2

When I awoke the next morning I was eager to go about my plans. In truth I had such difficulty getting to sleep the previous night, what with all of the ideas I had running through my head, that it was rather late when I arose.

Oh well, such things happen.

I sent off an owl to Dumbledore asking for recommendation as to a book or five on how to study Occlumency, then went off to work.

Obtaining a Time Turner was the first item on my agenda, and my only real surprise was how easy this was to do. I wandered into the Ministry during the lunch hour, found most stations abandoned, wandered into the Department of Mysteries ready with a story about being lost while at the Ministry on legitimate business, only to find no one there and wander out a few minutes later with four Time Turners concealed in my pockets.

Weird. I could only hope things were so disturbed because of the recent hubbub about my Death Eater captures and so on, as I could so easily see Minister Fudge giving pompous orders about 'getting everyone out in the field to search for others' or some other such nonsense, and didn't want to think that their security was that lax normally.

Well, I left the Ministry and immediately discovered that you could only travel back in time one week by the Time Turners I had available.

Still, a week was a good thing to have. I was about to go out and practice my magic somewhat when it occurred to me what week had just passed us by in reverse. Harry had been in the Hospital Wing when I'd gone back, ergo he was going to be facing Quirrel in the time that had only just now reversed.

Well, I had in no way planned on this, but decided that I might take a stab at the opportunity as it passed by all the same. So I skipped on over to Hogwarts and, while hiding out in the Room of Requirement doing spell and magical training (an ideal place to do both, I might add), I awaited that momentous night of the rescue of the Stone.

Invisibility cloaks are so useful! Once Harry and the others had gone down to the chambers below Fluffy I followed unseen, pacing them silently as they went from room to room.

Bypassing the Devil's Snare, flying keys, giant chessboard and troll were all too easy, as I simply followed along as they opened each way. I gave Ron a good look once he'd sacrificed himself in the chess game, as that was his one true moment of solid heroism, ever really (I didn't could facing the spiders as I did not believe it was something he'd have done if he'd known what he was getting into beforehand).

But he was fine, just stunned a bit really. No real harm done.

The Fireproof Potion was actually something listed in Moste Potente Potions, interestingly enough. Amazing what you can discover when you really need to know something and have a place called a Room of Requirement. I just went in with that desire in mind and found myself facing a reading stand with that book on it opened to the relevant page.

It wasn't even all that hard to brew, which was a good thing as I truly wasn't all that good at brewing them. I'd inherited Lockhart's skills, and he stank. Thankfully, I knew enough from my cooking experience about how to follow a recipe, do that carefully enough and it does not take many attempts before you have success. And the ingredients had all been there waiting.

But I did not follow Harry immediately through the flames. No, I was pretty sure that if I did so Quirrel and Moldy would discover me, and that would change the events as they ought to come to pass.

I was taking over the position of a blowhard and a coward. Being neither, I would not be in that position for long, however the skills that I had available sucked, and I would be a long time improving them before I felt any degree of comfort in facing down my foes in a stand up fight, and even then I wouldn't be willing to risk facing the big nasties for the foreseeable, as I did not have Harry's 'Author's Fiat' protecting me from a nasty and unwelcome death.

Listening closely, I was able to tell by the shouting who was doing what and when it all ended. As it concluded I drank my potion and darted swiftly through the fire, finding a scene on the other side pretty well represented by the original movie.

Plucking up the Philosopher's Stone, I replaced it with a fake provided by the Room of Requirement, a bit of amethyst I'd brought myself really, given the appropriate shape and radiations for a few hours by the Room, and I also snatched up Quirrel's wand before heading back out of the exit.

According to Rowling, via Ollivander, in the very last book, a captured wand will function almost as well for the one to defeat its user as a chosen match, or one that had selected you by choice.

Well, having spare wands was always handy. I'd taken two off of Pettigrew when I'd had the chance. One was his own, and I was sure that would work for me as I'd rather soundly defeated him. The other was Voldemort's, the very wand that was brother to Harry's own and had caused him so much trouble.

I had no doubts at all that Peter had tried to use that one once or twice, either in attempts to make it find its master or out of curiosity as to whether he was 'worthy' of using that wand in Voldemort's place. And, well, if he'd used it then he was a user, not a very good one, I was sure, but having taken it from him all the same, I had defeated it's last user and therefore it ought to respond to me.

That was something to explore later.

I hadn't defeated Quirrel, but Harry had, and perhaps he could use a spare wand later. One thing I was sure of was that if the underage magic detection system worked by placing charms upon wands (and I saw no reason why it shouldn't, and it made perfect sense that it should - wands were presented in such a fashion that it would be easy to do, and it would be a very practical approach), anyway, if that was the method used, then now Harry had a wand that would not trigger those detections.

It was something to experiment with at some future point.

Now in the rather happy possession of a Philosopher's Stone (and rather amazed to be so as I'd never dared list that among my goals), I made my way out of those chambers and back to the Room of Requirement, where I required a way to stay hidden from Albus should he choose to search the castle. Oh, and as long as I was waiting I should like to train.

No Problem.

I had been training so far by making use of the one gifted skill I had, memory charms, in a rather unusual way. They could be used ordinarily to make one forget memories, or to implant false ones, but in this case I had recalled a little known specialty (and Lockhart had once bragged that he'd been rather gifted with memory CHARMS - note the plural) concerning how to use a much milder version to reinforce a memory already there.

Simply spoken, I used those oft-neglected charms to help me remember better, recalling things like Lockhart's school days and those lectures and demonstrations he had slacked off through.

Well, I had no intention of slacking off any longer and wanted those skills, so by reinforcing the memories of lessons I had largely missed out on the first time I was able to recall them once again to use as practice material and rush through a rather large volume in much the same way as a pensieve helps one in both reviewing and organizing memories.

So, in spite of having paid not very much attention to those at the time, I could review them now and gain the value of those as if I'd actually been attentive the first time. Although it did require some amount of practice to get those skills down right, it had the advantage of going by much faster.

Nevertheless there was so very, very far to go and so much to cover. And this creep didn't even take all of the right classes, so I'd be totally on my own for most electives and NEWT level subjects.

And lets not even begin to discuss postgraduate studies.

As far as I was concerned, a Hogwarts education was only the beginning of what I needed to know. After all, none of those mages accounted powerful had stopped there. Moldyshorts and Dumbledore were both known to have studied further after Hogwarts. And the only younger mages I respected, Fred and George Weasley, well... there was no way they'd learned all that stuff in their classes.

Speaking of those guys, it was approaching 'present time' so I made my way out of the castle and off to the Weasley home, figuring using the morning of the day I'd slept in on was going to do no harm to anyone. And, if it came right down to it, I WANTED to be seen elsewhere during that time I was off robbing one of the secretive areas of the Ministry.

It was called an alibi. What? You think I did that horrid crime? No way! How could I when I was off over there at the same time doing something else? Look, I have witnesses!

That would be a certain defense in a muggle court, but I didn't know about a wizarding one, who should know about things like Time Turners.

Sigh. Everything is legal until someone figures out how to do it.

I had already discovered that a Time Turner would not allow you to be in more than two places at once, so you could only go back to repeat a day once, no more. Thus, it was important that I use my time wisely, despite having twice as much of it IF used well, as I couldn't just run up an infinite number of 'me' as I'd seen in some fanfics.

Pity.

So, bright and early that same morning I'd once slept through, I sent a letter off to Amelia Bones, Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, explaining that while I'd been interviewing at Hogwarts, Harry Potter had been in the hospital wing, and that I'd overheard someone talking about how Madam Pomphrey had found signs consistent with past child abuse, including at least one broken arm. And I was wondering what the follow up to that had been?

It was only after I sent the letter that I recalled how dead empty the Ministry had been that day, and rather guilty concluded that all of those Unspeakables and Aurors and, well, just about anyone else in the Ministry would probably have all been off investigating those allegations of crimes against the Boy Who Lived.

True enough, and the next day's paper would be a scandal sheet carrying the headlines pertaining to Harry's awful home-life situation, and how Aurors had broken into the Dursley home, under arms, intending to arrest and then question the family, only to find all three Dursleys dead. But there was more than enough physical evidence of his appalling treatment, including especially one cupboard under the stairs, to convict them in everyone's minds.

Poor boy. It hurt so much to be famous sometimes. Others? Well, others (if you knew how to use them right) could be so amazingly useful!

Like now, for example.

Any rabid fool who looked into Harry's situation in the least degree would find that it was Albus Dumbledore who put Harry there. It was unavoidable that would be discovered, and when it was... whew! He might not survive that with his career intact, but he certainly wasn't going to be getting away with any discrete, behind the scenes meddling to control Harry's life for a while.

Or so I hoped.

Actually, it was downright useful to me that it was the Aurors and not any muggle law enforcement agency that discovered the Dursley's corpses, as the muggles did things like investigate crime scenes and they had this nifty science called forensics, which stood a good chance of finding out clues even when you'd been fairly careful about not leaving any.

You could never be sure that muggle police wouldn't find something if they went looking. They were that good at their job. On the other hand, however, the wizarding government was far too quick about rushing in, making a first impression, and then erasing all evidence so the muggles didn't get involved.

So that meant I was almost certainly free and clear.

This was, however, getting ahead of ourselves. That paper was still one day from coming out, and this was certainly going to be a week for banner headlines. First two Death Eaters taken down by myself, now the Potter Scandal. I had little idea how right I was, as the next day would have the paper's report of Peter Pettigrew getting Dementor kissed. But that was all still in the fairly near future.

No, for now I still had another productive day to spend.

So, I approached Hogwarts once more. It was still one week almost to the day before school let out, but I had to get some things moving with certain kids there and I felt now would be a good time to do so.

Due to the excellent tutorial and books available in the Room of Requirement, as well as my own adaptation of memory charms to enhance recollection, I had done an amazing amount of catching up, truly staggering. I could almost call myself... sigh, at the point where I'd consider that I'd mastered slightly less than half of the first year curriculum. And that was the easy stuff.

No, I'd be a good, long time recovering my magical skills to where they ought to be at this rate. Curse the original Lockhart for a lazy fool. A charming one, but still a lazy fool.

And yet, still that charm kept proving useful as a certain Transfiguration teacher met me almost just inside the school gates.

"Ah! Professor McGonagall," I bent low over her hand and kissed it, causing a small blush to erupt on her face if I was not mistaken. I arose again with a charming smile on full bore. "How could I have been so remiss? I allowed our last engagement to be interrupted. Well, I owe you a meal, if you'll have my company?"

This last got asked with a gallantly raised eyebrow and tilt of the head, to which she responded with a small smile of her own as I silently confirmed the presence of a delicate, hardly there blush just barely touching the sides of her cheeks.

Excellent.

Still, my facade never faltered as I made this information mine, and she took my hand, accepting my company as we went to the Great Hall together once again, where I did a very gentlemanly role of holding her seat for her and in all other ways being an attentive and appreciative date, to all appearances holding her age of no concern.

She was quite evidently flattered, even in spite of herself.

Well, snide quips aside, flattery will get you places. Often places most people would be reluctant to let you go, until you've buttered them up enough that they'd hold the door open for you and ask you to help yourself to what would once have been against their better judgment to even let you come near.

And Lockhart easily had that kind of charm. He couldn't sustain it for any great length of time, so the man preferred to butterfly, flitting about so as to never let the charm of his appearance linger long enough to go sour. But for those initial few moments... ah, yes. He could be charming indeed!

But then, the primary reason he could not sustain it for any length of time was that he was only surface deep, using that excellent charm to conceal quite a few character flaws. Considering that I had fewer flaws than he to hide, I should be able to keep this up for proportionately longer.

So, realizing that the best conversationalist must also be a good listener, I kindly informed my dear Professor that in truth I knew very little about her, then drew her out to talk about herself - a subject most people rarely get enough of, yet few indeed want to listen to.

Which, people not wanting to listen was a big reason why most folks didn't get to talk about themselves very much. So, being willing to listen when a body talked about themselves... most of the time they'd peg you as a brilliant conversationalist and recall you very fondly for years.

And, humans were weird in certain ways. It's like we were wired that way, so just like getting the oil changed on a car, they had to talk about themselves periodically to feel healthy.

So, I was presently performing that service for McGonagall.

Now, to do this properly you had to pay attention. You couldn't just space off or be at all uninterested. You had to prompt with questions, and you had to recall what she'd said before. But if you did all of that, well, you practically had a friend for life with that, and a few token payments afterwards.

I was able to do that for McGonagall, or Minnie as she now insisted I call her. And quite to my surprise, afterward she insisted on taking me to her suite so that I could look at pictures of all of the people she had mentioned in her discourse, and see some of the books our conversation had referenced.

There comes a barrier, a buffer if you will, in this sort of thing, a point where your mind rebels as it reaches the 'too much information' stage where you honestly cannot hear another thing about her dear uncle Jones or whoever and still recall it all.

Just like eating too much at one meal. You had a certain capacity, and a small measure by which you could exceed that going from full to stuffed, but beyond that point it just wasn't possible to take any more in, and trying may well cause you to erupt, ejecting all you'd taken in before.

I was approaching the 'mental barf' stage when I made my excuses about tiredness and excused myself from further conversation about her life story and family, and school, and favorite students, and good lesson points, and...

GAH!

Ok! Having reached the 'too much' stage, and realizing that I'd been somehow shanghaied from late-ish morning until well into the evening, having had lunch together in the Great Hall and dinner in her rooms (which, contrary to some speculations, were NOT all in Gryffindor colors), I bid her goodbye for the evening and made my way out into the corridors.

To my own surprise I'd learned quite a bit about the relentlessly respectable lady. There was so much more to the current Head of Gryffindor House than I'd ever imagined.

But, then... Rowling was not exactly in the habit of fleshing out her major (or minor) characters. We still didn't know Hermione's parents' names!

Still, I had to have some time to review and process all that 'Minnie' had told me or I'd forget it all, and go back to knowing nothing more than Rowling had grudged us about the lady of iron discipline I'd just spent an afternoon with.

A very surprising afternoon indeed. Who knew that she had war experiences as a little girl during the Battle of Britain? Or that little mages had flow around on brooms at low altitude detonating bombs in the air? Or that so many unexploded bombs were because of wards set on the ground?

I'd had no idea, and once you'd steeled yourself to follow it, her conversation really was fascinating. For example, I'd known about war rationing, but never imagined that wizards had been affected or potion ingredients became rare or hard to find. Although I could see invisibility cloaks and dragon hide armor becoming rare and highly sought after items, with a vastly reduced supply. Most of the raw material for those items came from Axis occupied territory, after all. And what didn't still had to be shipped, so with everyone wanting it but supplies not forthcoming...

Yah, I could understand some people willing to engage their daughters to get a cloak or a dragon hide robe. But I positively NEVER would have pictured a seven-year-old McGonagall as one of those engaged! Least of all to a twenty something Jap submarine captain of all things!

But the guy got sunk, and the shipments never made, so it had sort of fizzled away, but on a slow, lingering demise that left her out of the running for the few guys who had survived that great and terrible war. So, she was stuck as a 'future old maid' at the bright old age of seventeen and had lived alone ever since, or at least without family of her own. She'd been forced to take a position as a nanny for someone else's children right out of school, and that was where she'd learned to be firm, respectable, and no nonsense, concerned with tradition, discipline and rules (whereas in her school days she said she'd once been quite the little hellion).

Terrible. What sort of things did we never bother to imagine about each other, than were nonetheless true? Somehow it all made me feel rather kindly to the old bird.

Although, in support of her story I HAD heard that the shortage of guys in post World War Two Europe was so bad that millions of women could not be married - because there were not enough guys left to marry them! Snagging an American GI back in those days was considered the height of a European woman's ambition, and the boy-girl ratio problem had been so bad in Germany that a women's coalition had gotten together to petition their government to allow polygamy for a generation or two.

But, no. I can honestly say that I'd never seen McGonagall, or excuse me, Minnie, as the sort of person who had such a rich tapestry of history behind her. I guess I'd always just seen her as a woman who'd been locked inside of a library all of her life, with maybe a husband and a few uninspiring kids back home. NOT the sort of person who kept a working panzer back home as a souvenir, and had once fired a schmisser in anger during a battle!

Oh, but of course she hadn't hit anything. What do you expect of a seven year old girl?

Actually, picturing that old bird as a small girl was a stretch in and of itself. There is some impulse in the young that causes them to believe the aged somehow sprang into existence with their wrinkles fully formed. Intellectually I knew it was false, emotionally... well, it was a hard urge to master. This, in spite of having seen her pictures of her family, including herself as a young thing from ankle-biter all of the way up to her late teens and beyond. Yet there was something vaguely spooky about seeing an old person like that as once having been young like you.

One can almost feel Death itself standing over one's shoulder with a scythe when one contemplates how an old person was once young. It was unsettling, how the impermanence of youth was made clear to me in a scary and yet undeniable way.

Who doesn't want to stay young forever? Or better, yet, never think about it?

Just as I was about to descend the bumpy road of tumultuous thought in the general direction of despair over the inevitability of it all, I thought about that rock I had purloined not long ago in this very castle.

Then, just as I was about to congratulate myself on living fast and dying young even if I lived to be a hundred and seventy, I recalled that I had no idea at all on how to use the dang thing!

I knew that it COULD be used to create gold and Elixir of Youth, but no clue as to HOW! As the dang thing didn't come with instructions, and it wasn't a topic mentioned at all in the school library, I didn't know how I was going to find out, either, as I could not picture myself just walking up to Dumbledore and asking the question (the bit about the library I'd found, interestingly enough, on requesting such material from the Room of Requirement, then finding only an inscription on the wall revealed, stating that if something wasn't to be found in the castle, the Room could not produce it, and it functioned more in the way of an index, shuffling things around, than a 'create anything you want' chamber - oh, and it wouldn't steal a person's possessions either).

Still, enough detritus, lost or discarded items, had accumulated over the millennia of the school's operation that it still remained enormously useful.

But I was getting off track. I had some kids to find before they got away on me, and the hardest of those to find would be the Weasley twins. But also I needed to give some help to Harry, if I could.

However, luck was not to be with me that night, and I hadn't been invited to stay. So, it was a quick floo trip to my own home (a rather nice penthouse that was showy and far too expensive for my tastes, as its rent ate up too much of my income that I'd already begun earmarking for other things) and from there on to another of my self-proposed assignments.

You see, Lockhart had to have had material off of which to base those books claiming to have done events that he'd actually stolen, and I didn't think that hanging out in a pub overhearing someone brag to his friends would be enough to base a full novel off of (although, books in the wizarding world WERE short and rather light on subject matter, witness Rowling's two 'school books' she had published for charity).

Still, that was what I'd often suspected, but upon arriving in this reality I had happily uncovered that relevant memory as to how he'd done it. So, as I went 'home', I suppose you could say, I went to a rather secret vault and pulled out a case of glass vials filled with silvery liquid, along with a small pensieve.

The memories of those who had done those deeds that Gilderoy had bragged about and claimed credit for.

There was an upper level specialty in the department of memory charms that caused the victim's memories to fall out of his head instead of merely erasing them. It did both, actually. So Lockhart could cause someone to forget their own deeds and gather his research material for claiming credit both at the same time.

Doing this, the original Lockhart had been able to review those memories as many times as he'd wanted. He could (and had) gone over them again and again in search of those little details that caused his tales to come alive.

The man was a gifted storyteller, but in order to do that well you need to know small facts as well as the big ones, the large as well as the seemingly insignificant, spices to flavor the main meal. It took a medley of details to make a good story, and you couldn't do that sitting down to interview a guy without going into so much depth as to make nearly anyone suspicious.

No, the original Gilderoy had succeeded in this again and again, so given how incompetent he was at most things, that said he must have had an EASY way of doing it - And this counted.

Glad to have confirmed this suspicion as fact, I took one of those bottles, a set that described the adventures my predecessor had recorded in his book 'Voyages with Vampires' and looked at it for a moment.

I had no idea if what I was about to try was even possible. The Gilderoy part of me was terrified by the very idea of it, but the rest of me was quite at ease with the suggestion. No one that I knew of had tried this, and it wasn't the sort of situation you rushed into casually. But...

Gilderoy Lockhart had gotten himself into quite a mess by claiming credit for deeds when he had no skills or talents to back up those claims. It was a bad situation and led to quite a mess. Frankly, the wizarding world (or any world) NEEDED heroes, and, paradoxically, if they had one in me they would lean less on Harry. Gilderoy Lockhart was actually famous enough that if the Dark Lord was to return today the people of magical Britain would be looking as much to me as to either Dumbledore or Harry.

This could be a good thing.

The more pillars you had supporting your culture the more likely it was to whether storms intact. In Rowling's books when Dumbledore had died and Harry had gone into hiding (at Dumbledore's last request) with the Dursleys, magical Britain had come apart at the seams and people panicked, leaving the whole thing open for Moldy to run through as he liked.

Well, it was one of my intentions to train up Harry to be a better hero, able to survive some of those burdens he got by having the wizarding world expect him to save them all of the time. Dumbledore may die once again this time around, I personally doubted it would happen the same way, but it could happen. However, Harry was never going to be stuck at the Dursleys again.

But!

If I was still around, people would also be looking to me, and a right fool I'd be if I couldn't hold up my end of that bargain. So, in a way, Lockhart'd brought this on himself. By claiming to be a hero, getting people to believe he was a hero, he was going to be required to be a hero when heroism inevitably got called for in one of the many crises that were bound to happen.

And, well, I wasn't about to get there on my own ability. Not on time, and certainly not from anything I'd inherited from Lockhart's own efforts. He was a complete fraud, unreliable at best, unfortunately.

So, as much as it pained me to take the risk, I felt I had to all the same. I prayed about it and felt comforted. Then, having prepared letters in case I died or went mad or whatever, I sat down in a comfortable chair, placed the tip of my wand into that vial of liquid I held in my hand (then placed the bottle down on an endtable so that I stood no chance of dropping it) and drew out a long silvery string of memory, which I then fed inside of my head.

Wow! What a rush!

I'd empty that whole bottle into my temple before I went to bed that night.