Ref: Incident at Hogwarts Concerning Gilderoy Lockhart, EQ-1993-16

by kitsunerei88

Summary:

Gilderoy Lockhart was a public figure—until he, under rather mysterious circumstances, lost his memories and was permanently locked up in St. Mungo’s Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries. No further mention is made of him, and he fades into obscurity, and such is the fickle nature of fame.

But does that make sense? Let’s say, instead, that he doesn’t. Let’s say that his tragedy draws attention—and let’s say the public furor gets him the public enquiry that he deserves.

Notes:

• For fencesit.

If it weren’t for the snakeskin, Ron didn’t think it’d have ever happened.

He remembered the steady drip-drip of water off the elaborately carved walls echoing in the eerie silence, the few stones that he could see dark and grimy and slick with slime. The snakeskin had lain across the floor, blocking their path and reflecting a bright, violent green in the dim light of Harry’s Lumos charm. The basilisk had to have been at least twenty feet long, far bigger than any snake had a right to be. It was motionless, but Ron had swallowed as Harry approached it.

“Blimey,” he remembered hearing himself croak, and there had been a thud beside him as Lockhart’s legs gave way and he had tumbled to the ground. Ron had whirled on him, feeling a sudden surge of anger—how dare Lockhart be frightened, how dare he try to run when Ginny was in danger, how dare he be such a useless lump when he was supposed to be their Defence Against the Dark Arts professor?

“Get up,” he had snapped, pointing his wand at his former professor.

In retrospect, knowing that Lockhart was a fraud, Ron really should have expected the man’s reaction. Lockhart had seemed unsteady enough—until he had lunged at Ron, smashing him in the knees, and Ron had fallen backwards onto the ground.

He hadn't even felt the moment that Lockhart had grabbed his wand from him.

“The adventure ends here, boys!” Lockhart had cried, his voice echoing through the tunnel. Ron had grimaced—if something had been waiting for them, it certainly would have known where they were now, he remembered thinking. “I shall take a bit of this skin back up to the school, tell them I was too late to save the girl, and that the two of you tragically lost your minds at the sight of her mangled body! Say goodbye to your memories!”

“You wouldn’t dare—” Ron had growled, desperately scrambling to his feet to tackle Lockhart to the ground, but it was too late—Lockhart's wand was already raised high above his head.

“Obliviate!”

Ron remembered heedlessly throwing himself to one side, his eyes tightly shut, and he heard an explosion—and not a small one. The ground shook, and the noise going on longer than it should have, a low rumble and crash of falling stone. When Ron had opened his eyes, everything was dark.

He had gotten up, and he remembered checking himself over and making sure everything worked. No injuries, and he still had his memories, thank Merlin for that. He remembered casting around, looking for Harry, looking for Lockhart. He couldn’t see a bloody thing.

“Lumos,” he had muttered, and his wand lit four feet away from him. He had stumbled over to it, his feet catching on loose bits of rock, and had grabbed at it. In the weak light, he heard a humming.

Lockhart had been looking around the tunnel, his face fixed in the bland, peaceful expression that Ron recognized from the newly Obliviated. The song was mindless, without a melody, and Ron had swallowed. “Sir? Professor?”

Lockhart hadn't looked at him. Too soon, Ron had realized, and the Obliviation Spell must have been extensive. Better him than us, he remembered thinking in mixed anger and resignation, turning away to face a new wall of rock.

“Ron? Are you OK?” Harry’s voice had been muffled and desperate. “Ron!”

“I’m here! Git’s not though. He got blasted by the wand.”

The new wall in front of them had been total. Ron hadn't been able see any hint of light from where Harry had to be standing on the other side, and it would have taken far too long for them to make a hole. Ginny wouldn't have had time, not when she’d been down here for hours, and even if they were separated by stone Ron had known that Harry was coming to the same conclusion.

“Wait here,” Harry had called finally. “Wait with Lockhart. I’ll go on.”

“I’ll try to shift some of this rock,” Ron had replied, his voice unsteady, setting his wand aside. He recalled climbing a few of the larger rocks on the bottom, picking one that was medium-sized, and throwing it to the ground. “So you can—can get back through. And Harry—”

“See you in a bit,” Harry had replied, sounding falsely confident, and Ron had known as well as if he could see it that Harry was gone.

He remembered Lockhart's persistent humming boring into his head. The man was still smiling aimlessly, rocking back and forth on his heels.

“You poor bastard,” he had said, before he climbed back on the rocks and started throwing them down, trying to make a hole to the other side.

After the Chamber, it was supposed to be over. Ron and Harry had won two hundred house points apiece for Gryffindor, leaving every other house in the dust; the basilisk was dead. Ginny was alive, and looking better than she had all year. The Mandrake Restorative Draught brought Hermione and everyone else who had been Petrified back to life. Lockhart was sent to St. Mungo’s for further treatment, and it was supposed to be over.

Dumbledore accepted their explanation, and that meant that Dumbledore would take care of it. It would never have occurred to him that some things were outside even Dumbledore’s control.

---

There was nothing like true silence, living in the Burrow. Ron, being in the uppermost room under the attic, heard the ghoul in the attic moaning and banging on the pipes at all hours. That was loud, but it was still better than both being anywhere near the twins’ room or under Mum and Dad’s bedroom. Strange noises came out of the twins’ bedroom all the time, and even if Mum and Dad were mostly silent, the times when they weren’t were far more disturbing than any other noise in the house.

There was no sleeping in at the Burrow, and that wasn’t for lack of trying. It was more that Mum and Dad woke early, then Percy woke, and the twins were surprising early birds, so if Ron wanted anything off the breakfast table then he had better be downstairs before nine. Only Ginny ever decided that sleeping was better than breakfast—well, Ginny and Bill, when Bill was home.

He spun down the stairs in a rush, hoping that Fred and George hadn’t finished the bacon yet. The bacon was always the first to go, and Ron had woken late enough that whether or not there would be any bacon left depended on whether he managed to get to the table before the twins’ got their second helping of breakfast.

He hurtled the last few steps into the kitchen, just as Fred took the last three slices of bacon off the centre plate.

“Aw, no,” he gasped, dropping into his usual chair. “You couldn’t have waited five minutes, Fred?”

“You snooze, you lose.” Fred grinned, folding up one of the slices and depositing it in his mouth.  “But look at the news today.”

“The news?”

George passed him a copy of the morning’s Daily Prophet. Curious, Ron took it, as well as the last two fried eggs on the table. He might not have been able to get any bacon, but at least there was still eggs and toast.

A COVER-UP AT HOGWARTS SCHOOL OF WITCHCRAFT AND WIZARDRY, the headline blared, and Ron sprayed half-chewed egg all across the full-size, full-colour picture of Gilderoy Lockhart, wearing sky-blue robes and his characteristic, too-charismatic smile, waving at an invisible crowd.

“Eurgh,” Ginny said, joining the table in her pyjamas with a yawn and a grimace of distaste—whether it was for Lockhart the man or Ron’s decorating the paper with egg, she didn’t say. She took a seat beside him and reached for the juice.

“Don’t tell me this is a current photo?” Ron asked, looking at George.

“Keep reading,” George replied, chewing on his own bacon. “It gets better.”

Ron sighed, and flipped the paper under the fold.

A COVER-UP AT HOGWARTS SCHOOL OF WITCHCRAFT AND WIZARDRY

What happened to Gilderoy Lockhart, wizarding adventurer, author, and hero?

This time last year, Mr. Lockhart was celebrating the publication of his autobiography, Magical Me. The book was his tenth book, the result of more than a decade of travelling the world fighting dark forces from ghouls, banshees, werewolves, trolls, to vampires. He had been awarded the Order of Merlin, Third Class; he was an honorary member of the Dark Forces Defence League. Witch Weekly granted him the Most Charming Smile award not once, not twice, but five separate and consecutive times. He was known for the wide diversity of his experience and his ability to charm bees from their honey. His career was at its height.

What then?

In August, Mr. Lockhart announced that he would be taking up the notoriously cursed mantle of Defence Against the Dark Arts Professor at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry for the 1992-1993 school year. Mr. Lockhart spoke, several times, of his intention to break the curse on the position. And since then, he has not been seen in the public eye.

Multiple sources, from the Ministry of Magic to the students and staff of Hogwarts school, confirm that the Chamber of Secrets was opened last year. Fewer sources confirm that the Chamber of Secrets was home to a basilisk which, controlled by a Parselmouth, attacked many students and only by great luck avoided outright killing anyone. The word is that the basilisk was killed, and the Chamber of Secrets closed, by the end of the school year through the bravery of two second-year students, Harry Potter and Ron Weasley. And somehow, in the midst of these terrors, Gilderoy Lockhart lost all of his memories.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, a Healer at St. Mungo’s Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries stated that Mr. Lockhart had, in their words, “the worst case of memory loss I have ever seen.” He does not remember his name. He does not remember his date of birth, or any of his impressive accomplishments. Lest one believe that this would be easily solved by reading his own books, Mr. Lockhart no longer has the focus or the concentration to read for any length of time. According to St. Mungo’s, Mr. Lockhart is no longer able to live on his own, and will be resident at St. Mungo’s for the foreseeable future.

Simply put, these facts do not add up. How do we count the ways?

First, if we accept that the Chamber of Secrets did hold a basilisk, how did two second-year students manage to fend off a creature that the Ministry has rated XXXXX for danger? The basilisk ranks among lethifolds, chimaeras, quintapeds, and acromantulas for sheer deadliness, and the number of wizards who have encountered these creatures and lived to tell the tale are legendary. To say that such a creature was not only defeated, but killed, by two second-year students is simply not credible—it is far easier to believe that it was Mr. Lockhart himself, known for his accomplishments in precisely the defeat of Dark Creatures, who faced off against the basilisk and won.

If that is the case, however, then how did Mr. Lockhart lose his memories? A basilisk can petrify or kill with its gaze, but it does not have the ability to wipe memories. Was Mr. Lockhart attacked? If so, by whom? And why?

These are the questions that the version of events put forward by Hogwarts School have not answered. As admirers of Mr. Lockhart’s many accomplishments, we owe to ourselves and to him to demand a full and complete investigation into his most tragic injury.

Ron curled his lip in disgust, folding the paper and throwing it across the table. “Lockhart couldn’t charm his way out of a wet paper bag.”

“Now, Ron.” Mum had come to the table at some point while he was reading, and she cleaned off the front of the Daily Prophet with a quick Cleaning Charm and a mild frown. “I know that Lockhart may not have been your favourite teacher, but his list of accomplishments—”

Ron snorted. “He lied, Mum. He’s a fraud—all the things he wrote about in his books were a lie, they were things done by other people. He tracked them down, learned their stories, then took all the credit for it.”

“I’m sure that’s not true,” Mum replied with a heavier frown of consternation. “You know better than to lie like that, Ron.”

“Oh, I’m fairly certain Ron is telling the truth, Mum,” Percy said, looking up over his mug of tea. “He is absolutely a fraud—sixth-year Defence was a complete and utter waste of time. He spent all class doing readings from his imbecilic books, and once when I challenged him to actually do the spell he had cast in Marauding with Monsters, he dropped his wand. All he could do was conjure sparks. The seventh-years, to one, skipped his class in favour of their own study sessions for the NEWTs.”

“Lockhart couldn’t even do a Shield Charm, remember?” Fred chipped in, this time with a laugh. “Remember the Duelling Club? He dropped his wand showing Harry Protego.”

Ron shuddered, loading eggs onto his toast and taking a bite. “I remember. I thought we’d have to take Harry to the Hospital Wing that night.”

“I’m sure Mr. Lockhart would have stopped anything from happening,” Mum interrupted, her voice a little stiff. “It could not have been as bad as all that—look at his books!”

“Like I said, Mum, he lied in his books. Tracked down the people who did the things, then he Obliviated them to forget they’d done it, and wrote books about it.” Ron chewed on his toast.

“Can you prove that?” Mum’s tone was sharp.

“He said it to us himself. Ask Harry when he comes—Harry was there too.” Ron shrugged.

“It’d be pretty easy to prove.” George leaned forward, reaching across Ron for the jug of juice. “What you’d have to do is figure out where he went and track down the sources of his stories. Even if he Obliviated the person who did it so they forgot they had done it, there would be other people who remembered the truth, or newspaper articles about it at the time of the events. Lockhart couldn’t have wiped everything.”

“Honestly,” Ginny cut in, setting her glass of juice down, “the most unbelievable part of what Ron says isn’t that Lockhart is a fraud. It’s that Lockhart was competent enough to track these people down at all.”

Mum sighed, picking up the paper and examining it. “Well, Ron,” she said, her expression pensive, “with this article, you’ll need to be careful. I doubt that this will be the end of it.”

---

Much to Ron’s disgust, Mum was right. There was an editorial later that week in Witch Weekly that clamoured for answers, and more than two dozen letters in both the Daily Prophet said the same. At first, Ron ignored it—it had to blow over eventually, didn’t it?

Ten days later brought a new headline article, one that Ron read while jealously guarding his full English breakfast from his brothers.

ENQUIRY CALLED INTO THE INCIDENT AT HOGWARTS CONCERNING GILDEROY LOCKHART

Bowing to more than a week of public pressure, the Ministry of Magic announced this morning that a full enquiry was to be conducted into the incidents at Hogwarts last year, particularly concerning Gilderoy Lockhart and his memory loss.

“The article by Rita Skeeter of June 12 was entirely correct,” Minister Fudge said, addressing a crowd in front of the Ministry of Magic. “The story doesn’t add up. We can independently confirm that the Chamber of Secrets was opened, and a basilisk is consistent with both the attacks of fifty years ago and last year, but the only explanation that has been provided so far regarding Gilderoy Lockhart is that “there was an accident”. This is simply not acceptable, and we intend to get to the bottom of it."

The remainder of the article was another listing of Lockhart’s accomplishments, and Ron shook his head, feeling a vague, indistinct sense of nervousness churning in his stomach. An enquiry wasn’t good, and he could only hope that Dumbledore or someone would manage to deflect it from him. Harry had been there too, so someone would, right?

---

“Heads up, Ron,” George called out to him, that evening while he was boxing Dad into a corner on the chessboard.

“Not now,” Ron replied, staring at the board and quickly running through all of his possible moves. He still had both of his knights, though Dad had taken his bishops, and with his queen… “I’m three to checkmate—don’t distract me.”

He might as well not have said anything. An owl swooped over his head, dropping a thin roll of parchment over his chessboard, knocking over what remained of his pieces. Ron swore, and to his surprise, neither Mum nor Dad yelled at him for it.

“That’s…” Dad said instead, blinking at the scroll of parchment. The parchment was heavy and textured, and a purple seal with a gold embossed M held the roll closed. “That’s a formal subpoena.”

“A what now?”

“A summons to the wizarding courts,” Dad explained, picking it up and cracking the seal, squinting at the text. “They want you to testify.”

“They want me to what?” Ron grabbed at the scroll of parchment, skimming the words. By the Order of the Ministry of Magic, Mister Ron Weasley is hereby ordered to attend at the Ministry of Magic to provide evidence on the memory loss of Gilderoy Lockhart, Order of Merlin, Third Class.

Underneath was the date, the time, and the location. He gaped at it for several long moments, before looking up.

"They can’t be serious,” he spluttered. “What can I—what do they expect me to say?”

“Well, I’d expect that since you were actually there, they expect you to tell them what happened,” Percy cut in officiously, looking up from his book.

Ron glared at him. “Yes, and tell them Lockhart is a fraud, that we basically kidnapped him to come with us to the Chamber of Secrets to rescue Ginny, then that he attacked us and tried to wipe our memories, and then that my wand exploded in his face and wiped his memories instead?”

An awkward silence fell over the room.

“When you put it that way…” George’s expression was caught somewhere between laughter, concern, and helpless pity. “I can’t see why you wouldn’t be excited about it.”

---

Harry arrived three nights later, a scroll of parchment scrunched in his fist and thunderclouds on his face as he hopped off the Knight Bus dragging his school trunk after him. It was a surprise—Ron hadn’t heard anything about Harry coming over, and it was almost midnight.

“Harry!” he yelled, pulling on his boots and hurrying out the door to greet him. “What are you doing here?”

“Mind if I stay?” Harry shook his head, the green of his eyes dark as he looked away—he didn’t really want to talk about it. “I mean, obviously if I’m imposing I’ll find somewhere else to go, or if I can get to Gringotts I can probably withdraw enough money to find a place or something, but Uncle Vernon kind of blew up when he found the summons from the Ministry. Kept going on and on about how he was harbouring a fugitive from justice, how he always knew I’d be a criminal, so I left.”

“Y-yeah, of course you can stay,” Ron said quickly, grabbing Harry’s trunk. He knew Mum would accept, Mum had gotten a look on her face whenever they talked about Harry’s family ever since the escapade he and the twins had pulled last year, so he’d only have to tell her so later. “You got a summons too?”

“I just mentioned I did, didn’t I?” Harry replied, a little sharply, then he sighed. “Sorry, Ron. Just—rough night, that’s all. Guess you got one, too.”

“Harry!” Mum cried, catching them as they came in the door. “Have you eaten dinner yet? You look so thin!”

“I didn’t get a chance to, but don’t worry about it, Mrs. Weasley.” Harry waved a hand, his smile weak, and Ron opted for lugging Harry’s trunk to his bedroom. Harry would protest that it was late, and that the Weasleys had already eaten and for Mum not to go to any trouble, and Mum would insist that it was no trouble at all and fry up some bacon and eggs for him with toast.

True enough, by the time he returned to the kitchen, Harry was sitting at the table with a loaded plate in front of him.

Dad was looking at Harry’s subpoena. “Yes, absolutely, I can take you to the hearing. You’re going a couple days before Ron.”

“Do we need to hire, I dunno, barristers or solicitors or something?” Harry asked, his voice trembling a little. “I mean—hiring one is no problem, I just haven’t done it before…”

“Barristers? Isn’t that some kind of shark?” Dad frowned.

“No, Dad—barristers,” Percy, who had come down from his bedroom hearing the ruckus, said. “Muggles have them. They’re like advocates, they argue the law.”

“Some of them are sharks, though.” Harry smiled weakly. “Do I need to hire an… advocate, then?”

“No.” Percy shook his head. “We don’t have anything equivalent to barristers or solicitors in the wizarding world. The expectation is that witches and wizards should be capable of defending themselves. In any case, though, this is only an enquiry—no one’s bringing any charges. You only have to tell the truth, Harry.”

From the expression on Harry’s face, Ron could see that he enjoyed that prospect about as much as Ron himself did—which was not at all.

---

The enquiry was in full swing barely two weeks later. It seemed that nearly the entire Hogwarts staff had been called, but Ron and Harry couldn’t go and see any of the proceedings. As future witnesses, they were barred from the hearing room until the time of their own testimony, in case they started colluding or otherwise changing their testimony.

In Ron’s opinion, it was a rather stupid rule. First, if he and Harry were hiding anything, they had had lots of time to get their stories straight since leaving the Chamber of Secrets. Second, it wasn’t as if they had come up with anywhere else for Harry to go, nor had anyone in the Ministry of Magic checked in on where Harry was staying, so if for some reason he and Harry hadn’t gotten their stories straight before, they definitely had time to do it now. Third, while he and Harry weren’t in communication with any of their professors from school over the summer, it wasn’t as if anyone had restricted their owl access—indeed, Harry had sent Hedwig to France to let Hermione know about the enquiry and their subpoenas. Finally, in what had be the stupidest move, the Daily Prophet was still reporting on every day of the proceedings.

Dumbledore was the first one up. He had hired Gilderoy Lockhart in July of last year to be the Defence Against the Dark Arts Professor at Hogwarts. Lockhart had been the only applicant, and he had been one largely because Dumbledore had gone out of his way to recruit him. He had such extensive and impressive experience fighting the Dark Arts, Dumbledore said, that he had considered Lockhart to be a valuable asset to the Hogwarts staff.

“Bet he’s lying,” Ron had grumbled, seeing the newspaper article over breakfast the next day. “He can’t have not known Lockhart was a fraud. I mean… just look at him!”

“But maybe he didn’t know before Lockhart came to Hogwarts,” Harry pointed out. “I mean, if you didn’t know him personally, you could think he was a bit bigheaded but still basically competent.”

“No way,” Fred interrupted with a shake of his head. “Remember, Dumbledore taught him too. He was probably an idiot when he was at Hogwarts.”

“But people change,” George threw in, punching Fred on the shoulder. “He could have thought, ‘Look, he was an idiot at school, but he’s done all these other things since, he could have changed.’”

“Eurgh.” Ron grimaced. “I don’t know. There’s something off about it. I think there was something else to it.”

“But he couldn’t have lied,” Percy said, looking up from his own read of the article. “The proceedings are done under magical oath. You can’t lie.”

“Not promising, Percy.” Ron sighed, feeling defeated. “I just hope I’m not arrested for owning the wand that wiped Lockhart’s memories, or something.”

Professor Snape’s testimony was nearly the complete opposite of Dumbledore’s. He was, according to the Daily Prophet, short and extremely stiff with the Wizengamot. He had not liked Gilderoy Lockhart; Lockhart had been an embarrassing, maddening spectacle as a fellow student, and in personality did not appear to have changed one whit on his return to Hogwarts. He had no special qualifications in Potions, and yet he had dared to lecture Snape on his potions. As far as Snape was concerned, Gilderoy Lockhart was a talentless buffoon, and the loss of his memories was no great loss at all.

“I never thought I would agree with Snape,” was all that Ron said on reading the article. The snorts around him said that everyone agreed, though the letters to the editor in the Daily Prophet and the ongoing progress reports in Witch Weekly opined that Snape had a poor view of everyone and Lockhart was simply not an exception.

Professor McGonagall was more circumspect, though it was clear that she, too, had no love for Gilderoy Lockhart. She had found him annoying as a student, but she had been willing to give him the benefit of the doubt when Dumbledore hired him. Regretfully, within two weeks of the start of the fall term, she had discovered that he was, if anything, more annoying, troublesome, and useless as a professor than he was as a student.

“I had not thought it capable for a student’s capabilities to decrease on leaving school,” the Daily Prophet recorded her saying critically, “but Gilderoy Lockhart was a less capable wizard as a Professor than he was as a student. He couldn’t even do a Switching Spell.”

Once the Chamber of Secrets was opened, she testified, Lockhart’s failings had actively impeded their efforts to keep the student body safe. While every other professor and the prefects patrolled the corridors at night, Lockhart skipped at least one out of every two shifts he had been assigned. He had abandoned the students alone in the hallways on multiple occasions to go and cosset his hair, leaving other professors to pick up the slack. Witch Weekly responded that Professor McGonagall was no doubt jealous of Gilderoy Lockhart’s good looks and popularity with the students, and that her opinion shouldn’t be given any weight at all.

“Popularity?” Harry mimed throwing up, his face wrinkling in disgust.

Professor Flitwick’s testimony was similar to Professor McGonagall’s, though he did have a few kinder things say about the man. Lockhart had always had a talent for Charms, he admitted freely, though he couldn’t say that he had seen Lockhart successfully cast a single spell since his return to Hogwarts. He did, however, admit that he spent little time with Lockhart, so he wouldn’t be able to say anything for certain. Professor Sprout was perhaps the kindest of the Hogwarts professors; spending most of her time in the greenhouses, she had next to no involvement with Lockhart. While on a personal level she found him somewhat grating, she had no reason to doubt his professional capabilities.

Witch Weekly very much liked Pomona Sprout’s testimony. Personality conflicts were understandable, the editorial that week said, and surely it could not be easy working with someone so brilliant and talented as Lockhart.

Ron had never particularly liked or disliked Professor Sprout before, but he found himself oddly sympathetic. Indeed, he found himself sympathetic to all their professors, and they hadn’t even gotten to the hard part yet.

No one had testified about the fraud. And given the press reaction to their professors’ commentary that Lockhart was an incompetent nincompoop, Ron didn’t have high hopes for what would happen when he and Harry went up there and told the world that Lockhart was a fraud who had hexed his own brains out.

---

The morning of Harry’s hearing dawned, and Ron woke up to see Harry rolling around restlessly on the cot beside him. One glance outside showed that it wasn’t even true dawn yet—the sky was streaked with red and pink, but the sun hadn’t yet crossed the horizon.

“If you’re up, you’re up,” Ron muttered, rolling over to look down at Harry. “Might as well get properly up, Harry. We can get up, get some hot chocolate or something.”

Harry sighed, sitting up and wrapping his quilt around him. It was chilly in the mornings, and Ron’s window had a nice coating of dew on it. “In a bit. D’you—do you think we should talk about it? Straighten our stories, so to speak?”

“It’s a magical oath, so we can’t lie.” Ron sat up in his own bed, propping himself up with his back against the wall. Above them, the ghoul let out a long, forbidding moan. “Leaves our options pretty short. We’re going to have to tell them about the fraud thing. We’ll probably have to start with giving Lockhart the slip, actually, that’s going to go over well…”

Harry snorted. “You mean, when he went to go curl his hair?”

“Yeah. Because we went and found Hermione with the note in her hand.” Ron rubbed his forehead. “I know initially we were going to find Moaning Myrtle, but I don’t think we need to say that? Not unless they ask directly.”

“How do magical oaths work, anyway?” Harry frowned. “Percy said that it meant that we couldn’t lie?”

Ron shrugged uncomfortably. “I don’t really know? It’s like—like an Unbreakable Vow, that sort of thing. You swear on your magic to tell the truth, and your magic forces you to tell the truth. But there are a thousand stories about the ways people get around magical oaths.”

“Like?”

“Well…” Ron leaned forward, wrapping his arms around his knees as he thought. “I really don’t know a lot about it, but Hermione would know. We should have asked her.”

“Yeah.” Harry sighed, looking away. “I just—I didn’t think of it earlier, y’know? If she were here, she would have thought of it and looked it up herself.”

“Yeah,” Ron replied with a small laugh. “Drives me nuts, the way she does that. The stories, though—I think a lot of getting around a magical oath is that even if you have to tell the truth, you don’t have to tell them everything. At least a third of the stories are cases where the interrogator doesn’t ask the right question, too, or they don’t pay attention to see that you’re actually answering the questions. I don’t know how far the oath goes to see that you’re telling the whole truth, either. Aurors like truth potions better, because truth potions also put you into some kind of trance, so you answer whatever someone asks you without being able to choose your words or anything.”

“All right.” Harry let out a deep breath. “Guess I’ll have to test it for myself, today.”

“We haven’t been charged.” Percy had been reminding them both of this fact ad nauseum, over the last few weeks, to the point where Ron wanted to punch him. Percy seemed to think that truth would win out and nothing could possibly go wrong, but Ron thought Percy had far too much faith in the Ministry. “We’re also still underage. And we don’t even know how to cast Obliviate, it’s a fourth-year hex.”

Harry rolled his eyes, which was more about Percy than what Ron had said. Ron had the sense that Harry had believed that Dumbledore could have or would have prevented the enquiry, and the fact that Dumbledore either hadn’t or hadn’t been able to do so had changed the way in which he saw the world.

Ron couldn’t say he felt any different—Dumbledore was supposed to have stopped these questions, and it was supposed to be over. And instead, Dumbledore didn’t seem to be able to stop the Ministry from dragging them into a major enquiry, even when Dumbledore knew that it had been Ron’s wand that had blown Lockhart’s memories away.

“Hot chocolate,” Ron declared, throwing his covers off his legs and standing up. “Let’s go get some, it’s better than sitting and stewing up here.”

Harry’s testimony started at ten in the morning, but he went in with Dad at eight-thirty. And from eight-thirty on, Ron kicked his heels and tried to find something to do to take his mind of Harry’s testimony.

He couldn’t concentrate enough to read the Daily Prophet, even if the paper was reporting on the statements given by some of the other Hogwarts professors. Most of them didn’t know Lockhart very well and, having had one poor experience, had gone out of their way to avoid him. He dropped it after barely having read a paragraph, then went outside, thinking of flying a few circles in the yard.

There was no luck there, either—he couldn’t lose himself in the joy of flying, and he couldn’t concentrate enough for a game of Quidditch, which he learned when the twins and Ginny came pelting out after him. Inside, he ultimately just gave up and spent half the day staring at his chessboard in the den, where his pieces yelled abuse at him as he distractedly tried to plan out a few new chess strategies.

He couldn’t say where the day went. He could say that he spent most of the day worrying about it, even if there was nothing he could do about it. Harry would be fine, and he’d be back, and he could tell Ron all about how it had gone.

Harry returned with Dad in time for dinner, looking more exhausted and wrung out than Ron had ever seen him, and that included right after he had gotten the Philosopher’s Stone and after the Chamber of Secrets.

“So?” He couldn’t help asking.

“Later.” Harry scowled.

It wasn’t until long after dinner, nearly midnight when they were both already in bed that Harry felt comfortable talking about it.

“It was like—I don’t know how to describe it,” he said softly, staring up at Ron’s ceiling. “First, it’s there in front of the entire Wizengamot, at least fifty people. Taking the oath felt like clapping my chest with cold irons, and I could feel it pressing up against me anytime I said something. But when they started asking me questions, I could tell that even if I had to tell the truth, I couldn’t be forced to tell them everything.”

“What did they ask?” Ron asked, propping himself up on his elbows. “And what did you tell them?”

Harry snorted in the silence. “They started with Lockhart. What did I think of him, was he a good professor, things like that. I said I didn’t like him, and when they asked why, I said that he had embarrassed me too many times, mostly by making me act out his stupid books in Defence Against the Dark Arts—oh, I didn’t say the stupid part. I said I didn’t think he was a good professor. If you keep your answers short, there’s not much the oath can get you on, all right, Ron?”

“Short answers.” Ron sighed. “Got it.”

“Short answers, and just answer the question in the least helpful way you can.” Harry rolled over in bed to look at him. “They asked a lot of really irrelevant questions. Anyway, don’t ramble on those. After that, we went to the day that we went into the Chamber of Secrets. I—I started with how we gave Lockhart the slip between classes, because he wanted to go curl his hair, and how we went to see Hermione. You have to be careful at that part, all right?”

“Careful?”

“Yeah.” Harry paused, thinking about it. “The oath doesn’t let you say that we gave him the slip because we wanted to go see Hermione, because that’s not true. But you can make two separate sentences that are true; we gave him the slip, and we went to see Hermione. No need to get anyone else involved. When we got to Hermione, we found the slip of paper, and when we were there, we heard the announcement about Ginny. Later that night, we went to see Lockhart with the information, and then…”

Harry trailed off, rolling over to face Ron’s cluttered bookshelf. “Then he told us he was a fraud, we made him come with us into the Chamber of Secrets, and he attacked us and tried to Obliviate us. I ended with the rockfall. I don’t really want to talk about it anymore—can we just sleep? I’m really tired, and it’ll be all over the news tomorrow anyway.”

Ron frowned at his best friend, but he let it go. “Y-yeah. All right. I’ll—after I read the news tomorrow, can I ask more questions, if I need to?”

There was a rustle from the other side of the room. “Yeah,” Harry replied eventually, pulling the covers over his head. “Yeah, tomorrow.”

---

HARRY POTTER A PARSELMOUTH, Witch Weekly’s cover blared the next day. Grabbing it off the stack of mail, Ron began reading.

HARRY POTTER A PARSELMOUTH

In a shocking turn of events, Harry Potter has admitted under magical oath that he is a Parselmouth, a Dark wizard able to communicate with snakes. And yet, that was only the most explosive of his testimony yesterday.

According to Mr. Potter, on the day that Mr. Lockhart so tragically lost his memories, he and his friend, Ron Weasley, managed to slip away from Mr. Lockhart between classes to see their friend, a Miss Hermione Granger. Miss Granger had previously been Petrified, by an assailant unknown, and Mr. Potter and Mr. Weasley found a note scrunched in her hand stating her deduction that the monster in the Chamber of Secrets was a basilisk. On the way to finding a professor to tell them this information, the school went into lockdown as Miss Ginevra Weasley was kidnapped and brought by the monster into the Chamber. According to Mr. Potter, it was not until much later in the evening when he and Mr. Weasley were able to seek out Mr. Lockhart for assistance.

Mr. Potter then tells a tall tale wherein, in requesting the assistance of Mr. Lockhart, Mr. Lockhart not only refused but appeared to be running away from school. Further, when challenged, Mr. Lockhart allegedly confessed that he had never done any of the heroic deeds as stated in his books, and that he had only tracked down the persons who had done those feats to learn their stories and to steal them for his own. Allegedly, Mr. Lockhart then attempted to attack the students, but Mr. Potter succeeded in disarming him and they took him with them when they went to seek the Chamber of Secrets.

Mr. Potter was able to find and gain access to the Chamber of Secrets through the assistance of a ghost named Myrtle, who was a victim of the basilisk, and his own Parselmouth ability. Once inside the Chamber, Mr. Lockhart allegedly attempted to attack both Mr. Potter and Mr. Weasley again, this time with Mr. Weasley’s wand, which malfunctioned and rebounded Mr. Lockhart’s curse back upon himself and collapsed a part of the Chamber. Mr. Potter then testified that he went on alone to defeat the basilisk and rescue the young Miss Weasley, but denied that his Parselmouth abilities assisted him with the monster as, “I was not its master.”

What can one say about his testimony? On one hand, it is troubling that he was able to do so under magical oath, which would in any normal case confirm that he was at least telling the truth as he understood it. However, in this case, his testimony leaves more questions than answers.

Parselmouths are rare, and the talent notoriously has shown itself only in the Darkest witches and wizards of our history. The idea that there would be one at Hogwarts is shocking; the idea that there would be two is so unlikely as to be impossible. Moreover, Mr. Potter’s accusations that Gilderoy Lockhart was a fraud, plus his allegations that Mr. Lockhart attempted to attack him and Mr. Weasley not once, but twice, is simply unbelievable. It would go against everything that the wizarding world has known about Mr. Lockhart for years.

Perhaps Mr. Potter, as a burgeoning young Dark wizard, has found a way to circumvent the magical oath? More than one wizard has, though never so blatantly. Such consideration must be made by the Wizengamot in coming to its conclusions in the enquiry.

Ron looked up from the magazine, his eyes on Harry who was studiously looking into his bowl of porridge. Porridge, despite that fact that Mum would whip him up fresh sausages and bacon and pancakes if he even implied that he wanted them. His spoon was in the bowl, but from the way that he kept spinning it around, it was clear he hadn’t eaten much of it.

“This article is such absolute bullshit,” Ron said, and he threw the magazine right into the bin.

---

The morning of his own hearing, Ron woke at dawn, despite the fact that he hadn’t fallen asleep until past midnight the night before. He and the twins had kept Harry distracted all weekend and they’d ended up making a bonfire of every article that had called him a Dark wizard. The smell of burning paper, tinted with the slightly sour smell of burnt magic, wafted into his bedroom window, which was open for fresh air.

Some fresh air.

He tossed and turned for three-quarters of an hour, before finally giving up on the ruse and simply sitting up. Harry, he saw, was already awake and fishing with one hand for his glasses, which he jammed onto his face.

“D’you want to talk about it?” Harry asked, a little uncertain. “I mean…”

“Not really,” Ron admitted. “I mean—what is there to say about it?”

“Not much.” Harry breathed out a long, heavy sigh. “I don’t really know what to say to you. Whatever Percy said—yeah, we aren’t being charged with anything, but I wonder if this isn’t worse? I mean, they say they’re just going to ask you questions, but really—”

“Really, they grill you,” Ron finished for him grimly. He could tell that much just from the way that Harry had acted over the weekend.

“Yeah. However bad you think it’ll be…” Harry shook his head. “It’s worse.”

“That’s reassuring,” Ron muttered, but he smiled to soften the words. He hadn’t expected Harry to have much comforting to say, and to be honest, he preferred that Harry tell it to him like it was.  “I need hot chocolate. And maybe Mum already started the bacon and eggs and toast.”

He ate far less than he normally would that morning, the grease from the bacon making him feel queasy after only two slices, and the scrambled eggs on toast tasted like sawdust in his mouth. He just barely managed to choke down the lot of it when Dad got up, then he put on the nicest clothes he owned—a not-torn pair of jeans and an ancient collared shirt that had been washed so many times he couldn’t tell if it was originally white or yellow. He hated the way it looked on him, so despite the summer weather, he grabbed one of Mum’s Christmas sweaters for him and pulled it on too.

“Smart,” Harry commented. “The proceedings are in the basement—it’s freezing down there.”

Ron made a face at him, then he took off back downstairs to Side-Along with Dad to the Ministry of Magic.

The Ministry wasn’t an entirely foreign place to him. Ron had come through the Ministry once or twice before, though he couldn’t remember why. There were a million things happening. Dozens of people were crossing the Atrium in every which direction, with more Apparating in by the minute, and he was hard-pressed to keep up with Dad as Dad headed for the elevators. The air was filled with movement—the rustle of people’s robes as they walked, the whisper of the pale purple memo-birds that flew between departments, the chatter of tired morning conversation. The first two cars to stop were already full, but they managed to squeeze into the third one heading down.

No one looked at him. Ron preferred it that way—no doubt after today too many people would be looking at him.

Dad’s office was familiar too him, in the vague sense that while he hadn’t been there anytime recently, the office was so obviously Dad that it couldn’t have belonged to anyone else. Parchment was piled high on the desk, and the room was full of broken or hexed Muggle contraptions. A box of biting doorknobs propped the door open, which Ron poked at while he waited.

It wasn’t long in waiting—or maybe it was, but dread made time pass in huge gulps and swallows. First Ron was in Dad’s office, poking at the biting doorknobs; the next, he was following his dad down a long, stone corridor that, even well-lit, reminded him too much of the Chamber of Secrets. He was walking towards doom, and every step felt like it.

He heard the chatter of muffled voices well before he reached the door to the proceedings. They sounded sinister, whispers in the dark, and Dad stopped well before the hearing room door.

“The proceedings are closed except to the press,” he explained with a worried sort of grimace. “I can’t go in with you. But you’ll be fine, Ron. Just tell the truth, and everything will be fine.”

“Yeah,” Ron replied, even if he didn’t believe it. That hadn’t been how it worked for Harry. “I’ll—I’ll come find you at your office when I’m done.”

“That’s the spirit.” Even so saying, Dad’s smile trembled. “I’ll see you when you’re done.”

Ron didn’t look as his father disappeared down the long corridor, instead staring at the huge, forbidding wooden door in front of him. It was old, worn shiny-smooth with time, and the doorknob looked too much like one of Dad’s biting doorknobs in the grim yellow lights for Ron to want to touch it. Gingerly, he pulled one sleeve over his hand and pulled the door open.

The room of the proceedings was shaped like a bowl with him at the very bottom. Witches and wizards sat in tiered rungs, at least fifty of them—some of them had their heads together, talking, while others were watching him as he entered. He could barely make out any of the faces that were further up, and he could tell that this was intentional. They would be able to see him, but he would be hard pressed to see any of them.

In the centre of the bowl was a single wooden chair, not unlike what Ron was used to at school, without any arms on it at all. From the chair, he could see that he would be looking straight onto a dais that had been built into the tiered rungs of the room—one that had the Minister for Magic and two women that Ron didn’t recognize sitting on it. It was clear where he was intended to sit and, hoping that his legs didn’t tremble like the jelly they now seemed to be, he strode over and sat down in the chair.

“Mr. Ronald Weasley, is it?” The Minister asked, peering down at him beadily.

“Yes, sir.”

“Your father works with us, doesn’t he?”

“He does, sir.”

Minister Fudge nodded judiciously, as if Ron’s reply had already answered some questions for him, but Ron had no idea what those questions might be. “Now, son, do you know why you’re here?”

“To provide information on the Gilderoy Lockhart case, sir.” Ron shifted in his seat, already uncomfortable. It had been all over the news, and he had lived it—why was Fudge treating him as if he were a child half his age?

“That’s right,” Fudge said, nodding in approval. “I’m going to be asking you questions, along with the two people beside me: Amelia Susan Bones, the Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, and Victoria Annabelle Townsend, Senior Undersecretary to the Minister for Magic. You’ll be answering questions under oath, so I’m going to need you to raise your right hand and to swear in risk of your magic that you will tell the truth.”

Fudge’s tone was grating. Ron fought the retort that was in his mouth, a simple comment that he wasn’t a bloody child, and instead simply raised his right hand and swore. “I swear, in risk of my magic, that I shall tell the truth in this proceeding.”

It was just as Harry had said. A ice-cold, iron vice wrapped itself around his chest, pressing against him, and for a second he couldn’t breathe—then it faded, but he could still feel it there, waiting for a lie.

“Very good.” Fudge nodded. “So, Mr. Weasley—what did you think of Professor Lockhart?”

“I didn’t like him,” Ron replied simply. Harry had said to keep it short, so he didn’t elaborate.

“Why not?”

“He wasn’t a very good professor.”

“Can you give us an example?” That wasn’t Minister Fudge, but Madam Bones. “What made him not a very good professor?”

“Well—” Ron paused, thinking. “Early in the year, he brought a cage full of Cornish pixies and unleashed them on us. He couldn’t control them, and they destroyed the room. Ultimately, Harry, Hermione and I had to catch them all and throw them back in the cage. After that, he spent the rest of the year acting out dramatic scenes from his books instead of teaching us any spells.”

“I see,” Madam Bones said, with a sharp nod. “Go on. In your own words, would you tell us what happened on the day that Gilderoy Lockhart lost his memories?”

Whose words would he use if not his own? Ron swallowed, trying to remember what Harry had said about what had happened.

“I guess—I suppose it begins with our Defence Against the Dark Arts class,” Ron started slowly. “At the time, because of the Chamber of Secrets, the professors were supposed to escort us from class to class—we weren’t supposed to be in the hallways by ourselves. Professor Lockhart was complaining about it, saying that, er, that the patrols were useless because Hagrid, the Groundskeeper, had already been taken to Azkaban.”

“Useless?” Fudge jumped on the word, and there was a soft susurrus of whispers in the crowd of looming, indistinct faces above. “He said that it was useless?”

“Well, er—” Ron tried to think, tried to remember. “I don’t remember the exact word he used. It might have been “not necessary” or “a waste of time” something. But he was complaining about it, and he didn’t want to do it, and Harry said that we could see the rest of the way ourselves since it was only one more corridor to Charms anyway.”

“I see.” Fudge made a note on a scroll of parchment, and Ron caught the glance that the two women shot each other behind his back. “Go on.”

“We went to see our friend, Hermione Granger,” Ron continued, feeling the magical oath press against him as he skipped several pertinent details: that they were planning on seeing Moaning Myrtle to interview her, that Professor McGonagall had caught them alone in the hallways, that they had talked themselves out of trouble. But they had, eventually, gone to see Hermione, so the oath let it pass. “She was in the Hospital Wing, Petrified. We went and we, er, sat with her a bit, and then we caught sight of a sheet of paper in her hand. We pulled it out, and it was a sheet on basilisks that she had taken from a book in the library.”

“And how did you make the connection, Mr. Weasley?” Madam Bones asked, her hazel eyes sharp. “Since Miss Granger no doubt couldn’t tell you.”

“Well—” Ron shifted nervously, trying to figure out what he could say that wouldn’t make things worse for Harry, but he couldn’t see anything that would work. “She’d written “pipes” on it, and, well, Harry had been hearing Parseltongue around the school all year. So Harry worked out that the basilisk was using the plumbing to get around the school.”

Madam Bones nodded and gestured for Ron to continue.

“So, er, when we were in the hospital wing—oh, no, maybe we were in the corridors? We heard an announcement that all students were supposed to go back to their common rooms.” Ron struggled for a second—he might have forgotten where he was when the announcement came, but he definitely knew where he was when he learned about Ginny, and he didn’t think it was important for anyone to know that he and Harry had been hiding in the closet in the Staff Lounge eavesdropping on the professors. Keep it simple, Harry had said, and as long as he was strictly true, he could avoid saying things. “We went back to our common room, and we learned that my sister Ginny was taken into the Chamber.”

The magical oath fought him, but it only found truth in his words, so it let them go.

“And then?” Minister Fudge asked, prodding.

“Well, what do you think?” Ron snarked, his anger flaring up suddenly—at this hearing, at the whole farce of a proceeding entirely. Who cared about Gilderoy Lockhart? “My sister had been taken into the Chamber of Secrets. My brothers and I, and Harry, we all sat together in shock for hours. Maybe we were mourning already, until finally, either Harry or I decided that we needed to go tell Lockhart about the basilisk. He was the Defence Against the Dark Arts professor.”

“Either Harry or you?” Minister Fudge pressed. “And Professor Lockhart, son.”

“Yes, either Harry or I—I don’t remember whether he came up with the idea, or I.” Ron snapped, flushing. His ears were burning, they always did when he felt pressured. “It doesn’t matter. We went to see Professor Lockhart in his office, and we found that he was packing to run away.”

The rumbles above had grown louder, but Ron ignored them, rushing ahead with his testimony. “He tried to tell us that he had an emergency come up elsewhere, and then when I asked him, what about my sister, he tried to wave it off. We argued with him, since he was the Defence Against the Dark Arts professor, said that he couldn’t leave while all this Dark stuff was happening and to look at his books, and then he told us that he hadn’t done any of the things written in his books. He said that he’d only tracked the people down, found out what they had done, then Obliviated them to forget that they had done it, and then he claimed the fame for himself! He said he looked better on the cover, and that the witch who had banished the Bandon Banshee had a hairy chin!”

The murmurs above had grown even louder, though Ron knew that Harry had to have said almost the exact same things. Why did it make a difference now? Did it make a difference now?

Madam Bones was making a note on her sheet of parchment. “And then, what happened?” she asked, as if she were asking about the weather.

Ron let out a long breath. “Then he said he had to Obliviate us, lest we spill his secrets to the world. He raised his wand at us, but Harry Disarmed him. We took him with us when we went to the Chamber of Secrets—the entrance is in the girls’ first floor bathroom.”

“And how did you know that?” Madam Bones asked, pausing in taking her notes. “You haven’t mentioned.”

“Moaning Myrtle, the ghost,” Ron said, trying to focus on her and ignoring Minister Fudge, who was wearing a disapproving expression. “She was killed when the Chamber of Secrets was opened fifty years ago. She told us how she died and pointed us to the sink that had a snake on it. Harry managed to open it with his Parselmouth ability.”

“And Mr. Potter showed surprise?” Minister Fudge asked. “He didn’t know about it before?”

“No way,” Ron replied sharply. “Harry didn’t know anything—we had to have spent forty minutes looking for that stupid snake, and he could barely get the words out to let us in. It took him about four tries. If you’re suggesting that Harry attacked people last year, well, you’re wrong. He didn’t, and he would never have attacked Hermione, or Ginny.”

The room was awash with whispers, which echoed. Ron couldn’t make any of the words out, it was all white noise, so he steamrollered ahead.

“We went down into the Chamber—the sink sank to reveal a pipe that led underground, probably under the lake or the Forest or something. It was dark, so we were moving slowly—Harry still had Lockhart’s wand. Then we came upon the snakeskin.” Ron paused, thinking about it, then he wet his lips. “If it weren’t for the snakeskin, Lockhart wouldn’t have gotten the jump on us. But there was a snakeskin—it was bright green, venomous-looking. We stopped, worried that it was a basilisk, and when we saw what it was, he collapsed. Or he faked it, I’m not sure. I turned around to tell him to get up, and then he lunged at me.”

“He lunged at you?” Minister Fudge repeated, his eyebrows going up.

“Tackled me across my knees. I went down, and he must have grabbed my wand.” Ron swallowed, before forcing himself forward. “He threatened us. Said he was going to take some of the snakeskin up to the castle, tell everyone that he was too late to save my sister, then that Harry and I had lost our minds at the sight of her mangled body. Those words exactly. And I was scrambling to my feet, trying to get my wand back, when he cast Obliviate and my wand—”

He stopped.

“Your wand?” Madam Bones asked, not unkindly.

“My wand backfired. His spell hit him instead of us.” The room, filled with whispers only a few seconds ago, was now dead silent. He reached into his pocket—no witch or wizard went without their wand, no matter if they were underage or not—and pulled out his wand. It was still held together by Spellotape, and better yet, it started whistling, right there on the Wizengamot floor. “I broke it earlier in the year in an accident. It wasn’t working properly all year, probably one in five spells backfires.”

Minister Fudge was staring at Ron’s mangled wand, and he didn’t seem to have any words. Madam Bones, on the other hand, was examining it closely.

“And your wand was like this since when?” she asked.

“Since September,” Ron said, flushing. “Harry and I—Harry and I had an incident with the Whomping Willow.”

“And you didn’t tell anyone?”

“The professors all know. Except Lockhart, I suppose, he wasn’t exactly big on wandwork in his class.”

“You didn’t write to your parents for a new wand?”

Ron looked away, down at the floor. “I was—I didn’t want to. I didn’t think it would do any good, since—well, Harry and I weren’t supposed to be near the Whomping Willow in the first place. We were already in trouble, so I didn’t tell Mum and Dad. And it worked sometimes, so I just dealt with it.”

“Could have been negligence, keeping it,” Madam Townsend said, nearly the only thing she had said the entire hearing, but she was talking more to Madam Bones, across from Minister Fudge, who looked to be recovering.

“But if the attack holds true, the negligence doesn’t matter,” Madam Bones replied, wrinkling her nose in mild distaste. “Many wands would backfire if put in the hands of an enemy. What core is your wand, Mr. Weasley?”

“Unicorn hair.” Ron didn’t look up, but he slowly put his wand back in his pocket.

“Unicorn hair is the most loyal of wand cores—wands made of unicorn hair are usually only ever loyal to one wizard, possibly one family. It may have backfired in Mr. Lockhart’s hands regardless of whether it was broken or not.” Madam Bones nodded, as if pieces of a puzzle were falling into place.

“Now, wait a minute,” Minister Fudge said. “Are we suggesting that Mr. Lockhart did this to himself? On accident after attacking and threatening Mr. Potter and Mr. Weasley?”

“The testimony given in this proceeding from the students and staff of Hogwarts has been remarkably consistent,” Madam Townsend remarked. “Also, I do not believe the Obliviation Curse is one that is taught to second-years at school. If I recall correctly, Obliviate is a fourth or fifth-year spell.”

“People learn things outside of class all the time, however.” Madam Bones looked directly at Ron. “Mr. Weasley, do you know the Obliviation Curse?”

“No, ma’am.” Ron hesitated. “On my magic, I swear it. Neither does Harry.”

“I see.”  Madam Bones nodded, her expression considering. “Go on, though I suspect that you’ve likely told us enough for us to come to our conclusions on the matter.”

“Lockhart’s spell also led to a partial collapse of the tunnel,” Ron continued quickly. “Harry must have run further into the Chamber, while I stayed behind. We were blocked off from each other, and Harry went on while I stayed behind to try to clear the tunnel. Lockhart could barely speak, he only hummed and looked around, so eventually I sent him back to keep him out of my way while I tried to make a hole in the rocks for Harry to get back. When Harry and Ginny came back, they had Dumbledore’s phoenix with them, and we all returned upstairs to the castle.”

“And anything that happened further in the Chamber? What happened to the basilisk?” Madam Bones asked.

“Harry says that he killed it. I didn’t see it.” Ron shut up. Harry had told him more, of course he had, but as far as he was concerned, if Harry hadn’t seen fit to tell them, neither would he. “That’s it. This is just a proceeding about Lockhart, isn’t it? Not about the basilisk, or the Chamber of Secrets. Just Lockhart.”

“So that is,” Madam Bones agreed, throwing a look at Minister Fudge and Madam Townsend. “I have no further questions. Either of you?”

“None,” Madam Townsend replied, leaning back in her seat.

Minister Fudge didn’t reply, looking somehow troubled and disappointed, and then he shook his head.

“You are dismissed, Mr. Weasley.” Madam Bones concluded. “The enquiry thanks you for your assistance.”

Ron nodded, feeling his legs tremble as he stood up, and he strode to the hearing door. Outside, he leaned against the wall, breathing deeply and trying to make his legs feel like legs again.

At the very least, it was over. They could excoriate him in the media tomorrow, and maybe he would just burn the articles without reading them this time.

---

Ron didn’t read the article that came out the next day, but according to Harry and George, it really wasn’t that bad. He wasn’t sure why that was the case, though George had his own theories.

“Look, Ron, we might not be rich or famous, but the Weasley name does mean something,” he said with a shrug. “We’re familiar, and people trust us because we aren’t really anyone, if that makes any sense. We don’t have a reputation for dishonesty or sliminess or anything, and we’re all Gryffindors, even Percy. We’re too honest and brash to lie about anything, we have no status to worry about losing, and we’re not clever enough to get around a magical oath.”

Ron winced. It was probably the worst reason for people to believe him, but he could see it.

“You’re also not a Parselmouth,” Harry added with a grimace. “You know, burgeoning Dark wizard and all. They don’t really have anything they can grip on with you.”

“You’re not a Dark wizard, Harry!” Fred interrupted, rolling his eyes. “What George and I did was a joke—don’t take it to heart.”

“Yeah,” Harry replied with a shake of his head. “It’s just the Daily Prophet, to hell with them. Anyone want to go outside and fly?”

Ron nodded, happy for the excuse get his mind off the Gilderoy Lockhart proceedings, and they ran off to get their brooms.

The proceedings closed with Ron’s testimony, but it was weeks before any decision was made. It was an enquiry, Percy reminded them endlessly when they talked about it. An enquiry only released a report about the likelihood of what had happened, making recommendations, and an enquiry couldn’t press charges or anything else. But an enquiry could recommend that charges be laid, a fact which Fred reminded him every now and then when he became too grating, and Ron was back where he began, worrying.

He preferred not thinking about it. Instead, he went out to fly, he reread the same comics that he had read for years, he went with his brothers down to the Muggle village down the hill for sweets. Before the end of summer, he did take his wand in for repair at Ollivander’s, and they collected their new books and supplies. Hermione came back from France, coming to stay with them a few days before Hogwarts started up again, and he could almost forget that the enquiry was still considering the results.

It was the day before they would be going back to Hogwarts, when Hermione was pounding at his door at seven-thirty in the morning.

“The report is out!” she called, just before she opened the door, waving the Daily Prophet. Ron and Harry both groaned.

“How bad is it?” Ron heard Harry ask, before he clapped the pillow over his head.

Insistent fingers pulled his pillow away from his head. “Come on, Ron, at least read it before you decide to stick your head in the sand.” Hermione rolled her eyes, sat down on his bed, and shoved the newspaper in his face.

Gingerly, Ron sat up and took it.

ENQUIRY RESULTS INCONCLUSIVE

The Wizengamot released its report for the enquiry on the memory loss of Gilderoy Lockhart this morning. In the accompanying press conference, Minister of Magic Cornelius Fudge stated, “The Wizengamot has concluded that the memory loss of Gilderoy Lockhart was, on a balance of probabilities, a result of a tragic accident. We were particularly disturbed by the consistency of the evidence provided—every witness from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, whether student or professor, testified under oath that Mr. Lockhart was less competent than his reputation would have suggested.

“More troubling, the preliminary inquiries into the allegations regarding Mr. Lockhart’s past accomplishments have only raised more concerns. At least two witches and wizards in County Cork, Ireland, have sworn that the Bandon Banshee was banished by a local, now-deceased but highly respected witch, and that Mr. Lockhart is nothing more than a con-artist. From Armenia, a brief review of the contemporaneous news sources identifies a now-elderly Armenian warlock with saving a village from werewolves. While such knowledge clearly could not have been known prior to events at Hogwarts and the tragic loss of his memories, the Wizengamot has recommended that a further enquiry be launched into the past crimes of Gilderoy Lockhart. Such a project being, of course, an international concern, the Ministry of Magic will consider the recommendation carefully before proceeding.”

Aside from the recommendation for a broader enquiry, the Wizengamot is satisfied that no further action need be taken.

Ron read it over once, then again, a slow smile spreading across his face as he handed the paper to Harry. Enquiry done, no charges, and his wand was almost as good as new. Things would never be quite the same for them, but it could have been worse.

It could have been far, far worse.

Notes:

A few weird hypothetical thoughts for the future had this actually happened within canon—Harry, Ron, and Hermione would generally probably have been more mistrusting of Dumbledore, the media and the Ministry of Magic well before book 5, and the general public knowledge of Harry being a Parselmouth would have probably had an impact on their trust of Harry as the Chosen One. But it seemed unavoidable, since the former follows as a result of Dumbledore being unable to shield them from the enquiry, and the latter is simply key to the events.

In any case, I hope you enjoyed! I loved getting the chance to dip my feet into writing a public enquiry, though in this case I modelled the legal part on HP canon, i.e. it's pretty close to what Harry goes through in Book 5.