Note: This will be the newest story on Patreon. This does not mean “In Naruto With An Achievement System” is being stopped, it will be updated either this Saturday or Sunday as usual and will follow the normal weekly/bi-weekly schedule.
I would really like your thoughts on this, thank you. Other stories help me to not burn out by writing the same thing over and over again, the first three chapters are from QQ.
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The Celestial Star (Gilderoy Lockhart/Celestial Gambler)
Chapter 1
The face in the window of the Janus Thickey Ward was still handsome. Gilderoy Lockhart, Order of Merlin, Third Class, Honorary Member of the Dark Force Defence League, and five-time winner of Witch Weekly’s Most Charming Smile Award, stared at his reflection and felt a hollow ache in his chest that had nothing to do with spell damage.
The fog had been lifting for days. At first, it was just flashes of color and sound — a Cornish pixie pulling his ear, the damp smell of the Chamber, the terrified look in two twelve-year-old boys' eyes. Then came the words. He remembered his name. He remembered his titles. And unfortunately, he remembered exactly how he had earned them.
He turned away from the window, his lilac robes swishing softly. The other residents were in their own worlds. Agnes was barking, and Broderick was staring at a potted plant. Gilderoy sat on the edge of his bed, his head in his hands.
He kept his silence. If the Healers knew he was lucid, they would ask questions. Questions about what he remembered and what happened down in the chamber. But the silence gave him too much time to think, and his thoughts kept drifting back to a small house in the suburbs and a woman named Clara.
His mother.
God, she had loved him. She had polished his wand before he even knew how to hold it. She had looked at him like he was the sun and the stars wrapped in human skin. And how had he repaid her? By sneering at his sisters because they were Squibs. He remembered their faces now, eager to support their magical brother, clapping when he turned the teapot into a tortoise. He had laughed at them. He had told them they were nothing, ordinary, dull. He had taken his mother’s adoration and twisted it into an armour of vanity so thick that nothing else could get in.
He hadn't been talentless. That was the worst part of the memory returning. He wasn't near Squib. He was a Ravenclaw. He remembered sitting in the common room, late at night, scratching out complex Arithmancy charts. He had designed a spell to project his face into the sky, massive and illuminated. It wasn't just vanity; it was brilliance. The magical control required to stabilize a projection of that size was immense. He could have been great. He could have been the Minister. He could have been Dumbledore’s equal.
But greatness took work. It took risk. And Gilderoy had found it so much easier to smile, to lie, and to let a simple Memory Charm do the heavy lifting.
Now, look at him.
"Post for you, Gilderoy," the Healer called out cheerfully, dropping a single letter onto his bedside table before bustling away.
Gilderoy stared at the envelope. It was from Gladys Gudgeon.
Weeks of silence had passed since his last lucid interval, and in all that time, she was the only one. Not his mother. He had stopped writing to Clara years ago, too enamoured with his 'secret missions' to visit, too arrogant to admit he didn't have time for her. He had abandoned her, just as he had abandoned his sisters and father. Now the world had returned the favor.
They didn't hate him. That would have implied he mattered. They had simply forgotten him. The public believed he was a tragic hero who lost his mind fighting dark forces, and they had moved on. He was yesterday’s news. A footnote.
He picked up Gladys’s letter. It reeked of perfume and desperation, the rambling of a fan who loved the image, not the man. It felt pathetic.
He gripped the parchment, his knuckles white.
Is this it? he thought. Is this the end of Gilderoy Lockhart? Sitting in a hospital ward, waiting to die, with only a stranger’s delusion for company?
The shame was a physical weight, heavier than the masonry that had fallen in the Chamber. He wanted to scream. He wanted to grab his wand, if he even had one anymore, and cast something real. He wanted to go back to that moment in the common room, to the boy who was good at Charms, and shake him until his teeth rattled. He wanted to be the man he had pretended to be. He wanted to save the village from the werewolf, not just steal the credit. He wanted someone to look at him and see Gilderoy, just Gilderoy, and love him anyway.
He closed his eyes, clutching the perfumed letter to his chest.
I would do anything, he thought, the plea ringing clear and desperate in his mind. Anything to change this. Anything to be real.
"Anything you say?"
The voice didn't come from the corridor or the bed and people next to him. It resonated in the marrow of his bones, deep and vibrating.
Gilderoy didn't hesitate. The desperation was a living thing in his throat, choking him. He whispered the word into the room as the other two in the room ignored him, “Anything.”
[A deal is struck, stoke your inner flame, Gilderoy Lockhart.][Fulfil your ambition, and may you live in interesting times.]
The world fractured. A blinding white light obliterated the ward, followed instantly by the sensation of water, cold, heavy, and crushing. He was drowning. The pressure squeezed his chest, water rushing into his nose and mouth, a terrified scream dying in his throat as the darkness swallowed him whole.
Then, he gasped.
Air, sweet and dry, flooded his lungs. Gilderoy scrambled backward, his limbs flailing, tangling in sheets that were far too soft to be hospital linen. He fell off the mattress with a heavy thud, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird.
He scrambled to his feet, wandless, eyes darting around wildly for the kind Healer, for the letter he'd been clutching, for the white walls of St Mungo's.
They weren't there.
Stone walls. High, arched windows showing a starry night. A heavy oak desk cluttered with familiar portraits of himself. In the corner, his trunks were stacked neatly, the brass fittings gleaming in the candlelight.
He knew this room. It was his quarters at Hogwarts.
He stood frozen, his breath hitching. This wasn't right. He was supposed to be in the Janus Thickey Ward. He was supposed to be invalid. But his mind was sharp, clearer than it had been in years, and his hands… they weren't trembling.
He looked at the trunks. They were still packed. It was August. The staff arrived weeks before the term started to prepare.
Memory washed over him, not of the hospital, but of today. He had arrived this morning. He had spent hours in the staff room, recounting his triumph over the Wagga Wagga Werewolf to Minerva McGonagall and Severus Snape who'd left shortly afterwards, Minerva and his old Head of House Flitwick had stayed wanting to be polite. He remembered her thin, tight smile. At the time, he had thought she was dazzled by his charisma. Now, with the clarity of hindsight and the sting of humiliation fresh in his mind, he realized what it actually was.
A light sneer. She had been mocking him. Deservedly so.
He sank onto the edge of the bed, burying his hands in his golden hair. He was back. Somehow, he was back at the beginning of the end.
Before he could process the impossible reality of it, a chime rang out, clear as a bell.
[Celestial Gambler System has been initialized][Welcome, Gilderoy Lockhart.]
The translucent glowing blue rectangle hovered at eye level, even when he moved his head. Its borders were ornate, scrolling filigree that reminded him of the frame on his Order of Merlin citation.
[You've been given a second chance, Gilderoy Lockhart.]
"W-Who are you?" Gilderoy stammered, backing up until his legs hit the edge of his bed. He waved a hand through the light, but his fingers passed right through the text like smoke. "W-What is this?"
He pinched his arm. Hard. It stung. This wasn't the hazy, drug-addled dreamscape of the Janus Thickey Ward. This was sharp. This was real.
[You've been given a gift.]
The words didn't just appear on the screen, they unfurled in his mind.
A sudden pressure built behind his eyes, not painful, but heavy, like water breaking a dam. In a split second, the confusion evaporated, replaced by a crystalline understanding that was foreign yet undeniable.
It wasn't a spell. It wasn't a curse. It was a "System." A construct created by a higher-dimensional entity, a being that existed in dimensions Arithmancy couldn't even theorize. It was a mechanism of cause and effect. He would perform actions, earn rolls, and this "System" would grant him power. Real power. Not the hollow fame he had stolen, but abilities plucked from the ether of existence itself.
It sounded insane. It sounded like something from a child's bedtime story, a fairy tale for the desperate. A magical slot machine in his head?
But the knowledge settled in his gut with the weight of absolute truth. He could feel the interface connected to something that lay deep within him.
A sound escaped his lips. A dry, shaking chuckle.
He looked at his hands. The hands that had been useless, fit only for signing autographs and gripping a wand he was too lazy to use properly. He looked at the reflection in the dark window, young, vibrant, and whole.
"A chance..." he whispered.
The chuckle bubbled up again, louder this time. He felt the vibration of it in his chest, manic and wild. He threw his head back, his golden hair catching the candlelight.
"Ha! Hahaha!"
The laughter tore out of him, echoing off the stone walls of the dungeon quarters. He wasn't crazy. He wasn't a vegetable rotting in a ward. He was Gilderoy Lockhart. And he had been right all along. He was special. The universe hadn't forgotten him, it had rewritten itself for him!
He wiped a tear from his eye, his smile stretching wide, the famous dimples cutting deep into his cheeks.
"I will be," he declared to the empty room, his voice trembling with a terrifying ambition and motivation he'd lost somewhere along the way. "I will be the legend they think I am. I was destined for this!"
[You have 3 starting “Free Rolls” they will begin now.]
The blue screen flickered, scrolling down to the first reward.
[Everyday I’m Slytherin’]
What greater way to honour Salazar Slytherin is there than to take the form of a snake? Why, it would seem that’s precisely what you did. You’ve become an animagus, a witch or wizard who can transform themselves into an animal (and back again — important, that!). More specifically, you are a snake animagus. You may choose a single existing non-magical snake as your animagus form.
Gilderoy crinkled his nose, a flicker of distaste marring his perfect features. A snake? He was a Ravenclaw, he belonged to the air. A golden eagle would have been far more fitting, soaring high above the masses.
Still, he reasoned, smoothing the front of his robes, to be an Animagus at all was a mark of magical distinction from the common masses. Minerva was one of the few registered ones in the century. It was a badge of elite capability.
He focused inward. There it was. A new sensation at the base of his skull, like a muscle he had always possessed but never flexed. He flipped the mental switch.
The world rushed upwards. His limbs vanished into his torso, his spine elongating and becoming incredibly flexible. For a moment, he tasted the air, his vision narrowing, before he willed himself back. He rose to his feet, human again, stumbling slightly as his center of gravity returned.
Useful, he conceded. And certainly a surprise for anyone foolish enough to duel him. Not enough people bothered to look down he reckoned.
The screen pulsed again.
[Brightest Star]
Get enough power, and people will look up to you. Doesn’t matter who, or why, but you can use this to your advantage. You, at will, may start glowing a bright white light, and allies within the light are motivated and moralized, while enemies in it are demoralized.
A slow, satisfied smile spread across his face. Now this was more like it. It was literal star power. He could picture it vividly, standing amidst the worried student body, and then, flash. He would ignite like a supernova. His hair would look magnificent in that lighting. He could practically hear the collective gasp of the student body, the way their worry would flee and thier hearts would firm with resolve from his brilliance. It was theatrical, it was beautiful, and it was entirely him.
Then, the third text rolled in.
[Prodigal Sorcerer]
Learning spells has never been difficult for you. With nothing more than bare-bones instructions, you can easily piece together what you need to cast a difficult spell. Hell, even just seeing a spell once would be enough for you to recreate it, or come pretty damn close. But your talent extends farther than just learning old spells. You have a natural ability to create new pieces of magic of surprising complexity and potency – the types of rituals spells you’d expect to find in ancient tomes and millennia-old scrolls. There’s a very good chance you could go down in magical history as a genius of the Art.
Gilderoy read the text once. Then he read it again.
His breath hitched in his throat.
"Genius of the Art," he whispered, testing the weight of the words.
It was what he had told everyone he was for twenty years. It was the lie he had sold to every witch or wizard who bought his books. And now, the System had just handed it to him.
He felt a buzz in his fingertips, a restless energy that made him want to grab his wand and cast... everything. The complex shield charm.he had struggled with in sixth year? He knew, instinctively, that if he looked at the theory now, it would unravel before him like a simple knot.
A laugh bubbled up, arrogant and bright. "Of course," he said to the empty room. "It’s only fitting. I always knew I was special."
But the laugh died abruptly in his throat.
He looked at his reflection in the dark window again. He saw the face of the man who had projected his image into the sky as a boy. That boy had potential too. That boy had been clever. And that boy had ended up rotting in a hospital bed, drooling over fan mail from strangers because he was too lazy to do the work for his own achievements.
Potential was a curse if left to rot. It was just a fancy word for "hasn't done anything yet."
His hands curled into fists at his sides. This gift, this Prodigal Sorcerer perk, it didn't mean the work was done. It meant the work was finally possible.
He wasn't loved yet. The world loved the lie. But with this? With this mind, with this power? He could turn the lie into the truth. He could actually banish the Bandon Banshee. He could cure the werewolf.
For the first time in his life, the prospect of studying, of practicing, didn't feel like a tedious chore to be avoided. It felt like hunger.
"Let them watch," Gilderoy murmured, his eyes hard and sharp, devoid of their usual vacuous twinkle. "I have a lot of catching up to do."
(ANs for Chapter 1 - 3 are from QQ)
AN: Extremely short, I'm aware. Originally, I was going to make an SI that stays in fourth-year timeline-wise and works through this stuff, but half way through I decided to take him back to his first night at Hogwarts + no SI, just pure unadulterated but slightly grounded Lockhart.
Also, this story, if I continue it, probably won't be that long. I don't expect this to go beyond 50-60k and that's a stretch.
Also, this is one lucky motherfucker, on his third roll he pulled the fucking Excalibur from Fate. While it would have been fucking hilarious to have him draw the sword in the middle of Diagon, it just wasn't what I wanted to write, so I re-rolled and he gets a magical prodigy perk, damn.
Oh, and I don't write in Third-Person often, so I hope it's fine.
Anyways, if you enjoyed it, like and reply to the thread with your thoughts and I'll continue it.