"Let us return to the matter of Marvolo and his son Morfin."
Dumbledore's voice drifted through the dim shack, carrying the heaviness of years within it. His fingertips traced idly along the edge of the table, as though touching the surface of those buried times.
"Marvolo's sentence was six months shorter than Morfin's three years. When he returned from Azkaban, he expected to find his daughter exactly as he'd left her: obedient, waiting, with a hot meal on the table. Just as on any ordinary evening before his imprisonment, Merope, cowering by the stove, timidly bringing the stew to the table.
But he found an inch of dust on every surface. Footprints preserved where no one had walked for months. Cobwebs layered thick on the rafters; the stove cold and black as stone. His daughter, the one he had always dismissed as a Squib had left behind only a farewell note, written in crooked, unsteady letters, telling him everything she had done."
Dumbledore paused, as though composing himself.
"From what I've been able to uncover, the shock of her desertion was likely one of the causes of his early death. Or perhaps he had simply never learned to cook for himself, he may not have known how to bake a loaf of bread. Azkaban had already hollowed him out; he was nothing but skin and bone by the end. He did not live to see Morfin return to the shack."
A note of quiet sorrow colored his voice as he finished.
"So Morfin lived alone here for over a decade," Sherlock said, "until the murders fifty years ago?"
"That's right. When the Ministry found Morfin, he was curled up in a broken chair in the corner, offering no resistance, he was simply taken into custody and led away to Azkaban. The only thing that troubled him was that his father's ring had gone missing. He'd always worn it on his finger.
"'He'll kill me,' he kept telling the officers who arrested him. 'I've lost his ring, he'll kill me for it.'
Those were, more or less, his only words. His mind had clearly deteriorated beyond recovery. He spent the rest of his life in Azkaban, grieving the loss of the last of Marvolo's heirlooms, and was finally buried near the prison walls among the other wretches who died within them.
And that, in fact, is precisely why I brought you here today."
"So your deduction is that Voldemort took Morfin's wand and used it to commit the murders."
Sherlock's brow creased. "But there's still a gap in the account."
"Ah, yes, of course, I haven't told you yet." Dumbledore smiled.
Sherlock gave him a flat look.
Confronted with that expression, Dumbledore laughed.
"I was most fortunate in obtaining a fragment of Morfin's memory. It is very brief, but it provided me with the decisive piece of information."
"Voldemort met with Morfin in person?" Sherlock seized on the key point at once.
"Yes. Do you see, Sherlock?" Dumbledore's gaze was warm with admiration. "That is precisely why I didn't bring you along to walk those two memories in the first place. I need only say one sentence, and you already know it all."
"If something like this comes up again," Sherlock said, looking at him steadily, "I think you ought to let me see the memories before we go anywhere. I find I have quite a growing appreciation for the Pensieve."
"Next time, without question."
Once the promise was given, Dumbledore related the contents of the memory he had retrieved from Morfin.
"On the day before the murders, Voldemort paid Morfin a visit. The combination of Parseltongue and a face that bore a striking resemblance to Tom Riddle Sr. told Morfin immediately who the young man was, Merope's son by Tom Riddle Senior.
Voldemort asked Morfin about Marvolo and about the elder Tom Riddle, and learned from Morfin the truth of his mother's marriage. When Morfin woke the next morning, he found himself alone on the floor, Marvolo's ring gone from his hand.
"That is the reason I believe the crime was not Morfin's doing."
Dumbledore watched Sherlock, the admiration in his eyes deepening.
"It was this crucial fragment of memory that first made me suspect Voldemort. And it is precisely this that I find so remarkable about you, Sherlock, you saw through to the truth without ever having laid eyes on that memory."
"Your manner was part of what led me to my deduction, sir." Sherlock shook his head slightly. "I suspect you already had your doubts before you ever found that memory. Otherwise, what would have brought you to Azkaban to seek out Morfin at all?"
"You give me far too much credit, Sherlock." Dumbledore shook his head.
"As I said, I came upon Morfin's memory by sheer fortune. He had held onto it all along, the true memory, intact but he had already confessed, and who would ever think to probe the mind of a convicted man? As it happened, I was in the midst of trying to piece together Voldemort's past and so I went to visit him in Azkaban.
"Forgive me if this sounds immodest, but without considerable skill and a great deal of highly advanced Legilimency, I could never have drawn that fragment out. Once I saw what it contained, I attempted to secure Morfin's release. But the Ministry had not yet reached a decision when Morfin died."
Dumbledore drew a long breath.
"My conclusion, then, is the same as yours: Voldemort stunned his uncle, took his wand, crossed the valley, and went to the Riddle house. He killed the Muggle who had abandoned his witch mother, and disposed of his Muggle grandparents alongside him. In one act, he erased the branch of his family he considered an embarrassment, and took his revenge on the father who had never wanted him. The seeds of his hatred were sown that day.
Then he came back here, performed his complex bit of magic implanted a false memory in his uncle's mind, replaced the wand beside its unconscious owner, took the ancient ring, and walked away without a backward glance."
Dumbledore's expression shifted into something more complicated a mixture of anger, grief, and a chill that had not entirely faded.
"The Ministry never imagined that Voldemort had done anything to Morfin. He was still an underage wizard, after all. But whatever Morfin may have been, he did not deserve to die in a cell with a murder charge he never committed."
"I share your view entirely, sir," Sherlock said quietly. "Morfin deserved Azkaban but for the crimes he actually committed. Not for something he never did."
Dumbledore nodded, and continued. "I will say, it is a deeply frightening thing that an underage wizard was capable of all this. It would have occurred to no one, that a boy of sixteen could have a mind so ruthless and methods so skillful."
Sherlock watched the unease that had settled on Dumbledore's face, and said, calmly: "But this particular boy was Voldemort. So, it all makes sense, doesn't it? As you've said before, he was showing signs of this even before he arrived at Hogwarts."
"Exactly which is what makes him so dangerous, and why we must find the Horcruxes as quickly as possible. We cannot afford to give him any room to recover."
Dumbledore's eyes regained their resolve.
"Which is why we are here today."
Ah. And there's the thread that pulls us back to the main story at last.
"Then I suppose this is where I come in?" Sherlock rose from his chair and brushed the dust from his coat. "Finding things I'm rather better at that than you are."
Dumbledore inclined his head.
"This is his mother's home. His only connection to the Gaunt family. I suspect he may well have hidden a Horcrux here."
"A deduction," Sherlock corrected, drawing on a pair of gloves and producing a magnifying glass faintly enchanted by magic. "And one I think is highly probable, as you said. It is a part of his roots. For Voldemort, a place like this would carry a particular kind of significance."
"Sherlock, do not touch anything on your own."
Dumbledore's tone was suddenly sharp. "If our deduction is correct, Voldemort will have protected it with a great deal of powerful magic."
"Perfectly understood. I find, you retrieve." Sherlock waved a hand, his manner easy, but with a quiet certainty underneath it that left no room for doubt.
Dumbledore couldn't help but smile.
He did believe, if a Horcrux was truly hidden here, that he would eventually find it himself.
But he also knew, with a certain instinctive confidence, that Sherlock would find it faster. Voldemort's nature, after all, was to rely on magic, to trust that raw power and elaborate enchantments were sufficient to keep any secret hidden. He had never imagined the sort of person who might look around the magic rather than through it.
Sherlock was not that sort of person. He understood both magic and science, and he had a gift for finding the turning point in the most unassuming of details. Bringing someone who moved fluently across both worlds, magic and the empirical was liable to produce results no one had anticipated.
I need only stay close and keep him safe, Dumbledore thought, tightening his grip on his wand.
And so it proved.
Sherlock moved through all three rooms with his enchanted magnifying glass, back and forth, methodical and unhurried. Dumbledore watched him crouch to examine the floor, then rise to his toes to peer into the gaps between the roof beams exactly as he had done at the Riddle house, moving through the ruin as though surveying a crime scene, leaving no corner uninspected.
Just as both men had deduced, Voldemort had never imagined anyone would come searching through this wreck. And he had certainly never imagined that the one who came looking would be Sherlock Holmes.
Half an hour later, the two of them stood looking down at the black-stoned ring. Both of them were smiling.
"Marvolo Gaunt's ring."
Having both seen it in Slughorn's memory, they recognized it at once.
Dumbledore stepped forward, his voice calm and measured. "Well, then, leave the rest to me."
Sherlock yielded without protest, taking a step back.
As he had said: I find, you retrieve.
But the business of dismantling Voldemort's magical defenses proved a good deal more involved than the business of finding the ring in the first place. Even Dumbledore, the greatest white wizard of the age required considerable effort before he had worked through every layer of protection.
The details of that struggle need not be elaborated on. What matters is that when the last defensive enchantment was finally lifted, Dumbledore let out a long breath. A smile spread across his face, and his eyes were full of quiet relief.
"Done at last."
Sherlock exhaled as well.
The two men looked at each other, and something warm and a little relieved passed between them in that glance. They had not come this far for nothing. Once Dumbledore returned with the ring and destroyed it, Voldemort would lose another fragment of his soul and with it, another measure of his power.
But then, in that same moment, Sherlock sensed that something was wrong.
Dumbledore's state had changed.
He was examining the ring closely, turning it in his fingers perfectly natural, in itself. But as he looked at it, his pupils dilated very slightly, and the focus drained from his eyes, leaving them hollow and distant.
His whole bearing became vague, uncertain. The hand holding the ring began to tremble; the other reached slowly outward, fingers spreading.
Sherlock's powers of observation were not the sort that missed small things.
He understood at once what Dumbledore was about to do.
The old man was going to put it on.
"Sir, stop!"
But Dumbledore gave no sign of hearing. He was deaf to the warning entirely, and his fingers continued their slow, deliberate advance toward the ring, unhurried, unstoppable.
The behavior was too abnormal. One look was enough for Sherlock to grasp that the Horcrux was far more dangerous than they had accounted for. Even Dumbledore had been caught.
Fortunately, he had prepared for something like this.
He said nothing further. Instead, he reached inside his coat and produced a weapon he had kept ready, and threw it directly at the hand that held the ring.
Under ordinary circumstances, Dumbledore would never have been caught by anything Sherlock could throw at him. With his abilities, even a silent attack from behind could be deflected with ease. But in this moment, his condition was not ordinary and Sherlock had deliberately avoided using magic, worried it would simply trigger Dumbledore's reflexes rather than break through his stupor. He had elected instead to resort to purely physical means against a man of over one hundred years.
There was no time to lose. Dumbledore's guard had slipped just far enough. He didn't move in time. The thrown object struck its mark cleanly.
The ring fell from his hand, hitting the floor with a light, clear sound.
Not entirely satisfied, and afraid Dumbledore had not yet fully come back to himself, Sherlock drew a second implement from his coat and delivered a sharp strike to Dumbledore's arm.
He had, in truth, intended to go for the face.
A sharp impact there would have had a considerably better chance of snapping someone out of a daze.
But there was rather too much difference in height between them. Reaching the face would have required a small jump.
So, he revised his aim downward, and settled for the arm instead.
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