Returning to Hogwarts as a professor was almost strange enough to make him forget that he did so alone, with two dear friends dead and the third beyond salvation. It was nearly bearable to walk from the Great Hall to his classroom, putting aside the memories that threatened to spill out – until he passed the statue of Haldrada the Questionably Benevolent, and remembered the secret passage that today’s students walked past without even blinking; and until he suddenly recalled the glorious summer of seventy-seven, and the mornings he spent in Sirius’s arms in that very passageway, loved and at peace.