The situation had reached a point where Dumbledore could no longer deny Sherlock's words.
The wizard hailed as the greatest of the age had just been relieved of something from his own hand—barehanded, without magic, by a fifteen-year-old boy.
It did, certainly, look rather unwise.
Sherlock's movement had been so swift that only now did Harry finally register what had happened.
He stumbled half a step forward, both hands instinctively reaching toward his best friend. "Sherlock, you—how could you—"
"Don't look at me like you've just seen a Boggart, dear Harry."
Sherlock tilted his head slightly, even managing a small joke, though his fingers gripped the crystal goblet harder than usual.
He swirled the liquid inside—luminous, softly glowing—and watched the green trails it left sliding slowly down the glass.
"If this potion truly works the way I've deduced—preventing us from retrieving the Horcrux—then I am unquestionably the right person to drink it."
"Why? Why can't it be me?"
Harry's voice pitched high. His palms were damp with sweat from clenching them so hard, his gaze locked on that goblet and the strange, unsettling green draught within it.
"Because in sheer force of will, neither of you can match me—don't rush to argue—"
Sherlock's tone was level, as though the potion posed him no particular difficulty.
Harry and Dumbledore both opened their mouths at once. Sherlock raised a hand to cut them off, with the uncanny timing of someone who had seen it coming. "Deep within yourselves, you each carry memories of pain you cannot face. Don't you?"
He paused, letting his gaze sweep across Dumbledore's suddenly grave expression before settling back on Harry's furrowed brow. "I don't."
Before the words had fully landed, he was already dipping the goblet back into the basin, drawing it up full.
"Besides, I've already started. Switching now would be nothing but wasted time—better to leave it to me."
"Professor, this is—"
Harry turned instinctively toward Dumbledore, his eyes full of appeal and helpless frustration.
From deep within the cave came the soft sound of lake water lapping against stone, carrying a bone-deep chill that made the brief silence heavier still.
Dumbledore's expression shifted several times—from the initial shock to a firm severity.
At last, he drew a long breath, his silver beard was trembling faintly with it. "Sherlock is right. Since he has already begun, let him finish."
"But—"
Harry wanted to argue. The words rose in his throat and caught there.
"Harry, you need not blame yourself. This is my error."
Dumbledore looked at Sherlock for a long moment—a gaze that held surprise, apprehension, and something else which was barely perceptible: admiration. "But I give you my word. Whatever happens, I will bring you both out of this cave unharmed."
With nothing left to say, Harry could only clench his fists and take his place beside Dumbledore at the basin's edge, watching in silence.
The air in the cave seemed to have thickened, curdled by the potion's strange miasma. Only the lake's murmur moved through it.
And then, beneath their stunned gazes, Sherlock tipped the goblet back and drained it in one swallow.
The emerald liquid slid down his throat. He did not so much as flinch.
One goblet. Two. Three.
Each motion flowing into the next, as though what he was drinking were not a potion Voldemort had devised to guard a fragment of his own soul, but nothing more than plain water.
Harry watched in rising horror.
His hands gripped the basin's rim so hard his knuckles had gone white, his fingertips pressing into the cold cracks in the stone, the faint sting not reaching him at all.
Dumbledore appeared composed. He was not. His wand hand was rigid, his gaze locked on Sherlock's face, his silver brows drawn into a tight knot, his breathing slightly faster than usual.
When Sherlock raised the fourth goblet and tipped it back, his body gave a sudden, violent shudder.
The crystal goblet struck the basin's edge with a sharp, ringing clink.
"Sherlock!"
Harry couldn't stop himself—he lurched forward half a step before forcing himself to stop.
He could see clearly: Sherlock was still clenching his jaw, still fighting to hold himself still.
But one of his hands had locked around the basin's rim the way Harry's own had moments ago, the veins on the back of it were rising faintly.
The other had gone instinctively to his abdomen, fingers digging into the fabric.
More alarming still—his eyes had closed, sometime in the last moment. His lashes casted shadows beneath them, yet did nothing to conceal the paleness spreading across his face.
"Sherlock—can you hear me?"
Harry heard his own voice trembling. His throat felt stopped up with something, dry and aching.
"Of course I can, my friend."
Sherlock's voice came up from somewhere in his chest and it brought Harry and Dumbledore no comfort at all.
They had never heard Sherlock speak like this. Hoarse, badly—like something had been scraped raw inside his throat. It reminded Harry, absurdly, of the sounds Sherlock made when he neglected his violin for too long.
Still, Sherlock finally opened his eyes, slowly.
There was residual pain in them, something that hadn't fully cleared—yet he managed to pull his mouth into something approaching a faint smile. "Don't worry. This level of pain is still within manageable limits."
"Throat, oesophagus, the stomach—distinct burning throughout, and each dose intensifies it."
He paused. His breathing was faster now, his chest rising and falling. "Extrapolating from the current rate of increase, the pain should peak around the ninth goblet. I believe I can hold."
In ordinary circumstances, Sherlock's analysis came fast and razor-sharp, each step following the last with a logic that left no room for doubt.
But now, every sentence cost him a pause.
His voice remained steady. The effort behind it did not.
Fine beads of cold sweat had broken at his temple, sliding down his cheek, soaking into his collar.
"Sherlock!"
"Sherlock—"
Harry and Dumbledore spoke at nearly the same moment, their voices full of the same anguish.
Dumbledore most of all. He looked at Sherlock's pale, stiff face, and understood better than anyone what that burning sensation actually meant—that "manageable" was the furthest thing from honest. Yet Sherlock remained calm enough to calculate. Even now.
Sherlock lifted the fifth goblet and swallowed it down.
But this time, setting the goblet aside, he finally lost the battle with his legs. He sank slowly down onto the rock beside the basin.
Under Harry and Dumbledore's anxious eyes, he settled his back against the cold stone wall and drew one slow, deep breath.
"As expected—this thing also drains strength rapidly…" His voice had weakened further. "Forgive me, Harry. I no longer have the strength to lift my arm."
"Sherlock—it's all right. We're nearly there."
Harry blinked hard against the burning behind his eyes, steadied his hand, and tilted the goblet carefully to Sherlock's lips.
He despised himself for it—the helpless, suffocating guilt of knowing how much pain each swallow caused, and still being the one to pour it in. The feeling was almost more than he could hold.
Sherlock swallowed the last mouthful and closed his eyes. "Even having prepared for it," he said, voice stripped to almost nothing, "I find I quite dislike this."
His voice faded. He exhaled once, long and slow—and slumped forward onto the stone.
"No—!"
Harry flung the goblet into the basin and threw himself across the floor toward Sherlock, blind to the golden locket coiled beneath the cup.
He rolled Sherlock over onto his back and looked at him—jaw slack, mouth open, eyes shut—
And something in Harry broke.
"No!" He shook him, frantic. "No—you're not dying, you said it wasn't poison—wake up, wake up—please—Sir, Dumbledore!"
Dumbledore stepped over in a single stride. He reached into the basin and drew out the locket, tucking it inside his robes.
"Move aside, Harry."
Harry scrubbed his eyes and stumbled back.
Dumbledore leveled his wand at Sherlock. "Rennervate!"
A flash of red.
Sherlock did not move. His chest did not rise. His pallid face in the cave's dim light held no sign of life.
"No—how—"
Harry's voice broke on the word. He looked from Sherlock's still face to Dumbledore's. "Sir—"
"Voldemort's malice runs deeper than we imagined, Harry."
Dumbledore's voice was low and grave, edged with a severity Harry had not heard before. "This potion, I suspect, is his own invention. The dark magic within it does not merely torment the drinker—it actively resists any magical intervention once it has entered the body."
"Then—then what do we do?"
Harry had lost all composure by now.
Dumbledore drew a breath and raised his wand again.
"Anima Revivificare!"
This was no ordinary Rennervate. A beam of white light—brighter and far more substantial than the red that had preceded it—burst from the tip of his wand.
The moment it touched Sherlock's body, it seemed to strike an invisible barrier. A dark resistance. White against black, grinding against each other, and through the grinding came a sound—faint, soft, and deeply unsettling.
Harry held his breath. His heart hammered against his ribs.
Then the white light died—and Sherlock's body convulsed.
"Cgh—ah—"
A sound scraped out of him, faint and wretched.
His lashes trembled violently. Then—slowly, with tremendous effort—his eyes cracked open.
Harry had never seen Sherlock look this way.
Those grey eyes, which in every other moment of Harry's memory had been clear and sharp and alive with thought—they were full, now, of an exhaustion and confusion that had no name.
"Sherlock! Thank God—you're awake!"
Harry wept openly, undone with relief.
Dumbledore let out a long, quiet breath.
"Water…"
And then Sherlock's voice—exactly as it sounded when he had neglected his violin.
"Oh—yes, of course—"
Harry sprang to his feet and reached for the goblet still sitting in the basin.
But Dumbledore was faster.
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