My intention was for this story not to carry on much after this chapter. But it seems to be turning into an Enid Blyton-style boarding-school epic. I hope you don't mind. There will be some familiar faces too. ;)
'Are you sure you've got everything, boys?' Mrs Holmes asked for about the hundredth time since setting off from home.
John and Sherlock both nodded very definitely, and grasped the handles of their suitcases, ready to set off up the drive towards school. It was a tall red brick building that loomed above them, built specifically to be a school, and so made to look just a little imposing. Boys of various ages flooded the drive, calling out to each other, saying their goodbyes, locating teachers and friends among the mass.
Sherlock was by now used to this, but John felt a little bewildered. Furthermore, he hadn't ever been to school without Harry, whom the Holmeses had sent to a girls' school quite a distance away. He had been given Sherlock as a sort of mentor and "looker-after", but he wasn't sure that the boy would be all that good at this job. If Mycroft's words were anything to go by, it would probably end up being the other way round.
'Don't forget to find the Mrs Hudson, introduce her to John,' Mrs Holmes told Sherlock, looking out over the crowd to see if she could spot the housemistress. It was perhaps unusual for a boys' school to have a woman in charge of boarding, but the boys were very fond of Martha Hudson, and furthermore she was really rather fond of them. Even Sherlock had a soft spot for her.
Sherlock nodded semi-reluctantly. He disliked being in charge of John far more than John disliked having Sherlock in charge of him. 'Very well. Goodbye, Mummy.'
Mrs Holmes bent down and kissed Sherlock on the cheek.
'Goodbye, Mrs Holmes,' said John. 'And thank you so much. For everything.'
'You're very welcome, my dear boy,' said Mrs Holmes, smiling affectionately, and briefly clasping the boy to her. It would be wrong to say that she preferred him to Sherlock as a son, but she rather wished Sherlock was more like this polite friendly child.
Then Mrs Holmes got back in the car and headed back home. John waved until she was out of sight, and then turned to Sherlock.
'Where's the housemistress?' he asked. 'Is she nice?'
'Objectively,' Sherlock replied vaguely. 'You would probably like her... Ah, there she is. Mrs Hudson!' Martha Hudson was not married, and the boys didn't know if she ever had been (Sherlock suspected she had, and that her husband had been a less than honest man), but for some reason she suited Mrs Hudson far more than Miss.
She was a motherly sort of woman, or perhaps an auntie, with her flyaway hair, beaming smile and warm, cheerful nature. Her eyes lit up on seeing Sherlock, and fell curiously on John; she quickly finished her conversation with one of the other boys, and then came over.
'Ah, Sherlock,' she said. 'Nice to see you back. And is this... Oh, look at me, I've forgotten his name.'
'John Watson,' Sherlock supplied.
'John Watson. That's it. It's very nice to meet you, John.' She grinned a little mischievously. 'Be careful with Sherlock, won't you? And Sherlock – your mother wanted you to be in the same dormitory, so you can keep a look out for him. So I've moved Henry into the next room, if that's all right.'
Sherlock shrugged. He didn't much care who he was forced to live with any more. He just tended to ignore his roommates.
'Do you want to show John up?' Mrs Hudson suggested.
Sherlock nodded and led the way without a word. He was already lost in thought, and probably would be for most of the term.
The dormitory was a small, uncomfortable sort of room painted in a demoralising off-white colour. There were three beds in it, and between them were cupboards, so that almost the entire room was composed of furniture. There was already a boy on one of the beds, sifting through a stack of books in his suitcase; he looked up at Sherlock and John's entrance.
'Hullo, Sherlock,' he said. 'And you must be John.'
John nodded.
'William Farrell.' He shook hands with this newcomer, while Sherlock as good as ignored him. William was a perfectly normal student who had at first tried to befriend Sherlock, but had quickly given up on finding that Sherlock didn't want friends, and wasn't especially likeable anyway.
John, though a bit shy at first, fell into a conventional conversation with the other boy as they each unpacked their suitcases. It did not escape John's attention that all of the other boys had much larger suitcases than his: his contained just a spare set of clothes, a notebook (which from the looks of it had been used often, possibly as a diary, or some sort of journal), and a little box of biscuits that Mrs Holmes had given him. Sherlock meanwhile, though he didn't seem terribly materialistic, had brought a huge stack of books and a chemistry-set, which he set very carefully on the shelf in his wardrobe and on the window-ledge, which he had claimed.
'Have you seen Mrs H?' William said then, jumping up.
'She was outside a minute ago,' John supplied.
'But is now in the sick-bay,' added Sherlock, without looking up.
William grinned lopsidedly and went towards the door, but before he left, he said to John: 'I suppose Sherlock's being trying out his deductions on you.'
John looked confused.
'Has he not? – oh, he will do before long. Won't you, Sherlock? You'll get used to it. You do when you have to live with him.'
And on that note, William left the room.
'Deductions?' asked John, abandoning his unpacking in favour of a pursuit of his curiosity.
'I deduce things,' Sherlock said shortly, as if that was supposed to explain everything.
'What do you mean?'
'I look carefully at things and guess things,' Sherlock shrugged. He wasn't much in the mood for explanations.
'Like... like the fact that William really likes classic literature?' John suggested.
'That's simple observation,' Sherlock said, rolling his eyes: John had been looking towards the stack of books in William's suitcase. 'Observation tells me that he reads classic literature, since that he has brought ten books and none of them were written later than 1890. The fact that some of these books are well-thumbed tells me that he reads them often – hence enjoyment. Deduction would tell me that he has had a birthday recently, since some of the books are new. As is his coat, incidentally. There are many other things that can be deduced from the content of this suitcase, but I shan't bore you with them.'
And with that he leaned backwards and made to disappear into the bewildering world of his own thoughts, but John stopped him.
'Are you famous for deductions, then, or something?'
'I make a few, from time to time,' said Sherlock. 'When I feel like it. I feel as if there ought to be a use for such a skill, but Mycroft has never found one, and I'm not sure I ever will, either. It's a simple party-trick.'
John furrowed his brow and shrugged, but vowed to himself that he would find some way of diverting Sherlock's energies into something useful. He had seen several other examples of the boy's great intelligence, but Sherlock's apathy meant that he rarely used it for anything.
Just then William returned, and struck up another conversation with John, or rather continued their previous conversation; Sherlock, somewhat relieved, separated himself from this idle chatter and sank into what looked like nothing short of a trance that seemed to absorb him completely.
William Farrell knew that Sherlock Holmes was an enigma, and he had accepted that fairly quickly. John was also conscious of this puzzle, but, unlike William, he found himself determined to solve it.
