Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Seventh Safeguard

Chapter 7 ~ The Darkness Thickens

In spite of hesitancy that had possessed him on the evening of the second of August, Mr. Sherlock Holmes had plunged into the task of tracking down Thomas Riddle's safeguards with an energy which I usually associated with moments of crisis. But then, perhaps no case so critical had ever been put into his hands. I knew, for I had seen, that he had been hired by several heads of state on businesses of 'international importance'. He had exposed the continent's largest crime-ring and dismantled its command structure. But never before, to my knowledge, had he attempted to reverse a military coup.

The urgency of the matter impressed me ever more deeply the further we got into it; the spate of murders, political and recreational (terrible phrase), the danger to life and liberty being faced by those wizards who (like Hermione Granger) were born of muggle parents, the fact that Wizarding interference in muggle affairs was a very real possibility if they stuck to their strengths of secrecy and mind-control, and the revolting situation that a portion of what should have been free England was under a tyranny, were all very immediate dangers. Every day mattered. Every day might be paid in blood.

Up till now Sherlock had been balancing his Wizarding investigations with his consulting work. Now everything but the Wizarding case was dropped. The rest could be picked up later. He had asked Hermione to investigate Riddle's history, but they did it together. The two of them poured over recent criminal histories – both Wizarding and muggle, and historical accounts of Wizarding events and sites, anything which Riddle, in his twisted, prideful view of the world, might have considered momentous.

Fred and George Weasley had gotten all but one of the ex-addresses of the Death Eaters which Sherlock had asked for through their father by the evening of the third of August – that of the Lestranges' house, which was currently unoccupied, and those of the Averys' and the Dolohovs', which had relatives living in them. They brought back a lengthy response to Hermione from Mr. Shacklebolt at the same time. This letter pleased Sherlock immensely, for it was wonderfully detailed. No impressions and half remembered notions. Lots of good hard facts with dates and addresses, presented with a thorough understanding of context. He seemed to recognize some of the cases, and I guessed that a few wild theories of his had just been vindicated.

The shop that the trio suspected, Borgin & Burke's, was searched through, twice. The first time in daylight under the guise of being ordinary customers doing some very in-depth window shopping. The second after closing time, which was even more in-depth. The ancient Lestrange mansion was scoured over. We visited several odd, out-of-the-way corners which Sherlock and Hermione thought had thought sufficiently important to merit investigation. We found nothing; no horcruxes, and no indications suggesting anywhere else they might be. The idea that the Lestranges had hidden one in Gringotts had grown on the children. And in view of the immense respect that the wizardshad for Gringotts, Sherlock seemed to be relaxing his 'too obvious' views a bit.

And Sherlock still – there was little enough time, I don't know how he managed it – was going through that terrible book Hermione had lent him at an alarming rate. He seemed to be carrying it around with him so that if he had a moment he would pull it out and read. My initial response of strong distaste towards the volume had increased into a kind of fear, though I don't suppose I had a clear reason. I happened to be standing right behind him once when he opened it. It was handwritten like a medieval manuscript; it may have actually been one. I wondered that the crumbling pages could still survive being turned. The hand was a hard one. The black lines were like assaults upon the paper. Somehow the very illumination of the capitals seemed an obscenity. I caught no full sentence in my brief glimpse, but I caught words.

A few days before I would have said that there was no such thing as witchcraft. When I met the three youths, I treated their strange vocabulary as merely an extremely odd way of referring to what was clearly just a strange form of technology; peculiar certainly, but quite innocent. And regarding the three, I still felt the same. The fact that they clearly believed themselves to posses innate abilities of some kind as well complicated the matter somewhat. But that inclusion in their secret society might be based on carrying a particular genetic trait, and that their technology might take advantage of that trait in some manner, was not unthinkable. All their illusions, teleportation, blasting rods, invisibility cloaks, and remarkable capabilities in matters of forming, shaping, and fixing matter seemed morally harmless. I could not see that the things which they were doing were in any way intrinsically evil; certainly not any way in which they could be connected to the demonic. It was a different technology – not too different in many ways from what I could see on the science-fiction channel.