(Word Count: 2,353)
Harry once again woke up later than usual, due to the long night he had. 'I really need to slow down on these nighttime adventures,' he thought with a tired yawn. He rolled out of bed.
Ron, Seamus, and Dean were already awake, playing cards in the center of the room next to the heating stove. As Harry opened the curtains, they all looked over.
"Merlin, Harry! You look like a ghoul!" Ron said.
"Yeah, mate! What time did you go to sleep? You're usually up way before us," Dean asked.
Harry scrubbed the tiredness out of his face as best he could. "Way too late," Harry muttered. He needed caffeine. "I'm heading down. Meet you down there?"
He quickly magicked himself so he was clean and presentable for the day, and went down to the common room.
Coincidentally, as he was coming down the stairs, on the other side of the common room, he saw Hermione coming down as well.
They noticed each other at the same time and met each other's eyes. Harry felt a spike of panic, nervousness, and embarrassment from Hermione before she brutally shoved those feelings down, though she couldn't quite get rid of them. She gave a warm, if a bit forced, smile. "Good morning, Harry," she said, tucking her hair behind her ear as best she could.
"Hey, Hermione. Breakfast?" Harry greeted with a warm smile of his own.
"Yeah. Breakfast."
They went down to the great hall for breakfast together as they usually do. As Harry ate his breakfast and read his letters, Harry also checked in on the quests that he had completed.
[Year 2 Quests:
Fate Quests: Hagrid's Friend Aragog, Gilderoy Lockhart
Magic Quests: Acromantula Nest, Centaurs,
Death Quests:
Overall Quests:
Fate: Fulfill the Prophecy, The Snake Nagini, Draco's Dilemma
Magic: Ravenclaw's Diadem, Slytherin's Locket, Hufflepuff's Cup, Find Excalibur!, Room of Requirement (repeatable), Magical Tutor (Repeatable)
Death: Horcruxes, Ghosts of Hogwarts
Completed Quests:
Fate: Polyjuice Potion[!], Hagrid's Arrest[!], Death Day[!], Chamber of Secrets[!], Slytherin's Monster[!]
Magic: N/A
Death: Slay the Basilisk[!]]
He had a lot of Quests now completed. He also noticed that Magic's basilisk Quest was gone. He winced at that, and hoped it didn't offend her too much.
He loved magic. So making Magic mad at him wasn't exactly the wisest move.
He opened up the first Fate Quest.
[Fate Quest: Polyjuice Potion
You avoided this whole situation and missed out on a cute cat-girl Hermione. Shame on you.
Reward: +1 Control]
Well, it was a shame, but he couldn't exactly justify to himself the need for it when he knew where the diary would show up.
[Fate Quest: Hagrid's Arrest
Well done! You prevented all of the attacks on the school, which made it so Hagrid wasn't unjustly arrested again!
Reward: +1 Magizoology]
Now this was good! His Magizoology was now 13, getting close to another perk. Speaking of Hagrid, he should definitely pay the gentle giant a visit soon. It had been a while since he had last visited. Although, with the two Quests regarding the acromantulas, he would have to visit the forbidden forest to clean them out. Hagrid will not like that at all.
Harry's heart twinged with a bit of guilt, knowing Hagrid loved Arogog a lot.
[Fate Quest: Death Day!
You rejected Nearly-Headless Nick's invitation to the Death Day party. Probably for the best. It's kind of gross.
Reward: +1 Focus]
Even if the Reward was a new perk, he wouldn't have gone to that party.
… Okay, he probably would have.
[Fate Quest: Chamber of Secrets
You've descended into the depths of the Chamber of Secrets to face your greatest ene—well, Riddle wasn't there, so it was hardly climactic. Hey, at least you brought your friends with you. The other young wizards really need the experience.
Reward: +1 Curses]
[Fate Quest: Slytherin's Monster!
You've slain the basilisk using its weakness against it. Smart, but really boring compared to killing it with the Sword of Gryffindor. Still, it's dead now.
Reward: +1 Magizoology]
Harry grinned. Two class levels! Last night was very lucrative. While he didn't want to delve too deeply into the dark arts, he did happen to use the Confringo curse when he was actually fighting something with the intent to kill—ike his fight against Quirrellmort—so any level in Curses would help with that. And with countercurses.
He looked at his final quest, the Death quest.
[Death Quest: Slay the Basilisk
You've done well in staying the beast. The world is rid of that evil creature.
Reward: +1 Curses, Perk: Basilisk Slayer, Basilisk Fang Dagger]
He didn't know how the dagger would appear, and he didn't want it to appear right in front of him at the breakfast table, so he didn't claim that reward just yet. He would claim it when he was alone.
But he did claim the perk and the class point.
[Perk Gained: Basilisk Slayer
Immunity to fear effects. Increased damage against magical creatures. Serpent-based creatures can sense you've slain a basilisk and will honor you.]
'Eh, I'll take it,' Harry mentally shrugged. Fear effects were largely a non-issue for him, considering he was already a master occlumens. Serpent-based creatures were already somewhat respectful towards him considering he's a Parselmouth. Though, thinking about some of the comments his snake summons made about him, maybe this was a good thing. 'I'd like to hear them now,' Harry thought.
The only thing completely new was the increased damage to Magic creatures. But he only really needed that against larger, magically resistant creatures. He didn't really plan on making that a common occurrence.
He closed his screen and focused back on the letters he was opening. The last few letters he had opened and scanned while he was reading the system screen were just basic business updates from Noggrap, his banker, over his financial investments, and other banking reports.
Now, with his full attention, he opened a letter from Sirius.
Harry!
Man, you wouldn't believe the trip I had! I've looked into the list of people you've sent me, and found the first one! He didn't believe me when I told him he had been obliviated, I tried everything to convince him to come back to St. Mungos and get checked up. I ended up having to pay the guy to come get checked out, can you believe this guy? I had to give him a whole 200 Galleons!
Well, you were right, the healers did manage to find evidence of obliviated memories, but there's nothing we can do about that.
I'm not really sure what you hope to achieve with these obliviated folk. If you have any idea what you want to do next, tell me so I can get everything ready before you come back home for Christmas.
Love,
Sirius
P.s. There's going to be a real shock for you once you come home.
Harry had sent Sirius to track down the people that had been obliviated by Lockhart, even those that Lockhart had barely messed with. His main victims, those that had actually done the things Lockhart was claiming for himself, were all fully obliviated all the way back to the time before the adventure took place. Sometimes it was only months missing, sometimes years.
These victims obviously knew they were missing memories. The unknowing victims were where Lockhart was more subtle about things, only erasing or altering key memories.
Dumbledore's friend was one of the unfortunate ones that lost more than 2 years of memories.
As for the big question, if canon Hermione in the epilogue was able to restore her parents memories of her, then surely Dumbledore could restore the memories of his friend, right? Unfortunately, the films cause this misunderstanding. In the books, it wasn't an obliviate spell she used. In fact, it was never stated what spell she used, or if she used several, but whatever she used it did far more than just erase her parents memories of her. She also added whole new identities for them.
Whatever it was she did, it was reversible. Obliviate was not. At least, not by conventional means. There was no "undo obliviate" counterspell. If it was easy to undo, then there wouldn't be an issue with getting Dumbledore's friend's memories back, and Lockhart would have been imprisoned a long time ago.
To undo an obliviate spell, it required extensive knowledge on what memories were erased in the first place. Oftentimes, not even the one doing the obliviate knows that. Most obliviators would simply erase all memories within the last 5 or 10 minutes when dealing with accidental magic exposure.
Lockhart likely does the same thing, but with months or years. He's not likely a legilimens that takes care to observe the memories before wiping them out.
Without this knowledge of the lost memories, they were largely considered impossible to restore.
With this knowledge, it was still extraordinarily difficult. There was only one recorded instance of a successful restoration, and that was done by the same hand that erased them in the first place. There has been some debate among scholars on whether or not the wizard actually succeeded, or if he hadn't just implanted his own memories of the event that was erased.
However, Harry was banking on the fact that this success was real. He theorized that the obliviate spell may not completely destroy the memories. There may be enough bits and pieces left deep within the subconscious mind to piece them back together again.
With knowledge of the lost memories, it was a matter of summoning those memories out of the depths of the mind. The legilimens doing it didn't have to delve into the subconscious themselves. But Harry would have to go into the subconscious, retrieve them, and piece them together himself.
Honestly, if Hermione did use obliviate on her parents, and managed to restore a lifetime's worth of memories, then kudos to her. That would be seriously impressive.
He wrote back to Sirius, telling him this plan and for him to make sure the man was close by sometime during Christmas break so they can test this theory. Or, if not him, then to find one of the other victims that would be willing to be the test subject for this experiment.
If it succeeds, then he would be able to go to all of the victims and offer to restore their memories, and finally have the testimonies and evidence to convict Lockhart.
Because they had gotten a far later start to the day than usual, the great hall was filled with students getting their own breakfast, and it was nearly time for the first period classes to begin.
Ginny, Neville, Susan, and Hannah, were still not down yet. Luna was sitting over at the Ravenclaw tables, looking as bright and cheerful as she could be, as if she hadn't been up past 2 last night.
Ron, Seamus, and Dean came down and sat beside him.
"Well, you're looking better now," Seamus nudged playfully.
"Yeah, now that he's had his caffeine," Dean laughed. "You're like an old man, Harry."
"Shut up," Harry grumbled, setting his letters down with a grin.
"So what were you guys up to last night? Both you and Neville are dead tired. We had to pull him out of bed before we left, or he'd have slept straight through the first period, I reckon," Ron said.
Harry glanced at Hermione. She shook her head slightly, but he shrugged. "It has something to do with a potential danger I had foreseen. We took care of it last night so it wouldn't bother anyone again."
"What was it?" Dean asked, leaning forward curiously.
"A basilisk!" A voice said proudly from behind them.
They all turned and found Ginny standing proudly with her fists planted on her hips. She grinned at Ron. "And you'll never guess how we killed it. Our rooster, Babbitty! He crowed once and it was dead!"
"No way! Babbitty? You're joking, what can a chicken do?" Ron asked.
"I'm serious! Just ask Harry or Hermione," Ginny said.
Ron looked at them for confirmation, and they nodded.
"Your rooster's named Babbity? Like the rabbit?" Harry grinned.
Ron flushed red, "Shut up," he grumbled.
"Wait, I'm confused," Seamus interrupted, "What's a basilisk? And what does a chicken have to do with anything?"
"A basilisk is a 5-X rated magical beast that can kill anything with a single glance into its eyes. It also has some of the most potent venoms in the world," Hermione said seriously, lifting her book she was reading, and held up the page depicting basilisks. "They're extremely magically resistant, but they have a fatal weakness: the crow of a rooster. Harry and Ginny fetched… Babbity, last night."
"Wicked!" Fred and George said in unison, sitting down on the other side next to Hermione.
"Our fearsome Babbity slew a beast like that?" Fred asked with a huge grin.
"But sneaking out of the castle, Gin?" George leaned in conspiratorially. "What would Mom say?"
Ginny bristled, "As if you two don't do the same thing!"
Fred and George both pretended to wipe away a tear. "We're so proud."
Then they turned to Harry, with a more serious expression on their faces. "But Harry, what's this we're hearing about you bringing Ginny to face a monster like a basilisk?"
Harry was about to defend himself when Ginny stepped in first.
"Don't you go blaming Harry!" She said fiercely, "I'm the one that decided to go with him! I wanted to come along!"
They looked at Ginny, and sighed heavily.
"Right. Merlin knows no one can convince you of anything when you set your mind on something," George said.
"Sorry you had to put up with her, Harry," Fred gave Harry a sympathetic look.
"What's that supposed to mean?" Ginny asked, offended.
"Nothing!" Fred and George said, and they went over to sit with the others in their year.
The rest of breakfast passed quickly, and Neville made it in time to snag a pastry from the table before they all had to go to Monday morning class.