Memory

Lockhart's face paled with fear and panic when he saw his spell had no visible effect. Panicking, he tried again, "Obliviate, Obliviate, Obliviate."

With each failed attempt, the worry on Lockhart's face increased. I sat there calmly, not reacting to any of his spells. When I went looking for the weaknesses of memory charms, I discovered that they couldn't get past Occlumency shields.

After his three failed attempts, Lockhart let out a nervous chuckle, "Well done, sir. I was testing you, and you passed with flying colors."

Seeing how I wasn't buying it, Lockhart did the second thing that he was good at, running away. Just as he turned to run, I murmured, "Libramen."

From under the table, I had my wand pointed at Lockhart's legs. When the Tripping Jinx hit his ankles, Lockhart went down hard, flailing his arms about trying to break his fall.

Getting up from my seat, I slowly strutted over towards Lockhart. As I stood over him in silence, I titled my head and held my wand out as if I were trying to figure out the best way to deal with him.

"Please don't hurt me," he begged. "I'll do anything you want. Do you need money, contacts, fame? Whatever you want, I can give it to you."

I could tell by the look in his eye, that he was finally where I wanted him. I showed him that his spells wouldn't work, and he couldn't get away from me. Now that I had deliberately taken away his primary tools, Lockhart fell back to cowardice. Making him feel helpless was the only way I could think of to secure his help. People like him will always look for a way out if they have alternatives.

Looming over him, I pointed back towards one of the chairs and said in my most menacing voice. "Sit down... Now." My voice trailed off, giving a silent warning and letting his imagination come up with the consequences if he refused.

Like I predicted, Lockhart crawled to the chair and obediently sat in the chair. On his face was an innocent smile like he didn't just try and erase my memory and run away. I almost rolled my eyes at his shamelessness display of sincerity. I'm guessing his charm is what let him get away with erasing so many people's memories. He befriends them, and when they're least expecting it, he strikes.

Resuming my seat, I pulled out the last bit of preparation that I made for tonight. I pulled out a magical contract and tossed it towards Lockhart. I wasn't good enough yet to create one that would be as restricting as the one I signed. So, I took my inspiration from Hermoine and hexed the contract with a spell that I know Lockhart would fear about all else. It was a spell that targets one of his greatest weaknesses, vanity.

I'm not sure if I used the same spell as Hermoine, but if not, it was close. It was a curse that would cover your entire face with pus dripping boils that wouldn't go away. I'm sure the curse could be broken eventually, but spells attached to contracts that you voluntarily sign, root deep within you, and are a pain in the butt to remove.

It accorded to me, that what I was doing to Lockhart was probably similar to what happened to my grandfather. I'll bet that Delvin Whithorn used his father's goons to get the drop on him, or maybe he threatened his family. Whatever was used, it was effective, and I bet they erased his memories afterward. When Grandpa George disappeared, Delvin swooped in and took what he wanted.

A small part of me felt terrible doing something similar, but at least it was against Lockhart. He was a garbage human being, whose days were numbered. I felt no urge to stop him from making the foolish mistake of using Ron's broken wand to try and permanently erase the minds of Harry and Ron.

Once Lockhart finished reading the contract, he looked over at me in surprise. He probably thought that I was after money. But, the agreement was pretty simple, in exchange for not telling the world of his crime. Lockhart would explain how to work with memory charms.

From the stupid smirk that slowly started appearing Lockhart's face, I could tell he was beginning to think that he had an advantage over me due to having something I wanted. To head off that train of thought, I showed Lockhart my left hand where I held a quill, and then to prove a point, I showed him my wand with my right hand. "Sign it,'' I demanded.

"Of course, I would be happy to, Mr..." Lockhart's voice trailed off in an attempt to learn my name.

"You can call me Mr. Box, or Jeremiah if you prefer. It makes no difference to me," I replied.

After putting his signature on the paper, Lockhart slid it over to me. I signed it with my real name and pocketed the document within my robe so that he didn't get a chance to look at it.

I glanced over at Lockhart and commanded, "Now talk to me about memory charms."

"Do you want to know about sealing, or rewriting?" Lockhart responded.

Crossing my arms, "The latter, I think the Forgetfulness Charm is rather transparent."

Lockhart shook his head, "That's a common misconception, you have to be very careful when it comes to erasing memories. Memories are connected and flow into one another, if you're not careful when sealing a memory away, it can have a cascading effect leading other memories you didn't intend to be sealed to be erased as well. If you're not careful, you can end up deleting a good chunk of someone's mind. For example, say you decided to erase the memory of a person buying their wand. If you aren't careful, you could erase every memory associated with their wand. Which would be devastating."

"I suppose you found this out first hand," I replied, disgusted by his actions of erasing the minds of brave witches and wizards.

"It only happened a few times," He defended. "Besides, if you think about it, I did them a favor. Their deeds will live on through my books."

"Except that they won't get the credit they deserve." I scoffed.

"Yeah, but without me, their stories wouldn't have sold so well. No one wants to read a story about an ugly, elderly Armenian warlock taking down a pack of werewolves attacking a small town. He'd look terrible on the front cover. No sense of style at all. And the witch who took down the Bandon Banshee never would have been taken seriously. She had a harelip. Without me, none of those stories would see the light of day."

The more I heard, Lockhart defending his actions, the more I wanted to curse him. I shoved the feeling aside. He would pay for his crimes one day when his entire memory was permanently erased. The only silver lining I could find was that at least I could profit from his experience.

"How difficult is it to undo the spell?" I asked.

Lockhart shrugged, "From my experience, it takes almost no effort to undo if you're the one who cast the spell. But, cracking another wizard's memory charm is a completely different story. It can be done, but if you're not careful, you could end up shattering their mind."

"So, how do I prevent that from happening?" I questioned.

"It's a careful mix of power, skill, and experience." He replied, "I don't have a lot of experience taking apart memory charms.

I was happy to hear that it was easy to undo what you did with the spell. It gave me some confidence on what I was planning on doing later. Wanting to steer the topic back to casting the spell, so I asked, "So, how do you cast the spell without it going haywire?"

"It's all about the intent within your mind when you cast the spell. You have to get extremely specific with what you want to be erased. The more precise you are with what you want, the better the outcome. But, one thing to keep in mind is the older the memory, the more likely other memories will be affected. There is a reason why Obliviators have to go through specialized training before they are allowed to erase memories."

Hearing how dangerous memory charms could be made me glad I didn't experiment on my memories without getting instruction. "So, what about rewriting memories? Do they need the same level of precision."

Waving his arm, Lockhart explained, "No, it's the opposite with rewriting someone's memories. The more you interfere, the less realistic it is, and a higher chance they will recognize it as false memory. All you need to do is insert a vague desire of what you want, and the mind will naturally do the rest. If you overdo it, the memory can become extremely distorted."

Lockart spent the next hour going over everything he had learned about memory charms. I ended up having to give more galleons to the barman because we ran out of time, and I still had more to do tonight.

As I mulled over his words, I was happy I came to him for instruction. I probably would have done the opposite of what he suggested. The books I read were vague on details like this. Perhaps in an attempt to limit the damage that someone could do without Ministry instruction, or at least make it easier to track someone down when they performed the spell poorly.

Coming to a decision, I said, "Well, I guess we should practice, shouldn't we?"

Lockhart looked around the room in confusion, "Yeah, but who are you going to practice on?"

As I looked at him silently, it dawned on him that I intended to use him as a practice dummy. "No," he protested.

Gesturing to the empty room, I said, "I don't see anyone else volunteering. Besides, you don't have a choice. Didn't you read the fine print of the contract? It specified that you would help me until I was satisfied, and I won't be satisfied until I get some practice in. Besides, I don't think you want to risk your pretty little face being covered in pus-dripping boils for who knows how long. I'm pretty sure that would put a damper on your book signings."

Lockhart's face twisted in horror when he heard the conditions of breaking the agreement. One of the things he was most proud of was his looks.

"Can't we grab some random person in the bar?" He whined. "It will be a piece of cake for me to convince someone to join us. Afterward, I can erase their memories. They will never know.

I slowly picked up my wand, "I think that the world has had enough of Gilderoy Lockhart erasing memories. Plus, I believe in karma. As you have sown, so shall you reap."

I pointed my wand at Lockhart and ignored his whimpering, "Obliviate."

Not wanting to chance messing up Lockhart's mind before he did it to himself, I targeted the last two minutes of our conversation where he discovered he would be a guinea pig.

Lockhart's eyes crossed in confusion, and a blank look appeared on his face. After a moment, his eyes fluttered. "Uh, where were we?''

I showed him my wand and gave him the same spiel about needing to practice. What followed was a near word for word repeat of our conversion during the last two minutes.

After a few more memory resets, I felt like I started to get the hang of it. I would need more practice, but I could do that on my own. So, I moved on to rewriting his memories.

I stuck with changing his most recent memories, I decided to rewrite our introduction, and when I cast the spell, I gently intended for him to view me as an enthusiastic fan. I was surprised how easily it worked, but I guess that thinking everyone was a fan of his was how Lockhart usually viewed the world.

Still, to say I was disturbed by the changes would be an understatement. Lockhart's entire view of me changed. In his mind, the last thirty minutes had gone down in an entirely different way. In his mind, he reinvented me as an enthusiastic fan of his and that I had been happily listening to him recant his adventures.

The whole process creeped me out so much that I immediately erased what I had changed, which reverted him to normal. No wonder the Ministry made this spell illegal and restricted information about the spell. I don't always see eye to eye with the Ministry of Magic. But, in this case, I agree with them completely.

I thanked the heavens that Lockhart was such an idiot, had he been more intelligent and driven, the amount of damage he could have done with it could have been astronomical. Already, I could think of dozens of ways it could be horribly abused in the wizarding world and the muggle world. Although now that I think about it, maybe using the charm in the way he did, is what allowed Lockhart to get away with it for so long. Maybe Lockhart wasn't an idiot?

Turning, I looked at his foolish expression before shaking my head. No, he was definitely an idiot, he just showed bouts of cunning ever now and again.

I still needed a lot of practice, but I sensed that I had gotten everything out of Lockhart that I needed. I pointed my wand at Lockhart one final time. I targeted Lockhart's memory of receiving my letter, and all of our time together and erased them. "Obliviate."

Lockhart's blue eyes shifted out of focus, and I left him drooling in the room. I needed to get out before he regained his focus.

By the time I made it back to Hogwarts, it was past lights out, and by sheer luck, I made it back to the tower without being discovered. Harry Potter had it easy sneaking around with his invisibility cloak and map. I need to look into a spell that will let me move around without being detected.

The following day, I spent some time rummaging around in my mind palace. Every memory I had was in here, and I was looking for some I wouldn't miss. Part of me considered using one of my memories from this life as practice, but they were far too precious to me. Luckily, I have some worthless memories from my previous life that I hold no attachment to and wouldn't care if they were erased.

Looking around at the shelves that were packed onto each level in my mind palace. I felt like I understood Dumbledore's comment to Harry about having so many memories that it felt like your mind was too full. I've always had a great memory, now that I had established my mind palace, every moment of my life was stored inside my tower.

I was a little nervous about moving forward. It was one thing performing the spell on Lockhart, but doing it to myself raised the stakes to a new level. Taking a deep breath, I made the way to the top of my tower, where I stored all memories from my previous life. In the real world, I clutched my wand as I selected one of my memories from my last life.

Concentrating on only affecting this memory I murmured, "Obliviate"

Inside my tower, the book started folding back in on itself, getting smaller and smaller until all that was left was a tiny black marble. I looked around at all my other memories and grinned when I saw they were undisturbed.

Immediately, I undid the spell and watched as the marble turned back into a book. I spent the following week practicing the Forgetfulness Charm until I was satisfied that I had a handle on the spell. I wasn't planning on using it on anyone if I didn't have to. But, at least now I am confident if I have to use it, I won't break someone's mind.

I moved onto rewriting memories. I stuck with the same memories. That way, I wouldn't suffer a loss if there was permanent damage.

My first attempt went wrong, I put too much input into my rewrite. When viewing the memory, it became hazy and foggy to where I couldn't see anything that was happening. What was strange is that I could hear what was going on, but it didn't sound natural. It was like someone was narrating the memories for me.

Thankfully, I was able to undo the damage and return it to its previous state. I spent the next few weeks perfecting my skill. I understood what Lockhart meant when he said to keep it believable.

As a fun experiment, I tried to rewrite one of my memories, where I met some aliens. But, when I viewed the memory, the aliens looked like the first attempts at CGI. They seemed so fake that it was humorous to view. By the end of March, I felt like I finally had a good grasp on how to rewrite my memories effectively.

Now, I had a little over a month to figure out how to build a brand new memory out of scratch. I was a bit worried about the amount of time I had left. My backup plan was to see if I could get away with just rewriting memories, but I was wary because I had already learned the hard way that it was easy to lose track of what you revised.

Done the right way, a rewritten memory feels so real that it becomes difficult to distinguish it from any other memory. And it feels like the revised account is what happened. To prevent this from happening, I started to keep a written account of what I was changing. If I got confused, I could use what I wrote to discern what was real and fake.

With only a month and a few days left, the clock was ticking. The spring break was rapidly approaching. When the break was over, I would only have around ten days to complete the trial. I had to get started right away if I wanted to complete the trial.