Our ex-Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher pushed open the doors and moved toward us, wearing a long lilac dressing gown.
"Well, hello there!" he said. "I expect you'd like my autograph, would you?"
"Hasn't changed much, has he?" Harry muttered to me. I grinned.
"Er — how are you, Professor?" said Ron, sounding slightly guilty. It had been Ron's malfunctioning wand that had damaged Professor Lockhart's memory so badly that he had landed here in the first place, though, as Lockhart had been attempting to permanently wipe Harry and Ron's memories at the time, our sympathy was limited.
"I'm very well indeed, thank you!" said Lockhart exuberantly, pulling a rather battered peacock-feather quill from his pocket. "Now, how many autographs would you like? I can do joined-up writing now, you know!"
"That's not something to brag about" said Amy, and Lockhart gave her a dirty look.
Ron, raising his eyebrows at Harry, who asked, "Professor, should you be wandering around the corridors? Shouldn't you be in a ward?" For a few moments Lockhart gazed intently at Harry, then he said, "Haven't we met?"
"Er … yeah, we have," said Harry. "You used to teach us at Hogwarts, remember?"
"Teach?" repeated Lockhart, looking faintly unsettled. "Me? Did I?" And then the smile reappeared upon his face so suddenly it was rather alarming. "Taught you everything you know, I expect, did I?"
"Actually, you didn't teach us shit" I said
Lockhart now gave me a dirty look, then one of recognition
"Yes, we have met before" he said slowly "weren't you the one that-"
He was cut off by a Healer, who had poked her head out of a door at the far end of the corridor and said "Gilderoy, you naughty boy, where have you wandered off to?"
She came bustling up the corridor, wearing a tinsel wreath in her hair.
"Oh Gilderoy, you've got visitors! How lovely, and on Christmas Day too! Do you know, he never gets visitors, poor lamb, and I can't think why, he's such a sweetie, aren't you?"
"We're doing autographs!" Gilderoy told the Healer with another glittering smile. "They want loads of them, won't take no for an answer! I just hope we've got enough photographs!"
"Listen to him," said the Healer, taking Lockhart's arm and beaming fondly at him as though he were a precocious two-year-old. "He was rather well known a few years ago; we very much hope that this liking for giving autographs is a sign that his memory might be coming back a little bit. Will you step this way? He's in a closed ward, you know, he must have slipped out while I was bringing in the Christmas presents, the door's usually kept locked … not that he's dangerous! But," she lowered her voice to a whisper, "bit of a danger to himself, bless him. … Doesn't know who he is, you see, wanders off and can't remember how to get back. … It is nice of you to have come to see him —"
"Er," said Ron, gesturing uselessly at the floor above, "actually, we were just — er —" But the Healer was smiling expectantly at us, and Ron's feeble mutter of "going to have a cup of tea" trailed away into nothingness, as did Amy's addition of, "we weren't actually here...for that"
We looked at one another rather hopelessly and then followed Lockhart and his Healer along the corridor.
"Let's not stay long," Ron said quietly
The Healer pointed her wand at the door of the Janus Thickey ward and muttered "Alohomora." I wondered why the door wasn't locked with a more powerful enchantment.
The door swung open and she led the way inside, keeping a firm grasp on Gilderoy's arm until she had settled him into an armchair beside his bed. I sat down in a spare chair nearby.
"This is our long-term resident ward," she informed us in a low voice. "For permanent spell damage, you know. Of course, with intensive remedial potions and charms and a bit of luck, we can produce some improvement. … Gilderoy does seem to be getting back some sense of himself, and we've seen a real improvement in Mr. Bode, he seems to be regaining the power of speech very well, though he isn't speaking any language we recognize yet. … Well, I must finish giving out the Christmas presents, I'll leave you all to chat. …
"I really feel for everyone who has to live their lives here" said Demelza
Amy was chewing her lip as she looked around the place. "I must say, this has given me a new perspective on my own situation" she said "compared to these lot, I'm lucky"
This ward bore unmistakable signs of being a permanent home to its residents. They had many more personal effects around their beds than in Dad's ward; the wall around Gilderoy's headboard, for instance, was papered with pictures of himself, all beaming toothily and waving at the new arrivals. He had autographed many of them to himself in disjointed, childish writing. The moment he had been deposited in his chair by the Healer, Gilderoy pulled a fresh stack of photographs toward him, seized a quill, and started signing them all feverishly.
"You can put them in envelopes," he said to me, throwing the signed pictures into my lap one by one as he finished them. "I am not forgotten, you know, no, I still receive a very great deal of fan mail. … Gladys Gudgeon writes weekly. … I just wish I knew why. …" He paused, looking faintly puzzled, then beamed again and returned to his signing with renewed vigor. "I suspect it is simply my good looks. …"
I carefully laid the pictures on a table beside me, then stood up and walked back to the others. I wasn't interested in helping Lockhart with envelopes.
A sallow-skinned, mournful-looking wizard lay in the bed opposite, staring at the ceiling; he was mumbling to himself and seemed quite unaware of anything around him. Two beds along was a woman whose entire head was covered in fur; I remembered something similar happening to Hermione during my first year, although fortunately the damage, in her case, had not been permanent. At the far end of the ward flowery curtains had been drawn around two beds to give the occupants and their visitors some privacy.
"Here you are, Agnes," said the Healer brightly to the furry-faced woman, handing her a small pile of Christmas presents. "See, not forgotten, are you? And your son's sent an owl to say he's visiting tonight, so that's nice, isn't it?" Agnes gave several loud barks. "And look, Broderick, you've been sent a potted plant and a lovely calendar with a different fancy hippogriff for each month, they'll brighten things up, won't they?" said the Healer, bustling along to the mumbling man, setting a rather ugly plant with long, swaying tentacles on the bedside cabinet and fixing the calendar to the wall with her wand.
"And — oh, Mrs. Longbottom, are you leaving already?" Our heads spun round. The curtains had been drawn back from the two beds at the end of the ward and two visitors were walking back down the aisle between the beds: a formidable-looking old witch wearing a long green dress, a moth-eaten fox fur, and a pointed hat decorated with what was unmistakably a stuffed vulture and, trailing behind her looking thoroughly depressed — Neville.