Down, down, down Ginny fell, sufficiently slowed that it only felt as though there were a light breeze blowing upwards. She held her robes down; besides her plunged a stream of Amortentia rivaling the mightiest waterfalls in height. Curiouser and curiouser. Where would you even get that much Amortentia? The mere premise of a fountain of the stuff, which Lockhart had put forward in the Department of Mysteries, had been daunting enough. You couldn't produce this much Amortentia by sacrificing the entire magical population of the Earth. That was certainly Harry's stock in trade, breaking the rules. But how? Ginny didn't even have the slightest idea, but she was sure she'd figure it out later.

It was clear that -

It was clear that...

There were too many things that were unclear for Ginny to focus on what was clear. It seemed that Harry had deliberately gotten petrified – and in the last minute or two, since Ginny had just seen him alive – unless that was an illusion. Why? The note said that Petrification was an advanced form of Legilimency. Okay? Had Harry force-fed the Basilisk Amortentia? That kind of made sense, then; Legilimency would obviously make Amortentia more effective by giving the recipient a more accurate image of their master's desires. But then what was Ginny supposed to do? There were multiple Basilisks? How? Why? Ginny had never really thought to do Parseltongue computing with actual snakes, but she supposed the idea made sense, though it'd be much less predictable than Sapespeck, although maybe more versatile – but –

Even if Harry intended to dose the entire system of Basilisks, this much Amortentia was overkill, unless the Chamber of Secrets comprised the entire interior of the Earth, which at this point Ginny would frankly no longer find surprising.

Were Fred or George going to be okay?

Where was Lockhart hiding and what evil was he up to now? Was Ginny safe from him?

What was the point of Harry's plan, anyway? What was a Coherent Extrapolated Volition, or, for that matter, a Yalizer? What benefit could be received from talking to even a thousand Amortentia-ed Basilisks? Weren't they friendly already, on command of Salazar Slytherin? Was the idea reclaiming magical lore? Couldn't Ginny do that on her own time?

Ginny looked down, did a rough calculation of the distance to the bottom divided by the rate at which she was falling, considered the the strength of her Bubble-Head Charm, and decided it would be safe to take a nap, though she restored the Bubble-Head Charm to give herself a few extra minutes of leeway.

Ginny did not touch down, as she expected, on the damp floor immediately outside the Chamber. Instead she landed gently on a river of Amortentia; this woke her up. She made her way to a ledge, and her eyes focused on a human figure – Gilderoy Lockhart, the former Defense Professor, who was standing on the opposite ledge and had his wand trained on her. Ginny suddenly became very alert, and her wand raised.

"Expelliarmus!" said Ginny, and Gilderoy's wand left him. At this point, Ginny noticed that Lockhart was profusely miserable, to the point of tears, and had a very hard time making eye contact with her. This did not produce sympathy, but it did produce confusion, of which there was already plenty. "What are you doing here?"

"Thinking," said Lockhart. "And waiting for someone to show me a way out. There's a trail of hissing that led me to the entrance of the Chamber, no problem, but I lost my way and couldn't find an exit. Didn't think to look up. I'll be turning myself in now." Lockhart began to float upwards, towards the massive pipe in the ceiling that Ginny had come through, the pipe that was spewing Amortentia everywhere.

"Wait a minute!" said Ginny. "I'm doing something very important and I have too many questions for you."

"Everything that's been said about me is true," said Lockhart. "As well as many even more awful things that no one even suspects me of. I've done horrific, inhumane things to you, Ginny, as well as so many others." He looked genuinely apologetic, moreso than was humanly possible.

"That wasn't even a question I asked," said Ginny, with a look of disgust on her face.

"I need to go to receive what is due for my actions," said Lockhart. "Ask me whatever questions you must."

"You are displaying a completely incongruous sense of morality," said Ginny, "and you're not wearing a Bubble-Head Charm, despite the fact that you were just about to fly upwards into a waterfall of Amortentia. From this I deduce that you have already fallen victim to Amortentia. Is this correct?"

"Yes," said Lockhart. "When I heard that I had been found out, for my... actions, I immediately fled to the passageways around the Chamber of Secrets, because they are all hidden from the regular search functions of the school. Further, I had been informed that there was a passage that led out of the school and bypassed the wards. I got lost before I found any such passage, and instead decided to remain here, at the entrance to the Chamber, as an obvious Schelling Point."

"A while later, the Basilisk emerged from the Chamber," continued Lockhart, "and I panicked, and seized upon a bit of trivia I'd learned, that if confronted with a Basilisk you may face a wall and cast a timed Body-Bind upon yourself, as that will cause the Basilisk to overlook you. It did overlook me, but within a minute Amortentia began pouring out of the ceiling, and I was powerless to evade it in my Body-Bound state. Some splashed in my foolishly opened mouth, and I was immediately swept with a sense of how wrong my entire life has been. A few minutes after that, I heard the Basilisk return; I suspect it was the true target of the Amortentia."

"Probably," said Ginny. "How did you get into the Chamber? Are you a Parselmouth?"

"Lord Voldemort gave me a ring that speaks the correct pass-phrase," said Lockhart. "He had you make it. I was in league with him all year, and you were used to access the Chamber."

"Start from the beginning, please," said Ginny.

"When I was a student at Hogwarts, I was a screw-up," said Lockhart. "Brilliant – even now, knowing how terrible I am, I can say that I was brilliant – but a screw-up. I thought that I was too brilliant to benefit from study. At first I spent all my time trying to make social connections, but gave up on that when I realized how transparent I was being. I had a theory that deceptive use of mind magic could be used to attain all the benefits of other magics that I cared about, and more."

"We've seen how that goes," said Ginny.

"The war was such a pain for me," said Lockhart. "I tried to play to both sides of it, without much success. First I tried to stand with the Order or their allies, and I simply wasn't getting anywhere, so then I tried to join up with the Death Eaters. I got scared straight. Sort of. I made my pitch to them, of using mind magic to take over the world. They rejected it outright, laughed at it, said it just showed what an incompetent wizard I was. They were sort of right; I wasn't and I'm still not very good at much of anything else. So I just sucked it up and became a rank-and-file Death Eater."

"Things got even worse a couple of days later," continued Lockhart, "when I heard Voldemort bragging that he'd destroyed the Chamber of Secrets to prevent future heirs of Slytherin from learning from it, and I responded, very respectfully, I think, that I'd heard a prophecy indicating it was still active. He became absolutely enraged with me, insisting that he had cast the Killing Curse and seen the Monster die, and although he didn't punish me on the spot for questioning him, I got the impression that I wasn't much longer for this world. So I thought about it, and I did the obvious: I snuck away, cast Obliviate Maxima on the whole lot of them, so that they'd never even know that I joined them, and Apparated far away. I then packed all of my things and fled the wizarding world."

"I spent more than a decade in America," said Lockhart, "never spending more than a week in one town, living in my trunk. I finally put my money where my mouth was on my mind magic idea, and it absolutely paid off – according to my values at the time, mind you. I actually rather liked exploiting Muggles rather than wizards – if I wanted to take advantage of Muggle women in a bar, I'd merely have to impress them with magic and Obliviate them when I was done. I could take whatever I wanted – if I wanted to test out a Muggle television to see why they liked them so much, I could simply take one, and its former owners wouldn't even know they'd had a television. It felt like Heaven at the time, but looking back now, with my new set of values, I can't even quantify how much suffering I've wrought. I ruined lives, tore apart families, plundered the poor and the rich alike."

"One day, I encountered a situation that made me rethink my life," said Lockhart, "in a manner of speaking. I was burglarizing a college professor, and he woke up, and I prepared to Obliviate him, and I'd already ascertained that he was unarmed, so I commented on how I was going to Obliviate him, and he started asking questions. Good questions. He knew he was going to be Obliviated at the conclusion of our discussion, so obviously he was the submissive party, but he received a basic summary of the existence of the magical world, and he asked me if they all did the sort of thing I did. And I said no, I was the only one who'd thought to use mind magic as extensively as I did. And he asked then, if wizards were as vulnerable to mind magic as Muggles were. And I thought back to my mass-Obliviation of the Death Eaters, and said 'pretty much'. So finally he asked why I hadn't taken over the entire world, magical and Muggle alike, why I had instead decided to merely pursue Earthly pleasures among Muggles. He asked me if it wasn't among my ambitions."

"Of course it was among my ambitions," said Lockhart. "I'd merely put it on the back burner. So after Obliviating him, I developed a new resolve – and I also investigated some of the other things he'd pointed out, like studying schools of thought and technologies originating from Muggles. I came back to Britain determined to become a hero, and I'd soon completely forged a variety of heroic acts by locating freshly committed feats of heroism and using Memory Charms to claim the credit. I hadn't thought out my scheme properly, and was soon being investigated by Mad-Eye Moody himself, who was convinced I was Voldemort, which is ironic in retrospect."

"Thankfully, when Moody ascertained that I wasn't Voldemort, he was strangely willing to let me go," said Lockhart. "Apparently he'd researched, and then foolishly applied, Muggle notions of criminal justice. I then proceeded to slow down, because it wasn't in my interest to garner that kind of suspicion. One day, I received fan mail from one Draco Malfoy, asking me to meet him; I was of course flattered and agreed. But the second we were alone..." Lockhart took a deep breath. "It became abundantly clear that he was not the heir of the fabulous Malfoy fortune, but rather Voldemort, possessing someone, despite his apparent second death at the hands of Hermione Granger."

"This version of Voldemort was quite un-Obliviated, and knew that I had briefly been a Death Eater," said Lockhart. "He explained bits of his backstory to me – you see, it turned out that Voldemort made many copies of himself, and bound them to inanimate objects. This particular Voldemort-copy was subjected to various cruel experiments, and held no feelings of kinship for his creator. Voldemort kept the copy informed on the state of things, and so he heard of my existence and my plans to use mind magic. He also heard of the prophecy I passed on, and its implications for the continuing existence of the Chamber. He wasn't caught in my Obliviate Maxima because I didn't even know that he existed, and he was an inanimate object, on top of that. He held onto that knowledge, and didn't inform Voldemort of the deception, until eventually he wound up in different hands, after the main Voldemort's death. He forcefully requested a partnership with me, and, in fear for my life, I decided it would be fine to be second-in-command over the entire world."

"He pushed me into a teaching position in Hogwarts, so I would be close by," continued Lockhart, "and pointed out that I would finally be able to fulfill all the fantasies I had as a student, of being important and having authority in the school. I was happy to obey the little instructions he had, to Obliviate you of your outings to the Chamber. He needed you to use the Chamber because the Chamber's magic rejected him for attempting to kill the Basilisk; he needed a Parselmouth who could be convinced to enter of their own accord. As soon as he was in, he would fully possess you, and do whatever he desired in the Chamber."

"At first he merely smuggled out Interdicted lore," said Lockhart. "He'd teach everything the Basilisk taught him to Mr. Malfoy, and would have me Obliviate both of you of everything - under a Reversible Memory Charm, so he could retrieve it later, when his possession had grown permanent. His plan never reached that stage. Would you like me to reverse your Memory Charms? The episodic memory should come back first, which should be psychologically distressing, but the skills should all come back within days."

"Sure?" said Ginny, tentatively.

"I need my wand," said Lockhart. Ginny's discomfort grew.

"Get it," said Ginny. Lockhart had to take a swim in Amortentia to retrieve it - not that it mattered, seeing as Amortentia exposure is a binary condition. He surfaced eventually, and carefully put his wand on Ginny's forehead. She shivered.

"Bacchup," said Lockhart, and, with no fanfare, Ginny suddenly became very aware that she had been tricked dozens of times into coming to the Chamber with "Tim", often under the pretense of stopping the killer. Each time the nightmare had ended in Lockhart's office. "I'm sorry."

"No, you're not," said Ginny. "Your concept of Harry wants you to feel remorse, and is making you play the role of a remorseful person. But somewhere in there, trapped inside you, is the real Gilderoy Lockhart, and he's not sorry one bit, except for getting caught." It occurred to Ginny that Obliviating Lockhart of his entire episodic memory would be a mercy, under the circumstances. A mercy he didn't deserve.

"Correct," said Lockhart. "Anyway, back to what I was saying; Voldemort's plan slowly grew more violent; the end goal was to permanently possess you, destroying your mind inside his horcrux - eventually he decided to use Draco instead of you - and then to kill Harry and blame the attacks on him. The Chamber would be swiftly destroyed by the Ministry, finally accomplishing what he'd attempted fifty years ago. He had me do awful things in pursuit of that goal - I gave Lesath Lestrange, who was already suffering horribly socially and emotionally, a False Memory Charm so he'd think Harry had callously suggested his suicide. All to obtain a rope to use in a ritual to produce a Lethifold, all to kill you in a manner consistent with prophecy. When it didn't work owing to your unexpected Patronus, and Draco wasn't possessed, I lost contact with Voldemort, and simply felt relieved, for I could resume my plan to dominate the world alone. I doubt I could have done it, though. Just look what happened to me before the Amortentia. I was brought down by my own prurient interests."

"You're sick," said Ginny, and she spit in the river of Amortentia.

"For all the evil things Voldemort made me do, I was doing equally evil things in my free time, for pleasure," said Lockhart. "I should go and face the consequences. Why are you down here, anyway?"

"Mission from Harry," said Ginny. "He's gotten the Monster under the effects of Amortentia, and now he wants me to go down and talk to it. I'm having second thoughts, though; I just have a bad feeling-"

"Get in the gondola now," said Lockhart, whose wand was now pointed straight at Ginny, in an obvious threatening stance. Ugh, letting him keep his wand had been a mistake.

"I'll scream," suggested Ginny.

"Little girl, this is the Chamber of Secrets," said Lockhart. "No one would hear you." Ginny didn't like the way Lockhart said that one bit. She climbed into the gondola.

"Stay out," she said, as the gondola began to move. "Harry sent me alone."

"Understood," said Lockhart. "I'll be waiting here to escort you out in an hour."

"Thanks for the exposition," said Ginny, as Lockhart faded from view, and then she referred to him using an expletive.