Chapter 18: The Thief's Defense RW
“I’ve lost Luna.”
It wasn’t a message Zephyr Breeze was proud of sending. The Investigation had switched to a much more active method- that was to say, active ‘surveillance’ on every single one of the ninety-eight remaining possible culprits- after the attack on Penelope Clearwater, a Ravenclaw prefect. The Royal had also set the database up to manage it for them, so all she had to do was tell the database what she wanted to do and when, and it would immediately find someone to relieve her to do whatever she needed to do- anytime she had to leave, there was conveniently always someone waiting to take over.
Unfortunately, though, Luna Lovegood, who had been seen curled up in her common room and usually sported a fearful look on her pale face, was a priority target for that… and she’d managed to shake Zephyr off her trail.
“Anything unusual?”
She winced at the verbal answer, rather than the data answer the database always provided. Even worse, that wasn’t Morning Sun- that was the Royal’s voice!
But still, unusual, unusual… “She had a bucket of paint and a paintbrush.”
“Was it red?”
A horrible thought struck her at that question; there was only one reason why they’d already know the color, yet still have to ask. “Yes.”
“Go to the second floor girl’s bathroom. Do not enter it, but check for more messages from the Heir. If you see Luna on the way, let us know.”
She took a deep breath, let it out, and turned to jog towards the named bathroom, dreading what she would find.
“Her skeleton will lie in the Chamber forever.”
Hailey winced at the message, especially paired with the image. While Zephyr had run for Myrtle’s bathroom, she and Ginny had checked with all the other active investigators- everyone else was accounted for.
The Horcrux… was in the possession of Ginny’s friend, Luna Lovegood. And it had taken her into the Chamber to wait.
It was really too bad they weren’t currently in the Chamber.
She sighed, then broadcast a message to the entire investigation team, using Ginny’s ‘royal voice’ filter, which even Morning Sun had used a couple of times. “All units dismissed, the Horcrux has been located.” She switched to sending just to Zephyr. “Thank you, Zephyr. We’ll take it from here.”
“Who is it?” Morning asked immediately.
“Luna Lovegood,” she answered promptly, broadcasting to the Investigation Management Team. “According to the message Zephyr uploaded, Luna has been taken into the Chamber and will not be returning.”
“We’ll see how long that lasts,” Bonbon observed calmly. “Do you need anyone to come with you?”
There was a pause, during which Hailey hugged Ginny gently. “I think we’ll take Lockhart.”
“I’m supposed to tell you that you shouldn’t burn him at the stake,” Hermione supplied honestly. “He’s in his office, by the way. Sleeping, looks like.”
“Oh, don’t worry, I know exactly how I’ll prepare the firewood.”
Even Ginny let out a snort of laughter.
It took a few minutes of pounding before Lockhart finally opened his office door. “What?” he asked irritably, having visibly just gotten out of bed.
“I take it you missed the announcement,” Hailey greeted calmly. No verbal announcements had been given, but Lockhart was almost famous across the Castle for missing those by sleeping.
“Huh?” Lockhart asked. “What announcement?”
“That there’s been another attack,” Hailey answered darkly. “Luna Lovegood… was taken into the Chamber of Secrets.”
He closed the door in her face. “Nothing I can do,” he said, his footsteps walking away from it.
She drew her wand. “Open Sesame.”
With a great crunching noise, the door ripped violently off the hinges and landed on the floor as a pile of firewood.
“What the-?” Lockhart began, while Ginny jogged up to Hailey; Hailey had teleported, but Ginny had walked.
“There is something you can do, Professor Lockhart,” Hailey told him firmly, lowering her wand. “We know where the entrance to the Chamber is, and how to get into it. What kind of famous monster-slaughterer turns down the opportunity to slaughter a monster?”
“Don’t tell me you’re actually going to burn him at the stake,” Ginny observed, though Hailey picked up the humor in the statement.
“Of course not,” Hailey answered promptly, and stepped over the firewood into Lockhart’s office. “Though I certainly seem to have prepared the firewood.” She looked up at Lockhart. “So are you going to do something about it?”
“W-Well,” Lockhart stuttered, staring at her in shock. “No,” he decided.
“Why not?” Hailey asked. “You’re the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, and here there’s some Dark Arts to defend against. Why not make it a practical lesson?” Not that he’d ever given a lesson worth listening to, practical or otherwise.
“Ah-!” Lockhart gasped. “When I took the job… Nothing in the job description-!”
“Correction,” she began, drawing a scroll from her pocket and unrolling it. “Hogwarts Professorial Employment Agreement, paragraph fourteen: ‘I agree that I may be required to perform additional duties as required to maintain the School and safety thereof independent of teaching duties, especially when related to my subject or skills’. This is a copy of the agreement that you signed to accept the job.” She smiled. “To maintain the School and safety thereof,” she quoted. “The Monster of Slytherin is threatening both the School and the safety of the same, and it’s definitely Dark Arts. As such, the job actually does require you to take action- and it’s your fault if you didn’t read it.”
“I- I didn’t expect-!” Lockhart began.
Ginny raised an eyebrow. “After all that stuff you did in your books?” she asked- taking the opportunity to get him to explain something.
“Books can be misleading,” Lockhart told them delicately.
“You wrote them,” she muttered calmly. “Are you telling us you lied?”
“My dear girl,” Lockhart began.
“Can I kill him?” Ginny interrupted him verbally, in Parseltongue- a question that sounded like an angry hiss to non-parselmouths and parselmouths alike.
Hailey smiled. “Only a little bit,” she answered, also in Parseltongue. Then she looked up, switching to English. “Oh, and by the way, only a parselmouth can get into the Chamber of Secrets, hence why so many Headmasters never found it. Lucky you, right?”
Lockhart scowled, but ignored her. “My books wouldn’t have sold half as well if people didn’t think I’d done all those things! Noone wants to read about some old armenian warlock, even if he did save a village from werewolves- he’d look dreadful on the front cover- no dress sense at all. And the witch that banished the Bandon Banshee had a hairlip!”
“So we were right, then, and you never did any of that,” Ginny observed. “Instead, you’ve been stealing other people’s accomplishments?”
“I knew there was a reason Dumbledore called you a fraud,” Hailey sighed.
Lockhart completely ignored their implications, as oblivious as ever. “Girls, it’s not nearly that simple- there was work involved. I had to track down each of these people, question them about exactly how they did what they did, then put a memory charm on them so they wouldn’t remember doing it. If there’s one thing I pride myself on, it’s my memory charms.”
“That doesn’t make it any less wrong,” Hailey informed him.
“That’s fame,” Lockhart told her. “If you want fame, you have to be prepared to fight for it.”
“Then you don’t deserve to be famous,” Hailey declared. “No thief should be famous.”
“I’m not a thief,” Lockhart scowled. “If not for me, their stories would never have seen the light of day. So what if I had to change them a bit?”
“You took credit for their accomplishments,” Ginny answered, “rather than taking the humble route of supporting them in their accomplishments. You probably wouldn’t have gotten as famous, nor as quickly, but your fanbase would be a lot less fickle- and a single mistake wouldn’t completely ruin you.”
He laughed. “Yes, I could’ve,” he conceded. “Then I’d be groveling on the side of the street!”
Hailey sighed. “Rita Skeeter is famous,” she told him. “She’s famous for capturing audiences with her penwomanship, so just about any publication- the Daily Prophet, the Quibbler, whatever- will pay quite a pretty penny for just about any article she’s willing to give them, no matter what it’s about.” She shrugged. “She attracts a very large audience- and even though most of the world knows her articles are sometimes inaccurate and basically always slanderously misrepresentative, they still read and believe them like their bread and butter.” She smiled. “Most of the world doesn’t like what she puts in her articles, but they don’t care because people like drama, and that’s what she gives them.”
“Don’t you think you could have done something similar, but in the opposite direction?” Ginny asked. “How many books have you written? Twelve?”
“... About,” Lockhart agreed. “I’ve got three more in the works.”
“You’re obviously good at finding those heroic stories that even someone like Rita has difficulty uncovering,” Hailey told him calmly. “You could’ve easily taken their stories, embellished them, and supported the people that did it. Had you done that, you probably would have become famous in your own right for helping those people out. You’d even have fans telling you about the major accomplishments of the people they knew, so you could tell their stories too. Had you done that, I don’t doubt you could’ve written fifty books by now, and been much more secure in your fanbase- like Rita, who basically can’t do wrong in the eyes of the public; she’s been involved in a few scandals throughout her career, but she’s pulled through because hers is genuine fame.”
“No, I-!” Lockhart sighed, lifting his wand from his desk. “I can’t have you two going about telling everyone about my secrets,” he said, raising it high. There was a moment of silence, in which Hailey and Ginny glanced at each other, and then- “Obliviate!”
The spell bolt froze in midair, about two feet in front of Hailey.
Then Hailey sighed. “Alright, how about this. We’re both Royals, and you’re coming with us whether you like it or not.” She smiled dangerously, and the temperature in the room dropped by several degrees, making Ginny flinch in surprise. “Unless you like dropping dead where you stand.”
“We might have considered keeping your secret for you if you had actually cooperated instead of trying to attack us,” Ginny supplied. “Unfortunately, though, you’ve just made us mad. You’re going to accompany us into the Chamber of Secrets and help us rescue Luna- and if you think we can’t feel you drawing behind our backs, or that we can’t destroy your wand without turning to actually see the wand in question, you’ve got another one coming.”
“When we get back from the Chamber, when you survive Slytherin’s Basilisk’s deadly gaze because of a special blessing I gave the whole Castle earlier this month, you won’t remember a thing about us, and we’ll tell the world your secrets.” She put a finger to her chin. “Hmm, the Daily Prophet seems like a good idea. Mind, they’ll probably just pay Rita to write the story, but…” She shrugged, then waved a hand to make the air kick him towards the door. “Anyways. Get up, start walking.”
“Good evening, Myrtle,” Hailey greeted, as she and Ginny shepherded Lockhart up the room. Myrtle had come out to meet them; ever since Ginny had taken her to meet her mother, she had become much more cheerful- so much that people weren’t calling her ‘Moaning Myrtle’ as much any more.
“Evening, Hailey!” Myrtle greeted in turn, before looking at Lockhart. “What’s he doing here?”
“He’s going to help us destroy the Monster of Slytherin,” Hailey told her.
Myrtle looked at her and blinked owlishly. “You really think he’s going to help?”
She shrugged. “His fans do.”
Myrtle laughed. “Of course they do. So.” She glanced back towards the end sink. “You’re going in after Luna?”
“Yup,” Hailey answered. “You watched?”
Myrtle nodded. “Right over the stall door- I wasn’t sure how best to alert you. She was holding a little black diary, and went into a huge pipe there.” She pointed at the end sink. “She didn’t seem like… well, herself. The pipe’s all closed up now, I don’t know how to open it.”
Lockhart reached the wall next to the sink Myrtle had pointed at; it was in the corner of the room. “What do you want me to do?” he asked plaintively.
“Go in first,” Hailey commanded. “The Chamber of Secrets is right next to you.”
There was a second of silence, then Ginny spoke. “Oh, right, we have to open the door for you, don’t we?” She switched briefly to Parseltongue. “Open Up.”
“Go in first,” Hailey repeated, gesturing towards the slimy pipe.
Lockhart did, dangling his legs down the pipe. “Girls,” he began.
Ginny gave him a psionic push, and he was gone.
“The pipe’s a lot slimier than it usually is,” Myrtle observed. “And that’s when it doesn’t give you stairs.”
“It’s all about how you ask it,” Ginny answered. “It’s all in Parseltongue- but if you just say ‘Open’, it’ll offer the clean pipe. If you say ‘please’, you get stairs. Tell it to ‘open up’, as I just did, and you get all covered in slime on the way down.” She giggled. “And if we ask it to please give us a lift, as I will once Lockhart gets to the bottom, we get an elevator.”
Myrtle giggled. “Finally taking him down a peg, eh?”
Hailey chuckled as well. “Yup. I’ve already given him an appropriate Curse, so while we’re down there sometime he’s going to find himself suddenly lobotomized.” She paused. “Then he’s going to find out exactly what the public thinks of his theft.”
Ginny snickered. “There are Curses and Blessings for everything, aren’t there?”
She nodded. “Yes, there are. For example, the oddly specific Blessing of Basilisk Immunity.”
She rolled her eyes. “Oh, alright. Anyways, do you want to come with us, Myrtle? Or do you want to wait up here?”
Myrtle shrugged. “That thousand-year-old basilisk doesn’t pose any danger, does it?” She paused. “Oh, why not. I’ll come with you, if you’ll have me.”
“Sure, no problem.” Ginny turned to the sink. “Close. Could you please give us a lift?”
The sink rose back into sight, hiding the pipe… then promptly sank away again, the pipe stretching up and morphing into a comfortable platform floating in a vertical shaft.
The three of them stepped on, and it dropped like a rock, but they really didn’t feel it; the magic moved them with it.
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Lockhart gets stoned and/or his memory messed with, doesn't he?
Ha! Take that Lockhart!!
11369233
Ok. Re-reading chapter one, and what I come away with (don't want to spoil the story for new readers, so this is not going onto chapter one's page):
1. Everyone thought Hailey was Harry. Everyone was mistaken. What the heck was going on /why?
Was this just because of being a royal, or was it something else?
2. The soul fragment missed. Ok, at first, I figured it just went to the pony portal. Now? I'm assuming it bounced off because of "royal". So what happened to it?
3. There is no clear "plans of Voldy" that I see, other than "Oh drat, here we go again. Now I have to start over, and probably clean up my old mess". He sounds almost like Marvin, commenting on his fate.
Use Lockhart as a sacrifice
11369401
1. You're right. I can't answer your question because spoilers.
2. Yes, it bounced off, most likely because of "royal"... or possibly due to some magic Lily did, but her natural wards would be able to deflect it like that w/o issue (spoilered because it's a side effect of something revealed in tomorrow's chapter).
3. That about sums it up, yes.
Yep it's gildroy the gilded git.
11369438
I had this mental image of the basilisk rejecting Lockhart, giving Hailey and Ginny a look of revulsion...
Oh My, I have now rewritten another chapter! That means I need another... oh, what was it called... Oh, there it is!
Interesting change...
One thing I've always wondered. Why does no one write Lockhart as competent?
"Defense against the dark arts" is not "battle magic". "Defense" can be "really good hiding" or "not being a target"; battle magic, like attacking another top wizard in a multi-hour duel, is Dumbledore's calling.
Sure, G.L. was incompetent in the original. But a great defense is not letting anyone know what you can do. Have a student being targeted by unknown magic? A spell that puts him out of the way, in safety, under close watch for 24 hours to "regrow bones" means he is *safe and under guard for 24 hours*. A show of "zap, zap, zap, oh dear, I have to flee the room", and then observing from a distance tells you what spells and skills your students have coming in -- and perhaps those pixies aren't really as dangerous as they think, and you want to see who panics and who keeps their head. Etc.
G.L. is a showman, but it's not *That much* of a change to make him competent if unorthodox in his teaching.
Lockhart deservedly get the rod after refusing the bitter carrot.
Royals being overpowered takes most of the fun away, but Lockhart fate now is making me looking forward for what is to happen.
Great chapter!
Still bitter yet sweet seeing Lockhard getting the wip