The waiting room of St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries was lively with noise. The air carried a peculiar blend of potions, antiseptic, and suffering—a smell that clung to the throat and refused to leave.
Witches and wizards in various states of distress and pain crowded the benches and corridors alike, their anxious murmurs and suppressed moans weaving together into a restless undercurrent of sound.
Sherlock, Harry, and Hermione had queued for what felt like an eternity before finally shuffling to the front of the slow-moving line and reaching the reception desk.
Behind the counter, a plump witch with a cloud of frizzy blond hair sat buried in paperwork. Without looking up, she called out in a nasal, clipped voice: "Next!"
It was not, it had to be said, a particularly pleasant sound—sharp and slightly grating against the ambient noise.
Hermione stepped forward at once, positioning herself in front of the wooden reception desk. She glanced at its surface—crosshatched with fine scratches and thought privately that someone might have considered a Reparo or two, before deliberately steadying her voice into something calm and assured.
"We're here to see Gilderoy Lockhart."
She drew a quiet breath. Her silent prayer was a simple one: that the witch would do what she'd done for the last several visitors—rattle off a ward number and wave them through without ceremony.
"Gilderoy Lockhart?"
The name seemed to strike something. The plump blond witch snapped her head up with a speed that was almost startling.
She pushed her old-fashioned round spectacles up the bridge of her nose, and through the thick lenses, her previously bleary eyes went wide with undisguised surprise.
"What's your relationship to him?"
Hermione's heart sank slightly. She felt the invisible furrow form between her brows, though she kept her expression composed.
"We were his students," she replied quickly.
"Students?" The witch repeated the word slowly, as though tasting it, and let her gaze sweep over the three of them—assessing, searching for something she couldn't quite name.
Then, at last, she lowered her head and scrawled a few untidy strokes across a yellowed, dog-eared sheet of parchment.
She took up a fresh quill next, held it poised over a clean white page, and spoke without looking up: "Names."
"I beg your pardon?"
Hermione hadn't anticipated this. A flicker of confusion crossed her face.
"I said—your names." The witch looked up and tapped the tip of her quill sharply against the parchment, twice. Her expression had curdled into open impatience.
"Hermione Granger," Hermione said at once, though a faint edge had crept into her tone.
"You said we," the witch said, eyes sharpening. "Give me the others' names. Don't waste my time."
Her manner was growing more abrasive by the second, as though she were running on fumes and itching for an excuse to ignite.
The slight rise and fall of Hermione's chest revealed the spark of irritation kindling within her. She hadn't seen any of the visitors ahead of them subjected to this. The whole process had been perfectly swift—name of patient, ward number, done.
"Is this really necessary for a visit?" she pushed back. "I didn't see the others being asked this."
"Generally, no!" The witch's expression darkened completely.
She'd been swallowing her frustrations all day, and now she let them out without apology. "But the ward you're trying to access is a sealed ward, and this is protocol. If you don't want to give your names, you're welcome to leave and stop blocking the queue."
Her voice had risen sharply, cutting across the waiting room with startling clarity. Heads turned nearby. Eyes swiveled toward them.
Hermione drew a long, slow breath, her chest rising visibly.
And then a hand settled on her shoulder—steady, and faintly cool.
Sherlock.
She turned to look at him, faintly surprised, and found him giving a small, unhurried shake of his head.
"She isn't lying," he said softly.
The witch let out a short, dismissive sound through her nose and folded her arms.
If Sherlock said so, then there was nothing for it. Hermione pressed her lips together, swallowed her displeasure, and said with reluctance—"Sherlock Holmes. And Harry Potter."
The effect was instantaneous.
The witch froze.
The quill slipped from her fingers with a clatter, rolled twice across the desk, and came to rest dragging a thin smear of ink across the fresh parchment.
"Sherlock Holmes?"
A Healer moving briskly past with a tray of vials pulled up short. The little bottles clinked together as she spun around, staring.
"Harry Potter!"
From somewhere behind them, the shuffling queue dissolved. Necks craned. Heads turned. Gazes locked onto Harry and Sherlock with the intensity of compass needles finding north.
In the span of a second, the noise of the waiting room dropped as though a great hand had pressed down over the sound and muffled it. What replaced it was a different kind of noise: the low, electric hum of excited whispers spreading in every direction.
Someone's jaw had gone loose. Others were already pointing, heads ducked toward their neighbours' ears, voices pitched low and thrilled. The murmuring swelled and rippled like a stone dropped into still water.
Since Harry had first entered the wizarding world, his appearances in public had never failed to draw a crowd.
If anything, the heat of that attention had only grown with time, not diminished. Especially now—with the Ministry's official confirmation that Voldemort had returned, Harry Potter's name had been placed at the very center of everything once more, inextricably tied to the darkness that had come back into the world.
Even Dumbledore and the Ministry's careful effort to bring Sherlock Holmes forward as a counterweight to absorb some of that frenzied attention—had done little to dampen it. If anything, the move had only launched Sherlock's own profile into the stratosphere; his name was spoken now in the wizarding world with a recognition that was fast approaching Harry's own.
Though Harry had more than a decade's head start, of course.
Sherlock was new. Brilliant, striking, rapidly rising—but new. Overtaking a legend of that magnitude was no small feat.
And yet here they were, standing side by side. One plus one, it turned out, was a great deal more than two.
Hermione pressed a hand to her forehead and let out a quiet, weary sigh.
This was precisely why she'd tried so hard to avoid saying their names. She had foreseen exactly this. And it had happened anyway.
As for the plump blond witch behind the counter—all her earlier imperiousness and irritation had vanished entirely. She blinked between Sherlock and Harry several times, eyes wide and faintly uncertain, before letting her gaze linger on Harry's forehead for one long, unmistakable moment. Then she retrieved her fallen quill.
Her fingers trembled slightly as she ran it down the long patient register, scanning quickly until somewhere in the lower middle—she found what she was looking for.
She looked up one final time, and when she spoke, her voice had undergone a complete transformation: soft, almost apologetic, colored with something that verged on flattery.
"Fifth floor. Spell Damage ward. Janus Thickey Ward."
Hermione gave a stiff nod. "Thank you," she said, the words coming out rather more clipped than she'd intended and then she turned, taking with her a Sherlock who appeared totally unruffled by the whole affair, and a Harry who looked as though he would very much have liked to sink into the floor.
She knew she ought to ask for directions. She decided she didn't care. Not a moment longer in this room.
As it turned out, she was right to leave when she did. Even as the three of them walked briskly away, the pointing and the whispering continued—still audible long after they had put considerable distance between themselves and the reception desk.
"Truly insufferable," Hermione muttered under her breath, quickening her pace. The word came out with the quiet exhaustion of someone who had tried to prevent something and failed. "I was doing everything I could to avoid exactly that, and still—"
"It's fine," Sherlock said, a note of dry amusement in his voice. He glanced sideways at Harry, who was still staring at the floor. "My dear Harry. I rather thought you'd be used to this sort of reception by now."
"I am used to it." Harry exhaled heavily. "I just still don't like it."
He understood the curiosity. He didn't begrudge anyone the excitement. But understanding something and being comfortable as its subject were entirely different things.
They walked on. Once they had passed well beyond the waiting room's heavy double doors and into a somewhat dimmer corridor, Hermione stopped a neatly dressed Healer and asked for directions.
Then she led them through the creaking doors and into a narrow, low-lit passage that ran into the body of the hospital.
The interior of St. Mungo's drew Harry out of himself somewhat—or at least nudged the discomfort aside.
The walls were hung with portraits of celebrated Healers from centuries past, their expressions ranging from grave to sagely serene. Crystal bubbles the size of footballs drifted beneath the low ceilings, each one housing a small candle whose warm, wavering light cast everything in amber and shadow.
Healers in green robes hurried in and out of doors, purposeful and preoccupied. From behind one door billowed a yellowish gas that smelled sharply of Sulphur, accompanied by faint, muffled sounds of distress.
They followed the wide stone staircase upward until they reached the fifth-floor landing, then pushed through the heavy doors marked SPELL DAMAGE.
Another corridor, familiar in layout.
At the far end: the door to Janus Thickey Ward—dark wood, solid, and silent.
Hermione reached out and took hold of the cool brass handle. She pulled.
The door didn't move.
"What is it?" Harry asked, noticing her hesitation.
"It won't open." She turned back to them and spread her hands helplessly. "I suppose it must be because it's a sealed ward. We may need to find a Healer to—"
"You're right," said a calm, measured voice behind them, "but there's no need for that."
Harry and Hermione spun around with matching expressions of delighted surprise.
"Professor Lupin!"
Remus Lupin stood a few paces behind them. He looked tired—he always looked tired, lately but his face held its familiar warmth as he observed the three of them.
Sherlock was unsurprised. He gave Lupin a quiet nod of acknowledgment.
"Sirius meant to come as well," Remus said, stepping forward and greeting each of them in turn. His gaze settled on Harry as he explained: "But Dumbledore had something else for him at the last moment."
He drew his wand, aimed it at the lock, and said: "Alohomora!"
The lock gave a soft, decisive click. Lupin pushed the door open and stepped inside, turning slightly to gesture the others in after him.
"This is a long-term ward," he said, lowering his voice as they followed him into the softly lit room. His eyes moved over the space with an expression of quiet sorrow. "The diagnosis was permanent spell damage, I'm afraid. With intensive treatment and a fair amount of luck, there's been some improvement…"
He paused.
"But?" Harry said.
"You'll see for yourselves in a moment."
Lupin exhaled softly and said no more, leading them further into the ward.
Sherlock, for his part, was already doing what Sherlock always did: taking in the room with quiet, systematic attention.
It was clear at a glance that this space had been adapted for long-term habitation. The area around each bed was considerably more personalized than anything they'd passed on the lower floors—books, small ornaments, framed photographs, mementoes accumulated in a way that suggested not days but months, perhaps years, of residency.
The cumulative effect was dense, almost cluttered, and strangely domestic.
Gilderoy Lockhart's bed was not difficult to find.
It was, in essence, a shrine.
His own likeness covered every available surface—photographs of himself in various poses, each more dashingly self-assured than the last, plastered across the headboard, arrayed along the bedside cabinet, pinned to the wall.
As the newcomers approached, the Lockhart in each photograph sprang to life simultaneously: smiling that polished, dazzling smile, waving with cheerful enthusiasm, perfectly delighted to be noticed.
It was, Harry thought distantly, rather like stepping back into the man's Defense Against the Dark Arts office in second year.
As for the real Lockhart—the living, breathing version, he was sitting upright in bed looking remarkably well. He was engaged in conversation with a tall man seated beside him in a chair: a man with a long silver beard, half-moon spectacles, and a pointed hat.
Albus Dumbledore.
"Ah, you've arrived." Dumbledore heard the footsteps and turned, greeting the three of them with his characteristic expression of gentle warmth.
"Hello there! Hello!" said Lockhart.
This was, perhaps, the greater surprise. When he caught sight of the newcomers, Lockhart's face lit up with an enthusiasm that seemed to exceed even Dumbledore's welcome—beaming broadly, waving energetically, like a man who hadn't seen friends in far too long.
He was dressed in a robe of pale lavender silk, immaculately pressed. His golden curls were arranged with their usual meticulous care. His handsome face glowed, his teeth caught the light. He looked, in every possible way, like someone who was not remotely ill.
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