The first episode of the Hogwarts: Tournament of Houses aired on November 28th, 2021, and it was a lot of fun for me to watch it! I was in the audience for two of the four episodes but this wasn’t one of them, so it was all new to me.
I’ve noticed that there is one aspect of the show that is getting chatter on the Internet from the first episode and it has to do with a man who was sitting at the front of the audience for the Gryffindor team. It looked like everyone else was wearing appropriate Gryffindor attire, everyone but this man.
Before I continue any further I need to give a HUGE thank you to Arthur and Molly Weasley. Your skill at taking screenshots is exceeded only by your kindness and generosity.
Well, I happen to be friends with him and know exactly what was going on, so I’m going to set the record straight. No, he wasn’t a Muggle coming to infiltrate the show or anything else like that that you might have heard.
By the way, I’ve said in the title of this article that he is wearing a white shirt and that’s not true, it’s actually a shirt with a pattern on it but it looks white from a distance.
You might be wondering why I haven’t shared my friend’s name. That’s to protect his privacy, but he does a fantastic cosplay of Gilderoy Lockhart, so I’m going to call him Gilderoy. That actually fits this scenario because he sticks out like a sore thumb in the sea of dark red, doesn’t he? The real Gilderoy Lockhart would be happy to have the spotlight on him, as my friend unintentionally does because of his shirt in this episode.
Gilderoy Lockhart with my daughter
How interesting! Gilderoy’s shirt in the above picture is also pale… Coincidence? I think not!
Gilderoy was actually one of six people chosen to potentially be on the show to play for his house, Gryffindor. The show chose six people: three of them were alternates and three were contestants, but no one knew who would be the three contestants until the show was filmed. The reactions that you see from the contestants as their names were called by hostess Dame Helen Mirren were completely genuine (some people have asked me if the contestants knew in advance that they would be called but I can assure you that they did not).
The question that I’m seeing most on social media about my friend is why? Why was he wearing a shirt that made him stick out in any audience scene that he was in? The answer is very simple. This is the shirt that wardrobe gave him to wear, he had no say in it. Personally, I think that wardrobe knew that my friend cosplays as two Hogwarts professors (Gilderoy Lockhart and Remus Lupin, and he does both brilliantly!) and wanted to make him look scholarly to fit his cosplay characters. I also think that they succeeded if that was their goal, he looks dapper and intelligent, and trust me, he is! He has a depth of knowledge of all things Harry Potter that is extremely impressive.
It’s easy to think that Gilderoy is the only person in the audience dressed like a Muggle but he’s not. Initially all six Gryffindor people were dressed in similar attire, as were all six for Hufflepuffs. The three selected contestants were changed into their Gryffindor sweaters after being called, while the three remaining people stayed in the audience. If you look closely at some of the pictures you can see the other two people.
The picture below is a great example of what I mean. If you examine the audience then you will see at least three people who are not in red clothes, it’s just that theirs blends in much better with all the Gryffindor shirts than Gilderoy’s does.
I have jokingly told my friend that he was like the Anti-Waldo of Where’s Waldo fame in that it’s impossible to not see him in any given scene that he’s in. But as we all know, Gilderoy Lockhart wouldn’t have it any other way!
One last thing. My friend seems to have gotten his 10 minutes of fame, if not the way he expected. But as Professor Lockhart said to a young Harry Potter, “Fame is a fickle friend. Celebrity is as celebrity does.”
