After lunch they headed to Defense Against the Dark Arts. Halfway there, Harry was rushed by a first year clutching a Muggle camera.
"Harry Potter?"
Harry raised an eyebrow and nodded.
"I'm Colin Creevey. I'm in Gryffindor."
Harry stared at him blankly.
"Do you think—it would be all right if—can I have a picture?" he asked, raising the camera hopefully.
"A picture?" Harry repeated blankly.
"So I can prove I've met you," said Colin Creevey eagerly, stepping forward. "I know all about you. Everyone's told me. About how you survived when You-Know-Who tried to kill you and how he disappeared and everything and how you've still got a lightning scar on your forehead" (his eyes raked Harry's hairline "and a boy in my dormitory said if I develop the film in the right potion, the pictures'll move." Colin drew a great shuddering breath of excitement and said, "It's amazing here, isn't it? I never knew all the odd stuff I could do was magic till I got the letter from Hogwarts. My dad's a milkman, he couldn't believe it either. So I'm taking loads of pictures to send home to him. And it'd be really good if I had one of you. Maybe your friend could take it and I could stand next to you? And then, could you sign it?"
"Signed photos? Who's giving out signed photos?" Lockhart asked, striding up to them, smiling with every single one of his teeth.
He saw Harry and flung an arm around his shoulders. "Shouldn't have asked! We meet again, Harry!" He seemed to be over his own humiliation of the day before.
Pinned to Lockhart's side and burning with humiliation, Harry got that familiar I-wish-I-could-turn-invisible feeling. But this time he remembered that he could.
"Sorry, Colin," he said, "maybe later." To Vanella and Draco: "I'll see you in the classroom."
And he vanished, shifting out of focus until he wasn't even there.
Lockhart's arm slammed against his own side, because the thing he had been holding there was gone, much to his chagrin. Colin Creevey looked positively mortified; he hadn't gotten his picture yet! Vanella and Draco, who were soon joined by Ron and Hermione, looked mildly surprised, as Harry had informed them, with little detail, of his teleportation and invisibility abilities.
After the original uproar of a student disappearing for the second time in 24 hours, they all continued to class, where Harry was waiting, unshrinking all of his Defense Against the Dark Arts books, and levitating Lockhart's desk and everything on it.
Lockhart was the first to enter the classroom, and seemed to be under the impression that his desk was possessed and levitating itself. He pressed his back against the wall next to the door and watched the stuff on his desk do flips while the students filtered in after the bell.
Harry was still playing with the desk when the classroom was full. Everyone's eyes were darting between a terrified Lockhart and a floating desk.
"Well, come on, Professor Lockhart," said Hermione, unaware that this was Harry's doing, "this is just a floating desk, compared to everything you've done in your books."
A few of the other students murmured their agreement.
"Yea," Vanella said, knowing perfectly well that it was Harry, who was sitting there restraining his laughter, "after all, a simple counter-levitation charm would do the trick, if you're more powerful than the castor of the original levitation charm."
Lockhart took out his wand and cast a weak counter-levitation charm. It didn't work. He looked at the door to his private office.
"I…inch…my way around the desk," he said, narrating his movements, "careful of whatever's possessing it. Then I…inch…open the door to my office, and…slip…inside." He left the door open.
The class looked at it bewildered. Draco leaned over to Vanella, "What's he doing?" he asked.
She shrugged. "Cowering in fear?"
Then Lockhart reappeared, followed by a bemused Albus Dumbledore. "See?" Lockhart whispered, "the desk's possessed by something."
The class laughed.
Vanella shook her head. "Stupid, stupid, stupid," she whispered.
Albus smiled. "More like someone, Gilderoy," he said. He turned to a grinning Harry. "Put the desk down, Harry, please."
Harry set the desk on the floor and organized everything on it back to the way it was.
"Thank you, Harry. And I must ask that you do not play with a Professor's things, without his permission. Next time it will be detention."
"Yes, sir," Harry said promptly.
"Good." Dumbledore turned to Lockhart. "Will that be all, Gilderoy?"
Lockhart nodded, a confused expression on his face.
"Then return to your teaching."
And Dumbledore left through the floo in Lockhart's office.
Lockhart turned to the class. "Well, now," he said, paying close attention to Harry, whose eyes were wide in a feigned innocence expression, "let's commence our lesson."
He reached forward and picked up Neville Longbottom's copy of Travels with Trolls (everyone had taken their books out). He pointed at the cover, where a winking picture of Lockhart himself was winking and smiling at the class. Lockhart winked also, saying, "Me. Gilderoy Lockhart, Order of Merlin, Third Class, Honorary Member of the Dark Force Defense League, and five-time winner of Witch Weekley'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 waited for people to laugh. Clearly he had rehearsed this. A few people resisted the urge to laugh at him, and not his joke.
"I see you've all bought a complete set of my books—well done. I thought we'd start today with a little quiz. Nothing to worry about—just to check how well you've read them, how much you've taken in…"
When he'd handed out the test papers he returned to the front of the class and told them, "You've thirty minutes…start…now!"
Harry looked at the quiz and began reading the questions:
1. What is Gilderoy Lockhart's favorite color?
2. What is Gilderoy Lockhart's secret ambition?
3. What, in your opinion, is Gilderoy Lockhart's greatest achievement to date?
On and on for three sides of paper went the ridiculous questions, up until the last one:
54. When is Gilderoy Lockhart's birthday, and what would his ideal gift be?
Looking at them, Harry wished he had bothered with the absurd, smiling man's books.
Half an hour later, Lockhart collected the papers and rifled through them at the front of the class.
"Tut, tut—hardly any of you remembered that my favorite color is lilac. I say so in Year of the Yeti. And a few of you need to read Wanderings with Werewolves more carefully—I clearly state in chapter twelve that my ideal birthday gift would be harmony between all magic and non-magic peoples—though I wouldn't say no to a large bottle of Ogden's Old Firewhiskey!"
He winked again. Ron, Harry, and Draco were all watching Lockhart with expressions of disbelief on their faces, while Vanella was watching him with mild amusement. Seamus Finnigan and Dean Thomas were shaking with silent laughter. Hermione, though, was listening to him with rapt attention and gave a start when he mentioned her name.
"…but Miss Hermione Granger knew me secret ambition is to rid the world of evil and market my own range of hair-care potions—good girl! In fact" — he flipped her paper over — "full marks! Where is Miss Hermione Granger?"
Hermione raised a trembling hand.
"Excellent!" beamed Lockhart. "Quite excellent! Take ten points for Gryffindor! And so—to business—"
He brought a large, covered cage out of his office and set it on his desk. "Now—be warned! It is my job to arm you against the foulest creatures known to wizardkind! You may find yourselves facing your worst fears in this room. Know only that now harm can befall you whilst I am here. All I ask is that you remain calm."
Harry found himself considered what animals he's read about that could fit in that cage. Lockhart put his hand on the cover, and Dean and Seamus stopped laughing. Neville Longbottom was cowering in his front row seat. Vanella and Draco were staring at Lockhart with something between disbelief and amusement. And over in the Gryffindor side, Hermione was swooning while Ron looked positively sickened.
"I must ask you not to scream," Lockhart said in a low voice. "It might provoke them."
As the class held its breath, and Harry raised his eyebrow, Lockhart whipped off the cover.
"Yes," he said dramatically. "Freshly caught Cornish pixies."
Seamus Finnigan couldn't control himself. He let out a snort of laughter that even Lockhart couldn't mistake for a scream of terror.
"Yes?" Lockhart asked, smiling at Seamus.
"Well, they're not—they're not very—dangerous, are they?" Seamus choked.
"Don't be so sure!" said Lockhart, waggling a finger annoyingly at Seamus. "Devilish tricky little blighters they can be!"
The pixies were electric blue and about eight inches high, with pointed faces and voices so shrill it was like listening to a lot of budgies arguing. The moment the cover had been removed, they had started jabbering and rocketing around, rattling the bars and making bizarre faces at the people nearest them.
"Right, then," Lockhart said loudly. "Let's see what you make of them!" And he opened the cage.
It was pandemonium. The pixies shot in every direction like rockets. Two of them seized Neville by the ears and lifted him into the air. Several shot straight through the window, showering the back row with broken glass. The rest proceeded to wreck the classroom more effectively than a rampaging rhino. They grabbed ink bottles and sprayed the class with them, shredding books and papers, tore pictures from the walls, up-ended the waste basket, grabbed bags and books and threw them out of the smashed window; within minutes, half the class was sheltering under desks and Neville was swinging from the iron chandelier in the ceiling.
Harry cast a protective shield over Vanella, Draco, Ron, Hermione, and himself. Then he took Neville off the chandelier and set him back down. He joined most of the others under the desk. Lockhart was batting them off at the front of the class. Harry grinned and directed the other pixies towards him.
"Come on now," Lockhart said, batting a pixie away from his ear. "Round them up, round them up, they're only pixies."
"Sir, they're only bothering you," Dean Thomas pointed out.
Lockhart took out his wand and bellowed, "Peskipiksi Pesternomi!"
It had no effect; one of the pixies seized his wand and threw it out of the window, too. Lockhart gulped and dived under his own desk.
The bell rang and there was a mad rush toward the exit. Harry was the last one out. He turned to Lockhart when he reached the door. "I'll do you a favor," he said, eyeing the pixies, "since you clearly cannot handle these yourself." Harry 'immobulus'ed all the pixies in midair, and they floated around helplessly. "Just stuff them back in their cages." He left, ignoring Lockhart's bewildered expression.
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Things went pretty much the same way over the next few days. Lockhart was still obnoxious, and Harry still had fun messing with his head whenever he thought he could without getting in trouble. Harry found it difficult to avoid Colin Creevey, who still wanted his signed picture. Lockhart had given up saying that Harry was trying to grab publicity after the first time Harry disappeared in his arms.
Anyway, Harry and the others were glad when the weekend came.
Dumbledore had arranged so Harry still had his Defense practices once a week, on Sunday nights. He'd also given Harry permission to fly around the grounds, as long as he didn't leave them, and didn't morph in public.
Harry was headed back to the Slytherin common room late on Saturday night when he heard it. A voice in the wall. A voice that chilled to the bone marrow, a voice of breath-taking, ice-cold venom.
"Come… come to me…. Let me rip you…. Let me tear you…. Let me kill you…."
Harry stopped dead in his tracks and listened, eyes darting around. "Hello?" he called. But the voice had already moved away. He stood there for quite some time, shaken. Then he ran back to the Slytherin house headquarters.
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Author's Note: Now we're getting somewhere. Ooooo, fun.
I know, I know… similar to the book, I understand. It pains me to write similarities like this, but I wouldn't do it if it wasn't necessary, I promise.
The writer's urge for reviews is getting the best of me, it seems… I'm back to writing again, after a break. But I may need more reviews to keep that fire going… so I would be much obliged if you all gave your opinions, especially on the Ginny deal, because I do value them all.
Next chapter up soon. Soon as I get it up.