The End

The End: or How Professor Binns defeated the Dark Lord.

It was a warm sunny afternoon, near the end of May. One of those kind of days when most teenagers would rather do anything than go to class, especially if that anything required being outdoors.

Harry, Ron and Hermione would have rather been outdoors; they would have rather been visiting Grawp. But no, they had the last review class with Professor Binns before Finals started next week. Professor Binns was a ghost. He was the History of Magic teacher. Long ago, he died before class but did not let that stop his lecture. One day to him was much like the last.

His other noteworthy attribute was his ability to cure even the worst case of insomnia, with nothing other than his voice.

This particular day was not really any different than most of the rest of his classes, except there was not even one exciting fact in the material they were covering.

It wasn't any wonder that less than five minutes into class half of it was asleep, with the other half fading fast, even the ever attentive, ever studious, Miss Granger.

First she slumped in her seat. Then her quill stopped moving. Finally her head would bob and she would awaken. The process would repeat but with a longer and longer pause before starting over.

Ron came prepared; he had a pillow. He pulled it out and put it to use right at the start of class.

Harry was in between. He really wanted to listen, but no matter how hard he tried, including five cups of strong coffee before class, he couldn't.

This particular day was worse than usual, the class was a double. So by the ten minute mark the entire class was soundly sleeping. The room looked as if Neville had blown up his cauldron while making a sleeping potion. There weren't any buzzing flies to awaken anyone. They were asleep, too.

Somewhere in the middle of this Harry became faintly aware of pain in his scar; the pain grew worse but not enough to wake him up.

Voldemort, the most evil, powerful and most despised dark wizard ever, decided that this would be the perfect time to rid himself of the pest, Harry Potter. Considering that the boy was nearly comatose in a silly history class, action was needed. Being the Dark Lord he knew what he had to do.

So he arrived near Hogwarts and quickly made his way into the building, using an invisibility cloak.

He quietly made his way to the History classroom. As he approached he heard Binns' voice. The sound of this voice made the constant buzz of insects on an afternoon such as this sound like a blaring alarm clock. So even before he entered the room he was under the spell, and growing sleepy. He was so sleepy that by the time he reached Harry he was on the floor snoring like the rest of the class.

Harry somehow became aware enough to recognize the snoring mass on the floor next to him. A streak of green light shot from his wand and the Dark Lord turned to ash. The Dark Lord was no more. He was dead. Deceased. Gone. History.

Binns stopped talking and started laughing, something that many generations of Hogwarts students never heard.

Harry heard through the laughs, "Well, I guess you never could stay awake in one of my classes, Tom."