Chapter 27: Hermione Makes the Argument Holmes Cannot

Pemberton made his first move at half past seven in the morning.

Holmes saw it coming approximately forty seconds before it happened. The tell was not in Pemberton's face, which remained precisely as composed as it had been throughout the previous two hours of interview, nor in his hands, which were still on the table with the specific stillness of a man who has decided that stillness is a form of argument. It was in his breathing — a single, barely perceptible deepening, the kind a trained observer might take for calm and a trained professional should take for preparation.

The staff room had grown lighter around them. The enchanted candelabra had dimmed as the grey morning pressed itself against the windows, and someone — Pomfrey, Holmes suspected, who had appeared briefly in the doorway an hour ago and been waved back — had sent up a tray of tea that was now entirely cold. Frobisher from the Ministry sat at one end of the table with a self-inking quill that he had been operating under the apparent impression that he was contributing to the proceedings. The two Aurors McGonagall had summoned — a broad, watchful witch with close-cropped hair named Proudfoot and a younger man whose name Holmes had not yet secured — stood at either side of the door. Hermione was at Holmes's left, sitting with her chair turned slightly toward the table's centre, her hands folded in her lap in the manner of someone who appears to be at rest and is not.