Chapter Text
By the time the interview was over, hours had passed and the sun was high in the sky. Apollo sat in his rented Leaky Cauldron room, already planning his next step. The most important task of getting himself a secured spot in Hogwarts was a success. But now, he had a whole other problem in his hands. How was he supposed to teach his students lessons while still keeping up a convincing ridiculous public image?
If Apollo wanted Voldemort from getting too interested in him, he needed to seem like a fool, someone so useless and stupid Voldemort wouldn't care about him at all. Apollo could perhaps act like a timid, clumsy, dunderhead, but he still needed to be sociable so he could watch over Harry and talk with other teachers without it seeming out of character. If he’s too shy, he won’t be able to talk much with anyone and setting up a social network would be much harder. Plus, Quirrell was a bashful and clumsy man, yet Voldemort still saw enough potential in him to turn him into a servant.
If Apollo can't go for a shy personality, then he’ll go for a brash one. He could go for a vain, incompetent, annoying, and shameless personality instead. With this personality, he can talk to anyone and start conversations without it seeming out of character. Social networks will still be difficult to set up, but he’ll at least be able to reach out more than if went for a shy act. Apollo could even be so exasperating that he might straight up be repulsive to Voldemort. It shouldn’t be too hard to keep this act up either, as Apollo was already good at being proud. He just had to dial it up to the max for this to work.
Now came the issue of professionally teaching his students while still keeping up this amateur persona. Apollo already knew the best he could allow himself to cast spells would be mediocre, bordering on poor, with a plentiful amount of mistakes here and there. If that's the case, books would be the best way for him to teach. But if he was going to teach with books, they had to be books that would make sense for the vain Lockhart to choose. Particularly, books he wrote himself.
Apollo conjured a stack of paper and a quill, writing as fast as the quill and paper could handle. He’ll write a series of twelve books and assign seven of them on the Hogwarts supply list. That should be enough to get across Lockhart’s glory-loving persona. The books will be autobiographies, or more accurately, memoirs full of some of his crazy adventures in his many myths that would sound outrageous to the average wizard. He’ll just need to slightly edit them and replace all his godly powers with magic instead. Apollo decided he’ll sell his books dirt cheap and put a 90% off sale on them too so everyone will easily be able to afford the whole required Hogwarts set for less than a galleon. Apollo is the God of Knowledge after all and wants to make sure knowledge is easily accessible to everyone.
The funny thing was, Apollo’s books weren’t actually lying. He was writing them to sound impossible, yet he really did do everything in his books, minus the magic parts. (One could make an argument that technically godly powers were a type of magic) In fact, Apollo actually toned it down so they could stay within the grade for the general audience. He was certain some of the things he and his family had done in Greek Mythology wouldn't exactly be very child friendly from the sheer amount of death, war, and torture they'd been involved in.
While the seven required books were still engaging storybooks, these books were also going to double as educational spell books. So Apollo made sure to write his self-inserted character learning Defense spells, fully describing each spell and then explaining the theory behind it in detail. Every book’s plot centered around his character learning, and therefore teaching the reader, how to fight different dark beasts and what spells would be most effective. He added a dictionary with every spell used in his story spanning dozens of pages in the very back of the book.
Apollo included a special spell he made himself written on the back of the front cover that students could use to highlight and navigate to the important sections of his book, making it easier to sift through the story for the specific spell they need. Really, his books were essentially just textbooks with a lot of extra plot centered around himself jammed in between information. Even then, all a student needed to do is recite a simple spell and the book would immediately clear up the unimportant parts.
Apollo spent the whole day and night writing all his books as fast as possible without accidentally burning the paper or breaking the quill from the sheer speed he was writing. He needed the papers intact so he could owl them to a publisher to get published, after all.