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It was a typical Monday— or was it a Tuesday? He could never remember his days anymore. He felt certain that it was earlier in the week. Well, alright, certain might have been a stretch. He was… pretty sure?
Whatever day it was, he knew— again, “knew ” is to be taken with a grain of salt— that it was his absolute favourite day of the week. It was time for a reading .
“Hi everyone,” he whispered to himself in practice. “My name is Gilderoy Lockhart. Or so they tell me, anyway.” He closed his eyes, smiling at the chuckles he imagined he’d receive at that last part. “And while I can’t seem to quite recall the deeds of my life, I’ve been gifted the honour of reading about them to you all today. I’m excited to share this journey with you as I discover my own accomplishments alongside you lovely witches and wizards.”
He nodded to himself and smiled into the bathroom mirror. No, no, even out the smile a little— there you are. Perfectly charming.
He was always surprisingly nervous before his readings. Was this how it was before the accident? They’d told him he’d been quite the confident fellow, but if he was being perfectly candid, it was hard to imagine.
Gathering his courage, he decided it was time, and after readjusting his hair for maybe the twelfth time, he left the bathroom.
“And so, the handsome wizard was greeted by the saved village with applause and declarations of love! The werewolves, having been driven away, never bothered them again, all thanks to the bravery of the young hero.”
He folded the book closed and glanced up with a hopeful smile. His favorite part of every reading was the end; the looks of admiration and the roar of follow-up questions reminded him why he did these— for the love.
Of course, it’d been a while since any of that had actually transpired.
He saw no such love after this particular reading. Instead, he was met with blank expressions, the unimpressed apathy of the other long-term residents of the Janus Thickey Ward clouding the room with thick and heavy ennui.
The other long-term residents, to be fair, consisted of nothing more than some plush animals: a dragon, a hippogriff, a teddy bear, and an eagle. There’d been others once, real people, including a bloke called Bone or Bud— Brode, maybe? — a witch with a furry face, and some nice couple that had seemed even more scattered than Gilderoy felt. They’d all passed, one by one, and while others had come and gone over the years, eventually he was the only one living there full-time, thoroughly alone.
Gilderoy stared at the blank faces of the plush creatures as they offered him nothing more than a judgmental silence.
His smile slipped.
“It happened, alright?” He snapped at them, his anger spiking. “I don’t care what that Granger girl said. It happened! ”
Again, the animals said nothing. Sometimes, after these readings, he’d almost swear that they were smirking at him with derision that one would never expect from a bunch of cuddly toys. He was careful not to voice his suspicions, however. His memory may have been faulty still, but he wasn’t crazy. The last thing he needed was to give the Healers more reasons to pump him full of potions and keep him locked up in this ward all day.
The silence, he decided, was still better than the questions he’d started getting from the wizards and witches who used to listen to him.
Though to be fair, it was only ever really one question.
“What’s wrong?” they’d ask.
And then they’d ask again and again once more.
Maybe it wasn’t always the same person, but it was the same Them, that capital-T-Them, the collective of those who reacted the same way every time he answered that question. In his defense, he was only being honest. It wasn’t his fault that it wasn’t a truth they wanted to hear.
Because he would tell them. And each and every time, they’d walk away. The kinder ones would at least inform that he’d messed up— that he deserved everything he’d gotten.
Maybe he did. How was he supposed to know? He couldn’t remember it.
He really missed the happy confusion from the beginning. “Who am I? Famous, you say? Why of course I’ll sign some autographs— just remind me what that means?”
That was the Golden Era, it was.
Then people started asking him that bloody question after a few years in the Janus Thickey Ward.
“Not my fault,” Gilderoy mumbled, sitting on the Hospital bed beside his plushies. “Slander, it is. Of course I saved those people. Banished that banshee, too!”
He let out a huff. The denial was pointless by now, he knew that. Justifying himself to a bunch of inanimate toys wasn’t going to change the fact that the entire wizarding world knew he was nothing more than a fraud.
If a tree falls in a forest, and no one’s around to hear it, did it really make a sound?
Well, if a wizard spent his life stealing the memories and accomplishments of other, better wizards and witches, but can’t remember even a minute of that life, did he really do the wrongdoings?
Of course the bloody tree makes a sound.
Gilderoy picked up the nearest plushie— a teddy bear he’d taken to calling Clarence, or Eddy, or sometimes Vanessa, depending on which name he could recall on a given day— and frowned down at it.
“They told me I was special,” he murmured. “They told me I’d done incredible things in my life. You know that though, I’ve read you my books.” The bear gave no reply, and Gilderoy’s scowl deepened. “If I hadn’t done all those things, why did they let me believe it?”
Again, the bear just sat lifeless in his lap. With a frustrated growl, Gilderoy hurled the bear across the room, watching it hit the wall and fall to the floor almost soundlessly.
“Six years, they let me believe it!” Gilderoy snapped, standing abruptly and whirling on the remaining animals. “Ghouls, trolls, vampires, they said I tamed them all! They gave me books! With my face on them!” The dragon was the next to be picked up and thrown in another flare of anger. The plastic of the eyes made a more satisfying thunk as the dragon hit the tile and lay still, face-down against the floor.
Gilderoy paused from his mistreatment of cuddly toys to tug at his hair. Witches and wizards alike used to swoon over that hair. It wasn’t until he’d been locked up at St. Mungo’s for a few years that his hair grew untamed and matted. That was around the time people stopped recognizing him.
It wasn’t until then that they started to ask that “what’s wrong?” question that he loathed so much.
“You want to know what’s wrong?” He asked the plush hippogriff next. It, predictably, simply stared. “What’s wrong is that I hadn’t the slightest idea as to who I was. Yet people loved me. And then, just because I wanted my special Ministry reading to be scheduled over that Granger woman’s Beedle the Bard translation— honestly, it’s just a stupid children’s story with notes from some Dumbo bloke— she decides to ruin me?”
Gilderoy sighed. His anger rarely lasted long, and he’d started to wear himself out.
“I—” he broke off and tilted his head at the hippogriff. “I can’t quite recall what got me this angry.”
This was how his afternoons tended to go. The nurses had learned to just leave him be and to be ready with replacement plushies for when his anger spells were particularly vicious. Gilderoy was fairly sure that he’d had to be physically restrained on multiple occasions, though he struggled to remember why.
Usually, his main clue was a note stuck to the wall above his bed that he’d read when awoke.
Your name is Gilderoy Lockhart. A memory spell had delayed complications that the Healers have yet to work out— or at least that’s what they claim. If you forget everything again, read ‘Who Am I?’ on your nightstand.
There was a second, slightly messier sentence scrawled out on a piece of parchment just below the first one that really made for pleasant mornings: Also, the entire wizarding world hates you. Cheers.
Gilderoy’s anger continued to dissipate. He was certain there’d been a valid reason for it, but what was it?
Sitting back down on his bed, he hugged the soft hippogriff to his chest. “What am I doing here?” he murmured. “I— I could have sworn I was meant to be elsewhere. A school? I’m a teacher aren’t I?”
He winced as his head began to ache.
“Ahh— that’s not good,” he groaned, pressing his fingers to the side of his head. “It was a school, wasn’t it? There was… a bathroom. And a swing? No, a slide. And a flash of light, and then— agh! ”
He clutched his head with both hands then, the hippogriff falling off his lap and joining its fellow inanimate friends on the floor.
Gilderoy moaned as the headache persisted. He’d been close, hadn’t he? What was it, though? He’d been a— an Auror? A singer perhaps?
No. None of that was right.
The headache subsided, and with it went any proximity he might have had to the truth. His head only really hurt when he was close.
But the headache, like the memories, always faded fast.
And, like every time that they went away, he was left feeling rather numb. It was sort of like waking up from a long night’s sleep; he felt groggy and disoriented.
Gilderoy sighed, looking around the room with significantly less feeling. He hopped down from the bed and retrieved each of his plushies, one at a time, returning them to their proper place against the wall.
The dragon, hippogriff, teddy bear, and eagle stared at him expressionless once again. There was no derision, no judgment. Just the blank faces of some fluff-filled children’s toys regarding him with complete and utter indifference.
Just another day in the life of Gilderoy Lockhart.
He wasn’t actually sure what time it was, or even what day really, but he did manage a smile. After all, there was to be a reading the next day!
Gilderoy loved readings.