CHP 7

It was Molly and Arthur Weasley followed by their children. The youngest two Ron and Ginny seemed embarrassed at the attention they were getting. Percy seemed angry and the Twins were basking in the attention. Hagrid was following them and seemed to be trying to get the attention of the teachers to try and resolve the situation. It must've been pretty rare for someone to arrive late to Hogwarts I guess. How did they even get here? Broom, or their flying car? There weren't any Floo fires near the entrance, I think. No that's stupid, nevermind. Wizards could teleport, or rather 'Apparate.' They could've gotten here instantly! The only reason Ron used the car in the story was because you needed to be at least 17 to learn how to do it.

Still, there's really no reason for Wizards to be late for anything with instant transportation. Molly and Arthur seemed apologetic for their tardiness, and teachers don't really scold parents for anything, so with a 50-point deduction to Gryffindor, for being late to come to school (a first in history I think), and Ginny being led to the first-year group, the matter was resolved. Ron noticed us sitting on the Gryff's table and beelined towards us. The Sorting began in earnest and the Hall got quiet. I whispered and asked him why he was late.

"Well, we got stuck at the entrance to King's Cross and had to wait for someone to fix it. But we'd already missed the train by then. Mum was spittin mad about that. But Dad calmed her down and we went back home. We planned to reach Hogwarts by Floo through Hogsmeade or just broom all the way here, but we would've been too early if we reached in the morning when the rest of you only reach here by evening," he said.

"The longer I can stay out of school the better, so the Twins and me convinced Mum to let us stay at home and eat lunch or do work instead of wasting time here. We ended up getting late because Percy unpacked to study and then the Twins unpacked because they wanted some prank item they'd packed and Ginny unpacked because she wanted to comb her hair or some other nonsense. We ended up having to spend too long packing everything again and getting ready, so we ended up late," he regaled.

I had to try hard to reel in my laughter, but oh my god, what is this, a sitcom?

The Sorting was mostly over so further conversation died down. I don't remember the houses of all the current First-Years but Ginny got into Gryffindor and Luna got Ravenclaw. I would have to prevent her eventual bullying just because she was too cute to bulli.

The Sorting ended and we ate enough for 5 adults between Ron and me, the rest of the House sitting by us, staring, like you would at a car accident. Eventually the feast wound down and Dumbledore got up to make his announcement.

"Now that we have all been fed and watered, I won't keep you long. The list of all items banned from use in the hallways has expanded once more. I thank you for expanding our minds on the varied, striking uses of flexible rulers Mr. Weasley and Mr. Weasley. Please do try to be early next time. As always magic is prohibited in the corridors and the Forbidden Forest is forbidden. And finally, we welcome our newest Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, Gilderoy Lockhart."

With a flourish and a twirl Gilderoy Lockhart stepped into the Great Hall. His smile painfully wide and his demeanor one of practiced vanity. The women in the room swooned and every boy groaned. I think that as guys who are full of shit, it's easy to recognize and pick out another shitbag by sight. Or maybe it's just jealousy. He didn't get a chance to speak though as Dumbledore cut in and let the prefects take the kids back to their dorms. His smile got quite strained after that.

Back at the dorm I was lying on my bed and deciding my game plan for the year. My Cursed Energy is an avenue but this was magic school and I would have to learn magic as well. I would have to keep up with the training, try not to fall behind in my magic studies, try to do better in my magic studies, get my body in better fighting shape, send letters to people, find and deal with the Diary Horcrux somehow, expose Lockhart for being a fraud, and more that I'm sure I'm forgetting. For now, it was time to sleep.

.

"Welcome students, I'm sure you all know me, if not for my fame, then for my many successful and well-written books. Regardless, I will introduce myself once more, for those of you living under a rock," he chuckles, "I am the author of Break with a Banshee, Gadding with Ghouls, Wanderings with Werewolves, Order of Merlin holder, honorary member of the Dark Defense League and five time winner of Witch Weekly's Most Charming Smile Award," he smiles at the class, all teeth, "I am Gilderoy Lockhart," he states with a bow. The class erupts in cheers. The girls swoon at his handsome smile and the boys cheer. For all that I know he's full of hot air, he really is quite a celebrity in the Wizarding World. He's also full of himself.

The walls are covered with magical portraits of himself, some posing seductively, some painting medieval portraits of himself, which, really? You have paintings of yourself, painting yourself? Cringe, dude. The whole classrooms been done up, flowery decorations in the corners, lavender furnishings, perfumes, and more. Really, if it wasn't so godawfully self fellating it would have been quite a nice departure from the usual drab classroom.

"I'm sure Hogwarts has had many storied and renowned Defense Against the Dark Arts teachers in its history, and I am honored to be a part of that legacy now. Rest assured, your education lies in safe hands. Why, with my many encounters with the Dark, with werewolves and hags and ghouls and trolls, I daresay you've never had a teacher with as much field experience as me! I'll gladly share my experiences, in written form through your textbooks, with you."

He's really full of himself, sheesh. I don't know how much more of this moron I can take. Hermione beside me is swooning at every word that comes out of his mouth. I'm curious, does she even recognize how self-absorbed this guy is?

"Hey Hermione," I whisper, "does this guy seem a bit full of himself to you?" I ask.

"What? Shh Harry, the Professor's speaking, I can't miss anything. Ahh, I can't believe they managed to get Gilderoy Lockhart to teach here," she squeals in excitement, "Hogwarts is the best."

Well… really, what do I say to that? I hope she gets over him soon, I don't want to bear with a fangirl for this guy for the rest of the year.

"Don't worry Harry, I agree with you," Ron says, "this guy definitely kisses his own reflection because he loves himself so much. I've never seen anyone quite like him yet. Don't know how the rest of the girls can't see through 'im."

Glad, that at least one of my friends had his head on straight, my attention went back to Lockhart

"…be doing a short quiz right now. Just to ensure you're familiar with your textbooks, numbering 1 through 7. It might seem a bit much for a second-year class like yours, but rest assured, you won't have to buy another textbook for next year or the one's after that because I'll still be here to teach you and the familiar course material should help. And hey, at least, you got it for cheaper as a bulk buy now than as a regular purchase." Saying so he started passing down quiz sheets to distribute amongst ourselves.

Reading through the quiz my soul flies out of my body, 150 questions, 'Name Mr. Lockhart's favorite color,' 'What is Mr. Lockhart's ambition in life,' 'How did Gilderoy Lockhart defeat the cursed werewolf in Wanderings with Werewolves?' and on, and on, and on. I'm losing braincells just reading this.

.

School is boring. This is undeniable fact. Even with magic introduced as a factor, school is still tedious. Don't get me wrong, watching someone transfigure a teacup into a rat or a hamster into a wheel is great, slightly disturbing but exciting. But learning the theory of why the spell was invented, what the spell incantation means in witch Latin, what spells are similar or do the exact same thing with different incantations and on, and on, killed any enthusiasm I had. Lockhart's teaching did that as well but that was a different matter. My skill at magic was boosted by my powers to the point that just seeing someone do a spell was enough for me to understand what it did, and a few tries with my wand were enough to perform it. Doing magic was still thrilling but the clerical work accompanying it sucked.

It got to the point where I started doing challenges to make it more difficult for me, do this spell with the wrong wand movement, this one on a different object, maybe vary the colours of the resulting teapot and so on. Eventually I got rid of my wand altogether, when I realized it just didn't give me that boost that it used to give me as just Harry. I have changed as a person after my insertion, so I suppose it's reasonable. I'll still keep my wand, because if I end up facing Voldemort even after everything I plan to do, hopefully the brother wand effect will be enough to stunlock him while I bash his face apart with a reinforced fist.

It should be possible to do spells wandlessly with my power, so I started carrying a stick, coloured to look like my old wand, doing the wand motions with my right while I tried to cast with my left hand. It was definitely more difficult than with just a wand, and different spells need to be adapted differently when you don't have any specific gestures already known.

Meanwhile, I tried channeling Cursed Energy into the object see what would happen. Cursed Weapons and Tools were a thing, I knew. Does just channeling energy through an object make it a cursed object eventually or does it require some additional technique? Special Grade Cursed Weapons all had their own Innate Techniques but, from what little I remember, they usually were made of sorcerer corpses or souls? I'm not exactly sure.

My preliminary results show that the stick has now gotten sturdier but not much else aside from that. It is also very good at poking people. As Hermione found out. School was boring, so I got my joy by bullying children. Nothing malicious, but very irritating.

I keep my innate technique training to the evenings or after dinner because of its' intensive stamina cost. I mostly used it to try and commune with my new favourite stick, trying to build a deeper connection to it and maybe make it my Fullbring or evoke some kind of Innate Technique from it, if that's even possible with my expy version of it.

It's October 31st, the date Fate repeatedly chooses to fuck with me. Except this time, I had metaknowledge. I can't tell anyone that Ginny has the Horcrux diary with her, but if I was to accidentally see her acting strange and speaking snake, I hope no one minds if I take some aggressive actions and save her by punching her. I'm devolving into a caveman; Jujutsu really is mostly all about how hard you can punch.

In original canon, Harry went to the ghosts' Death Day with his friends and found out about the petrified cat while coming back from it. I couldn't care less about that. I couldn't ask Ginny to hand over the Diary because I shouldn't have known about it, and I couldn't get it from her room because I didn't yet have the magical skill required to circumvent the school wards that detect trespassing in the women's dorm. Not even mentioning that Hogwarts had the best ward system in the entirety of Britain.

I didn't dare unveil my Six Eyes here, I could feel the layers upon layers of magic settled in here. Because of the drawback as well, my eyes were at 50% and couldn't really do much aside from telling me what a spell did and some mental bullet time. I made do by charming the inside of my spectacles opaque, but I was putting off using it here because I was worried about the very real risk of brain death by information overload.

Regardless, I declined from attending the Death Day party and sent Ron and Hermione ahead of me for the regular feast by acting like I was sad on the day of my parent's death. I don't really remember them but I do miss my old parents so it wasn't a complete lie. I hid and followed my 'damsel in distress' under my invisibility cloak when she came down from the tower and started heading down. She didn't really seem all that different, not possessed or like she was about to release a murder snake on the school. It was odd that she wasn't at the Halloween Feast, I knew why of course, but it wasn't enough to act on my suspicion. I didn't really know when to 'apprehend' her. If I keep following though, I'm sure I would find something.

We reached the second floor and I see Gilderoy standing by, anticipation eager on his face. Something's wrong. There's no reason for him to be here now. He looks like he's been waiting for her to come along all this while. I am suddenly not as sure of what exactly is happening here. How does he relate to the Chamber of Secrets?