Disclaimer: If you recognise it, surprise, I don't own it.
Chapter 8– R&D.
Edited: 19/03/2023
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Finally, I have done it. I have learnt the vanishing spell, which is the key to me understanding all sorts of more intricate magic because I am not going near that man with a ten-foot pole until he is all cleaned up, and he is going to be my test dummy for the foreseeable future.
I brandish my wand at one of the countless fiction novels that past Gilderoy had filled his library with, and the books that have now come in quite handy as I have been using them for target practice.
Pointing my wand towards the book, I focus intently on the object I want to vanish, to completely disappear and turn into nothingness, and then I begin the wand movement.
First, I bring my wand down and then to the right, and then down and to the left and then down and to the right. Each time the length of my draw gets bigger, the movement is basically a squiggle that gets longer after each turn.
"Evanesco." I intone, making sure to pronounce it ev-an-ES-ko, which is critical. My other attempts where I did not say it correctly either ended up doing nothing or mutating the object into some weird new thing which just looked wrong. There is no bright light as is usual with most spells, not even a sound. The book is just there for one second, and then it is gone. Vanished.
I move with purpose to my next target. I see no reason to delay any longer with everything prepared. So, leaving the library, I move to my- to my dungeon? No, it is not a dungeon, but what else do you call a room where you hold people captive, where you keep prisoners? It is not a prison either, or at least I don't want to call it that.
I guess I will henceforth refer to it as the guest room where my guest stays. It seems much more elegant and neat that way. If I ever do mention it in passing when I am finally out of this house, then I can pass it off as just a regular guest and not the balding middle-aged fat man I keep locked in the spare room.
Opening the door, I am treated to the sight of Digby. D. Digworth sleeping, which was not what I expected. I totally expected to see him sitting there ranting and raving, cursing me to hell and back and barraging me with threats of all kinds about when he is finally free.
Hell, I even slightly expected him to be sat there weeping, and when he caught sight of me, he would start begging for forgiveness and for me to spare him his life, snotting all over the place and promising to be different from then on, that he would forget about this and never even think of it again.
Yet here, this toad of a man sits, slumbering away, snoring without a care in the world, completely covered in his own filth, bloody disgusting. He has not eaten or drunk anything for the past few days, he has been entirely trapped on that chair at the behest of someone that he had just tried to murder, and Digby has the luxury of sleeping when he should be worrying for his life like I feared for my life, it pisses me off.
Not bothering about his sleeping state, I am more bothered about the litany of stains colouring his entire being, the yellow, the brown, the green and the white, which I am not even going to question, probably just slobber and drool. Whatever all that stuff is, all that matters is that I get rid of it as soon as possible. Otherwise, I don't think I will be able to stay in this room any longer. Even standing in the doorway, I feel sick.
I raise my wand, which I have been getting more and more familiar with since I woke up, and I point it in the direction of the sleeping oaf in my house. I realise at this moment that this is the furthest I have ever been from my target. When I was practising in the library, I was right next to the desk I was placing the novels on, so I was casting the vanishing spell at point-blank range, which I am not doing now.
Digby. D. Digworth is a couple meters away from me, strapped to a chair in the middle of the room while I am standing in the doorway of that room, I have never cast the spell from this far away, and I don't know if it will be effective at this range. Of course, this could be easily solved by simply moving closer to the man and then casting the spell, but that would require me to move closer to the man before casting the spell.
To put it simply, the man smells horrible, even from where I am standing, and he looks disgusting as well. If there is one thing that I don't like, it is getting unbearably dirty or going near awful things. Of course, I am okay with getting my hands dirty. But, still, I do not want to go swimming in a pit of slugs or go near a mountain of dead bodies, and I think that is reasonable.
So why the hell am I going to do something that I don't want to do for this sack of shit in front of me, the same pug-faced bastard that tried to murder me? When I have to go wading into the filth, then I am going to make sure that I am either doing it for myself or someone I care about, and I don't have anyone like that at the moment.
So if I end up vanishing this guy from existence, then so be it. As far as I can see, that would be much better than me going near his disgusting body and violating my own virtue.
But I also do need this guy as a test dummy. Otherwise, I am going to have to wait until I come across the next asshole that crosses me, and while I don't mind doing that, I would still like to have a test dummy now rather than later, which means I have to focus on this spell. So, with my wand still pointing at the grotesque sight in front of me, I begin to focus and visualise what I want to happen when I cast the spell.
I want all of the stains on Digby. D. Digworth to be cleaned. I want them all to vanish. I want all of the filth on his person to be extinguished from existence. I wish for all of the disgustingness in this room to disappear. I want all of the stains, all of the dirt, and all of the filth to evaporate into nothingness. I want it all, all of it, to be gone.
"Evanesco." I didn't even realise it, but I had closed my eyes when I was trying to visualise what I wanted to happen in reality, so I opened them wide. I immediately turned around, wishing to Merlin that my eyes did not work. I desperately want to go and find a bottle of bleach to wash my eyes even if I damage them in the process, but then I realise that bleach is a muggle product, and I have none at hand right now. I want to cut my eyes out.
"Hm, ah, what- AH, WHY THE HELL AM I- YOU, YOU BASTARD! WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING!?" Digby awakes and screams bloody murder when the effects of my spell are made known, or rather the outcome of my magic is what had awoken him from his deep sleep.
I refuse to turn around and look at the man once more. I know that I will have to do so at some point, but I want to delay it as long as possible to spare my eyes from the torture.
"Shut up, you idiot. Just shut up!" I say, not wanting to hear the man's pathetic screeches as well. I could have dealt with the sight itself, but it was the suddenness and unexpectedness that startled me and gave me some trauma. Plus, it was a pretty horrific sight.
"WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS? JUST WHY- Oh no, no, no, no, no, no. Please don't do it, I beg you, please don't." Digby starts to quiver, I can hear it in his voice, and he suddenly changes his tune and starts to beg me for some reason, utterly different from the cursing he was doing a second ago. He is even talking at an average level, though I don't think that was conscious on his part.
"What the hell are you on about Digworth? Stop talking nonsense, and close your mouth." I say exasperatedly, tired from his mouth flapping and spewing nonsense, though I guess I can understand why he's doing it. Still, I am trying to come to terms with the sight I had just seen, and he isn't helping. It was so abrupt and- and- I really don't know how to describe it. I just never thought I would see such a sight.
"Oh my god, I regret it. I regret everything. I did it to all those women, the pureblooded and even the muggle ones, so that they at least served some purpose, even with some younger ones, but I had never done it to a man, never, and now it is going to be done to me. Is this payback? Are all of those souls cursing me from hell and forcing this fate upon me? No, no, no, please, Merlin, no." Digby begins to hyperventilate and mutter at insane speeds about stupid things, about women and children, both magical and muggle, and doing something to them, and now he is being punished for it. What has he done, and what does he think I am about to do to him?
"What are you going on about, man? Get a hold of yourself. I know you are trapped in that room against your will, but be a man and deal with it. You brought this upon yourself. And what did you do to those people that you think I am about to do to you?" So I honestly went over what he had said, and as I just asked him, I came up with some ideas, one in particular. But surely it can't be that he mentioned children after all, and you wouldn't do that to a child, would you?
"I-It's obvious what you are planning, you, YOU UNDRESSED ME AFTER ALL!!! YOU, YOU ARE GOING TO SODOMISE ME!!! YOU TRULY DO NOT DESERVE THE MAGICAL BLOOD THAT RUNS THROUGH YOUR VEINS! TO COMMIT SUCH A DESPICABLE ACT, TO DO SUCH A THING TO ANOTHER MAN, YOU ARE A STAIN ON YOUR WHORE MOTHER'S RECORD!!! DO NOT THINK YOU CAN DO THIS TO ME. I WILL GET OUT OF HERE AND KILL YOU, LOCKHART. I WIL-" I slam the door shut behind me, shocked and disgusted with what I had just heard.
My vanishing spell had turned out to be too powerful. I had either put too much magic into the spell, or I had visualised the result too hard or visualised something else. Either way, my magic not only got rid of the man's stains but also wholly removed all the things on him, including his clothes, leaving him naked on the chair.
Thankfully the rope and the chair did not disappear as well, and he remains strapped to it. So I guess I just visualised all of the filth in the room disappearing, and I did not count my own creations and chair as filth. Surprisingly, I also did not count Digby. D. Digworth as filth.
However, with the new knowledge I have just discovered, I now know that this putrid man was the filthiest thing in the room. I wish I had placed even more power into my spell and extinguished this horrid being from existence. But what's done is done, and I now have no reservations in how far I am willing to take my experimentations of magic on this creature. I am sure that his future existence will be much more deserved than simply being vanished out of existence. His victims will definitely enjoy him living under my direction more than him merely dying.
I am not a saint, not by any means, but I would not do what this man did. I know I am still just a sixteen-year-old, in mind, not body, and I have not lived enough, but I have the memories of Gilderoy Lockhart, and while I have partitioned them from my mind, they are still a part of me.
Gilderoy had never blackmailed or forced himself upon someone else. He lied, yes, he tricked, he seduced, and he manipulated, but he never forced, which means I did all of those things as well because I am Gilderoy Lockhart.
Alright, never mind all that. It is time to make a checklist. Number one is to figure out a way to clothe the naked bastard in the room behind me. Number two is to start feeding and giving the toad some water so that he can live longer, and I can experiment on him even more, which I will do after number one. I'm sure he can survive a few more days. It might hurt him, but it is a sacrifice I am willing to make.
I don't really want to take the time to feed him or give him sustenance. Just thinking about it makes me feel disgusting, which is why I will leave thinking about that till after I deal with clothing the man, which is a problem in and of itself. I, again, could do this quite simply by going closer to him and doing the job myself, but I don't want to, and I certainly don't want to dress this man with my own hands. So when in doubt, deal with it with magic.
Going to my library, I began searching for a suitable spell to help me in my endeavour. Unfortunately, at this point, it seems like I will never get around to practising the magic in the black book.