I Did A Little Bit More Than That

Gilderoy Lockhart is a fame-obsessed fop. Readers first meet him at Flourish and Blotts, the go-to bookstore for Hogwarts students. He is then found out as a fraud, becomes a villain (of sorts), and gains the dubious distinction of being the second ill-fated Defense Against the Dark Arts in the Harry Potter universe. Why is he so vain, though? And for a wizard who has a great talent for executing Memory Charms, why does he only manage to achieve notoriety instead of greatness? I set out to write a series of fanfiction vignettes about his origins as a villain and, therefore, to wrestle with those questions.