I spent the remainder of September and most of October tuning up my Dark Arts coursework until I had a quite satisfactory syllabus for each class worked out, even managing to bring most of my assigned textbooks back into the curriculum, especially for the lower classes: I began assigning specific sections of the books to read and re-enact in class, as practical lessons on how to deal with specific Dark threats. Many of the students relished the opportunity to act out these scenes, which I found gratifying.

I also managed to find a friend in Professor Flitwick, a delightful, good-hearted man who always tried to find the best qualities in others. I discovered early on he was roundly admired among the staff for his expertise in Charms work, as well as being unflaggingly cheerful and patient in his classrooms. I also discovered that he enjoyed butterbeer as much as the next wizard, and so I invited him to share a few with me from time to time, over at Three Broomsticks, or sometimes, late at night, in a quiet corner of the castle.

We chatted away several evenings during September and October watching the rain fall from a comfortable vantage point in the Astronomy Tower, the highest tower in the castle. He even showed me a handy little charm to keep the rain off: Impervius, which I hadn't realized could be used in such a manner. Its only drawback was that you couldn't eat or drink while it was in effect, since your body also became impervious to digestion. I was constantly amazed at the amount of education I seemed to have missed in my younger days.

Flitwick, I had learned early on, was a past master at dueling, having won several championships in international dueling competitions in the 50's and 60's, before he began teaching at Hogwarts. He was still very good at it, if I was any judge; one night he showed me some simple techniques for disarming and disabling opponents without using deadly force or Dark magic. The simplest one, of course, was Expelliarmus — it was basic to most wizards' spell repertoire.

Expelliarmus could be blocked with a Shield Charm, Flitwick pointed out. But many wizards lacked the ability to produce a solid shield on demand. For those that could, however, a new technique was needed.

As it turns out, a Shield Charm isn't as effective against Transfiguration spells as it is against other charms. So, a Horn-Tongue Hex or Insect Jinx can be used to distract one's opponent in preparation for the Disarming Charm.

Flitwick had dozens of examples like these. It seemed dizzying that anyone could keep so many attacks and counter-attacks, ripostes and defenses in their head at one time. We were sitting out on the Astronomy Tower one night before the class was due to show up, having a couple of butterbeers, when I told him he should teach these things to Hogwarts students.

"Can't," Flitwick said in his squeaky voice after taking a swig of butterbeer. "It's against Ministry policy to hold dueling classes these days."

"You're joking!" I exclaimed, taken aback by such news. "How are students going to protect themselves from Death Eaters if they don't know how to duel?"

"Shhh!" Flitwick quickly silenced me. "Be careful about saying that too loudly, Gilderoy!"

"What, Death Eaters? Well, they're still around, aren't they?"

"Not officially." Flitwick took another drink of his butterbeer, draining the bottle. With a flick of his fingers the bottle Vanished from his hand and I tossed him another full one, impressed with his non-wand based magic. "Officially," he continued, "You-Know-Who is gone and all of his followers are either disbanded or in Azkaban."

"Do you believe that, Filius?" I asked, draining my own bottle. I held it up and Flitwick nodded, with a merry smile on his lips. I tossed it in the air: he smoothly drew his wand, gesturing toward it, And the bottle Vanished in mid-throw. I smiled, shaking my head, impressed again with his skill.

"Oh, there are probably still wizards out there who would follow You-Know-Who again if he reappeared," Flitwick conceded. "But he's been gone for — what, nearly a dozen years now. It seems unlikely he's coming back."

"What about what happened to Professor Quirrell?" I asked, wondering what the Charms professor really knew.

Flitwick was silent for a moment. "The headmaster never revealed the full story of what happened between Professor Quirrell and Harry Potter —"

Oho, I thought to myself. So something had happened between them!

"— But it is certainly a fact that Quirrell is dead," Flitwick continued. "I attended his funeral, after all. No charges were ever brought against the Potter boy, it seems reasonable to say that he was cleared of any wrongdoing.

"But as to your first point, Gilderoy: Ministry guidelines on wizarding education now specifies Defense Against the Dark Arts as the primary class for learning to defend oneself against Dark attacks."

"Funny," I said with a jaunty smile, "But I never learned how to duel back in my Defense classes."

"That much is obvious," Flitwick said, chuckling. He took a long swig of his butterbeer.

"Oh, ho-ho, very funny," I said, reaching surreptitiously into my robe. Suddenly I pulled out my wand, pointing it Flitwick. "Expelliarmus!"

The bottle of butterbeer flew from Flitwick's hand, and I smiled, triumphant — for a moment. Then I felt my limbs go rigid and immobile. Flitwick lowered his wand — I had not even seen him draw it.

"Something to think about, my lad," he said pointedly. He stood and Vanished the empty butterbeer bottles lying around us. "If you're going to attack someone, you have to make it count for something. Disarming me of a butterbeer bottle is amusing, but you left yourself wide open for my Body-Bind Curse. You'll need quite a few more lessons before you're ready for a real duel, Gilderoy." He tapped me on the forehead with his wand and the Body-Bind Curse evaporated.

"Thanks, Professor," I said ruefully, getting to my feet. "I'll probably never be as good as you, though."

"Probably not," Flitwick agreed cheerfully, as we walked back down the Tower staircase into the castle, parting to go to our respective quarters. "But you'll never know unless you keep trying, my boy."

Except for Flitwick, however, the staff avoided me. Even Snape kept his distance, though he sometimes gazed coldly at me during meals or when we passed in a corridor. That was pretty much how I preferred it — I had to be "on" as the famous Gilderoy Lockhart whenever I was around anyone else, and such performances were draining.

By October my classes had settled into a more-or-less weekly routine: I would assign each class a list from the Standard Book of Spells series to learn, having the students practice on each other or with a few of the brighter ones, like Harry or Hermione in second year, coaching the less-gifted students. I was surprised and pleased to see how easily Harry learned these spells compared to students who'd grown up around magic all their lives — Ron Weasley for example. Hermione Granger also did well, for that matter, which surprised me when I learned that she had two Muggles (dentists) for parents. She was easily the smartest witch of the school, even among students several years ahead of her, although she did not always cotton onto the practicals of a defense spell as quickly as Harry, even when she understood the theory better than Harry did.

I kept up the reading assignments from my textbooks, choosing passages that emphasized anticipating trouble and nipping it in the bud. It was hard to believe that I had written some of these things, given the reputation it seemed I now had. I'd wondered for some time if something might have made me forget bits of my past that would explain why I'd begun stealing memories from other wizards, but everything I could recall pointed toward me always being a selfish, lazy, incompetent wizard. The best I could do, I decided, was to avoid that type of behavior from now on.

It was slow going, given the reputation I had among the staff, and that I had to maintain the illusion that I was mostly hopeless at Defense Against the Dark Arts while Death Eaters roamed the halls of Hogwarts. I hoped to reverse that reputation by the end of the school year, by figuring out who the Death Eater infiltrating the school was and exposing him, as well as surviving You-Know-Who's curse that kept any teacher from lasting more than a single year in the Defense Against the Dark Arts position.

The reenactments of the reading assignments were the highlight of my classes many weeks, especially so with the second years, as I usually picked Harry to help me with them. I could tell he was enjoying the experience, as humble as he was about his acting ability. I gave him several tough acting assignments: once, he played a Transylvanian peasant I had cured of a Babbling Curse from a vampire who'd been the Ministry Head of the Department of International Magical Cooperation at one time, before he'd gone missing and had been replaced by Barty Crouch. I also gave him the tricky role of a yeti which had developed a head cold, a most unusual occurrence since the beasts are well-acclimated to the cold and seldom suffer from such maladies. Harry did an excellent job of growling in the manner I'd described in Year with the Yeti. I was coming to depend on him more and more in class for the sense of authenticity he lent to his performances.

My office hours had become rather busy, filled with answering questions from hordes of young witches who kept asking me, again and again, to explain some aspect or another of the adventures in my book. I'd taken to keeping a pile of autographed pictures on my desk and presenting one to any young witch who came round. Usually that, plus a brief explanation of the current assignment, would be enough to send them on their way.

Near the end of October, I had a stroke of luck I though would help me keep abreast of teacher gossip, even though I was persona non grata in staff room outside of regular meetings. I was hanging a portrait over a crack in a wall of my office, but realized I could hear faint sounds coming from it. I listened more closely and heard what I thought was someone speaking. Taking out my wand, I cast an Engorging Charm on the crack, which exposed an old stone chimney behind the wall; from a hole in the mortar I could now hear Professor McGonagall upbraiding Professor Trelawney about her showing up late to several morning classes in the last few weeks. This chimney must be the flue for the fireplace in the staff room, I realized.

I saw at once that I might be able to listen in on conversations going on in the staff room without having to be present, if I could make the sounds coming from the chimney a little clearer. I cast another Engorgement Charm on the hole itself, then Transfigured a small disk from a bronze Knut. I made the disk convex, then placed a Sonorous Charm on it so that any sound hitting the concave side would be magnified on the other. When I fitted this in place in the hole, it worked quite satisfactorily — I was now able to hear both Professors McGonagall and Dumbledore, who were now discussing possible reasons why Sibyll (Professor Trelawney's first name, I recalled) would be late for class. Professor McGonagall was telling Dumbledore she believed Trelawney was drinking too much at night. Elated with my new means of gathering information, I hung a portrait of myself over the crack in the wall, instructing it to let me know whenever it heard conversations from the staff room, or to remember them if I wasn't around.

Not long after that it was time for the Hallowe'en feast. It was, as I was to discover, one of the most-anticipated events of the fall term: the Great Hall had been decorated with huge pumpkins, presumably the ones I'd seen growing in Hagrid's garden. The walls of the Great Hall were decorated in large black party decorations shaped like bats. I commented on them to Professor Flitwick as we were having lunch in the Great Hall on Hallowe'en day.

"They are bats, my boy," Flitwick squeaked.

I looked around at the walls, nearly black with them. "There must be thousands of them," I said, awed.

"Oh, indeed," Flitwick said, breaking into a grin. "Come tonight at the feast, they'll be flitting about the hall by the hundreds."

My nose wrinkled at a sudden thought. "My lord, imagine all the droppings!" Flitwick laughed.

"Well, are you a wizard, or not?" he asked, chortling. "A good Vanishing Charm will handle anything that comes your way!" I headed back to my office, faintly nauseous at the thought of all those bats flying around above me as I tried to eat my Hallowe'en dinner.

It was the weekend, so no classes were being held; I contented myself with listening to several conversations in the staff room through the crack in the wall, though there was nothing much exciting going on: two female teachers whose voices I didn't recognize were gossiping about Professor Trelawney, who'd apparently begun drinking early that weekend and was already fast asleep in her quarters, having been taken up by an exasperated McGonagall, with Professor Sprout's help. The afternoon became grayer and grayer as storm clouds gathered outside, and it was raining steadily by the time the clock on the wall of my office struck six p.m. Bored and tired, I nodded off.

It was nearly seven when I woke to the sound of a soft crack, and opened my eyes to behold a large pair of green orbs staring at me. "Boddy!" I exclaimed, startled, and jerked upright at my desk where I'd fallen asleep.

"Happy Hallowe'en, Professor Lockhart," Boddy said happily. He appeared excited. "It has been some time since Boddy and sir have spoken. Boddy hopes sir has been well."

"Fine," I said shortly, blinking at the house-elf. "Where've you been all this time, Boddy?"

"Working," Boddy replied. "Always working, Professor Lockhart. It is what we house-elves do, sir. Only minutes ago, we were given the rest of the day off by Professor Dumbledore himself, in honor of this day."

"In honor of Hallowe'en?"

"No, sir," Boddy shook his head, his large ears swiveling around. "In honor of Sir Nicholas's Death Day. This is the 500th anniversary of his death."

"Why on earth would you celebrate the day he died?" I asked, appalled at the idea.

Boddy looked about the room, almost as if he were afraid someone might hear, before he stepped closer to me and said, in a low voice, "Sir Nicholas is the reason we house-elves are at Hogwarts."

I didn't quite understand. "Come again?"

Boddy spoke hesitantly; he continued to look around, as if someone might leap out of the woodwork at any moment and accuse him of a high crime. "Sir Nicholas's family kept many house-elves, sir. He was very kind to us, but when he was condemned to death, his castle was taken over by the men who'd arranged his death — men who had no love for house-elves," Boddy shuddered. "But Sir Nicholas arranged with the Headmaster of Hogwarts that we should come to work here at the castle, answering only to the current Headmaster or Headmistress of the school, and here we have been born and lived and died now for 500 years." Boddy's eyes had become very bright.

"That was most thoughtful of Sir Nick," I said gently. "Especially as he was facing the executioner's axe himself."

"He was a great man," Boddy agreed. "Second only to Harry Potter himself, who rid the Wizarding world of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named."

"And speaking of him," I said, seizing the opportunity, "I'm trying to find out which one of the staff members is a Death Eater."

Boddy's eyes went wide with horror. "That cannot be!" he gasped. "Professor Dumbledore would never allow it!"

"Professor Dumbledore might not know," I argued.

"Professor Dumbledore knows everything that goes on inside the castle," Boddy replied at once. "We make sure of —" the house-elf clamped his mouth shut, but too late — he'd given something away.

"You make sure of — what?" I rounded on Boddy, determined to find out what it was, now that I knew he was hiding something. "Tell me!"

"We — we are Professor Dumbledore's eyes and ears inside the castle," Boddy whispered. "We tell him things we see, things we do.""The students?" I asked. Boddy nodded. "The staff?" I pressed further, and again Boddy nodded. "Including me?" I demanded.

"B-Boddy would n-never," the house-elf faltered. "Boddy would never reveal anything b-bad about Professor Lockhart! Never!"

"Have I done something bad you know about, Boddy? Tell me!" I was desperate to know — anything, anything I might have done in the last few months, bad or good. Not knowing for sure what had gone on in my past, beyond what Boddy had already told me, was torture.

"Sir has always treated Boddy well," the house-elf said, looking at me entreatingly.

"That doesn't answer my question," I pressed on relentlessly. "What have you told Dumbledore about me?" Boddy looked stunned. "Boddy, tell me!"

"Psssst! Gilderoy!" Another voice suddenly intruded — my own. One of my portraits, the one hanging over the crack in the wall near the staff room's chimney stack was gesturing for me to come closer. "I hear something!"

I strode quickly over to the wall, putting my ear close to the portrait. My image also leaned over, listening to the wall behind his frame in an attempt to hear more clearly. But I could hear nothing but a strange, scraping sound — a sound accompanied by an unusual hissing.

"What is that sound?" I said, looking up at my portrait, who shrugged expansively. "Boddy," I said, looking around, "What do you make of —"

But Boddy was backing away fearfully — his great green eyes appeared about to pop out of his head. "No — NO!" he cried, his arms held before him as if to protect himself from the very sound coming from behind my portrait. "It has returned!"

"What's returned?" I demanded. "What is that sound?"

"The monster!" Boddy cried. "The air! The air!"

That made no sense to me. What kind of monster could the air be? "Boddy, what do you mean?"

But Boddy, shaking his head violently, spun away and disappeared with a loud crack. My portrait, still listening, shouted, "It's moving away, going downward!"

"Keep listening!" I shouted back, and ran out of my office and down a nearby flight of stairs, then along a corridor to the main staircase leading down to the Entrance Hall. I was halfway down the stairs when I was met by a large crowd of students, coming up — the Hallowe'en feast was over. Stepping aside, I let them flow past me, waiting for Professor Dumbledore and several members of the teaching staff who were coming up the stairs toward me.

"It looks like I missed the festivities," I said with a smile. "How was the feast?"

"Quite tasty," Dumbledore replied contentedly. "I very much enjoyed the pumpkin tarts. It is a shame you missed it, Gilderoy."

"Where were you, Professor Lockhart?" Snape, bringing up the rear of Dumbledore's entourage, asked in a suspicious tone of voice.

"I'm afraid I fell asleep at my desk," I replied ruefully. "Getting caught up on my assignments."

"Commendable," Professor McGonagall said dryly. "But all work and no play makes —" She stopped as there came the sound of someone shouting somewhere above us. It was hard to make out what was said, except for the last word: "Mudbloods."

"Come along," Dumbledore said, his expression now serious, and the group of us followed a throng of students up to the first floor, trying to locate the source of the shouting. We hurried along a corridor, in the same direction as the way to my office. By the time we reached a mostly deserted corridor, we could hear yet another voice, that of the caretaker, Argus Filch.

"You! You!" Filch was screaming at someone — and we saw, as students parted to let us through, that it was Harry Potter he was screaming at. "You've murdered my cat! You've killed her! I'll kill you! I'll —"

"Argus!" Dumbledore shouted, and the caretaker froze in mid-lunge toward Harry as we took in the bizarre scene: On a nearby wall was Filch's cat, Mrs. Norris, hanging from a torch bracket by her tail. On the wall above the cat was written a message in foot-high letters:

THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS HAS BEEN OPENED.
ENEMIES OF THE HEIR, BEWARE.

Harry was flanked by his friends Ron Wealsey and Hermione Granger. Also nearby stood Draco Malfoy, looking flushed and strangely gleeful for such a tense situation. It could have been his voice we first heard shouting.

Dumbledore stepped forward, between Harry and Filch, and looked carefully at Mrs. Norris. Reaching up, he detached the cat from the bracket, then nodded at Filch.

"Come with me, Argus," he said. He turned to the three students. "You too, Mr. Potter, Mr. Weasley, Miss Granger." He glanced toward me, and I instantly divined his intention.

"My office is nearest, Headmaster — just upstairs," I said quickly. "Please feel free —"

"Thank you, Gilderoy," Dumbledore said, and led the way up to my office as the crowd of students parted to let us through.

The sun had completely set since I'd left my office — it was much darker than when I'd run out, several minutes ago, to find the source of the scraping, hissing sounds I'd heard in the wall, what Boddy had called the "air monster." However, seeing the writing on the wall in the corridor had made me realize my error — Boddy had said "Heir," not "air."

As we entered there was a flurry of motion across the walls: several of my pictures, their hair already done up in curlers for the night, had scrambled out of sight. I grimaced in embarrassment but no one had seemed to notice, except perhaps Harry — he was giving me a strange look as I drew my wand and lit the candles on my desk so we could all see better. Dumbledore placed the cat carefully on my desk and began to examine her closely, as Professor McGonagall bent nearly as close to watch Dumbledore's gentle probing of the animal. One of the portraits behind me said, "It was definitely a curse that killed her — probably the Transmogrification Torture — I've seen it many times, so unlucky I wasn't there, I know the very countercurse that would have saved her…" the portrait trailed off as I frowned unhappily at him.

Snape, standing back where he could see both the professors examining the cat and the three students, had a most peculiar twitch at the corner of his mouth, as if he were trying to avoid smiling. Filch had fallen into a chair near the desk and was sobbing quite unashamedly.

I heard a strange murmuring, and wondered for a moment whether the monster Boddy had alluded to had returned — but it was only Professor Dumbledore muttering incantations over the body of the cat. The words Dumbledore was saying reminded me of an incident I'd just read about in Magical Me, and I said, "I remember something very similar happening in Ouagadogou, a series of attacks, the full story is in my autobiography; I was able to provide the townsfolk with various amulets, which cleared the matter up at once. As I recall, there were over a hundred people in that village, so I should say I prevented the murder of almost —"

Dumbledore looked at Filch. "She's not dead, Argus," he said softly. I stopped talking.

"Not dead?" Filch croaked. He peered at his cat through trembling fingers. "But why's she all — all stiff and frozen?"

"She has been Petrified," Dumbledore said softly.

A sudden memory of just this event came to me, as if I'd always known it. "Ah! I thought so!" I muttered.

"But how," Dumbledore continued, "I cannot say…"

Filch's face contorted with fury, and he turned toward Harry, shrieking, "Ask him!"

Dumbledore shook his head firmly. "No second year could have done this. It would take Dark Magic of the most advanced —"

"He did it, he did it!" Filch spat insistently. He glared at Harry, his expression growing more livid by the moment. "You saw what he wrote on the wall! He found — in my office — he knows I'm a — I'm a — he knows I'm a Squib!"

Harry, now the center of attention, looked hideously uncomfortable. "I never touched Mrs. Norris! And I don't even know what a Squib is!"

"Rubbish!" Filch snarled. "He saw my Kwikspell letter!" I started to ask what a Kwikspell letter was, but Snape had stepped forward from the shadows.

"If I might speak, Headmaster?" he said smoothly. "Potter and his friends may have simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time." There was that quirk at the corner of his mouth, however, indicating he probably did not take what he was saying seriously. "But we do have a set of suspicious circumstances here. Why was he in the upstairs corridor at all? Why wasn't he at the Hallowe'en feast?"

All three of the students began talking at once. "Nick invited us to his Deathday party —" "— down in the dungeons, there were —" "— hundreds of ghosts, they'll tell you we were there —"

"But why not join in the feast afterwards?" Snape pointed out; clearly he was enjoying their predicament. His black eyes were gleaming with malice — I could see it in him. "Why go up to that corridor?"

Harry friends had fallen silent and were looking at him.

"Because — because —" Harry seemed to be reaching for a plausible explanation. It was becoming apparent he wasn't being truthful. I frowned, knowing that Snape was winning again. "Because," Harry finally blurted, "we were tired and wanted to go to bed."

"Without any supper?" Snape asked, almost sneering with triumph. "I didn't think ghosts provided food fit for living people at their parties."

"We weren't hungry," Ron said. At that moment his stomach rumbled loudly. I heard McGonagall sigh almost inaudibly.

Snape was now smiling openly. "I suggest, Headmaster, that Potter is not being entirely truthful. It might be a good idea if he were deprived of certain privileges until he is ready to tell us the whole story. I personally feel he should be taken off the Gryffindor Quidditch team until he is ready to be honest."

I shook my head at the hypocrisy in Snape's words. A thoroughly unfair evaluation of Harry, I believed, and Snape had spoken of honesty! McGonagall probably saw it as clearly as I did, since she spoke up sharply as well.

"Really, Severus! I see no reason to stop the boy playing Quidditch. This cat wasn't hit over the head with a broomstick." A good point, I noted. "There is no evidence at all that Potter has done anything wrong."

Dumbledore nodded. "Innocent until proven guilty, Severus."

Snape's expression was coldly furious, but he said nothing.

"My cat's been Petrified! I want to see some punishment!" Filch exploded.

Dumbledore held up a calming hand. "We will be able to cure her, Argus. Professor Sprout recently managed to procure some Mandrakes. As soon as they have reached their full size, I will have a potion made that will revive Mrs. Norris."

My desire to be helpful got the better of me. "I'll make it," I said, remembering that the potion in question was relatively simple to brew. "I must have done it a hundred times." Which was hyperbole but I was sure it wouldn't be at all difficult. "I could whip up a Mandrake Restorative Draught in my sleep —"

"Excuse me," Snape said, his voice icy. "But I believe I am the Potions master at this school."

I stared at Snape, hating him for the truth, but there was nothing I could say to that. Dumbledore turned to Harry, Ron and Hermione, dismissing them, and they walked quickly out of my office.

When they were gone, Dumbledore spoke once again. "I think, Gilderoy," he said, a twinkle in his eye. "We shall leave the potion-making to Professor Snape. After all, that is what I hired him for…"

Wordlessly the teachers exited my office. My portraits returned to their frames, adjusting hairnets and curlers while giving their own opinions on what had happened to Filch's cat, while I wondered what, if anything, Boddy's monster might have had to do with it, and just who the "Heir" was. I had a sense of foreboding, however: could this have something to do with Malfoy and the Death Eaters?