Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Seventh Safeguard

Chapter 14 ~ The Locket, the Cup, and the Diadem

We were moving before the first subtle glimmers of dawn had appeared in the sky. I was weary after only a few hours sleep, but Sherlock Holmes seemed to have forgotten what exhaustion was. He was here, there, and everywhere as the last minute preparations went on. He was cheerful, as if the last few days of desperate grasping for answers had never happened. But I remembered his sombre warning of the night before, and it was with some inner trepidation that I bid farewell to my wife and daughter. Mary had spoken cheerfully of Harry. She insisted that she knew almost nothing – though she knew more than I had told her – would have rather asked than answered questions, and, of course, she had no solution. But the few words she spoke on the matter cheered me. She knew that he had a terrible infection of some kind, 'cancerous' she called it. But she did not seem to think his 'cancer' indissociable from him. She did not take for granted that he was doomed. Few and uncertain as her words were, they lent credence to Sherlock's expectations of discovering a solution today. Mr. Pye's letter, little more than a reiteration of what he'd said the day before with better credentials, was disappointing, but not a death knell. The sun had not yet risen over the towers of London when we threw open the doors, and the two helicopters, accompanied by several score wizards on broomsticks, glided out over the dark waters of the Thames.

The whole affair with about the bank was over in short order. Sherlock's and my part in it was but little. We were neither Wizarding fighters, nor official police. I did not even see most of it. Sherlock and I were in the port helicopter, which was co-piloted by George Weasley. His twin was in the other. We rappelled down into the street with the rest. The only people in sight were the two Death Eater guards by the doors, who had fallen to the Order's stunning spells the moment we came into view. In a few moments, through some combination of police explosives and Kingsley Shacklebolt's know-how, the high bronze doors lay twisted upon the ground and we entered.

The goblins, or the few of them that were about when we entered, were surprisingly blasé when Kingsley declared the place claimed by the Order on account of the current administration being an illegal usurpation. Why should they care what the wizards were up to apparently? But they became a little more indignant when they realized that we intended to take something, just one thing, a stolen item, from their vaults. The majority of them put up quite a fuss and cry about it, but it was rather too late to stop us, and a handful of them, less concerned with honour perhaps, or more cognizant of the dangers of Riddle's rule, agreed to cooperate.

I was not among the small team sent down to the caverns to fetch the cup from the Lestrange's vault. I understand that there was a dragon down there; an actual, live, giant, winged reptile, whose exhalations really did combust upon contact with the air. Sherlock tells me it was in a rather in-humane situation, but I should have had a curiosity to see it if I had known. But I was left among the majority of the force.

They returned after a rather more lengthy trip than I had expected, bearing aloft the cup of Helga Hufflepuff. We left the Order and the team to fix the place up, evacuate the goblins (whether they liked it or not) to prevent them from undeservedly bearing the weight of Riddle's wrath, and engineer the 'escape' of some of the captured Death Eaters who had seen what we had taken. And the five of us, Harry, Sherlock, Hermione, Ron, and myself, slipped out of the bank and teleported out of Diagon Alley onto a little hill-side in Northamptonshire just as the sun was rising.

Behind us broad fields stretched away, silver green into the distance, broken by darker patches of woods and hedgerows. The roofs of a tiny hamlet shone out of the fields, not a half a mile to the south-east. From the woods on either hand there rose a loud, merry cacophony of bird sounds. Dew drenched my shoes, and fell in big prism-like droplets from the long leaves of the grass. Before us rose a broad green stretch of rising land. A line of tall trees stood upon the summit, catching the early light. Beyond that was only blue.