Seeing the man and hearing Harry's words, Sherlock showed no surprise whatsoever.
"I knew it was him."
Under Harry's astonished gaze, Sherlock strode quickly to the man.
Looking at this face that was both familiar and strange, Sherlock asked quite rudely:
"What are you doing here?"
"Just showing my usual concern for you."
"Thank you, but I think I've already received your attention."
Despite not having the height advantage, Sherlock's presence was no less imposing when facing this man, even though he had to look up at him when speaking.
"You're as aggressive as always—have you never considered that we're on the sa side?"
"Strange to say," Sherlock tilted his head as if thinking for a mont, then gave a definitive negative answer, "No."
"We have more in common than you can imagine. In comparison, our petty grievances are nothing more than child's play."
Hearing Sherlock's response, the man frowned and said earnestly:
"But it will cause people distress—you know very well this worries our parents."
Sherlock, who had already been unfriendly, imdiately beca sharp-eyed upon hearing this:
"Who exactly is causing them worry? ? I think you need to understand that they've never worried about , Mycroft!"
When Sherlock said this, Harry was stunned.
"Wait, stop talking for a mont!"
Harry quickly stepped forward, positioning himself between the two.
He looked at Sherlock, then at the man Sherlock had called Mycroft, and asked carefully:
"You just ntioned parents—whose parents?"
"Our father and mother."
Both turned their heads simultaneously, their mirror-like eyebrow movents causing the shocked Harry to involuntarily step back.
Sherlock suddenly laughed softly:
"Harry, this is my brother, Mycroft Hols."
After saying this, he looked up again. "Ha—you've put on weight again."
Mycroft continued frowning: "Quite the contrary, I've been building muscle."
He didn't believe his brother couldn't see this point.
Obviously, he was saying this deliberately.
Harry looked incredulous: "Brother! You said brother? He's really your brother?"
"Of course he's, my brother!"
Sherlock seed sowhat impatient, his tone becoming rougher.
"But isn't he—"
"Isn't he what?"
"I don't know how to put it," Harry hesitated, then tentatively said, "The mastermind behind everything?"
"Ha!"
Sherlock couldn't help but laugh. Hearing Harry say this made him happy again. "Well said, my friend. Not far off the mark."
Mycroft also laughed, though he was laughing bitterly:
"Oh, my God, I'm just an ordinary university student."
"By ordinary, do you an soone who's already working for the British governnt before graduating?"
Sherlock said coldly, then turned to Harry with an explanation:
"If he weren't always secretly doing odd jobs in his spare ti, he'd probably be a mber of Her Majesty's governnt right after graduation."
The conversation between the two left Harry completely stunned.
He never would have imagined that the person who claid to be Sherlock's nesis would turn out to be his own brother.
Even more surprising was how powerful this brother seed to be!
The two brothers engaged in a war of words right there at the front door.
Neither side would give ground, and Harry, caught between them, felt weak and helpless.
Just then, the door hinges suddenly creaked, and Mrs. Hols poked her head out:
"Children, are you having an argunt?"
"No!"
"Impossible!"
After speaking in unison, both frowned simultaneously.
After quickly stepping back three paces to create distance, Sherlock imdiately withdrew his hand while Mycroft casually adjusted his tie.
"Tea and snacks are in the study."
Mycroft pointed his umbrella at the mud prints on Harry's shoe heels. "Do tell Coach Moran that his anti-slip wax formula needs updating, unless he wants to train all his mbers to be geologists—after all, not everyone can collect sandstone samples from a fall."
As he turned, his coat tail swept past Sherlock's trouser leg. "Keep up, brother, unless you want to tell Mother you've dismantled her Victorian tea service again."
Sherlock gritted his teeth and sneered: "Harry, rember never to bet with bureaucratic types like this—they keep records of how many raisins you had for breakfast."
With their eldest son ho, Mr. and Mrs. Hols were very happy.
Through Mr. Hols's introduction, Harry and Ron learned with surprise that Sherlock wasn't an only child but had an older brother.
Mycroft Hols was exactly seven years older than Sherlock, and their grandfather had been a country squire for generations.
When Sherlock was four, the Hols family had traveled to Montpellier, France, where they stayed for two full years.
It was during this ti that Mrs. Hols learned to cook French cuisine.
"What? So, all this ti we've been eating French food?"
Ron seed very surprised.
"Ronald, surely you must know that the best restaurants in England are French restaurants."
Mycroft said with a smile while fidgeting with the black umbrella in his right hand, looking at Ron.
Ron: "..."
He had always just focused on eating and never paid attention to such things.
"After leaving France, we went to Rotterdam in the Netherlands, and later settled in Cologne, Germany for a ti."
Mycroft continued Mr. Hols's narrative.
"When Sherlock was seven, he entered a boarding school for the nobility, and the family hired a private tutor for him. Boxing, fencing, and violin were all learned during that period. I must say, my dear brother is indeed exceptionally gifted in these areas."
Sherlock snorted, while Harry and Ron exchanged glances.
Only now did they realize that their friend had quite a rich background.
As a British citizen, by age seven he had already been to France, the Netherlands, and Germany.
Thinking of their own seven-year-old selves—one enduring his cousin's bullying in a dark cupboard, the other enviously watching his brothers play Quidditch in the grass.
We are not the sa!
"Just last year, Sherlock fell seriously ill. Originally, we planned to have him attend a preparatory school in Yorkshire as a day student after he recovered. Unexpectedly, he received an acceptance letter from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. You know the rest."
After a brief silence, Ron couldn't help asking:
"So, Mr. Mycroft, are you also a wizard?"
Hearing Ron's question, Mycroft smiled at him: "What do you think?"
Mycroft didn't stay at ho for long.
After just one al, he left without even staying the night.
He was said to be very busy.
But Harry and Ron couldn't understand what a 19-year-old university student could possibly be so busy with.
Shouldn't this be the most relaxed period of life?
"You don't need to worry about him," Sherlock said casually when Harry and Ron asked about it. "He's always been like this."
"Sherlock, your relationship with your brother doesn't seem very good?"
"That guy has his own set of behavioral principles. He always hopes I'll live a so-called 'normal' life, but that's exactly what I don't like—you know very well that what I've always pursued is freedom and excitent."
"So, is he a wizard or not?"
"Of course not."
"Then did your aunt and uncle tell him about you going to Hogwarts and about Ron and ?"
Hearing this question, Sherlock's face showed a complex expression: "No, never."
"Then how did he—"
"You might not believe it, but he's indeed more skilled than I am in observation and deduction."
Sherlock said calmly, "Half of my first year at Hogwarts has already passed. With so much ti, it's been enough for him to make deductions. In fact, that he only started contacting you at Christmas was later than I expected. It seems the magical world isn't entirely useless—at least it provided so obstacles for him in certain aspects."
"What are you saying?"
Hearing Sherlock's praise for Mycroft, Harry and Ron were imdiately stunned.
They knew Sherlock's abilities all too well, but now he was saying Mycroft was even more skilled?
Was he even human?
"Harry, do you rember when we t outside earlier? He imdiately deduced that we had practiced boxing and that you had taken a fall."
With Sherlock's reminder, Harry finally rembered this detail.
Mainly because he had been too shocked upon hearing Mycroft's voice to pay attention to this point.
"Surely your mother couldn't have—"
Harry realized his mistake as soon as he spoke.
Mrs. Hols could certainly tell Mycroft that they went for morning training, but she couldn't have known about boxing practice or Harry's fall.
"Of course not!"
Sherlock shook his head. "First, our clothing consisted of loose athletic wear and sneakers, obviously not for a leisurely walk. Second, my wrists had slight red marks that he could definitely identify as traces left by boxing glove straps. I bet he even noticed the direction of the wrist guard buckles—I only just thought of this point myself.
"As for you, my dear Harry, you must not have noticed that the cuff of your sleeve at the elbow was turned up, with coarse fiber edges stuck with several grains of quartz sand. Only the boxing gym behind St. Bartholow's Hospital in all of London uses this mixed gravel flooring, which is why he ntioned Coach Moran at the end.
"Your left shoe heel showed abnormal wear on the outside with clumped mud prints—only losing balance and dragging one foot would create this spiral pattern, combined with your stiff gait, sufficient to prove you suffered a minor sprain from a fall.
"Finally, the sweat droplets you hadn't yet wiped from the back of your neck and your breathing rate 0.3 seconds faster than normal are signs of sustained regular exercise for more than half an hour.
"From these details, deducing the entire situation would be more than sufficient for him."
This explanation left Harry and Ron completely dumbfounded.
"Funny to think that when I received the acceptance letter last sumr, I thought it was a prank that guy had pulled. Turns out I wronged him."
At this point, Sherlock also laughed, though he imdiately frowned.
He didn't tell his two friends that based on Mycroft's behavior today, he had a vague suspicion.
That Mycroft knew about the existence of magic, and quite possibly earlier than he did.
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