The children who lived, Fought, and Loved

Chapter Thirty

Chamber of Secrets/ The Basilisk

The twins and Ron race into the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom and up the stairs to Lockhart's office.

"Lockhart may be useless, but he's going to try to get into the Chamber. At least we can tell him what we know!"

They open the door to the office and step inside, "Professor, we have some information for you."

Primrose looks around the office, it
was al­most com­plete­ly stripped. Two large trunks stood open on the floor. Robes, jade-​green, lilac, mid­night blue, had been hasti­ly fold­ed in­to one of them; books were jum­bled un­tidi­ly in­to the oth­er.

"Is he leaving?" Peter asks wide eyed.

"It looks like it wormy."

The pho­tographs that had cov­ered the walls were now crammed in­to box­es on the desk. Lockhart stuffs some clothes into his trunk, which he closes as he turns toward them.

Both Primrose and Ron scowl at him.

"Are you going somewhere?" Harry asked.

"Um... well, yes. Urgent call. Unavoidable. Uh, got to go." Said Lock­hart, rip­ping a life-size poster of him­self from the back of the door as he spoke and start­ing to roll it up.

"What about my sister?!" Ron said jerkily

"Uh, well, um... As to that, most unfortunate. No one regrets more than I." He said, avoid­ing their eyes as he wrenched open a draw­er and start­ed
emp­ty­ing the con­tents in­to a bag.

The people in the great hall stare at the screen, in shock.

Regulus jump up from his seat and pointed at the screen, "Ha I knew it."

Barty grabs his arm, pulling him back down.

Ron stares at him in disbelief. "You're the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher. You can't go now!"

"Well, I must say, when I took the job, there was nothing in the job description about—"

Harry blocks his path, "You're running away? After all that stuff, you did in your books?!"

Primrose scoffs, "I knew it, you're a fake."

"Books can be misleading."

"You wrote them!" Harry shouted.

"Don't they have a saying like 'don't judge a book form it cover?"

Lockhart straightens up and frowns at Harry, "My dear boy, do use your common sense! My books wouldn't have sold half as well if people didn't think I'd done all those things!"

Harry stares at Lockhart, "You're a fraud. You've just been taking credit for what other wizards have done!"

"Is there anything you can do?" Ron asks him.

"Yes. Now you mention it. I'm rather gifted with memory charms. Otherwise, you see, all those wizards would've gone blabbing, and I'd never have sold another book."

James growls at the Screen, "Don't even think about it!"

The twins and Ron look at each other as Lockhart walks toward his suitcase,

"In fact, uh... I'm uh.." Ron nods at them, and they both reach into their robes to pull out their wands.

"going to have to do the same to you." he collects his wand from the suitcase, but Harry, Primrose, and Ron already have their wands trained on him.