Chapter 3: Chapter 3 SNAFU
It was on October 31st, 2004, that Harry finally succeeded. He had won the Final War. The mighty task of killing the monstrosity known as Lord Voldemort, oops, make that Voldewhore, was complete. In the final battle at what was left of the Ministry for Magic, he had taken Riddle head-on. He had done that many times before, but this time he out-right won — he had killed Riddle with the Sword of Gryffindor. He had finally eliminated that abomination from the face of Earth.
It was a cadmean victory though.
Tom's insanity had dragged the Muggles into the Wizarding U.K.'s Pure-blood Civil War. Tom simply did not understand the power the Muggles had. His last real interaction with the Muggles had been the year before World War II ended, 1944. He had missed entirely the United States dropping the Atom Bombs on Japan in August 1945. If he had realized the damage just one of those could do, he never would have bothered the Muggles.
His failed Death Eater attack on the Prime Minister and Her Majesty the Queen at Buckingham Palace in 2000 had been an unmitigated disaster for the Wizards. Yes, one Wizard can kill dozens, or even hundreds, of Muggles, but even bees can swarm and kill a man. And the ratio of Muggles to Wizards in England was 600-to-one in 2000. Most Muggle-born could do the math, Tom Riddle, A.K.A. Lord Voldewhore, certainly hadn't bothered to do so.
The turning point was when the Muggle death toll from attacks reached 15,000 in one year. The Obliviators simply couldn't keep up, and that Voldewhore and the Death Eater's were in charge of the Ministry and the D.M.L.E.'s didn't help either. The Muggle military, with the help of a few Muggle-borns who had turned to the Muggle government after seeing their families killed at the instigation of the Ministry, started with ordinary tactics. However, the shields and protective enchantments the Wizards used demonstrated the impracticality of that approach in the first month. And few, read none, non-Muggle-born Wizards came to help the Muggles, so the Muggles quickly adopted a policy of annihilation instead of confrontation for all non-Muggle-born.
They started using cannon-fired tactical nukes on Wizard enclaves. No wizarding shield can stand up to the 10-million degree heat of a nuke. And while electronics fail in a magic field, few magic fields extend to the height necessary to affect an exploding nuclear bomb. A bomb capable of creating a crater a 500 yards in diameter when it explodes 300 yards in the air above a target creates a blast wave that goes through protective enchantments like a blow torch through a marshmallow. And unplottable only works if you haven't plotted everywhere else! Their orbital satellites certainly helped the Muggles in that regard. They didn't know what was in the blank spot on their charts that the computers said was there but they couldn't see, but the Queen's Government certainly didn't approve it. That made it fair game.
In a matter of a month, the U.K. Wizarding population plummeted fifty percent.
In desperation, the Wizards turned to the imperius, but the Muggle military was long used to enemy infiltration and quickly adopted measures to mitigate the attacks. And when you have isolated teams that only work via radio, and require two confirming sources for their orders, how do you get close enough to the decision maker to use the imperius? Especially when you have a clue-less Pure-blood whose understanding of passing as a Muggle was zero. A few times they did succeed, though, changing instructions or coordinates, and sent the nukes towards Muggle London or another large city. By the end of a year, the U.K. Wizarding population numbered less than ten thousand, and six million Muggles had perished. Which only hardened the Muggle's resolve to eradicate the Wizards.
By the second year, less than two thousand Wizards remained alive, while the Muggles had suffered another three million deaths.
And the blatant violations of the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy brought the world's attention to the magical world. With the typical Wizard response being one of obliviation for the Muggles, the war spread rapidly. Obliviating a local Muggle witness doesn't help when someone kilometres away on the receiving end of a video camera saw what had happened. And that viewer saw the Wizard doing the obliviating as well.
Wizardkind was dead; the survivors just didn't know it. The shopping districts, the business districts, Hogwarts, the Ministry, Wizarding villages, the Quidditch stadiums — all provided gathering areas where Wizards and Witches could congregate and meet potential spouses. Those were now nothing more than smoking ruins.
The Magic gene is a small genetic variation affecting less than two-tenths of one percent of the world's population in the 20th Century. Without the support structure of magical villages, schools, shopping districts and other places Wizards and Witches could congregate, any Wizards or Witches that were born now would be unable to find a spouse to propagate the species. The situation was the same as it had been over a thousand years ago. Wizards and Witches had to wander the world to find others of their kind. Only today's world provided a near infinite number of ways where a Muggle could detect the Wizard or Witch hiding in their midst. And the ratio of Wizards to Muggles now was so much higher. A needle in a haystack was easy by comparison.
The spells to find these new Wizards were lost with the destruction of the governmental buildings and schools. So now there was no way to reach those new Wizards and Witches to tell them about the Magic community and to show them how to use their magic. Any infants born now were sports, one-off flukes whose accidental magic would end up killing them when it finally revealed them to the now-virulently anti-magic Muggle governments. And any who did survive would marry a non-magical spouse and eventually the gene that allowed for magic would disappear from the gene pool.
The magical species — centaurs, giants, trolls, and so forth — had simply been wiped out. They usually inhabited isolated locations with no shielding whatsoever. Tactical nukes finished them off handily. Not even the Goblins and Dwarves could survive a nuke driven deep into their tunnels by a Muggle-born suicide squad intent on revenge against all things magical for destroying their families.
The Muggle world was licking its wounds. The Magic War had done something nothing else had — united the various warring Muggle tribes into a cohesive whole. That cooperation, of course, would soon break apart into disagreeing factions. But the war had shown they could work together against a common enemy, no matter their individual differences. That experience would temper future disagreements, and help keep them focused on finding and eliminating any new Wizards or Witches. Mitigating the environmental damage of the war, ironically, were the few surviving Muggle-born Wizards and Witches who were using their magic to clean up the radioactive bombing sites and restoring them to usefulness.
And to think, it all began to unravel because of one selfish "pig-stupid" Weasley: Ronald the Jealous Git.
His brother, Bill, had taken him in after he had left Harry and Hermione in the Forest of Dean during what should have been their seventh year at Hogwarts. He had watched the boy mope around his apartment for weeks. Misunderstanding the boy's inherent laziness as guilt, Bill had taken him to dinner at the Leaky Cauldron. He had planned to console Ron with his favourite activity — eating. When Bill tried to persuade him to "let out his guilt," Ron had angrily shouted the details of their secret horcrux-hunting mission in the crowded pub.
Harry blamed Dumbledore for that situation. If the man hadn't been so close-mouthed about his secrets, if he had spoken plainly to Harry instead of in riddles and questions, if he hadn't wasted months and years doing nothing, the original search wouldn't have taken so long. And Ron wouldn't have been able to betray them. Instead, after the bumbling Wizard's death, they had wasted valuable time wandering in the wilderness looking for things he should have been searching for and destroying before Harry had ever heard of Hogwarts!
And just what had the Headmaster been planning? Either he was senile, incompetent, or a sociopathic master manipulator who enjoyed playing with other's lives, never really understanding or caring about the pain and heartache he created. Or how much he risked in not sharing what he knew. And why hadn't he taught Harry any valuable fighting skills? That lapse alone had added years to his fighting with Voldewhore.
Naturally, a Death Eater, or a sympathizer, had overheard Ron's wobbler at the Leaky Cauldron.
Lord Voldewhore immediately retrieved and re-hid his remaining horcruxes – Hufflepuff's Cup and Ravenclaw's Diadem – behind fidelius charms. In typical Voldewhore fashion, he left taunting messages and traps in place of the former horcruxes. It had been spirit-crushing to break into the Lestrange Vault and discover that it was all for nothing. Going after the Diadem at Hogwarts was where Hermione had been cursed. The Withering Curse was unstoppable, just as it had been when it killed the Headmaster. Harry's quick reaction in cutting off her arm an instant later had saved her life, but only temporarily. It took her five long pain-filled years to die.
Riddle moving those last two Horcruxes cast the Wizarding World into the abyss with Magical and Muggle world suffering alike. It had taken Harry seven more years to destroy the horcruxes, with friends and allies dying at his side, while he killed Voldewhores's followers whenever and wherever he found them.
Voldewhore didn't care whom else died — he was immortal! But with tremendous determination and tenacity, Harry had fought on, watching his friends and allies die one-by-one. He reluctantly became the Master of Death and used Death's help to locate and destroy the final horcrux — himself. And then killed Tom with Gryffindor's Sword while the git was celebrating his "victory" over Harry.
Death had enjoyed the feast provided by the war. Not even Joseph Stalin's and Mao Zedong's Communist purges had yielded such a bonus of Wizardly deaths. It gladly helped Harry Potter to his victory, and gained the long-awaited soul of Tom Marvolo Riddle. Why would it not enjoy this? Both the boy and his nemesis had provided it with a plethora of souls and activity. But it had lost its freedom to Harry Potter. And was looking at being terminally bored for thousands of millennia to come. The second was annoying, but the first was intolerable. No one was allowed to escape DEATH!
Now all Death had to do was trick Harry into giving up his Mastery. Harry Potter was a master of many arts, but no one is more cunning than Death.
One day, Death presented itself to its Master. Harry was sitting on a park bench in a bomb-blasted radiation-ruined town destroyed by an errant nuclear shelling, lost in his thoughts of self-loathing at losing everyone and everything he held dear. He berated himself for not doing more sooner, for not preventing the disaster that destroyed Wizardkind. Living held no appeal, and being the Master of Death meant he couldn't die. He couldn't even get rid of the items by throwing them through the Veil of Death in the Ministry — Voldewhore had destroyed it fearing Harry might use it to kill him. And the damn things could withstand a nuclear blast!
Glancing around at the destruction, Death commiserated with him, "It is sad, is it not? You could have avoided all this ruin if only you had known how it was going to be and had the knowledge and power you have now mastered. All your friends would still be alive. You could have been a Lord among them. You could have been King of the World!" Death proclaimed.
Harry laughed, "If it were possible to go back in time, I would gladly do it even if it saved only one person who had died. I don't want to be Lord over all the people, I just want them living and going on with their lives. And I want my friends back."
"Ah, such nobility, you make me proud, young Master. You may not consider it, but you are my Lord and I dislike my Lord putting himself in a right strop, locking himself in his self-constructed prison of desolation, and driving himself potty," Death said in a mock humility.
Harry chuckled weakly at its antics. "You amuse me, using flamboyant words and slang in the same sentence."
"Forgive me, my Lord, but I change with the times, get more innovative in my ways, and this is one such thing." Death replied. "But, my Lord, I have a proposal for averting this destruction . . . ."
"I am listening," Harry said, one eyebrow raised curiously.
"I can send your soul, together with your core and knowledge but not your body, to a time in the past where you can imprint yourself on a younger version of yourself. That would give your younger version the right amount of knowledge and power. You can achieve your destiny without much effort, and prevent much destruction," Death explained. And never get the Elder Wand nor Resurrection Ring, leaving Death in charge of itself, masterless forever.
Harry leaned back, thinking, considering. That was one way around the time-travel restrictions. He'd never have to worry about meeting himself because he was himself. And Eloise Mintumble's problem of changing the past and dying a horrible death when she returned to the present wouldn't matter, as he would never return. That was the flaw in all the time travel theories; they assumed one would return. Or one had to return. The so-called paradox of eliminating one's father, then being not born, and then being unable to eliminate one's father didn't exist in this case. All he had when he arrived in the past would be a Seer's knowledge of a possible and avoidable future.
"What's in it for you?" Harry asked, knowing well that Death doesn't like to make deals.
"My Master, you are very clever for your age, but that can be expected from what you have survived. I am magical. I like to have a regular and timely supply of those magical souls where I can guide them into their next great adventure, but all this destruction has left me nearly jobless. I am no demon, Master. I am just an inevitability, like life itself, the magical embodiment of a course of action that has to take place after a certain amount of time. I enrich the living, prompting them to see how valuable a life they have. I am an entity like all life, but beyond them, for I have a power over them too. One day, I will take them all with me too, but that day is nowhere near," Death said.
"I'll do it." Harry readily replied.
"You have not heard everything, Master. When what you have accepted is done, you will no longer be my Master, but like any other mortal." Death said gravely.
"You don't understand me, do you? I don't care for immortality or riches. I care only for what I can bring back. I am accepting you deal, Death," Harry said quietly.
"Very well, Master." Death silently chuckled. "I will send you back in time, to a time where your current self is most compatible with your younger self. But be warned, my Master, You will imprint upon the first body you meet when you arrive, and the fusion of your current self with the younger self will make a radical change in your personality. You will have to be circumspect in your actions or others around your younger self will notice and wonder why you changed."
"Are you done yet? I am willing to take anything you throw to undo the damage. I have undergone a lot of pain and inner turmoil ever since I was a toddler, and I can surely beat whatever problems this might cause. Even if it is death, I gladly accept because I cannot exist with the guilt of 'if only I had accepted it.' DO IT NOW, DEATH!" Harry yelled angrily at his servant.
"As you wish, my Lord." Death smiled at Harry Potter, who grimly smiled back in return. Death began a long and steady incantation that burned the body of his Master, liberating his soul. With a powerful push, Death forced his Master's soul back in the stream of time.
(◎_⊙)
It was a terrible day for Harry Potter. First, he got lost in some side street to Diagon Alley, only for Hagrid to rescue him ignominiously. Now he was being forced to pose for a picture for The Daily Prophet along with this overly smiling smarmy new Defence Against Dark Arts professor, Gilderoy Lockhart. Just being near the Wizard set his teeth on edge — there was something that made him feel unsafe in the Wizard's presence.
It was then that something strange happened, during the camera's brief bright flash. Something powerful seemed to be coming at him. Harry, with a decade of dodging his cousin Dudley's blind-side attacks, lunged to the right. As his future Professor was holding him tightly around the shoulders, this dragged the buffoon into the incoming thing's path.
It happened then, before the camera flash vanished, something hit Gilderoy Lockhart. He swayed a moment in the aftermath, then his eyes rolled up and he slipped to the floor, unconscious, taking poor Harry with him.
There was utter chaos in the crowd when their favourite author and five-time winner of Witch Weekly's Most-Charming-Smile Award collapsed over the Boy-Who-Lived. Molly Weasley immediately dragged young Harry Potter from beneath the unconscious Gilderoy Lockhart and looked in horror at her favourite author on floor.
The management of Flourish and Blotts immediately responded to the crisis and transferred the stricken Wizard to Saint Mungos. They promised his disappointed fans that there would be another autograph signing at a future date.
It took half an hour to disperse the crowd remaining at Flourish and Blotts, most of them going to Saint Mungos where the expert healers were trying to awaken Lockhart.
During that time, Draco Malfoy announced Harry had caused this by striking the preeminent author with a Dark spell. That developed into a fight between the Weasleys and the Malfoys. It ended when the half-giant Hagrid separated the two adult combatants, but not before Arthur Weasley punched Lucius Malfoy in the nose. No one noticed, in that commotion, the extra book slipped into the cauldron of a young Miss Weasley, the seventh child of the Weasley family and the first witch in seven generations.
Gilderoy Lockhart, Order of Merlin, Third Class, Honorary Member of the Dark Force Defence League, five-time winner of Witch Weekly's Most-Charming-Smile Award, and soon to be Hogwarts' most beloved Defence Against the Dark Arts Professor (at least in his own mind) returned to consciousness feeling lightheaded and extremely tired. The Healers informed the gathering crowd eagerly awaiting news regarding their favourite author that it was merely a case of exhaustion and with good nutrition potions, he would be fine soon. What startled everybody was hearing, "WHAT THE BLOODY HELL IS THIS?" from the room housing the self-important popinjay.
For some reason the photograph taken at the bookstore came out blank.
(⊙_◎)
It didn't take long for Harry to realize Death had played a prank on him. But while most people would have been mad, he was grinning happily. Sure, Death may have thought Harry would be humiliated in being bound to the body of a bloody fraud and cheat, but it didn't understand that Harry would not mind being a mistreated house elf or even Fang, Hagrid's giant dog. As long as he could prevent the widespread destruction caused by the war, he was happy. And being Lockhart gave him a front-row seat on the events of Second Year.
Getting out of St. Mungos was a bit trying, as he seemed to be at war with himself. Finally, he just relaxed and let things flow instead of trying to fight. He still remembered how to get to back to Gilderoy's home, thankfully. And he was equally happy that he didn't splinch himself in his current muddled state.
He had a lot of work to do in the short amount of time before school started.
First on his agenda was adjusting to his new body. Fortunately, after years of battle, he knew how to adapt quickly to any new situation and use it to his advantage. He swiftly realized that he was neither Harry Potter nor Gilderoy Lockhart, but a confusing combination of the two. At any given moment, one or the other seemed to be in command. Thus, sometimes he acted just like he remembered Lockhart acting like in Hogwarts — as a smarmy publicity hound braggart, basking in the firm belief that he was adored by everyone and that his every pronouncement was met with acclaim. Other times, he was humble Harry wanting to avoid the crowds, downplaying his achievements, and just craving to pass unnoticed in the background. In other words, one wanted to be a Star, the other wanted to be Normal.
Fortunately, melding with the narcissistic Wizard had one tremendous side-effect, his Post-Trauma Stress Disorder was almost gone. The sudden panic attacks were moderated by Gilderoy's sunny confident personality. No more paralyzing bouts of certainty that Voldewhore was stalking him, because Lockhart loved the fans constantly following him. No more flashbacks where he attacked anyone around him thinking they were Death Eaters — one of the reasons he had been hiding alone in the radiation scarred ruins was to protect those around him. Instead, the smarmy buffoon acted as a buffer — he simply couldn't conceive why anyone would want to attack him. Gilderoy's wand would still drop into his hand at any startlement, tip glowing with an uncast spell, but he quickly returned it to its holster and no one ever noticed.
As the days passed, however, he began to notice that more and more, the Harry Potter he remembered was becoming Lockhart. And that Lockhart was becoming Harry Potter. The line between the two began to blur and disappear. He had Harry Potter 's courage and moral fibre for wanting to do what was right and Gilderoy Lockhart's cunning and smooth talking confident ways. He still craved the attention and admiration of others, but at the same time demanded that it be for the right reasons. He wanted to dress and look the part of a successful public celebrity, yet at the same time to be nondescript and unnoticeable. He wanted to be the focus of everyone's attention and to hide in the shadows, unnoticed.
His emotions were in a constant turmoil between his two characters. That required a good week or two to settle down. He still vacillated between the two states, but now the ends were not so far apart.
Gradually, the smouldering pain of inner turmoil as the two personalities merged subsided. Harry/Gilderoy Lockhart was a brand new person, with Harry's determination, speed, and empathy, and with Gilderoy presence, quick cunning, and confidence. They still quarreled in his head, but now it was over nuances of their amalgamated personality.
The most surprising discovery was that Harry enjoyed flirting with the Witches just as much as Gilderoy — it was actually fun! And Gilderoy's confident manner easily dragged the hesitant, insecure Harry into conversations loaded with innuendo whenever the Witches were around.
He noticed his power levels increasing too. In a scale of magical power calibration, from what he had seen or experienced, he would give Dumbledore a ten, Voldewhore an eleven, and himself a seven.
Gilderoy may have been a fraud, but he was very good at extraordinarily difficult Memory Charms. Harry gave him a rating of three on the same scale. Of course, he had never had the opportunity to measure any of these on an objective scale, so he could have been wrong in his relative rankings.
Complicating things, though, was that Harry was supposed to have merged with his younger self. Being identical, his older core would simply have replaced his younger one's core. His new core was an adult's core, but if he were careful, he would merely appear very magically advanced for his age. That had been his first thoughts when Death proposed this adventure.
However, now, with Death's prank, that was out the window. Instead of replacing Gilderoy's core, they had merged into one larger core, one with two centres offset from one another. What that meant he hadn't the slightest idea. On the bright side, he was probably on par with Dumbledore in power. Unfortunately, that was still less than what Voldewhore had available when he was reborn. But Voldewhore cheated — his Death Eater mark was also a power leech on his followers, artificially boosting his power to ridiculous levels. That was another reason it had taken Harry so long to flush the shite. Harry had to reduce Tom's marked followers to the point where Harry had a decent chance of beating him — although some might consider it cheating to apparate behind the other Wizard and lope his head off with a sword.
And his changed magical core meant that Gilderoy's wand no longer worked very well for Gilderoy/Harry. The wand chooses the Wizard, and the Wizard he now was wasn't the one that Gilderoy's wand had chosen. He needed a new one, and fast! Harry might be proficient in wandless magic, but as a Hogwarts' Professor, he would need a good working wand to demonstrate the spells. And while it might be fun to teach them all wandless magic, not everyone had a magic core capable of standing the strain of that style magic for extended periods. So, a new wand was in order.
But he couldn't just pop into Ollivander's. As crazy as the old man appeared, he was extremely sharp on wands and would definitely suspect something was wrong. And Harry/Gilderoy most definitely didn't want people getting suspicious of him at this stage of the game.
After the potions were finished from the damned unlively Healers at St. Mungos — the Witches had been remarkably resistant to his natural Wizard charisma, Gilderoy thought — this amalgam of Harry and Gilderoy decided to go fetch a custom-made wand.
But Gilderoy did have a point that there were some very hot mediwitches wandering around in St. Mungos. When Gilderoy began categorizing them according to their hip-to-bust ratio, and how much fun they might be in bed, or against a wall, Harry's response was an uneasy, "stop it," followed by the distraction of planning how to get the various horcruxes.
Flirting was one thing, going farther was an area Harry wasn't sure he wanted to explore just yet. He wanted to get a bit more comfortable with his new body. He might be ready for such blatant activities in, oh, say, thirty years.
(◎_◎)
Though Ollivanders was the best place to get your first wand inexpensively, there were many other wandmakers available in and around Europe serving the needs of the magical population. Gilderoy remembered meeting a Wizard who made very powerful wands to suit the needs of a wizard perfectly. Unfortunately, that Wizard wouldn't do the same for Witches.
When that Wizard first established his shop, his exacting and thorough measurements — that Ollivander would never attempt — chased most young Witches out of his shop in disgust. And then only after their parents had hexed the wandmaker in the most painful ways they could manage. He started refusing them to save himself the pain. Those Wizards, and rare Witches, that did put up with his unusually thorough measurements praised his wands as the best in the world.
Harry apparated to Wandmaker Marcus Flintoff's shop and met an elderly man in his one-hundred-and-eighties. He was thoroughly groped, er, measured, by the old man — Gilderoy/Harry was unsure just how much of the measuring was actually necessary, but he would put up with much worse indignities in his quest to destroy Voldewhore, and had in the future.
"Very unusual," said the old man, staring at Harry. "Your core seems so, for the lack of better word, variable. The power level dips, rises, and pulses at random intervals. Usually, such a person would be sedated to control the pain and in the permanently disabled ward in a Wizarding hospital, but you are standing here!"
He smiled, "But for such an unusual customer, I am a very unusual wandmaker." He held up a finger in pride. "You require a combination wand. I see Cherry and Holly for the wand, wrapped and rolled intricately with each other and held together with Willow tree root fibres. It will be flexible to meet the changes in your core and at the same time, remains tenacious and strong as a carrier of your magic. It will be almost impossible to break. It will be very flexible and you even could bend it into a circle, like a bangle, and wear it on your wrist.
"But the Willow root fibres return it to straight after bending. You see, you get a very elastic wand and that's very unusual."
Harry wanted to face-palm while Lockhart wanted to grin like a goof at the uniqueness of the wand. The result was a calm and observant expression.
"So, the exterior of the wand is fixed, next is a suitable core." He paused and regarded the blond-haired, elegantly and smartly dressed Wizard.
"For such a special person as yourself, is required a combination of cores. I see in your magical core a combination of two very different energies, So you need two different materials. One is bleu flame ambers, marking great power and resilience. The blue flames are the hottest and most potent yet they give off little light, and are difficult to extinguish.
"On the other hand, I see tidal waves of low energy that crave attention. I could use Phoenix feathers to match the flames, but it will not allow another core. Dragon heartstring is potent but is unsuitable for your nature." The old man frowned. "A Fire Salamander's spinal cord is small in size but holds a constant low fire and it is amphibious in nature, so it is well suited to be superimposed on another core. It represents your subtle dangerous nature and desire for attention. Some consider Fire Salamanders to be evil, an unjustified reputation, if I say so myself. A good one I can obtain from an alchemist friend of mine, it will be pricey.
A hint of a smile touched his lips. "To accommodate these two conflicting cores you need a good binding and stabilizing agent."
"To bind these two, we require a powerful object with adhesive and cohesive properties. Amethyst, mixed with gold can be used for this by melting it, laminating it around the cores, and wrapping the wood around at the right time to make an excellent wand."
Harry/Gilderoy listened to the rambling patiently and paid a good amount of galleons with a promise to get two wands in a week — a smart Wizard always carries two wands into battle. The second had a small gold band on the handle to differentiate it.
He also had Marcus make a thirteen-inch long wand, Cherry Wood with a unicorn hair core; an eleven-inch wand, Holly with phoenix feather core; and a ten-and-three-quarters inch wand, vine wood with a dragon heartstring core. The three extra wands were marked with a small gold band on the handle to indicate they didn't have the English Trace on them. And he picked up a score of dragon-hide wand holsters with automatic sizing, comfort, invisibility, and anti-summoning runes. Christmas was coming and it was only smart to buy early.
He did some casual shopping to pass the time while waiting, buying trivial items like a new Nimbus 2001, clothes that were elegant and at the same time inconspicuous, some books on teaching, Muggle exercise equipment, and a particular cabinet from Knockturn Alley. There would be no way into the castle, bypassing the protective enchantments that Harry didn't control! The exercise equipment was because Lockhart's body was not at his full fitness level. Over the years, while on the run, Harry had learned the value of being fit — a healthy mind in a healthy body were requirements. Too often, he had seen a Wizard or Witch fall in a fight, not to superior magic, but to a lack of stamina. With the training Harry intended, he should be at peak performance in a matter of a few months.
Later, with a few other odds and ends purchased, and after a rescheduled autograph session at the bookstore, he was ready for Hogwarts.
Gilderoy/Harry Lockhart knew that Harry Potter and Ronald Weasley, after missing the Hogwarts' Express because of Dobby's interference, would crash-land on the Whopping Willow on the first day of school. Harry Potter from the future wanted to thwart, subtly, Dobby's plans; Gilderoy Lockhart from now wanted maximum publicity and attention out of it. Their compromise should result in a one-hundred point loss to Ronald Weasley, with Ron being held as the ultimate goofball and loser. Harry should come out of it unscathed. And the new D.A.D.A. Professor obtain maximum positive attention at the school — a perfect stage with a captive audience for the next ten months!
And that situation would be the beginning of the wedge Harry/Gilderoy planned to drive between the two boys. Ron would never be close enough to for Harry to consider asking him for his help in a dire situation. And Ron would be too jealous to volunteer.
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