Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Seventh Safeguard

Chapter 10 ~ Sherlock Holmes Presents his Plan

In far too short a time, Harry began to drop in altitude. I was amazed at how fast the city sprang up to meet us. For a few moments, as I began to pick out individual persons on the ground, I wondered if he could still slow down and pull out of the dive without slamming us to pieces. But I need not have worried. He knew what he was about, and though we seemed to swoop perilously close to the ground, he brought us safely to a level course over the rooftops.

The illusion which protected the Black house worked from above as well as from in front. But Harry found it, and landed on the roof. We climbed in through an upstairs window and took everyone by surprise by coming down the staircase, windblown and jubilant, somewhat earlier than they had expected us.

Mary and Shirley were there with Hermione, Sherlock, and the three Weasley boys. When I realized that we would be unable to return to Queen Anne Street until the end of the gang-war, I had intended to send them to Baker Street, feeling sure that the landlady, Mrs. Hudson, who was fond of Mary and doted on little Shirley, would be glad to let them stay in my old room for a short time. But Mary had been too quick to accept Harry's offer of hospitality. Harry seemed to think that he had a duty by her, whether because she was the wife of a team member, or due to the fact that it was, in a round-about fashion, his acceptance of my help which had led to her getting into trouble. The current theory under which muggle-born wizards were being persecuted was that they were actually muggles who had somehow 'stolen' magical ability, and were therefore thieves and usurpers (never mind that they didn't have any explanation whatsoever of how these villainous muggles went about this 'stealing' of a genetic trait). Harry thought, from Runcorn's words, that they had picked Mary out as being an example of a muggle who had attempted this theft. He was sure that Ministry officials would be after her in force and thought his own refuge the safest place for her to hide.

I was not entirely pleased with Shirley being here. Mary and I might take this place in stride, and Sherlock Holmes might laugh at the notion of anything about it being remotely frightening, but Shirley was a very little girl yet. So I was pleased to see that she was all right with it. She had really taken to the Weasley twins. They seemed to have put everything in just the right light for her; she was looking at the matter as quite the adventure without being actually frightened.

Sherlock and Harry were all for immediately setting about the council, and we only took a few moments before leaving Mary, Shirley, and the twins upstairs and headed down for the kitchen. The instant we had all taken our seats around the old oak table, Sherlock began talking.

"The possibility of needing to actually seize control of an area with arms had occurred to me some time before our collaboration began. This is far from unheard of in the world of police-work. The pretensions of this particular gang are admittedly higher than that of the ordinary criminal organization, but the fact remains that they are still a gang ... which has at this point seized control of a number of civilian institutions. Now, I asked my brother to have available a strike-team which could be called in – a special police unit with air-support. ... Now, if I am not incorrect in my approximation of the bank's security, it would technically be possible for us to get into the Lestrange's vault if we were able to fully convince the bank that we were the Lestranges..."

"I have some polyjuice potion!" exclaimed Hermione, interrupting Sherlock.

"What's that?" I asked.

"It turns you into someone else for a couple of hours." she explained matter-of-factly.

Since I was by now fairly accustomed to hearing shocking claims of that sort, and since my own ridiculous transformation of earlier in the day was still very fresh in my consciousness, I just nodded complacently.