"Sir?" a young boy with flaming red hair asked as he raised his hand. The rest of the class looked up in curiosity. No one ever interrupted this class.

The ghostly professor looked up with a bland look. "Yes Mr. Wesly?" he asked in a bored tone.

"I was just wondering, my dad said that Harry Potter defeated Voldemort," the boy said, undeterred by the fact that the professor had gotten his name wrong.

"That's just a legend, this is history, we do not work with fantasy stories in this class," Professor Binns said.

"Didn't you teach Harry Potter?" the boy continued.

"I might have taught a Harry Potter, but the one that defeated Voldemort in 1999 is simply a fabrication of imagination," the professor said. The boy sat back in his desk dismayed. His dad had talked about Harry Potter like he had been a real man. The boy had had fantasies that his great-great-grandfather's best friend had been the famous Harry Potter.

"But, sir! My mom said that her great-great-aunt dated Harry Potter!" the boy's cousin said.

"No man could have defeated Voldemort single handedly. The only man that could have done it died before Voldemort's defeat," the professor said.

"There has to be newspapers from that time," the original boy said sensibly.

"All artifacts were unfortunately destroyed in the war. Now, if you'll let me continue my lesson. We are done discussing silly fantasies." The professor looked back down to his notes. "In 1999, the most feared wizard of his time was killed. No one knows how he died, but we know he disappeared. There was a large battle at the end in which the man's followers and the resistance battled..." The students fell back into a stupor after the ghost resumed his breathy lecture.

Later that night, the boy was found in the library. "Hey Weasely, what are you doing? None of the professors gave us homework over the break," another boy said. The new boy had sandy colored hair and a round face.

"Hey Seamus, I'm just looking up some stuff for history," the boy named Weasely said.

"You've got to be kidding me Bill! You're doing extra work for Binns' class?" Seamus said.

"Well, what Binns said in class reminded me of what my dad told me once."

"What's that?" the sandy haired boy asked as he sat down next to his friend.

"He said that in the 1999 war, some guy named Harry Potter defeated Voldemort single-handedly. But after the big battle at the end, Harry Potter disappeared and was never heard of again. My dad said that my great-great-grandfather was best friends with Harry Potter, and they went to school here."

"That famous Ronald Weasely?" Seamus asked.

"The one and only," Bill said proudly.

"But Binns said that all the artifacts from that time was destroyed during the war," Seamus said speculatively as he watched Bill reach for another book.

"I don't believe him," Bill said as he flipped the pages of a thick book. After a few minutes of silence, Bill shut the book. "Nothing," he said despairingly.

"Maybe Harry Potter never really existed," Seamus suggested sadly.

"Perhaps, but just imagine how cool it would have been to be the descendant of the best friend to the person solely responsible to defeating Voldemort!" Bill said, his eyes lighting up. "And my aunt said that her great-great-aunt, and my great-great-great­-aunt dated him. I could have been related to someone famous!"

Seamus hit the back of Bill's head. "You already are! Ronald Weasely, the only person to have never lost a game of chess. I heard he even beat that Muggle named Bobby Fischer!"

"But the person to have saved our world from Voldemort...Just imagine, Ronald Weasely and Harry Potter, best friends. I bet they were popular!"

"But neither one became famous until after Hogwarts," Seamus said sensibly.

"Harry Potter was famous since he was a year old. Voldemort tried to kill him, but failed. He then went on and defeated Voldemort many times. And each time, Voldemort barely escaped with his life," Bill said.

"How do you know that? You don't even know if Harry Potter existed."

"My dad told me," Bill said.

"If your dad told you that history was an exciting class, would you believe him?" Seamus asked.

The tips of Bill's ears turned violently red. "No," he mumbled.

"So how can you be sure that Harry Potter was real?"

"I can't," Bill said. "I guess you're right, Harry Potter wasn't real," Bill said sadly. He had been really looking forward to proving that not only was the legend of Harry Potter true, but that he was almost related to him. Bill shut the book he was looking at and put it back on the shelf.

The friends walked out of the library, thinking about what life would have been like if Harry Potter had been real, if the stories about the boy were more than stories. But alas, Harry Potter was only a fictional character from almost two hundred years ago.