(Word Count: 2,681)
The feast gradually broke apart as the students were dismissed. They began to file out of the Great Hall, the long tables emptying in waves as groups broke off toward their respective common rooms. Harry remained seated for a few moments longer, to allow for the initial rush to pass. He didn't want to be caught up in the crowd and if he tried to break away later, it would be more conspicuous. To his friends, he simply stated that he had to meet with a professor quickly, and that he would meet up with them in the dorm room.
While the students had to wait to be dismissed during the welcoming—and closing—feast, the professors had no such restriction.
One by one, they had filtered out over the course of the meal, some leaving shortly after they had finished eating, others after brief conversations at the staff table. Lockhart had been among the earlier ones to depart, rising with a flourish and a smile for the lingering students before sweeping out of the hall preening as everyone watched him go.
Once the bulk of the students had left, he rose from his seat and made his way out of the hall, merging briefly with the remaining stragglers before peeling off down a side corridor that saw significantly less traffic. He made his way out towards the DADA classroom, which connected to Lockhart's private office and quarters.
There were two things he needed from this.
The first was straightforward: information. Lockhart had built his fame and fortune around stolen accomplishments, wiping the memories of the men and women that had actually done the work and published their stories as his own. Harry didn't want to allow such a charlatan to get away with a free pass, so he intended to get the names and locations of all of his victims and see if he could start gathering evidence to bring him to trial, as well as getting his victims the help they need to recover their memories.
He intended to bring Dumbledore into this matter. While he couldn't get Dumbledore's help with the diary issue, he wasn't barred from getting his help with this matter. Plus, having the Supreme Mugwump of the ICW, and the Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot helping bring him to justice would make things a lot easier. He wouldn't have to explain so much on how he came to know about the victims so much.
The second issue was less straightforward, and far more important in the immediate sense.
Harry's expression tightened slightly as he considered it.
Lockhart's character varied wildly depending on who was writing him in the fanfiction community. In some cases, he was nothing more than a vain fraud, a serial obliviator who exaggerated his stolen accomplishments and took advantage of his fame in relatively harmless ways. In others… it went much further. Abuse of memory charms did not have to stop at stealing stories, and with a school full of students—many of them young, impressionable, and more than a little infatuated with him—the potential for something far worse was there.
Thinking of how Ginny and Hermione were so infatuated with Lockhart, with the OG Hermione even drawing out hearts in her schedule around Lockhart's class, Harry was not going to assume which version of the man he was dealing with.
He was going to sift through every memory the man had to make sure.
And if there was even the slightest indication that Lockhart's behavior crossed that line—if there was any pattern of coercion, manipulation, or predation—then Harry would deal with it immediately, with Imperio if he had to.
Even if there wasn't, he still intended to take precautions, though perhaps not to the same extreme.
Lockhart was reckless, self-absorbed, and entirely too comfortable altering other people's memories to suit his needs. Leaving someone like that unchecked in a school environment was a risk Harry had no intention of tolerating.
With the decision made, he continued down the corridor, and entered the DADA classroom.
The classrooms weren't always the same each year. Each teacher had the right to decorate their classrooms as they saw fit. For the rest of the courses, this wasn't obvious since the teachers rarely changed. Once they've changed things to how they liked it, the classroom remained basically the same year after year. The DADA class wasn't the same. The DADA professors changed year after year, and the classroom changed with them.
Lockhart's classroom was filled with framed photographs and posters, all depicting the man in various heroic poses. Some waved cheerfully to Harry as he entered, others struck dramatic stances as if caught mid-adventure, and a few seemed to be actively attempting to draw attention to themselves, winking or gesturing in exaggerated fashion. It was exactly the sort of self-indulgent display Harry had expected, though seeing it all concentrated in one place only reinforced his earlier assessment.
'How can anyone be so narcissistic?' Harry grimaced in distaste at the man.
He stopped in front of the office door at the top of the stairs and knocked.
"Come in!" Lockhart's voice called from the inside.
Harry stepped inside.
The interior was no better. Every available surface was occupied by yet more images of Lockhart, each one competing for attention in its own way. Though dominating the wallspace behind the desk was a large lifesized portrait of himself. The desk itself was pristine, though that only seemed to serve as a stage for a neatly arranged stack of glossy photographs awaiting signatures. Behind it sat Lockhart, who had evidently been practicing his expressions in a small hand mirror before Harry's arrival. He had just set it down as Harry had entered.
The moment he noticed who had entered, Lockhart's entire demeanor shifted into something polished and welcoming, as though he had been expecting this very encounter.
"Ah! Harry Potter!" Lockhart exclaimed, spreading his arms slightly in a welcoming gesture. "Do come in, come in! I was wondering when you might stop by."
Harry closed the door behind him, his expression neutral.
"I wanted to speak with you, Professor."
"Of course you did," Lockhart said easily, leaning against his desk with practiced casualness. "A fellow celebrity, after all. We must support one another. I saw the mess the press made of you over the course of the summer. You must have had a lot of trouble. You must learn to manage these things, you know, or they'll run roughshod over you to make you out to be some sort of villain. I'm more than happy to give you some tips I've learned myself."
Harry stepped forward, meeting Lockhart's gaze directly.
"I won't take much of your time," He said.
"Think nothing of it!" Lockhart replied, "I always make time for my students, especially those with such promising futures."
That was enough.
Harry pushed into Lockhart's mind without warning, a firm and controlled application of legilimency that left no room for resistance. Lockhart's defenses, such as they were, collapsed almost immediately under the pressure, his thoughts rising to the surface in a disordered flood.
Harry sorted through them quickly.
He did not linger on anything irrelevant, nor did he allow himself to be distracted by the performative nature of Lockhart's memories. Instead, he filtered aggressively, pulling forward only what he needed.
The stolen stories revealed themselves quickly.
Faces, voices, and interviews, each tied to a different individual. A witch in a remote village recounting how she had driven off a banshee. A wizard in the desert describing his encounter with a coven of hags. A healer explaining how she had survived an encounter with a group of werewolves, and an accidental magic that had forced one of them back into a human. Lockhart had posed himself as a journalist at first, interested in publishing their story. Then, when he became well known, he shared his own stories with them and they talked together about their harrowing experiences. He listened, extracted every useful detail, and then erased their memory of the encounter entirely.
But it wasn't just them. Lockhart was a bit more thorough than canon had suggested. He also went around to everyone involved and fudged their memories a bit to place himself at the scene as well. This way, his stories were a bit more credible since there were actual people out there who could verify Lockhart was there.
Harry moved through these memories at speed, committing the relevant details to memory as he went. There were far more victims than he had expected, which only reinforced the necessity of dealing with this properly.
With that established, he shifted his focus deeper.
This time, he was not looking for isolated events, but for patterns of behavior. Specifically, he searched for any indication that Lockhart's use of memory charms extended beyond what he had already observed. For any sign that he used them to coerce, manipulate, or take advantage of others in ways that went beyond simple fraud.
The results were… still scummy, but not predatory.
Lockhart was exactly what he appeared to be on the surface: vain, self-serving, and more than willing to indulge in attention wherever it was offered. There were numerous interactions with admirers, particularly past seventh year students and adults who sought him out, and he had no reservations about encouraging that attention when it benefited him. However, there was no evidence of him targeting those who could not consent, no coercion, and no indication that he used memory charms to conceal that kind of behavior.
Harry studied the memories for a moment longer, confirming the absence of anything more severe.
Disgusting in its own way, there wasn't anything illegal in this particular matter.
That did not mean he would be leaving it alone. The seventh year students and some sixth year students were technically adults in the wizarding world, and by the looks they were giving him, they were more than willing to indulge the fraudster.
Harry raised his wand, and cast a spell.
There were different methods of controlling another's actions. The most infamous one was the Imperious Curse. It directly implanted an order that overrode the target's own thoughts and desires. This spell worked in the conscious space of the mind, so the target of the spell could still subconsciously resist it. If the will was strong enough, that resistance would be able to incite the conscious mind to resist it as well, as seen in the fourth book, where Harry was able to partially resist the imperious curse from Professor Crouch.
Even with that bit of drawback, it was still the most powerful form of mind control as, even with the partial resistance, most of the mind was still bound to follow through with the task. One plus side is that the target wouldn't remember doing anything they were doing for the duration of the curse.
There were other spells that worked in a similar way, known as compulsions. These implanted desires or commands into the mind of the targets as well, but these spells didn't override the conscious mind as Imperio did. So, if the implanted compulsion was too obvious, the spell could be fought against and it would most likely fail.
The plus side if it worked, was that the target would remember doing the task and, if the compulsion was subtle enough, think it was their own idea. Though more often than not, they would notice how strange it was for them to do that, and call it into question.
Softer methods, known as suggestions, worked differently. There were no implanted desires or commands. Instead, it worked off of the target's own thoughts and desires. Suggestions amplified what the caster wanted, prioritizing that one desire above the rest. It worked through the subconscious mind, so it wasn't guaranteed to succeed. For example, even if the target wanted nothing more than to stay in bed and sleep, they could still get up and get ready for the day. That was the value of free will, after all.
The plus side was, because it worked through the subconscious, that the target would always think it was their own idea, because they would rationalize the idea based on their own desire.
Harry preferred a combination of the subtle method of suggestion, and a small compulsion. It was more work, and required layering more than one spell together, but it would bind the target's mind as surely as an imperius, with the benefit of target thinking it was their own idea.
He worked within the structure of Lockhart's existing motivations, identifying the central threads that governed his behavior. At the core of everything was his reputation, his carefully constructed image and the constant need to maintain it. Beneath that was a persistent fear of exposure, of being revealed as a fraud and losing everything he had built.
Harry reinforced that fear, not by introducing anything new, but by increasing its influence over Lockhart's decision-making. He tied it specifically to Hogwarts, and his goal of writing a book about his time here.
His time here could either elevate him further as being a renowned Hogwarts Professor, or destroy him entirely if mishandled.
Any behavior that risked scandal, any situation that could be interpreted as inappropriate—especially involving students or colleagues—became something to avoid instinctively, not out of morality—Lockhart didn't really have that—but out of self-preservation. The idea of crossing that line was reframed as something inherently dangerous to his image, something that would inevitably spiral into exposure and ruin everything he was trying to achieve.
It was a suggestion that aligned perfectly with who Lockhart already was.
Placed over that suggestion was a small compulsion. It wasn't a direct order or anything like that, but it would induce a specific thought whenever Lockhart was a bit too tempted to ignore his suggestion. "Dumbledore knows everything happening in the castle. He will find out."
Harry watched the adjustment settle into place, ensuring that it integrated cleanly with the rest of Lockhart's thought patterns. There was no resistance, no instability, because there was nothing for the mind to reject. The conclusion it reached was entirely consistent with its existing logic.
Satisfied, Harry withdrew.
Lockhart swayed slightly, his hand catching the edge of the desk as awareness returned, his expression briefly unfocused.
"What did you—"
"Obliviate."
The spell removed the memory of Harry's presence and everything that had occurred since he entered the room. Lockhart's confusion and anger vanished almost immediately, his posture straightening as his expression reset into its usual practiced confidence.
"Confundo."
He used this spell to make all of the portraits in the room and Lockhart himself think he had just given Harry a bunch of advice on how to handle the press, as well as an invitation for Harry to join him in signing his fan mail, so he could continue teaching him about how to be a celebrity.
"I'll have to decline for now, but thank you, Professor Lockhart," Harry said smoothly. "My Grandfather, Arcturus Black, has been teaching me. Though I do thank you for your advice. It was very informative."
Lockhart beamed, clearly pleased.
"Excellent! Always happy to inspire a young mind."
"I'll see you in class, Professor."
"Bright and early!" Lockhart replied.
Harry inclined his head slightly, then turned and left the office without another word, closing the door quietly behind him.
The corridor outside was empty, the castle already settling into its usual nighttime quiet. As he walked, Harry reviewed what he had learned. The crimes Lockhart committed were extensive. There wasn't any actual evidence yet, but that would only grow as he followed up on the information he had gotten. Though that wasn't for him to worry about. He just needed to give a list to Dumbledore, and that would be the end of his part in the matter.
Harry turned toward Gryffindor Tower, his pace unhurried. For now, all that he needed to do was watch the marauder's map and wait for the diary owner to reveal himself.
'Hmph, this year's quests seemed like it was easier than last year's.'