Chapter 5

Disclaimer: If you recognise it, Surprise, I don't own it.

Chapter 3– The Library.

Edited: 04/03/2023

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Closing the door and locking it behind me, I turn around to gaze upon the empty living room that belonged to Gilderoy Lockhart to me. Even the Gilderoy art of me can feel how pointless it is, even if it is full of gaudy furniture and all those years' worth of accolades and awards that just feel so hollow. Still, I quickly pushed that feeling away and rid it from my mind having had years of experience doing so after getting my hopes up and then being brutally rejected by so many families. I don't know why I thought this magical world would be any different.

Shaking my head, I place my keys on the desk by the door and walk into the apartment without a clue of what to do so I just get to explore the rest of the condo, which I was doing earlier but got distracted by that stupid letter from Hogwarts but to be fair if anyone else got shoved into this year no matter the age of the inhabitant they resided in they would get excited at a Hogwarts letter because that is just the way it is though this Hogwarts letter held no joy to me.

Continuing my exploration of this pompous apartment, I didn't discover much else apart from a few new rooms without anything interesting them and functioning as you would expect them to. I have explored the rest of the place. I am now in the final room, which turned out to actually be a library which excited me as a library in a wizard's home will obviously hold books about magic. So I quickly grabbed the first book on a shelf and began to read through it, but it was just a piece of literature, and so I put it back in its place and picked up another, which was also another piece of literature.

I put that back and picked up another and then another and then another until I had picked up almost half of the books in the library, and not a single one of them had any magic spells inside of them. All of these books were just literature books and stories from both the magical and muggle worlds, as I spotted a fair few muggle classics on the wall. So I guess even if Gilderoy is a hack, he is at least a good hack who actually knows how to write a story and make it enticing. He at least does his research and looks at all sorts of books, both magical and non-magical, but what pisses me off is that there is not a single book about learning magic actually in this place.

Getting frustrated but not wanting to give up my search, I give one last glance around the library and try to see if I can spot anything of interest. Still, all I can see are shelves and shelves of useless books on rich mahogany bookshelves with an excellent grand desk at the back of the room with a fancy chair which should be called a throne with how fancy it was and I guess this is where Gilderoy does all his work as I can see a pot of ink with a quill inside it on the desk and a bunch of parchments spread across the length of the desk as well as a typewriter set on the side of the desk which can be easily moves to the centre if you need to use it.

And behind it, in his usual arrogant fashion, is a magical portrait of Gilderoy Lockhart hung on the wall that continues to wink and smile charmingly at me as I move around the room. Still, I have already seen too many of those in too many rooms to actually pay attention to it as they all just do the same thing and continue to pose at you, so I ignore it in favour of moving to the desk and searching it for anything interesting.

I move to the desk and begin to look through at the contents on it, which is just as I described before. Still, now I can read all of the parchments on the table. It seems like Gilderoy Lockhart was comfortable enough in his fame and pedigree that he thought he no longer had to go and steal stories from accomplished witches and wizards and that he could instead make his own fictional story up with him as the main character and tell everyone that it was true and thought that they would all believe it. The crazy thing is that I actually think he is correct, and he could have done that.

But as I look at his desk, I realise that he actually had some roadblocks because while he may be an excellent storyteller and writer, that is only when he has good material to write up. I could only assume his imagination is shit because on the desk are loads of scrapped story ideas. There are 'Tap Dancing With Trolls', 'Vacationing With Vampires', 'Meanderings With Mermaids', 'Pontificating With Pirates', 'Lunching With Liches' and my personal favourite 'Various Vacuous Venemous Veelas', which makes me release a bark of laughter thinking this guy is becoming a smut writer and trying to be like the man, the myth, the legend, Jiraiya from Naruto who wrote the Icha Icha Paradise series.

"Haha, aren't I amazing? What would you say is my best feature?" I freeze and turn around slowly to see the Gilderoy Lockhart portrait on the wall looking directly at me. I wonder if I am hearing things or if that is just the Gilderoy Lockhart in my head's thoughts, and he is coming out to the front of my mind again. Still, those worries diminish as the portrait in front of me moves.

"Come on now, don't be shy. I know I am an amazing specimen of a man, but you have to choose a single feature that you think is my best. Actually, now that I think of it, this might be the most difficult thing to do since all my features are great. But, even so, you must pick the one you think is my ultimate feature." The portrait talks again, seeming to have some actual intelligence and cognition behind all the magical oil and whatever else goes into making this magical, moving portrait. However, this is also the first one I have seen that actually talks.

The rest I have seen, while of different sizes and grades, all continue to change between various poses and wink and smile charmingly at whoever could see the portrait, but this is the first I have noticed that can actually talk, which freaks me out a bit. I wonder if he can tell I am not Lockhart anymore and how intelligent this portrait is, but I realise it will only have Gilderoy's intelligence as it continues to talk. So I should be safe, so I resume my nosying while ignoring the chatty portrait obsessed with its features.

"Is it my blonde wavy hair? Or maybe my dashing white smile? Or perhaps my enchanting laugh? There are too many great features to choose from. No wonder you have yet to answer me." I try to ignore the portrait as I pour through the contents of the desk. Still, I don't find much since these draws only seem to be full of different coloured ink pots and different kinds of quills, and I doubt they are any different from each other except for the decorations upon them and quite a few different types of parchment.

I even found a single desk drawer full of muggle pens and paper that all seem to be unused. There are quite a few different muggle items in there as well. Apart from the books, these are the only things I can find of muggle origin in this apartment. They were hidden in a draw, so I can easily guess that ol' Gil didn't quite like the less pure half of his blood which was quite obvious when you noticed him distancing himself from his family and his mother, that married a muggle man, throughout all of this that damn portrait has been continually chattering in my ear and has constantly been arrogantly boasting about himself and asking me what his best or my best feature is. I can only bare it for so long.

"So, come on now, what is my very best feature? Look closely now, take your time and think about it because there is a veritable treasure trove to shift through to get to the most valuable piece of treasure, and that is what I am, a national treasure. I, Gilderoy Lockhart, am the very best and most handsome wizard in all of Britain, nay, in all of Europe, nay, in all of the wor-" I slam the desk drawer I was looking through closed, having gotten very angry with my lack of results and this dumbass portrait has brought me to boiling temperature. So I turn around to see its stupid smug self-assured grin as it looks down at me, and I feel the intense urge to just launch my hands at the blasted thing and just tear it to shreds.

But I somehow stop myself before I can and take a deep breath to think about my situation. This is one of those magical portraits, and as I know from the books, the people in the magical portraits could travel between different paintings, which could all be at completely other locations, so even if I did tear this thing to pieces, there is no guarantee that this annoying man in the image would be destroyed.

There is even a chance that he could go to a different portrait somewhere and tell someone about me, Gilderoy Lockhart, tearing his own magical picture to pieces which are definitely out of character, so it would be best that I leave this portrait alone for now and just never come back into the library until I figured out a way to destroy the painting or simply silence or remove it.

"Oh, have you finally figured it out? How much time has it been since I first asked you? You must have taken ages and researched a lot to finally come to a decision. So, go on then, tell me, what is my best feature?" I hear the portrait ask as I move to leave the library, and I am nearing the door when it asks me once again what Gilderoy Lockhart's best feature is. I find myself utterly bored and fed up with the question, and yet my feet slow to a stop for some reason. I don't know why or how, but for some reason, I open up my mouth to answer.

Even though I don't know the answer, words rise unbidden from my throat. But then, those words escape from my mouth into the open air. "Gilderoy Lockhart is the most brilliant wizard in all the land. His blonde wavy hair glistens in the sun, and his straight white teeth shine even in the dark. His brilliance is as if a rainbow that has been given physical form, and his elegance is that of royalty. Still, by far, his best feature is his boundless talent at magic which surpasses that of even Dumbledore himself."

I stand there for a moment, completely confused and shocked at the utter drivel that I myself just spoke into the air. I can only feel intense relief that there is no one else around me to have heard me spout such bullshit. I don't even know why I said it, as I was fully intent on leaving this room and never coming to hear again. Still, as I listened to the portrait ask me that question one last time before I left the room, I had an insane feeling that I would regret leaving the library and not answering the question. So I opened my mouth, and those words came out automatically as if those words were what the portrait was actually asking for.

The crazy thing is that I think those words actually came from the Gilderoy Lockhart part of my mind that sometimes rears its head. I think this portrait is merely here like a mirror-mirror on-the-wall situation to remind Lockhart how awesome he is. That intense feeling that I might regret leaving this room came from him as well because I can see no possible reason why saying those words to that portrait could serve any other purpose except feeding the massive ego of this tool and feeding the unearned arrogance of this pompous man.