"What, a mission targeting you?"
At Sherlock's words, Gemma's heart lurched. Without thinking, she tightened her grip on Hermione beside her.
Voldemort had sent Draco Malfoy after Sherlock?
Even though Malfoy's skill level was worlds apart from Sherlock's, the sheer certainty in Sherlock's tone told her instantly this was no offhand joke.
If this operation had been arranged and deployed personally by Voldemort himself, then the Death Eater ranks would treat it with the highest priority, top to bottom, and move fast.
Resources might well be poured into this one task. The strike would be swift and merciless.
How could that possibly count as good news?
It was practically shoving Sherlock straight into the eye of the storm!
Hermione sucked in a sharp breath, the air seeming to drain from her chest all at once.
She grabbed the hand Gemma had hold of and squeezed back hard, her face going pale.
"Sherlock! This is far too dangerous—and besides, how do you even know this?"
"The information comes from two sources."
Sherlock leaned back against the sofa, his posture relaxed, and slowly raised two long fingers.
"First, our dear Professor Snape.
"Second—same as last time—Draco Malfoy."
"That's not—"
Hermione and Gemma exchanged a glance, both their faces full of baffled disbelief.
In the end it was Hermione who couldn't hold back, leaning forward urgently.
"Sherlock, you're losing us here.
"Are you saying Voldemort specifically sent Malfoy after you—and then this got back to you through Professor Snape and Malfoy themselves?"
"Precisely correct, my dear Hermione."
The corner of Sherlock's mouth curved into a faint smile, a hint of teasing in his eyes.
"It seems writing really has done wonders for your gift for summary."
"Oh, that's hardly worth mentioning."
Hermione waved a hand, brushing it off with reflexive modesty.
But no sooner had she said it than she caught Gemma's odd look, and it dawned on her all at once. Her cheeks flushed faintly pink, and her voice shot up.
"That is absolutely not the point here!"
"Calm down."
Sherlock raised a hand in a soothing gesture, fingertips pressing gently downward, cutting off Hermione's urgency.
His voice stayed level, as though he were working through a simple calculus problem.
"Strategically speaking, this is unambiguously a positive sign. It confirms two key things.
First, it proves our various strategies have actually been working.
That includes the messaging campaign the professors—Dumbledore chief among them have been running for the past two years, ever since Voldemort's return.
Those quiet, gradual efforts have already planted seeds throughout the wizarding world.
And, of course, there are those two brilliant works of yours that have taken the wizarding world by storm—A Study in Scarlet and The Hound of the Baskervilles."
He paused, his gaze sweeping over Hermione's still-reddened face, then continued.
"Between them, they've made the name Sherlock Holmes into something the entire wizarding world can't stop talking about.
Looking purely at the current situation, Voldemort's attention along with a significant share of his resources and malice is shifting away from Harry and onto me.
What does that mean?"
Sherlock leaned forward slightly, his eyes turning sharper.
"It means Harry's bought himself far more precious breathing room—room to keep growing and preparing in an environment with somewhat less pressure bearing down on him.
In a wizarding world this unsettled right now, splitting the enemy's ire is a necessary tactical sacrifice. And that's exactly what Harry needs most right now."
This, naturally, referred to Harry's special identity.
Gemma pressed her lips together, absorbing Sherlock's words carefully.
Hermione still looked worried, but a spark of thought had begun to flicker in her eyes as well.
"Second, it shows Voldemort is starting to feel a genuine threat—and a certain degree of anxiety.
He no longer sees me as just some lucky child who's stumbled into foiling a few of his minor schemes by chance.
He's now marked me as a target worth deploying a dedicated mission and specific personnel to deal with."
There was a barely perceptible note of pleasure in Sherlock's voice.
"An opponent the enemy takes seriously enough to treat as a threat is worth far more than a pawn dismissed entirely.
It opens up more gaps for us to observe, analyse, and strike back through."
Listening to Sherlock's rather cheerful account, Hermione still looked deeply troubled.
"But Draco Malfoy's father is right there at Voldemort's side. The moment he's found out—"
"My dear Hermione, there's something you may have forgotten."
Sherlock smiled faintly, a glint of cunning flashing in his eyes, and said something that left both Hermione and Gemma stunned.
"From the very start, my advice to Lucius was that there was no need for disguise or concealment—just do whatever needs doing.
If Voldemort wants Malfoy to act, then he ought to commit to it fully.
Voldemort wants him to watch me, doesn't he? Then let him report everything I do at school back to Voldemort, in full, down to the last detail. No need to hold anything back.
Once the watching, the approaching, the probing are done, it should be persuasion's turn."
"Persuasion? Getting you to join the Death Eaters?" Gemma shook her head in disbelief. "How is that even possible?"
"Why not?"
Sherlock countered, his tone carrying the cool detachment of someone standing outside the whole affair.
"For the Death Eaters, the advantage is unquestionably on their side right now.
The Ministry is teetering. Azkaban's been breached. The Dementors have defected. Part of the giants have sworn allegiance. Panic is spreading through public opinion...
A talented young wizard, born to Muggles yet gifted beyond his station, who seems dissatisfied with the current state of things—isn't that exactly the kind of asset worth courting?"
"But... Voldemort's always championed blood purity..."
Hermione said, somewhat hesitantly.
"Wrong!"
Sherlock said crisply.
"On the surface, Voldemort venerates blood purity. But what he actually despises was never the identity of 'Mudblood' itself.
Don't forget—he's half-blood himself. What looks like contempt for the Muggle blood in his own veins is, in truth, contempt for what that blood represents: weakness and inferiority.
To him, blood purity is nothing more than a slogan for public consumption.
At his core, he's an extreme egoist and pragmatist. He's only ever followed one rule, from beginning to end: What can be used, keep. What can't, discard."
The living room fell into a brief silence, broken only by the occasional birdsong from outside the window, which only made the mood feel heavier.
"Children!"
A cheerful voice, accompanied by brisk footsteps, drifted in from the kitchen like a beam of sunlight cutting through the gloom hanging over the room.
Mrs. Holmes appeared in the doorway wearing a clean floral apron dusted here and there with traces of flour.
She carried a large white porcelain plate, steaming and fragrant, piled high with golden, fluffy scones, a small jar of glistening raspberry jam set beside them.
Her face was lit with a warm smile, even the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes creasing with it.
"Tea time!
I baked fresh scones, and there's the raspberry jam Hermione said she liked last time!
Now stop talking about all those headache-inducing things—that's for the grown-ups to worry about. Come on, eat while it's hot!"
The three of them exchanged a quick, knowing glance, the tension in their eyes easing slightly, replaced by the easy smiles one puts on for the benefit of one's elders.
They rose together and made their way to the table.
The heavy talk of Voldemort, Death Eaters, and the new mission was, for now, buried beneath the sweet smell of scones and the warmth of family.
But the invisible pressure in the air, and the storm yet to come, had already left their mark clearly on that sunlit living room on King's Road—as unmistakable, and as silently spreading, as the shadow of the potted plant on the windowsill.
Later that evening, Luna arrived at King's Road as well.
She wore a pale blue dress printed with a scattering of tiny stars, still carrying that same ethereal, unbothered air. Mrs. Holmes had, naturally, been the one to invite her.
By this point, everyone had more or less figured out what Mrs. Holmes's believed.
Whatever anyone else thought, she had stubbornly believed like in Daily Prophet that Sherlock was seeing all three girls.
"Dear, if you keep this up, people are going to start talking about Sherlock."
Once all the guests had left, Mr. Holmes sat on the sofa, rubbing his temples, and said to his wife with helplessness.
"What are you on about?"
Mrs. Holmes said looking displeased.
"My son is so exceptional—so what if he's seeing a few girls?"
"Sherlock, do you care what other people think of you?" She turned to look at her son, standing off to the side, eyes full of expectation.
"I don't care," Sherlock said flatly, his gaze still fixed on the night beyond the window.
"See? Our son doesn't care either!"
"Even if you say that, I still—"
"Besides, I've already asked all three girls. They're all fine with it!"
"...Fine. Whatever makes you happy." Mr. Holmes sighed and finally gave in.
"What do you mean, whatever makes me happy? If it weren't for you being so useless, would I even have to deal with this?" Mrs. Holmes planted her hands on her hips, her tone growing even more forceful.
"What—what does this have to do with me?"
"Have you forgotten what we were like when we were young? Not the least bit proactive when it mattered—I'd say these two kids take after you!"
Sherlock watched his father wilt under his mother's forceful barrage, shook his head, and walked over to the window.
He wasn't worried about his father's current state—no matter how things looked now, once the night was over, his father would always find a way to win his mother back over. That was a lesson he'd learned since childhood.
He, on the other hand, had far more pressing matters to think through.
He'd already warned Lucius not to do anything unnecessary.
And yet, it seemed the head of the Malfoy family hadn't taken that warning to heart.
Voldemort gives you an assignment, you carry it out—full stop. Why go running off to find Snape on top of it?
He genuinely had no idea what Malfoy thought he was doing.
Fortunately, Snape's performance had been as reliably solid as ever, without a single slip.
There was also one other matter Sherlock hadn't shared with anyone.
The breach of Azkaban.
On the surface, it looked like the Ministry simply hadn't taken Dumbledore's warnings seriously, and that the Ministry's own weakness had led to the outcome.
But in fact, that wasn't the whole story.
Consider this: after the battle on the night of the Triwizard Tournament's final task, Voldemort had genuinely suffered heavy losses.
The Death Eaters he'd only just finished regathering had been swept up almost to the last man.
Even John Smith—or rather, Black Light—the man who'd given Voldemort such enormous help, had been sent straight to Azkaban.
Even granting that the Ministry had ignored Dumbledore's advice, it shouldn't have collapsed with such a wholesale, crushing defeat.
So there had to be some hidden circumstance behind it that no one knew about.
Once you'd eliminated everything impossible, whatever remained—however improbable—had to be the truth.
So, there was only one explanation.
Sherlock's gaze abruptly deepened, as though it held a bottomless, frozen pool within it.
Moonlight spilled across the side of his face through the window, carving out the hard lines of his profile.
With the new Minister for Magic now in office, the mood in the wizarding world seemed to have taken a genuine turn for the better.
Where the Daily Prophet had once run near-daily stories of disappearances and deaths, along with all manner of bizarre, panic-inducing incidents, it had recently carried two rather good pieces of news instead:
Florean Fortescue, who ran the ice cream parlour in Diagon Alley, and Ollivander, who ran the wandshop, had both very nearly been abducted by Death Eaters.
At the critical moment, Rufus Scrimgeour, Head of the Auror Office, had arrived in time with a well-equipped squad of Aurors and rescued them. Not only that—in the fierce fighting that followed, they'd left two Death Eaters badly wounded.
It was the Ministry's first successful thwarting of a Death Eater plot in a good long while.
The paper ran a bust portrait of Scrimgeour alongside the story—a head of hair as thick and shaggy as a lion's mane, a face fierce and hard-bitten.
But in circumstances like these, it lent him a certain reassuring quality.
As for the article itself, it carried a note of long-absent optimism running through every line.
One Saturday morning, the sky was clear and bright, sunlight breaking through the clouds to fall across the streets of London for the first time in what felt like ages.
Even the Black Manor at Number 12, Grimmauld Place, seemed to shed a little of its usual gloom in the morning light.
Sherlock, Harry, and their friends had all arrived bright and early.
Today, they were off to Diagon Alley together to buy books and stock up on supplies for the new term.
They'd chosen today specifically because it was the one day Mr. Weasley wasn't working overtime and could come along to see them there—one extra layer of safety.
"When's the Ministry car coming?" Hermione asked curiously.
"Should be soon, I'd think."
Gemma checked her watch, then turned to Sherlock with a smile.
"Everyone's riding on Harry's coattails again this time—he's getting Level One security detail now. Once we reach the Leaky Cauldron, they're bumping the guard up even further!"
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