Fic: The Age Of Discovery [Pre Hogwarts]

[unseenbox]

Summary:The main cast discover their magic as children. Ensemble piece.
Rating: PG
Warnings: Moriarty exists implied death and injury.

Mycroft is eight and a book has just flown off the shelf right into his lap. It gave him a shock, truth be known. The shelf is on the other side of the room. The book was as well, until only a moment ago. A moment ago when he wondered if he should get up to fetch it, and was on the brink of deciding it wasn't worth the effort.

The next moment, he was almost winded by the book in question.

He's tempted to panic, but old enough to know that that won't do any good. Not to mention, panicking would worry Mummy. As would flying books, no doubt.

Instead, Mycroft opens the book in his lap, and starts making a mental map of what avenues of thought he should look into about the matter.

Theta is seven years old and he never has to worry about tripping and bumping his head. Whenever he runs and feels his shoelaces catch, he always rights himself before he collects any interesting bruises. He’s not surprised at all about it, but it takes some of the thrill out of the whole thing, sometimes.

John is ten and there is a boy dashing off into the road after a ball. He knows he should call for someone, get his mum, get Harry, get help, but all he can think of at the time is move move move and before he realizes it he has. Faster than he should be able to, he thinks later, but everything’s moving so fast, even the breeze in the trees and the car turning the corner too fast with a driver on a mobile phone and then everything comes to a soft, sharp stop. He wakes up later, surrounded by his mum and Harry and his dad if he could be there. He wonders why everything doesn’t hurt as much as he thinks it should, but it’s hard to think when there’s so much life and not life buzzing around him to the drip drip drip of the IV in his arm.

Dean is five years old and Dad has a flat tyre. Sammy’s making faces in his car seat and blowing hungry baby raspberries, and Dean can hear Dad swearing quietly from behind the car because he forgot to buy a new spare tyre. It’s already dark outside and Dean’s starving and he already knows that if Dad has to call the repairmen it’ll take forever for them to get here. He wishes they had a working tyre already so they could go home. The next moment, there’s a loud whoosh of air and Dad crouches down next to the car with a “What now?” on his lips. He gets back in the car the next moment and tells Dean, looking more confused than ever, that it looks like he got it wrong and the tyre’s fine after all. Dean knows that Dad never gets it wrong. He still doesn’t say anything.

Ushas is nine years old and she can make flowers bloom with a thought. She does it with the ones in the glass vase on Mother’s dressing table without even thinking. They were starting to wilt and they were Mother’s favourites, and it seemed a waste that they’d only last for a few days. When she realises what she’s done, she spends the next three hours trying to make it happen again, consistently, experimenting with different kinds of flowers, different stages of wilting. When she succeeds, she smiles.

Jim is ten and he doesn’t sink when he hits the bottom of the pool. He knows that’s how it works, he read it somewhere, but it amazes him when the bubbles start pouring around him but he stays afloat. It burns a little, especially when he looks at the people on the side who must’ve thrown him in. They’re laughing quite a bit, even though he can’t quite hear it over the rushing noises in his ears. It doesn’t matter, anyway. He laughs louder when Carl Powers doesn’t float back up.

Greg is ten and he does his homework. He’s not very good at maths, but he tries to solve all the problems on the worksheet, all the same. It’s nothing unusual, nothing out of the ordinary, only the thing is. Well. The thing is, when it gets late at night and his mum tells him he should be asleep, sometimes the lights go out even though he hasn’t touched the light switch. He doesn’t know where to start, trying to figure something like that out, so he just keeps track of it and goes back to doing his homework like his mum says he should.

Sam is nine years old and he had the oddest dream last night. It felt different than the dreams he had before, usually filled with dinosaurs and aliens and some things he can’t quite remember when he wakes up. He dreamt of a fire, which wasn’t so strange, except for the fact that he heard fire engines drive past his house this morning.

Donna is six years old and she has no idea where she is. All she remembers is that about five minutes ago Mummy was saying, in her That’s Final voice, that they couldn’t afford a holiday this year, so they were staying home. And it wasn’t fair, because Caitlin got to go to Spain, she was showing off about it in school, and all Donna wants to do is go to the beach. So she’d opened her mouth and shouted at her mum to tell her so, and when her mother said no, again, she’d screwed up her face-- and the next minute she’d opened her mouth to shout and then she was here. She doesn’t know where she is, and for a moment she thinks about shouting again until someone tells her. But there’s a duckpond, and a sandpit nearby with some other children playing in it, so she decides it can’t be that bad. She can just play in the sandpit for a bit and pretend it’s the beach in Spain, and then she’ll catch a bus home like the grown-ups do. Simple.

Koschei is eight years old, and it’s nearly bed time. He’s been glancing at the clock for the past half an hour and wishing it would stop or go backwards so that he doesn’t have to go. The closer it gets to half past eight, the longer he’s been glaring at the stupid thing. After he’s stared at it for exactly two minutes - he counted - the second hand suddenly starts moving backwards, and he grins. Oh, he is so telling Theta about this tomorrow.

Sherlock is seven and he notices things. Most of the things he notices are very small. He notices the way people walk, the way people talk, the way people wear their clothes, the way sidewalks are paved and streets aren’t. It’s a Sunday in July and his brother gets a note, and everyone knows the post doesn’t come on Sundays. He asks about it, but he doesn’t like the answer he gets. It sounds like something Mummy told his brother to say. He keeps it in mind so he can gloat when he finds the real answer later, because now there’s a puzzle to solve.