HP one shots

Never Gonna Give You Up // Harrymort

Summary:

Lost in the throes of a post-divorce midlife crisis, Harry signs up to be the new Hogwarts Defence professor. Unfortunately the post is still destroying perfectly decent professors left and right, and Harry can't break the curse without special help.

Which is how he ends up with the Resurrection Stone on his finger and with the shade of Lord Voldemort as his co-teacher.
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1 . Scout for suitable candidates.

Harry Potter moves into the Defence Professor's quarters, opens the closet to hang up his coat, and is promptly ambushed by a boggart.

By the time he's found some way to clear it (Ginny standing tall and regal, saying, "I'm moving to Sweden now, so you wouldn't mind if the kids transferred to Durmstrang, would you? I'd hate to have to clear our custody agreement with the Ministry again"), there's a sharp knocking at his door. He opens it and finds a rather harried-looking Minerva outside.

"I have to inform you that your classroom's been given away," she declares in lieu of any greeting, "to Muggle Studies. Apparently it's one of the best spots for connection now that our routers escaped their terrarium ..."

She presses directions to his new classroom into his hands. "It's the same room as last year, so you'll have to rebuild it, I'm afraid."

Before he can answer she hurries away, muttering about the silliness of using literal spiders to connect to the web.

Rebuilding the classroom after whatever got the last professor fired (Harry doesn't know, the Ministry's covered it up, but from the smell it involved several of those new heat-seeking Dungbombs) takes three hours. It would've taken two except Peeves comes to greet him halfway through, celebrating his arrival by glitter-bombing him with the good stuff from George's shop (guaranteed to double if you try magical removal!). By the time he emerges, glitter's caked on his limbs, soaked through with stale Dungbomb sap. He shuffles his way down a staircase, which has been newly refurbished.

He hops over the trick step and trips, abruptly realising that the steps aren't the same height he remembers. The trick step's probably been removed anyway to comply with Ministry accessibility regulations, he realises, while he tumbles the rest of the way down.

With Herculean effort, Harry pulls himself to the edges of the Forbidden Forest instead of attending the Welcome Feast. He gets zapped by walking headlong into brand-new wards, which is how he finds out that the new treaty says nobody's allowed into the forest without express permission from a panel of centaurs. Half-coherent, he begs to be allowed to enter, and they let him through, mostly out of obvious pity. He trudges on grimly, certain that only one person can get him out of this mess.

2. Get them to notice you! Put your best foot forward to make that big first impression.

Harry's shivering (from cold and/or the lingering effects of electrocution) and caked in dirt again, but after five hours he finds it. The Resurrection Stone.

Alright, so he's actually found a scrap of metal that's grimy and tarnished past recognition, but it had better be the Resurrection Stone or he's fleeing the premises right now, professional reputation be damned. He slides it onto his index finger, twists it several times and gets-