literature

Secret Diaries of Prof. Binns

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If this record ever meets eyes other than my own, it will only be long after even my shade has vanished from this world, for the questions it poses are not ones to simply be browsed at leisure.  I had hoped to one day include these questions in the day-to-day class schedule, but it seems that regulation and the traditional whimsy of the wizarding world are not up to the challenge of even accepting them as valuable queries.

We wizards, with our memory-siphoning, fire-shooting, and rubbish-cleaning, fail to realize the ultimate question posed by our very existence:  Where did magic come from?

The most common answer will be that magic has always been here; that is as a much a force of nature as light or gravity.  That much may be so, especially when such great pains are taken to conceal its’ presence from Muggles.

But where did it start?  When did the first person, wandless, lash out with their as-then-unknown power and trigger the creation a new world in the process?

Possibly the best known date to any Diagon Alley shopper is 382 BC, when Ollivander’s went into the business of making wands.  While they have certainly been amongst some of the most finely-crafted magical instruments to date, this leaves literally thousands of years of history blank; the first wizard certainly did not walk into a shop to begin his career.

Perhaps answers can be found in nature.  Magical creatures have existed alongside man, probably originating before he did.  This lends credence to the idea that magic is natural, but does not answer how it came to be institutionalized.

So why all these back-and-forth questions?  What point is there in pursuing such odd ideas?
Wizards have no sense of future.  To them, the future is the same as the present, maybe with a shinier cauldron or a few new spells, but the traditions and ideas remain the same.  Why?  Because wizards also have no sense of the past.  The origin is unimportant to them.  The names, dates, facts, and figures are seen as trivial and useless, when in fact they provide the keys to future events; the patterns which keep repeating.

To the person or persons reading this diary:  You have thought enough of the history of magic to open this book, doubtless after having to uncover it from whatever restrictions I have placed upon its’ recovery.  It falls to you to understand the questions within, but the choice to raise them is yours.  You must ask yourself whether comfort or knowledge is more important, for you and the rest of the world.

Professor Cuthbert Binns, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, 1784
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