Quote Originally Posted by maxmixiv View Post
My apologies. It's sad because I knew answer
(I guess that Zorro spoke about "after the lecture" case.)
I am not sure. It is because due to the tense agreement in English, "Petya walked up to the professor and told him that he had to miss the lecture today", "that he had to miss..." is required to be in the past since the main clause "walked up and told him" is in the past. So, we do not actually know to which moment of time "he had to" applies. If I don't mistake with the English grammar Native speakers can correct me.