It wasn't until the third time he hit his thumb with the hammer that Harry realized he shouldn't listen to Gilderoy Lockhart. In retrospect, he should have known that before the first time. Nothing the man said had ever been true or useful. Yet, somehow, Harry was clutching his thumb after listening to the idiot. It didn't help that the idiot was still shouting suggestions.

"You need to hold the nails at a thirty-degree angle, Harry! Like this." Lockhart said and mimicked hammering something.

Harry dropped the hammer onto the floor and, with a smooth motion, drew his wand. Before Lockhart could react, he shouted "Confringo!"

The intense force of the spell ripped across the room and struck Lockhart in the face. There was an explosion of heat and light. Smoke billowed and then cleared.

"Well, that was uncalled for," Lockhart said, sniffing.

Nothing had changed. His painting was still on the wall. The frame was still perfectly parallel to the floor. Not the faintest brushstroke had been charred.

"Shut up," Harry said.

"Feel free to ignore my advice," the Lockhart painting said, leaning casually against his frame, "but I did the carpentry work on Chatsworth Mansion. I know a thing or two about hammers and nails."

"No, you didn't," Harry said, slumping into his chair, "and no you don't. You don't know anything about anything. You're just a blowhard. You're worse than a blowhard. You're a copy of a blowhard."

That seemed to shut the painting up. Harry dropped into the creaky desk chair and stared at his handiwork. The top half of the room's giant window was boarded up. It had taken him hours to accomplish, and he was exhausted. For the tenth time he wracked his brain for a spell that would securely cover a window, but for the tenth time, he drew a blank.

He looked down at the pile of boards the Hogwarts house elves had given him. Maybe they gave him the wrong kinds of boards. These were, after all, fairly narrow. He hadn't told them why he wanted boards and a hammer and nails. They'd asked, but he'd evaded the question. Maybe it was time to go back and tell them he'd wanted to cover the window.

He sighed, shook his head, picked up a board, and started hammering again. The advice from Lockart resumed immediately.

"You're supposed to hold the extra nails in your mouth."

"What I don't understand," Harry said through gritted teeth, "is how you managed to stay on that wall all these years without me noticing you. I was in this office dozens of times when I was a student. I think I would have noticed you while Lupin was teaching me to make a patronus or Crouch was trying to kill me."

He hammered the board in and smiled at his handiwork. He was getting the hang of it.

Lockhart ticked off the Defense Against the Dark Arts professors on his fingers. "Lupin put a curtain over me. Moody put a dresser in front of me. Umbridge put a painting of a kitten on top of me. Snape stared at me so threateningly I spent the year hiding in other paintings. The Carrows—"

"That's a good idea," Harry said, picking up another board. "Why don't you go hide again? Plenty of picture frames in Hogwarts."

Lockhart sniffed. "Other paintings don't suit me."

Harry smiled as he hammered. "The other paintings don't like you. Not a surprise. Nobody likes the real you, either."

There was no answer. Harry found his whole body relaxing as he stepped back and surveyed his handiwork. A dozen thin pieces of lumber formed a curtain that completely obscured the window. It wasn't a perfect job: there were a dozen gaps, the boards hung at odd angles, the nails only partially went into the window-frame. Still, for someone with no experience doing manual labor, it was pretty good.

He looked around the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher's office, his office, and smiled. With the window gone, he felt he could finally settle in. He sat down and propped his feet up on his desk.

His moment of satisfaction was cut off by a loud banging on the door. Harry jumped. It sounded like someone was trying to smash it down with a club. Harry reached for his wand then, remembering he was at a school, made himself stop.

"Come in?" he said, unconsciously making his words sound like a question.

The door swung open, and a giant man stepped in. His beard and hair had turned grey, and he wore a strangely clean and nicely-fitted suit, but Harry knew him instantly.

"Hagrid!" Harry said, running around the desk to give his old friend a hug. Hagrid groaned a little and Harry released him. "Are you okay?"

Hagrid scoffed. "Ah, it's nothing. It's just, yeh know, getting' older. I got giant bones and human joints. They don' work great together. Rheumatism, of a sort."

Harry guided him to the chair across from his desk. Hagrid lowered himself into it, carefully. The chair squealed in protest, but didn't break. He took a long, paper-wrapped package out from under his coat and leaned it against the chair.

"Sorry for yer loss," Hagrid said, before Harry could ask about the package.

Harry nodded. Countless people had said that to him over the last few months. He'd gotten tired of it and had snapped at a few people who said it. Still, this was his friend.

"Thanks Hagrid."

"There are a few potions that help," Lockhart said.

Hagrid turned to look at the painting and laughed. "Still here, are you Lockhart? Thought for sure someone'd take yeh down by now."

"Turns out Lockhart was good at two things: memory charms and making paintings impossible to move," Harry said.

"Other'n that, how are you?"

Harry considered saying the truth. He considered telling Hagrid that he had taken the job because he had to keep moving. If he stopped too long, he'd hear Luna's voice behind him, talking about a clarity spell, whatever that meant. That he could barely keep himself cleaned and fed, let alone keep in touch with his friends, his family, his children.

No, he wouldn't put all that on his friend's shoulders.

Harry gestured around the room. "Living the dream. My own office. Free room and board. Two months off every summer."

"Prepared fer classes?"

Harry shrugged. "They don't start for two weeks."

Hagrid nodded. "Got yer syllabus ready?"

"My what?"

Hagrid froze. He seemed to turn pale. "Yer syllabus. The list of what yeh teach. The subjects fer each class."

Harry smiled. "I figured I'll work it out on the fly. I passed my exams with flying colours, as you may recall. And don't forget I have field experience as an auror and as the head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. I'll be fine."

Hagrid leaned forward with a look so intense it scared Harry a little. "Harry, yeh got four houses and seven years o' students. That's twenny-eight hours of classes per week, not includin' double-classes. If you don' have a syllabus, yer gonna ferget stuff. Repeat stuff. Yer students deserve the best from yeh, yeh know?"

Harry felt the first stirrings of panic. Hagrid, seemingly blind to Harry's anxiety, was still talking "I 'sume yeh have yer rubric ready."

"My what?" he said in a small voice.

"Yer rubric. Yer gradin' criteria. Yeh gotta tell 'em how yeh'll grade before yeh do it. It's only fair."

He took a deep breath then looked at Hagrid. "How do you know so much about teaching?"

He realized, with a shock, it was a terrible thing to say. Even though Harry had found Hagrid's classes silly (and borderline dangerous), he'd still taught for ages. He hadn't meant to demean the man's ability. He was about to apologize, when Hagrid barked with laughter.

"Yeh, I was pretty green, wasn' I? Well, after a few years, Dumbledore sent me off to teacher trainin'. Learned all 'bout different learnin' styles an' the like. Speakin' of which…"

Hagrid grabbed the package leaning against his chair and, with a thump, put it on the desk. It was clearly a broom, but Harry asked anyway. "What is it?"

"It's yer Firebolt! I had yer kids send it on. I know it's pretty old, but I figgered you'd be more comfortable on it than on one of the school brooms."

Harry stared at him, confused.

"Headmaster didn' tell yeh he wanted you to teach flyin' lessons and referee Quidditch, yet, did he?"

Harry shook his head. He'd quit his job for the one at Hogwarts because he thought it would be easy. He stayed away from the house where his wife died. He gave up his old job, which was a constant reminder how he failed to catch the man who killed her. Teaching was supposed to be low-stress, an easy retirement from being an auror. Now that he knew the extent of the work in front of him, his stomach sank. He dropped his head to his desk, banging it.

Hagrid leaned forward placed a comforting hand on his shoulder. "Cheer up, 'Arry. Yeh'll do a bang-up job. I jes' know it. All yeh need is to put that nose to the grindstone…" He looked at the office window. "An' get more sunlight! Why'd they board up the window? It's the best feature of the office!"

Before Harry could say anything, before he even knew what Hagrid was doing, the half-giant had strode over to the window. He took one hand, ran it under Harry's boards like he was opening a letter, and swept it all to the ground.

He tilted the window open. "Tha's better! Get some sunlight an' fresh air in here. Look at that view! Yeh ken see the Forbidden Forest from here."

Harry sighed. "Thanks Hagrid."

"Well, yeh've got a lot o' work ahead of yeh. I'll be off. I'll come check back on yeh when things calm down a bit."

He gave the big man another hug, gently this time, and watched him leave the room. The door slammed shut with the finality of a coffin lid.

Harry opened a desk drawer and took out parchment, ink and quill. He started writing down what he remembered from his classes. Lupin taught him how to deal with magical monsters. Snape taught jinxes.

Moody (well, Fake Moody) taught The Unforgivables. That was the class he remembered the most. Moody had taken spiders out, then tortured and killed them.

Umbridge taught him nothing. Lockhart (and he glared at the painting) taught him nothing. He missed his seventh year. There were large gaps in his knowledge he had no idea how to fill.

His mind went back to Moody's lesson. He had to teach The Unforgivables; they were important. The problem was he didn't know how to cast them all. He'd cast the imperious curse and felt the surge of joy that came with it. Crucio could probably be learned with practice. But avada kedavara… As Bellatrix LeStrange said, you had to mean it. You had to have true hatred in your heart.

"It's the opposite of expecto patronum," he mused out loud.

"You know," Lockhart said, "I was one of the first wizards to perform the incredibly complicated-"

"Avada kedavara!" Harry shouted, aiming it at the painting.

There was a tiny flicker of green light, but nothing more. The painting cowered in its frame. Harry sighed and looked back at his desk. In another drawer was a stack of letters. He'd put off opening them for months.

He knew what they were; he knew he wanted nothing to do with them. So, he'd

counterspelled all the howlers, burned the obviously cursed ones, and put the rest away. Now, with the prospect of planning his grueling course load, he finally decided to open them.

Sorry for your loss. Sorry for your loss. Sorry for your loss.

Dozens of letters saying the same thing over and over.

They understood his pain. They could never understand his pain. They would do anything for him; all he had to do was ask.

So many letters. So few he wanted to answer.

And then he found a strange one. It had a muggle postal stamp and was addressed to:

Harry Potter

That Place Wizards Are

Harry marveled that the letter found him. He opened it. Inside was the crude handwriting of his cousin. He read the first line and sighed.

Sorry for your loss.

He read on.

I know it's not the same thing, but when Mum passed on, I found religion helped me. I don't know what wizards believe. You're wiccan, right? Anyway, I believe we'll meet them again some day. It gives me comfort, knowing there'll be a resurrection.

I hope you can find comfort, too.

Harry's eyes misted up a little at the thought that his cousin, his dumb, mean cousin who'd bullied him for years, had written something so kind. He pushed the tears down.

Underneath the letter was signed:

Dudley

And beneath that, in large letters:

BIG D

He laughed and the tears did come. He wiped them away.

"There'll be a resurrection," he read aloud.

Harry unwrapped the firebolt and weighed it in his hands. The handle was worn, the red varnish flaking off, the twigs in the tail were no longer sleek. Still, it radiated power.

He walked over to the window and threw it open. He gazed down at the Forbidden Forest.

All the major features were clear from Harry's viewpoint. There were the dark paths, the place where Grawp once lived, and the clearing where he'd died. He'd boarded up the window so he wouldn't have to see it. He made himself look.

"I know a clarity spell," Luna's voice said behind him.

Harry jumped out the window.