Magical History Is an Excellent Course

There were far too many memorable things about student life, but in the grand span of one's school years, they were merely embellishments.

What truly ran through the entirety of student life was class after class...

And the reason Andrew could think of such profound matters in class was entirely because of the professor up there... Well, he had initially wanted to call him elderly, but after thinking about it for ages, he could not find a suitable description.

Simply put, their professor was dead.

This was not the description of a murder case, but of a scene from some day in the past—the professor was now a ghost.

And judging by the looks of it, this professor intended to keep doing this job indefinitely, while the school had no plans to replace him.

Most importantly—when it came to teaching quality, this professor's lessons... were absolutely sleep-inducing.

Under the combined effect of the professor's masterful skill of doing nothing but reading aloud from the textbook and the drowsy late-summer sunlight, quite a few students who had yet to settle back into school after the holidays were politely attempting to have an intimate date with their desks.

Since no brave soul had yet tested whether sleeping would result in points being deducted, Andrew still tried hard to make sense of the relationships between the figures in the Magical History textbook.

Unfortunately, it was not particularly effective—and tragically, even though his Magical History textbook was secondhand, it was still as pristine as French weaponry during World War II, with not the slightest bit of entertainment to be found.

After several attempts, he could only resort to the traditional craft of inserting characters into the history textbook.

This was not difficult. First, he inserted a character he liked. Considering next month's manuscript deadline, Andrew decisively made Gryffindor the protagonist—as for how the editor would revise it, sorry, he had no idea, nor did he know the author of that serialized novel.

The timeline problem was simple too. Dragon veins, a Moonlight Treasure Box, a cellar one could travel through, several special stars aligning in a row, a Dark wizard's curse, some river in a valley—thanks to his extensive reading, Andrew had plenty of ways to send Gryffindor wherever in time he needed him to go.

So this became great fun. Finding major historical events in an orthodox history textbook was much easier than digging through fairy tales.

If there was a clear protagonist, he would say Gryffindor was the old master secretly guiding them from behind the scenes. If there was no clear protagonist, he would say Gryffindor could not bear to witness the tragedy and intervened while concealing his identity.

Then he got completely carried away—digging out interesting events and stuffing him into them.

Pay attention, Andrew. The bottom line for Magical History is that you can't fail!

After repeatedly persuading himself, Andrew successfully padded out an outline for next month's book.

But Andrew's excitement caught the attention of Kevin beside him. "What happened? Did you sneak a magazine in?"

"A very interesting beetle appeared on my book. I'm drawing its route with my pen."

Andrew had long prepared seventeen or eighteen contingency plans for this, all to prevent people from trying to see what he was writing.

However, Kevin's reply was something he had never anticipated.

"Let me play with it."

No, were you crazy?

Andrew nearly lost it—this excuse was already boring enough. Could this class possibly be more boring than a beetle?

Well, yes...

"It already flew away," Andrew muttered. "Looks like it thought this was boring too."

"Pfft..."

Kevin nearly failed to hold back his laughter, but Professor Binns showed no sign of looking over. It seemed that as long as the classroom did not suddenly collapse, he would steadfastly finish reading the contents of the book before dismissing class and leaving.

That might be a very interesting subject for research. Too bad I don't have any spare time to do it.

Andrew gave a slight shake of his head, turned to a fresh page in his notebook, and began organizing a relationship chart for the main figures and events from the pages covered in class.

It was only a remedial measure, enough to ensure he passed—but with the course being taught like this, it was the only way he could salvage his grade.

Before Professor Binns dismissed class, Andrew tapped the page containing his notes with his wand. Once it fell, he slipped it between the pages covered in that lesson, intending to paste it in properly when he organized everything over the weekend.

When Professor Binns finished his lecture, Andrew clearly heard soft cheers. He looked at his roommates, and Bell, the tallest of them, had already drifted off to sleep.

Professor Binns, who did not take the ghost route, left the classroom in a stiff, almost walking manner. If one ignored the professor's translucent body, he was no different from an old professor about to retire.

Therefore, only after they were sure the professor had left did the students raise their voices. Those who needed to wake people did so, while the rest started chatting.

"I'm going to take a look at the library. Anyone want to come?"

"Don't you have a meeting? Oh, right, you passed..."

Hughes—the skinniest boy in Andrew's dorm—paused, then answered himself.

"I don't have anything to do. Why not go take a look? I haven't been to the library yet. What about you guys?"

"The assessment..."

"Same."

"See you later."

The five said goodbye to one another, and Andrew and Hughes headed toward the library.

"You seem pretty invested in Magical History, Andrew. That's great. Too bad Professor Binns doesn't seem very good at teaching it."

Invested?

Andrew was too embarrassed to say what he had actually been doing, so he could only nod along.

"I like it anyway. Magical History is really great. My dad is a Muggle, but he's very interested in history. He always tells me that history tells us where we came from, and how many mistakes we made in the past."

Oh no, a real history enthusiast. Andrew decided not to reveal the utterly deranged thing he had done.

Luckily, they still had something to talk about.

"God... I can't imagine how he reacted when he found out your mother was a wizard and that the Wizarding world really existed."

"I thought he'd be devastated too, but he wasn't. After the initial shock, he felt that a lot of historical mysteries that couldn't be explained could finally be explained."

Hughes smiled. "But after Mum told him he couldn't reveal the Wizarding world's existence, he was actually disappointed. When he learned I was coming to Hogwarts, he told me to combine the history of the Wizarding world with Muggle history and uncover the things that had been hidden away."

"There's just one problem." Hughes looked troubled. "I really don't know how to tell him that our Magical History professor's teaching ability is really..."

He swallowed the adjective that would have followed, but Andrew felt the same way.

"If you don't want to disappoint your family, you could put it this way: the professor is a genuine historical witness who simply isn't good with words. To this professor, most of history is everyday life."

"Wow, that's so cool." Hughes's eyes lit up. "That completely fits his imagination of magic!"