The Only One He Ever Feared
Friday's Defense Against the Dark Arts lesson started strangely. The windows of the classroom were covered as they entered, leaving them almost no light to find their seats. As they waited for Lockhart to show up, there was an eerie whisper that came from the back of the room, near the professor's office. Slowly, the door to the room creaked open, and a pale blue light could be seen inside.
The students peered into the room as the light grew brighter, then a woman seemingly floated out of the room. She had pale skin, dark hair, and a white dress. Her hair and dress floated around her like it was underwater. This was no ghost and looked exactly like the picture on the cover of Lockhart's book, Break with a Banshee.
Harry, Lyra, and a few other students drew their wands as the creature approached the sitting students, and then without warning, she opened her mouth as all the bones inside her body glowed through her skin and she let out an unearthly scream that caused everyone to cover their ears, and shut their eyes. Then, just as quickly as she had started screaming, she stopped and light flowed into the room from the windows.
Harry looked towards the woman, only to see her head slumped to the side, and her hair and dress had fallen flat. Upon closer examination, her arms were made out of wood and joints could be seen in them with metal pins to allow movement. The eyes on her face were wide open, but there was no life in them.
"And that, good children," Lockhart said as he stepped out of his office, "was a banshee, which is what we will be covering for the next few weeks. Who here has already read the book outlining my first dark creature hunt - Break with a Banshee?"
There was a scattering of hands around the room.
"Excellent!" he exclaimed as he displayed his sparkling smile.
He then proceeded to retell the first chapter of his book. All of his other books seemed to have a firm background of what led up to his heroic feats. However, this one jumped in with both feet and started the story with him trying to kill the Bandon Banshee. The first chapter was just him attacking the spirit as she called for someone's death in the city of Bandon. Local wizards tried to keep him from attacking her, but he just threw spell after spell at her until she vanished into a cloud of mist, retreating from the battle. Their professor then had them analyze every spell he cast and tried to get them to figure out why the spirit of death had retreated from the fight, but he rejected all of their ideas, assigning them an essay to think of more solutions to that question.
At the end of class, he asked Harry and Lyra to remain there after everyone left. Once they were alone, he came and sat in front of them.
"So, what did you think of the banshee at the beginning of class?" he asked.
"I was about to set it on fire," Lyra responded.
"So, you thought it was real?" Both Harry and Lyra nodded. "Excellent, just what I was hoping for. Well, the reason why I held the two of you back is that I was contacted the other day by your tutor, Steward Brandt, who asked me to be the tutor for both of you for calligraphy. Isn't that incredible?"
Harry had been wondering if they would ever start that, not that he was looking forward to learning a new way to write what he already knew. He shared a look with his sister who had a similar look on her face, but the two of them just smiled and nodded.
"Great! Brandt informed me that your weekly dueling practice on Saturday is off because Miss Farley is unavailable while she is adjusting to her animagus form, so why don't we meet after breakfast and go over the first lesson?"
Harry and Lyra looked a bit bummed out, but not every lesson could be Dueling or Transfiguration, some of them had to be like History of Magic.
So on Saturday, after breakfast, Harry and Lyra spent the whole morning and part of the afternoon in Professor Lockhart's office starting their calligraphy lessons. Harry had the kit that Lockhart had given to him for Christmas, and another one had arrived for Lyra during breakfast from Brandt.
Their professor had modified his classroom to have posters covering the walls displaying different styles of writing and had many assortments of pens and brushes displayed for examples. He started them off with a history of calligraphy in the Western world, explaining that the word itself came from ancient Greek, as a combination of two words, Kallos and Graphein, meaning 'beauty' and 'to write.' Beautiful Writing became an art form in itself which became more than just the letters themselves, and taught people to take into account proportion, positive and negative space, depth perception, and light when writing.
Lockhart spoke with such passion about the subject that it made it far less boring than they thought it would be. It took him an hour for the entire history lesson on the subject before they even started to write anything. After assembling their pens and setting up the inkwells, he showed them the common strokes and how to manipulate the pen in such a way that it changed their stroke marks with great ease and without dripping ink on their papers.
Finally, just an hour before lunch, they started on actual letters from a style that was called Foundation Hand. They were able to make it through the first five letters of the alphabet, only in capitals before going for lunch. They did learn a new spell before leaving for lunch, the ink vanishing spell, Atramesco. It was a very useful spell for removing mistakes on paper or for cleaning up your hands without too much scrubbing. The wand movement involved holding it like a pencil and just wiggling it like an eraser over the ink you wanted to remove. There was quite a bit on their hands by that point, and they needed to get rid of all of it before going to The Great Hall.
After lunch, they returned to Lockhart to finish going over the rest of the alphabet in this style. They managed to finish both capital and lowercase letters by 5 p.m, and then they were given homework on top of that. Lockhart showed both of them journals that Brandt had purchased for them with animated illustrations for every letter that they could trace for practice. They would have to use the ink vanishing spell each time they completed a letter before starting again. He told them to come back after dinner on Monday and he could see how they had progressed.
After they left the classroom, Lyra complained, "Ahhhh, I feel like I've hiked to the hoohoo nest and back down… Twice! Walking on my hands!"
"That wasn't the most pleasant way to spend a Saturday, but as soon as we learn this, we never have to do it again."
As they arrived at the common room, a large group of Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs was coming in from the snow. Sitting on the shoulders of Fred and George was Whispers, being hailed as a hero.
"Harry! Lyra!" they took turns saying.
"Whispers here won us the snowball fight," said Bill.
"A warrior with no equal," Ted followed up.
"Do you mind if we come into your common room to celebrate our victory?" one of them asked.
Harry and Lyra shared a look and she took off into the room to get someone to guide the larger group through. Harry told the group of students, "Lyra needs to get Cedric or someone else to bring a group in."
Nearly five minutes later, Patricia, Millicent, Neville, and William came out. Patricia had an arm full of blindfolds, while Neville and Millicent were holding a dozen garlands, made of ivy. Harry had no idea what bollocks story they were trying to do now.
Patricia told the Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs who were waiting, "Our common room got changed a bit over break, so you need to blindfold yourself on the entry." She gestured toward the other two students, "You also need to wear these necklaces."
Everyone was sufficiently interested in seeing what was happening, so they allowed her to put the blindfolds on all of them with a sticking charm, tie them together at the wrists, and place the garlands around their necks. She then led them into the maze while instructing them to sing the school song, while William gave each of their visitors a small shock at random. At one point, Harry saw that one of the twins might be trying to peek through the blindfold, so he had them start over from the beginning of the maze, and the beginning of the school song.
Eventually, they all got through the maze, and their blindfolds were removed. Patricia let them keep the ivy necklaces, saying they should keep them in case they wanted to return to the Scamander common room sometime. However, no one was listening as they stared at the changed design of the room.
They had a small party, which involved plenty of fruit juice, small cakes from their kitchen, and other treats they had lying around. At one point a large pile of snow got dumped into the room and Fred and George reenacted their snowball fight, along with Whispers who just seemed to be enjoying throwing snow at people now that his gloved hands wouldn't get cold.
At some point, Lee Jordan disappeared with Alicia Spinnet and wasn't seen for the rest of the evening until everyone went to dinner. Most of the dinner seemed to be taken up by students talking about Valentine's Day tomorrow. The third-year students would be getting to go to the nearby town of Hogsmeade, and the castle would otherwise be empty of students, not that it was all that busy inside on a weekend anyway.
Brandt woke up leisurely on Sunday morning and went through all the mail and necessary paperwork from bed like usual. He called various elves to set him up with breakfast and send the necessary communications to different people. Harry and Lyra had sent him a letter informing him of their discussion with the Scamanders about the history of the poachers and that they had also passed on a message to be sent to Nestor about it. Such an operation was incredible to have stretched for so long without being discovered, so he knew that even the investigation by Nestor's friend Caesar might not turn up anything. He'd almost certainly have to hire a group of Bloodhounds to tackle the case.
After he got through all the business paperwork and mail for the morning, there was one package left for him, in shining red paper. He smiled at the seal, knowing it was from his betrothed. He had sent her a Valentine's Day gift a few days before. While on the island, he had found a few dead vipers near the snake pits; they were the most brilliant green in color, so he preserved them and had them turned into gloves for his intended, when he came back to England.
Opening the gift from her, he found a jeweled puzzle box. The outside consisted of different puzzles on each side, which would each probably open to something different inside. He tried shaking it to see if something was inside but heard nothing. However, with magic involved there could be anything from a watch to a small dragon waiting for him to solve one of the puzzles. He would need to work on opening it later to see if it contained something as he had a full day ahead of him.
He smiled as he thought of what kind of fun Harry and Lyra would be having for their very first Valentine's Day.
Then he froze, remembering he didn't get to talk about the day of romance with them since Tonks had caused Harry's breakdown before he could talk to them about the holiday. Well, he could be sure that he would have an interesting tale to be told next weekend.
When the children got to the Great Hall the next morning, they found the entire room covered with banners of red, pink, and white. The candles that floated around the room would occasionally give off a puff of confetti in the same colors that would vanish before it hit the floor. There was beautiful piano music that could be heard throughout the room and many of the other students were dressed up in fancier clothing than their standard school uniforms.
Harry, Lyra, and Whispers all looked around in confusion at everything as they sat down at their table. The food was different too; the pancakes, waffles, muffins, toast, and cinnamon rolls were all shaped like hearts. The only fruits on the table were red; strawberries, apples, peaches, pomegranates, and jams. Someone had even colored the bacon to be pink, despite being fully cooked.
As they ate the strangely reddish breakfast, Lockhart stood up and walked to the lectern by the professors' table. He was wearing an amazing assortment of reds and pinks in his robe and cape, while his usually blonde locks were dyed a bright cherry red to match his ensemble.
"Good morning all, and Happy Valentine's Day to you all! Someone decided to spike my morning coffee with a potion to dye my hair red, but I'm just going to keep it this way. Whoever did it can expect ten points to their house and two galleons in exchange for the recipe and the antidote."
Nearly everyone in the room immediately looked towards the Weasley Twins at the Gryffindor table who were pointing at each other and having a small argument.
Lockhart looked towards them as well, and continued, "I would like to thank the forty-six students who have already sent me Valentine's Day cards, though the one who laced the chocolates with a love potion will get to deal with some over-amorous owls the next few days as a reminder not to play with such nasty things. Use your own charms instead of magical ones, and wait at least fifteen years before you send me such advances again."
Lyra could see looks on a few of the other professors' faces that meant that whoever was going to start receiving the lovesick owls would get more than that as a punishment.
"The fun doesn't end with just a fancy breakfast, as I have hired a troupe of cherubs to deliver special romantic greetings to you all day!"
He clapped his hands and a group of seven men who looked like smaller versions of The Giver, just a smidge taller than Professor Flitwick marched into the room. They were all wearing white togas with tiny wings on their backs. Some carried harps or bows with a quiver of arrows, and three of them carried small satchels over their shoulders. They had extra large and hairy feet but wore sandals all the same. Their noses were large, in the same shape as The Giver, but closer to human size than his. However, they didn't look happy to be there and all had sour looks on their faces.
Harry and Lyra looked at each other and smiled while whispering loudly, "They're Hobbits!"
Lockhart waved to all of them and said, "These Dwarves will be spread out around the castle and Hogsmeade today to send and deliver your romantic notes to one another. If you have something you would like to send, each Dwarf has a menu of options for the delivery along with the costs; nothing more than a sickle!"
One of the Dwarves stepped up and shot an arrow straight at Professor Lockhart from across the room. It hit him straight in the heart, but he just smiled and waved to everyone. He plucked it out and said, "Arrows with cheering charms! Totally harmless! Twelve knuts a shot, three for a sickle!" Then he sat back down at the table and the Dwarves all crowded around a table in the corner to wait for students to approach them. Two of them lit up cigarettes while they waited.
"The dwarves look a lot like Hobbits," Harry repeated to Lyra.
She agreed and then looked around, "Where'd Whispers go?"
They spotted him approaching the group of dwarves in the corner and followed him at a distance. Whispers cautiously sat down in an empty seat at their table and stared at all of them. They all turned to look at him and in a gruff voice, one of them said "Whatcha want, monkey?"
Whispers tilted his head and looked at one smoking the cigarette and pointed to it. The dwarf looked curious and passed him the burning tab. He held it for a moment while his eyes glowed blue, then shook his head and passed it back.
Then he reached out to one of them and touched their nose and asked, "Yoo Giver?"
"Give what?" he responded.
Harry and Lyra approached them at that time to answer, with Lyra explaining, "He's our little brother. We know someone who looks like you, named The Giver."
"Plenty of dwarves here and there," another one said. "Strange name though."
"He's not a dwarf," Harry said. "We were told he is called Duwende."
The seven of them looked at each other and started to laugh when they were done, the one who had given Whispers his cigarette said, "The Duwende died out centuries ago, I bet your friend is just an old man who got hit in the face with a swelling charm."
Harry pulled out his photo album and flipped to a page that had a picture of their tutor, placing it in front of the smoking dwarf. The ornery little man passed his cigarette to the one next to him and examined the picture, then passed the album around the table as they all carefully looked at the photo. They all started to make rumbling noises to each other in the same way that Newt had done when he spoke to The Giver. When the album came back around, the one who they had surmised was the leader who examined it again, touching and staring at The Giver's black fur, his feet, and his fingers.
"He is a *grumbling noise,* a giver and a taker?" the dwarf asked.
They did understand, and Harry and Lyra both nodded.
"We will talk to you about this another time," the leader said. "There's a line forming behind you."
Harry and Lyra turned around to see a line of other students wanting to engage the services of the Valentine's Day cherubs. So Harry took back his album and returned to their seats with Whispers loping along behind them.
Blaise and Daphne slid into seats next to them when they got back, with the dark-skinned boy asking, "So, who were you two sending stuff to? I bet you both get a ton of Valentines today."
"There's something like a dwarf where we live," Lyra answered. "Whispers wanted to see if they were related."
Harry raised his eyebrows, "Why would people be sending stuff to us?"
"You're kidding, right?" Daphne asked. "You're the Boy-Who-Lived and the Black Princess! Tons of people will be sending you cards and chocolates."
"Oh…" he responded, unsure of what to say.
Blaise informed him, "It's fine if you don't want to date anyone who sends you cards, just be sure to say thank you to anyone who does."
"What if we get love potions, like Lockhart?" Lyra asked.
"Yeah, that's always a possibility," Daphne said. "Snape checked all our edible gifts last year in Slytherin to make sure they weren't laced with anything. Talk to your head of house to see if he'll do it too."
"Speaking of your head of house," Blaise began. "Do you think he could clear up the entrance to your common room later today? My mother is coming to visit and would like to talk with the portrait of Liborio, as well as get some of the fresh fruit from the room."
"We can just guide her in," Harry responded.
"With a blindfold and singing silly songs as you do with everyone else? Not for my mother," he pleaded with them.
"Ok, we can ask him," Harry agreed, and quickly went up to the staff table to arrange it for her visit.
On the way out, however, he was stopped before he could leave the Great Hall by the troupe of Dwarves. Whispers's eyes glowed blue, and he vanished but stayed next to them.
"One moment, Mr. Potter," their leader said, "We have a singing valentine for you."
"A what?" Harry asked.
The Dwarf leader turned to the other six and started, "A one, and a two, and three…"
"With streaks of silver all through his hair
And a sense of style that's very debonair
When a lass is in trouble, he will console her
Then stick his staff through someone's shoulder
When things are darkest, he is the light
I hope he'll be my valentine tonight!"
The leader had sung each line along with one of the others, switching off for each member of the troop. Their voices were not designed for singing and it did not sound like a proper song or poem. The leader of the dwarves stepped forward when they finished and gave Harry a card that had the song written inside of it. There was no signature. A couple of people applauded, while others laughed, and a few gave cooed and said it was adorable.
Harry had no idea what to do with it. He looked to Lyra who just shrugged, so he asked the room, "Who sent this?" He held up the card.
"I did!" called out some older girl he didn't recognize.
"No, she didn't, I did!" called another.
A few other girls called out as well, and he heard someone from the mess of students call out, "I am Spartacus!" followed by a few other similar calls, which confused Harry even more.
Not wanting to deal with the situation, Harry scooped up Whispers who was still next to him and slung him across his back as the Hidden turned visible, then Harry and Lyra walked out of the room.
Throughout the day a few other cards came to Harry, and three for Lyra, while they lounged in the common room. They had a pile of chocolates from Daphne, Tracey, Hermione, Penny, Lavender, Parvati, Seamus, Dean, and Blaise. There were no more singing valentines, and all of the others were polite and friendly. After the first three, Harry and Lyra started to give money to the dwarves to send return letters to everyone who had sent something to them.
The card from Blaise said that his mother would be arriving before dinner, close to 4 p.m. When the time was approaching; Harry, Lyra, and Whispers met Blaise at the exit to the courtyard, where Blaise was waiting. Shortly before sunset, the galloping of hooves could be heard approaching outside of the courtyard, and up the path came a white carriage being pulled by two black horses with manes of raging blue fire.
Driving the horses was a man in a periwinkle blue coat and top hat. Riding on the back was a footman in a similar outfit. The carriage pulled into the courtyard and turned around so it stopped with the door facing the entrance to the castle. The footman hopped off the back and unfolded a set of steps to the door, then opened the carriage.
Blaise's mother was inside with a dapper-looking man wearing a set of gray robes with a periwinkle blue ascot. However, none of the students watching the arrival or anyone reading this would have been paying any attention to him. The only reason he was being described right now was to mention his ascot and imply that the color matched the coachmen's uniform and the blue flame of the horses.
This phenomenon was due to the dress that Miss Zabini was wearing as she stepped down carefully. She was wearing a deep red velvet dress that hugged her hourglass frame. It was strapless with off-the-shoulder cap sleeves and a sheath style on the bottom that had an extra wrapping on the back to look like a cape for her lower body. She also had donned red velvet gloves to match the dress and sparkling ruby heels.
She walked towards Blaise who gave her a deep bow, and said, "Good evening mother, I hope we aren't taking too much time out of your evening."
"It's just a short detour." She turned back to the carriage, "You don't mind, do you, Gorman?"
"Anything for you, my dear," he called back as many of the others watching were startled by someone else in the carriage that they had missed.
The footman reached behind the carriage, pulled out a wooden bucket, and passed it to the driver who had just climbed down. Pulling a sapphire flask from his pocket, he poured a shimmering liquid into the bucket, then waved his wand to transfigure it into a long trough in front of the horses. With another wave of his wand, the liquid was ignited and small blue flames danced on the surface as the horses began to slurp at the burning water.
"Good evening to you too, Mr. Potter, Miss Black, and I've heard it's Sir Whispers now, correct?"
They exchanged formal handshakes, even Whispers, who said to her, "Alesssan-ra?"
"Astounding memory," she smiled at Whispers. "Let's go see old Liborio now."
The footman followed them as they entered the common room. Newt had disabled the maze, so they were able to walk straight down the tunnel and into the room. When the inner door was opened and they entered, Blaise and his mother stopped to stare at the common room.
"Well," she began, "this is different."
"We blessed the room before the break," Lyra explained. "We did it before at our home, so far it has made the plants grow faster and larger, and the fruit grows much quicker regardless of the season."
She looked around the room, and at the floor, then said, "This floor is not going to work with my heels. Harry, where is Liborio's portrait?"
Harry pointed to the back right corner of the room where a small study area was set up, "He's over there."
Turning to the footman who was still with them, she told him sweetly, "Orson, would you mind doing something about this?"
The man smiled and waved his wand to transfigure the ground into a polished blue and silver tile pathway that curved around the grove of trees, arriving at the study area. Other Scamanders in the room watched with interest as Whispers led the group across the polished pathway through their common room over to the study corner. Whispers climbed on the desk below the portrait as they arrived and sat down.
The footman, Orson, conjured a comfortable chair for Alessandra and then stood behind it while Harry, Lyra, and Blaise sat down in the chairs that were already there. The portrait of Liborio Montessi gave a formal bow to everyone present.
"It's good to see you again, Madam Zabini, you are the vision of loveliness this evening," he said with a smile.
"Liborio, how goes the project with Sir Whispers?" she asked the portrait.
"I would have not thought such a thing possible in the past, I was scared that he might turn out like that jarvey you had me try to educate once…" he shivered. "Never again will I do that. Sir Whispers here will never be able to communicate at the level that I or another human can. However, he will certainly be able to remember more complicated words than a giant and be more clear with expressing his thoughts than a centaur; though he won't be able to comprehend the drama that the latter speaks with when they talk about such mundane occurrences as the weather. He knows basic courtesies and behaviors, can understand most facial expressions, and can converse about as well as a seven-year-old. I don't think he will be able to grow more from additional lessons with me."
He looked down towards Whispers, lounging below the frame, "Whispers, how old are you?"
Whispers held up one of his hands and counted up the numbers, finally saying, "Fiiive, I aaam Fiiive yeeers old."
"What are your father and mother's names?"
"Faadder is Cheeef. Mudder is Teeeecher."
"He has problems making the TH and Z sounds, and he tends to enunciate in places where he shouldn't need to, but we have been working on turning the things he knows into English. I attempted to teach him French as well for some basic phrases, but trying to explain that there could be more than one way to say certain things in English and French was a bit too much for him."
"Excellent," Alessandra told the man. "I will have Orson collect you and return you to my home."
"Do I have to leave so soon?" the man in the frame pleaded. "I have quite enjoyed being here at Hogwarts, not just to try to bring civilized speech to this very intelligent creature, but to also be around children and assist them with their work."
Alessandra made a face to say she wasn't quite sure, then looked at the footman, and back at the portrait, "I guess you may stay until the end of the year. I do not think I will need to train any new elves until June at the earliest."
"Mother, what do you think about selling an extra frame of his to Hogwarts?" Blaise asked. "Set him up in a study hall for all the students so that he can come here on weekends and provide tutoring."
"I will send an owl to Dumbledore and see if he would be interested in such a purchase," she said with a small smile.
Liborio smiled approvingly towards Blaise, "You may have your mother's good looks, but you have the brain and charity of my great-nephew. I hope to see more of you in the coming years at this school." The boy gave the portrait a satisfied nod back.
As they started to walk back towards the entrance, Alessandra pointed towards the fruit trees, "Would you mind if I took some of those with me?" she asked Harry and Lyra.
Without waiting for them to respond, Whispers scaled the pomegranate tree and pulled down two fruits for her. Harry nodded in the affirmative to her as well. The footman conjured a bag and they picked two of every fruit and placed them inside. Whispers also ran off to the greenhouse and pulled up a bushel of mint to put in with everything. When they got back to the entrance, the footman reversed the transfiguration of the floor and they walked back through the tunnel to the hallway to the courtyard.
When they could be seen by the carriage again, the man inside called out, "My dear, we are going to be late for the theater."
She was about to respond when from the other end of the hall Gilderoy Lockhart started walking towards them, and called out, "Mr. Potter! It seems with every month I see you with a different beautiful woman a bit too old for you. However, maybe this one is just right for me."
The footman drew his wand, "Miss Zabini is spoken for and is here with Gorman Strauss. Unless you wish to find yourself at the tip of his wand, I suggest you back off."
Lockhart stared down imposingly at the man in the blue coat, and tapped his wand in its holster without drawing it, "Your master would be comfortable dueling with Gilderoy Lockhart; Order of Merlin recipient, honorary member of the Dark Force Defense League, the man who bested the Bandon Banshee, who defeated the Wagawaga Werewolf, and was triumphant over a trio of trolls?" He paused to stare down the man a bit more, then patted him on the shoulder, "Do not worry, I have no intention of trying to steal a woman claimed by another. That would be bad manners, particularly on a day like today. I simply was interested in an introduction."
Stepping around the man who was a bit in shock, Lockhart spoke to Miss Zabini, "I see our outfits match on this Valentine's evening. I can't imagine wearing something so contrary to the holiday, like blue of all things. I don't think I should have to give my full list of titles again, but I am Gilderoy Lockhart, at your service."
He had bowed and extended a hand for her to place a hand on top of, which she did and he raised it to kiss the back of her knuckles. When she spoke back to him, there was an airy sound to her voice and Harry could swear he heard small bells in her voice, "It's a pleasure to meet you Gilderoy, I am Alessandra Zabini."
However, as she spoke, Lockhart's eyes widened dramatically and he dropped her hand and jumped backward, "No! No! You stay away from me!" he said frantically. "Away! Get away from me now!" he backed up too quickly and tripped on his cape, falling on his rear. Then he scrambled to his feet and ran off in the other direction.
Harry stared after his defense professor retreating up the grand staircase, then turned back to Blaise and his mother to see the worry on their faces for a brief second before it changed to a look of confusion.
"What a strange man," she said, then turned and walked quickly back to the carriage, with the footman closing the door as she entered, folding up the steps, then hopping on the back as the horses carried them away.
"What was that?" Lyra asked Blaise.
"I… I have no idea," he stammered briefly. "Lockhart is a bit weird." Then, he too, quickly retreated away from the Scamander common room, leaving a confused Harry and Lyra, as well as an extra confused Whispers just standing in the hallway.