Chapter 1

Edited by: 5th dimension

Gilderoy knew the memory charm quite well. It was the basis of everything he'd built up in his life, after all, the only thing he was talented enough at that he bothered to pursue it.

So when he uttered the word "Obliviate," he knew something had gone wrong. Now that he thought about it, stealing the Weasley's held-together-by-tape wand probably hadn't been the best idea.

Thoughts flitted through his head as the spell set to reach its crescendo, the pale green light flashing up. It would backfire, Gilderoy knew. It was a feeling deep inside his bones. So he did the only thing he could do that would not result in him losing all his memories.

A great explosion rang out as he overloaded the wand the instant it would have successfully formed the spell. Losing his memories would mean the end after all. Suffering some physical damage while attempting to valiantly save one of his younger students was something he could come back from.

Though he underestimated the strength of the explosion.

It threw him backwards into one of the walls like Thor's hammer had been thrown at him from Asgard. He managed to glimpse the horrified looks of the two boys who'd held him at wand point before they too were blown back.

Gilderoy managed to get himself together after the tunnel ahead of him finished noisily collapsing. "Gilderoy Lockhart succeeds once again," he managed to slur out, thanking himself for the fact that the robes he'd worn on that day carried several defensive enchantments. The innate magic resistance of an adult had something to do with it as well, piped out his long-buried Hogwarts education.

His two students, however, weren't as lucky or prepared as him. Lying on the ground, dead as they were.

Gilderoy stumbled forward and searched Potter for his wand, before it became completely unusable from the blood spreading through the boy's clothes. The wand promptly overheated in his hand and sent out sparks until he let go with a yelp. It clattered to the floor as he nursed his hand.

"Bloody wands." Gilderoy looked around, quickly regaining his fear as he once again looked upon the gigantic shed skin of Slytherin's monster. "What now?" he muttered, stumbling back towards the entrance. The entrance he couldn't reach due to the lack of stairs and couldn't open due to not being a parseltongue.

That was rather unfortunate, but while he'd never actually gone on any adventures, he had still written several books about them. And while he had spent a great part of those books educating others on his greatness, adventure was still a hefty secondary priority.

And so he quickly concluded, upon glimpsing a a secondary tunnel leading somewhere, that the basilisk needed more than just one entrance and exit. The victims had been on different floors after all, and he doubted the thing was capable of climbing the castle's moving staircases.

Decision made, Gilderoy quickly hobbled away into the tunnel, unwilling to wait there for what would either be a cadre of teachers, all curious about how two students had died, or a dark wizard that went around petrifying muggleborns with the help of a bloody basilisk. He glanced back at the two corpses one last time, before descending into the dark tunnel that made him wish really hard his wand hadn't been taken away and left in his office.

"Boys, you can remember this day as the day you almost caught Gilderoy Lockhart, the greatest adventurer alive." Gilderoy hummed to himself his theme song and walked along the tunnel as it slowly grew large enough for him not to have to crouch anymore.

"Battling with Basilisks." No. Upon coming to an intersection he chose one that lead downwards. Everyone else went upwards, but not he! Gilderoy was running from something, and it wouldn't do to be predictable.

"The tragic tale of Gilderoy Lockhart's failure; getting back up after falling, the adventurer extraordinaire reflects upon one of his most costly failures. Three children left dead, a hero scarred. A reflection upon the whimsy success of past adventurers and the disastrous consequences of the Hogwarts Escapade." Didn't that sound grand.

Gilderoy doubted he could spin this into a success very easily, so the only option left to him was to create the most heart-wrenching failure of his career. People loved to identify themselves with the protagonist, and what better way than to have the protagonist lose? A tear escaped his eye as he thought about all the encouraging fanmail he would be receiving in the near future.

Of course that was the moment that the floor disappeared from under him, and he lost consciousness as his head cracked against something in the short tumble.

-/-

The first thing that Gilderoy did when he came to himself was go into a sitting position and check the throbbing spot at the back of his head. It came away wet, warm, and red.

He was capable of perceiving the redness not only because of the brightness of his smile that had won him the Witch's Weekly Most-Charming-Smile-Award, five times! But also because of the presence of what appeared to be an ugly ghost shining around in the middle of the room.

Unacceptable. Who was this extra, and why were they attempting to outshine him? Gilderoy rearranged his dishevelled hair into a semblance of order and strutted up to the ghost. Its facial features greatly resembled a monkey. This would be easy then.

He puffed himself up and ignored his dirtied clothes, preening at the ghost with a wide smile. Even dirtied and rumpled, his clothes still looked better than the rags the ghost was wearing.

I'll see you try to outmatch this, he thought to himself. The only thing even slightly resembling proper clothing on it was the cape covering the things back. With the Slytherin crest no less. It stood no chance against his colour-coordinated ensemble.

"What art thou doing?" asked the ghost.

Gilderoy had considered that the ghost might have been a student that had been born with the terrifying condition of supreme ugliness, but the voice was too old. A deceased head of house? It seemed honestly confused as well, but Gilderoy had experience with people trying to get close to him by pretending to neither know who he was, nor what he was doing.

"Me, Gilderoy Lockhart, Order of Merlin, Third Class, Honorary Member of the Dark Force Defence League, and five-time winner of Witch Weekly's Most-Charming-Smile Award-but I don't talk about that. I didn't get rid of the Bandon Banshee by smiling at her." He gave the now even more confused-looking ghost his patented smile accompanied by a wink. "But you knew that already of course. Where do you want your autograph?"

"Whomst've?" Hesitation, but then the ghost pointed at the centre of the dank room, filled with rotting bookshelves containing oddly preserved books, where lay a spear jutting out from the ground. A skeleton laid beneath it, a corpse that had seemingly died impaled on the spear.

The oddly evil looking, glowing spear. With several organic eyes blinking closed and open on the shaft.

"That be my spear. I hesitate to ask this but I would like to receive my autograf there." The ghost lisped out the word autograph like he didn't know the word. But at least he'd admitted to being his fan. Not that Gilderoy hadn't known beforehand of course.

Everyone was his fan!

He jaunted over to the spear under the suddenly-hungry eyes of the ghost and pulled out his quill… and stared down at it. "Ah, it's broken." The ink had disappeared as well.

"I be having one here som-" Gilderoy cut off the ghost of with a raised hand.

"No need, it is my duty to my fans to provide them with autographs under my own power." It was a heavy burden, oftentimes almost too heavy. Hours spent scribbling away, wrist aching. But Gilderoy was a courageous man, a self-sacrificial one. He pulled out a razor out of his breast-pocket. Enchanted to remove all facial hair upon even coming near his face, this would be the first time he'd use it mundanely.

Gilderoy pricked his thumb enough to draw blood, soaked it up with the quill tip, and let his hand travel alongside the spear's shaft, ignoring the blinking eyes and trying to find the place where he could sign. "What's your name old chap, need to dedicate this to someone," Gilderoy asked as he finally found a free spot that didn't have too many eyes. To my dearest fa-

"Salaza- What are thou doing!?" The ghost shrieked as he focused enough to see what exactly Gilderoy was trying to sign with.

"Huh, that's weird name, Salaza Whatarethoudoing." Gilderoy did not have time to ponder the quirky naming conventions of wherever Salaza came from as all the eyes along the spear shaft, upon coming in contact with his dripping blood, exploded into golden sand that enveloped him.

He didn't even have time to shout an apology for not being able to finish the autograph as the sand invaded his body through his opened mouth. He blacked out to the frothing mad face of Salaza Whatarethoudoing. Poor guy, must have been mad for not getting an autograph.

-/-

Gilderoy awoke to a flashing sky of purple… Well, it was actually lilac, his favourite colour. Then he noticed he was lying on his bed. He arched his back painfully as a sudden pain assaulted his mind. "Gaahhhh!"

The pain didn't stop. Spasming on the bed eventually led to him falling off of it, the pain of his bottom impacting the floor distracting him, for a short moment, from the pain in his brain.

Faster than ever before in his life, Gilderoy sprang back up, turned to the nearest wall and punched it as hard as he could, ignoring the fact that he was punching a poster of himself in the face. The broom-flying Gilderoy on the poster huffed, shook his fist at him, and flew off somewhere else. Not that the real Gilderoy noticed, cradling his broken right hand on the floor as he was.

The pain slowly abated as he sat there crying. The fact that his head didn't feel like it was being subjected to the Cruciatus anymore calmed him enough that he realized that he wasn't where he last remembered being.

He was in his room at Hogwarts. He was a professor here. Right. Well, not for long. The school year was ending. The school might even close with the now-death of three students. One of them that abhorrent Boy-Who-Lived.

And wasn't that a fitting moniker? Boys weren't really known for their smart decision-making. And 'who-lived?' That didn't apply any more.

He picked up his wand from the nightstand and froze. Weasley and Potter had divested him of his wand. God knows where they'd put it with their grubby little mitts, but it most certainly had not been his nightstand.

With his head cleared, the only thing distracting him now was the comparably miniscule pain of a broken hand, so his mind raced. He had been signing an autograph for one of his deceased fans, down in the lattice of tunnelworks connected to the Chamber of Secrets. Why couldn't he remember what happened afterwards?

Gilderoy snapped his fingers and ran to his trunk, where, in a hidden compartment, he had a small pensieve. It had cost him an arm and a leg, but worth it when he had to interact with people who had access to the truth potion or knew legilimency.

The pensieve was empty, the tell-tale glow of white, luminescent memories missing from the small bowl. It hadn't been used at all actually, by anyone, for nearly a year now. There would be a residue of the memories clinging to the bowl if it had been used in the last month or so. Which brought forward the concerning possibility that someone had dared to take away his memories.

Crucial memories.

How had he gotten from the chamber of secrets to his bed, fully healed? Expect for his now-broken hand of course, which he'd inflicted on himself.

Had the death of the two boys been connected to him in any way? If so, why was he in his room, sleeping peacefully, when he should have been in a ministry holding cell? Not that he would have stayed there for long. The minister was a fan of his.

Gilderoy glanced at his Gilderoy Lockhart calendar (slightly naughty underwear edition) and froze.

No. That… That was the wrong date.

He must have hit his head harder than he'd thought. He just hadn't noticed the injury because he was so amazingly pain-resilient from all his adventures. Gilderoy chuckled to himself and headed out towards the hospital wing to get his hand fixed. He could have done it himself, but poor Poppy needed something to do.

While some of his memories had gone obviously ajar, somehow, and someone had pranked him by turning his calendar backwards, it was impossible that other faculty members would be similarly affected by whatever had blanked out what must have been a day of his life.

And a hell of a story as well! How had he spun the jaunt into the Chamber of Secrets into something that would allow himself to rest in bed leisurely? Poppy would surely tell him. People loved recounting his adventures to him. Why he had no idea. He'd been there himself after all!

-/-

"Getting hurt on your first day in Hogwarts already, Professor Lockhart?" Poppy tutted at him as she lead him to a bed and forced him to sit down.

First day? Gilderoy remembered it. He had arrived a week before school started to talk about the curriculum with his fellow teachers, to furnish his rooms, and to familiarize himself with the castle again. Misdirectional thing that it was.

But why did Poppy think that? Apparently he'd gotten away with only losing a day. The poor matron had obviously lost almost a year of her memories. He could play along, though. Seek out someone else later.

"Alas, it is my fate to always be confronted with the unknown. This time, it required quite a hefty punch to get rid of it!" he proclaimed. The unknown in this case being the sudden pain in his head which he had distracted himself from by breaking his hand. Also the mysterious circumstances of seemingly apparating into his bed and falling asleep.

Which was odd, since Gilderoy wasn't capable of apparition, and it was supposed to be impossible to do in Hogwarts either way.

Gilderoy had hardly gotten his hand healed, bandaged, and warned about not using it before he was out of the door in a flurry of movement. His feet stomped on the ground and his left hand autographed his name onto the bandages of his right. Being able to write with both hands was an important skill, after all; dual autographing was a life saver. Though in the solitude of signing his fan letters, he did prefer to do a better job with his right.

Gilderoy was growing more and more confused as he walked through the halls of the castle towards Flitwick's office. There were no students in sight. He hadn't spotted one of the blighted little buggers anywhere from his walk to the hospital wing, either. It was supposed to be a Sunday. They should be everywhere!

Had he slept through the weekend? Had he slept through the entirety of what was left of the school year? Or had he lost his memories of the two months before it ended? Poppy had said that it was his first day here, but that couldn't be. It was even more unlikely that every single student at Hogwarts shared her delusion of it still being summer vacation.

Gilderoy halted just as he was about to open the door to the charms classroom. He could just use a tempus to see what the date was. Silly him. He'd mostly stopped using magic at all once he'd reached his goals of fame and glory, so he had nearly forgotten that the spell existed.

Gilderoy wobbled his wand in front of himself and said a slightly longer than necessary incantation. He wanted to be sure, after all. "Show me the time tempus."

Golden lights started flowing together before his eyes, forming the 8:34 at first, and then the 24.8.1992.

Well. That was mildly concerning. He'd never heard of an occasion of the spell being wrong after all. How fortuitous that he was standing before the room of the resident charms master. Gilderoy knocked and entered.

"Ah, good day Gilderoy, what can I do for you?" Flitwick asked kindly, the half-goblin reading some essays at his desk.

Gilderoy was struck by the sincerity and intonation of the greeting. He had long since considered the respect of his colleagues lost to him. Being outshone by the new professor on the block couldn't have been easy. A deep part of him whispered that they had lost respect for him because they themselves were too behind to understand the complexity behind his lessons. That deep part was obviously right.

"There is something wrong with my tempus charm, Professor Flitwick, and I thought to myself, why not consult the resident charms master?" Gilderoy needed to lead the conversation along a path that would reveal if Flitwick also believed that it was the start of the school year, not the end of it.

Flitwick set aside his reading material and hummed to himself. "Were you going through spells to teach your class? I teach the spell in their second year so it won't be necessary to teach it, though I wouldn't mind you doing it earlier."

Gilderoy shook his head. "No, I simply forgot my to put on my watch today and used the spell for the first time in a while. It shows me the date 30th of May, 1993." It was better to say what the time was from his own perspective, in case the professor was also suffering under a bout of delusion.

Flitwicks eyes widened at that. "Oh boy."

Leaving the first chapter slightly short because I want to gage the interest in this story before commiting any more time into writing it.

I'm not really a review whore, but neither am I interested in writing something that will have a view count lower than its word count.