Disclaimer: If property is theft, I have never stolen Harry Potter.

The sounds of the 1993 beginning-of-term feast echoed through the heavy oaken doors of the Great Hall, and the Fat Friar sighed wistfully. Good food had always been his weakness – hence his sobriquet – and his ghostly inability to partake of such feasts was no less depressing to him after 700 years than it had been when he was newly dead. It was for that reason that, though he dutifully showed up each year to witness the Sorting and greet the new Hufflepuffs, he tended to drift quietly off into the outer corridor once the actual dishes appeared.

Having nothing else to occupy himself, he decided to pray his usual Way of the Cross for tranquillity within the school and a rich harvest of learning during the coming school year. He had only just reached the second Station, however, when a soft voice said, "Excuse me, Friar, do you have a minute?"

The Friar rotated himself in surprise, and smiled paternally down at the blonde-ringletted third year standing behind him. "Ah, Miss Abbott!" he said. "What brings you out here? Shouldn't you still be feasting with your Housemates?"

Hannah Abbott shrugged diffidently. "Maybe," she said. "But I wasn't really that hungry. I feel as though I should be, but meeting that dementor on the train sort of took away my appetite, I guess."

"Ah." The Friar nodded, and pursed his ectoplasmic lips. "Yes, I can see how it would do that. But, even so, why leave the Hall to come and cavort with your House ghost, instead of staying with your own living friends? Rather morbid of you, don't you think?"

Hannah giggled. "Well, maybe so," she said, "But the truth is, I actually wanted to ask you something. There was a bit in my assigned reading over the summer that puzzled me a little when I thought of you, and I was just wondering if maybe you could explain it to me."

That single sentence told the Friar everything he needed to know. It was starting a little early this year – blast Fudge and his dementors, anyway – but he had known that it was going to happen sooner or later; each September for the past three decades, at least two or three new third years in his House had come up to him with the same question.

"Well, perhaps I can," he said. "Tell me about it."

Hannah took a deep breath. "It was when I was working on the History essay that Professor Binns had us write over the holiday," she said. "It was all about witch-burning in the 14th Century, so I looked in the index to A History of Magic for references to that, and all the pages it sent me to seemed to say something about mediæval Muggles thinking that magical people worked for the devil. Basically, the idea seemed to be that the Church in the Middle Ages saw Hogwarts as this great, semi-mythical stronghold of just the most hideous evil, and they would have burnt it down in ten seconds if they'd ever been able to find it."

The Friar nodded. "Yes, I see," he said.

"So I started to write the essay that way," said Hannah, "and I was about three inches into it when I suddenly remembered about you. And that got me stuck, because I couldn't figure out how the patron ghost of my House could be a man of the cloth if the Church hated magic – unless maybe you'd been some sort of two-faced, cynical person who just joined an order to avoid persecution, but that didn't fit either, because I knew you. A Slytherin might have done something like that, but I couldn't imagine that someone from our House would."

She let out a helpless sigh. "So that's where I am," she concluded. "I never finished the essay; it's still in my trunk, marking an Agrippa reference in the book, with just the three inches of it written. And I need to have it done by Friday, because getting a 0 on an essay you had three months to write is really a rotten way to begin the school year. So… what am I missing?"

The Friar stroked his chin thoughtfully. "Tell me, Miss Abbott," he said, "did you ever note the publication date on A History of Magic?"

Hannah blinked. "Um… no, not specifically," she said. "I think I heard that it was written in the early '60s, though."

"1961," said the Friar. "Just after Professor Dumbledore became Headmaster."

"Oh," said Hannah. "Well, all right, then. But what does that have to do with anything?"

"Do you know when Professor Binns died?"

Hannah stopped to think. "Quite a while ago, wasn't it?" she said. "There's a sort of Victorian quality about him… was it in the 19th Century sometime?"

The Friar chuckled. "No, not quite that far back," he said. "But he was born and raised under Victoria. He died in 1938, at the age of 73."

Hannah stared at him expectantly. "And so…?"

"Well, how do you suppose he heard about Miss Bagshot's book?" said the Friar. "Not by keeping up with the newspapers, certainly. If ever a man lived in the past, it was Herodotus Binns; I don't think he really believes that anything of importance has ever happened since the International Statute of Secrecy was signed. Yet he uses, as his principal History of Magic text, a book that was written nearly thirty years after his own death. Why would that be, do you think?"

Hannah shrugged helplessly. "Someone recommended it to him?"

"Exactly," said the Friar. "Specifically, Professor Dumbledore recommended it to him. Bathilda Bagshot was an old friend of the Dumbledore family, and, when she published her general overview of wizarding history after twenty years of work, the Headmaster strongly encouraged Professor Binns to begin using it as his standard text. Professor Binns yielded readily enough, but I don't think he's ever actually read the book; he still gives the same lectures he's given for over a century, and just transcribes the proposed homework assignments from the study guide. Or, rather, he doesn't transcribe them himself, of course, since he can't interact with matter; he has a house-elf named Nimmy who does it for him."

This glimpse into the inner workings of the Hogwarts curriculum left Hannah breathless for a moment. When she recovered, though, she realised that she still didn't know what all this had to do with religion and magic during the Middle Ages, and she said as much.

"Well," said the Friar with a sigh, "while Professor Dumbledore is unquestionably a great and brilliant wizard, there's nothing particular extraordinary about his knowledge of history. For the most part, he simply accepts the general picture of it that he was raised with – which would be fine, of course, except that he happened to be raised in Godric's Hollow."

"What does that have to do with it?" said Hannah.

"Godric's Hollow is the most celebrated of the 18th-Century wizarding villages that came into existence after the International Statute of Secrecy was signed," the Friar reminded her. "Its prestige, and that of its elite families, has always been bound up with the Statute – and, therefore, just about everyone who lives in the place, or who gets his ideas from someone who does, assumes without question that the Statute was the greatest and wisest thing wizardkind ever did, and that its implicit view of Muggles as naturally ignorant and hostile to wizards is entirely true, always will be true, and, therefore, always has been true. That assumption colours everything they feel, think, and do, with the result that even so learned a scholar as Bathilda Bagshot can write a book saying that mediæval Muggles – not Renaissance Muggles, mark you, but mediæval – were 'particularly afraid of magic', and even so great and wise a man as Albus Dumbledore can think highly enough of that book to get it assigned to two generations of Hogwarts students."

"Oh," said Hannah softly. "So you mean… you mean that wizards first decided to be secret from Muggles, and then needed a reason to feel that they'd done the right thing? And so they told each other nasty stories about what Muggles did to wizards, and after a while everyone forgot that the stories weren't really true?"

"Well, not quite everyone," said the Friar mildly. "Some of us old-timers can still remember a bit further back than 1698. But, in essence, yes, that's more or less the way of it."

Hannah thought about that for a minute or two, and then said, slowly, "That can't be all there is to it, though, can it? Even if Miss Bagshot's exaggerating things because of how she was brought up, the whole thing about the Church burning witches wasn't just something the people in Godric's Hollow invented. I mean, my mother's a Muggle, and even she knows about Joan of Arc and so on." She paused. "But then, what about you…"

A low moan escaped her, and she buried her face in her hands. "Oh, I don't know," she said plaintively. "I must just be so stupid; I know this must make sense, but it just doesn't to me."

"Now, now, my dear," said the Friar gently. "That's no way to talk. There's nothing wrong with your mind; indeed, if anything, it's a good sign that you can think hard enough to feel confused. A true simpleton never does that; he just believes what he hears until he hears something different, and then he believes that and forgets the other."

"Oh, I know that," said Hannah wearily. "It's what Mum's always telling me, that curiosity matters more than always having the answers. But, if I were really smart, I'd know the answer, wouldn't I?"

"Perhaps," said the Friar. "Perhaps not. It all depends on what the question is."

"The question is, why did a Church that let you be a friar go around burning witches?"

"Ah," said the Friar. "Well, if that's the question, I can tell you the answer quite easily. The answer is that, in my day, you wouldn't have been a witch."

He had expected this statement to get a reaction out of Hannah, and so it did; she raised her head and stared at him, wide-eyed, as though expecting the officers of some ghostly Bedlam to swoop up and drag him away any moment. "What?" she said.

"You wouldn't have been," said the Friar. "You wouldn't have called yourself one, and no-one else would have called you one, either – least of all the authorities of my order. You might have been an Ætherica, or a Quadranimans, or a Filia Sphærarum, or any of half a dozen other things – perhaps even the encantatrix that you still would be in America – but never a malefica."

"Why not?" said Hannah.

"Because," said the Friar, "in order to be a maleficus, you have to regard the Devil as being God's equal in power and authority, and to believe that you can win power over the elements by serving him. That's what the crime of witchcraft consists in: the heresy of Manes and Waldo, that evil has a reality and force of its own, independent of what it takes from goodness. And so it, like all other forms of heresy, was treated as subversive of the crown – which, after all, still claims to be God's agent in ruling Britain – and punished by burning at the stake. A nasty business," said the Friar, making a face, "but, then again, very little about secular law has ever been pleasant."

"But I didn't get my magic by serving the Devil!" Hannah exclaimed – and then, with a sudden pang of horrified doubt, added, "Did I?"

"No, of course not," said the Friar. "That's why I say you're not a witch. The habit of calling a female Quadranimans a 'witch' didn't start until the so-called Enlightenment, when the average Hogwarts or Beauxbatons maiden thought so well of herself for scorning Muggle religion that it tickled her to identify herself with the servants of Satan. It's rather like the way the Minister of Magic was just the King's Audiencer for the Isles of Hogwarts, until Charles II decided that that title didn't annoy the Puritans enough."

"Charles II knew about Hogwarts?" Hannah said faintly.

The Friar cocked his head, and a smile twitched at the edges of his mouth. "Well, of course," he said. "All the monarchs of Scotland knew until 1901, and they would have continued to know if Victoria hadn't formally delegated the task of dealing with the Ministry to Disraeli and his successors. Hasn't Professor Binns covered that in his lectures yet?"

Hannah coloured. "Well, maybe he has," she said. "The truth is, I have a lot of trouble following his lectures, so I usually just, well…"

"Read the textbook instead?" said the Friar.

"Well, yes."

The Friar nodded. "Yes, that would explain it," he said. "I don't suppose Miss Bagshot is keen to emphasise the role of the Muggle crown in the history of wizarding Britain. She may not even have told the story of how the office of Audiencer ceased to be hereditary."

"Being Minister of Magic used to be a hereditary office?" said Hannah.

The Friar raised his eyebrows, and Hannah, suddenly realising how ignorant she was surely sounding, burst into giggles. "Sorry," she said. "It's just… there's so much to all this, and I never guessed. No-one ever told me."

The Friar smiled, softly and a little sadly. "Yes, it's a much bigger world than it looks at first," he said. "But we don't have time to discuss the whole of it now; I imagine" (with a glance toward the Hall) "that they're just about finishing up with the feast in there, and you'll probably want to get at least some food in you before you get swept off to your dormitory."

As if on cue, Hannah's neglected stomach let out a loud growl, and she blushed and giggled sheepishly. "Yes, I suppose I'd better," she murmured. "I still don't know what I'm going to do about my essay, though…"

"Simple enough, I'd say," said the Friar, with the confidence of one who had dealt with this same problem regularly for thirty years. "The assignment was to discuss the proposition, 'Witch-burning during the Fourteenth Century was completely pointless.' It never said that you had to agree with the proposition, or even define its terms the same way the author did; you just had to discuss it intelligently."

Hannah frowned, as the idea worked its way into her mind. "You mean that I could write an essay about whether criminalising heresy ever made sense, and Professor Binns would accept that?" she said. "It wouldn't have much to do with History of Magic, would it?"

"It could," said the Friar. "You might quote Albertus Magnus a few times; I'm fairly sure he discusses the point somewhere – and then there's the real legend of Wendelin the Weird, who professed forty-seven heresies to get herself burnt forty-seven times, and then the forty-eighth time came before a wizard judge who knew how to make Fiendfyre. In any case, if Professor Binns – or Nimmy, rather – frames an essay topic in such a way that it's no longer about History of Magic, and then marks you down for answering it accurately, it seems to me that it's on her conscience, not yours."

He was laying a bit of a test for her here. He knew, of course, that Nimmy had never in thirty years marked down a witch-burning paper merely for reinterpreting the question – but Hannah didn't know that, and she had spent two years in Severus Snape's class learning how vehement Hogwarts professors could be in defence of their prejudices. The question was, would she risk a poor grade for the sake of integrity, or lose her nerve and decide to simply parrot the book after all? The Friar had seen students go both ways, and more than a few Hufflepuff prefects (a position for which Dumbledore often took the Friar's recommendations into account) had owed their status to the results of such decisions.

Hannah bit her lower lip, toyed with one of her ringlets, shut her eyes tight, and took several deep breaths; then, letting them all out in one heavy exhalation, she nodded. "All right," she said. "I suppose it's the only way. You'll help me find sources, won't you?"

"I can recommend a few books, yes," said the Friar gravely.

Hannah nodded again. "Okay, then," she said. "Thanks."

She turned to re-enter the Great Hall, but then paused after only a few steps and turned back to the Friar. "Oh, by the way, I almost forgot to ask," she said. "I hope this isn't too nosey of me, but something about the way you were talking just now made me think of it, and I just wanted to make sure I was right. You taught History of Magic yourself, didn't you, back when you were alive?"

"I?" said the Friar. "Good heavens, no. I've just been around a while, that's all."

"Oh." Hannah seemed disappointed, and a bit puzzled as well; after a moment, though, she shrugged and turned back towards the Hall again.

"No, History of Magic was a Dominican enclave in my day," said the Friar. "My subject was Potions."

Hannah turned sharply, and shot a startled glance at his placidly smiling face; then she laughed, and rolled her eyes. "All right, I suppose I deserved that," she said. "Never assume more than the evidence actually shows you: I'll learn that, someday. But I was right about you being a teacher, then?"

The Friar nodded. "Fifty-one years," he said.

Hannah looked properly impressed. "Wow," she said. "You must have liked it here."

"It had its points, yes," said the Friar. "The beginning-of-term feasts, in particular: those were always excellent." And he gave her a meaningful look.

Hannah laughed again. "All right, all right, I'm going," she said, and turned a third time back toward the Great Hall. This time, she made it through the doors, and the Friar chuckled as he heard her footsteps hurrying back to the Hufflepuff table.

"Does our House proud, that one," he murmured. "Now, where was I… ah, yes. Ave, Rex noster; Tu solus nostros es miseratus errores…"