Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Seventh Safeguard

Chapter 3 ~ Statement of the Case

"Voldemort should have died." Harry Potter explained. "He murdered my mum and dad, and then tried to kill me. But my mother's last enchantment protected me, and his curse rebounded and hit him instead. It should have killed him, but it didn't. He disappeared for thirteen years, and a little over three years ago he regenerated."

"What do you mean he 'regenerated'? Don't you just mean he returned?" asked Sherlock.

"No. He ... regenerated. I was there. I saw it." Marks of old horrors were written on the boy's face as he said this, and with a sickened feeling, I wondered what place a boy of fourteen could have had there.

"What were you doing there?" asked Sherlock, and I knew from his tone that he was not insensible to this either.

It was Miss Granger who answered.

"He was captured." she said. "Because of his failure to kill Harry, Harry became a symbol of resistance and Voldemort meant to begin his second bid for power with killing him in front of his followers. ... But he was overconfident. Harry fought him and got away."

"Ah." said Sherlock. "That is why you expected to be targeted tonight."

"He's been hunting Harry for years." said Hermione. "Our friend who escaped the ministry tonight sent us warning that they were coming."

"I see. Please continue."

"Wait." I said. "So he, Voldemort, has sort of a – fake body?"

The three children looked as though they weren't sure how to answer that question. It was Sherlock who answered me.

"Oh, it's real." he said. "Flesh and blood ... DNA ... But if it is unnaturally created, like cells designed and grown in labs, that would help to explain ... a great deal." He flashed his gaze back to Harry. "You are certain of this?"

"Completely." said Harry.

"What state was he in before he made this artificially regenerated form?"

The answer that Harry gave consisted of anecdotes which did not seem to me to work out into a conclusive or even consistent explanation. Ghost or goblin, or ruined man – or all of them together? I couldn't believe that Sherlock seemed to be swallowing it. But perhaps, I thought, he's humouring Harry, or maybe he sees what's really going on through Harry's explanation, or he's understanding what Harry is saying better than I and it matches so well with information he already knows that he's willing to take it as a working – if improbable – hypothesis until he can find a better. I, in any case, was utterly confounded.

"So, it was these safeguards which enabled him to regenerate?" said Sherlock finally, apparently deciding that that was the really important point – the how of the matter was academic.

"Yes." Harry replied definitively.

"Then if his exact location was known at this moment, and an aerial missile strike was called down which incinerated the entire vicinity ... that would not get rid of him?"

"The equivalent of that's already happened to him once." said Harry. (Harry has never seen a missile strike, I thought.) "If it was so simple as that, we wouldn't be having this war now. The horcruxes must be destroyed first."

"I see." said Sherlock. "Well, I'd prefer not to rule out the missile strike anyway, just yet. But – your objective is to hunt down and destroy all of these objects, so that when the legitimate wizarding forces confront Riddle, he is not invulnerable?"

"Exactly." Harry nodded.

Sherlock nodded. "Very well. What do we know about these 'horcruxes'? How many? What do they look like? What kind of places are they likely to be found in? Please be as specific as possible."