Gilderoy Lockhart

Gilderoy Lockhart is a fictional wizard in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series, introduced prominently in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Before joining Hogwarts, he built a celebrity career through bestselling autobiographical adventure books, including Break with a Banshee, Gadding with Ghouls, Holidays with Hags, Travels with Trolls, Voyages with Vampires, Wanderings with Werewolves, and Year with the Yeti. His smiling photograph appears on the back covers and moves like other magical portraits. Lockhart says he earned the Order of Merlin, Third Class, and presents himself as a fearless defeater of dark creatures and a favorite of the public. In 1992, Hogwarts headmaster Albus Dumbledore appoints him Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher. He arrives in flamboyant turquoise robes, distributes photographs of himself, and requires students to buy his costly seven-book set. His first lesson releases Cornish pixies, then proves unable to control them. He gives Harry a quiz centered on Lockhart's own biography, establishes a Dueling Club with Severus Snape, and boasts about spells he cannot demonstrate. During the club, Snape disarms him at once, and Harry inadvertently reveals Parseltongue while stopping Draco Malfoy's conjured snake. Lockhart later presides over a disastrous Valentine's Day celebration, sending dwarfs to deliver singing messages throughout the castle. When the Chamber of Secrets is opened, Lockhart exploits the panic by claiming he can identify its monster and cure its victims. Yet when Ron Weasley and Harry find him preparing to flee Hogwarts, he admits that the achievements in his books belong to other witches and wizards. He located them, learned their stories, then used a Memory Charm to erase their memories and claim their deeds. Forced into the Chamber, he tries to erase Harry's and Ron's memories with Ron's damaged wand. The spell backfires, leaving Lockhart with severe amnesia while collapsing part of the tunnel around him. Following the battle, Lockhart spends time at St Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries. In Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Harry and friends encounter him in the hospital's long-term care ward. He recognizes neither Harry nor Ron, but retains a faint instinct for signing photographs and reacts with pleasure when given a peacock-feather quill. His mother, accompanied by him during his stay, remains proud of the heroic image his books created. Lockhart's false memoirs and damaged memory make him a comic but consequential and notable figure in Harry's second Hogwarts year.