For the first class of the afternoon, the first-years’ footsteps were noticeably heavier than they had been in the morning.
Having just eaten their fill in the warm Great Hall, the young witches and wizards dragged legs that felt like lead up the spiral staircase, finally stopping before a heavy oak door at the end of a corridor on the second floor of the castle.
A brass plaque beside the door bore faded, calligraphic letters: *History of Magic Classroom*.
Alvin Vance entered the classroom with the rest of the Slytherins.
It was an ancient, tiered room.
Rows of wooden benches rose steadily from the podium to the back, their surfaces worn smooth and shiny by generations of students.
Large windows faced the rear of the castle, letting in the grayish-white light of a gloomy sky and bathing the entire classroom in a sleep-inducing silence.
But what truly caught Alvin’s attention was the professor standing behind the podium.
He was nearly transparent.
His pearly-white body faintly showed the outline of the blackboard behind him, and a squashed hat sat askew on his equally translucent head.
The man exuded an aura of “old age,” like a musty blend of parchment and ancient dust.
He kept his head lowered, droning on in a slow, flat, monotonous voice that sounded like a skipping record on an old gramophone, completely oblivious to the students’ arrival—or perhaps he noticed but simply didn’t care.
Professor Cuthbert Binns.
The only ghost professor at Hogwarts.
According to *Hogwarts: A History*, one day during his lifetime, he had been grading essays in the staff room, died in his sleep, and his ghost had simply risen from his chair to teach his class the next day, never leaving the podium since.
Alvin sat down in the third row next to Draco Malfoy, his gaze quietly resting on the translucent figure.
In his Eastern understanding, souls that lingered in the mortal realm were usually tied to deep obsessions, unfinished business, or specific spiritual anchors.
What, then, was Professor Binns’s obsession?
Was it his inability to let go of the endless pile of ungraded essays?
Or was he simply so accustomed to teaching that even death couldn’t stop him from walking into the classroom?
This was the second time since arriving at Hogwarts that he had encountered ghosts existing so naturally in everyday life.
The first had been the Fat Friar and the others; this time, it was Professor Binns.
These two observations made him even more certain: the Western wizarding world’s definition, state of existence, and social role of “souls” were fundamentally different from those of Eastern Taoist studies.
It wasn’t a matter of who was right or wrong, but rather two complete, self-consistent sets of world rules.
And now, he was sitting before a window looking into the history of those rules.
“Open your books to page three hundred and eleven,” Professor Binns said in a run-on tone devoid of punctuation, his eyes staring over the students’ heads as if looking into some distant era from hundreds of years ago.
“Today we shall discuss the magical social reforms of Britain during the era of the Archmage Merlin and King Arthur…”
The rustle of opening pages rose sporadically.
Most of the students hadn’t even brought their textbooks, clearly having received advice from their older peers: for History of Magic, you only need to bring your ears—you’ll end up falling asleep anyway.
Alvin opened his thick copy of *A History of Magic*, scanning the densely packed text before raising his eyes to meet Professor Binns’s hollow yet focused ghostly gaze on a level plane.
He could sense that this ghost professor wasn’t unaware of the students’ presence; he just…
didn’t care.
He taught his lesson, and whether those sitting below him were alive or dead, listening or snoring, made no difference to him.
“…Merlin, as one of the greatest wizards in history, has an early life that remains unprovable.
The mainstream view suggests he was born in the sixth century, the son of a nun named Carmelis and a sprite…”
Professor Binns’s voice was like a slow-flowing, gray river.
Three rows away, Ron’s head was already drooping heavily like a ripe pumpkin.
Harry was struggling to prop his eyelids open with his elbows, caught in a battle between falling asleep and trying harder to stay awake.
The situation on the Slytherin side was no better.
Draco Malfoy, the Chief who had proudly sworn this morning to “set a good example for the first-years,” was currently resting his chin on his folded arms in a posture highly unbecoming of a pure-blood heir.
His grey-blue eyes struggled to open wide every five seconds, only to slowly close again like a receding tide.
Beside him, Crabbe was already snoring softly, while Goyle was drawing a grazing unicorn on his parchment with near-devout focus, obviously having nothing to do with the history of magic.
Alvin glanced at Draco just as the latter was entering his latest round of “struggling to open his eyes.” Their gazes met briefly.
Draco immediately sat bolt upright like a cat whose tail had been stepped on, pretending to have been listening intently all along, even attempting to pry his eyelids open with a finger.
But in less than three minutes, the invisible wave of drowsiness swept over him once more, and his platinum-blond head slowly slumped back down, finally resting gently against his folded arms.
This time, he didn’t fight it.
Alvin withdrew his gaze and looked back at the podium.
“…Whether Merlin provided magical support in establishing the Knights of the Round Table for King Arthur remains a subject of academic debate.
Professor Bill Smith, in his *Medieval Magic and Royal Power*, points out that early documents do not explicitly record Merlin’s personal involvement in the creation of the Round Table, suggesting this legend most likely originated from the artistic embellishments of twelfth-century troubadours…”
Professor Binns’s tone remained entirely flat.
Yet Alvin was listening with great interest.
This wasn’t out of politeness or the self-discipline of “respecting the classroom despite the boredom”; he genuinely found it fascinating.
First, the lecturer himself was a living piece of history.
A professor who had taught the subject for nearly a thousand years and was himself a witness to history, no matter how much his tone resembled a lullaby, possessed an irreplaceable density of information in his lectures. Enjoying the story? Read on at novelping.com.
Alvin could easily imagine that this ghost before him, who looked as if he might drift away at any moment, might have personally witnessed historical events that textbooks glossed over in a mere three lines.
He was just too lazy to mention it.
Second, he desperately needed this class.
Having grown up in a Taoist temple, Alvin’s education from his father had focused on Taoist classics, spellcraft principles, alchemy, and medicine.
His mother had occasionally shared stories of the British wizarding world, but those were mostly limited to family history and general knowledge.
As for the complete lineage, social structure, and major historical changes of Western magical civilization, his mind was virtually a blank slate.
The morning’s Charms class had granted him a glimpse into the laws of “how magic works,” while History of Magic opened a window into “how magical civilization was formed.” Both were equally important.
And so, in this classroom where eighty percent of the students had drifted off to dreamland, a bizarre sight unfolded:
Hermione of Gryffindor sat with her back ramrod straight, her quill flying across her parchment like a tireless woodpecker.
Meanwhile, Alvin of Slytherin, a single silver strand hanging down from his dark hair, maintained a focused expression, his eyes tracking the translucent figure on the podium, occasionally bowing his head to jot down a few lines in his notebook.
As for the rest, they were all dozing off in dreamland.
Professor Binns was entirely unfazed by this.
He had taught History of Magic in this exact tone for centuries.
Having lived through war and peace, the rise and fall of Dark Lords, and generations of students going from wide-eyed children to graduates, only to send their own children to listen to his lectures, he had seen it all.
Whether there were three hundred people or just three sitting below him, whether they were awake or asleep, made no difference.
He would go on lecturing just as he always had, until Hogwarts crumbled or he himself faded away entirely.
Thus, when a certain moment came—
*Swish.*
A crisp rustle of bones and fabric rubbing together, like a flat stone skipped across a thousand-year-old well, created an unbelievable ripple in this classroom where only a ghost’s monotone had filled the air.
Professor Binns’s lips stopped moving.
It took him about three seconds to realize what had happened.
During that time, he even looked down at his own hands, as if to make sure that sound hadn’t been his own ghostly joints popping—assuming he could still make such noises.
Then, those ghostly eyes of his—which always stared past the students’ heads into a distant time and space—for the very first time, slowly and incredulously focused on the center of the classroom.
The third row.
The Slytherin section.
A boy with a single silver streak in his dark hair was holding his hand straight up.
The posture wasn’t a tentative, hesitant half-raise, but a steady, deliberate, and proper hand-raise—elbow on the table, forearm perfectly vertical, fingers pressed together, like a straight shoot of bamboo.
Professor Binns opened his mouth, but no sound came out.
For the first time, an expression resembling confusion appeared on his ghostly face.
The few other students who were still awake stared in shock.
Hermione’s quill froze over her notebook as she turned to look at Alvin, a flash of surprise in her eyes, followed by a look of annoyance that said, *Why didn’t I think of that?*
Neville struggled to pry his heavy eyelids apart, looking around in a daze.
Even Crabbe, who had been sleeping soundly, seemed disturbed by the sudden silence, letting out a loud snore before rolling over to continue his slumber.
Professor Binns finally found his voice.
“…Do you…
have a question?”
His tone was still flat, but the pause and that rare gaze—which could almost be described as actually looking at someone—revealed the inner stirrings of this thousand-year-old ghost.
“Professor,” Alvin’s voice was steady and clear, neither too loud nor too soft, but carrying perfectly across the classroom.
“Regarding the controversy you just mentioned about whether Merlin’s creation of the Round Table for King Arthur was merely a later embellishment, I have a question.”
Professor Binns’s translucent eyebrows rose very slowly by about a millimeter.
That was the greatest movement his eyebrows had made in the past three hundred years.
“Speak.”
“Professor Bill Smith’s primary basis for denying Merlin’s involvement in the creation of the Round Table is the lack of explicit records in pre-twelfth-century literature,” Alvin said.
“But from my rudimentary understanding, Britain during King Arthur’s time was undergoing the Anglo-Saxon invasions, and a vast number of early documents were destroyed or lost during the chaos of war.
Since the survival of early medieval historical records is inherently incomplete, isn’t there a methodological risk in dismissing a legend that has endured for centuries simply because of a ‘lack of contemporary written records’?”
The classroom was completely quiet.
Not the quiet of sleeping students and steady breathing, but a heavy, suspended silence.
A few young wizards who had been slumped over their desks groggily raised their heads, either startled by the sudden question or simply drawn in by the unusual atmosphere.
Professor Binns fell silent for three seconds.
During those three seconds, across his ghostly, plaster-like face that was always completely expressionless, there flickered a succession of emotions: surprise, contemplation, scrutiny, and a faint, almost imperceptible spark of…
interest, cutting through his centuries-old stagnation.
“Mr.
His tone remained flat, but for the first time, his monotone held pauses and emphasis.
“Yes, Professor,” Alvin replied.
“Your question,” Professor Binns said slowly, “essentially touches upon a core conflict in the study of magical history: the play between written evidence and the reliability of oral tradition.”
He paused.
This was the longest pause he had made in the entire class.
“Professor Bill Smith represents the ’empirical school,’ which advocates that all historical assertions must be supported by contemporary written evidence.
But as you said, the Arthurian era coincided with Britain’s ‘Dark Ages,’ which suffered from severe literary fragmentation.
Relying entirely on written records leaves massive blanks in our understanding of sixth-century magical society.”
He seemed to be recalling something, his hollow ghostly eyes narrowing slightly.
“I…
recall that in the eleventh century, a chronicler named Aldred mentioned that in the basement of a monastery in Cornwall, he had seen a fragment copied in the ninth century.
In the fragment, there was a dialogue attributed to Merlin, discussing an enchantment process that ‘keeps oak from rotting and carries the symbol of royal authority.’ That monastery was burned down during the goblin rebellions of the fourteenth century, and the fragment was lost along with it.
Aldred’s account itself, lacking physical corroboration, has long been dismissed by mainstream academics as an isolated and uncorroborated report.”
He paused, his translucent lips twitching slightly as if he wanted to say more, but in the end, he merely exhaled a sigh of non-existent air.
“Therefore, Mr.
Selwyn,” his voice remained dull, but his tempo was half a beat slower than before, “your skepticism does indeed possess academic merit.”
He raised his translucent hands and slowly made a motion to award points toward the Slytherin section.
“Five points to Slytherin.
For…
reasonable skepticism and critical thinking.”
The classroom fell silent for a moment.
Then, Hermione whipped her head around, looking at Alvin with a mixture of surprise and admiration that seemed to say, *You can do that?*
Neville’s mouth fell open, entirely clueless about what had just transpired, but he instinctively clapped once before stopping awkwardly.
Even Ron was jarred awake by the uncanny silence, asking Harry in a daze:
“Wh-what happened?
Is class over?”
Harry didn’t answer.
He just looked in Alvin’s direction, a faint smile gracing his lips.
On the Slytherin side, Draco remained fast asleep, his platinum-blond head resting peacefully on his arms, his breathing steady, entirely oblivious to the historic event that had just occurred a mere three feet away.
There was even a faint, lingering smile at the corner of his lips.
Perhaps in his dreams, he was securing some great honor in the most elegant manner possible.
Alvin nodded to Professor Binns, his voice remaining calm.
“Thank you, Professor.”
He lowered his hand and returned his gaze to his open textbook.
But out of the corner of his eye, he noticed the translucent figure lingering behind the podium for a moment longer.
Rather than mechanically flipping to the next page of his lesson plan as he usually did, Binns tilted his head slightly, as if still lost in thought.
Then, Professor Binns lowered his head and resumed lecturing on the next topic in his flat, unvarying drone.
But if one were observant enough, they would notice that his speech, which usually ran at the steady pace of an old record, seemed to be…
half a beat slower.
It wasn’t out of fatigue or a hitch in his memory.
It was more like someone who had been asleep for far too long finally hearing someone knock at their door.
The clouds outside the window parted slightly, letting in a faintly brighter ray of grayish-white light.
Hermione’s quill resumed its rapid dancing across her parchment, though she occasionally raised her eyes to steal a thoughtful glance toward the Slytherin benches.
Ron slumped back down, while Harry tried his hardest to stay awake, failed, and slumped down too.
The classroom was once again filled with the sound of rhythmic breathing and the low drone of the ghost professor.
Alvin’s quill glided gently across his page, recording the keywords Professor Binns had just mentioned: *Aldred*, *Cornwall monastery fragment*, and *goblin rebellion*.
Beside those words, he added a brief note in tiny, neat handwriting:
*Ghosts are living history; do not overlook them.*
He closed his notebook, looked up, and continued to watch the translucent figure behind the podium recounting events from a thousand years ago.
History of Magic remained highly “hypnotic.”
But he listened with rapt attention.