4 Chapter 4

It was only upon reading the Hogwarts letter that my mind got a jolt. I realised that I am not, in fact, this fake disgrace of a human being who only felt a little saddened at the prospect of his mother's death, which pissed me off never having had a family of my own, and so I retook control. This body is definitely mine now, and the soul or whatever of Gilderoy Lockhart no longer seems to be around. However, his memories are still inside this body as shone by the fact that I know things that only he would know and getting overwhelmed by them, I was nearly consumed and devoured by vanity and narcissism.

I need to reaffirm who I am and just how pathetic and shameful the existence of Gilderoy Lockhart is. So I try to recall his life as much as I can and not the fake version that he has brought himself to believe but the authentic, unedited version which highlights just how much of a waste of space Gilderoy is so that I will never be again consumed by his massive egomania.

Gilderoy Lockhart was born on the 26th of January, 1964, to a Muggle man and a witch and had two elder sisters, both Squibs. As the only one of her three children with magical ability, Gilderoy quickly became their mother's unabashed favourite, vastly inflating young Gilderoy's sense of self-importance. Unfortunately, in their excitement, he and his mother forgot that Hogwarts was a school for all British and Irish wizards. Thus his introduction to the school alongside everyone else was, in his opinion, incredibly dull.

On the 1st of September, 1975, Gilderoy Lockhart enrolled at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, four years behind James Potter, Sirius Black, Remus Lupin, Peter Pettigrew, Lily Evans, and Severus Snape. He was Sorted into Ravenclaw, but he was almost a Hatstall, as the Sorting Hat thought he was a good fit for Slytherin but decided against it by a narrow margin.

He had hoped to be greeted by fans and thus become very popular because, in his mind, he was already a fully-fledged genius with exceptional magical prowess. The fact that he was just ordinary, that more talented and gifted children were present, and that nobody was particularly impressed by his naturally wavy hair disappointed him.

He had above-average abilities and was more intelligent than most of his classmates, but he had a flaw in that he would only try if he was confident that he was the best of whatever team, group, or class he happened to be with at the time. Nevertheless, Gilderoy did well in school, and his teachers believed that he could make a name for himself with hard work. Even if he fell short of his lofty goals, which he freely shared with anyone who cared to listen (he told them he would create the Philosopher's Stone before leaving school and that he planned to captain England's Quidditch team to World Cup glory before becoming Britain's youngest Minister for Magic).

Despite this, he managed to gain the spot of Seeker for the Ravenclaw Quidditch team in his final year at Hogwarts, but this was just due to the one-in-a-million chance that nobody else had applied for the Seeker position. So with fewer people trying for the quidditch role, it ended up his by default. Furthermore, the previous Seeker had just finished his final year. So Gilderoy managed to conclude his last year at Hogwarts as the team Seeker, and while he wasn't good at the beginning, he managed to become above average before the end of the year.

His vanity was such that he valued learning not for its educational value but for the attention it provided. he craved attention and prizes and begged the Headmaster to start a school newspaper solely to see his own name in print. When this stunt failed to garner him any attention, he resorted to grander, more dramatic methods of gaining attention.

Though he was never popular with the other students, he did gain some notoriety by carving his signature in twenty-foot-long letters into the Quidditch pitch (which also earned him a week's worth of detentions), creating a spell that shot a hologram of his own face into the sky in imitation of the Dark Mark, and sending himself eight hundred Valentines, causing breakfast to be cancelled due to the number of droppings and feathers in the porridge. He devoted his abilities to insincere shortcuts and cowardly dodges, focusing on attention-seeking while ignoring authentic learning.

Lockhart became an accomplished author after graduating from Hogwarts in 1982 (with a faint sigh of relief from the school staff), travelling to exotic parts of the world and, having mastered Memory Charms shortly after graduation, tricking accomplished witches and wizards into revealing their most marvellous deeds and then erasing their memories, pretending he had done the things they did in his autobiographies.

This singular focus on Memory Charms came at a high cost. All of Lockhart's other magical abilities had deteriorated to the point where they could no longer be repaired. So every time he returned to Britain, he brought a new book along with him that chronicled an adventure that had allegedly occurred during his travels.

The books themselves were self-promotional and filled with a plethora of invented details that were nothing more than conceit, self-praise, vanity, gross exaggerations, sensationalisations, and idle speculations that were all hot air and bilge water. Known victims of his deception included an Armenian warlock and a witch with a hairy chin. Nevertheless, his books were well-received, and he kept a special quill of peacock feathers on hand for book signings.

He also received numerous awards for his ostensibly great deeds. He was invited to join the Dark Force Defence League as an honorary member, all the while successfully concealing his deception. Due to his alleged bravery and resilience in combating the Dark Arts, his former teachers, who were unaware of his status as a con artist, began to suspect that they had misjudged him, which worked in his favour as they did not give wrong opinions on him to others.

According to Lockhart, he initially believed that the more press exposure he received, the better his career would advance. But, unfortunately, he had become overexposed by the time he was writing his second best-seller, Gadding with Ghouls, which hurt his popularity.

He then went mysteriously "missing" for three weeks before revealing to the Daily Prophet that he had been kidnapped by trolls in the wilds of Stockton-on-Tees, with this being one of the milder stunts he had pulled. His popularity soared once more as a result of the storey. As a result of this experience, he asserted that one should "be sparing with [one's] public appearances, at first," lest one become overexposed.

Overall, Gilderoy Lockhart's extreme arrogance, exceeding vanity, conceit, egomania, narcissism, impudence, insensitivity, inconsideration, and self-obsession was his defining characteristics. He was a voracious self-promoter who claimed to have done many great things, but in reality, he was just a fraud who stole the credit for other wizards and witches' accomplishments and whose claims about himself mainly were conceit, self-praise, vanity, and whose claims about other things were idle speculations, gross exaggerations, and pure sensationalism. He was a massive dickhead.

I know and am aware of all this because I have all of his memories. They are no longer overpowering me because I know exactly who this man used to be. I refuse to be taken over by such a waste of space and become a husk of ego, this man did not appreciate his family, and that is not something that I will do.

The best thing to do right now would probably be to stay calm and take note of my surroundings and current situation before doing anything else and try to sort out the memories in my mind and create a more enormous disconnect between myself and the old Gilderoy Lockhart, but that would be something that he would do. I am not him, his mother may be dead, but his father and his two sisters are not, and so this could be the chance for me to gain a family and to finally experience what those kids at school made fun of me for my lack of.

Going back into the bedroom, I quickly walk to the wardrobe and throw it open to the sight of all these disgustingly frilly silk robes, which I quickly begin to pull out and toss behind me one after another without care, ignoring the small part of myself that ached at seeing such blatant disregard for the cloth. Still, I knew that those were not my feelings but remnants of Lockhart. I toss and throw out numerous items until there is nothing left hanging in the wardrobe, but in a pile at the bottom of the cabinet, hidden by all those garish robes, is a simple black dress robe which I quickly throw on, not being bothered to find myself underwear as I have somewhere to be.

I walk back over to the side of the bed and pick up the wand, nine inches, made of cherry with a dragon heartstring core. It is slightly bendy, and I look at it for a moment before stowing it away in my pocket and not thinking further about it and turning around to leave. Still, as I do so, I spot myself in the mirror, and I am a mess. My skin is damp, my hair matted, and I stink to high heaven, but I have already dressed, and I can't afford to waste time right now.

My mind wanders to the object in my pocket, and I whip it out into the air holding it firmly and thinking of cleaning myself and making myself look representable. My arm moves due to muscle memory, and the words slip out of my mouth as I cast several different spells. Once I am done, I look back up at the mirror, and I see a completely unfamiliar person.

Glistening skin, wavy blonde shiny hair, a sparkling smile and dazzlingly blue eyes were what I saw as I looked into the mirror. I realised that I had overdone it, so I reached up my hand to mess up the wavy blonde hair as I did not like it. Still, no matter what I did, some spell was in place that made it return to its original position, so I decided to focus on the other features. I tried to do the same thing I did earlier, which was to just focus on what I wanted to be done and rely on muscle memory and knowledge to fill in the gaps and bring my wishes to fruition.

I tried it once and then again when it didn't work, which is when I tried to search my memory for a way to do it manually. But, of course, then I realised that Gilderoy never needed to stop any of these spells, and so he only learned how to apply the spells and kept them on until they wore out, at which point he would cast them again.

Knowing it would be fruitless to continue to try and not wanting to waste any more time, I put the wand back into my pocket and moved out of the bedroom and into the living room and over to the fireplace. I know how this works even without Gilderoy's memories. I have watched the movies many times in my last life whenever I could manage some alone time with the TV or had a stable internet connection and a laptop.

Feeling urgent to get where I wanted to go and also feeling excited about my first floo travel, I grasp a bunch of the floor powder from the little place next to the fireplace before I step into it and turn around, relying on instinct, I smash the powder to the ground while stating a place I wasn't even sure of and then green flames grew to encompass my view. I closed my eyes and tucked my body in as I began to feel myself twist and turn through reality on the way to my destination.

------------------------------------

I steady my resolve and calm my excitement as I stand in front of an ordinary British semi-detached house, which I recall having three bedrooms and 1 bathroom with another bathroom outside as well as a small kitchen and a medium-sized living room and front room, bracing myself I work up the courage and walk open the small gate in front of the property and enter making sure to close it again behind me before walking down the path and using the lion themed door knocker to knock three times before waiting patiently for the door to be opened.

The door swings open, and standing there is a man who looks to be just past his fifties. He has brown hair, blue eyes and an emotionless face as he looks at me. The man is a bit overweight, but from his features and the remains of his old build, you can tell that he used to be a good-looking man, but time had progressed, and so did he, losing his charms. However, he still looked quite suitable for his age, and as I looked at him, I knew exactly who he was as memories of him arose unbidden in my mind.

"I-"

Before I can even say a word, the man slams the door shut in my face. I stand there stunned for a moment before I knock on the door again, but I use my knuckles this time. Then, finally, although I am still confused about what is happening, the door opens again, and Gilderoy Lockhart's father stands there with a harsh glint in his eye, and I smile before going to say something, but he talks before I can.

"It is too late now, you had your chance to be here, and you missed it in favour of your own selfish pursuits. Your mother died an entire month ago while you were gallivanting around on unicorns and chasing fairies or whatever the hell it is you people do in that magical world of yours. We were not even able to contact you as we had no idea where you were or how to get in to contact with you, and now you come here expecting to be welcomed inside for some tea and crumpets." I go to say something to try and salvage the situation, but the man just continues his tirade.

"Grow up, Gilderoy. You are no longer a child. In the end, all your mother kept asking for was you while her daughters and I were there by her side, but we were not good enough for her, and she longed to see you again before she passed, the ungrateful son who ran off for fame and glory abandoning his family. You may be my son, but you are not my child. You stopped being my child when you discovered that you had magic and you belonged solely to your mother until you cast her off when you no longer needed her. Your sisters and I want nothing to do with you or that world, so leave and never contact us again. Have a nice life, Gilderoy."

The door closes gently this time, but in my ears, it smashes close. The sound resounds in my ears as my smile slowly drops into a frown having a delayed reaction to the response I was not expecting and the rejection that I had just received. I stay there for a few moments before turning away from the door with a frown on my face and moving off down the path with my cloak billowing behind me as I do so, heading back to where I woke up. I got my hopes up again. It was too much to ask for.