Rating:
PG
House:
Astronomy Tower
Characters:
Gilderoy Lockhart
Genres:
General
Era:
Multiple Eras
Spoilers:
Philosopher's Stone Chamber of Secrets Prizoner of Azkaban Goblet of Fire Quidditch Through the Ages Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
Stats:
Published: 12/14/2002
Updated: 12/14/2002
Words: 2,345
Chapters: 1
Hits: 282

Detention

Nentari

Story Summary:
On his very first day at Hogwarts, Gilderoy Lockhart gets into a strange trance and gets detention. Prequel/cookie of Rebirth.

Posted:
12/14/2002
Hits:
282
Author's Note:
Just a small moment from Lockhart's past. I came up with the idea after seeing CoS; it was going to be a flashback moment in a future chapter of Rebirth, but it became to big so I turned it into a short ficlet instead. I loved the result so much that I'm going to repeat the experience and write more Lockhart schooldays' fics. Some of you may be shocked to see the house where Gilderoy is sorted; I apologize for it, but after I studied the synopsis for the rest of the Avis series, it was the only possible choice.


Detention

"I can't believe it. It's you? You're the -"

The voice inside his ear stopped abruptly. There was silence for a rather considerable and uncomfortable amount of time.

"What happened?" he thought to himself.

"What happened, my dear boy," the voice finally said, "is that I have been waiting for you for a very long time, but I was expecting something very... different."

More silence. Then, the voice spoke again, "It would be a very difficult task, sorting you. But I mustn't worry about it, because the choice was made for me long ago. No matter what I see in your head, you have to become a GRYFFINDOR!"

"God help us all," the Sorting Hat added as it was removed, but Gilderoy Lockhart was too surprised to hear it.

***

Gilderoy opened his eyes. It took a while for him to realize this wasn't his old bedroom, but the dormitories at Hogwarts.

He sat down and looked around at the circular room immersed in shadows and moonlight. He still couldn't believe he was there. For most of his life, he had heard his father say he would be the first squib in the family, his shame and disgrace. Then he got the letter, and the speech changed to the houses he wasn't fit to be at. He wished he could see his father's face when he found out he was a Gryffindor...

Gilderoy was immersed in his thoughts when something really strange happened. All of a sudden, the dark shadows assumed a red-blood tonality, and the moonlit shapes became painfully bright; in a split second, all lines began to dance and spin, making him incredibly dizzy. The peaceful silence was also gone, as a never-ending whistling sound began to play painfully inside his ears.

He tried to lay down again, but his legs began to move against his will, and soon he found himself standing up and moving around. He was no longer certain where up and down were, but his body seemed to know the way, as he wasn't bumping into anything.

His hand grabbed something solid, and was about to turn it when he felt something touch his shoulder.

"Hey, are you okay?" a voice said.

Suddenly, everything went back to normal, and the shrill whistling sound vanished. He saw that he was in front of the dormitory door, his hand on the doorknob. He turned, and saw that Graham Shaw, one of his dorm mates, was shaking his shoulder.

"Are you okay?" he repeated.

"Yes..." he managed to mumble. "Feel a bit strange, that's all... Had a weird dream..."

Graham looked at him with an annoyed expression and returned to his bed, mumbling grumpily about sleepwalkers.

Still confused about what had just happened, Gilderoy decided to do the same. Soon, he was fast asleep.

***

The first lesson, Charms, didn't go very well. When attempting to impress his classmates, Gilderoy accidentally set a roll of parchment on fire, and caused panic among all the Gryffindors. With this in mind, it's no surprise that when they entered the Transfiguration classroom, they all tried to sit as far away from him as possible.

The fact that Professor McGonagall seemed more interested in taking notes than anything else didn't help, either. In order not to fall asleep, he began to amuse himself by drawing a picture of himself on his parchment (making sure his wand was not in contact with it). The small version of himself was in a very heroic pose, fighting a strange creature he was sure to be product of his imagination, a menacing black cloud with five eyes and what seemed like claws sprouting from the vapor. Underneath, he wrote: Gilderoy Lockhart, Champion of the World.

As he was finishing designing his cape, he noticed his vision reddening again, and he began to feel the piercing, whistling sound. Before he knew it, his body stood up and he began walking. He could feel things bumping into his arms, but couldn't see what they were. As his hand raised and got hold of something, he realized he was opening the classroom door.

He walked for what seemed like an eternity, without being aware of where he was going to. The dancing lines before him and the whistling made him feel sick, and he felt the urge to throw up.

At a certain point, he stopped, and felt his voice coming out from his lips, though he couldn't understand what he was saying. At that moment, he felt something touching him, and his sight and hearing returned to normal.

He was in front of the entrance to the Gryffindor common room, the portrait of the Fat Lady wide open. Behind him, was a ver angry Professor McGonagall.

He was in trouble.

***

For the next days, nothing strange happened to Gilderoy. However, this didn't stop the other Gryffindors from avoiding him.

At the arranged day, he went down to the Entrance Hall to meet Filch, who greeted him with a nasty smile. The two of them stood in silence for a while, Filch stroking his cat. Gilderoy wondered if this was going to be his detention, standing in silence all night.

He decided to say something. "Er, Mr. Filch, sir," he said, in what he considered to be his most dignified intonation, "what's going to be my punishment?"

"Just you wait, sonny," the caretaker replied. "We have to wait for the other nasty little grub to arrive." At the look of puzzlement in the boy's face, he added, "You're not the only one who got himself into trouble."

At that moment, a girl entered the Hall. At least, Gilderoy thought it was a girl - her face was half-hidden by a wild curtain of ginger curls. From a glance at her robes, Gilderoy realized she was a Hufflepuff.

"Cassidy, right?" Filch asked. The girl nodded. "Follow me, you two."

The went up a staircase. As they walked, Filch addressed the girl again. "I remember your sister," he said. "Dull little creature, that one was. But at least she was one of the few around here who knew how to behave themselves." He made a grimace. It was obvious he preferred when students misbehaved, as then he had reasons to torment them. "I wonder what she must be thinking about her little sister."

Gilderoy noticed that the girl's fists were closed with such fury they were almost white.

They stopped near a classroom door. Filch opened it, and a grotesque scene appeared before their eyes: a room in such a state of disorder and confusion, it looked as though it had been visited by a tornado. Chairs and tables were turned, and there was a confusion of broken glass, crockery and what looked like vomit... or worse.

"Peeves," Filch said. "We should get rid of that menace. Well, you two, it's your job to clean this mess up."

He pointed at some cleaning utensils on the floor and added, "No magic. And if this place isn't clean when I get back, you'll have to come back tomorrow, and the next day, and the next, until everything's nice and shiny."

He shoved them inside, hissed a "have a nice time," and shut the door behind them.

Both children stared at the mess for some seconds, after which the girl just shrugged her shoulders and moved forward, grabbing a cracked waste-paper bin and carefully pouring the broken glass and crockery inside.

Gilderoy, on the other hand, stood exactly where he was, paralyzed with disgust. After a couple of minutes, the girl looked at him, her face still half-hidden by her curls.

"Well?" she asked, in an annoyed tone. "Are you going to help me, or will you just stand there?"

Something about her voice made him take a step forward, carefully avoiding the vomit with a disgusted expression, and sit next to her.

"What can I do?" he asked.

"Better pick up the pieces before cleaning up the rest." It looked like she knew what she was doing.

"You've done this before?"

The girl looked at him with what seemed like a I-don't-want-to-talk-about-it expression (at least that's what he assumed, as it was hard to tell with all that hair covering her face) so he decided not to insist. However, the idea of being quiet didn't please him at all.

"My name is Gilderoy. Gilderoy Lockhart," he said, trying to make his name sound impressive.

"Julia" was the grumbled reply he got. He pondered about it for a while, as the name didn't sound impressive enough, in his opinion.

He thought hard, in search of another topic of conversation; perhaps something that was able to make him look good.

"I'm a Gryffindor, you know. The best house in Hogwarts, my father says."

The sentence, however, didn't have the effect he was expecting. What he could decipher as a furious glare met him, as she hissed, "Yeah, rub it in, why don't you?"

Gilderoy was so amazed with her reaction he just stood there, staring at her, until he pictured what could have been the problem.

"I'm sorry, I forgot you're a Hufflepuff. I didn't want to put your house down, but I'm just repeating -"

"Don't you ever shut up?" she snapped. He was taken aback by her reaction.

"Sorry," he finally said in a weak voice. "I talk too much, don't I? My father says I should have my tongue chopped off."

This wasn't exactly what she was expecting to hear. She stopped picking up the broken pieces and stared at him. "He does?"

"Yes. When I was little, I didn't have anybody to talk to, so I talked with my teddy. I used to make up stories and told him everything, but one day my father came home, yelled at me and threw my teddy into the fire."

"He did?" her voice expressed her surprise. He nodded. "You really didn't have anybody to talk to?"

"Only my teddy."

Silence. Gilderoy had returned to picking up the broken pieces (taking an eternity with it, as he was afraid to cut himself - or worse, getting himself dirty) but the girl just stood there, staring at him. After a while, she said, "My father's a bastard, too."

"What?"

"He is." She returned to her task again. "He just cares about drinking."

"He must be really thirsty."

She looked at Gilderoy coldly.

"He gets drunk, okay? And he calls me names, and he beats on my mother... The only person he's nice to is Kathy."

"Who's Kathy?"

"My sister." Her face hardened. "The one Filch was talking about. Finished school last year with top marks. Head Girl. Never did anything wrong in her life. And she was a Gryffindor." She sighed. "I was so angry when the hat put me in Hufflepuff... Kathy used to tell me that they were all idiots." She glanced up. "But she's wrong, they're just great. When I got detention, they supported me, you know. Now I wouldn't trade my house for anything. But that doesn't mean I won't get annoyed when people being to talk about my sister. I want to show I'm not like her, but I can be as good as her."

"I'm going to be great one day," Gilderoy suddenly announced.

"What?"

"When I was put in Gryffindor, I realized I can do something to prove my father that I can do something with my life. One day, I'm going to be really famous, and he'll have to admit he was wrong about me."

She shook her head. "I just wish I could show to my father I can do things as well as Kathy, but I'm not interested in being famous."

"What do you want to do?"

"I don't know... How about you? What do you want to be famous for?"

He thought about this for a while, and then began a long talk about defeating monsters, saving people in danger, each tale more unbelievable than the other. The girl just stood staring at him. After his endless speech was over (during which they had the time to pick up every small piece of glass in the classroom and mop the floor) she turned to him and asked, "And how on earth are you going to pull that one out?"

"I have no idea. But I'm going to do it, and then I'm going to make my father say he's sorry he has ever doubted me."

At that moment, the door opened. Filch was back. With a disgusted sniff, he inspected the floor.

"You mopped this like trolls," he growled. "But I wasn't expecting anything better. The chairs haven't been fixed, either. I hope you're here again tomorrow, same time."

"Yes, sir," the two children said.

"Now off you go." He shoved them away.

As they were walking down the corridor, followed by Filch and his cat, Gilderoy turned to Julia. "I really liked talking to you," he said.

"Well, I must be a better company than a stuffed toy."

"Can we talk again some time?"

"Of course," she said with a smile. "We have to return to clean the rest of the room tomorrow, remember?"

"Oh." He had forgotten about it. "Okay."

She moved the curls away from her face, and for the first time he saw that her eyes had a shade of lilac. "I have to go that way now," she said, pointing at a different entrance from the one he was advancing to. "See you tomorrow then... Gilderoy, right?""Right, er..."

"I told you, it's Julia."

"Right, right. See you tomorrow, then."

She turned to move, but then he remembered something. "By the way, why did you get detention?"

"Oh, that. I broke the nose of a stupid idiot the other day."

"What?"

"Yeah." She smiled wickedly. "A third-year, can't remember his name. Nobody calls me a mudblood and gets away with it."

She finally turned and walked away.

Gilderoy stood there for a while, watching her go. What a strange girl, he thought. Still, it was nice to finally have a friend.


Author notes: So, why did the Hat have to put Gilderoy in Gryffindor? What were those strange trances he fell into? If you're interested in learning more, there will be future fics featuring Gilderoy and Julia, from their early schooldays up to Chamber of Secrets.

More on Gilderoy can be found on the fic Rebirth at Schnoogle. Set after the events from Chamber of Secrets, it takes place in another wizarding school, featuring mostly original characters, but you can also find our favorite blond idiot trying to pick up the pieces of his lost memory.