I stared at the newspaper in my hands, trying to process what was happening.
Too surreal.
Too strange.
An illusion?
A hallucination?
Putting the newspaper down on the table, I surveyed the room.
A wardrobe enchanted with weak space-expansion charms.
A luxurious bed with a golden canopy.
An oak writing desk.
A couple of chairs.
A trunk with more serious enchantments on it.
A coat rack by the entrance.
Two doors, one slightly ajar, revealing a sink and mirror beyond.
And dozens of moving photographs.
Moving images of a vaguely familiar man with hair the color of gold and a pearly white smile.
Judging by the photos, he didn’t just suffer from a mild case of megalomania.
He reveled in it.
I pointed my wand at the chair and used a rather obscure Transfiguration spell, one that transforms an object into an arbitrary non-dangerous form.
Essentially useless, it had a couple of peculiar features an old Polish Transfiguration master had once told me about.
First, the spell didn’t work on enchanted, cursed, or living objects.
Second, the wizard casting it had to be of sound mind.
I looked at the avant-garde piece of art the chair had become and frowned harder.
“Finite.”
I restored the chair to its normal state, closed my eyes, and sniffed the air.
Scents of perfume, wood, clothes, and many other things reached my nose.
Too detailed.
So not a hallucination.
Not an illusion based on self-suggestion, since I was seeing this room for the first time.
Not an ordinary illusion or memory trap, because a construct this complex and detailed, one that didn’t conflict with the surrounding enchantments, was closer to a miracle than to magic.
I sighed, then looked at the hand holding the wand.
Neatly trimmed nails.
Not my hand.
Not my wand either.
Judging by the magical background, which in recent years had been indistinguishable from that of a burial mound or crypt, someone had clearly been playing games with space and time.
And souls.
Mine and the poor bastard’s body I’d just occupied.
I traced several patterns with my wand, casting a stationary Protego around the bed along with a couple of other protective charms, then lay down on it.
I began to breathe slowly, recalling the meditations of Tibetan wizards who, in matters of working with the soul and its connection to the body, could give many others a run for their money.
Only getting access to that knowledge was an adventure in itself.
Inhale.
Exhale.
Inhale.
Exhale.
The sensations of the body faded away, eventually leaving only the perception of surrounding magic, something I’d developed over years of creating magic.
I focused on myself, feeling a tingle.
A familiar tingle.
The same one I’d felt when a Dementor nearly devoured my soul, leaving me to spend the next few days reconnecting with my body.
Fortunately, this time the process was much faster.
At some point, the previous owner’s memories began surfacing in my consciousness.
I dove into them.
The most important thing for me right now was information.
Five hours later, I stared at my reflection in the mirror with a twisted expression.
A handsome, even charismatic face with blue eyes stared back.
A face with a certain charm to it, despite the unpleasant look I was giving it.
Gilderoy Lockhart, wizard, writer, idol of hundreds of witches, and fraud.
The man I had become.
I smoothed my hair with wordless, wandless magic and adjusted my shirt collar.
Then I froze.
For the last two years, I’d honestly stopped caring about my appearance.
The ghouls around me valued my “inner world” more, and the surviving humans valued power.
So, seeing my current body not as a “lumpen survivalist” but as something else…
it felt refreshing.
I was beautiful.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
I banged my head against the wall in irritation and glared at the mirror.
The adaptation to Lockhart’s memories had gone too well.
Largely due to some similarities in our personalities.
Some similarities.
A memory surfaced.
Young Lockhart at Hogwarts, sending himself over eight hundred Valentine’s Day cards.
“Oh, damn it.”
I certainly possessed a somewhat self-absorbed personality.
But this…
this Narcissus was beyond good, evil, and magic.
There were no equals in his mind.
Only fans, future fans, and problematic people.
That was it.
Such a paradigm of thinking in a wizard whose magical knowledge barely exceeded a school level was simply infuriating.
Actually, that wasn’t entirely fair.
In the areas of charms and potions related to appearance and beauty, he truly had no equal.
As did his mastery of the Memory Charm, Obliviate.
I knew about this wizard from memories predating the Cataclysm.
One of the few British wizards whose fiction was distributed throughout the magical world.
And I’d actually enjoyed his books.
Excellent descriptions of landscapes and cultural features of different countries, paired with unique character development.
The only downside was the entertaining but far-from-realistic descriptions of magic used in combat.
Until his dramatic exposure at Hogwarts, I’d been understanding of this flaw.
Truly powerful wizards didn’t reveal their fighting styles to the world, nor did they share knowledge of semi-legal curses.
Now, having absorbed the memories and even some personality traits of this adventurer, I felt…
sorry for him.
Though he hadn’t possessed great magical power, he could have become as strong as the characters in his books.
In magic, a wizard’s will and personality often mattered more than raw power.
Lockhart’s narcissism and arrogance, taken to absurd extremes, allowed him to perform wonders with the charms he was confident in, the ones where he truly believed he was the best.
Hair-care charms and wrinkle-removing spells?
Sometimes, fueled by sheer willpower, they could temporarily imbue clothes with the natural charm of a Veela or give hair the properties of certain magical creatures.
Back at Hogwarts, he could create and modify spells.
Thanks to his personality and an almost animalistic instinct for danger, he’d built connections with many people.
His experience as a half-blood at Hogwarts, surrounded by pureblood aristocrats, had taught him his strengths and weaknesses.
After graduation, he knew how to make a good impression on strangers.
What truly limited his potential was a lack of patience and, surprisingly, an inferiority complex.
Lockhart quickly lost interest in areas of magic where he couldn’t achieve perfection in a short time, a victim of his own perfectionism.
Only his certainty that his appearance had to be the best drove him to study charms and potions related to magical appearance modification.
As for the Memory Charm…
by the time I landed in Lockhart’s body, he had already written two books.
“Voyages with Vampires” and “Wanderings with Werewolves.” The “ideas” for these stories had been borrowed from a Russian Auror, or, as the Russians called them, a Dark Hunter, and a French Magizoologist.
I carefully examined the memories of the Briton using Obliviate.
I was impressed.
These memories once again showed me the power of emotions and feelings in magic.
Envy…
A disgusting feeling, called one of the seven deadly sins by Muggles.
Together with the Memory Charm, it created an unusual synergy.
The charm itself relied on the natural processes of forgetting that humans experience, processes needed for better brain and memory function.
Obliviate allowed you to find a specific memory and accelerate this process for it.
More skilled wizards could replace the memory with another one, sometimes even verbally describing what “actually happened,” thereby planting a mental suggestion in the person.
For Muggles and weak wizards, it was highly effective.
But from the intermediate level onward, some more attentive wizards could notice something was off.
High-level wizards, who typically practiced Occlumency, could directly overcome Obliviate.
Lockhart’s modification of the Memory Charm could have made him the best Obliviator in any Ministry of Magic.
If, of course, the spell hadn’t been banned and its creator buried alive or locked in the dungeons of the Unspeakables.
After all, no matter how you looked at it, Obliviate always left at least a trace in a person’s mind.
With rough or frequent use, it could even disrupt a person’s mental faculties.
Lockhart’s version of the Memory Charm lacked these drawbacks.
Modified and strengthened by envy, it could now bypass many standard protective charms, and the erasure process itself became something like hypnosis or self-suggestion.
The “subject” simply didn’t believe in the erased memories and, through their own associative chains, constructed the “most likely” memory for themselves.
In essence, the wizard didn’t disrupt the “subject’s” mental activity.
He simply accelerated the natural forgetting process.
The “subject” filled in the rest themselves.
Only when the volume of erased memory exceeded a certain percentage relative to the remaining memory could a Legilimens detect its use.
It was all the more frustrating that such potential had been squandered by Lockhart himself.
Left unrefined.
But his body and personality could still serve me.
Knock.
Knock.
I turned toward the door to my hotel room.
I waved my hand, tidying everything in the room.
The strange hybrid of cloak and coat hanging on the rack, in light tones, settled onto my shoulders.
Thanks to the stronger connection between soul and body, weak household charms no longer required words or wand movements.
I cast a transparency charm on the door.
The door began to dissolve, revealing a blonde woman impatiently tapping her finger on her purse.
Green eyes surveyed the hotel corridor and door with irritation.
She clearly had no idea she was being watched.
I cast the usual set of protective charms I’d used since the Cataclysm, dispelled the transparency charm, and hid my wand in my sleeve.
Lockhart’s familiar smile spread across my face as I approached the door.
“Good day.
How can I help such a beautiful lady?”
The woman behind the door smiled sweetly.
Hearing the friendly voice and seeing the sunny smile of her new victim, Rita Skeeter felt a brief flutter of embarrassment.
But the seasoned journalist quickly composed herself.
“Sorry to bother you.
My name is Rita Skeeter, and I’m a reporter for the Daily Prophet.
I’d like to interview you about your latest book, ‘Wanderings with Werewolves.'”
The woman spoke in a sweet, cheerful voice, taking a small step into the room.
Her green eyes quickly scanned the visible part of the room behind the smiling young man.
“So you’re interested in my latest book?
That’s wonderful.
Don’t worry, I’m happy to give you an interview.
Let’s go downstairs to a café I know.
They serve excellent tea, perfect for a leisurely conversation.”
The already bright smile grew even brighter.
“There’s no need to go through the trouble.
We can talk perfectly well in your room.”
The journalist tried to take another step into the room, but the man’s silhouette blocked her path.
“As a true gentleman, I must look after a lady who’s decided to keep me company.
Besides, an unmarried young woman shouldn’t be in a room where a man normally sleeps.”
Rita had no choice but to nod, hiding her irritation behind slightly narrowed eyes.
In a public place, some of the “details of the conversation” she might have “mentioned” in her future article would automatically be off-limits.
When the up-and-coming writer stepped out of the room and casually closed the door behind him with a wordless, wandless spell, the journalist perked up.
“He’s not just any wizard.”
Following the confidently striding man, she shot him a flirtatious look.
“Do you invite every girl you just met straight to a café?
Do you make enough money from your books to treat every acquaintance?”
Gilderoy Lockhart rewarded her with a smile.
“And do you try to get into every man’s room who gives you an interview?”
The journalist laughed a clear, ringing laugh, the kind that men so fond of their “inimitable humor” find so appealing.
“You’re a joker, Mr.
Lockhart.
But don’t forget, asking questions is my job here.
Besides, you agreed to give me an interview.”
“I agreed to an interview about my second book.
Everything else is just a pleasant conversation between us.”
The smiling blond shook his head.
By this time, they had reached the café “Teas of Paureljo.” They sat at one of the outdoor tables and waited for the waiter.
The journalist looked at the floating notebook nearby, its quill writing quickly, and ordered her favorite tea and the most expensive dessert on the menu.
The man only smirked in amusement.
“So, why did you decide to visit France, which led to the events you describe in your book?”
“Oh, that’s quite a story.
At the time, I decided to visit this history-rich country to meet with several famous Potioneers.
This area of magical art had fascinated me since my early years at Hogwarts…”
For the next half hour, the pair chatted “amiably.” Rita Skeeter, riding the “wave,” smiled as the swiftly writing quill recorded “new” details in the notebook.
“Thank you for the interview and the pleasant conversation.
I think my future article will draw a lot of attention to you and your book.”
The blonde journalist smiled briskly, a sly gleam in her green eyes, and rose from her seat.
Lockhart stood and mirrored her smile.
“I’ll be hoping for a good review of my work.”
Walking along the cobblestones, the woman picked up her notebook.
Most of her best article ideas came during or immediately after an interview.
She wanted to check the quill’s notes so she wouldn’t miss a single detail.
Flipping through the pages quickly, she suddenly froze at the last one.
In a beautiful handwriting not her own, the words were written:
“Some exotic insects possess a unique beauty that sometimes inspires me.
But that won’t stop me from crushing them if their chirping becomes irritating.
Your good friend,
Gilderoy Lockhart.”
Grabbing the locket that was supposed to protect her from Legilimency, the woman stared at the notebook with a pale face.
Watching the departing journalist with cold eyes, I swore softly in Czech.
“Bitch.”
I turned and headed back to my hotel.
Right now, I needed to properly adjust my mental defenses, taking into account the new circumstances: a new body, foreign memories, the partial personality shifts from the body-soul integration, and other minor details.
Then, I needed to plan my next moves.
What I needed most right now was information.
If…
if I really had been sent back in time, then I, the original me, should be in Germany right now, performing purification rituals on the sites of Grindelwald’s concentration camps and his Muggle pawns’ camps.
Which meant…
my wife was alive.
“Maria.”