Chapter 4
The blank parchment sat on his massive oak desk, mocking him. Gilderoy rubbed his temples and firmly admitted to himself that pride was a terrible, treacherous thing. Announcing he would write a new textbook in three weeks had sounded incredibly dashing in the Great Hall. Now, surrounded by towers of reference materials at two in the morning, it felt like a spectacularly foolish trap he had set for himself.
He had forgotten a rather crucial detail. He did not need to write just one book. Hogwarts had seven years of students, and they all required different curriculums. He needed foundational basics for the first years. The fifth years required comprehensive preparation for their Ordinary Wizarding Levels. The seventh years needed advanced, highly complex material for their Nastily Exhausting Wizarding Tests.
During his first disastrous tenure, the older students had simply stopped attending his classes after the first month. He had not complained at the time. He had used those free periods to answer fan mail and try out new hair glosses. But this time was different. If he wanted his name to remain respected long after he was gone, he could not let the older students ignore him. He needed to provide them with genuine, challenging education.
The problem was his subject. The perk made him a genius at learning and creating spells. If he were the Charms professor, this book would already be half-finished. He could simply write down his newly acquired insights on wand movements and magical theory. But he was teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts. That meant he had to teach students how to survive encounters with ghouls, hags, and dark curses. He was forced to cross-reference his spellwork with dreadfully dry Ministry-approved bestiaries that read like tax documents.
However, Gilderoy was not entirely ignorant of the subject.
He opened the bottom drawer of his desk and bypassed the stack of glossy author portraits. Beneath them lay a row of plain, battered leather notebooks. These were his true life's work. They contained the raw, unedited transcripts of his travels. To successfully steal a hero's life story and pass it off as his own, he had to know exactly how they had achieved their feats. He had spent weeks interrogating his victims, pressing them for every single detail of their magical combat before he cast the Memory Charm.
He pulled out a notebook labeled 'Armenia, 1987' and flipped through the pages. In his published bestseller Wanderings with Werewolves, Gilderoy had written that he defeated the Wagga Wagga beast in thrilling close combat. He had claimed he wrestled the monster to the dirt before hitting it with a dazzling Homorphus Charm.
The true events recorded in his notes were much less romantic but far more practical. The ugly Armenian warlock had never let the werewolf get close. The man had conjured a heavy stone golem to wrestle the beast. While the werewolf tore uselessly at the unfeeling rock, the warlock had safely cast a complex binding curse from the high branch of a nearby tree.
Gilderoy traced the warlock's detailed diagrams with his finger. Conjuring a functional combat golem and maintaining a binding curse simultaneously was difficult, brilliant magic. It was precisely the sort of practical, life-saving strategy that belonged in a sixth or seventh-year syllabus.
He set the Armenian notebook aside and pulled out three more. He had the true account of the Bandon Banshee. He had detailed notes on a vampire coven in the Black Forest. He even had dozens of interviews detailing encounters he had never bothered to turn into novels because the victims had been too boring to adapt.
He possessed a massive library of practical, field-tested Defense theory. He simply had to categorize it by year, test the spells himself using his new abilities, and write it out in his own engaging style. The task was monumental, but for the first time in a very long time, Gilderoy felt fully prepared to do the work.
Before he categorized the first curse or detailed a single counter-spell, he drew a fresh, crisp piece of parchment toward him. Every great work required a dedication. He dipped his peacock feather quill into the dark ink and hovered it over the page.
He wrote with fluid, sweeping strokes. To all the lessons I have learned, and with the fervent hope to become even more magnificent.
It was a perfectly fitting sentiment, a neat blend of newfound reflection and unyielding vanity. He smiled, moving his quill down to sign his name. His wrist flicked with practiced, theatrical ease. He created the elaborate, looping swirls on the "G", the "y", the "L", and the "h". He admired the dark ink drying in the candlelight. It was a beautiful, commanding signature.
It was also the exact signature his mother had sat at the cramped kitchen table and painstakingly taught him to perfect when he was eight years old.
Gilderoy’s smile faltered. His stomach twisted into a sharp, sudden knot.
He had forgotten her. Again.
He had been back for a full day. He had reveled in his restored magic, parried with his colleagues, and enthusiastically plotted his grand path to legitimate greatness. In all that time, wrapped up in his own miraculous second chance, he had not spared a single, fleeting thought for Clara Lockhart. The realization felt like a physical blow.
When he had been rotting away in the Janus Thickey Ward, staring out the reinforced window at a world that had completely moved on without him, he had thought of his mother, even his sisters and father constantly. In the silence of the hospital, he had finally understood the value of her blinding, unconditional adoration. She was the only person who had ever loved Gilderoy the boy, rather than Gilderoy Lockhart the brand. He had missed her terribly in those blank, lonely years.
Yet he had repaid her lifetime of devotion by casting her aside the moment his face graced the front pages.
Gilderoy carefully set the peacock feather quill down on the desk. He pressed his palms flat against the cold wood, steadying his breathing. The syllabus could wait a few more hours. Tomorrow morning, before breakfast, before dealing with Snape or Dumbledore, he was going to leave the castle. He was going to visit his mother. He had been given a second chance at life, and he was not going to spend it abandoning the only woman who had genuinely cared for him.
Dawn had barely broken over the Scottish Highlands when Gilderoy stood before his ornate mirror. His stomach churned with a persistent, cold anxiety. He smoothed the lapels of his outfit. He had opted for a crisp white shirt, fitted trousers, and a sweeping velvet coat in deep plum. It was a careful compromise between Muggle fashion and wizarding robes, resulting in a look of harmless, wealthy eccentricity.
He ran a comb through his golden waves and forced his reflection into a brilliant smile. He was Gilderoy Lockhart, five-time winner of Witch Weekly's Most Charming Smile Award. His mother had worshipped him when he was an arrogant teenager. She would surely weep with joy to see the highly successful, magnificent man he had become. The mirror reflected pure confidence, neatly burying his nerves under a familiar layer of vanity.
He left the castle boundaries and Apparated directly to the quiet, suburban street of his childhood. The houses looked exactly the same as they had a decade ago. Tidy lawns lined the pavements, alongside painted fences and parked motorcars. Gilderoy walked up the concrete path to his old front door, his heart hammering rapidly against his ribs, and knocked.
An elderly Muggle woman answered. Her silver hair was pulled into a neat bun. She looked at his plum velvet coat with mild amusement but absolutely no recognition.
Gilderoy flashed his trademark smile and asked for Clara Lockhart.
The woman blinked in surprise. The Lockharts had moved out years ago, she explained.
Gilderoy felt the ground drop beneath his boots. Moved. Of course they had. He had not sent a single owl in over ten years. The old woman noticed his sudden pallor and kindly invited him inside for a cup of tea. He accepted numbly, stepping over the threshold into a hallway that smelled of lavender potpourri instead of his mother's familiar baking. An elderly man sat in the parlor reading a newspaper, giving Gilderoy a polite nod as he entered.
They sat in a small sitting room filled with floral furniture. The old woman poured hot tea into dainty porcelain cups. She explained that they had bought the property directly from the Lockhart family nearly eight years prior.
"I thought they only had two daughters," the woman remarked casually, handing him a saucer. "Lovely girls. Very practical."
Gilderoy offered a stiff nod, staring down into his tea. Practical and dull. That was exactly how he had viewed his squib sisters.
The woman paused, a sudden crease forming on her forehead. "Oh my. Wait a moment. Is your name perhaps Gil? Gileroy?"
"Gilderoy," he corrected smoothly, his pride taking over on pure reflex.
"Ah, yes." The woman settled back into her chair with a sad, gentle smile. "Your mother did talk about you. Just the once, when we were signing the final paperwork."
Gilderoy set his teacup down on the low wooden table. The china rattled loudly in the quiet room. He leaned forward, gripping his knees, and asked what Clara had said.
The woman tilted her head, squinting slightly as she searched her memory. She confessed she did not recall the exact phrasing. Clara had seemed deeply exhausted that day. But the old woman remembered the tone perfectly. She said Clara had spoken of him with immense love, but the words carried a heavy, final sorrow. She reached out and gave Gilderoy’s arm a comforting, sympathetic pat. She did not ask for any clarification or express shock at his existence. Based on her mournful gaze, she clearly believed the son Clara Lockhart had described so tearfully had passed away a long time ago.
A terrible weight settled into the pit of Gilderoy's stomach. Dead. His mother spoke of him as if he were dead. He had been so utterly consumed by his glittering, false persona that Clara believed the son she actually knew no longer existed in the world.
A sudden, intense urge washed over him to stand up and leave. He wanted to flee back to his comfortable stone quarters at Hogwarts. He could bury himself in his textbooks, prepare for his classes, and bask in the guaranteed adoration of naïve children. It would be incredibly easy to simply let his mother believe the lie. The old Gilderoy would have walked out the door and never looked back.
He stared at his pale hands, remembering the silence of the hospital ward. How would it have been if he'd had his family there? Visiting him? Telling him stories? He closed his eyes, swallowed the suffocating lump of cowardice in his throat, and firmly squared his shoulders. He looked back at the old woman and politely asked if she knew where the Lockhart family lived now.
— Clara Lockhart —
The small cottage in Surrey was quiet. The only sound was the steady ticking of the grandfather clock in the hall and the sharp snip of Clara Lockhart's scissors. She sat at her small kitchen table. A fresh copy of the Daily Prophet lay flat on the wood. She carefully cut out a small article near the back pages. It was a brief mention that Gilderoy Lockhart may be the new DADA Teacher at Hogwarts.
She carried the clipped parchment to a thick leather scrapbook resting on a side table. It was the seventh volume. Every bookshelf, every spare surface in the room, held some trace of him. Magazines, glossy photographs, newspaper columns. The smiling face of Gilderoy Lockhart gleamed from every corner of the house.
She loved the boy she had raised. She simply could not stand the man he had become.
Clara closed the scrapbook. The glossy smile on the cover felt completely hollow. It was her own fault, and she knew it with a heavy, bitter certainty. She hated him for abandoning his family, but she hated herself far more.
She had created this monster of vanity. When Gilderoy first showed accidental magic, she had treated it like a divine gift. She had lavished him with attention, praise, and indulgence. In her ambition, she had completely ignored her two older daughters because they were Squibs. She had deemed them ordinary and unworthy of her time.
Yet, when her husband Gregory died of a massive heart attack six years ago, it had been her ordinary daughters who held her hand at the funeral.
Gilderoy had not come. He had been somewhere in Asia. The urgent letters had simply bounced back unopened. Her daughters had not wept over his absence. To hate someone, you had to know them. Gilderoy had been a complete stranger to his sisters since the day he graduated. They felt absolutely nothing for him. That cold apathy hurt Clara more than open anger ever could.
Her daughters visited her every week now. They bought her groceries and made sure the cottage was warm. They gave her a devotion she did not deserve. She had spent her life cultivating a single, brilliant flower, only to realize she had grown a toxic weed. The man on the magazine covers was a stranger who wore her son's face.
She missed her boy terribly, mourning him exactly as one mourns the dead. She had absolutely no desire to seek out the famous author. Reaching out meant opening the door to the narcissism she had nurtured. It meant looking directly at her greatest failure.
A sharp knock echoed through the quiet house.
Clara frowned. The postman had already come, and her daughters were at work. She wiped her hands on her apron and walked slowly to the front door. She turned the brass knob and pulled the heavy wood open.
— Gilderoy Lockhart —
Gilderoy stood on the small stone porch. He had spent the last ten minutes pacing outside, rehearsing a dozen different charming greetings. But the moment the door swung open, the carefully crafted smile melted off his face.
His mother looked small. The vibrant, ambitious witch he remembered was gone. Her hair was entirely white, and deep lines of exhaustion framed her eyes. She stared at him. Her expression held no shock, no tears of joy, and no adoration. She just looked unspeakably tired.
"Hello, Mother," Gilderoy said. His voice cracked slightly.
Clara kept her hand firmly on the door handle. "Gilderoy. Come in."
She stepped aside. She did not reach out to hug him. She treated him exactly like a stranger interrupting her afternoon.
Gilderoy stepped into the narrow hallway and immediately stopped dead.
The walls were covered in his face. Framed articles lined the corridor. A stack of his hardback books sat perfectly aligned on a side table. He walked slowly into the sitting room, his chest tightening with every step. Scrapbooks, posters, and clippings occupied almost every inch of space. She had followed his entire life. She had meticulously documented every single lie he had ever published.
He turned to face her. She stood by the doorway with her arms crossed over her apron.
"I went to the old house," Gilderoy said quietly. "The woman there told me you moved. I... I did not know about Father."
"You were out of the country," Clara replied flatly. "Your sisters tried to send owls. They could not find you. He passed quickly."
Her voice lacked any accusation. The absolute absence of anger made him feel utterly sick. She had accepted his selfishness as an unchangeable fact.
"I am sorry," he whispered. It was a woefully inadequate phrase, but it was the only true thing he had said in ten years. "I should have been here. I should have written."
"Yes," Clara agreed. "You should have."
Gilderoy looked at a nearby scrapbook. He recognized the article taped to the cover. It was an interview from three years ago, where he had bragged about abandoning his dull roots to pursue greatness. She had clipped it, read it, and saved it.
"I have been an idiot," Gilderoy said, looking back at her. The urge to flee was immense, but the memory of the Janus Thickey Ward kept his feet glued to the floor. "I wanted to be everything you told me I could be. I completely lost myself doing it. I am trying to change."
Clara watched him carefully. The silence stretched between them, thick and heavy.
"People do not change simply because they realize they are wrong, Gilderoy," she said softly. "They change when they put in the work."
"I am doing the work," he insisted. He took a half-step forward, desperate for her to believe him. "I am teaching at Hogwarts now. I am writing a real textbook, not another one of these adventure novels. I am actually doing the magic."
Clara sighed. She looked around the room, glancing at the dozens of smiling portraits that surrounded them.
"I am glad you are safe, Gilderoy," she said. Her tone was final, dismissing him without a trace of cruelty. "I really am. But your sisters will be visiting this evening, and I need to prepare dinner. They would not be comfortable with you here."
Gilderoy felt a sharp sting behind his eyes. He nodded slowly. He understood. He had broken this family into pieces, and a single apology was not going to glue it back together.
"I understand," he said. He reached into his velvet coat, pulled out a small slip of parchment with his personal owl post address at Hogwarts, and placed it on the kitchen table. "If you ever need anything. Anything at all. Please."
Clara looked at the parchment, then back at him. She offered a small, tragic smile. "Goodbye, Gilderoy. Safe travels."
He walked out the front door and stepped off the porch. He did not look back before Apparating away. The visit had completely shattered his remaining vanity. The work ahead of him was massive, but he finally understood exactly what he had to fix.
AN: Family is never easy. I didn't want to create a mess of crying and accusations, just to say this before it's asked, Gilderoy hasn't given up. He'll just need to take some time and try again and again, broken bonds aren't something that you can fix in a day.