An Unlikely Duo 2: The Chamber of Secrets

Lockhart gets what he deserves

Nico had never been more right.

The class hadn't even started yet, and Artemis looked murderous.

Nico had no idea what Lockhart had ever done to make Artemis hate him this much, but he had a vague feeling that he was going to find out.

When the whole class was seated, Lockhart cleared his throat loudly and silence fell. He reached forward, picked up Neville Longbottom's copy of Travels with Trolls and held it up to show his own, winking portrait on the front.

"Me," he said, pointing at it and winking as well, 'Gilderoy Lockhart, Order of Merlin, Third Class, Honorary Member of the Dark Force Defense League and five times winner of Witch Weekly's Most Charming-Smile Award – but I don't talk about that. I didn't get rid of the Bandon Banshee by smiling at her!"

He paused for laughter, and a few people smiled weakly, just to be polite.

"I see you've all bought a complete set of my books – well done. I thought we'd start today with a little quiz. Nothing to worry about – just to check how well you've read them, how much you've taken in ..."

When he had handed out the test papers he returned to the front of the class and said, "You have thirty minutes. Start – now!"

Nico looked down at his question paper.

1. What is Gilderoy Lockhart's favorite color? 

2. What is Gilderoy Lockhart's secret ambition? 

3. What, in your opinion, is Gilderoy Lockhart's greatest achievement to date?

He looked down at the three sides of paper in horror. Every single question was about Lockhart. Not a single thing about Defense Against the Dark Arts.

He was starting to see why Artemis hated him so much.

He looked up from his paper to see half the class exchanging exasperated glances with each other. He caught Artemis's eye and gestured as subtly as he could towards the question paper.

Artemis had no such reservations, and all but smacked his paper in frustration. 

Nico imagined that he was trying to tell him something like, 'Can you believe this bumbling idiot?'

He shrugged at him, before turning to his paper and starting to doodle mini Cerberuses on his paper.

A few minutes later, most people seemed to have gotten over their shock, and had bent down to fill in their questionnaires. Nico doubted that any of them actually knew the answers, but at least they were trying(or they appeared to be, anyway)! The same could not be said for Artemis.

Artemis was sitting up straight, his posture stiff, and he was pointedly ignoring the paper that had been placed in front of him, practically begging Lockhart to notice him.

The Professor continued to ignore him, which was his fatal mistake. No one ignores Artemis Fowl and gets away with it. 

"Ahem." Artemis cleared his throat loudly, causing several students to look up at him.

Lockhart barely glanced at him.

Artemis tried again, "Ahem!" he said louder, resulting in a slight twitch of Lockhart's eye.

"Mr. Fowl," Professor Lockhart gritted out, still smiling his award winning smile, "Do you have a question?"

"I do actually." Artemis said, standing up, "I wanted to ask you where you put our question papers." he said pleasantly, his polite tone never wavering.