A/N: Warning for attempted rape.

When he looks back at his youth, Gilderoy knows the exact moment that made him want to save people for the rest of his life. Whenever he tells the story, he does it with a flourish, embellishing it until the tale is just as fantastical as any in his books. Secretly, though, he thinks that the truth is more meaningful than any fiction he could weave.

It was in his sixth year, and he was walking back to the Ravenclaw common room after a long day spent cramming for his half-yearly exams when he came across a boy and a girl in a dark alcove. His first instinct was to roll his eyes and continue walking, assuming they were just another couple having a break from studying. But then he heard tell-tale signs of a struggle, and glancing over his shoulder, he could see how the boy was using his tall form to corner the girl.

Gilderoy's breathing faltered; there was no way he could overpower the boy in a fight. Yet before he knew it, his feet had stilled and were turning to carry him back towards them.

"I don't think she wants you to do that," he said. His words were steady even as he hid his hands in his robes to hide the way they were shaking.

"You don't know what she wants," the boy replied.

Gilderoy tried to peer around the boy, waiting for the girl to say something either way, but from the little he could see, she looked like she was shaking too hard to speak. "Maybe not, but I'm a prefect, and I want you to leave her alone."

The boy looked over his shoulder to fix him with an icy glare. "Stay out of it."

In that moment, Gilderoy recognised him, and a plan formed in his mind. He tried to appear as nonchalant as he could. "If you insist. But I heard that the next time you get into trouble, you'll be forced to sit out a Quidditch match. At this point in the season, your teammates would probably just replace you, wouldn't they?" He put on a sigh. "It would be a shame, really."

"You're lying," Mulciber said, turning towards him fully. "They wouldn't do that."

"That's what I heard." Gilderoy shrugged, keeping his voice calm despite the pounding of his heartbeat. "I could be wrong, but do you want to risk it?"

It took ten seconds for Mulciber to make a decision. In that time, Gilderoy ran through what he could do if Mulciber decided that he did want to risk it.

The answer was 'very little'.

Fortunately, Mulciber simply scowled at him before shooting one last look at the girl in the alcove and storming away without another word.

"Thank you," the girl – Mary Macdonald, he realised, from Gryffindor – said once he was gone, starting to straighten her robes.

Gilderoy waved it off. "Did he hurt you?"

"How did you know that would work?" she asked instead of answering. "You're not a prefect. If he realises you lied…"

"People mistake me for Andrew all the time," Gilderoy said. It had always annoyed him, but for the first time, the fact that he resembled the older prefect was proving useful. "I just asked myself what he would do."

"Well, it was still brave of you." Mary hesitated before asking, "Can you walk me back to my common room? I don't want to be alone while he's out and about."

Gilderoy didn't, either, but he didn't want to admit that. Besides, it was safer for him to be alone right now than for her to. "Of course."

For the most part, they walked in silence, breaking it only for the occasional awkward comment. Once they reached Gryffindor Tower, she thanked him again before disappearing inside the portrait hole, and he strode as quickly as he could to his own common room.

By the end of the week, it felt like all anyone could talk about was how Gilderoy had swooped in at the last moment to save Mary from Mulciber. He could tell that Mary didn't like the attention, but he thrived in it. Being revered by his classmates, hearing his professors compliment him for his quick thinking, feeling people constantly watch him wherever he went – it was a heady feeling.

He chased it for the next few years like a photographer after a storm before realising that he would never be able to catch it again on his own. He was, it seemed, never quite clever enough or hardworking enough or well-positioned enough for that.

For a time, the sense of endless failure frustrated him. But then he remembered that he hadn't been any of those things the first time, either. The only reason he had been able to help Mary was because he had pretended to be someone else – to be Andrew.

If only I could pretend to be someone else all the time, he thought.

And that was when he got the idea of Obliviating people to steal their success. As much as he liked knowing that his actions had helped Mary, what he craved the most wasn't the sense of moral goodness; it was the praise – the adoration. And he could get that just as easily from stealing other people's achievements as he could by making his own.

By the time he realised that it wasn't the same, it was too late to start again. He had built up a persona, and there were certain expectations that came with that. He was as unable to change the past as he had been able to fight Mulciber that day in the alcove, as much as the regurgitated story might claim otherwise.

So that's why the older he gets, the tighter he clings to the memory of Mary's gratitude and his classmates' respect. It isn't as flashy or ostentatious as his other adventures, but it's the only one that's real. And that, he's finding, is more important than he first anticipated.