Chapter 2

Wow, what an unbelievable dream that was. It was so vivid and lifelike. In it, I felt stronger than I ever have before, so much so that it was kinda addicting. I found myself desperately wanting to go back into the dream, so I didn't open my eyes and kept them closed in the hopes that I would go back to sleep and return to my imagination, resuming it where I left it off.

Still, all that ends up happening is that I stay laid in my bed with my eyes scrunched close, fully awake, eventually conceding that I will not be going back to sleep, much less returning to that brilliant dream, so I open my eyes and resign myself to returning back to my mundane unbearable life.

I open my groggy eyes and can't really see my surroundings due to the little thingies in my eyes, not that I care about my surroundings, what with them being all dusty and damp since I have been given the most isolated and broken down room in the foster home since I am the 16-year-old loser that nobody really cares about.

I have a stale relationship of indifference with the people in the house. I have just been living my days out one after the other, living a monotonous life waiting for something to happen to me and, in the meantime taking advantage of the internet connection and the broken down laptop that nobody wanted to binge tv shows, manga, youtube and anime.

Wanting to know the time, my hand stretches out across my satin sheets to my nightstand, where I pick up my wand, nine inches made of cherry with a dragon heartstring core, and it is slightly bendy though I had the decorations and carvings especially made to make it look more elegant so that it is now more fitting for someone of my status, without thinking about it I wave it in the air and mutter out the spell name to get the exact time.

"Tempus."

With my head still lying back on my expensive fluffy pillows, I watch as a mist arises out of the tip of my wand and warps through the air, twisting and turning to eventually show '12:32', which is fine because I don't have school today. I can sleep in. I think I will stay here and close my eyes a bit before I have to get up and hope that nobody in this dumping ground is using the toilet and there is still food in the fridge.

I close my eyes and reach out to place my wand back on the nightstand and relax for a bi-. WAIT, A WAND! My eyes snap back open, and I look to my right with my gaze travelling across my bare arm (which I could have sworn were skinnier than that) up my wrist to my hand, which holds the fancy cherry wood stick.

My eyes go even further on following the mist that pours out of the tip of the wand to the mystical numbers it makes up that flow in the air without any support and seamlessly held together, but what befuddles me the most is that I made this unnatural phenomenon happen. I did so naturally without any effort at all.

Startled at the realisation of what I just made occur, I panickedly sit up in my bed and drop my wand from my palm, and as it clatters against the smooth oak floor, I look around the room I have awoken in bewildered to find that it is entirely different from the room I went to sleep in and yet I don't feel out of place at all finding the room comforting and to my liking which is intensely weird as I can't remember myself having such gaudy tastes, the smooth oak floor is about the only okay thing, but the rest is not okay, and yet I find myself enjoying the room.

The bed I am in is a gold leaf antique french style bed that's frame is made of gold, and its mattress and pillows are covered in purple satin. There is a giant Lucien gau golden chandelier in the ceiling of this surprisingly tall bedroom, there are extensive baroque wardrobes and drawers around the edges of the room and multiple golden ornate mirrors on the wall and one full-length cherub cheval mirror that stands next to an antique vanity drawer.

That stuff is a bit much but overall fine but what really freaks me out is the multiple pictures (possibly hundreds) on the wall, which each hold a handsome young man posing cooly and smiling a charming smile at the viewer, but what well and indeed throws me for a loop is the fact that all of those pictures are simultaneously moving with each man throwing different poses and smiles while looking directly at me.

The strangest thing, though it is not the only thing that is freaking me out, is that the pictures are moving. The same handsome blonde man is in all of the images surrounding this room, smiling directly at me, and while that would creep out anybody else in my situation, I am not creeped out at all, which alarms me even more. At the same time, I don't feel creeped out emotionally, while intellectually, I know I would usually be creeped out by something like this.

Still wanting to learn more about the current situation, I pull off my satin covers and step out onto the smooth wooden floor, only remembering that I am naked when I feel a breeze run between my legs. Still, I can't find myself bothered about that at the moment. So I step forward and only spot the wand on the ground before I complete my movement.

My body urgently moves unbidden around the elegant wooden stick (wand?) on the floor like my life depended on it. I end up doing a 180-degree turn where I end up looking at the ugliest thing I have ever seen in my life. Yet, it is pleasing to my eyes. A massive oil painting hangs above the gaudy bed.

It is a painting of the pompous handsome blonde man painting another portrait of himself (paintception?), and this one moves, as well as the blonde man in the painting, who stops his work to look towards me and throw me a wink along with a dashing smile.

Deciding to ignore that bag of cats for now, I step away and turn away from the weird self-portrait and resume my examination of the room, but nothing really jumps to my eye. I don't really want to touch or go exploring, and of the drawers, in case anything like the weird phenomenon earlier happens. However, this time it isn't quite so harmless, I look around the room before I spot the full-length mirror again and go towards it, but it seems like I was wrong about it being a mirror as it appears t just be another moving image of the blonde man.

Still, this one is particularly saucier as the blonde man is very much naked in this. Examining him, I make the observation that he is a handsome man in his twenties with wavy blonde hair down to his shoulders, and he has exceptionally straight and shiny teeth, deep blue eyes, and a strong chin. His body is of average height and build, being slightly muscular.

I find myself envying his particular good luck as he was graced with a considerable length of masculinity that makes me feel self-conscious. After examining him a bit more, I shoot my eyes back up to his face, and much to my surprise, his eyes shoot up at the same time, causing me to stumble backwards, startled, which the man in the painting does as well. I bump into a wardrobe opening it in the process, which reveals flamboyant, flashy and incredibly extravagant clothing in a wide assortment of colours.

Ignoring those for a moment, I begin to move closer to the painting again, and the man in the painting encroaches slowly as well before we are face to face. I reach up and place my hand on the painting with the artwork only to be surprised when instead of feeling a canvas or some kind of parchment, my hand feels the old touch of metal.

The connections begin to fire off in my mind, and I look around the room rapidly, making sense of everything that I have found out so far. My eyes spin from the man in the mirror to the countless images on the walls of the same man, to the gaudy, expensive furniture, to the wardrobe full of elaborate extravagant robes.

Finally, my gaze shoots to the wand that was nine inches, made of cherry with a dragon heartstring and described as 'slightly bendy', which still lays on the wooden floor. I suddenly come to terms with my new reality and the surprising revelation of my own unique identity.

"I am Gilderoy Lockhart..."

But more importantly...

"...It was real... I just had sex for the first time and lost my virginity."