10 Best Subplots In The Harry Potter Movies
4. Professor Lockhart’s Fraudulent Scheme (The Chamber Of Secrets)
Gilderoy Lockhart swaggers onto the scene at the start of The Chamber of Secrets. With his gleaming smile and lush outfits, he’s impossible to ignore. And he also has an impressive catalogue of achievements, which are well-documented in the form of several bestselling books.
After gaining the Defence Against the Dark Arts job, he arrives at Hogwarts and begins to teach. But Lockhart’s lessons turn out to be a joke. He appears to have no magical abilities whatsoever, and during Harry’s first lesson, he accidentally releases a swarm of pixies.
As it turns out, Lockhart is a total fraud. He created his bestselling books by interviewing heroic witches and wizards about their accomplishments before wiping their memories and taking all the credit for himself.
This immoral yet ingenious scheme is a neat twist that no one saw coming. In fact, it’s such a good idea that it’s hard to believe no one else came up with it before Lockhart did. Whilst many of us suspected Lockhart of being a liar, no one could have predicted he’d sink so low in order to become famous.
Fortunately, Lockhart gets his just deserts down in the Chamber of Secrets when his own Memory Charm backfires, which is an amusing and satisfying end for this fraudulent subplot.