Dumbledore flicked his wrist and raised his wand over the rim of the cup. "Aguamenti!"
Clear droplets instantly gathered within it, and in the blink of an eye the goblet was brimming with clean, transparent water.
Fine mist still clung to the outside of the glass, glimmering faintly in the dim light of the cave.
Harry stepped forward at once, took the cup in both hands, and carefully lowered himself to one knee, bringing the rim slowly toward Sherlock's pale, bloodless lips. "Here's water, Sherlock! Drink—quickly!"
But at the very instant the rim was about to touch Sherlock's lips, the water that had just filled the cup vanished without a trace.
No sound. No mark. As if it had never existed at all.
Harry's hand froze in mid-air. The goblet was empty.
He stared at it in stunned disbelief, then looked at Dumbledore.
Dumbledore's face had gone utterly grim. He raised his wand at once. "Aguamenti!"
The cup filled again, brimming to the top.
But the moment he brought it to Sherlock's lips, the water vanished a second time.
Silence fell over the cave. Only the slap of the lake against the rocks grew clearer—and colder.
In that moment, even the bewildered Harry understood.
Voldemort.
He and Dumbledore turned their gaze simultaneously toward the ink-black water of the lake.
It shimmered with a faint, unsettling light in the darkness, its surface rippling as though issuing a silent invitation.
Or rather: a lethal lure.
"Water—"
Sherlock spoke again. His voice was barely a breath.
What surprised them both was that Sherlock, as though he could sense the direction of water, turned his eyes with great effort toward that black surface exhaling its reek of death.
More surprising still: though he had seemed moments ago to have no strength left at all, he now struggled to crawl toward the lake.
A cold dread—sharper than the chill of the cave itself—seized Harry's heart.
Dumbledore watched Sherlock's movements, his expression growing heavier by the second.
In that moment, he understood Voldemort's design completely.
It was a trap of cruelty—each mechanism locking into the next, a closed and merciless circuit.
Voldemort had reckoned that no single person could drink the potion guarding the Horcrux alone, because the agonies it induced would eventually strip away the will to continue. A second person was therefore needed to force the first to keep drinking.
With that in mind, Voldemort had conjured the boat that could carry only one.
As long as two people could never reach the island together, an apparently insoluble dilemma was guaranteed.
And even if someone possessed the willpower to drink every last drop, the potion itself would ravage the drinker's body—just as it had ravaged Sherlock's.
His endurance had been extraordinary. He had held out against the assault on his mind in a way few people ever could.
Yet even so, he had been reduced to this state of utter ruin.
Worse still: the potion actively resisted ordinary restorative magic.
And finally—the potion triggered in its drinker an overpowering, consuming thirst. A thirst so absolute it could strip a person of reason, driving them to seek water at any cost.
That was the last link in the chain Voldemort had so carefully forged:
The potion destroyed the drinker's will and strength. It raised a barrier against healing magic. And the maddening thirst it kindled drove them inevitably toward this lake of horror.
'The Dark Lord, demonstrating once again his cunning and his venom.'
Dumbledore drew a long, slow breath.
The cold air filled his lungs and steadied him.
Fortunately, Voldemort was not entirely without blind spots.
"Hold him, Harry," Dumbledore said, his voice low and resolute. "It seems we have no other choice."
Harry nodded sharply and dropped to his knees, pressing his hands firmly against Sherlock's shoulders.
Under ordinary circumstances, he could never have restrained Sherlock. But Sherlock had drunk the potion Voldemort had crafted to guard the Horcrux, and his body had been hollowed of all its strength. Harry held him with ease.
As for Dumbledore—he strode to the water's edge, wand in hand, and simply bent down and scooped a cupful of the cold, dark lake water.
Harry hurried over, took the cup from Dumbledore's hands, and carried it quickly back to Sherlock, bringing it to his lips.
This time, the water did not vanish.
Cool and faintly shimmering, it swayed gently in the cup—and in the gloom of the cave it looked achingly precious.
Harry's heart leapt. He tipped the cup carefully and let the water flow into Sherlock's mouth.
After only two swallows, Sherlock began to cough.
His chest rose and fell in shallow shudders. The grey of his eyes gradually found their focus again.
"The lake water?" he asked, his voice low and hoarse, his gaze settling on the cup in Harry's hand.
"That's right—the water conjured by magic kept disappearing, so—"
Harry started to explain, moving to give him more.
"An old trick," Sherlock said quietly, shaking his head, stopping him. "Nothing new."
The moment his mind had cleared, he had worked it all out in an instant.
That overwhelming thirst had been, more than anything, a psychological craving induced by the potion—not a simple physiological need. With his willpower restored, now that he could think again, he could master it.
The thirst had never been truly physical. It had been, at its root, a thing of the mind.
Two sips were enough to restore his capacity for thought. Sherlock had no intention of drinking further.
"Sherlock—are you all right? Really?"
Harry, seeing Sherlock refuse to drink more, could not help but ask with worry.
"The view from that direction," Sherlock said, "will answer your question. I don't think you'll want me drinking any more of that water anyway."
He turned his gaze toward the lake's edge.
Harry followed it—and his heart seized. He nearly cried out.
A pale, glistening hand had emerged from the water and locked itself around Dumbledore's wrist, its fingernails packed with black mud, dragging him toward the rocks.
That was not the worst of it.
The surface of the lake, which had been still a moment before, now erupted like a pot brought to a rolling boil. Dozens upon dozens of pale heads and arms broke through the black water—men, women, and even children—
They stared with sunken, eyeless sockets, their faces the colour of chalk, their sodden rags trailing behind them as they drifted toward the shore.
'Inferi.'
Corpses revived by the Dark Arts—puppets of terror, set to motion by a Dark wizard's will.
They possessed no consciousness, no soul. Yet they had terrible strength. Under the Dark wizard's command, they attacked all intruders without mercy, seizing and dragging—drowning, strangling.
And because they were not alive, they were immune to most physical harm and to ordinary Stunning Spells.
Harry recoiled as though scalded and let go. The goblet struck the rock with a ringing clang; the remaining water spilled out and seeped away into the cracks of the stone.
He had expected them—Dumbledore had warned him, after all—but he had never imagined there would be so many.
Crammed wall to wall across the dark water, a hundred of them at least.
If Dumbledore hadn't been here tonight—
Harry's scalp crawled at the thought. Cold sweat prickled down his back.
But Dumbledore was here.
And now it was Dumbledore's moment.
He set his feet, tried to wrench his wrist free, but the dead fingers were locked around him like iron, the knuckles nearly buried in his skin.
Dumbledore's eyes narrowed. He raised his other hand and touched his wand tip to the Inferius's arm.
The hand released immediately. The creature dropped back into the lake with a heavy splash.
By then, more had already clambered onto the rocks. Their desiccated fingers scraped against the slick stone with a sound like grinding bone, their hollow, misted eyes fixed on the three of them. A few sockets flickered with a faint, malevolent white light. Their waterlogged clothing dripped steadily, leaving dark trails across the rock.
"Which confirms that refusing to give him more water was the right decision, my dear Harry." Sherlock leaned against the rock—his voice still weak, but his mind already working.
"Otherwise, just the two of us would have no hope against this many Inferi. Ha. The Dark Lord, in the end, failed to account for two things. First: he never imagined a minor wizard would come here. Second: he never imagined that someone like me could exist."
The words had barely left his lips when flame erupted from the tip of Dumbledore's wand, roaring to life. It coiled through the air like something living and formed a blazing ring of fire around all three of them.
The heat drove back the cave's cold. In the darkness, it blazed like a small sun.
The Inferi lurching toward Dumbledore flinched the moment the firelight touched them, staggering and reeling as though struck by some invisible force.
Just as Dumbledore had said.
Fire. The one thing the dead could not endure.
They crashed into one another, filling the cave with low, hollow thuds as they blundered about, desperate to escape the ring of flame.
But the ring held—stiff as iron, a wall of fire that gave not an inch.
Perhaps it was fury at what Voldemort had done. Perhaps it was the knowledge that Sherlock and Harry had suffered because of this place. Something cold and bright passed through Dumbledore's eyes.
He raised his wand hand slightly.
The golden-red fire surged. The ring that had surrounded the three of them began to expand—rolling out like a tide, sweeping toward the Inferi.
Shrieks tore through the cave—inhuman, ragged, high enough to split the eardrum, drowning out the sound of the lake entirely.
The Inferi scrambling back toward the water were too slow. Far too slow.
The fire was pitiless. It swallowed the Dark-magic puppets whole. Outstretched arms carbonized in the blaze; empty sockets blazed with reflected orange light. The figures twisted, blackened, their flesh hissing and cracking—then dissolved into curling threads of smoke and were gone.
In the glare of the fire, Dumbledore's face was carved from shadow and light: brow furrowed, lips pressed together, his wand hand steady and sure.
In moments, the dozens of Inferi that had clambered ashore were utterly destroyed, reduced to ash.
What remained in the water shrank back, cowering, eyes fixed on the wall of flame—and did not come forward again.
Harry stood motionless, heart still thundering in his chest.
He had expected Dumbledore to drive the Inferi back.
He had never imagined Dumbledore would simply annihilate them.
The most powerful magic Harry had ever seen Dumbledore use before tonight had been the Patronus on the Quidditch pitch. So this was what Dumbledore was truly capable of?
One against a hundred. The word terrifying was not sufficient.
"Move. Now."
Dumbledore turned and walked back toward the boat.
Nothing could stop them. The great mass of Inferi had been destroyed; the survivors were too busy fleeing to give chase.
Harry hoisted Sherlock onto his back and followed quickly after Dumbledore.
The three of them squeezed back into the boat as they had come.
The moment they were seated, it skimmed back across the black water, leaving behind the burning rock.
The Inferi still drifting beneath the surface dared not show themselves again.
Harry suspected that if he ever came back here alone, he could handle what was left.
"Sherlock. Are you truly all right?"
"Don't worry," Sherlock said, and a rare, relaxed laugh escaped him. "When all is said and done, what I drank was a potion the Dark Lord made himself. If I were entirely unaffected, that might be a little embarrassing for him."
"This was my fault, Sherlock."
Dumbledore turned to him; his face creased with guilt. "I put you in far too much danger."
"I would correct that to: a narrow escape at worst." Sherlock coughed twice. "Though it does confirm my earlier reasoning—you were right that this was never meant for you." He started to say more.
"Sherlock. Don't talk."
Harry had noticed Sherlock's colour, still far from right, and cut him off gently.
Sherlock nodded and said nothing more.
With a soft thud, they reached the far shore.
Dumbledore stepped out first, then turned to help Harry with Sherlock.
By the time they landed, the fire ring had gone out. No more Inferi surfaced from the lake.
The boat that had brought them back slipped beneath the water once more, and the chain clinked and jangled as it sank back down into the depths.
Dumbledore let out a long breath. "Come. We're going home."
On the way back, the archway sealed itself again. Dumbledore, brisk and unhesitating, drew the blade across his own hand once more, offered his blood, and it opened.
After that, the familiar path.
Dumbledore cast another restorative charm on Sherlock—enough that Sherlock could stand on his own feet at last. Dumbledore kept one arm around Harry's shoulders and the other firm against Sherlock's side.
"Hold tight."
The next instant, the sea-wind and the smell of brine were gone.
The air carried dust now, and the scent of old cloth. They had returned to the city.
Though not, it seemed, to the right street.
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