Ghost

After the first month, St. Mungo's began to let him receive Owls, but only after they'd been carefully screened.

They'd explained to him numerous times that he'd lost his memory due to a tragic accident on the job, but none of them offered him satisfying answers to his questions. They told him he was Gilderoy Lockhart, one of the Wizarding World's greatest heroes, but that didn't mean anything to him. What was the Wizarding World? What did it mean to be a hero? How come his socks were such an off shade of white?

One of the nurses on his ward – the long-term care unit of Spell Damage on Floor Four – always acted a bit strangely around him. She was a mousy little thing on the cusp of middle age who treated most of the patients like they were infectious, which was ridiculous since he'd been told the infectious patients were kept on the floor above.

She smuggled him the books. It was policy not to over-stress the patient by giving them a lot of information on their lives, but he was frustrated and she was eager to help. She told him that he'd been a very-well known writer, and it only took a little wheedling to get her to bring him a complete set.

"Mabel, you are truly a marvel," he said, flashing her a brilliant grin. One of the first things he'd re-learned was the power his smile held over people. She stammered and flushed, and he privately thought she looked silly, shifting back and forth on the balls of her feet, but instinct told him pointing the truth out wouldn't be conducive to his future.

Reading his books was a revelation. Using a notepad and quill – one specially spelled so as to prevent anyone from poking an eye or anything vital out – he created a time line for his activities, trying to retrace his life. He found the prose quite solid, but was confused – however had he managed to make the time to do it all?

According to his records, he was only thirty years old. The books didn't make much reference on when he did all the feats, so he supposed he could have magicked himself around the world – they called it Apparating, right?

He had to admit that he was a pretty impressive person.

Coming to that realization was quite satisfying, and reaffirmed his desire to get better. He was sure that it would be more satisfying to tell the stories himself than to just read about them. And people out there needed his help to protect them from all the things that crept in the night.

They worked on his therapy more, and gradually he was regaining knowledge about the Wizarding World, and how to live in it. It was during his third month there that he saw the first of them.

As an ambulatory patient, he was allowed to roam the facility. He made it a habit to go through all the floors, because often people would recognize him. He loved indulging in their sympathy, and occasionally one would drop a mention of a previous meeting. Lockhart gathered those crumbs like it was manna as he tried to piece his old life together.

There were other wards on his floor, and he was visiting one of them that contained those who had been affected by painful curses. He didn't like the place much, but there were often visitors around it. That day, no one reacted to his presence, and he had given it up as a lost cause. He was just about to head on his way back when something caught the corner of his eyes.

A small boy with dark hair stared at him, and his expression wasn't pleasant. It made a shiver crawl down Gilderoy's spine, and he blinked, wondering what he'd done.

Then he had to cover a mouth to stifle a scream. The boy wasn't standing there any longer. It took him a moment to gather his wits enough to react. “Did you see a boy there?” he asked a passing doctor.

The man gave him a harried look, and Gilderoy noted the heavy stack of papers he was carrying. “No, Lockhart,” he said, before offering a very poor attempt at a smile. “Maybe you should be getting back to your room.”

He did what he was told, but he remembered the look in that boy's eyes, like he wanted to hurt him. Gilderoy told himself it was only natural that someone as stellar as he was made enemies, but that didn't quiet his fears.

The ward he was in had other victims of the Obliviate spell. He was one of the lucky ones; he could at least remember how to talk and perform basic tasks. There was one poor witch, who had a boil the size of his thumb on her chin, that couldn't even sit up by herself. The staff was slowly trying to teach her how to care for herself, but it was an uphill battle.

It bothered him that he didn't know who he really was, because he could tell most people thought he was a pretty splendid fellow. His doctors had told him that there wasn't anything that could be done about his lack of memories. One mentioned that traces of his memory might just come back, “Because nothing is ever really lost, just kind of misplaced,” but most encouraged him to just more on.

"You'll just need to build some new memories," one particularly unsympathetic soul. “No use crying over a lost Quidditch match.”

Gilderoy might have just done that if he hadn't been stuck in a hospital. There had to be more to the world than white walls, doctors and nurses. He spent days just sitting there, signing photos which he was assured were sent out to his fans. He wondered what it would be like to do things other than writing autographs.

The next incident happened on Halloween. They had decorated his ward in bright orange and black, and a couple of pumpkins floated above the patients. It was pretty, Lockhart supposed, but it seemed a bit strange. Why celebrate pumpkins?

He didn't object when they gave him his special lunch, complete with a glass of pumpkin juice. The drink was pleasantly spicy, and he was enjoying it when again, he saw something out of the corner of his eye.

This time a red haired boy stood there, but the look of hatred was the same. Lockhart choked on his mouthful, accidentally spitting it up all over himself as he coughed in panic. It took a minute to catch his breath.

He wasn't surprised that the boy was gone when he looked again.

“Are you okay?” Mabel asked, since she was on shift.

“Just went down wrong,” Lockhart answered. “Can you help me find something to change into?”

He wasn't going to show how shaken he was. The first incident he'd dismissed, but now he was starting to wonder. He had heard the hospital wards were spelled against ghostly intruders, but maybe some had gotten through. He knew he was sane; he knew he was sane.

That night, he turned his head and saw the first boy standing there again. The boy's eyes were glowing in the dark, a brilliant green that couldn't possibly belong to a human.

“What do you want?” Lockhart demanded. His voice shook just a little, and he cursed his cowardice. This was not the way a hero of the Wizarding World should act. Mentally he wished he remembered the courage that came through all his writings.

The boy hissed something in a language that didn't sound human. Lockhart felt the hair stand up on the back of his neck, and finally he gave into the scream that had been building inside him.

It took less than a minute for a nurse to be by his side, and the boy had vanished again. Lockhart found himself staring at the place the boy had stood, unable to stop shaking. "Are you feeling alright, Mr. Lockhart?" the nurse asked with concern.

“Just a nightmare,” he said, lying through his teeth. A hero wouldn't admit to being scared out of his wits.

She smiled at him gently. “Would you like a glass of water, or a sleep-help spell?” she offered.

He agreed to both.

He saw the two more and more frequently after that. They came one at a time, never in a predictable pattern and always when he was slightly distracted. He asked the nurses, in an offhanded fashion, if they happened to know two boys who visited regularly under that description, but their responses were negative.

No one else ever saw them. He tried to tell himself someone was just having a joke at his expense, but the looks they gave him couldn't be dismissed as a prank. There was hatred in their gazes.

In three months, he came to see them every day. He learned to surround himself with people, because they were less likely to appear when he was dealing with someone else. At night, though, he couldn't escape them.

One night, while using the bathroom, he turned his head to see both of them. They had never appeared together before. They stood in front of him, united, and Gilderoy wished he had his wand – he wished he could do a spell to get away from them. "You're not real!" he said, backing up until he bumped into the wall.

The boys just glared at him, holding their wands out threateningly.

“You're not here, you're not here, you're not HERE!” he declared, like saying the words would make them true. He put his hands over his head, and and sank to the floor, screaming at the top of his lungs.

The doctors had to sedate him, and when he woke up, he didn't see the boys. He wondered if the lunacy in St. Mungo's was catching.

The nurses babied him a bit, saying that maybe they had pushed him too hard to recover. There were other people out there to be heroes – just look at Harry Potter and Dumbledore. He'd taught Harry himself, so there was nothing for him to worry about.

Mabel took it a step further. The next day, she brought in a copy of the Daily Prophet. “See? The Boy Who Lived is a real hero,” she said, and her smile was reassuring. “As long as he's around, you don't need to rush back into the fray.”

Lockhart looked at the paper, and suddenly things fell into place. The paper was carrying the story of “The Second Task” on the front page, complete with moving photograph. The boys in the picture were Hogwarts Champion Harry Potter, and the student he had rescued from the lake, Ronald Weasley.

It was only then that he realized that it was memories, not ghosts, that haunted him.