AN: I was trying to think of a reason for why Professor Binns is such a boring teacher, and wondered if maybe he has just lost faith in humanity. Of course, I don't own it.

Characters: Professor Binns, but also Harry, Tom Riddle Jr, James, Lily, Snape, Dumbledore, Ginny, and the next generation. Anyone you think it applies to, really.

Summary: "Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it." –George Santayana. (Professor Binns knows this better than most.)

Lessons in Continuity

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I want to see it all, he thought, and that's why he never quite moved on.

(If only he knew then that it all isn't very much.)

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At first he tried getting them excited. He stood on his desk and made funny poses while shouting, "The Goblin Rebellions! Open to page 359 in your textbooks…" and of course they laughed and smiled and his class was easily the most entertaining of all the schools'. (But then when the tests come back he saw that half of them had failed anyway. Red ink stained their papers like blood.)

He watches the world as each new class graduates. He determines how many years it will take before they will be in positions of power. He watches, and waits.

One day he forgets what he's waiting for.

There is a boy with glasses in his class. There was a boy with glasses in his class. There will always be a boy with glasses (in the world, in Hogwarts, in his class.)

There is a boy with dark hair and pale skin, a boy who could go very far indeed, reshape the world if he so chooses. (And he's learned, this type of boy – they choose, they always choose.)

"The Goblin Rebellions," he says, "Open to page 359 in your textbooks…"

This boy will make history, will become it. (They always do.)

He does not deal with fiction. Why would he, when this is a history class? All that he teaches is based purely in facts, with minimal speculation. After all, you examine the past in order to predict the future. Who would want to predict the future by examining faulty facts? As with most historians, he searches for the truth.

Now of course there could always be many versions of the truth; to that he does not deny. There is bias in every historical document that isn't a primary source. It is only in putting the pieces of all the points of view together does he have the full picture. So in a way, history is a very exact art, almost scientific in nature. (A pity that this is a magic school, where students are not very inclined to science.)

The gentle wheeze of sleep begins somewhere in the second row. He continues reading.

There is a girl with ginger hair. Her tongue is sharp, her wit sharper, and he sighs in resigned defeat as all of the male attention in the room is sucked away from him and towards her.

(Sometimes she is in Gryffindor, sometimes Slytherin; but always one or the other, hot or cold, never in the middle ground of tranquility. She's a firestorm raging up from the south, headed for destruction, oblivion, and from the glint in her eye he thinks she knows it-)

"May I have your attention," he says, but never does.

There is a war, but then again there has always been a war.

He waits in his office for an old important man to drop by for a visit. Not a social visit, mind you; he never gets those. No, he is waiting for a serious visit, a visit steeped in urgency.

The old man never comes.

(The first few times he looks for the important old man himself. He just wants to help, after all. His personal collection of notes and old tomes alone could change the tide of the war. He could say no, no, Griphook the Great did that and was defeated in three months…Brinald the Brave used this tactic to change the public opinion in his favor-)There is never enough time.

He waits in his office until the candle dies with a hiss of smoke.

There is a boy with dark hair and a girl with flaming red, and there is love. Not necessarily between the two of them, but it's there, somewhere in the equation. So is death.

If it is a love story, it is a tragic one. There is no gentle romancing found in these pages, only a fire storm of raw emotion. It's becoming a theme with the red girl. There is a glint in her eye that spells her grave.

If it is a death story, it in an equally tragic one. He kills her, in some way. She dies because of (for) him.

But either way there is love and death, a girl and a boy: the classic elements for every timeless story. He watches the tale play out in front of him (once upon a time there was-)

"The Goblin Rebellions. Open to page 359 of your…"

He watches the ancient wizarding families breed themselves into insanity and sickness in their bid to stop the infiltration of impure blood. He watches traditional wizarding customs fade into disuse as the ignorance and paranoia spreads, as the wars multiply, as families fall into ruin and break apart. He watches the Ministry grow larger and more useless, the torture of muggles, the spilling of magical blood by magical hands and wands. He does not need to be a seer to know what comes next.

There is a boy with dark hair, a girl with flaming red, connected by time and tales of old and – dare he say it? – fate.

There is a boy with pale skin, sitting in his class at this very moment, holding the world like a piece of clay in his hands. There is a choice, too. (The river of blood runs both ways.) The boy looks at him, through him, as if he's only a ghost.

No, he does not need to be a seer. Only a history teacher.

"The Goblin Rebellions," he says, "Open to page 359 of your textbooks," and is not surprised when no pages turn.

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I want to see it all, he thought so he stayed, year in and year out until decades gave way into centuries.

(and realized that it all looks pretty much the same)