The moment Snape took in Fudge's pathetic expression; he decided to skip the niceties.
"That's right—I'm threatening you."
"Wh—what?" Fudge staggered as though struck.
Snape kept going. "Feel free to resist. Go on—pull out your wand and curse me. I dare you."
"You—you can't just say things like that... Severus, that kind of thing... one simply doesn't..."
Snape had heard enough. He turned away from Fudge entirely and looked at Dumbledore. "Which of us stays behind?"
Dumbledore's gaze swept slowly over the faces before settling on Professor Sprout. "Pomona—I leave this to you."
Professor Sprout said nothing. She simply walked to where the bound young Barty Crouch lay and gave a quiet nod.
By now, Fudge had understood perfectly well what was coming. Even so, he could not bring himself to let it go without one final struggle.
"Albus, you can't... you really shouldn't..."
"Cornelius, I have no desire to force your hand."
Dumbledore's voice remained unhurried and warm, his gaze steady as he pressed on:
"The evidence is before you. Voldemort waits on the other side of this Portkey—waiting for Harry. But it will be us who greet him: warriors who are ready. Time is short. If you still consider yourself Minister for Magic, if you still feel any responsibility toward the wizarding world, then do not retreat at the very moment that world's fate hangs in the balance."
"Very well."
Fudge drew a long breath. Dumbledore's words had, at least, offered him a way to bow out with something resembling dignity.
He grasped the meaning clearly enough: he was needed as Minister only as a witness. No one was asking him to fight.
Old habits, however, die hard.
Having already capitulated; Fudge couldn't resist one last attempt to reclaim his authority. He drew himself up and put on his most ministerial air.
"I will accompany you. I intend to see for myself what is happening here. But if this is some kind of trick, Dumbledore—I swear to you..."
"Oh, sod off!"
That was the last straw. Snape's patience snapped, and his wand was out before the words had finished leaving his mouth. "One more word out of you and I will stun you where you stand and drag you there like a sack of potatoes."
Professor McGonagall, Professor Flitwick, Professor Sprout, and Professor Lupin all turned to Snape with expressions of profound, unambiguous approval.
He had spoken for everyone.
Even Harry who had never once in his life had cause to cheer for his least favorite professor found himself mentally giving the man thirty-two points.
Brilliant.
Fudge fell instantly silent, as though someone had cast a Silencing Charm on him without warning.
At last, the truth of his situation penetrated fully.
In a matter of life and death, no one cared about his title—least of all the people in this room. If he cooperated, he might salvage the last shred of his dignity. If he fought, he would be hauled along against his will, and even that shred would be gone.
His gaze moved back and forth between the Triwizard Cup on the desk and Dumbledore's face, his expression a tangle of resignation and something that had not yet found a name.
At last, a flicker of desperate resolve crossed his eyes—the look of a man who has finally stopped refusing to believe what he has known all along.
Dumbledore, being the kind of man he was, still gave Fudge that much: a small dignity, extended without fanfare.
"There will be no trick, Cornelius—only the truth you have been running from."
He then turned to the only two underage wizards in the room. "Harry. Sherlock. Are you ready?"
Strictly speaking, none of this should have involved children.
Dumbledore had already been turning over the idea of rebuilding the Order of the Phoenix, an organization whose first requirement for membership was, above all else, adulthood. In the wizarding world that meant seventeen, not the Muggle standard of eighteen. Both Sherlock and Harry still fell short.
Gemma Farley, who had been running messages and errands with quiet tirelessness throughout these weeks, actually met the threshold and Dumbledore had every intention of approaching her.
But.
Some people come into the world already carrying weights that were never meant for their age. Sherlock Holmes was one of them. Harry Potter was another.
And only they could pass through the Portkey without arousing Voldemort's suspicion.
Which was why, beneath Dumbledore's words just now, beneath the steadiness of his voice, there was something that could not quite be kept out: care, and worry, and a regret that had nowhere to go.
"Ready." Harry nodded firmly.
Before coming to the headmaster's office, Harry had been afraid genuinely afraid, at the thought of facing Voldemort again. But now, with the assembled might of Hogwarts around him, and Dumbledore himself at the head—the one person Voldemort had always feared that dread had loosened its grip considerably.
Most of all, it was Sherlock's composure that had steadied him. That quiet, unshakeable confidence.
But the moment the words left his mouth; Sherlock contradicted him flatly.
"No. You're not."
"...Sorry?" Harry blinked. The others in the room turned to look.
Sherlock raised one finger and tapped the side of his own head, lightly but deliberately. "When you're in close proximity to Voldemort, your scar will hurt. Tonight, you will be face-to-face with him, with nothing between you. The pain will be worse than anything you've experienced before, quite possibly beyond what you can endure."
The room went still. Every pair of eyes drifted to the lightning-shaped mark on Harry's forehead.
Under Dumbledore's explicit instructions, the incident in Divination—Harry writhing on the floor while his scar tore at him had never spread beyond those who needed to know. But everyone present knew. They simply hadn't thought of it until now. Leave it to Sherlock to have thought of it first.
"Severus," Dumbledore said quietly, turning to Snape. "The matter we discussed..."
Snape's brow furrowed. Then, after a pause, he gave a single nod. "It can be done."
The tension in Dumbledore's expression eased, visibly and all at once.
He drew his wand and passed it lightly over Harry. The knot in Harry's chest the one he hadn't quite noticed was there loosened at once, and the whole of him felt fractionally lighter.
"This charm will ease the pain that is coming. But ultimately, it will depend on you."
Harry nodded. With Dumbledore's word behind it, Sherlock said nothing further.
In truth, even without Dumbledore's help, the only thing Sherlock could have done was warn him as he had said before. If Harry truly wanted to resist what was coming, the only real defense was to keep Voldemort's emotional interference out of his mind entirely. Seal the door and hold it shut.
In the end, that was always a task for one person alone.
Dumbledore, McGonagall, Flitwick, Snape, Lupin, Sherlock, Harry, Fudge, and Bagman, nine of them moved together to the headmaster's desk.
They formed a circle around the Triwizard Cup, which now sat on the desk transformed into a Portkey, their eyes fixed on it.
"Everyone except Harry and Sherlock will cast a Glamour on themselves. Filius reinforce all our concealment charms so nothing fails in transit. We cannot afford to be seen before we are ready."
Professor Flitwick nodded without a word. As the Charms professor, this was simply his domain.
"Be careful," Lupin said to Sherlock and Harry, his voice low.
"Whether or not we are careful," Sherlock replied without inflection, "is largely irrelevant." He let his gaze pass over the assembled professors. "Our safety depends on your strength. If you fail to protect us, all the caution in the world will not save us."
Lupin had no answer to that.
Snape's eyes stayed on Harry for a long moment, the expression in them unreadable. He opened his mouth as though he intended to say something. Then he closed it. He said nothing at all only tightened his grip on his wand.
"Then."
Dumbledore extended one long finger and held it suspended above the Cup, his face grave.
"On three, we touch the Portkey together. The destination is unknown. Once we land, conceal yourselves immediately every one of you. Be ready to fight from the first moment. Harry and Sherlock are the priority. The instant either of them is in danger, act. Do not hesitate.
"Cornelius. Ludo. You are not expected to fight. Stay hidden."
Everyone nodded, everyone except Fudge, whose pallor by now had all but drained him of color, though even he managed a faint, miserable inclination of the head.
Dumbledore had not expected anything more from him. He even suspected, privately, that at this point the Minister for Magic might not be able to hold his own even against Sherlock and Harry together.
"One..."
Fudge was trembling so badly he had become something between a man and a flame in a gale. Bagman beside him was sheet-white too, but holding together which still put him several leagues ahead of Fudge. Professors Flitwick and Lupin had quietly drifted to stand on either side of them, close enough to intervene if either man lost his nerve at the last moment.
"Two..."
McGonagall's knuckles went white around her wand. Snape leaned forward almost imperceptibly, snake-sharp and poised, ready for anything.
On the floor, young Barty Crouch lay where he had fallen. The corner of his mouth, Sherlock noticed, had curved upward, the crooked smile of a man awaiting his master's triumph.
Professor Sprout kept one eye on him and one eye on the nine people about to use the Portkey, allowing herself no room for distraction.
"Three —!"
It happened in an instant. Before the word had fully left Dumbledore's lips, Sherlock felt a tremendous force seize him by the navel as though a hook had driven through him from the inside out and yanked backward, hard.
The headmaster's office shattered like a mirror, dark wooden bookshelves, Fawkes the phoenix perched on his stand, the whirring silver instruments, Crouch bound and helpless on the floor, the terror and disbelief on Fudge's face all of it fragmenting at once, falling away in pieces, and then gone.
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