diff --git a/lucene/contrib/highlighter/src/java/org/apache/lucene/search/vectorhighlight/FastVectorHighlighter.java b/lucene/contrib/highlighter/src/java/org/apache/lucene/search/vectorhighlight/FastVectorHighlighter.java
index 54072b92520..9a3ffcfe377 100644
--- a/lucene/contrib/highlighter/src/java/org/apache/lucene/search/vectorhighlight/FastVectorHighlighter.java
+++ b/lucene/contrib/highlighter/src/java/org/apache/lucene/search/vectorhighlight/FastVectorHighlighter.java
@@ -77,6 +77,8 @@ public class FastVectorHighlighter {
    * @return the created {@link FieldQuery} object
    */
   public FieldQuery getFieldQuery( Query query ) {
+    // TODO: should we deprecate this? 
+    // because if there is no reader, then we cannot rewrite MTQ.
     try {
       return new FieldQuery( query, null, phraseHighlight, fieldMatch );
     } catch (IOException e) {
diff --git a/lucene/contrib/highlighter/src/java/org/apache/lucene/search/vectorhighlight/FieldQuery.java b/lucene/contrib/highlighter/src/java/org/apache/lucene/search/vectorhighlight/FieldQuery.java
index 7df3635d530..a402d415fae 100644
--- a/lucene/contrib/highlighter/src/java/org/apache/lucene/search/vectorhighlight/FieldQuery.java
+++ b/lucene/contrib/highlighter/src/java/org/apache/lucene/search/vectorhighlight/FieldQuery.java
@@ -102,7 +102,7 @@ public class FieldQuery {
       if( !flatQueries.contains( sourceQuery ) )
         flatQueries.add( sourceQuery );
     }
-    else if (sourceQuery instanceof MultiTermQuery) {
+    else if (sourceQuery instanceof MultiTermQuery && reader != null) {
       MultiTermQuery copy = (MultiTermQuery) sourceQuery.clone();
       copy.setRewriteMethod(new MultiTermQuery.TopTermsScoringBooleanQueryRewrite(MAX_MTQ_TERMS));
       BooleanQuery mtqTerms = (BooleanQuery) copy.rewrite(reader);
diff --git a/solr/core/src/java/org/apache/solr/highlight/DefaultSolrHighlighter.java b/solr/core/src/java/org/apache/solr/highlight/DefaultSolrHighlighter.java
index 977e846f830..eef991e9ce2 100644
--- a/solr/core/src/java/org/apache/solr/highlight/DefaultSolrHighlighter.java
+++ b/solr/core/src/java/org/apache/solr/highlight/DefaultSolrHighlighter.java
@@ -364,7 +364,7 @@ public class DefaultSolrHighlighter extends SolrHighlighter implements PluginInf
         // FVH cannot process hl.requireFieldMatch parameter per-field basis
         params.getBool( HighlightParams.FIELD_MATCH, false ) );
     fvh.setPhraseLimit(params.getInt(HighlightParams.PHRASE_LIMIT, Integer.MAX_VALUE));
-    FieldQuery fieldQuery = fvh.getFieldQuery( query );
+    FieldQuery fieldQuery = fvh.getFieldQuery( query, searcher.getIndexReader() );
 
     // Highlight each document
     DocIterator iterator = docs.iterator();