"So, Dumbledore also believes that person is growing stronger?"
Ron asked, lowering his voice after listening to Harry's full account.
His lips were pressed tight as he spoke, his eyes filled with a fear he couldn't quite conceal.
Sherlock glanced at Ron and understood at once.
Even now, this poor boy still hadn't freed himself from his terror of Voldemort. Not only was he unable to say the name aloud, but even mentioning anything connected to him sent a visible tremor through his body despite the warm sunlight streaming through the windows outside, he was shivering.
It was understandable, really. That kind of fear had been absorbed from birth, breathed in from every corner of the world around him. After so many years of deeply ingrained thinking, change would take time.
No rush. It would come slowly.
If the three of them made a point of saying the name in front of Ron more often, he would gradually be desensitized. One day, he'd even thank them for it.
Sherlock shifted his gaze to Hermione.
Compared to Ron, who was trembling with fright, Hermione's reaction was something else entirely and rather unexpected. She had been silent for a full ten minutes, sitting with both hands pressed to her forehead, staring fixedly at her knees, brow deeply furrowed, as though locked in some fierce internal debate.
"I think she needs a Pensieve," Harry murmured to Sherlock, just quietly enough that only the two of them could hear.
Hermione finally raised her head slowly. Her eyes were full of confusion and frustration. "So we still can't do anything? Is that what this means?"
"Well… it does seem that way, for now." Harry scratched the back of his head, looking a little awkward.
"If even Dumbledore can't solve it…" Hermione's expression darkened further, the corners of her mouth drooping.
Seeing her so crestfallen, Harry quickly tried to reassure her. "It'll be all right. Dumbledore said that the moment he finds a way, he'll tell me straight away."
"Right," Ron chimed in, trying to ease the tension. "Come on, Hermione, do you really doubt Dumbledore?"
Hermione shook her head. Then, abruptly, she turned to Sherlock, a flicker of renewed hope lighting in her eyes. "Sherlock, do you have a solution?"
Harry and Ron both blinked, exchanging a startled look. They knew Hermione trusted Sherlock, but a solution to something that had left even Dumbledore at a loss?
What made it all the more remarkable was that Sherlock actually nodded.
"Yes," he said, perfectly calm.
"What?"
Harry and Ron cried out simultaneously, their voices ringing with disbelief.
Hermione, meanwhile, immediately broke into a radiant smile, her eyes lit up like stars. "I knew it. I knew you'd have something."
"I have a solution," Sherlock said, then paused. "Whether it's one you can use, however, is another matter entirely."
Harry was just about to ask why he hadn't mentioned it back in the headmaster's office when Sherlock spoke again, his tone unhurried.
"The solution is to be like me and clear all those useless emotions out of the attic of your mind. That way, the next time Voldemort—"
Ron gave a violent flinch, his whole body was shuddering harder than before. He shot Sherlock a deeply aggrieved look.
Sherlock ignored him completely and continued: "—comes close to you, or experiences a sudden surge of intense emotion, you would be able to empty your mind in time, and simply throw that pain and fear out along with everything else."
w(Д)w
Harry, Hermione, and Ron all stared at Sherlock with the look of people who had just witnessed something that defied the laws of nature. A bizarre, heavy silence fell over the common room.
"Is that even something a human being can do?" Ron finally broke the silence. his shock so extreme it had temporarily overridden his terror of Voldemort, and the words tumbled out before he could stop them.
"It isn't particularly difficult," Sherlock replied in a matter-of-fact tone, as though he were discussing something as mundane as making toast. "Anyone can do it with proper training."
"Right. I've officially been stripped of my humanity." Ron gave a resigned nod, then turned to Harry with a helpless look. "Mate, can you do it?"
"Absolutely not," Harry answered without a moment's hesitation.
"There you go, then." Ron spread his hands and gave Hermione a wry look. "Even Sherlock isn't all-powerful. This method only works for him… are you all right?"
He asked because, without warning, a strange and dreamy expression had spread across Hermione's face.
Her eyes had gone glassy, as if she were staring into the distance at something no one else could see. She reached up slowly and pressed her fingers to her temple. Her hand was trembling slightly.
"I'm fine," she said.
She held her breath, pressed her temple again, then abandoned that entirely and covered both eyes with her hands, her shoulders rising and falling in small, rapid movements.
Harry and Ron exchanged a helpless glance, completely at a loss.
Sherlock watched her thoughtfully, the tips of his fingers tapping a slow, rhythmic pattern on the table, as though analyzing her reaction.
"I've just had an idea!"
Hermione snapped her head up, her eyes blazing with fierce excitement. She looked at Sherlock with a gaze full of open admiration. "I think I understand now. You're right—if you empty your mind completely, truly completely, then Voldemort's influence simply has nowhere to take hold. Yes. Yes, that's exactly it—give me two seconds, I need to go check something in the library!"
Before the last syllable had left her lips, Hermione grabbed her bag from beside her and bolted out of the common room like a gust of wind.
"Hey—!"
Ron had barely managed a single word before she came storming back in, her face still flushed with excitement.
"What are you—hey!"
The next moment, Harry and Ron were left absolutely dumbstruck.
Because the Hermione who had returned shot across the room, rose up on her tiptoes, and pressed a swift kiss to Sherlock's cheek then vanished again just as fast as she'd appeared, leaving nothing behind but a blurred impression and the swinging portrait hole.
"Was… was that a confession?" Ron stared at the spot where Hermione had disappeared, then slowly turned to Harry, murmuring in a voice of utter disbelief.
Harry nodded unconsciously, his own eyes fixed on Sherlock, his expression equally stunned.
Sherlock, for his part, tilted his head ever so slightly and reached up to touch the cheek she had kissed. Then his brow furrowed, and he murmured, as if to himself:
"Has she truly understood it?"
"Hey, hey, hey!"
Ron shot to his feet, his voice rising to a near-frantic pitch. "Is that really what we're focusing on right now?!"
The second task had ended with Hermione kissing Sherlock too. Back then, it could still be explained away, she'd been terrified for his life, and seeing him safe and sound had made her emotional.
But today? Today, there was no such excuse. This little miss had apparently decided to stop pretending and lay all her cards on the table. And Sherlock, Sherlock, who had just been kissed was just sitting there as if nothing had happened. She was a girl, for heaven's sake!
A girl who'd now kissed him twice! How was he so completely unfazed? Would it really take a kiss on the lips before he woke up?
"You're not wrong, dear Ron," Sherlock said at last.
"Hm?" Ron turned sharply coming out of his reverie.
"You're right that this isn't worth focusing on right now." Sherlock's tone was perfectly serious.
Ron nodded vigorously.
"What we need to focus on," Sherlock continued, "is the Triwizard Tournament."
"Oh, of course…"
Ron let out a long sigh.
He never should have gotten his hopes up for Sherlock.
And so the moment passed a small, fleeting episode, soon forgotten.
Cedric, however, tracked Harry down as soon as he heard about the scar. His face was etched with concern. "How are you feeling, Harry? Has it been giving you any trouble?"
Not wanting to worry his captain, Harry smiled reassuringly. "Don't worry. Dumbledore already knows, and he says he's working on it."
"If Professor Dumbledore is already aware, then there's nothing to worry about." Cedric visibly relaxed, a relieved smile breaking across his face. "My parents and honestly, everyone I know have always said the same thing. It's a well-known fact, really: even at the height of his power, the one person You-Know-Who truly feared was Dumbledore. If Dumbledore has a plan, you'll be fine."
"That's what I think too," Harry said, nodding.
He gave the same answer partly because he didn't want Cedric to worry just as he'd told the same comforting half-truth to Cho Chang, who had sought him out anxiously only a day or two ago, asking quietly about his scar. Harry didn't need Sherlock's powers of deduction to figure out the chain: Parvati Patil, the ever-devoted follower of Professor Trelawney, had mentioned it to her twin sister Padma in Ravenclaw, and Padma had passed it along to Cho.
He hadn't wanted Cho to worry either. So he'd told her the same thing: that Dumbledore already had a solution in mind. Like Cedric, Cho's faith in Dumbledore was absolute, the moment she heard he knew about it, the tension visibly drained out of her.
"Still, you should take care of yourself," she had said, holding his arm with a look of earnest concern.
It had made Harry feel quite happy.
After they were done discussing the scar, Cedric furrowed his brow thoughtfully. "That said, you really should take care of yourself." His words echoed Cho's almost exactly. Harry had just started to nod in agreement when Cedric added:
"So maybe in the third task, you and the others should hang back. Let me handle the traps and dangers inside the maze."
Harry looked at Sherlock. Sherlock gave a slight, composed nod. "That would be for the best."
"Ha — well, I am the captain, after all. I ought to be useful for something." Cedric laughed, and there was a note of quiet pride in his voice.
"You were already useful," Sherlock said evenly. "You got rescued by us in the second task."
Cedric paused then burst out laughing. "Fair point. That time, I really do owe you two."
After a year together, he had come to know Sherlock's character reasonably well. He understood now why Sherlock had so few friends: that blunt, unfiltered honesty was simply not something most people could handle. But once you accepted it, you found that Sherlock was, in fact, a remarkably interesting and deeply reliable person.
In the weeks that followed, the champions from all three schools threw themselves into intensive preparation by whatever means they could devise. No one knew exactly what obstacles the maze would hold, but compared to the first and second tasks, the third was at least a known quantity: find the Triwizard Cup somewhere in the maze, while navigating whatever dangers stood in the way.
During this time, Fleur sought Sherlock out with a slightly anxious look on her face, wanting to know whether Mycroft had mentioned her during the Easter holidays.
When she learned that Mycroft hadn't brought her up at all, she exhaled with obvious relief, her expression softening into one of quiet contentment.
"Sherlock, I can call you that, yes?"
"Yes."
"The Cup is going to be yours, yours and Harry's!" Fleur said with a burst of enthusiasm. "Those Durmstrang boys still haven't grasped the situation. I heard Krum even tried to provoke you?"
Hearing this, Sherlock spent exactly three seconds in consideration, and arrived at the conclusion that it was almost certainly Ron who had let that slip. In some ways, that was something Ron and Hagrid had in common: neither of them was good at keeping things inside.
The difference was that Ron at least had a sense of what ought and ought not to be said. If you asked him to keep a secret, he could. Hagrid, on the other hand raised as he was on a diet of Veritaserum, as far as anyone could tell was another matter entirely, and best left unmentioned.
"It wasn't really a provocation," Sherlock said. "More of an ordinary exchange of words."
"Which is exactly why I say they can't read the room," Fleur laughed. "All I need is for us not to finish last."
With Beauxbatons currently sitting in second place, if Hogwarts took the Cup in the third task, her wish would be granted.
But her ease didn't last long.
As June arrived, the weather grew increasingly warm, and the atmosphere inside the castle grew taut with excitement in equal measure. Almost everyone was anticipating the third task to be held one week before the end of term and the corridors were full of students hashing out strategies for the maze.
"I don't get it," Ron said, flopping onto a sofa in the Gryffindor common room with a defeated air, spreading his hands. "What exactly is everyone so excited about? The moment you three go into that maze, we can't see a thing we'll just be standing around outside, waiting."
"It was the same with the second task, and everyone was still just as excited," Ginny shot back flatly, rolling her eyes. "Honestly, I don't know what the organizers were thinking. Three tasks, and two of them can't even be watched properly from the stands. It's a real disappointment."
You can read more than 40 chapters on:
patreon.com/MikeyMuse