"How did you know? My performance should have been perfect."
It was a completely emotionless face, so cold it was almost cruel, and utterly unfitting for the smooth-smiling Lockhart.
His eyes, now sharp like a snake eyeing its prey, made him look like a completely different person from the Lockhart of a moment ago.
Harry spoke to this new Lockhart. "Sorry, but Lockhart doesn't speak that logically."
"What?"
"And if Lockhart were the Heir of Slytherin, the whole world would already know about it. It would be written on the first page of every one of his autobiographies, advertised as 'The Book by Lockhart, Heir of Slytherin'."
The man wearing Lockhart's face thought for a moment, then smirked. "Well, now. It seems there's a slight difference between the memories etched into this body and how the world perceives him."
He spread his arms wide as if in an exaggerated play. "Things would have been so much simpler if you had just killed this body right here. 'The Boy Who Lived' murders a promising young genius author. Quite a nice picture to paint, isn't it?"
Harry gripped the holly wand in his hand tightly. Then he asked, "Where is the real Professor Lockhart? And since when?"
Lockhart, who had tucked his own wand away as if Harry posed no threat at all, replied, "My, my, Harry Potter. Your intuition is still lacking, it seems. This *is* the real Lockhart. Can't you tell? That this body is truly his? That there isn't even that subtle gap that Polyjuice or Transfiguration can't fill?"
He spoke mockingly, but in truth, it was a bit much to expect Harry to discern such a subtle difference. A well-brewed Polyjuice Potion was difficult for even Dumbledore to detect easily, and besides, the Transfiguration magic Harry was used to seeing was none other than Aisen's.
There was never a flaw in Aisen's Transfiguration.
Still, Harry set all those facts aside. The only thing he needed to consider was calculating his next move in this situation.
*'So, it's just as I thought. Someone else has possessed Professor Lockhart's body. In that case, if I use Crucio now, can I inflict pain on the heir's mind?'*
As Harry's mind raced through the calculations, the heir continued.
"And as for 'since when'… well."
The heir's eyes slanted ominously as he smiled. "Since I attacked your friend, Weasley, perhaps?"
The heir then watched Harry's face intently. A faint look of disappointment flickered across his expression when he saw not even a twitch of a change.
"How dull. Well, Weasleys have always been a nuisance in every era. Even if he wasn't your friend, I probably would have attacked him eventually."
Harry, his expression still unchanged, asked, "So, why did you come looking for me?"
The heir asked back as if it were absurd. "After a provocation like that, did you really think I wouldn't come? If so, I'm very disappointed."
The heir's face changed completely, and he spoke as if chewing on every single word. "Obviously, I've come to take back what should have been mine. And to catch a brat who doesn't know his place and runs wild, relying only on his famous name."
From that short conversation, Harry was able to gather several pieces of information.
The heir was a spiritual entity capable of moving between bodies. He also possessed considerable pride in being the Heir of Slytherin.
A person with an enormous ego, and the ability to back it up.
Naturally, only one name came to Harry's mind.
Though there were several holes in his logic, Harry trusted his wizard's intuition and spoke.
"Tom Riddle."
"What?"
"You're Voldemort."
This time, for real, the heir's face hardened completely, not a shred of pretense remaining.
After a long moment of frozen silence, the heir—Tom Riddle—opened his mouth.
"…Harry Potter. The Boy Who Lived. It seems your fame is not entirely undeserved."
Though he was wearing Lockhart's face, he flicked his tongue in a way that was not at all like Lockhart. "I suppose it would be best to deal with you here."
Harry retorted with a crooked smile, "You're going to try again what you failed to do last year?"
At those words, Tom Riddle's face soured once more. From that reaction, Harry realized that the Tom Riddle before him and the Voldemort he had faced last year were not entities that shared the same memories.
*It's not like he's a cockroach, laying eggs to replicate himself,* Harry thought, inwardly astonished.
Harry taunted him again. "And surely you didn't think I came here completely unprepared?"
As they glared at each other, beams of light collided between them.
***
Turning back the clock, to that morning.
Hermione was feeling gloomy again today.
She had been walking around alone for nearly a week.
Ron had been attacked by the Heir of Slytherin and was barely clinging to life. Harry, seemingly shocked by Ron's condition, had become a recluse.
Aisen was on a "self-declared vacation" or something and still hadn't returned.
For Hermione, who usually spent her time with them, there were few others she could call friends. Even when she assessed herself objectively, she knew her personality wasn't exactly easy to get along with.
Naturally, she had become an outcast in Gryffindor.
And that wasn't the only reason for her gloom.
"Is that her?"
"Yeah, the Muggle-born…"
"She's so lucky…"
"She's definitely next…"
Whispers followed her everywhere she went.
Muggle-born. Mudblood.
As the student who held the firm second-place position right behind Aisen, she was in the perfect position to be the target of her peers' jealousy.
And to top it off, she was a Muggle-born, not a pure-blood or even a half-blood.
It was inevitable that the envious gazes directed at her would soon turn into raw hatred.
Moreover, since the Chamber of Secrets had been opened, the volume of those voices had been growing louder.
Discrimination based on birth is wrong. As long as that social norm existed, whether people followed it or not, overt acts of discrimination against her were bound to be limited.
But after the Chamber of Secrets was opened, that norm had shattered.
The Heir of Slytherin was already slaughtering the enemies of Slytherin, so what was wrong with bad-mouthing a Muggle-born now?
On top of that, with all her friends gone, it was a natural progression for Hermione to become the target of slander.
The ominous Muggle-born who eats her friends. The Mudblood who doesn't know her place.
These and other insulting nicknames were what she had been hearing lately.
When Hermione entered the Great Hall for lunch and sat down, the people around her scattered as if a tide was receding.
*Isn't this the miracle of Moses?* she thought. *No, maybe Moses was a real wizard. The wizarding world defies common sense.*
After a brief moment of reflection, she silently picked up her utensils.
Hermione muttered through clenched teeth, "…It doesn't matter."
At the dining table where no one approached, she simply took out the book she was carrying in her pocket and began to read quietly.
She loved books. Especially textbooks.
Because, unlike people, they never spoke lies that changed.
Also, they didn't discriminate.
They didn't impart knowledge to only a select few, nor did they judge their readers.
A book gives knowledge fairly to anyone who opens it.
That fairness was precisely why Hermione loved books.
In that sense, books were her teacher, her goal, and her idol.
Perhaps that was why, even after learning what a worthless person Lockhart was, she couldn't tear her admiring gaze away from him. After all, he was the author of the books she admired.
Hermione turned a page of Lockhart's *Voyages with Vampires* with a smile far too bitter for a twelve-year-old.
While she was reading, she felt detached from her reality.
As if she wasn't a friendless, outcast, Muggle-born witch, but a 'real witch' traveling through the pages of a book.
But reality seemed unwilling to even grant her a moment of escape. Hermione looked up from her book.
Footsteps were approaching her through the parted sea of the Great Hall.
It was Malfoy, who had recently established himself as the center of Slytherin, leading his cronies toward her.
Hermione tried to ignore them and focus on her meal, but she couldn't.
"Wingardium Leviosa."
Malfoy had drawn his wand and, in an instant, snatched her book with a Levitation Charm. Hermione slammed her utensils down and said with a frown, "Give it back."
Ignoring her protest, Malfoy flipped through the book and said mockingly, "Well, well. Look how worn this book is. How many times have you read it? Lockhart would be so pleased."
Then he looked at Hermione with contempt. "Granger, you must be happy getting good grades under a professor like that? Do you think you're something special just because you get good grades?"
Hermione was about to retort, but the words caught in her throat.
For a fleeting moment, the thought had crossed her own mind: what was the point of getting good grades under Lockhart?
To think she would lose a logical argument to the likes of Malfoy. Hermione fell silent.
Malfoy continued, "What do you think will change just because you're second in the class? You must still have some of that dirty water in you from coming from Muggle society, haven't you?"
"What did you say?"
"We wizards are different from Muggles who love to rank everything. Don't you get it? No matter how you rank second or first, no wizard will ever acknowledge you. We wizards aren't Muggles who look up to people just because they have a high number next to their name."
Malfoy's words were like daggers. "That is the fundamental difference between a Muggle-born like you and a wizard-born like us. An innate limitation you can never overcome."
Hermione forced her voice through clenched teeth. "…So what if it is? That's none of your business. Now give me back my book."
"Oh, not my business? Of course it is."
Looking down at Hermione, Malfoy said, "As a proud Slytherin student, isn't it natural to clean up trash when you see it on the street?"
"Trash?"
"Yes, a filthy Mudblood like you who disrupts the culture of wizards."
Hearing such an unspeakable insult for the first time in her life, Hermione's face froze like ice.
The Slytherin students standing behind Malfoy snickered, finding it amusing.
Malfoy surveyed the scene, then smirked, waving the book in one hand. "So, what if I don't give this book back? What are you going to do about it? What can you do, with no friends? 'The Mudblood who eats her friends'."
Hermione gritted her teeth.
If any of the other Weasley brothers had been there, they might have helped her, but among those remaining in the Great Hall, there was no one with a kind enough heart to stand up to Malfoy's gang for her sake.
Malfoy sneered at Hermione and said one last thing. "Be careful, Granger. I only came here to warn you. Now that all your friends are gone, you'll be the next enemy of Slytherin. Filthy blood."
Then he turned and left with his gang, snickering, holding her book in one hand as if it were filth-covered trash.
Just then, a familiar voice was heard.
"This school is a complete mess."
***
*Strange. I haven't even been gone a month. How could the school have become such a mess?*
***