because there are better ways to get around life. I feel like magic is a cheat." John insisted. Sherlock sighed, tapping his fingers thoughtfully on his desk and watching the caretaker work, he looked so innocent, so young, that it almost pained Sherlock to think of what he might be going through.
"I um, well; I just thought that over the time that I've known you, you haven't done any magic." Sherlock muttered. John looked up at him in mild confusion, as if he were trying to see how many dots Sherlock had connected.
"Need I explain myself again?" John asked, not taking his eyes off of Sherlock, as if daring him to ask.
"Well, I kind of thought, and I don't want to be harsh, I know it's kind of a rough...." Sherlock started.
"You think I'm a squib?" John asked. Sherlock let his sentence hang, nodding guiltily.
"I mean, it makes sense, doesn't it?" he muttered. John sighed, sitting down on his knees and staring a little bit blankly at the projector, as if not willing to look Sherlock in the eyes.
"I suppose being a squib makes me a bit of a weak link, doesn't it?" he muttered.
"No, John, no of course not." Sherlock insisted.
"You yourself said it, squibs are at the bottom the food chain in the wizarding world, he can only call ourselves a part of it because we can see dementors, and muggle repellent charms don't work on us." John sighed. "Other than that, I'm useless."
"John, come on, I need you for so many things, the school needs you, I never even thought that you were a squib until..." Sherlock paused for a moment; thinking about what John would feel if he knew that Victor had been the one to piece this all together. "...Until I noticed that you didn't really known what to do when you spilled the ink."
"I'm sorry I didn't tell you, I know....I know that you probably think I'm worthless, and I can agree on that, but you know, I might not be able to cast a spell, or brew a potion, or transfigure a mouse into something really unnecessary, but I can find the measures of a triangle, and I can analyze poems and plays, and I'm rather the master of scooter tag in gym class." John muttered with a sort of sad smile.
"You went to muggle school?" Sherlock asked gently, not wanting to make it sound as if that were some sort of purgatory.
"I had to. Hogwarts wasn't going to take me, I tried to go one year, my first year, the little Hufflepuff who couldn't even make a feather float through the air. Of course, they had known there was something rather off about me, I wasn't really showing signs of magical ability at a young age. My sister, when she was two, had floated all the way to the roof, they had to call the fire department, they didn't know what to do. And when I was two, I simply sucked on my thumb and cried, like a normal, useless, muggle baby." John admitted. Sherlock didn't really know what to do, he looked around the room awkwardly, knowing he was supposed to comfort John in some way, but he wasn't being presented with any obvious options. So he went over to where John knelt on the floor, kneeling beside him and looking him straight into his hazel eyes. To Sherlock's despair, there were tears forming in them, small drops of water collecting in the corners of his beautiful eyes, they shouldn't be there.
"John, I know that some people might consider squibs dead weight, or weak links, or just a burden on their magical families, and sometimes they're right. Most squibs, I can imagine, busy themselves trying to make a life for themselves in the muggle world, moping over what they could've had, what life they might've had in the Wizarding world, but not you. John, I admired you when I thought you were a wizard, but I respect you, and am honestly in awe of you for taking what you didn't have and ignoring it. You were able to get a job at the most respected wizarding school in the world, without any wizarding powers, you were able to make magic happen." Sherlock insisted. John smiled rather weakly.
"That's pretty cheesy." He decided. "But I appreciate your respect. It's just that, you've got Victor, and he's the ultimate wizard, he's everything I can never be, and I thought that maybe, maybe you didn't want someone like me around. Because what am I to someone like him?"
"You're John Watson, and you're brilliant." Sherlock assured. John laughed doubtfully. "And it's not a competition between you and Victor, it never has been. The two of you are polar opposites, and maybe that's why I like you both. But John, Victor's perfect at everything naturally, you make yourself perfect at everything through hard work, and dedication, and that brute stubbornness that you have, and that's a lot more of an achievement than he'll ever accomplish." Sherlock decided. John just rolled his eyes, getting to his feet and tapping the broken projector unsurely. Sherlock stood up as well, looking down on John and forcing himself not to pity him. John needed no pity, he didn't want pity, it would be an insult to his commitment.
"Are you alright?" Sherlock asked nervously. John wasn't looking him in the eyes, and he couldn't see the expression on his face.
"Yes, I'm fine; I'm just not sure what to do. I've never had emotional, heart filled conversations with anyone before, what do we do now, just walk away?" John asked with a bit of a laugh. Sherlock had to laugh at his utter stupidity, but nodded.
"I have no idea." Sherlock admitted.
"How about a nice, handshake?" John suggested sort of awkwardly.
"You want to shake my hand?" Sherlock asked.
"Feels fitting, don't you think?" John agreed.
"Well, if this were a romance movie, we'd be kissing by now." Sherlock pointed out. John smiled kind of awkwardly and Sherlock pursed his lips, staring at his feet and pretending to be very interested in a new smudge on his shoe.
"I don't know whether to be disappointed or relieved that it's real life." John admitted with a hasty laugh. He held out his hand, and Sherlock smiled, this really was awkward.
"Nice talk John." Sherlock agreed, shaking John's hand with a smile.
"Yes, it was truly eye opening." John agreed with a laugh, his hand rather sweaty in Sherlock's. They made eye contact once again, but just as Sherlock was beginning to see small flakes of gold in those brown corneas, John looked away, as if not able to look Sherlock so deeply in the eye right now.
"So, dinner?" Sherlock suggested.
"Dinner, dinner sounds nice, lead the way." John agreed, their hands dropping back at their sides.