Gilderoy was four when his mother died.
The stories she told him about the woman who fell in love with the man, but never got to marry him, and instead married someone for their money, she had told these with a depth of personal feeling that Gilderoy had felt and quietly understood even though boys his age weren't supposed to understand much at all.
Juniper Lockhart never expected her son to either, unlike his father, whose demands grew more and more by the week. At one year old, when Gilderoy wasn't toilet trained already, his father had given him a small beating and a longer lecture about responsibility. But all Gilderoy could hear was his mother's crying in the background.
The next full memory he had of her was coming to the top of the stairs that led to his father's study, and knowing in his heart that something was dreadfully wrong. The words whispered in his ear over and over, and hung in the air like a deadly fog.
Wrong Wrong Wrong
Mum, he had whispered, knowing she couldn't hear his voice because he was speaking too low, something else his father had always hated. He stared down the winding stairs he had gone down himself many times to ask his mother to read to him at night, or to see a picture he had drawn. The darkness gaped at him, and a dull pounding filled his ears. This time he knew something else, just like he knew when his mother was telling him the stories, he had known she was talking about herself and that she needed to tell someone, almost to apologize.
He knew that the stairs weren't safe and he shouldn't go down them tonight. He knew that there was something terribly wrong. Something the blackness, perhaps mercifully, wouldn't let him see.
Mum Mum Mum I'm scared don't leave me alone.
He could've gone back to his room. It was still night and time that he should be getting to bed without a story anyway, or else his father might…
Swishing down the hall in his pajamas with the hippogriffs on them, surrounded by a blue that was a fake sky and made him feel hatred under the yellow hall lights, Gilderoy found his father.
Nerolinus Lockhart had looked down at this son, and saw in his face that he was too afraid to be lying about what he felt. What he knew. He told Gilderoy to go to bed twice, but Gilderoy followed him anyway, swishing back down the hall, very conscious of his footsteps, down down down, until they reached the top of the stairs with the…
Gilderoy's father lit up his wand, and the whole room went up with it. Nerolinus looked lost for a moment, but Gilderoy knew exactly where to look. The foot of the stairs. There she lay sprawled, her head tilted to the side, still partially resting on the last step, face in some sort of grimace. The air smelled like death.
His father said in a controlled voice that he would have it cleaned up soon, told Gilderoy not to talk to anyone about it, and so the image remained lurking on the edge of the boy's mind.
Gilderoy would sit munching toast slowly, feeling it like ashes in his mouth, while his father told him that he had contacted the Ministry and they had seen to everything, and how he should practice his letters because he was terribly behind. And Gilderoy knew that no one had contacted the Ministry at all.
And even though he didn't know the word, it whispered softly in the dark next to him when he was in bed alone, coming through a crack in the window and snuffing the candle that had been maybe guttering weakly next to his bed.
Suicide.