After Dumbledore's departure, the circular room looked exactly as it always did.
The long-legged desk stood at its center, scattered with delicate silver instruments that rotated slowly, emitting small, steady puffs of silver smoke. The painted portraits of former Headmasters and Headmistresses dozed in their frames along the walls; one or two cracked open an eye to glance at Harry before shutting it again.
Fawkes the phoenix perched quietly on his golden stand near the door. He was the size of a swan now, his crimson and gold plumage radiant in the light a breathtaking beauty. When he noticed Harry's gaze, he gave his long tail feathers a friendly shake and blinked his bright eyes at him, uttering a soft, melodic note.
"Hello, Fawkes," Harry said with a smile, giving a little wave. Then, almost without noticing, his fingers drifted to his forehead, gently brushing the scar.
The pain had faded. Only a faint, lingering warmth remained and somehow that eased the tight knot in his chest.
His eyes moved to the wall behind Dumbledore's desk. The Sorting Hat sat quietly on its shelf, old and battered. Beside it hung a sword, silver-bright, its hilt set with great rubies that scattered points of light across the room.
Harry recognized it immediately. It was the sword Sherlock had pulled from the Sorting Hat in their second year, the sword of Godric Gryffindor himself, a legendary weapon steeped in ancient magic. Sherlock had wielded it to destroy Tom Riddle's diary: Voldemort's first Horcrux.
Then something else on the desk caught his eye.
It was an ugly gold ring, its wide, cracked black stone giving off a faintly sinister energy. Harry's pulse quickened. Between what Sherlock had told him and what he already knew, he recognized it immediately: this was Marvolo Gaunt's ring, another Horcrux, now destroyed.
But the thought of how close that ring had come to killing Dumbledore made Harry's stomach clench with retroactive dread. If Sherlock hadn't intervened in time, the consequences would have been unthinkable. Even now, remembering the story as Sherlock had told it, he felt a cold unease he couldn't quite shake.
He was still considering whether to take a closer look at the ring when the door swung open again and Dumbledore walked back in.
To Harry's astonishment, the person who entered with him was none other than Sherlock, the very person Harry had just been thinking of.
"Sherlock, what are you doing here?" Harry stood up instinctively, surprise written plainly on his face.
"I arranged for Sherlock to be excused from Professor Victor's class," Dumbledore explained. "I felt this matter concerned him directly. And besides—" He turned to glance at Sherlock. "You mentioned to me before that if anything like this were to happen again, you wished to examine the memory directly, rather than receive a secondhand account."
Sherlock raised an eyebrow slightly, a quiet look of understanding crossing his face.
He hadn't known Harry would be here. A student had knocked on the door during Arithmancy and handed Professor Victor a note; Victor had immediately sent Sherlock to the Headmaster's office. Even with his considerable powers of deduction, he hadn't anticipated this.
Still, he had made that request of Dumbledore once before, after they had retrieved the Gaunt family ring. He preferred to observe memories in their original form rather than hear them filtered through someone else's recollection. After all, the same memory, seen through different eyes, could yield entirely different information.
His gaze rested briefly on Harry's face.
"Your scar hurt again?" he asked.
Trust you to work that out, Harry thought at once certain, as he always was, that Sherlock had arrived at the conclusion through observation and inference, not because Dumbledore had told him.
"Yes," Harry said.
He was about to launch into a full account of what had happened in Divination when he recalled Dumbledore's earlier instruction. He glanced at the headmaster, a silent question in his eyes.
"Go ahead, Harry," Dumbledore said, gesturing for both Harry and Sherlock to sit as he settled back into his own chair. "I asked Sherlock here precisely because I want him to hear this. He may notice things that you and I might overlook."
It was only then that Harry realized: Dumbledore's "friend" had been Sherlock all along. He had half-expected it to be Professor McGonagall, or perhaps Snape.
"A sound decision," Sherlock said, with a brief nod of approval toward Dumbledore.
Harry took a steady breath and began.
Perhaps because he was speaking to Sherlock, he was especially precise, leaving nothing out. He described entering the stuffy Divination classroom, quietly opening a window to let in some air because the heat had been unbearable.
He described drifting to sleep under the drowsy drone of Professor Trelawney's voice. He described the dream itself: Voldemort and an ally, speaking of a conspiracy connected to the Triwizard Tournament.
And he described the moment the ally spoke Sherlock Holmes's name and the volcanic fury that erupted in Voldemort's response, followed by the Cruciatus Curse, which had driven Harry to the floor in agony.
Throughout the account, Sherlock and Dumbledore listened in complete silence, neither interrupting once.
Dumbledore watched Harry steadily, his gaze deep and still.
Sherlock, meanwhile, drew a slim notebook and pen from inside his robes and wrote quickly as Harry spoke, noting the details he considered significant.
"And that, that was everything," Harry finished at last, letting out a slow breath. The weight in his chest had eased.
Sherlock still hadn't looked up from his notebook. Dumbledore nodded thoughtfully and asked: "I understand. Now, has your scar caused you any pain this year, apart from the time it woke you over the summer holiday?"
"No," Harry said firmly, meeting Dumbledore's gaze. "That's the first time since then."
Dumbledore rose from his chair and paced slowly behind his desk, deep in thought. After a long moment, he opened the cabinet behind him, removed the Pensieve, and set it on the center of the desk.
He pressed his wand to his temple, drew out a shimmering silver thread of thought, and lowered it gently into the basin. The memory swirled and eddied, forming a pale silver whirlpool.
When he had finished, he turned and looked at Sherlock, who was still bent over his notebook, writing.
"Sherlock," Dumbledore said. "What do you make of it?"
Sherlock didn't answer immediately. His fingertips tapped lightly against his knee, and his gaze drifted to Dumbledore's face for a moment as though confirming something before shifting to Harry. Then, carefully, he began:
"This time, you saw the man's face clearly. Correct?"
"Yes."
"You saw the snake as well, the same one as in your previous dream?"
"That's right."
"And did you see Voldemort himself?"
"No, just like last time. Only the back of his chair."
A trace of frustration crept into Harry's voice. He still hadn't managed a clear look at that terrible figure.
"Good. And when this Mr. Smith mentioned my name, Voldemort flew into an impotent rage, lashing out at thin air?"
There was a faint note of dry amusement in Sherlock's voice.
Impotent rage. Harry's mouth twitched despite himself, and he glanced reflexively at Dumbledore.
Dumbledore blinked one silver eyebrow lifted subtly and then his expression settled again, giving nothing away.
Harry collected himself. "Yes," he confirmed.
"Then let me see if I have it right."
Sherlock held out the notebook. Harry took it, and was struck immediately by a sense of déjà vu, Sherlock had done this before, reconstructing the key details of a dream with swift, precise lines, helping Harry remember what his own mind had let slip.
He looked down. In clean, spare strokes, the notebook showed the scene from his dream: a man and a snake facing each other; the shadow of a high-backed chair concealing a vague shape, the silhouette of Voldemort.
"Yes, that's exactly it, Sherlock!"
The image seemed to unlock something in Harry's memory. Details came flooding back, and his voice grew lively:
"The man, the one talking to Voldemort, Voldemort called him Smith! And the snake, Voldemort called it Nagini! And there's more—"
"Well done, Harry. I see you've remembered what I told you."
Sherlock looked up, and for once his expression was openly warm, something quietly approving in his eyes.
"This time, you didn't force yourself to chase the details, so when you saw the sketch, the memory came back whole."
"Of course I remembered," Harry said, sitting up a little straighter with unmistakable pride. "Temporary memory rejection, right?"
Sherlock let out a genuine laugh and clapped Harry once on the shoulder.
"Excellent, my dear Harry. You've come a very long way."
A faint flush crept into Harry's cheeks. He rubbed the back of his head, a little embarrassed.
Then Sherlock turned toward Dumbledore, and his expression shifted at once the warmth was receding, replaced by something focused and precise.
"Based on both of Harry's dreams, and the fact that his scar has responded on both occasions, a few things can be stated with reasonable certainty. First: the scar Voldemort left on Harry is no ordinary scar. It is the expression of a deep connection between Harry and Voldemort."
Harry felt a jolt of unease at those words. A deep connection between him and Voldemort? That sounded rather alarming.
Sherlock continued without pause:
"The curse that failed to kill him did more than rebound Voldemort's power, it bound Harry to a fragment of Voldemort's soul. So, whenever Voldemort draws close, or experiences a powerful surge of emotion, Harry's scar responds with intense pain. It is a form of resonance between their souls."
Dumbledore gave a slow nod.
This confirmed what he had long suspected. He simply hadn't expected Sherlock to state it with such certainty.
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