Monday, February 20, 1995
(Gilderoy Lockhart)
I was currently watching as Hagrid finished the class on Fire Crabs with the fourth years.
Since I had promised Dumbledore I would take Hagrid as my assistant and train him until he became a competent professor, I had been guiding him slowly, allowing him to take on a little more responsibility with each passing month.
Today, for the first time, I had even entrusted him with teaching most of the lesson himself.
At the beginning of class, he had been a nervous wreck.
His enormous hands fidgeted constantly, his voice had cracked several times, and he had nearly introduced the Fire Crabs as "lovely little fellas" before remembering they had a tendency to explode.
Now, however, judging by the broad smile hidden beneath his wild beard, most of those nerves had disappeared.
He was answering the students' questions confidently, occasionally demonstrating something himself, and the fourth-years were listening with genuine interest.
It was obvious.
Hagrid truly loved teaching about magical creatures.
He simply needed someone to believe he could do it.
And unlike the original timeline, where he had unleashed the horrifying monstrosities he called Blast-Ended Skrewts upon generations of unsuspecting students, this year there was thankfully no such abomination crawling around the grounds.
Mainly because I had firmly vetoed his idea of crossbreeding Fire Crabs with Manticores the moment he mentioned it.
Besides producing creatures that looked like nightmares given physical form...
"It is also highly illegal," I had reminded him, repeatedly.
To his credit, Hagrid had looked genuinely surprised.
Apparently he had thought the Ministry only frowned upon breeding Acromantulas, which he had already done judging by the giant colony living in the Forbidden Forest…
As the lesson came to an end, the students began packing away their things and making their way back toward the castle in cheerful groups.
I was just about to congratulate Hagrid on another successful lesson when Harry unexpectedly broke away from his friends and approached me.
His black hair somehow looked even messier than usual, as though he had spent the morning repeatedly running both hands through it.
More concerning were the dark bags beneath his eyes.
The poor boy looked like he hadn't enjoyed a proper night's sleep in quite some time.
"Professor Lockhart," he began hesitantly.
"Yes, Mr Potter?" I replied pleasantly. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"
Harry glanced nervously to either side before looking back toward Hermione and Ron, who were waiting a short distance away.
Hermione gave him an encouraging nod.
Ron gave him a thumbs-up.
Harry inhaled deeply, apparently gathering his courage.
"I was wondering if... you could offer some insight about the golden egg clue for the second task."
I raised an eyebrow.
"Mr Potter..."
I looked at him for a long moment.
"There's merely four days until the second task... and you're telling me you still haven't deciphered the clue?"
Harry winced.
"You've had three months."
His expression became increasingly sheepish.
"What have you been doing all this time?"
"I have tried," he protested. "But every time I open the egg, all that comes out are those awful shrieks. How am I supposed to get any clue from that?"
I stared at him in disbelief.
Three months.
Three whole months...
...and he hadn't even attempted a different approach.
He had simply kept opening the egg exactly the same way over and over again.
Sometimes I genuinely wondered whether Gryffindors mistook stubbornness for problem-solving.
I pinched the bridge of my nose. "Tell me, Harry. Have you tried opening it somewhere else?"
He blinked. "Somewhere else?"
"Indeed," I said. "Perhaps in the sky. Underground. Somewhere with... different surroundings."
I smiled mysteriously.
"I won't tell you the answer directly, of course. That would be against the tournament's rules."
"But sometimes," I continued, "changing your environment changes your perspective."
Harry stood completely still.
Then, slowly...
His eyes widened. "I..."
A grin spread across his face. "I think I understand!"
"I certainly hope so," I said dryly.
"Thank you, Professor!"
Without another word, Harry hurried back toward Ron and Hermione, excitement replacing the anxiety that had weighed on his shoulders moments earlier.
I slowly shook my head as I watched the golden trio disappear across the lawn.
Harry was walking much faster now, practically dragging Ron along while Hermione hurried after them, already launching into a rapid stream of theories that made both boys look increasingly overwhelmed.
Good.
At least they were finally doing something.
I folded my arms behind my back and let out a long sigh.
"Three months..."
I shook my head slowly.
"Three entire months."
The clue had been sitting in Harry's room since the first task, and only now, with four days remaining, had he decided to ask for help.
Honestly, if the boy weren't so spectacularly talented at surviving impossible situations, I would have started worrying about his common sense.
Then again...
Perhaps that was exactly why he survived. He never had enough time to overthink anything.
"I have tried," I muttered, imitating Harry's voice. "'Every time I open the egg, it screams.'"
Of course it screamed.
It was designed to scream.
The whole point of the clue was to make the champions think beyond the obvious.
Had none of them wondered why the egg produced a sound?
Or perhaps they had simply assumed magical objects enjoyed being irritating.
A perfectly reasonable assumption, admittedly.
I rubbed the bridge of my nose.
"Three months," I repeated.
One would think that with Miss Granger beside him, who has been hailed as the brightest witch of her generation since she first set foot in Hogwarts, they would have solved something that simple within the first afternoon.
Hermione Granger was brilliant, incredibly hardworking, and painfully organised.
The sort of student who probably colour-coded her revision schedules.
If anyone should have deciphered the clue almost immediately, it was her.
Yet somehow...
I suddenly paused.
Actually.
Now that I thought about it...
A knowing smile slowly spread across my face.
Oh.
That explained quite a lot.
Harry and Hermione had started dating shortly after the Yule Ball.
Ever since then, whenever I saw them outside lessons, they were almost always together.
Studying together.
Walking together.
Sharing meals together.
Sneaking longing glances at one another during class.
Occasionally forgetting I possessed functioning eyesight.
Not that I particularly minded.
Young love was a beautiful thing.
It simply happened to be spectacularly distracting.
I could still remember walking past the library one evening intending to borrow a book for some light reading.
Instead, I had found the two of them tucked away behind one of the taller shelves.
There had certainly been books present.
Whether either of them had been reading them was another matter entirely.
I had quietly turned around and left without announcing my presence.
Some things were best left unseen.
Another memory surfaced.
Only last week I had assigned a short essay on the behavioural differences between mountain trolls and forest trolls.
Harry's essay had contained three paragraphs.
The first discussed trolls.
The second somehow drifted into praising Hermione's note-taking.
The third appeared to have been written while staring directly at her instead of the parchment.
Miss Granger's own essay, meanwhile, had been flawless...
...except that halfway through an otherwise excellent explanation of troll migration patterns, she had accidentally written "Harry" instead of "however."
I chuckled to myself.
I suppose that explains why neither of them solved the clue.
They had spent the last three months snogging each other senseless instead of solving tournament riddles.
Not that I could truly blame them.
I had once been their age as well.
Hard to believe, I know.
Looking this magnificent, one might assume I had been hand-crafted by the gods looking exactly like this.
But I, too, had once been a hopelessly lovestruck teenager.
Granted...
I had also been devastatingly handsome.
Some things never changed.
I smiled to myself as I turned toward the castle.
Still...
If they survive adolescence, they might actually make a rather lovely couple.
Then I frowned thoughtfully.
I just hope Mr Weasley doesn't die of third-wheeling before graduation.
Poor Ronald.
Being best friends with a newly enamoured couple was a burden few deserved to bear.
Shaking my head with a sympathetic sigh for the redhead's suffering, I headed back toward the castle.
I had lessons to prepare, fan-mail to read…
...and a growing suspicion that Harry Potter would return in approximately two days claiming he had discovered that the clue worked underwater.
Naturally.
As though it had been entirely his own idea.
…
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