Sherlock stopped coming to breakfast. It wasn't because he wasn't hungry, because he was. He still ate the normal amount for a boy his age, thirteen years old, just in the common room. It wasn't because he had studying to do (although he did, he just hated all of it but potions and defense against the dark arts). It was because of the Howlers.

After the perfection that was the elder Holmes, the trouble-making Sherlock was, to say the least, a disappointment and his father made sure to let him know it. Every failed exam, every detention, any grade below perfect marks, every class skipped in the hospital wing or in bed with a headache resulted in a very lengthy Howler delivered at breakfast. The first Holmes was Head Boy. The second had the record for the most detentions given for backtalking or exploring after dark.

And so, Sherlock had taken to eating breakfast in the Ravenclaw common room. That way, when the booming deep-yet-shrill voice assaulted him for what seemed like an eternity, he wouldn't have to deal with the reputation of being the most unstudious student his House had likely ever produced. After two and a bit years, though, it was sorely tempting to the teenager to just set the mail on fire and be done with it. Except that would earn him another detention and another Howler—and possibly nullify the Hogsmeade permission slip his mother had signed in a flurry of autograph papers.

This time, the Howler was particularly vicious. Not worthy of the family name. Lazy. A good thing no one wastes time befriending you. Pathetic. Weak. Not even a proper wizard, can't complete basic charms. Useless. Shameful.

Sherlock never believed it, or at least not usually. He had bad days, of course, but generally held the opinion that you either thought he was brilliant or you were wrong. It got him through, and it seemed to work for cats, so why not? He tossed the discarded Howler in the fireplace, not yet lit today, but he could produce a flame and so soon changed that. He stretched, ate a biscuit, and continued reading Martha Palmer's seventh-year defense against the dark arts book. His father was every bit as unimportant as the family patriarch had declared his youngest child to be.