Gilderoy Lockhart, Best Smile Award
*Warning for Character Death
Cancer.
That's the word they keep using, over and over, even though he's told them a hundred times he doesn't know what it means.
Cancer.
So he acts like he can't hear them, and he sits in his hospital bed reading books (looking at the pictures) and signing photos (scribbling random patterns) and practicing his smile in the mirror (trying to find a shred of recognition in that face staring back at him).
The word cancer flutters around his head, tugging at him like a fly; he swats it away, and when the nurses ask what he's doing he tells them there is a bug in my ear, so they give him potions that make him sleepy and put him to bed.
And months go by, and nothing changes.
The new word they use is brain cancer, but he doesn't know what that means, either, and he's realized by now that they aren't going to tell him, so he makes up his own definition. It's an award, he decides, like the Best Smile Award hanging over his bed. He doesn't remember winning it, and he can't read the headlines, but the nurses tell him it's from Witch Weekly and it's an honor and you should feel very proud, Mr. Lockhart.
The figure in the Best Smile Award commemorative photo is quite handsome. He finds himself staring at it for hours, mesmerized by that face, those eyes, that hair. Sometimes the nurses catch him standing on the bed with his face pressed up against the glass while the man in the photo recoils and squeaks, Go away!
Brain cancer, they say when they see him doing this.
That's when he decides maybe brain cancer is a form of love.
Getting worse, they say, and sometimes no cure, but he doesn't even hear those words, much less try to decipher them, because lately there's been a pleasant sort of buzz coming from his mind and he's so busy listening that he can't bother to care about the nurses.
I hear you, he says to the ringing in his ears - he has to say it aloud, there isn't any room in his mind for thinking, but sometimes speaking is difficult and he has to settle for humming back.
Schizophrenia? a nurse asks, but the Healer shakes her head.
Brain tumor. Cancer. Nothing we can do.
Best Smile Award, he says cheerily, and the nurse sighs and shakes her head sadly, as if winning such prizes is a shame.
At one point they try an option called surgery, and it's prefixed by the word muggle, but he doesn't know the definitions of either of those words so he doesn't care.
He wakes up with a massive headache and stitches on his forehead and an even louder buzzing than before. It hurts, he yells to the nurses. Make it go away.
Go away, echoes the man in the Witch Weekly Best Smile Award.
Failed, mutters a nurse. Nothing we can do.
What's happening to me? he asks, but nobody answers. The Healers give him a potion, and his headache goes away, but he also can't make his mouth move anymore after that, so he stops asking.
Family, and that word he does know the meaning of, but he doesn't recognize any of the people surrounding his bed: not the one they call fiancée, or the one called mother, or brother or niece or uncle.
But he makes sure to point out the Witch Weekly Best Smile Award to them, just in case they don't know he's won a prize.
Gilderoy, says the one called Fiancée. I love you.
Cancer, he replies proudly - because that's a form of love, isn't it? - and she begins to weep.
His memory comes back - first gradually, and then all at once.
Gilderoy, he says to himself. He says it over and over, and it's hard to speak but he manages it. Gilderoy Lockhart.
The nurses don't understand it. The Healer's best explanation is that the brain tumor has eaten its way through a magical wall set up by the memory spell. But there's no way to know, because wizards don't often have brain tumors and memory loss at the same time, and there isn't time to study Lockhart because he's only got about a week left to live anyway.
Owl my fiancée, he begs. Owl my mother.
But he can't speak clearly enough - he can't make his mouth form the words, he can't make himself do anything - so the nurses do nothing.
The last day is, somehow, the easiest.
He can't speak at all anymore. He can't hear much, either. Most of his vision is gone. Most of his will to live is gone.
He's got the Best Smile Award poster memorized: the font, the lettering, the length of the article, the color of the background, the shape of the man in the picture. He knows every inch of that man. He knows that man is beautiful. He knows that man is confident. He knows that man will someday grow up to lose his memory. He knows that man is going to die in a hospital bed.
(He knows that man is a liar, but that's a secret he isn't going to tell.)
The nurses are saying something - probably cancer, or tumor, or nothingwecando - but he doesn't care.
One night he simply slips away.
The Best Smile Award continues to wave.
He's a coward, which is why he decides to become a ghost when it's all over.
He could go to Hogwarts, he supposes, or to his one-time fiancée's home, but he doesn't.
He goes back to St. Mungo's and sits in the same hospital bed he's been inhabiting for nearly ten years, and he stares at the Witch Weekly Award they've left tacked up in his honor.
Gilderoy Lockhart, he repeats over and over, until it's the only thing left in his entire memory - no family, no magic, no cancer.
Gilderoy Lockhart. Best Smile Award.
He will never forget again.
[Muggle Studies Class: Write about a character death that is not canon]
[Disney Character Competition: Hades - write about someone who is stuck]