Dumbledore caught several fleeting fragments of crucial importance:
Lockhart's younger face, wearing a greedy, ingratiating smile as he handed him a large bag of Galleons.
Himself-Lockwood-proudly displaying a manuscript detailing a unique form of Memory Extraction and Transplantation Magic.
A gleam flashed in Lockhart's eyes, and his wand rose silently...
Then came pain that seemed to tear his soul apart, followed by utter darkness... and the wretched years that followed, spent in a daze, stripped of all his talent.
These fragments had been deftly wrapped around the central accusation that "Lockhart had stolen his research and brutally erased the relevant memories." This was clearly bait-a compromised witness Madara and the others had deliberately left behind, an opening that could plausibly expose Lockhart's sordid history in his "old line of work" and lure Dumbledore into taking action.
Although Dumbledore had suspected a trap, Lockwood's memories seemed remarkably "real" under Legilimency and pointed clearly in one direction. Yet whenever he tried to probe further, they grew hazy. Clearly, he could not dig deeper to uncover whoever was manipulating things behind the scenes.
"Even knowing it's bait, I still have to bite," Dumbledore murmured, a trace of bleak weariness in his voice.
To topple the gilded idol that was Lockhart, to protect Hogwarts from further erosion by an unseen shadow, he had to use this pawn, even if it meant sacrificing some of the principles he had always upheld.
He needed a storm, one powerful enough to tear apart Lockhart's halo, and at its center, he had to introduce a new variable-Harry Potter.
When Dumbledore entered the Ministry of Magic's atrium, the Floo Powder in the fireplace had only just burned out. He had not taken a side entrance, worn an Invisibility Cloak, or done anything to conceal his identity. He wore a