Throughout COS I found Lockhart to be a rather superficial humorous character, but close to the end when he revealed his true nature, he scared me. I'm afraid i felt no sympathy when he accidentally obliviated himself. Perhaps he'd be happier that way. Anyway, people's natures and reasons for being as they are and doing what they do has always fascinated me and that was a nice touch to the fic.
Bravo! Well done. An excellent piece of writing, and I think you achieved what you set out to. I completely agree with you that Lockhart is highly underestimated. He's seen mostly as the comic relief, but there's something very dark about his character. He's not a complete airhead like people think. To pull off the stunt he did, taking credit for other people's work would have taken careful planning, and a total absence of conscience. Plus, he's willing to leave a little girl to be killed by a monster, and to destroy the minds of two of his young students in order to avoid being exposed as a fraud. There's nothing funny about that. And yet, I think we can somehow sympathise with him - he's so desperate for fame and recognition. He's an attention whore, and there's gotta be a reason for that. Plus, he's so pretty.
Well, all in all I thought it was a very well written story. But truthfully, what really drew me to read it was some research that I was doing for a paper on "graphic" fan fiction. Trying to represent both sides on the topic (be it slash, SC, SI, NC, ED, or Molestation), I found the author's note at the end of the paper highly informative. It certainly justifies Gilderoy's egomaniacal behavior and adds much more depth to an incredibly superficial character, and hopefully gives the genre some more validity.
That was powerfully written and the footnote about the phsycology at the end confused and impressed me! ;)
