"Don't look so surprised, Harry."
Sherlock glanced at Harry, whose jaw had gone slack, and spoke in his usual even tone.
"People tend to grow blind to the things they see every day and yet the most important clues are almost always hidden in precisely those details. A secondhand memory has already been filtered through the narrator's subjective lens. Only by witnessing things firsthand can you catch what gets left behind."
The moment Sherlock finished speaking, Harry found he had nothing to say. It was exactly what Dumbledore had observed a moment ago: both Sherlock and Voldemort had a gift for persuasion, only Sherlock's weapon was logic that admitted no rebuttal.
Dumbledore, for his part, seemed entirely unbothered by the small interruption. He smiled warmly at the two of them.
"Who would like to enter the memory first?"
Sherlock did what he always did, gestured for Harry to go ahead, then followed close behind.
This time, the moment Sherlock's feet touched solid ground, he found that leaving the headmaster's office had brought him straight back into it.
Fawkes the phoenix was curled on his golden perch, fast asleep, long tail feathers draped over his sides, breathing slow and steady.
Seated behind the desk was the Dumbledore of the memory, almost identical to the Dumbledore who had stepped into the Pensieve just moments before. The only differences were a few fewer wrinkles and eyes that carried slightly less of the weight of the years.
The office furnishings were much the same as they were now, save for one detail: outside the window, it was snowing. Great white flakes drifted silently past the glass in the darkness, settling in quiet drifts on the sill, casting a cold, still quality over the entire room.
From the surroundings and Dumbledore's appearance, Sherlock estimated this memory was several decades old.
The younger Dumbledore sat with his hands folded on the desk, expression calm and unhurried, as though waiting for someone he expected.
Sure enough, it was not long before a soft knock came at the door.
"Come in," said Dumbledore, his voice warm and steady.
Harry very nearly cried out because the figure in the doorway was unmistakably Voldemort.
He managed to stop himself, though his hands balled into fists at his sides.
Even Sherlock, who rarely showed surprise, let something flicker across his eyes.
Until now, Sherlock had encountered Voldemort in two forms. The first was the grotesque thing clinging to the back of Professor Quirrell's head, the less said about that, the better.
The second was the handsome young Tom Riddle: the version Sherlock had seen in other people's memories through the Pensieve, and the version conjured by the diary Horcrux in the Chamber of Secrets, with whom he had spoken directly.
If Sherlock were being honest, that Tom Riddle had put more pressure on him than the real Voldemort ever had. Sharp, disciplined, without a single foolish impulse. If not for the information gap Sherlock had exploited, things might well have gone differently.
But now he was seeing a third form.
The face before him still held the shape of Tom Riddle's features, yet it looked as though it had been held over a flame, the contours wereblurred and waxy, twisted in ways that didn't quite make sense. The whites of his eyes had gone permanently red, threaded through with a vicious, sinister gleam.
Sherlock needed only one glance to understand: prolonged immersion in the darkest magic had ravaged both soul and body, leaving this ruin in its trail.
Voldemort wore a long black cloak that swept the floor, its hem soaked with the melt-water of tracked-in snow. His face was utterly pale, a match for the white outside the window and his very presence radiated a cold, crushing weight.
Dumbledore's face showed not the slightest surprise at the visitor's arrival. Sherlock concluded immediately that this meeting had been arranged in advance.
"Good evening, Tom."
Dumbledore looked at that ruined face without so much as a flinch, his expression easy and pleasant. He gestured to the chair across from his desk. "Please, sit down."
"Thank you."
Voldemort moved to the chair and settled into it slowly, his voice coming out like sandpaper dragged across stone.
"I heard you'd become headmaster. An admirable choice."
"I'm glad you approve," said Dumbledore, smiling. "May I offer you something to drink? Wine, or mead?"
"That's very kind," said Voldemort. "I've walked a long way. I am rather thirsty."
Dumbledore rose and crossed to the cabinet where the Pensieve now stood, in those days, it was lined with bottles. He selected a wine, poured a glass for Voldemort and one for himself, and returned to his chair.
"Well then, Tom." Dumbledore was the one to break the silence. "What brings you here?"
Voldemort did not answer at once. He lifted his glass and took a small sip, his gaze drifting slowly around the office as though searching for something.
"They don't call me Tom anymore," he said at last, setting the glass down with a faint note of pride. "These days I am known as—"
"I know what you are called."
Dumbledore's pleasant smile did not waver as he cut off the name before it could leave Voldemort's mouth.
"But as far as I am concerned, you will always be Tom Riddle. That is perhaps one of the more tiresome qualities of a teacher, we never quite manage to forget what our students once were."
He raised his glass in a gesture of a toast.
Voldemort did not raise his. He simply looked at Dumbledore with cold displeasure.
"I'm surprised you've stayed here so long," he said, shifting the subject abruptly after a short silence. "I've always wondered, a wizard of your power, and you've never wanted to leave the school? Teaching is well and good, of course, but the wider world of politics would offer you far more room to—"
"I don't see it that way, Tom. For a wizard like me, there is nothing more important than passing on the old arts and shaping young minds." Dumbledore's tone was quiet but firm. "If I remember correctly, you once saw the appeal of teaching yourself—didn't you?"
"I still do." Something complicated moved through Voldemort's eyes. "I simply wonder why you—a man the Ministry consults regularly, who I believe has been nominated as Minister for Magic on more than one occasion would choose to remain at Hogwarts."
"Three times, actually," Dumbledore said pleasantly, taking the opportunity to correct the figure. "But a career at the Ministry has never held any attraction for me. In that, Tom, we are surprisingly alike."
Voldemort lowered his gaze and took another sip of wine without replying. Dumbledore did not fill the quiet either, only waited with that same serene expression, content to let the other man speak first.
"I have come back," said Voldemort at last, raising his eyes to meet Dumbledore's directly. "Perhaps a little later than Professor Dippet once hoped but I have come back, all the same."
"You might say what you mean a little more plainly, Tom."
"Have I not been plain enough? I have returned to apply, once again, for the position Dippet told me I was too young to fill. I am asking you to let me come back to this castle and teach. I have seen a great deal since I left here, and done a great deal. I could teach your students things they would learn from no other wizard."
Dumbledore regarded him over his glass for a long moment before speaking.
"Yes, I am aware of what you have seen and done since you left us." His tone remained restrained, though it carried now the faintest undertone of gravity. "Word of your activities has reached your old school, Tom. If even half of what I've heard is true, I am deeply sorry for it."
Voldemort's expression did not change. "Greatness breeds envy," he said evenly, "and envy breeds malice, and malice breeds lies. You understand that well enough, Dumbledore."
"Quite so. But are you certain you wish to call what you have done greatness?" Dumbledore asked, raising an eyebrow with the slightest edge of irony.
"Of course." Voldemort's eyes seemed to burn suddenly, his voice flooding with intensity. "I have conducted experiments that have pushed magic to heights never before reached—"
"Certain kinds of magic," Dumbledore corrected him quietly. "Only certain kinds, Tom. In other respects, you are, forgive me pitiably ignorant."
Voldemort smiled for the first time.
It was nothing like Dumbledore's gentle, steady warmth. It was the smile of a man who considers himself above everything around him and set against that ruined face, it was far more chilling than open rage.
"You still sing the same old song," he said softly, with a note of contempt. "And yet, Dumbledore, nothing I have seen in the world has given me the slightest evidence to support your famous conviction, that love is a more powerful magic than mine."
"Perhaps you've been looking in the wrong places," Dumbledore offered gently.
"Then where better to begin a new line of inquiry than here—at Hogwarts?" Voldemort turned the conversation back, his voice now almost silky. "Will you allow me to return? Will you let me share what I have learned with your students? I place myself and my abilities entirely in your hands."
"In my hands?" Dumbledore raised his eyebrows, a glint of something probing in his gaze. "And what of those who follow your hands? Those who call themselves or who are said to call themselves Death Eaters. What becomes of them?"
A flash of red passed through Voldemort's eyes. His nostrils, thin as knife-slits, flared almost imperceptibly. Clearly, Dumbledore had touched a nerve.
Seeing it, Sherlock leaned slightly toward Harry and murmured, "Interesting. He didn't expect Dumbledore to already know about the Death Eaters."
Indeed, the use of the name itself seemed to have caught Voldemort entirely off-guard.
"My friends—they will carry on well enough without me, I expect," he said, recovering his composure.
"I'm glad to hear you call them friends," said Dumbledore, a faint note of amusement in his voice. "I had rather assumed they were servants."
"You are mistaken."
There was the first thin crack of anger beneath the surface.
"Then if I were to stop by the Hog's Head this evening, I wouldn't find Nott, Rosier, Mulciber, and Dolohov waiting for your return?" Dumbledore asked lightly, reeling off the names with perfect precision. "Loyal friends indeed to have trudged all this way through the snow on a dark night, just to wish you success in a job interview."
That Dumbledore knew of his companions so precisely displeased Voldemort visibly. His gaze hardened. "You always did know everything, Dumbledore."
"Oh, hardly. I simply have a good relationship with the local barman."
Dumbledore set down his empty glass, sat up straight, and touched his fingertips together, forming a steeple. Sherlock noticed the gesture and felt a flicker of recognition.
"Now, Tom," said Dumbledore, and for the first time his voice took on a genuinely serious tone. "Let us be plain with one another. Why have you come here tonight, with your followers in tow, to apply for a position that both you and I know perfectly well you don't actually want?"
A brief expression of surprise crossed Voldemort's face. "Don't want? On the contrary, Dumbledore. I want it very much."
"Oh, you want to come back to Hogwarts, certainly. But you no more want to teach here than you did at the age of eighteen." Dumbledore's gaze was sharp and direct. "What is it you really want, Tom? Why not, just this once, be honest with me?"
Voldemort let out a cold laugh. "If you won't give me the position—"
"Of course I won't," said Dumbledore without the slightest hesitation. "And I rather think you never expected me to. But you came anyway, and put forward the application. You must have had something in mind."
Voldemort rose abruptly to his feet, fury spreading across his twisted face in a way that made him look nothing at all like Tom Riddle, and everything like the Dark Lord he had become.
"So is that your final answer?"
"It is," said Dumbledore, rising slowly, his voice leaving no room for negotiation.
"Then we have nothing more to discuss."
"Nothing," Dumbledore agreed. A profound sadness crossed his face, a shadow of something that looked almost like grief. "The time when I could frighten you with a burning wardrobe and compel you to reflect is long past. But I wish I could, Tom. I truly wish I could."
For one tense instant, Harry nearly shouted a useless warning. He saw clearly: Voldemort's hand had twitched toward his pocket, toward his wand. But the moment passed, and Voldemort mastered himself.
"You will regret today's decision, Dumbledore."
"I am the headmaster, Tom," said Dumbledore simply.
Voldemort turned and strode to the door. It closed behind him with a sharp crack, and he was gone.
In the same moment, Dumbledore reached out and took hold of Sherlock's and Harry's arms.
A heartbeat later, all three were standing back in the real headmaster's office, where no snow fell outside the window and Dumbledore's face had returned to its familiar, deeply weathered self.
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