My pleasure

Inspired by the @/cocodrilosad ’s tweet! So here is Severitus overpaint :)

But I was thinking just now...

Literally no one in the friend group aside from Aang knows Zuko was the Blue Spirit

So do you think... they're just hanging out in the palace post canon all piled up in one of the rooms reserved for when the royal family wants to chill—and Zuko is voicing his (extremely reasonable) upset about his father for one reason or another

And Sokka just says something like, "So are you gonna just leave him to rot in jail for the rest of his life, or are you gonna give him another punishment?"

And Zuko goes quiet. Thinking. Then he says, "Maybe I should send him on a quest to capture the Blue Spirit to regain his honor"

Like, imagine being Gaston. You're watching your ex fiancee smooch the hell out of the guy who murdered you and also (in your mind) kidnapped her and is now trying to double kill you.

And Rumbellers are like "how sweet!"

And then five minutes later the adorable little princess you almost married sends you to super hell to save the terrifying goblin man you think is the villain of the story.

I am unreasonably hyped for this, glad to see this thing thrive!

Lockhart himself was a fake, but his books (which all the students had to buy) weren't. Those accurately described the exploits of genuine experts that actually did DADA stuff. Lockhart interviewed them and wiped their memories. So while Lockhart's classes were a waste of time, anyone could just read his works and get a solid DADA education. The students weren't actually left out to dry. Honestly, it was almost certainly a better year than Umbridge.

I want to go a step further and say that Dumbledore hiring Lockhart to expose him was brilliant. If Dumbledore had proof that Lockhart was wiping people's memories, he'd have him arrested and sent to Azkaban. Since that didn't happen, Dumbledore doesn't have proof, only suspicions. To expose Lockhart, he'd have to go searching all over the country for the people Lockhart wiped. Even if he found them, Lockhart's memory charms can't be easily undone, except by himself. And even after all that, there would need to be a trial, where Lockhart's looks and money might get him off easy.

On the other hand, put him at Hogwarts and make him teach class for a year, and it instantly becomes obvious he's a fraud. You have hundreds of students as witnesses, even paper evidence in the form of the useless homework Lockhart gave. I'm fully certain that if Lockhart hadn't lost his memory, Dumbledore would have used the overwhelming evidence to convict Lockhart, and force him unwipe his victim's memories.