A/N: Author's notes are too mainstream.
The last things Gilderoy Lockhart remembered were feeling awesome, raising a piece of wood, preparing to pull off his grandest of all plots, and then failing miserably. Then seeing a whole bunch of crazy shit, then being taken to some sort of hospital, then being treated like a goddamned five-year-old twenty-four-seven, then — OH HOLY MOTHER OF ALL FORNICATION, it was coming back. Everythingwas coming back, and it was making his head hurt.
Actually, scratch that; hurt was an understatement. His brains felt as if they were going to burst through his nostrils, his tympanic membranes were pulsing to the sound of an nonexistent sine wave a couple terabels too loud, and his mouth was making voices he didn't know human pharynxes could produce. It was as through a centenarian with Parkinson's and nine litres of espresso performed a lobotomy on him withoutanaesthetics.
Obviously, this triggered a lot of commotion among nurses and fellow patients alike. Soon enough, Gilderoy was positively flooded with bullshit like, "Mister Lockhart, are you alright?", "Mister Lockhart, what's wrong?", "Mister Lockhart, please calm down!" He may have been busy screaming his own lungs out, but the whole thing was getting admittedly irritating. Damn bitches don't know when to put a sock in it, do they?
"Shut the fuck up!" he yelled while Quietus'inghalf the floor wandlessly, then resumed his screaming business as per usual.
A couple of days later, Gilderoy Lockhart was discharged, the doctors figuring his "permanent" incapacitation wasn't as permanent anymore. Granted, he was going to have some trouble travelling around, but fortunately, he had planned for such a situation well in advance. He was going on a trip to Australia for the next week or so.
Bertram Lockhart was probably the luckiest man ever to live on Earth. On first sight, he was a fool, bright as obsidian near the bottom of the ocean, warm as the insides of a refrigerator, elegant as John Rambo in Vietnam. And truth be told, there wasn't a single speck of dishonesty in that. His quality of character was remarkable in its absence.
But there was one thing that had gone incredibly right in Bertram's life, and that was his brother. Not only had he become the most popular thing since Michael Jackson, he was just about as rich as. And of course, courtesy of an awesome set of lawyers, a bit of cunning and a dozen or so legal windows, quite an amount of profit ended up in his pockets. Like, say, fifty percent.
So Bertram Lockhart might be the most useless bag of bones ever to walk on this planet, but he sure as hell never had to work for anything. Or put any effort whatsoever, for that matter. Anything he wanted, he could have, for whenever people refused to listen to his inane drivel, money talked.
If that wasn't enough, his rather magical brother had made sure to conjure up the most exotic of mansions in a remote location, right next to one of Australia's great beaches, which of course he had proceeded to render even more exotic via modern technology and angels of the female variety. Truly, if there was such a thing as heaven on Earth, he was as close as any man had been to it. The cherry on top was, of course, that his brother had finally been declared mad, literally zeroing out the chance of complaints ever coming his way.
Today, however, was slightly different, because his return to his mansion was met with uncharacteristic silence. No cars had been parked outside — save for his own, of course — and no supermodel was cooling off in the pool. In fact, even his beautiful maids had gone missing; where to, he didn't know. He started looking around, suspecting some sort of surprise, and there was indeed one, though it didn't hide itself nor was it pleasant.
Gilderoy Lockhart was sitting in his leather armchair, glass of white wine in hand, scowling at him hard enough to make bodybuilders cry in fear.
"Wait, why are you — howdid you — what the fuck is going on?" Bertram exclaimed. Wasn't Gilderoy supposed to be hospitalised?
"You are one giant numbnut, Bertram. Always have been. Also, I told everyone to leave us alone for an hour or two unless they had a sudden desire to meet their ancestors."
"Hey, fuck you!" Bertram snapped back at his brother, then seated his ass comfortably on the sofa facing the armchair. "And answer the questions, will ya?"
"I think you've got things slightly wrong. You answer myquestions," Gilderoy corrected him.
Bertram raised a snide eyebrow and moved on to pretentious smirk. "Oh, yeah? And why should I do that, huh?"
"Oh, let's see...," Gilderoy trailed off, circling his finger around his glass of wine. "You answer what I ask you, and I tell you how to rule the world. Deal?"
"Deal," Bertram agreed almost immediately. If it had been any other person, he'd end the conversation by telling them they were insane, but his brother wasn't any other person.
"Awesome," Gilderoy said with a smile. He reached into his left pocket and pulled out a small vial, which he tossed over to Bertram. "Cheers," he said, raising his glass ever so slightly.
"What is —"
"Not poison," Gilderoy noted. Bertram simply shrugged and did as instructed. "More like the most powerful truth serum in existence," he explained a second too late. Bertram chocked and tried to puke, but the deed was already done. "So I guess the first thing I should ask is: how the fuckdid I just lose thirteen years of my life?"
Thus Gilderoy learned how, right after graduating from the Hogwarts School of Wizardry, he went to have his fortune told, only to find out he was doomed to spend thirteen years of his life living as a fool ten times greater than his brother. Knowing all too well that one cannot challenge the Fates, Gilderoy chose to live through the ordeal on his own terms rather than in the most inopportune time, so he devised a plan worthy of Slytherin himself.
He changed his own appearance to that of a blond git, and then he implanted false memories to such an extent that his very personality changed. The only thing he left intact was his mastery of memory charms, which he suspected might play a role in his eventual quasi-reincarnation. And, surprisingly enough, it did; apparently, an obliviation charm backfired really bad, erasing his memories. The falseones. Which subsequently let the real ones resurface. Way to go.
He was going to ask how much of a fool he had been, but a muggle such as his brother wouldn't know anyway. He did, however, have something else to ask.
"So, where did you find all the cash to pretty this place up?"
"I didn't find anything. It's all yours," Bertram explained.
"Wait, what?" Gilderoy was confused; how could he have this much money?
"Apparently, you're pretty popular among those wizard folks," his brother explained.
Gilderoy knelt forward and whispered, "How much are we talking about?"
"I 'unno, man, but it's a whole lot."
To that, he exhaled in exasperation and fell back on the armchair. "Alright, that's all."
"Are you going to keep your end of the deal?"
"Sure thing," Gilderoy grinned. "You are a giant idiot! Brainless bastard! Three-year-old with Down syndrome!"
"Well, you t—"
"Shut up! Didn't you learn anythingin economics class?"
"The hell you're talking about?" Bertram asked, genuinely uncomprehending, and feeling awkward about suddenly being treated like a doormat.
"What's the galleon/sickle ratio?" Gilderoy asked. No answer came. "You don't even know that?"
"T-to be honest...," Bertram trailed off.
"Twenty-seven, you uneducated son of a hermaphrodite elephant! What's the gold/silver ratio?"
"Look, man, I don't know this st—"
"Ninety-four." Gilderoy interjected. "Ninety. Fucking. Four," he repeated as loudly as he could. He was going to get a positive reaction no matter what, he just had to. None came.
"O...kay. And?" Bertram said.
Gilderoy was going to kill him. He really was going to kill him. No human being can possibly be this stupid. "And? And? Seriously, man, does your upper head function at all, or is it just the lower one doing all the work?"
Bertram shifted around shamefully.
"Merlin's dick, Bertram," Gilderoy resumed, "if we're as rich as you say we are, you should own half the planet by now at the very least."
"Wait, what?" Bertram said flatly.
"Exchange ratios," Gilderoy explained shortly. No comprehension still. He's dead. That's it. Nothing can help him now. "You take a whole ton of galleons out of your vault. You smelt them like a pro. You come here and sell the gold en masse for silver. You take the silver all the way back to Gringotts and stamp some official shit on it for a fee. You exchange your fresh sickles for galleons. You repeat this process a few times, and by the time the sun sets, you own all of magical Britain and no one knows a thing."
Bertram scratched his head. "Okay, um, I don't get it, that's way too advanced for me. You should discuss this stuff with, like, my accountant and all. You know."
"Shut the fuck up!" Gilderoy yelled and got up from his armchair, throwing his glass of wine on the floor and drawing his wand. He pointed it at Bertram and said the words the situation deserved one too many minutes ago: "Avada Kedavra!"
Survival of the fittest, bitch, Gilderoy almost thought. He was going to work out how to make it look like a drunken suicide after he was done deciding which hemisphere to buy first.