A/N: Okay, so before you start reading I just have a quick thing to point out. As we all know, this is Tris' day, and thus she'll be in her Ancient Runes class. I have scanned through the books and found virtually no mention of Ancient Runes, and so I have pretty much made the entire thing up. The teacher's name and names of books I found on a very useful website (I'll put a link in if I can) and the rest is made up. If you have any suggestions/ideas, feel free to let me know.
Disclaimer: All characters are credited to their respectful authors. However, how they are depicted in this chapter is credited to me, as is Ancient Runes, seeing as how JKR never really went into detail about that particular class.
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Chapter 10 – Tris
Tris walked down the hall, behind the other Ravenclaws. Much to her disappointment, Luna was a year younger than her, so they wouldn't have any classes together. She was surprised at feeling that way about someone other than her foster-siblings; she didn't make friends that easily, yet somehow she and Luna just seemed to connect. Maybe it was the teasing thing; she had learned that many of the other students called Luna 'Loony' and thought she was crazy. Because of that, Tris could understand her. To be honest, the whole 'friends' thing unnerved her a bit.
She trailed behind two other fifth-year girls named Padma Patil and Lisa Turpin. They didn't even seem to notice her and instead were talking excitedly about other people she didn't know, mainly boys. Not that she cared. She just wanted to follow them to their next class.
They went down many flights of stairs, deeper and deeper into the castle, until at last they reached a dark, damp, musty room that had a certain resemblance to a dungeon. This, Tris guessed, was the Potions room.
Once inside, they took their seats at a series of long tables. Each table had what looked like small fireplaces set up on top of them. Large cupboards were positioned against the far wall, and a blackboard was fastened to the wall that faced the desks.
Tris sat down at a table with Lisa and Padma, as well as another girl.
"Oh, hi," Lisa said indifferently. "You're Tris, the new girl, right?"
With difficulty, Tris restrained herself from saying 'As if you didn't know that' and instead answered her with a nod.
"I'm Lisa, and these are Padma and Mandy," she said, twisting a strand of straightened blonde hair around one finger.
Padma nodded to her, and the brown haired Mandy smiled at her. "I love your hair," she said. "I wish I had red hair. I had highlights put in, but my hair is so dark that they're not that obvious."
"Um... thanks," Tris said uncertainly.
Just then, the door to the classroom opened again, and a tall, black-haired man swept into the room. He wore a huge black cape that flapped around him as he walked.
"Settle down," he said icily as he shut the door.
Going to the front of the room, he turned on his heel and stared at them for a moment before saying, "Good morning. For those who do not know me, my name is Professor Snape." He spoke with a cold authority and seemed to look right through them, as though they were unimportant. Tris had noticed that as soon as he entered the room, the entire class had fallen silent.
"Before we begin today's lesson," Professor Snape said, "I think it is appropriate to remind you that next June you will be sitting your OWL exams, which will allow you to prove how much you have learned about the composition and use of magical potions. Moronic though some of you are, I expect each of you to at least scrape an 'Exceeds Exceptations' in your OWL, or suffer my extreme displeasure. As Ravenclaws, I expect you to live up to your house standards." He stared around the room; a couple of the students fidgeted uncomfortably at his words.
"After this year, of course," he continued, "many of you will cease studying with me, as I take only the very best into my NEWT Potions classes. But, unfortunately, we have another year to go before that happy moment of farewell; so whether or not you are intending to attempt NEWT, I suggest that all of you concentrate your efforts at maintaining those high marks you are all... legendary for." He gazed around the room coldly.
"Today we shall be mixing up a potion called the Draught of Peace, which calms anxiety and soothes agitation. Be warned: if you are too heavy-handed with the ingredients, you will put the drinker into a potentially irreversible sleep, so you will need to pay close attention to what you are doing."
With a wave of his wand, he added, "The ingredients and method are on the board, and everything you need is in the cupboard. You have an hour and a half... go."
Tris scanned the board and then jumped up to grab her ingredients. It looked like a complex potion, but she was looking forward to it. Challenges were always fun for her.
She scooped up an armful of supplies and dumped them into a spare cauldron, before hurrying back to her table and laying them out. Many of the ingredients she had never heard of. Powdered moonstone? Hellebore syrup? Tris thought that she had heard of moonstone before, but it probably was very different in Emelan than here.
Suddenly, Daja's voice spoke in her head. Briar? she called. Do you think you can help me here?
Tris listened in curiously as he said, I might be able to. I'll need you to melt it so that I can work with it better, and it might help if Tris can... loosen it or something. Like, you know how squashed plants can turn into coal and metal? Something like that, except... opposite...
Tris looked through their connection and saw that they were talking about how best to turn a match into a needle. An interesting task, she thought.
Just melt it, she said to them both. That should work. You won't need me for that, right? 'Cause I'm in the middle of a Potions class here.
No problem, Daja told her. I can handle the heat.
Tris blocked them out and focussed on her potion.
Sure enough, it seemed as though Snape couldn't have set them to do a more complex, precise potion. Everything was measured; from the exact order and amount of the ingredients, to the number of times you had to stir it and what direction to stir it in, you had to have it all exactly right. There even was a point halfway through where you had to lower the heat of the flames to a specific degree and keep it there for the exact length of time.
The professor passed by her cauldron several times, staring into it with a calculating look. Each time he continued on without any comments, which Tris took to mean that hers was, so far, satisfactory.
With ten minutes left, Snape called out, "A light silver vapour should now be rising from your potion."
Tris glanced around the room. The surface of her potion was a shimmering mist of silver, and so were several other cauldrons, but most of them had vapour of varying shades of grey. Beside her, Mandy was muttering spells under her breath as she prodded the base of her cauldron, trying to light the flames.
"Do you need help?" Tris asked her quietly.
Mandy nodded, flustered. "If you can, that'd be great."
Tris reached back and ran her hand through her hair, collecting a handful of sparks from her braids. Holding them in her palm, she pointed them towards the base of Mandy's cauldron, and whispered, "Strike." The miniature lightning bolt leapt from her fingertips to ignite the burner.
As the flames licked the sides of her cauldron, Mandy whispered, "Wow. I don't know how you did that, but thanks."
Tris smiled slightly and returned to her own potion.
A moment later, Snape said to the class, "Fill one flagon with a sample of your potion, label it clearly with your name, and bring it up to my desk for marking. Your homework for next class will be twelve inches of parchment on the properties of moonstone and its uses in potion making."
Tris glanced around, wondering where to get a flagon from, when Mandy handed one to her with a grin. "Looking for this?"
Tris accepted it. "Thanks. I'll need to get some, I guess."
"No problem. Besides, you helped me with my potion. If it hadn't been heated for the right amount of time, it would have been ruined."
Tris scooped some of her potion into the flagon. She wrote her name on it and carried it up to Snape's desk.
He surprised her by looking directly at her. "That was... fairly well done, for a first attempt," he told her.
She nodded and returned to her seat.
"What did he say to you?" the blonde girl Lisa asked her.
"He complimented me on my potion."
"What?! He never compliments anyone! I mean, I make perfect potions, and he's never even looked at me for them!" Indignantly, Lisa stalked off.
Tris paid no attention to her. Who cared what she thought?
Beside her, Mandy had heard the whole brief conversation. She rolled her eyes. "Ignore her," she told Tris. "She's a stuck-up snob. She gets on everyone's nerves. I don't know how Padma stands to be near her."
They walked together to their Charms class. Tris was interested to see Daja and find out how her Transfiguration had gone.
The Hufflepuffs weren't in the classroom yet when they got there, so Tris sat down at an empty seat. A few minutes later, Daja walked in and came to sit beside to her.
"So, how was your class?" Tris asked her.
Daja sighed. "Terrible. The whole needle-matchstick thing worked fine when Briar helped me, but then I blew up the room attempting to turn a beetle into a button."
Tris groaned in sympathy. "I thought you were supposed to be the responsible one."
"Not anymore." Daja sighed.
The short man standing at the front of his class came forward into the light of the window. "Good morning, fifth-years, my name is Professor Flitwick," he said cheerfully. "Today, I would like you to review your Summoning Charms from last year. Remember, the incantation is Accio, and make sure you flick your wand correctly. On each of your desks is a coloured box; for your review, you will Summon the stick with a colour corresponding to your box." He glanced down towards Tris and Daja as he added, "For our new students, please attempt to Summon the stick with your own magic."
Tris glanced down at the golden box in front of her and then across the room, where a jumbled pile of sticks sat on the floor. She studied it for a moment before locating a single golden stick amongst the others.
She reached back and unwound part of one braid. A thin gust of air swept out around her. Going into her magic, she grasped the end of the breeze with her mental fingers and rode it along to the pile. It took her a couple tries, but in the end she was able to extricate the golden stick from the stack. From there, it was easy to carry it back to her.
Once she was done, she retied her braid, weaving the wind back into her hair.
"Well done, class, well done indeed!" Flitwick cried out happily as the last stick soared back to its owner. "I'm happy to see that you still remember last year's Charms lessons. Now, I am going to teach you Colour-Change Charms, which will most certainly be on your OWLs. If you can't get it, that is fine, there will be plenty of time to practice before the exams."
Tris ignored Flitwick's wand instructions, instead trying to use her own magic, but as she suspected her powers were unable to change colours.
As the bell rang, she went off to lunch. Afterwards, Daja invited her to come outside with her new Hufflepuff friends, but she wanted to see the library and so refused.
Tris walked down a wide hallway towards where Mandy had said the library was. She soon saw a large doorway. Pushing the heavy wooden door open, she found herself in heaven.
It was a huge room. Giant bookshelves lined the walls and were placed in rows all through the room, and each shelf was jam-packed with books. There were only a couple other students there, which meant that Tris practically had the entire collection of books to herself.
First, she reached into the blue shoulder bag she had bought in Diagon Alley and pulled out a copy of The Quibbler. She had noticed an article about runes on the cover and had been curious to read more before her Ancient Runes class, so Luna had given her a spare copy of the magazine.
Opening the magazine, she flipped to page 57 and started reading the article on runes.
Secrets of the Ancient Runes – Revealed!
It has long been thought that the ancient beings that first started writing in runes had used them as a code, to pass along secret messages to those who understand them. Now, our skilled runes experts have proven that, by turning runes upside down, you are able to reveal ancient spells previously unknown.
The runes printed below may look like gibberish, but if you possess the talent to decipher them for what they really are, they read, "Double, double, Toile and Trouble, Fire burn and Cauldron bubble," which is a line from Shakespeare's famed play.
It is thought that, in the mentioning of a potion being created, that the wizard Shakespeare was making a record of a spell he had invented during a time when meddling with spells had fierce consequences. It is our belief that he wrote of the Witches creating a spell purposely to draw attention to those lines.
All you must do is turn this magazine upside-down, and you will discover a spell invented in Shakespearean times, indeed, a spell created by Shakespeare himself: a spell to turn your enemy's ears into Kumquats!
At reading that last line, Tris stopped and stared blankly into space. What on Earth was a kumquat? She had never heard of it before.
I'm getting a bit tired of running into strange words, she thought sadly. Back home I knew everything. Here, I'm just as useful as Briar as far as defining words go. Kumquats, moonstones, hellebore... they have no meaning to me.
Hey, I heard that. Through Briar's eyes, Tris caught a faint glimpse of the red-haired twins standing in front of him.
What mischief are you up to now? she asked him.
Nothing. He immediately blocked her out.
With a sigh, Tris closed the magazine and tucked it back into her bag. Standing up, she walked down the aisles of books, searching for a dictionary.
She soon found one and rifled through it until finding the definition of Kumquat. Apparently it was a small, oval-shaped fruit that was coloured in shades of orange. She was a bit surprised that it was a fruit; who wanted to change their enemy's ears into fruit? But then again, it was beyond her as to why anyone would want to change their ears into anything other than ears.
For the rest of her free period, Tris did research on moonstones for her Potions essay. By the time the bell rang, she had gone way past the required twelve inches and was closer to twenty-two.
At last it was time for her Ancient Runes class. Tris walked up a flight of stairs to the third-floor classroom. Once inside, she sat down at an empty table and was soon joined by a brown-haired girl.
Their teacher walked into the room. She had very light brown hair and, to her surprise, wore a dress that looked similar in style to Tris' instead of the traditional wizards' cloak.
"Hello," she greeted them. "My name is Bathsheba Babbling. I ask that you move away from tradition in this class and call me Mme. Sheba, rather than Professor Babbling. I have been the Runes teacher at Hogwarts for nearly ten years and am considered a bit of an expert in the subject.
"For this year, we will be focussed on the study and translation of runes. Later on we shall proceed to the writing of runes. Until then, it is simply a matter of interpretation."
She looked around the classroom and smiled. "I will be providing several copies of Ancient Runes Made Easy;however, you should each have your own copy of Magical Hieroglyphs and Logograms. Another book that will be required later on in the year is theSpellman's Syllabary. These texts will both help you in your learning of the art of runes."
"I'm so excited," whispered the girl sitting across from Tris, "I can't wait to learn more about runes. My name is Hermione, by the way. I met your sister Sandry; she said that your name is Tris. All your magic powers sound so interesting, I've never heard of anything like them!" Hermione looked at her curiously. "Is it true that you have lightning and wind and stuff in your hair?"
Tris nodded. "Yes, my hair is sort of like my mage kit."
"That is so cool! I'll have to talk to you sometime, all four of you for that matter, I need to figure out exactly how your powers work!" she exclaimed.
Tris studied her for a moment. "Are you a bit of a... smarter student, by any chance?"
"I don't want to sound like I'm bragging, but yes, I am."
"Maybe... in exchange for telling you about my powers... you could teach me more about your world?" Tris asked her hopefully.
"Sure, I'd be happy to!" Hermione glanced up towards the teacher. "Oh, we'd better stop talking now, we'll interrupt the lesson."
Mme. Sheba turned and walked over to a large blackboard. She pulled out a piece of chalk and briskly began writing lines of runes all across the board.
"Today," she said as she wrote, "we will start work on one type of rune. Who can tell me what the types are? Miss Granger?"
Hermione immediately said, "Runes are divided into two categories, alphabetical and symbolical. Alphabetical runes stand for each letter of the alphabet, whereas symbolical runes can each represent a word or phrase."
"Excellent definition, take five points for Griffindor. Now, the runes I'm writing are the entire alphabet. Get out your quills and parchment and copy them down."
Tris and Hermione began writing out the list of runes. Once everyone in the class had copied the runes onto their papers, their teacher handed out sheets of parchment with more runes on them and told them to translate the page.
"There will be a quiz next class on translating alphabetical runes, so make sure to study hard," she told the class. At mention of a test, several of the students groaned.
Tris immediately got to work deciphering the runes.
"Do you know why Mme. Sheba doesn't use her wand to write on the board?" she asked Hermione, recalling how Snape had made the list of ingredients appear on the blackboard with a simple wave of his wand.
"Yes, actually, I do. I remember asking her last year when I took this class," Hermione replied. "She says that waving a wand is good and all, but it doesn't allow you to fully appreciate the art of runes. She thinks that taking the time to write them out is a lot better than using spells. Because of that, she makes us write them out be hand as well."
"That makes sense."
"Yes, that's what I think too, but of course there is always somebody who disagrees." Hermione shook her head. "I mean, why take the class if you don't agree with the teacher?"
The two of them worked together for the rest of the class. Hermione was very friendly and willing to help her out with some of the more difficult runes. As a result, by the time the bell rang Tris felt that she had made one new friend. That alone made her happier. Maybe she could fit in here.
Dinner passed by uneventful; Tris sat next to Luna and Mandy and talked with them about their classes. Partway through dessert, she was interrupted by a voice in her head.
How did your day go? she heard Daja asking them.
We'll tell you later, replied Briar. He sounded annoyed about something.
After dinner, meet us on the fourth floor corridor, by that wall hanging of the knight, Sandry told them. We'll find an empty classroom and talk in there.
Sounds good, Daja replied.
I'll meet you there, Tris agreed. She wondered what stories the others had to tell.
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Ok, here's the link: /hogwarts/w_pl_
I hope it works. If nothing else, you can Google 'HP Lexicon' and find the home page. It's dead useful for Fanfics and other misc stories, especially if you're like me and are too lazy to go through every single book in a search for one specific charm or potion.
Last word: I will try to update every week from now on. I have major tests this week, but I'll still try. Stay tuned...