Chapter 771 - 771: 0771 The Meeting

"You shouldn't be meeting me at a time like this."

Sherlock studied Draco, who had come looking for him so abruptly, with an odd expression.

It had to be said—Malfoy's sudden invitation had genuinely caught him off guard.

From the very start of term, Sherlock had already known that Voldemort had given Malfoy a task.

At the time, Sherlock had judged it a throwaway move—and a kind of test.

A test of the Malfoy family's loyalty.

When Voldemort had first been reborn, he'd suffered a heavy blow.

And it was precisely because Lucius Malfoy had heeded Sherlock's warning that he hadn't rushed to his master's side that night.

Sherlock's purpose at the time had, of course, been to sow division—itself just a throwaway move.

He hadn't expected that throwaway move to actually prove useful.

Because he'd so precisely anticipated Voldemort's movements, it left Lucius—that consummate egoist with a strange feeling: that following his old master might not be such a good idea after all.

On the other hand, it was precisely because he hadn't gone to help Voldemort that Voldemort had found himself with no one to call on during his most difficult stretch. Under those circumstances, Lucius had resolved to switch sides and join the camp of justice.

He had even offered, on his own initiative, to supply intelligence.

But Sherlock had stopped him.

Even though he knew Lucius genuinely meant it.

Because Lucius, after all, was no Snape.

Even if he'd been a few years ahead of Snape at school, his ability fell far, far short of Snape's.

Snape could carry off being a spy. Lucius certainly couldn't.

What was more, Voldemort had never trusted Lucius the way he trusted Bellatrix or Barty Crouch Jr.

After all, though Voldemort had turned himself half-witted by making Horcruxes, back when his soul had still been whole, he'd been sharp enough to see straight through to the true nature of Lucius Malfoy.

Not to mention that it was through Lucius's own doing that he'd lost his most precious Horcrux.

Given all that, the fact that Voldemort hadn't simply killed him already counted as an act of great mercy.

One reason was that the matter of the Horcrux couldn't be allowed to come out.

The other was that Voldemort, at the time, had no one else to use.

But once Azkaban had been breached and a great wave of Death Eaters and Dementors loyal to Voldemort had joined his ranks, the situation changed again. Even without Sherlock's warning, Lucius knew perfectly well he ought to keep his tail tucked in and his head down.

Not to mention that Voldemort had handed the task of dealing with Sherlock to Draco—not to Lucius.

Given that Voldemort had already acknowledged Sherlock's strength, having Draco take this on was frankly a joke.

With the school year now drawing to a close, Draco had accomplished essentially nothing—that's putting it a bit dramatically, of course—though at least Sherlock had made a point of letting him glimpse some of his own movements, enough for Draco to carry back and report.

Sherlock had originally reckoned that would be more or less sufficient.

His main energy, by now, was thrown into flushing out the figure lurking behind the scenes.

He hadn't expected that Draco would not only track him down, but drag him straight to the Room of Requirement.

"So you really do know about this place, Holmes."

Malfoy said this while watching Sherlock, whose expression showed not the slightest surprise.

"Mortal cleverness," Sherlock said, looking at Malfoy. "I find it genuinely hard to imagine what could have given you such an illusion."

"Holmes—"

Malfoy froze for a moment, then forced a sentence out through gritted teeth:

"My father asked me to tell you—the Dark Lord has an extremely formidable ally."

"You're saying your father has learned that Voldemort has an ally?"

Sherlock couldn't help but start at that.

"Don't say that name!"

Malfoy flinched violently, then bellowed the words.

Still, he knew perfectly well Sherlock wouldn't listen to him.

So, drawing a deep breath and summoning every ounce of will to master his terror of the name, he said in a rapid burst: "My father says that for years now, there's been someone helping the Dark Lord all along.

"Even the Dark Lord's rebirth—that, too, was orchestrated single-handedly by this person.

"My father recently got wind of this crucial piece of information. That person's name is—"

Sherlock couldn't help but perk up at that.

"John Smith!"

Sherlock: "…"

He'd been wrong.

He never should have pinned any hope on Lucius.

"Holmes, my father dug up something critical!"

Malfoy, not noticing Sherlock's speechless expression at all, pressed smugly on:

"Actually, 'John Smith' is nothing but an alias—which, of course, anyone could see.

"The key is, he used to work at the Ministry of Magic. His real name is Wright Black—Black Light.

"Back then, he stole a classified document from the Ministry, wanting to—"

Just as Malfoy was about to reveal the intelligence his father had obtained, Sherlock suddenly cut him off:

"The ally your father spoke of—it's him?"

"What's wrong?"

Malfoy, abruptly interrupted, couldn't help feeling put out.

"Holmes, I think you should understand just how important this information is!

"All this time, everyone's assumed only Death Eaters would follow the Dark Lord—no one ever imagined he might have an ally as well!

"For the Dark Lord to have been reborn successfully, this Black Light must have played a huge—"

Sherlock said, somewhat wearily, "I already told you last time—don't try passing along messages anymore—"

"Holmes, my father is doing this for your own good!

"Do you have any idea how dangerous it is, taking the risk of being discovered just to pass along intelligence this valuable?

"If the Dark Lord ever found out…"

At this point Malfoy even began trembling all over, none of his usual defiant swagger left in him.

Watching Malfoy in this state, Sherlock, for once, didn't say anything mocking.

"Pass this along to your father for me: there's no need to do this sort of thing anymore."

Sherlock said it calmly. "For him, this is a very dangerous thing to do."

Malfoy looked at Sherlock in some surprise, as if he could hardly believe Sherlock would be concerned for his father's safety.

"I've told you before—this is a fight to the death, and from the moment you all made your choice, there was already no turning back. So—" Sherlock said, his voice distant.

"Neither he nor you have any need to take risks to do anything at all.

"Whatever Voldemort tells you to do, you do it—you were never in a position to resist him in the first place.

"Didn't he set you to spying on me? Then just tell him everything I do at school. That's all it takes."

Sherlock's attitude left Malfoy struggling to understand: "But he also said he wanted me to—wanted me to…"

"Wanted you to have the chance to kill me with your own hands?" Sherlock gave a light laugh. "Just tell him you never had the chance. Isn't that simple enough?"

"But…"

"Malfoy, do you honestly believe a student could commit murder right under the noses of top wizards like Dumbledore, McGonagall, Flitwick, and Snape?

"And with the person being killed being me, of all people—the very idea is absurd!"

Malfoy's face flushed red.

He felt the contempt in Sherlock's words toward him.

But he also knew it was, in fact, the truth.

"Remember what I've said. Tell him: no more unnecessary moves—or he won't live to see the moment of victory in this war."

Once Malfoy had left the Room of Requirement, Sherlock's expression turned grave all at once.

"Malfoy arranged to meet you in the Room of Requirement?"

"And said his father was risking his life just to tell you that John Smith is Black Light—pfft—"

"Ron, that isn't funny," Hermione said, giving Ron a very stern look. "They're on our side—and this really is a dangerous thing for them to do!"

These days, the only classes that ever separated Ron and Lavender were the ones—like Divination or Potions—that the two of them hadn't both signed up for.

Just such a moment as this: Lavender had gone off with Parvati to Firenze's Divination class, and Ron had drifted over to stand with Sherlock, Harry, and Hermione.

"All right, Hermione—I still think that whole family's a pack of opportunists, but fine, you've got a point, they have ended up on our side." Ron shrugged. "But didn't Sherlock already tell him not to do this kind of thing anymore, because if they ever got caught, then—"

"They already have been caught," Sherlock said softly.

"What did you say?"

Harry, Hermione, and Ron all stared at Sherlock in astonishment.

"I said, Lucius and Draco Malfoy's little scheme has already been discovered."

"You—how do you know that?"

Ron gave a start at hearing this.

Never mind what he'd just said—at most, he'd wanted Malfoy to learn a lesson, something along the lines of another good pounding from Harry's fists, the way it had gone before.

But he'd never once wished Malfoy dead—especially not now, knowing that father and son had reformed and turned to the right side.

Hearing Sherlock say this, he grasped the gravity of the matter at once.

"Sherlock, are you sure—" Hermione hurried to ask as well. "Is it the person you mentioned, or Voldemort?"

"It's 'him,'" Sherlock said tersely. "There's no doubt about it."

The three of them fell silent.

Because Sherlock had already told them before just how formidable Voldemort's true ally was.

"So… will they die?"

Ron asked hesitantly, as though if any harm actually came to the Malfoys, it would be a curse he himself had brought down on them.

"No."

To Ron's relief, Sherlock's answer came back in the negative.

"From what I can deduce, 'he' knows about this—but Voldemort doesn't."

Sherlock pressed his hands together beneath his chin, brow furrowed, murmuring to himself:

"But why would he do this? Is he trying to signal something to me?

"And if so, exactly what is it he's trying to tell me?"

Harry, Hermione, and Ron all kept silent.

The three of them, by unspoken agreement, didn't ask Sherlock how he could be so certain that this mysterious figure knew while Voldemort didn't. They all understood perfectly well that this wasn't the moment to interrupt Sherlock's train of thought.

Ron especially.

He was terrified that if he so much as opened his mouth, Sherlock would say he'd disturbed his thinking.

Lucky for them, they were sixth-years now.

Six years earlier, simply being in the same room as Sherlock—doing nothing at all—might well have been enough to throw off his concentration.

Right up until the last Defence Against the Dark Arts class of the term began, Sherlock didn't speak another word to the three of them.

For this, the three of them were, by now, entirely understanding.

A full six years.

This was the first time an opponent had ever appeared who could truly match Sherlock stride for stride.

Probably distracted for that very reason, Sherlock was caught off guard by Snape, who seized the chance and docked Gryffindor ten points.

"Not even the Lion King, the great detective, may drift off in my classroom, Mr. Holmes."

Snape said this in that voice of his that always managed to make everyone uncomfortable:

"And you, Potter—why didn't you remind your good friend to mind classroom discipline? Because of you, Gryffindor has lost another ten points."

Harry: "…"

Here we go again!

In Snape's classroom, no matter who made the mistake, it could always somehow be pinned on Harry.

Six years running now, and everyone had long since stopped finding it strange.

The bell rang for the end of class, and the little lions trooped out of the room grumbling and cursing.

Partly it was because Snape had gone and docked points unfairly again; partly it was because Snape had just announced in class that he'd be raising the difficulty of the exam this year, since the Defence Against the Dark Arts exams of years past had all been far too easy.

"That's outrageous! Last year's exam was O.W.L.-level—since when was that easy?"

"Exactly—the entire year only had two people get an Outstanding!"

"It's absolutely absurd!"

"There's no living like this anymore!"

"Oh, this is just great—"

Harry watched them with more than a little envy.

It looked like griping on the surface, but at least it was talk about some perfectly ordinary school matter—far better than a day spent talking about nothing but the horrors of the Dark Arts.

Sherlock's earlier deduction, it seemed, kept getting confirmed by events, time after time.

Ever since the Ministry of Magic and Hogwarts had gone their separate ways once again, the Death Eaters' activity had grown steadily more brazen.

It wasn't so long ago that, right after Scrimgeour had taken office, the Aurors had for a while had the upper hand, pressing the Death Eaters back.

There had even been several occasions when a number of Death Eaters were arrested.

But during this stretch of time, the situation had completely reversed.

The Daily Prophet carried news every single day of the Dark Mark turning up in one place or another.

As everyone knew, whenever Death Eaters killed someone, they sent up the Dark Mark.

Which meant that, at fairly regular intervals, someone somewhere was dying an unnatural death.

What pained Harry even more was that the Order of the Phoenix, too, had started running into trouble.

Several of their operations had been ambushed by Death Eaters.

Even though Sherlock, after going to Dumbledore, had swiftly severed the connection built up with the Ministry over the past year, the Order still ended up suffering considerable losses.

Beyond Lupin, who had been sent out early on, other Order members had since been injured, one after another.

It was, frankly, hard to believe—in the space of a single year, a situation that had looked so promising had taken such a sharp turn for the worse, becoming what it now was.

"Sherlock, you—"

Harry was just about to speak to Sherlock as he usually did, when he suddenly realized the boy was nowhere to be seen.

"Where's Sherlock?"

"He was just here a second ago!"

Hermione and Ron exchanged baffled looks; they both remembered clearly that Sherlock had walked out of the classroom together with them.

So how had he simply vanished?

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