Potterlock – The Chamber of Secrets
Author's Note: Heeey! Sorry for the delay on this first chapter of Part 2 of my Potterlock Saga. I will confess, I used a certain amount of original dialogue in this chapter, simply because it made the scene flow better, but mostly just the bits in Flourish and Blotts. The next chapter will be longer. Hope you enjoy and remember to review!
Chapter One
John Watson's spirits were soaring sky high as he and his mother approached the weather-beaten face of the Leaky Cauldron pub. Mrs. Watson put a hand on her son's shoulder as he pushed open the door to reveal the dingy interior of the building, completely invisible to the other Muggles passing by. Nobody gave them so much as a second look as the door swung shut behind them, but John could sense his mother's nervousness as they stepped into the pub. A couple of wizards playing a card game on a table nearby glanced at them as they moved forward, casting dubious looks at Mrs. Watson's Muggle clothes.
"It's okay, Mum," John said, smiling as they passed the bar, giving a crooked old woman who John suspected to be a hag a wide berth.
Exiting through the door at the back of the pub, John drew out his wand and tapped the combination on the brick wall there to reveal the entrance to Diagon Alley. Mrs. Watson gave a little gasp – as she'd done this time last year – as the bricks began to shuffle aside to form the tall archway. Nearby shoppers didn't even glance up as they stepped through, the wall shifting back into place behind them.
"C'mon!" John said excitedly, tugging on his mother's arm. "Gringotts first."
They made their way through the throng of cheerful shoppers towards the wizarding bank, magnificent in marble against the colourful shop windows, stopping only so John could goggle at the display in Quality Quidditch Supplies, where the latest model of broomstick – the Nimbus 2001 – was being admired by a small crowd of people. John had no plans to try out for the Quidditch team himself – his nervousness of heights prevented him from doing so – but even he could appreciate the streamlined, ebony handle and the elegance of the tail-twigs.
When they arrived at Gringotts, there was already a small queue leading up to the main enquiries desk, where a long-nosed goblin was serving a pale, blond boy John recognised as Draco Malfoy – a Slytherin in his year. He guessed that the tall, imposing man beside him must be his father. They shared the same look of self-satisfied smugness. Mrs. Watson steered John over to another desk at the Coin Exchange, where a separate queue of Muggle-born students were waiting with their parents, the majority of whom had the same look of nervous wonderment that Mrs. Watson had as their notes, pounds and pennies were traded for Galleons, Sickles and Knuts. As they joined the end of the line, John saw someone another familiar face standing a couple of places ahead of them.
"Hey, Hermione," he said loudly, and his Housemate turned to look at him. Her hair was longer and even curlier that it had been last year, and she'd grown an inch or so. John, who had only grown about a quarter of an inch since the end of last term, felt embarrassingly short.
"Hi, John," she said, smiling pleasantly. "Good summer?"
They chatted cheerily until her parents had exchanged their money and she said, "Well, see you on the train," and left the building with her mother and father in tow. Five minutes later, John and Mrs. Watson followed suit, John clutching his bag of wizard money with excitement fluttering in his stomach.
"Where to first?" Mrs. Watson asked casually, though John could tell she was still a little perturbed at having just been served gold by a real live goblin.
"Flourish and Blotts," John said. "I've got to get seven new books."
"Yes," Mrs. Watson said, pulling John's booklist out of her handbag and glancing at it. "Just who is this Gilderoy Lockhart? Your teacher clearly thinks a lot of him."
"He's some kind of wizard Superman," John said. He'd asked Sherlock the same thing in his last letter after receiving the booklist. "Or at least everyone seems to think so. But Sherlock says there's loads of things in his books that don't quite add up – plot-holes and all that. He also reckons Lockhart himself's gonna be our new Defence teacher. He's pretty self-centred."
"Who – Gilderoy Lockhart or Sherlock?" Mrs. Watson smiled.
John paused then said, "Both."
Laughing, they stepped into Flourish and Blotts Bookshop. Or at least, they tried to. The whole place was crowded with people – mostly women and girls – all twittering and clamouring to get to the back of the shop, where some kind of press event seemed to be being held. Looking round, John saw a sign he'd missed before just inside the doors – GILDEROY LOCKHART will be signing copies of his autobiography MAGICAL ME today, 12:30 – 4:30 pm.
"Ooh," Mrs. Watson said, noticing the sign as well. "Isn't he handsome?"
John, however, thought Lockhart looked like a bit of an idiot – his smile was too wide, his golden hair too perfect. It wouldn't have surprised him if he put it in curlers before he went to bed. A loud round of applause announced the appearance of the wizard himself, stepping out through a door at the back of the shop. A harassed-looking man was dithering by the bookshelves nearby, desperately trying to persuade the mob of witches to mind the merchandise, but no-one was really paying him any attention. John was just wondering if it might not be better to come back later, when the crowd may have dispersed a little, when Lockhart's jovial voice boomed: "It can't be Harry Potter?"
John saw poor Harry – another of his Housemates at Hogwarts – being dragged to the front of the queue and forced to shake Lockhart's hand as a short photographer clicked his camera madly.
"Harry Potter," Mrs. Watson said curiously. "Isn't that the boy you said defeated that horrible wizard, Voldy-wotsit?"
"Mum," John said, glancing nervously at a group of witches close-by, who luckily hadn't heard. "People don't like the name. You have to call him You-Know-Who. And yes, he is."
"He doesn't look like he's having much fun," Mrs. Watson observed as Harry was finally released from Lockhart's hearty handshake. His face was flushed with embarrassment and annoyance. John could hardly blame him – unwanted fame must be hard at the best of time, without being re-illuminated by someone as pompous as Lockhart.
"Ladies and gentlemen," the handsome wizard called over the hubbub, which faded as he waved for quiet. "What an extraordinary moment this is! The perfect moment for me to make a little announcement I've been sitting on for some time."
An excitement whisper rippled through the shop, and Lockhart smiled smugly.
"When young Harry here stepped into Flourish and Blotts today, he only wanted to buy my autobiography – which I shall be happy to present to him now, free of charge—" the crowd applauded, and Harry looked like the last thing he ever wanted to see was a copy of Lockhart's book, free or otherwise, "—he had no idea, that he would shortly be getting much, much more than my book, Magical Me. He and his school fellows will, in fact, be getting the real, magical me. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I have great pleasure and pride in announcing that, this September, I will be taking up the post of Defence Against the Dark Art teacher at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry!"
And, even over the cheering and applause of the ecstatic crowd, John heard a low, soft voice say, "Told you so."
His heart leapt, and he turned with a delighted laugh to see his best friend – Ravenclaw genius, Sherlock Holmes. To John's slight humiliation – though he was too happy to let it bother him too much at the time – he noted that Sherlock seemed to have grown even more effortlessly striking over the two months they'd not seen each other – he was taller, skinnier, his hair a little longer, and his cheekbones seemed more define by the weight-loss in his face. Clearly amused by John's undisguised pleasure at seeing him, Sherlock gave him a slanted grin.
"What're you doing here?" John asked. "I thought you said you'd already got your books?"
"I have," Sherlock said, nodding to a middle-aged woman in aubergine robes who was clutching a copy of Magical Me and twittering with a friend. "Mrs. Hudson – our laundry lady."
"And you're here because?"
"She needed help with the shopping," he shrugged. "And I had nothing better to do."
He smiled lazily at John, who beamed back. He was rather pathetically pleased to see Sherlock – he'd missed him a lot over the summer. Sherlock had been true to his word about writing, but John knew his mind to be quite distracted, and so the letters had sometimes been a little late in coming. Plus, it wasn't the same as actually having an actual conversation.
"You might want to get your books now," Sherlock advised, glancing over his shoulder at the advancing crowd of new witches gathering outside the bookshop doors. His eyes then fell on Mrs. Watson, who was surveying him with interest.
"Oh yeah," John said. "Mum, this is Sherlock. Sherlock, Mum."
"Nice to meet you," Mrs. Watson said, holding her hand out, which Sherlock shook with good grace – John knew he wasn't overly keen on physical contact with people he'd never met. "John's told me so much about you."
John blushed as Sherlock's smile turned slightly smug, and he hurried over to the towering display of Lockhart's ridiculous books. He was just reaching up to claim a copy of Voyages with Vampires, when there was a loud, metallic thud and he turned just in time to see a tall, red-haired wizard throw himself at the man he recognised as Draco Malfoy's father. He saw one of the Weasley twins yelling, "Get him, Dad!" and a plump witch – also a redhead – shrieking, "No, Arthur, no!"
The fight caused the crowd of Lockhart fans to move back against the bookshelves, knocking a couple of them over, the books cascading down onto their heads while the panicked shop assistant tried in vain to call off the fight. Then the enormous hands of Hagrid – the Hogwarts gamekeeper – appeared amidst the brawl and forced the two wizards apart. Mr. Weasley was sporting a badly cut lip and Mr. Malfoy seemed to have been hit in the eye with one of the books littering the floor. The shop now looked rather like a tornado had struck it, and John chose this moment of unexpected calm and distraction to gather the rest of his required books and dump them rather heavily in front of the cashier, who was staring, open-mouthed, at Mr. Malfoy stalking from the shop, his son in tow, while Mrs. Weasley was clearly giving her husband a good telling-off.
"Well, that certainly spiced things up," Sherlock said happily as they stepped back out into the street. "I was starting to get bored."
"I tell you, that Lucius Malfoy is a bad character," Mrs. Hudson – clasping her sighed copy of Magical Me to her chest like it was her first-born child – said in a disapproving tone. "The whole Malfoy family's that way."
"Were they ever involved in that You-Know-Who fellow?" Mrs. Watson asked.
"Well, they've always claimed bewitchment and trickery," Mrs. Hudson said. "But I don't believe a word of it, and neither should anyone else. Bad a batch of wizarding folk as ever I met."
"I thought your family had an elf or something to do your housework," John said – he and Sherlock were walking a little way behind the two nattering women.
"A house-elf," Sherlock said. "Walby. He does the cleaning and cooking and everything, but house-elves aren't allowed to be presented with clothes, even laundry – it means they're free to go. Mrs. Hudson just does the washing and ironing."
"Just how rich is your family?" John asked, impressed.
"Not that rich," Sherlock said, a little awkwardly. "You don't pay a house-elf, and Mrs. Hudson's an old friend of Mother's."
They stopped off at a stationary shop so John could top up his parchment, quill and ink supply, the apothecary for ingredients for his potion-making kit, and then popped briefly into Eyelops Owl Emporium for some Owl Nuts for Hector, John's barn owl.
"Why don't you have an owl yet?" he asked Sherlock as they made their way back towards the Leaky Cauldron. Mrs. Hudson had treated the two boys to strawberry and peanut-butter ice-creams, which they were making short work of.
"Don't need one," Sherlock said shortly, licking a droplet of ice-cream threatening to escape its cone. "Just extra hassle. Mycroft had three by his seventh year – the noise when he was home drove me up the wall."
"Why would you need three owls?"
"He already had plenty of correspondents at the Ministry by that time – one owl wasn't fast enough. He did a summer job in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement when he was sixteen. Already laying his trail."
John hoped he'd get to meet Mycroft Holmes one day – he sounded interesting.
It was nearing three as they reached the archway back to the Leaky Cauldron. The throng in the bookshop was still as thick – if not thicker – as before, and the assistant looked like he was on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
"What d'you reckon Lockhart'll be like as a teacher?" John asked as Mrs. Hudson opened the archway with her wand.
"About the same as his books," Sherlock snorted as they stepped through the arch toward home. "Predictable, ridiculous, and thoroughly unconvincing."