Professor Binns

[David]

No: HPFGUIDX 57623

Janet Anderson wrote:

> what is the 
> unfinished business that keeps him here (clearly it isn't 
teaching ...)?  

Ah, I think it *is* the teaching that is Binns' (and JKR's) 
unfinished business.

The history of the WW is plainly chock full of unfinished business, 
or, rather, of stories not yet told and truths not yet uncovered.  
It is one of the most prominent features of the series that each 
book deals with a different period of the past and how it affects 
the present: for COS, Riddle's early days; for POA, the marauder 
era; for GOF, the immediate post-Voldemort time.  PS sets the scene 
by locating the series' central mystery at the point when Harry was 
a little over a year old.

Binns is useless for relating this information, although it is his 
job.  The other characters have to stumble through to it themselves, 
and it is little surprise that, compared to the strong authorial 
voice, the series' official internal storyteller is reduced to 
ghostly status.

David