SPARKLING
ft. Gilderoy Lockhart

Gilderoy wasn't really sure how long he'd been in St. Mungo's. He was equally unsure how long he'd known it was St. Mungo's — the nurses were trying awfully hard to make him think he wasn't, giving him letter after letter to reply to and passing him copies of his own books to read.

Gilderoy wasn't really sure why they were doing the latter, it was glaringly obvious that the events described were fictional, despite the fact that he had apparently been the one to write them as fact. He didn't really understand why he'd done that Before. Gilderoy wasn't really sure about anything from Before.

Nurse Louisa liked telling him about all the things he'd apparently done Before, and Gilderoy would listen with an indulgent smile and hum when necessary, asking the woman to pretty please touch up his hair or nails or whatever else when she left. They were things that were awfully hard to do by himself, what with the fact that he'd been refused a wand on the grounds of not remembering how to use it.

He was more than a little annoyed about that.

Not having a wand meant a lot of things: he couldn't do his own cosmetic charms, couldn't fill his own glass or fluff the pillow just right, and most importantly? He couldn't decorate for Halloween.

Gilderoy didn't remember much (and he didn't even remember this, not really) but he was very sure Halloween was meant to be more colorful than just the white and pale blue of the supposedly-not hospital he'd been confined to.

Nurse Louisa had indulgently changed the color of the drapes around his bed to warm orange and painted the walls bright red in an homage to autumn. The colors didn't quite match Gilderoy's skin tone — didn't match at all, actually — but they sparkled with enough glitter to make up for it.

Gilderoy liked glitter. And there wasn't nearly enough of it.

One good thing about fan mail, though? Gilderoy only had to suggest nicely that one of his fans send him a card full of glitter to get several jars of brilliantly sparkling orange and black glitter. And Gilderoy was planning on decorating.