Book 2, Chapter 09, November the Fifth.

Two days after the opening act.

 

I'm sure some of you are wondering how our dear professor Dumbledore could let the students unsupervised and unprotected at night in the castle.

Let just say it involved a special potion and a long standing spiteful owner of a dirty pub of his acquaintances. None of the students or the staff noticed the difference when a different director sat on his chair, for despite the odds between them, they were still brothers.

I knew about the switch because of the map.

And no, I didn't try to check the director's position in the great hall. On the contrary. It was when I saw him patrolling the corridors alone at night while seeing him at the teacher's table during feast that it enlightened me.

The professor perfectly made use of the information I found about the monster's first murder.

Anyone looking at the map would be able to see the names of the students, the staff and the visitors. The problem would be the number of dots you have to look up. Hundreds of students.

 

Any trouble sleeping ?

Try counting them.

It really could put you to sleep.

Or make you throw a tantrum in a rage-quit.

Remember hundreds of students, ghosts, teachers and eventually guests, all moving as they see fit while you're counting.

My summer camp monitor threw the gloves for less while counting our group, we didn't number more than thirty.

 

Why do you think the twins never bullied Ron for sleeping with another man ?

They didn't notice.

Speaking of the map, let's correct some misconceptions :

- It can't show the room on the seven floor. That room has the same benefit as 12 Square Grimault. Unplotable.

- The map can't show you Lord Voldemort's location. Nobody was ever born with that name. Ever. You can check Tom Riddle's point instead.

It's true, remember how it works.

Should you pretend to be Dumbledore your real name will appear.

So, should you pretend to be named Lord Luis Voldemort Vuitton, it will be the same situation.

Oh, do any of you guy remember every Hogwarts student name and surname ? Cause that's how you can miss a dude pretending to be dead while he sleeps in your little brother's bed.

 

I will excuse you if you mistake one guy for his father, the old map wouldn't make the difference.

Yes, old map, I added some new features.

That's what lead me into the director's office that day, to speak with him.

- My father told me the chamber was opened in the past before his time and that someone died. With what I suspect him to have done, I checked Ginny Weasley on the map. She always disappeared near the same location. I checked, and found out that Moaning Myrtle was the monster's first murder. A student earned a school special reward for denouncing Rubeus Hagrid at the time which lead him to be expelled.

Professor Dumbledore was looking at me deeply at the time.

- Hagrid was offered the gamekeeper position on your insistence. You would never have done that if you believed the accusations against him. Meaning the person who got the award either made a mistake or lied. I couldn't find much about him. Just that he worked for some time for Borgin and Burkes, then disappeared. Once again two red flags in my opinion. Prefect in chief never ended up working for that shop.

- Your researches impress me as always Draco. I too believe that student to have lied.

- What happened to him professor ?

- He found a special entourage then changed his name. Perpetrating acts so repellent and horrifying that many became afraid to even say his new name.

A light of comprehension showed up in my eyes. 

Do my acting skills equal Meryl Streep ?

A long moment passed between us, only disrupted at some times by the noises from Fumseck.

While this moment passed, I couldn't not look at something on the director's desk. Noting the differences between this one and the others.

It reminded me of that time earlier last year, when I took my biggest gamble.

---

The morning following Percy's attack.

 

News of the attack shocked the staff and the students.

Wild theories were running fast among the crowd.

One stupidest than the other.

Guess who were the two biggest morons at the origin of most of them ?

Exactly.

 

These two.

 

 

 

Gilderoy Lockhart.

And Sibylle Trelawney. 

 

 

 

Surprised ?

The tally of her death predictions was at least on the double digit for this year.

More than all the years from the start of her employment put together.

Her first class of the morning got scared shitless when she announced that out of all of them, six would either die or suffer one way or another.

Ken and his shiny smile for his part, kept sighing and showing how much he regretted not having been there in time to prevent the attacks from :

- please insert here a huge pile of stupid assumptions from the moron on what kind the monster is, displayed one after the other.

 

I literally can't bear with him anymore.

 

At least Daphne had an intelligent conversation on the side, answering some first year from our house on why Harry Potter didn't let himself fall from his broom to use the parachute's spell. (It became a game for the people owning the broom's new iterations. Including in our team, but only at the end of practices so, I let it slide).

 

Simple.

 

The Malfoy-Draco-parachute-spell© only got included in the generic making of brooms since the start of the 2001 series.

Oh, it's starting.

Stay quiet.

Shhhh ! ! !

 

It had been oh so simple and easy to pull something like that off.

Ask for a wireless to be present way in advance and let the people around you get used to it.

You would need less than four spells to do it perfectly.

All your audience would need was the magic wireless.

Ready to eat your words and spread them further and further.

Once the hippogriff had gone beyond the fence, it won't came back.

The wireless in the great hall that morning was tuned on an old band of music. Among the noise of the conversations and breakfast, nobody really gave it attention. That is, until suddenly, it started to emit static, coughing and spiting, while letting out weird noises.

Then the silence.

For thirty seconds.

The students and the staff were all a little startled by this. The studio would always act almost instantly when a problem like that came out.

First came the strings.

Followed by the brass.

Then the drums and finally the whole orchestra. For a little more than two minutes.

The students and the staff all thought it was an impromptu program put on air while the network fixed the problem.

They were all wrong.

As the music ended, a silence of twenty seconds was heard again.

Then...

 

 

 

- Good morning London, Allow me first to apologize for disturbing your programmed radio emissions. I do like everyone like the comfort of everyday routines and familiarity of tranquil repetition. I enjoy them as any bloke. But in the spirit of commemoration usually associated with someone death or the end of some awful bloody struggle and a nice holiday, I thought we could mark this November the fifth. A day that is sadly no longer remembered by taking some time out of our daily lives to sit down and have a little chat. But please allow me to first introduce myself.

Voilà ! In view, a humble vaudevillian veteran cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of Fate. This voice, no mere veneer of vanity, is a vestige of the vox populi, now vacant, vanished. However, this valorous visitation of a bygone vexation stands vivified and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin vanguarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition! The only verdict is vengeance; a vendetta held as a votive, not in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous. Verily, this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose, so let me simply add that it’s my very good honour to meet you all today and you may call me V.

At that moment, all the surrounding people's attention were focused on this show, wondering what it was.

Shall all of you ask yourself who I'm, and what would my purpose be by broadcasting my voice all around the world today, let me answer all your questions by telling you all about this play.

Remember, remember the fifth of November. The gunpowder, treason and plot. I know of no reason the gunpowder treason should ever be forgot.

Less than four hundred years ago, Guy Fawkes, an heroic muggle man tried to show to the world that this country's royalty had failed it's subjects. 

Among all the dates of holidays and anniversaries, most of dreaded conflicts or of long passed great persons, I think we should all take a little time today to remember him too.

And what a better way, on this frabjous day, than to cheer and toast to the other unseen heroes that walk among us.

We should celebrate them. Congratulate them. Honour them.

For now is the time for the big bad wolf to haunt this woods.

I'm talking about a man without morals. Ready to do every baseness for fame and glory. Reaping others of their accomplishments and memories. Cloaking his villainy and draping himself with their glorious fates while he bask in this felony.

Who, would you ask me, could this great villain be ?

 

GILDEROY LOCKHART, YOU'VE FAILED ALL OF US ! ! ! The voice screamed.

Lockhart until now was checking his appearance in a pocket mirror and wasn't listening at all. Hearing his name startled him, making him do a little jump on his cushioned chair. The whole staff was staring at him right now, the student did too. 

- Yes I'm talking to you, oh pompous foul, oh cockiness king. Did you really think nobody would found out ? I bet you did. But alas, no evil shall escape my sight even in the darkest night. So to expose your crimes, let me bring you under the brightest light.

Your first victim was Nicolas Winton. You wiped his memory and proclaimed to have saved the very village he protected. That village was remote and didn't read your lies. Winton stayed at his home after your aggression and without his wife discovering his journal, none would have known the truth.

Daniel Molloy, was the one who spent time with the vampires. They still remember him and never saw you once in their undead lives.

Lucy Gray, was spoiled of her story with a banshee, you left her dizzy in a dark allay of London. She was then mugged by a muggle crook with one of their fireweapons.

Florence Nightingale was the one to spent time with werewolves. She still have no knowledge of where and when she got her forearm's scar.

Elsa Lanchester, studied ghouls, trying to make them more accepted by the witches and wizards. All her work went for nothing. Now she's a mere clerk in an office.

Georges Remi Prosper, after an apparating mishap, spent a whole year with the yeti that saved his life. You left him half crazy in a Chinese opium den.

Ada Lovelace was in love with a hag, she lived, studied and helped them. After her encounter with you, she left her friends. They still miss her to this day.

Eirikr Rauoi trained trolls for a living. He still don't know how you could learn more than him about them.

Do you really think I'm the only one to have uncovered the truth ? 

From now on, you won't have a decent night of sleep, from now on your guilt will haunt you. Your crimes will stuck to you, you will never be able to cover them anymore.

Your days are counted fraud. I hope you appreciate them.

---

You know what ?

I really wanted to bully him that day. 

Put it on my bad mood.

My development of the bewitched glasses wasn't coming to fruition. I was able to make the base version already, but the improvements I wanted all failed.

I wanted them to be able to discern invisible people like Moody's magical eye, but haven't been able to replicate it yet.

---

The first mail soon to be ex-teacher Lockhart got after the broadcast was from his longtime fan Gladys Gudgeon.

In canon, she was the only one who kept to writing letters to him after his memory got wiped out.

Here too, she showed unconditional support for her hero, calling "V" with all the bad names she could think of.

She was promising to rain hell on him by writing to all the other fans she knew, commanding them to form troops and protect their idol.

She told him she already wrote to the Ministry of Magic, not to request an inquiry, but to oblige them to. There was a lot of entitled moments along her letters. And yes, she sent more than one, during the day.

 

Good thing when your teacher can't give you detention ?

You can't be sent to detention to help him write back to his fan mail.

Bad thing when your teacher don't require to give you detention ?

Unlike Harry, I wasn't spared from this core.

 

My free hour after lunch, wasn't free anymore.

 

Reporting for duty sir.

Double agent Malfoy Draco present and ready to screw you over.

You know, I read the Count of Montecristo many times when I was younger. Now I know how Edmond Dantes felt when he was standing right next to some of his foes/targets.

 

It felt AWESOME.

 

Only a few hours since V's intervention and you could already see him as if he was walked at gun point toward a cliff. His hair was a mess. His robe was in disarray. His whole aura screamed out how much he felt wronged by the world.

 

If only he knew.

 

What would a good and loyal supporter, investor and student like me do in this circumstances ?

- Don't worry professor, I won't let your name be tarnished by this miscreant. I already contacted one of my father acquaintance at the Daily Prophet. She promised me the article she will write later today will strike your unknown foe so hard no one will ever dare to repeat such heinous act.

It must be known that four boards mysteriously appeared in each common room that day.

All students could write and read it without problem.

A special spell was bewitched on them, making every single line visible on all four.

Only one colour of chalk was visible when you wrote on it. The one belonging to your house.

According to the boards description, scripted on it's surrounding wooden part, professor Lockhart's students were welcome to try and list all the tasks their mentor was unqualified for. Rewards would be given to originality and for the house with the most answers.

 

A good thing when you have a network of people owing you favours ?

You only have to tell them to write something to be even.

A bad thing when students start to badmouth a useless teacher ? Once they start, bullying will never finish.

I had to fake being unwell in potions and be sent to the infirmary, (where I came late, pretending to have been gone to the toilets), to be able to run to each common room fast enough to put everything in place before lunch.

 

The way good and bad thing works ? Sometime balance rectify itself.

If not, you just have to give him a push.

The screams he will make during the fall will be even more appreciated.

 

---

Let's be serious for a moment here and think about a really important question.

Talking about Pettigrew and the map made me think of baldy future comeback.

So.

Should I sent a gift to LV when he will finally be back ?

I was thinking some Head& shoulders ?