Lockhart's exaggerated acting failed to resonate with Harry, and Lockhart noticed it too.
Seeing Harry's still-unconvinced expression, he shrugged:
"That's both right and wrong. Like I just said, my body is dying. But my soul, well... I'm afraid it's going to live forever.
"Ha, this whole damned business sounds downright eerie when you say it aloud. So many fools chase immortality and never get it. Someone like me, who never wanted it-well, would you look at that, I'm about to live forever..."
"You mean... a ghost?" Harry caught on quickly.
Hogwarts had several ghosts, all of whom had lived for hundreds of years.
The conditions under which a wizard became a ghost had always been an extremely advanced research topic in the wizarding world. Only a tiny handful of its very best wizards studied it.
Unfortunately, though hundreds of years had passed and the number of ghosts kept increasing, no one had ever discovered a pattern.
That was simply because those who became ghosts came from every conceivable set of circumstances. As a result, the research had never made much progress.
There had never been a definitive account of exactly what sort of wizard could become a ghost, and under what circumstances, that everyone accepted-or rather, that could be reliably reproduced.
Of course, given that producing a ghost required a wizard to die, it was only natural that the research was difficult to advance.
"A ghost? Hmm... I don't think so. At least, not entirely." Lockhart shook his head, thought for a moment, and said, "Don't you Gryffindors have a poltergeist, that Peeves fellow? I'll probably be more like him."
Peeves?
Harry raised his eyebrows slightly.
Harry knew that Peeves was different from ordinary ghosts.
None of the other ghosts could affect the material world. You would not even feel