With Lockhart's hissing Parseltongue, the stone door let out a dull rumble and slowly opened to both sides.
"Professor Westeros," Lockhart announced with dramatic magnificence, his arms spread wide like a conductor in front of an orchestra. The smug satisfaction in his voice was obvious as he gestured toward the opening chamber. "Allow the pleasure of witnessing how you handle this."
The stone door completed its heavy journey, fully shoing the chamber inside. Adrian scrutinized into the blackness, his eyes adjusting to the gloom.
Nothing. The chamber was utterly, inexplicably empty.
Adrian's brow furrowed as he observed the empty space, his hand instinctively tightening around his wand.
Lockhart's expression gradually changed, like a mask slowly slip from an actor's face. The smugness slipped away first, replaced by bewildernt. His eyes darted frantically around the empty chamber as panic began to set in, and his face started growing pale.
"This is... this is impossible," he stamred, his voice losing its acting confidence and beginning to tremble. Desperation crept into his tone as he leaned forward, hissing more Parseltongue into the darkness. "Little one, where are you? Co to ..."
Adrian turned his sharp gaze on Lockhart, observing his increasingly agitated deanor with growing confusion. "What exactly are you trying to accomplish with this charade?" He asked, his voice tinging with genuine bewildernt.
He had prepared himself for battle to face the legendary basilisk. But where was the thousand-year-old serpent that should have appeared?
In fact, Lockhart was also sowhat dumbfounded.
'Where was my massive basilisk?'
'How had it disappeared? I clearly rember telling it to stay in that room.'
A sudden scraping sound from within the chamber broke the tense silence. Both n froze, their attention turning toward the darkness.
Lockhart's face brightened instantly, his smugness returning to his face.
"Ah," He said with new confidence, straightening his shoulders and smoothing his hair. "It appears our friend was rely enjoying a nap."
Just then, from the depths of the chamber ca not the massive body of the King of Serpents, but a tiny gray mouse.
Lockhart's triumphant smile froze on his face. His mouth remained open, but no words erged. The silence stretched between them filled with embarrassnt and confusion.
Adrian watched this bizarre scene with a mixture of disbelief and speechlessness. His eyebrows rose slightly as he processed what he had just witnessed. 'What in rlin's na is Lockhart trying to do?'
However, Lockhart seed to be more adaptable than Adrian had given him credit for. He shook off his shock and accepted the reality of the basilisk's disappearance.
"Well then," Lockhart said with forced nonchalance, waving his hand dismissively as if the disappearance of a legendary monster was rely a minor inconvenience. He brushed imaginary dust from his robes and tried to restore his dignified attitude. "I suppose I wasn't really counting on that... stupid snake anyway. Unreliable creatures, giant serpents. Far too unpredictable for soone of my refined tastes."
Seeing Lockhart's confident appearance, Adrian imdiately tensed up.
He knew that Lockhart alone couldn't face him, so what was Lockhart's trump card?
Of course, it was—Voldemort!
Adrian steadily pointed his wand at Lockhart. "The performance ends now, Tom. Stop hiding behind Lockhart's face and show yourself."
However, Lockhart's next performance was far beyond Adrian's expectations.
"Tom?" Lockhart repeated, his voice tinging amused puzzlent. Then his expression turned into sothing like sarcastic sneer. "Oh, you must be referring to that fascinating piece of parchnt I discovered in the Room of Requirent. Quite the interesting find, actually. Tom... yes, I believe that should indeed be the na."
Adrian's determination didn't waver. He knew how cunning Voldemort could be in his manipulations. "Stop this deception, Voldemort. I know you've taken control of Lockhart's body. End this pretense and face directly."
His wand remained steady, its tip glowing faintly with magical energy.
Lockhart suddenly burst into exaggerated laughter, the sound echoing in the stone chamber sounding particularly harsh.
"Oh, my dear Professor Westeros," Lockhart gasped between fits of laughter, actually wiping tears from his eyes with his free hand. "You truly underestimate the magnificence that is Gilderoy Lockhart. Do you honestly believe that I—I!—would ever surrender this perfect, my absolutely divine body to soone else?"
Lockhart reached into his robes and took out a torn, yellowed piece of parchnt. He held it in the air like a trophy, waving it with obvious pride and satisfaction.
"A broken, fragnted soul," Lockhart continued with obvious disdain. "How could you possibly imagine that I would allow such a... thing to possess ?"
Adrian's eyes narrowed as he observed both Lockhart and the diary fragnt. "Then explain to how you managed to—"
"Control the basilisk? Speak the ancient tongue of serpents?" Lockhart interrupted smoothly, clearly relishing the opportunity to display his knowledge. His smile was that of a man holding all the winning cards in a high-stakes ga.
For the first ti since entering the chamber, Adrian felt truly lost. The puzzle pieces he had been arranging in his mind suddenly no longer fit together.
'Could it be possible that Voldemort hasn't taken control of Lockhart after all?' The thought sent a chill down his spine, not because it was reassuring, but because it opened up far more disturbing possibilities.
Observing Adrian's obvious confusion with satisfaction, Lockhart seed to savor the mont. Rather than pressing his advantage, he moved closer to Adrian.
"Do you recall a conversation we had several months ago?" Lockhart asked.
Adrian tilted his head slightly, his mory searching through their past interactions. "What conversation?"
"Ah, it appears the mont wasn't as morable for you as it was for ," Lockhart said with fake disappointnt, shaking his head as if saddened by his forgetfulness. When he looked up again, his expression had turned serious. "Allow to refresh your mory, Professor Westeros. I asked you a very specific question: Do you think I'm a powerful wizard?"
The mory surfaced suddenly in Adrian's mind. It had been around Valentine's Day, during one of their chance encounters. Lockhart had indeed asked such a strange question.
At the ti, Adrian had dismissed it as another manifestation of Lockhart's peculiar narcissism.
"Now, my dear colleague," Lockhart suddenly straightened his back, his face showing a seriousness Adrian had never seen before. "I can provide you with a definitive answer to that question. Yes, I am indeed very, very powerful."
Adrian's grip on his wand tightened instinctively.
'What kind of breakdown is Lockhart having?'
Adrian wondered, watching the man's increasingly erratic behavior.
Under his bewildered gaze, Lockhart casually crumpled the diary fragnt in his hand and compressed into a small ball. With nonchalance, he tossed it onto the floor.
The piece of paper that should have contained a piece of the Dark Lord's soul was now lying on the ground like common waste.
"You see, Professor Westeros," Lockhart said with satisfaction. "Even the legendary Dark Lord... cannot do anything to ."
Adrian was sowhat surprised. Lockhart wasn't completely ignorant—he had indeed learned a lot from the diary fragnt and knew that the soul within it was Voldemort's.
But why—how—?
"Allow to explain the fascinating sequence of events," Lockhart said, snapping his fingers with drama. His fear had completely evaporated, replaced by an almost manic enthusiasm. "You know what my reputation was built upon, don't you? mory Charms. Such beautifully simple spells, really. Point, flick, and poof—inconvenient mories simply... disappear."
He took out his wand and drew patterns in the air, leaving trails of silver light that swirled before fading. "Perhaps I should express my gratitude to our dear Dark Lord. You see, he beca my teacher, instructing in magical arts far more sophisticated and powerful than simple mory charms. Ah, but mory—mory is such a wonderfully complex and malleable thing."
Adrian watched with growing unease as Lockhart's eyes took on a feverish gleam.
"I spent countless hours exploring the possibilities, experinting with techniques that went far beyond basic mory charms. And gradually, I discovered sothing remarkable about myself—my true magical gift."
Adrian sighed deeply.
"That poor soul," Lockhart continued, contemptuously kicking the crumpled paper on the ground, "believed himself to be the master manipulator, the one pulling all the strings. What delicious irony! He never realized that I was the one in control from the very beginning.
While he thought he was influencing , I was absorbing his knowledge, his magical techniques, his mories. And now that I've taken everything useful from him, he's beco completely useless. I know everything he knew, and so much more."
Adrian looked at Lockhart, whose eyes were gleaming with an unusual light.
In fact, Adrian thought he was being too arrogant, actually looking down on Voldemort like this. You should know that even Dumbledore wouldn't refer to Voldemort as a "poor soul."
You never know how many sinister backup plans Voldemort has hidden away—one careless move and you might fall into a trap or be cursed.
Even a teenage Voldemort couldn't be underestimated.
And Lockhart... Adrian could only say he was too naive, having no idea of Voldemort's true terror.
Perhaps intoxicated by his own apparent victory, Lockhart began to reveal other secrets.
"By the way, do you know? mory is an extrely dangerous and precious thing. Rember those books I wrote? You might think the stories in those books were all made up by , but that's not the case."
His smile took on a predatory tinge.
"Every single adventure described in those pages actually happened, Professor Westeros. The only fictional elent was the identity of the protagonist. I made myself the hero of other people's genuine accomplishnts.
Take 'Voyages with Vampires,' for example—the real hero of that tale was a vampire hunter. I simply... borrowed his mories after ensuring he could never contradict my version of events."
Lockhart's expression grew pensive as he continued. "And 'Wanderings with Werewolves'—honestly, can you imagine voluntarily spending months in the company of those foul-slling creatures? The original adventurer was made of sterner stuff than I. But his mories of the experience were quite vivid and detailed, perfect for creating a convincing story."
When a person starts revealing secrets they've buried deep in their heart and never told anyone else, they often can't stop themselves. Just like Lockhart now, beginning to tell Adrian about his experiences over the years.
Adrian didn't interrupt him, but listened with interest.
However, Adrian understood that since Lockhart was telling him all this, he must have absolute confidence in dealing with him—most likely through mory Charms.
And Adrian wasn't afraid of mory Charms.
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