"Not at all!"
The moment Dumbledore asked whether they minded getting wet, Harry shook his head without hesitation.
He even found Dumbledore slightly funny for asking. For the sake of destroying a Horcrux, what did it matter if they were soaked to the bone?
Sherlock simply shrugged and said nothing.
Having satisfied himself that Sherlock and Harry could handle themselves, Dumbledore seemed to drop all restraint. Without warning his movements turned quick and nimble almost youthful. With one light leap he slid from the boulder into the water and swam towards the dark fissure in the rock face.
What surprised Harry was that Dumbledore had tucked his wand between his teeth, and was swimming in a breaststroke—each pull through the water was powerful/
Harry glanced at Sherlock.
Sherlock tilted his head slightly, then simply stepped off the edge in a leap of faith.
Harry followed without a word.
The moment he hit the water; Harry couldn't suppress a shudder. It was bitterly cold—hard to imagine this was August, though the cloudy sky certainly didn't help.
He was relieved that before the second task of the Triwizard Tournament, Sherlock had put him through swimming drills. That training was paying off now, when it mattered.
Just as Dumbledore had implied, once their clothes were soaked through they became heavy and bloated, dragging at their bodies like lead weights.
Dumbledore led the way at a steady pace—neither fast nor slow.
Sherlock moved with his ease, arms pulling through the water with power, his body cutting through the current with no apparent effort.
Harry consciously quickened his stroke. Each time he surfaced to breathe, his lungs filled with the sharp, briny reek of salt and seaweed.
In that moment, Sherlock's dark shape ahead was like a lantern guiding him forward.
After a short time, the fissure widened into a pitch-black passage.
Sherlock's sharp eyes caught the tidemark stains on the passage walls—clear evidence that at high tide this tunnel flooded completely.
The rock walls on either side were slicked with dark mud, barely three feet apart, gleaming like tar in the brief flicker of Dumbledore's wand light.
Occasionally a small clump of mud would break free from the wall and drop into the water with a dull plop.
A little further in, the passage bent sharply to the left and continued deeper into the cliff.
Sherlock kept close behind Dumbledore, Harry kept close behind Sherlock, and all three swam in single file, pushing through the narrow dark.
The cold water worked steadily at Harry's skin. Gradually he felt the numbness creep into his fingers until his strokes had gone stiff and mechanical.
Sherlock fared considerably better. When his hand brushed the rough, wet rock in passing, his fingertips could still read every groove and ridge with perfect clarity.
More than that, he was quietly committing the layout to memory. In an unfamiliar environment, the details mattered.
At last, Sherlock saw Dumbledore rise from the water ahead of him and stand upright.
Silver-white hair lay plastered to his cheeks, his black robes glittering with water, the drops falling from the hem and pooling in small puddles at his feet.
Sherlock looked up. A rough flight of stone steps wound up ahead of them, leading to a wide, open cavern.
By the time Sherlock had climbed the steps and begun to take in the cave around him, Harry was hauling himself up behind him with considerable effort. Water cascaded from his soaked clothes and streamed down the steps in a long, dark trail.
"Finally, out of there," Harry muttered, exhaustion plain in his voice.
The cave air was still and bitterly cold. Harry shook uncontrollably, his teeth were beginning to chatter.
Without a word, Sherlock drew his wand and cast a warming charm.
Harry felt a wave of heat spread through him from the inside out. The cold dissolved; his clothes turned dry and warm, as though they had been held before a roaring fire.
He let out a long breath of relief then registered what had just happened, pulled out his own wand, and returned the warming charm to Sherlock.
Dumbledore: "—"
He shook his head slightly, then moved to the centre of the cave. He raised his wand high and began to turn slowly on the spot, examining the walls and ceiling with great care.
"Yes," Dumbledore said. "This is the place."
"How can you tell?" Harry asked.
"It has encountered magic before." Dumbledore said, briefly and certainly.
He fell silent again and resumed his slow rotation, clearly studying something in the walls that Sherlock and Harry could not see.
"This is only the anteroom—the entrance hall," Dumbledore said after a moment. "We need to go further in. What stands between us and that is Voldemort's work, not nature's—"
He moved to the cave wall and ran the tips of his long fingers along it.
Then, after a pause, he began to speak in a low voice—in a strange language neither of them could follow.
He circled the cave twice from the left, touching the rough wall wherever he could reach, stopping occasionally to probe some section with his fingers—tracing upward and down, carefully.
Finally he came to a halt and pressed his open palm flat against the stone.
"Here," he said. "We go in here. The entrance is concealed."
Harry didn't ask how he knew.
He had seen this kind of thing too many times now.
Flashy theatrics—smoke, bangs, spectacular displays were the hallmarks of lesser practitioners.
Those of real ability were like Sherlock and Dumbledore: observation alone, eyes and hands, was enough to find what was hidden.
It had to be said, what Dumbledore had just done was remarkably similar to the way Sherlock approached a case.
Dumbledore stepped back a few paces from the wall and levelled his wand at the rock.
At once a glowing outline appeared—an archway blazing with brilliant white light, as though a powerful source of illumination burned just beyond the stone.
"It's working!"
Harry said, excited—but even as he spoke, the outline vanished. The rock was solid and blank again, exactly as before.
Dumbledore didn't try another spell. He simply stood and stared at the wall with complete concentration, as though something written there neeeded all his attention.
Harry kept still. He had no wish to break Dumbledore's train of thought.
But Sherlock spoke up without warning: "Too simple for him, isn't it?"
"What do you mean, Sherlock?"
Harry didn't quite follow, but Dumbledore understood instantly. He gave a slow nod and drew a short silver knife from his robes.
"Sir—what are you—what are you doing?"
Harry went rigid at the sight of it.
"Sherlock is right. There is a price to pay."
"A price?" Harry stared from Sherlock to Dumbledore. "You mean we have to give something to open it?"
"Obviously," Sherlock said, with a thin, cold smile. "Very much in keeping with his character."
"And that something is—?"
"Blood."
"Blood?"
"Yes. Which is why Sherlock called it too simple."
Dumbledore's tone carried a note of contempt—and something close to disappointment: "I share his view. The intention is merely to force the intruder to weaken themselves before entering. What a pity. Once again, Voldemort has failed to understand that there are things far more terrible than physical harm."
"Professor!"
Harry saw Dumbledore raise the knife and lurched forward. "Let me—I'll do it—"
But Sherlock caught his arm. Harry turned to him, startled.
"You won't stop him," Sherlock said quietly.
And indeed, just as he said it, Dumbledore only smiled. A flash of silver, a bright spill of red—dark crimson drops scattered across the rock face in a gleaming spray.
"You're a good person, Harry. But moments like this call for Sherlock's kind of practicality—"
As he spoke, Dumbledore drew his wand tip along the deep cut he had opened in his arm. The wound sealed itself at once.
"Ah. That appears to have done it."
The blazing white outline of the archway had reappeared on the cave wall—and this time it held. The blood-spattered section of rock simply vanished, leaving a dark opening in its place, with what seemed like absolute darkness beyond.
"Simple. And dramatic."
"I agree with you entirely, Sherlock—but we still cannot afford to underestimate him."
Dumbledore spoke and stepped through the archway.
Sherlock gestured for Harry to follow, then took up the rear himself and as he did, he lit his wand. Once they were fully inside the passage, the light from Dumbledore's wand alone was not quite enough.
Harry noticed what Sherlock had done and quickly cast his own Lumos.
An extraordinary sight opened before them.
They were standing on the shore of an enormous black lake. The water stretched away in every direction without end; the far bank invisible. The cavern above them soared out of sight; even craning back, they could not find the ceiling.
Far out across the lake, somewhere near what might have been the centre—a dim, pale green light hovered and shimmered, reflected in the dead stillness of the water below.
Apart from that eerie green glow and the light from the three wands, the darkness was absolute—deep and dense in a way that felt unnatural, as though it had weight and substance. The wand light barely seemed to cut through it; this darkness was thicker than ordinary dark, more resistant.
"We walk on," Dumbledore said gravely. "Take great care not to step into the water—stay close behind me. Do not stray."
And so, they began to make their way along the narrow strip of rock at the water's edge.
Their footsteps rang out in sharp, flat echoes as they moved.
They walked on, and on—but the scene around them did not change. On one side, the rough cavern wall; on the other, the black lake, smooth and motionless as a mirror, with that cold green light burning at its heart.
Harry found the oppressive silence of the place increasingly hard to bear. It pressed in on him, unsettling and heavy, and he found himself wanting to speak just to break it.
"Sherlock—where do you think the Horcrux is hidden?"
He kept his voice low, not wanting to disturb Dumbledore.
"My dear friend, you may be overestimating me."
Since entering the cave, Sherlock had been taking in every detail of his surroundings. At Harry's question, a slight smile crossed his face.
"Even I cannot draw conclusions when there isn't enough evidence."
"Ah." Harry couldn't keep the disappointment from his voice.
He had rather assumed Sherlock would be able to look around and immediately deduce which mechanism concealed the Horcrux.
"Yes," Sherlock said.
He glanced at Harry and read him at once—his friend was desperately eager to leave this place. The atmosphere was clearly weighing on Harry more heavily than on either Sherlock or Dumbledore. His psychological fortitude wasn't quite strong enough yet.
The thought prompted a fond laugh: "Though I can't identify the precise location, I do have one suggestion."
"What suggestion?" Harry perked up immediately.
"Why not try Accio?"
"...What?"
Harry stared at him. That was an option?
"Harry, I think that's an excellent idea," Dumbledore said, breaking his silence.
"Really, sir? You're not—?"
Harry half-suspected Dumbledore was humouring him.
"Certainly." Dumbledore paused and turned to look at them both, with a smile. "I think Sherlock's idea is the most straightforward way to establish exactly what we're dealing with."
"Agreed." Sherlock nodded and gestured for Harry to go ahead. "Isn't this rather your speciality?"
Thinking of the Triwizard Tournament, Harry steadied himself, raised his wand, and called out clearly:
"Accio Horcrux!"
With a sound like an explosion, something enormous and bone-white erupted from the black water twenty feet away—
—and before Harry could make out what it was, it was gone again, leaving the surface heaving in deep, spreading ripples.
Harry stumbled back in shock. He was about to collide with the cave wall when Sherlock's hand caught him and held him.
"Evidently, if we attempt to seize the Horcrux directly, something responds," Sherlock said, with a light, humourless laugh. He shook his head. "Or rather—they respond. Plural."
"My thoughts exactly, Sherlock. There is more than one. Do you have any further suggestions?"
"Isn't that your domain?"
Sherlock sounded almost idle. "You're the expert on this kind of thing."
"Yes—but right now I find I need you to think alongside me."
"Very well—"
Sherlock rolled his shoulders and paced slowly along the water's edge for a moment.
Then he raised his head.
"My assessment: the Horcrux is not on the lake floor. What we need now is simply a way to reach the centre of the lake safely."
"Good. Go on."
"Go on? Professor Dumbledore, you taught Tom Riddle. You know his methods far better than I do. If I must say something further—" he paused. "Magic always leaves traces. I'm simply not the one equipped to find them."
"You're right. Magic always leaves traces—and sometimes very obvious ones."
Sherlock's words seemed to have genuinely sparked something.
This time, Dumbledore did not feel along the wall as before. Instead, he moved his hands slowly through the open air, as though searching for something invisible—something he could close his fingers around.
"Ha."
A few seconds later, Dumbledore brought both hands together—and gripped something in the empty air.
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