Magical History Is an Excellent Course

There were far too many memorable things in a student's life, but over the course of all those years, they were merely little highlights.

What truly ran through the whole of a student's life was one lesson after another...

And the only reason Andrew had time to ponder such profound matters in class was the professor up front... Well, he had originally wanted to call him elderly, but after thinking it over for ages, he still couldn't find a suitable description.

To put it simply, their professor was dead.

This wasn't a description of a murder, but of something that had happened one day in the past—the professor was currently a ghost.

And from the look of things, the professor intended to stay in this position indefinitely, while the school had no plans to replace him.

Most importantly—as far as teaching quality went, this professor's lessons were... positively sleep-inducing.

Thanks to the professor's masterful technique of doing nothing but reading the textbook aloud, working in tandem with the dizzying late-summer sunshine, quite a few students who hadn't yet settled back into school after the holidays were already very politely attempting an intimate date with their desks.

Since no brave soul had yet tested whether sleeping would cost them points, Andrew still tried his best to work out the relationships between the people in his Magical History textbook.

Unfortunately, this wasn't particularly effective—and, tragically, even though his Magical History textbook was secondhand, it was still as pristine as French weaponry from World War II, leaving him no amusement to be found.

After several attempts, he could only fall back on a time-honored technique: inserting a character into the history textbook.

This wasn't difficult. First, he had to insert a character he liked. Considering the manuscript due next month, Andrew decisively made Gryffindor the protagonist—as for whatever changes the editor might make, sorry, he knew nothing about that, nor did he know the author of that serial.

The timeline was easy to handle, too. Dragon veins, the Moonlight Treasure Box, a cellar that allowed time travel, a few special stars aligning, a dark wizard's curse, a river in some valley—with his extensive reading, Andrew had plenty of ways to send Gryffindor to whatever era he needed.

That made things very entertaining indeed. Finding major historical events in a proper history textbook was much easier than digging through fairy tales.

If an event had a clear protagonist, Gryffindor would be the old mentor guiding them behind the scenes. If it didn't, Gryffindor simply couldn't bear to witness the tragedy and intervened while concealing his identity.

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

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

After repeatedly talking himself down, Andrew successfully cobbled together 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 really interesting beetle showed up on my book. I'm using my pen to draw its route."

Andrew had prepared seventeen or eighteen backup explanations for this long ago, precisely to stop anyone from trying to see what he was writing.

Kevin's answer, however, was something he never could have predicted.

"Let me have a go."

Seriously, are you out of your mind?!

Andrew nearly lost his composure—that excuse was already boring enough. Could this lesson really be more boring than a beetle?

All right, yes...

"It's already flown away," Andrew muttered. "Looks like it thought this was boring enough, too."

"Pfft..."

Kevin almost failed to stifle his laughter, but Professor Binns showed no inclination to look their way. It seemed that unless the classroom suddenly collapsed, he would resolutely finish reading the contents of the book, then leave when class ended.

This might be a very interesting subject to investigate. Shame I haven't got a spare moment for it.

Andrew shook his head slightly, turned to a fresh page in his notebook, and began drawing a chart of the relationships between the main figures and events in the few pages covered during this lesson.

This was merely a remedial measure, enough to ensure he passed—but with the lesson taught like this, it was the only way he could salvage his grades.

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

When Professor Binns finished his explanation, Andrew distinctly heard quiet cheers. He glanced at his roommates; Bell, the tallest of them, had already drifted off to sleep.

Rather than taking a ghostly route, Professor Binns left the classroom in a prim, proper manner that almost resembled walking. If one ignored his translucent body, he was no different from an elderly professor nearing retirement.

Thus, only after confirming that the professor had left did the students raise their voices, waking those who needed waking and chatting with one another.

"I'm going to have a look at the Library. Anyone coming?"

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

Hughes—the skinniest boy in Andrew's dormitory—paused, then answered his own question.

"I've got nothing on, so I might as well have a look... I haven't been to the Library yet. What about you?"

"Assessment..."

"Same."

"See you later, then."

The five said their goodbyes, and Andrew and Hughes headed toward the Library.

"You seem pretty interested in Magical History, Andrew. That's great. Unfortunately, Professor Binns doesn't seem particularly good at it."

Interested?

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

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

Oh no, a genuine history enthusiast. Andrew decided not to reveal the outrageous things he had done.

Fortunately, there was still something they could talk about.

"Good heavens... I can't imagine how he reacted when he found out your mother was a witch and the Wizarding world actually existed."

"I thought he'd be shaken, too, but he wasn't. After his initial shock, he felt that lots of previously inexplicable historical mysteries finally made sense."

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

"There's just one problem," Hughes said, looking troubled. "I really don't know how to tell him that our Magical History professor's abilities are really..."

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

"If you don't want to disappoint your family, why not put it this way? The professor is a genuine witness to history who isn't very good with words. To him, most of history was simply everyday life."