Gilderoy Lockhart stared at the blank white walls from his cot in the psych ward of St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries. He shook back his graying blond mop top as he tried to free his arms from his straitjacket. He didn't know how long he had been at St. Mungo's, but most of his other memories were quickly coming back to him. His overprivileged childhood with doting parents at his disposal. His sorting into Ravenclaw house where he was told again and again that he was special and intelligent beyond the rest of his peers, giving him a self-entitlement that led to laziness and lack of study. An unparalleled fame in the wizarding world earned by taking the credit for the accomplishments of others. The memories were all too much to bear as Lockhart rested in his cot. With great effort, he sat up and began to pace around his room, feeling guilt he had never felt before.
Lockhart's guilt ultimately manifested itself into one name: Daniel Goldstein. A fellow Ravenclaw, Goldstein had struggled his entire life with two barriers. Not only was Goldstein a Muggle born, the product of two dentists, but he was a practicing Jew as well, perhaps the only Jewish wizard alive in Britain. During their Hogwarts days, Lockhart had bombarded Goldstein with anti-Semitic insults simply out of jest. The last he had heard from Goldstein, his loving wife had given birth to a boy named Anthony. Of course, that was 17 years ago. Anthony Goldstein would probably be in his final year at Hogwarts now. Perhaps Lockhart had taught him in his Defense Against the Dark Arts class, but he didn't know. He never took roll or bothered to learn any of his students' names. He searched his room for stationery and came across a blood-red Mead notebook and an ebony quill pen. He then began to scribble a letter in his childish scrawl:
Deer Anthony Goldstein (an Daniel to),
Eyem sorry four al the trubbel eye hafe kauzed yew in the passed. Eye wuz a cellfish mann, and eavil mann. Eye canot beagin too desscribe the gilt eye amm kurrenly esperiencing. Az a wize wizzard, musch wiezer then mieself unce tolld me, iff eye amm nevver for mieself, whew wil bee four mie butt iff eye amm unly four mieself, wut amm eye?
Lockhart looked out the window and noticed a pillow of snow and a stunning magical reindeer display led by a ghostly Father Christmas.
P.S. Happey Hanukah
-Gildroy Lockart