Remember Me Not
D.L. SchizoAuthoress
Rating: Mature, for later chapters
Note: This story, having been written long before I understood the importance of beta readers, is not up to my current standards. Also, upon re-reading the story, I realized that I have a lot more setting and background to establish in these opening chapters. I truly love this story, since it's my first instance of truly "stepping out of the box" when it comes to fanfiction, and I want it to be the best tale that it can be. Dhampirs and all.
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The halls of St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies, most famous and most acclaimed hospital of the wizarding world, were quite busy. At least, this held true in the places where the general public was allowed. There were other places, which one could only access through the most convoluted paths of travel and stringent security checks; places that held only a coldly clinical silence. One could wander these halls freely, but there was an overall sense of heavy restraint – of something dark and strange being held back – that engendered a subconscious caution when visiting.
In the austere halls of St. Mungo's Intensive Care Ward, a cheerful and altogether out-of-place voice asks, "What have we got today, Madame Malloy?"
A soft female voice, obviously meant to be soothing, but too practiced to be so, answers, "It's Gilderoy Lockhart, again, Healer Moon. He isn't making any lasting progress."
These words elicit a laugh from the mediwizard. "Stubborn one, eh? Well, not much surprise there...the only thing the lying fraud was any good at was Memory Charms."
----
It was a confounding case, even to such experienced practitioners of the healing arts. Though Gilderoy had been in a functional state immediately following his backfired Memory Charm, his mind had deteriorated further in a matter of hours, to the point that even his involuntary functions had stopped. It was as though the Memory Charm had been powerful enough to make his brain forget to control breathing and heartbeat. Luckily, Madame Pomfrey had revived him and performed the Sanosanus spell in time to prevent irreversible damage. When his memories were restored initially, with the Memorati incantation, they'd thought him insane; he ranted at them incoherently and attempted to injure himself. When he had been prevented that course of action, he erased his own memory. The second time this happened, the mediwizards confiscated his wand.
Some of the rooms in St. Mungo's were padded, but most of them were nearly bare, with a few pieces of simple furniture so perfectly crafted that not even the most thorough search of all surfaces would yield a sharp or pointed place. And Gilderoy had searched, many times over, when his memory came back with painful clarity. He had felt it necessary. When his healers attempted a different curative method with the more subtle Pridem Retineo (he'd surprised them by only speaking French, and insisting that his name was Gilles Romilly), a few weeks passed before he broke into the head mediwitch's office and stole his wand back, once again using the Obliviate on himself. After that, they broke his wand, a bendy willow branch of eight inches, and found that he'd been using a veela-hair core. ("Notoriously unstable," murmured Mr. Ollivander, when told by his great-nephew, who worked on Gilderoy's case, "never use the things myself.")
It had taken months of concerted effort, but all of his books had been recalled, the witches and wizards he had stolen from located – thanks to notes in Gilderoy's personal diary – and credited for their accomplishments. As Gilderoy had written, in detail, the exploits of his victims, it was a simple task to restore their memories. All passages of deliberately falsified or self-aggrandizing information were excised by a newspaper editor, and Gilderoy was only mentioned in passing, in the introductions. The hate mail found him anyway.
Gilderoy Lockhart knew, even without the Howlers and dangerous 'gifts' he received in the post, that people hated him. He couldn't blame them, not a bit, because he hated himself ten times more than all of them put together. The Slow-Recall Charm worked unstoppably toward totally restoring his mind. He recovered his memories easily enough, but along with them, he developed a guilt complex. Really, it was a pity for both him and the staff of St. Mungo's that he had to turn into a decent human being at the time. It was what kept him attempting to magically induce amnesia, though by now, no one who entered his chambers carried a wand. If he could have just stayed the way he was before his ill-fated Memory Charm backfire, ("a smarmy, deceptive, conscienceless, self-important braggart," in his own words) he would be out and about by now.
Probably, he would have been shunned by the wizarding world before the public's interest in his minor controversy faded, and he weaseled his way back to prominence, or at least a comfortable and well-paying position. As it was, none of the staff assigned to his case were willing to forget his crimes, and it was really a small sacrifice on their parts to give him a bed in Intensives.
----
The man is a wreck. He sits motionless in his smoothly carved, comfortably padded chair--nothing but the best for the patients in this world-class hospital – and stares at the unforgivingly clean and bright looking-glass that stares back at him.
His wavy blond hair brushes his shoulders in a golden shroud. The healers, particularly the older ones, cluck impatiently like irritated hens at the fact that he will not let them trim it, and nor will he wash it of his own volition. He must be coaxed into it.
His face, lean and haggard yet still very attractive, is usually clean-shaven (under supervision of course), but he has been letting it go for a day or two, and a shadow of yellow-gold whiskers touch his mouth and chin in a sort of fuzzy halo. He runs the tip of his tongue over dry lips. His teeth are still white and straight and perfect, and if he ever smiled, he could be very charming.
If he ever smiled.
It is his eyes that have changed the most of all. Oh, they are still the same shade of forget-me-not blue and still very nice eyes. But these blue orbs which once held a false cheerful brilliance and a vacant type of jubilation now overflow with torment and self-hate. It is this terrible blue gaze, reflected in a mirror, which holds him captive and forces him to remember.
Forget-me-not blue. How apt.
Some days – never nights, because the lights-out rule is strictly enforced – some days, he cannot bear to look at the mirror anymore, cannot bear to remember the phantoms of his past life, and he wanders about his small room in agitated distraction. Eight paces (and his stride is long) across, twelve paces the other way if the bed didn't obstruct his path. The bed, though narrow, has a thick mattress. Regulation white sheets and green blankets. One pillow, a bit on the thin side, sits on top of the blankets. His chair sits beside the bed; the mirror hangs on the same wall that his headboard is against. A similar chair, ostensibly provided for visitors – of which Gilderoy has had none – that the healers use when talking to him, is positioned nearby. A wardrobe, containing robes of grey and green (the same shade as the blankets) and a blue that clashes with his eyes, is against the opposite wall. There's a narrow panel in the door, at eye-height, that slides back for a few moments before anyone will enter.
He wonders sometimes if they do this because they think him dangerous. It's a laughable sentiment, logical but laughable all the same. He's a threat to no one but himself. It's sad that they snapped his wand.
Admittedly, he wasn't much of a talent when he did have a wand, but his magical training – both in France and Great Britain – had emphasized the importance of a wizard never losing his wand. It was like having a limb missing. Without a locus, his magic had no way of safely or productively channeling out of him. Privately, Gilderoy thought that perhaps part of the reason his memories seemed to slip from him and fade, even now, was because of his intense desire to forget. Magic that was sourced in the emotions was quite strong, sometimes strong enough to override wand-cast magics, though it was largely uncontrollable.
Some nights, when he cannot move from his bed to risk the night watchmen intruding, Gilderoy allows his mind to wander, to settle where it will among the memories. He remembers quite clearly the decision to change his name, though the reasons behind it remain slightly fuzzy at the edges. He tries the names, in a soft whisper, testing the sounds and comparing them. Gil-de-roy Lock-hart. Zheel Roh-milly.
Except, when he'd transferred to Hogwarts at fifteen, nobody had called him Gilles, they'd all said "Jye-ulls" and spelled it with only one L. Everyone rejected the soft tones, preferring to see what they wanted, to call him what they chose. He wasn't sure why that bothered him, besides the fact that he hadn't liked them teasing his accent when he corrected them. There was something hard about the name he'd chosen for himself, his famous and detested name, even in the cadence. Right down to his last name...Lockhart, lock heart. Keep out, world; don't look at what's inside. See the pretty veneer? Don't you look deeper, or you'll see the decay.
Sometimes he is confronted with another face when he looks in his mirror, a face out of memory. It is a face half-hidden in the shadows of his former office at Hogwarts. A partly suppressed smile curved a thin-lipped, pale mouth below a hooked, hawkish nose, and black eyes gleamed out of the darkness. Gilderoy had been bouncing about the gathering in his office, offering suggestions from his extensive 'research' of the Dark Arts, trying to impress this shadowy, enticing creature somehow. And instead, he'd gotten totally swept up in his imaginary expertise and offended the man.
"Excuse me, but I believe that I am the Potions Master at this school." Severus Snape said frigidly. Even simply recalling it, Gilderoy shivered.
----
It is morning. Breakfast has come and gone – at least it wasn't Madame Yoxtree serving today, she has a habit of carelessly tossing his tray at him; he vaguely recalls letters from her, in his old life. Someone is watching him, and Gilderoy waits patiently until the door opens. He will not be the one to break the silence.
"Excuse me, Mister Lockhart?"
A deliberate emphasis on the 'mister', Gilderoy is sure of it. He absently attempts to arrange his face in the semblance of an apologetic smile and answers quietly, "Forgive me, sir, I didn't hear you come in. I was...remembering."
"What were you remembering?"
The automatic question! The curtain rises, time for the act! The mediwizard, Hayworth this time, has a parchment and quill in his hand, expectant, eager to be done with this difficult case. Gilderoy looks at him emptily,
"Remembering?"
"You said you remembered something."
"Is that all you care about?" Gilderoy furrows his brow childishly, delivering the pointing line. Before Healer Hayworth can deny it, Gilderoy shrugs and asks, "Did Madame Yoxtree ever write letters to me? I think perhaps she did."
"Once a week, at least!" Hayworth exclaims, wrinkling his nose. "She thought you were brilliant." Ah, a bit of role scoring for the nurse – she is not just a bitter lady pushing the upper limit of middle age, she has been hurt by his past deceptions, taken in by his clever act. Just as Hayworth and Moon and all the rest get taken in by his current act, no matter that the script calls for it to be much less clever.
"She doesn't like me now, you know. Perhaps she could write me a letter. I would write back, and she could see how nice I am. I'd be glad if she liked me."
"Is that all? You were recalling old love letters?" Healer Hayworth makes a notation on his parchment that Gilderoy doesn't care to read. (It is, as always, 'No Improvement'.) The disappointment the healer feels is evident in his tone. Yes, that's lovely. Matches the tempo of the scene!
"That, and..." Gilderoy brightens momentarily, and then looks crestfallen. He invents an explanation quickly, seeing Hayworth's confused glance. "Oh...I've forgotten again. I'm sorry. I try, I do. It slips away from me, all twisty. I do try."
Healer Hayworth sighs and leaves with a, "Please, Mister Lockhart, try a little harder to keep your memory," and Gilderoy is alone again. The curtain closes.
----
Gilderoy wakes up one morning in late June to find that someone has cut his hair to the nape of his neck while he slept. Ruefully, he contemplates his image in the mirror and pats the shorn blond waves with a bitter smile on his face. Can't have the star of the show looking like a vagabond, now, can we? They even took the time to trim his beard. It's a bit...Robin Hood, the look they've given him. He sighs.
He looked about his new room again, as he was accustomed to. Smaller than the other room, it still contained everything the other had had, resulting in a closed, claustrophobic feeling to the place. It was no longer really new, but he still thought of it as such. His act demanded that he think of it as such. This room is located in a lower ward, the ward where the chronic cases were kept. The screaming, raving human husks left behind after prolonged Cruciatus... the pitiful, inhuman things that sometimes resulted from high-stakes duels that were for 'humanitarian' reasons allowed to continue existing, features melted into hideous blurry semblances of their former selves and bodies twisted into half-animal monstrosities... sociopaths and abuse cases... and Gilderoy Lockhart.
Naturally, St. Mungo's does not disclose of such things lightly. Very few people on the outside know of the Intensive Care Ward, and even fewer of the Chronics Ward. Any surviving family of the patients must sign a non-disclosure agreement, on the grounds that treatment is a delicate thing and cannot be disturbed by undue or negative attentions. It's really an unnecessary thing; no one ever visits the Chronics Ward.
The watch-panel slides back from the door, a little slit of light soon blocked by a muddy hazel eye and a milky-looking face of which he can see only a small section from cheekbone to forehead. Someone says, "Yeah, lookin' in the mirror like always. He's seen his new haircut."
The door opens, but Gilderoy does not turn from the mirror. His hand freezes and drifts down to hang limply at his side, and he closes his eyes, calling up the face of his incubus – long and silky dark hair, black eyes like ice and fire set in sallow flesh, thin mouth of a sardonic turn, and the strong, hooked nose. Gilderoy wants to cry, but he does not. He has been not-doing for so long that it is hard to find the strength to be doing anything.
"Dunno why you want to see him. He's nothing."
The voice that answers hits Gilderoy with all the force of a two-ton block of mortar and brick. Smooth, cool, resonant, and richly bitter like baking chocolate, that voice. Severus Snape says with all his professorial superiority, "No one is as simple as nothing, least of all Gilderoy Lockhart, if memory serves."
Gilderoy winces at this cruel barb, knowing instinctively that Severus never says anything without first weighing its anticipated effect, if he can help it. He has always been this way. The broken idol – and how could he be anything but broken, living in the place? – that was once Gilderoy Lockhart puts a palm to the cool glass and mumbles tonelessly, "Go away."
The man of the hazel eye complies, but Severus is impassive, staring without comment at his one-time colleague. Gilderoy is finally alone with the man who haunted his dreams mockingly, a tantalizing daemon of the subconscious who would not subject himself even in Gilderoy's most desperate fantasies to the blond's awed, adoring, trembling touch.
Softly, in a frightened-innocent tone, he inquires, "Why are you here?"
"Who am I, Gilderoy?" Severus asks. That's not in the script.
Gilderoy fumbles for a cue, finds none, only knowing that it is impossible to lie to him. Instead, he rephrases the question and injects his self-loathing into his voice. "Why has the great Potions Master, Professor Severus Snape, deigned to pay his contemptible former fellow-employee, one Gilderoy Lockhart, a visit in the Chronics Ward of St. Mungo's?"
"Because you should not be in the Chronics hall of St. Mungo's," Severus replies dryly. "You have had your memory restored time and again, and it seems to me to be quite permanent at this time."
Gilderoy wonders if Severus has been told of his escapades toward oblivion. If he asked, though, Severus would doubtless seize upon the information (if he had not heard it before) and wield it like a knife, to cut deep. Words hurt. Gilderoy knows this; it's something he learned at Hogwarts, as 'Giles'.
"Ah. The Headmaster has insisted upon your intervention into my pathetic state of affairs?" Gilderoy asks, his sarcasm weighing heavy, as he turns around and walks the short distance between them. He hovers a polite distance from the Potions Master, awaiting the man's answer.
"The Headmaster," Severus states clearly, "ceased to care about what happened to you once you left the Hogwarts grounds."
The fact is not a revelation to Gilderoy. He waves his hand dismissively, a white disdainful dove, and turns his chair about. "Sit down, please," he requests, indicating the second chair to the right of the one he is moving. "I'd offer you a cup of tea, but, well..."
Severus does sit, upon the edge of the cushion, as if prepared to stand and fight if necessary. Gilderoy takes a seat as well, facing his visitor. Before either of them can speak, a terrible howling that is not human suddenly comes to them from somewhere down the hall. Neither man shows any sign of having heard, but Gilderoy apologizes anyway,
"You'll have to forgive Pacifico...Inferno Hex and an involuntary Transfiguration into a half-bear."
"Pacifico?" Severus asks, intrigued despite himself.
"Adrian Pacifico, a Spanish warlock, I think. He's been at St. Mungo's since 1951." Gilderoy shrugs, closing the subject. 'So much for the act of a destroyed short-term memory,' he thinks, silently marveling at how easily Severus Snape gets past his defenses.
Severus leans forward, effectively snaring Gilderoy with his serious expression and solemn black gaze. He explains calmly, "It has been a month since Lord Voldemort," Gilderoy flinches slightly at the name; Severus ignores this, persisting, "since Voldemort came to full power. I am, under Dumbledore's orders, attempting to organize enough experienced wizards to fight against him alongside our already assembled forces."
"Professor, how noble of you," Gilderoy mutters in a dead, monotonic voice. His hands become nervous birds as he continues, "They snapped my old wand...and I am prohibited from owning another one...I'm not a wizard, Professor Snape, and I'm sorry to waste your time."
Severus says nothing, only watches. They are both silent, staring at each other. Gilderoy drops his gaze to his hands, clasped and wringing together in his lap. Severus is intent upon observing the blond.
Finally, Gilderoy stammers out, "I-I really am ver...very sorry, Snape. They're right, you know. I am nothing. Nothing at all."
"Stop it."
Surprised, Gilderoy darts his blue eyes to Severus's face again. "Pardon?"
"Stop it! Why do you let them say things like that about you?" Severus demands angrily. He is on his feet now, glaring around the small room as though he wished to destroy the place with the sheer fury in his dark eyes. "This place...this place is as bad as Azkaban!"
"St. Mungo's isn't a prison," Gilderoy points out. Severus's outburst scares and confuses him. This is most definitely not in the script. Surely Severus hasn't confused the best hospital in the wizarding world with its best prison?
"For you it is, for a lot of other people it is." Severus retorts. "And the Chronics like this Adrian Pacifico! What diseased, sadistic mind could conceive it as a kindness to let such tormented souls live after they've suffered so much?"
"I don't know." Gilderoy whispers fearfully.
Severus lets out his breath in an impatient huff. "No, of course you don't." His eyes, icy black and full of fiery, indignant anger, settle on Gilderoy, sitting in subdued passivity that hidessuch hate and fear. An almost imperceptible flash of compassion softens his expression, and he whispers in a somewhat soothing tone, "I will get you out of here."
----
Severus is as good as his word. For a few days, though, loads of paperwork had to be filled out in triplicate, appropriately filed, and return forms permitting certain release tests received. Though the mediwizards expressed their doubts, no one was willing to challenge the last of the Snape nobility over such a man as Gilderoy. And then the tests themselves came, ludicrously and deceptively easy to complete. Gilderoy toyed with the idea of answering only in French, but decided against it on the grounds that they'd most likely declare him unfit and lock him away again.
Gilderoy spent his nights lying awake and wondering exactly why Professor Severus Snape, wealthy wizard from the old nobility and a member of the Fraternal Order of Potions Masters (Severus was well-known to be much more proud of the latter label) would take an interest in him. After all, the last time they had spoken before Gilderoy's unfortunate use of Mister Ronald Weasley's defective wand...
Gilderoy shudders at the recollection, as much because of his blind idiocy at the time as because of the united front of near-hatred he'd seen in the faces of the staff. He allows himself to shed a few tears as he thinks of the coolly sarcastic rancor that Severus had directed at him with the express intent to wound. Not, he would be the first to admit, that he hadn't deserved such treatment. But it still rattled him to realize that he had done things to be deserving of their anger, and that he had blithely deluded himself into believing that everyone loved him.
He'd forgotten the first rule of acting – never believe your own act. Of course, he'd forgotten others, such as "suit the action to the word, the word to the action", and he had been the very definition of one who overstepped the "modesty of nature".
"Just the man. The very man. A girl has been snatched by the monster, Lockhart. Taken into the Chamber itself. Your moment has come at last."
The words are poisonous. He shies away from them and wonders again why Severus – as he secretly refers to the man, but was and is too afraid to address him as such aloud – would want him out of St. Mungo's and underfoot.
Well, Severus had made mention of Azkaban in his visit. It was fairly common knowledge among the older generations of witches and wizards that Severus Snape had been a Death Eater. It was quite logical to suppose that Severus had once served a short sentence in Azkaban. And thus, perhaps he only wished to get Gilderoy released because the man was cured and should rightfully be released...instead of spending days and nights listening to alien shrieks and howls coming from all sides.
A broken sobbing rises distantly, as if taking cue from his thoughts. "Where's my baby, where's my baby...they've taken him, they've taken Neville away..."
Gilderoy hides his head under his pillow and tried to ignore the muffled crying. Rosamond Longbottom was one of the worst ones to listen to while wallowing in self-pity.
He hopes that Severus will come to get him soon.
----
The same night that Gilderoy Lockhart was vainly attempting to ignore Neville Longbottom's mother, Severus Snape was steadily emptying his liquor cabinet, glass by glass. He was not usually a heavy drinker, but tonight was special.
'In less than a day, Gilderoy Lockhart will be in my house. What insane impulse led me to St. Mungo's to visit him?' Severus asked himself bleakly.
Severus would probably never admit it, even under pain of slow, torturous death or the threat of a Dementor's Kiss, but he had at one time fancied the brainless git. The fact that he was not alone in this crazy adoration really did nothing more than piss him off immensely and lead him to pour another glass of scotch.
He had known almost from the start that Lockhart was false in his claims to greatness. His father – another member of the Fraternal Order of Potions Masters; like father, like son – had been in the town of Wagga Wagga at the same time Lockhart claimed to have been there. Silenus Snape had been trying to capture the alpha werewolf to further the development of Wolfsbane Potion, when the Armenian warlock Avedis Vahan had shown up and ruined the opportunity. The elder Snape would rant about this 'terrible occurrence' nonstop, if enough dry martinis were put in him.
Silenus Snape had been dead for five years by the time the damnably difficult potion was finally perfected and used on Remus Lupin. But his son found a certain satisfaction in the fact that the potion tasted, to put it crassly, like horseshit and that anything done to alter the taste would upset the delicate balance of ingredients and render the brew totally ineffective.
Perhaps that was petty, but surely Severus was allowed to be petty just like every other human being in the world...
But the alcohol was distracting him from his original train of thought. What was it, now?
Oh, yes. Gilderoy Lockhart.
Severus hadn't had any expectations as to what Gilderoy would be like, although he had prepared himself to be confronted with a hopeless, helpless shell of a man. He'd seen enough of those in Azkaban to be almost totally inured against the horror they instilled. He would have been all right, facing that.
Instead, he'd found himself conversing with Gilderoy on nearly equal ground. Something in that man, who was still beautiful even though he looked older than he ever had before, had changed. His pretty blue eyes had been deepened and enriched with suffering; there was self-knowledge and bitterness reflected there, now. It was almost too ironic that Gilderoy should have to be stricken by amnesia to learn who he was.
END PART ONE
Note: For anyone who is interested, Avedis means "Good News" and Vahan means "Shield" in Armenian. I thought it fitting for someone who saved a village from werewolves, don't you? And Pacifico means "Peaceful"...puzzle that one out as you wish...
The reasons behind Gilderoy/Gilles's name change (a new idea of mine) haven't been explicitly stated yet, but I trust that my readers are intelligent enough to get some idea why he did it.