"No—!"
"Stop—!"
Sherlock's words finally made Voldemort realize that something had gone terribly wrong.
In that instant, he remembered the value of striking first. Without another word, he turned on Sherlock and fired the Killing Curse.
In his mind, what did it matter if Holmes had seen through every layer of his scheme?
You're still in my hands, aren't you?
At this distance, no mind—however brilliant—could outrun the speed of the Killing Curse.
No one in the world had ever survived it. There was only one exception, and he was standing right before him now. Harry Potter.
But tonight, Voldemort intended to put that anomaly to rest forever.
As for Sherlock Holmes—he was nothing more than a small appetizer before the main course.
Voldemort moved with the swiftness of a Dark Lord reborn, sudden and decisive. By any reasonable measure, no one should have had time to react.
And yet someone did.
Crack
Before anyone could blink, a man-height gravestone wrenched itself free of the earth—dirt and roots trailing behind it—and shot across the cemetery, planting itself squarely between Sherlock and Voldemort.
The curse from Voldemort's wand struck the stone-dead center.
Green light erupted. The thick slab cracked violently in two.
The destruction was considerable. But it had not touched a single living body, and so its terrible purpose went unfulfilled.
"How is this pos—"
Voldemort cried out and swept his gaze around the graveyard. Then he drew a sharp breath.
"Dumbledore!"
Every eye turned at once.
There stood Albus Dumbledore, a short distance behind Sherlock and Harry. His silver hair and long beard stirred faintly in the night air. His expression was utterly calm. His wand rested at his side, held loosely, almost carelessly.
In the last heartbeat before catastrophe, the greatest wizard of the age had stepped forward and deflected Voldemort's attack.
Sherlock rolled one shoulder in a slight shrug.
Voldemort's reaction had been a touch more impulsive than he'd anticipated—but he had not been entirely unprepared.
Four years ago, the rock cakes that Hagrid had baked with his own two hands had already proven their remarkable resistance to magic. Given that he was walking into a direct confrontation with Voldemort tonight, he had naturally brought one along.
Dumbledore's timely intervention meant it hadn't been needed. Even so, on this one point at least, the old man had kept his word. he had put Sherlock and Harry's safety first.
"Coming here tonight was foolish of you, Tom."
Seeing that Sherlock was unharmed, Dumbledore allowed himself a quiet breath of relief. Then he turned his gaze to Voldemort and spoke with perfect composure.
"The Aurors are already on their way. You and your friends here are finished."
"Dumb-le-dore."
Voldemort pronounced the name one syllable at a time, his voice saturated with a hatred that ran down to the bone.
When enemies meet, the hatred blazes brightest.
If Harry Potter was his most celebrated nemesis, then Dumbledore was the one man he had ever truly feared.
One was the Dark Lord's destined undoing. The other was the Dark Lord's one genuine terror.
Dumbledore shook his head gently. "Shout as loudly as you like, Tom. It cannot hide the fact that you are afraid."
"Afraid? You'll be dead before I'm finished!"
With a roar of fury, Voldemort raised his wand. A bolt of green light tore toward Dumbledore.
Dumbledore turned on his heel and vanished like smoke. A heartbeat later he reappeared behind Voldemort and swung his own wand in answer.
A stream of white light—soft in appearance but carrying enormous force—surged toward Voldemort.
Voldemort moved with the speed of a coiled snake, vanishing from where he stood and reappearing a dozen feet back, in front of his gathered Death Eaters.
His dark robes snapped in the night wind. Those serpentine red eyes fixed on Dumbledore with cold, unblinking focus.
"I'll give you this much—you've managed to surprise me tonight." He let the admission fall like something distasteful. "But where is my servant? What have you done with him?"
"How remarkable," Dumbledore said mildly. "I didn't know you cared for anyone else, Tom."
He offered a faint smile, then glanced sidelong at Sherlock and Harry—a quiet signal to fall back.
Moonlight lay across his deeply lined face, carrying in it something that looked almost like tenderness.
Now that he had entered the field himself, there was no reason to leave two underage wizards exposed to Voldemort's direct fire.
His gaze moved slowly across the Death Eaters arrayed behind Voldemort. They stood cloaked in darkness, heads bowed, not one willing to meet his eyes.
In that moment Dumbledore's presence seemed to expand, filling the graveyard—the full bearing of a Powerful Wizard in his prime, an invisible weight pressing down on the air itself until even the night felt heavier.
"I cannot understand why any of you still follow him."
His voice was not loud. But it reached every Death Eater clearly.
"As I see it, what you are doing is nothing short of foolish in the extreme. You have an opportunity right now to cut all ties with him—to step away, and begin your lives again…"
"Who do you think you are!"
Facing Dumbledore, Voldemort was plainly less composed than he had been against Sherlock and Harry. The old man's words pricked something raw and undefended, and Voldemort spat in fury, leveling his wand once more. A killing blow screamed out.
His aim was off. Rage had unsteady hands.
The curse struck a dead tree in the distance. The trunk blackened and split.
Even as Voldemort drew in power for another strike, Dumbledore moved his wand.
Sherlock raised an eyebrow.
He could feel the sheer force behind whatever Dumbledore had cast. And it was not dark magic.
Even Voldemort was forced to conjure a silver shield from the air to absorb it.
Dumbledore's spell struck the shield and produced a sound like a great bell struck low—deep, resonant, almost majestic. The shield held, though it trembled at its edges.
About as durable as one of Hagrid's rock cakes, Sherlock noted to himself.
"You won't finish me, Dumbledore," Voldemort called out. His crimson eyes narrowed above the rim of the shield. "Is that the best you've got?"
"We both know there are many ways to destroy a man beyond simply killing him, Tom."
Dumbledore took one measured step forward, his old wand turning slowly between his fingers. "I confess that merely taking your life would leave me unsatisfied."
"Nothing is worse than death, Dumbledore!" Voldemort snarled.
"Then you are profoundly mistaken."
Dumbledore's voice dropped to something almost gentle.
"Your greatest failure, in truth, is that you cannot understand how much worse than death certain things can be—to lose everything worth holding, and to sink for eternity into nothing but loneliness and regret."
He already knew about the Horcruxes. He knew how Voldemort had mutilated his soul in the name of escaping death. Those words landed like a blade slipping beneath armor.
"Avada Kedavra!"
The words cut straight to the wound Voldemort least wished to acknowledge. He howled them out and hurled another bolt of green.
This time, a silver shield rose in front of Dumbledore as well—conjured, it seemed, just in time—and caught the curse squarely.
The green light hit it with a sharp, clean crack. The shield held.
"Thank you, Minerva."
Dumbledore turned his head and addressed the shadows on the far side of the graveyard with a quiet smile.
"Though I don't need your assistance just yet—perhaps you could see to the others first?"
"Gladly—Stupefy!"
Professor McGonagall's voice rang out.
The next instant, a Death Eater standing behind Voldemort went down before he even knew what had happened.
With that first strike, McGonagall had fired the opening shot—and the true battle for the graveyard began.
The professors who had concealed themselves with Disillusionment Charms revealed themselves all at once, their first volley dropping several Death Eaters before the others could even orient themselves.
But with their positions exposed, the element of surprise was spent.
The remaining Death Eaters drew their wands and the graveyard erupted into chaos—shards of stone flying, wind howling, a dozen colors of spell-light weaving through the dark air, the shouts of incantations rising and falling from every direction.
"Petrificus Totalus!"
A Death Eater shrieked the curse and drove a beam of grey light straight at Professor Flitwick.
Flitwick was small, but he was astonishing.
He bounced the tip of his shoe off a nearby gravestone and leapt—light as a leaf caught in a draft. The grey light skimmed the hem of his robes and punched a hole in the earth where he'd stood.
The moment his feet touched the ground, he flicked his wand in answer. "Expelliarmus!"
The red jet hit its mark. The Death Eater's wand flew from his grip, and as he bent to retrieve it, a vine conjured by Professor McGonagall snapped around his ankle and threw him hard against a gravestone. He didn't get up.
Flitwick stood atop the gravestone and took in the field around him.
Even elevated, he was not a tall man.
But in that moment, he projected something enormous—a force of presence that made the Death Eaters hesitate.
In terms of numbers alone, the Death Eaters still held the advantage, even accounting for those already taken down.
But the people who had come tonight were among the finest wizards alive. Even the Ministry's top Aurors might not have matched them.
And so despite the odds, the professors held the upper hand.
"Rather easier than I imagined," Sherlock remarked, surveying the field with practiced composure.
He noticed that Snape, Fudge, and Bagman had still not appeared. Clearly, Dumbledore was keeping something in reserve—characteristically cautious despite overwhelming advantage.
The man is enormously powerful and somehow still overcautious, Sherlock observed internally. Quite the combination.
"Dumbledore!"
Watching the battle turn against him, Voldemort let out another roar.
He finally understood, in that moment, what it meant to make one wrong move and lose the whole board.
He had entered tonight riding the confidence of a body restored, certain that from this graveyard forward he would begin reclaiming everything the first war had denied him.
He had not expected this. Not remotely.
He was willing to believe that in direct combat, he surpassed Dumbledore. But the moment he committed to a duel with Dumbledore, he could not spare a thought for anything else—and Dumbledore's companions were no easy prey. Outnumbering the professors as they did, the Death Eaters were being dismantled anyway.
And there was something he could not bring himself to admit out loud. he had not detected all these people arriving alongside Harry and Sherlock.
He had failed to detect these many wizards under Disillusionment Charms.
"You don't have to raise your voice," Dumbledore said. "I can hear you perfectly well."
A thin tongue of flame curled from the tip of his wand and wrapped around Voldemort, enveloping the silver shield he'd just summoned.
"We've won!" Harry exclaimed, clapping his hands together.
But the words were barely out of his mouth before the flame transformed—coiling, hissing, rearing back as a great serpent—and slithered off Voldemort's body to face Dumbledore with bared fangs.
"It's not that simple," Sherlock said, perfectly composed.
"Whatever one might say about him as a person, his ability is not in question. Dumbledore alone cannot bring him down."
"Ah…"
"Don't worry. Reinforcements are nearly here." Sherlock allowed himself a small smile. "And even without them, we've already made this position unlosable."
As they spoke, another killing curse flew from Voldemort's wand toward Dumbledore.
The man clearly had a favorite spell.
And he was extraordinarily practiced with it.
Unfortunate, then, that the man across from him was Dumbledore.
The silver shield that McGonagall had conjured suddenly expanded, swallowing the curse whole. But after absorbing two Killing Curses in succession, it had done all it could—it shattered and dissolved into nothing.
At the same moment, Dumbledore moved.
Because Voldemort had no honor in a duel.
Even as he fired the Killing Curse, he had quietly directed his conjured serpent to strike at the old man from the flank.
But Dumbledore had not been careless. He handled the curse and flung the serpent high into the air in the same motion.
A moment later, it dissolved into a wisp of smoke and was gone.
In the aftermath, Voldemort's movements began to slow—the unmistakable sign of something Dumbledore had woven into the exchange.
Sherlock watched the two greatest wizards of the age contend with each other, one eyebrow lifted in quiet appreciation.
The magic was genuinely fascinating. But still—
"It rather feels like a turn-based game," he murmured.
He was fairly certain that if he could close the distance with a long blade in hand, he could run Voldemort through the kidney again without too much difficulty.
Then the crack of Apparition—one after another—split the night air.
Wizards materialized across the graveyard. Among them was Sirius Black.
"Ha!"
The moment he arrived, he was already swinging his wand, a beam of red light shooting out and striking a Death Eater mid-duel with Lupin.
"Crabbe? You absolute idiot, Crabbe!"
He gave a satisfied whistle, then called out loudly. "Harry! Sherlock! Are you two alright?"
"This is not the moment for pleasantries, Sirius!"
Lupin cut him off sharply.
"Sherlock—take Harry and get out of here now!"
With the Aurors arriving, Lupin could sense a desperation beginning to build on the other side. Cornered animals were dangerous. In that environment, Sherlock and Harry were actually more exposed than they'd been a minute ago.
Sherlock's strength was his mind. On a battlefield with spells flying blind, the mind offered no protection. No one could predict what might go wrong.
So, while they still held the advantage. get the non-combatants out.
What Lupin had reasoned through in seconds, Sherlock had arrived at in one.
In fact, the moment he'd seen Sirius appear, he'd already acted.
"Accio Goblet!"
When the trophy that Barty Crouch Jr. had transfigured into a Portkey landed in his hand, Lupin was still mid-sentence telling them to leave.
Sherlock was already moving—a quick hand on Harry's shoulder. "We're going—now!"
Something hooked below their navels and a whirl of color tore them away.
"No—!"
A howl of desperation tore from Voldemort's throat.
He reached out to stop them. He was already too late.
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