Written for HPFC Mystery Competition, in which I was given the two characters Lockhart and Skeeter, the prompt of one teaching the other, and the word "blatherskite."
I don't own any of this, nor do I profit from it.
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The Gilded King's Descent into Mindlessness
by Rita Skeeter
You may know Gilderoy Lockhart from one of his many famous books, or his escapades, or even his fifth consecutive win of Witch Weekly's Most Charming Smile Award. But this reporter has exclusive details on his most recent adventure at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, as well as reliable information that everything he has published in his books was nothing but meaningless blatherskite.
At interview, it was revealed that Lockhart himself had no memory of his adventure, which is rumored to include none other than our very own Boy Who Lived, Harry Potter, and the most fearsome Dark Wizard of the century. This reporter was present when Potter and Lockhart emerged from a dark tunnel in a second floor girls' bathroom at Hogwarts. With them were Arthur and Molly Weasley's two youngest children, both obviously scared witless. The children were all sent to the Hospital Ward at school, while Lockhart was taken to St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries, where he remains to this day.
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Rita Skeeter paused for a moment, absently sucking on the end of her quill as she eyed the flaxen-haired man sitting in the hospital bed. Lockhart was murmuring something incoherent, of course, Rita thought to herself. I'll have to make up this entire thing. What else is new?
She wasn't paying attention when Lockhart, seemingly suddenly aware of her presence, asked her something.
"What?" she muttered distractedly; sentences still forming in her mind.
"How do you do that?" he asked, pointing.
"Do what?" Rita was already irritated. She needed a hot story, and she needed one now, or else she would probably be stuck interviewing mindless morons for the rest of her life. She wouldn't be surprised if her next interview was a freshly Kissed prisoner from Azkaban.
"That thing," he babbled, "with the words, how they connect all together like that? How do you do that?"
"What, write?"
"Yes!" He seemed ecstatic that she had understood what he meant. "Write. But with all the letters all joined up, not separated."
Rita Skeeter sighed, pulling out a fresh piece of parchment and a new quill; it wouldn't do to have Lockhart stealing her Quick-Quotes Quill.
"Okay, look," she said, dipping the quill into her ink, and then placing it onto the parchment. "Watch what I do, then copy me."
His handwriting left a lot to be desired; after an hour of working with him, he had finally managed to hold the quill properly, or close enough, she thought, and his letters looked like a three-year-old's scribbles.
"No, no," she said, for about the fiftieth time that day. "You want to loop it around, like this." She showed him again, and he copied it again.
"I'm bored," he whined. "Why does this have to be so hard?"
"Okay, look," she snapped. "You're the one who wanted to do this, not me. I just wanted a good story, but NO. You decided you wanted to learn how to write, and for what? You don't even remember your own name."
"My name?" the man asked. "What's that?"
Glaring at him, the whole time, she quickly wrote it on the parchment. "Gil-de-roy. Lock-hart." She pointed at each syllable as she said it.
The man fell silent. He stared at the written representation of his name, then cocked his head to look at it from a different angle. "Is that..." he whispered, "is that mine?"
Rita just huffed, tossed the parchment at him, and left.
Lockhart, quiet for once, slowly traced his name with his finger. "Mine." Again. "Mine." He drew the word out. And again. "My. Name."
He picked up the quill Rita had left behind and started to copy the words over and over again.