Carnival of Rust
Chapter Twelve
Authoress Note: I lose regular internet access on or around the 28th of this month. With that being the case when I have access to an internet access I'll update what I have done, which means you'll get 23 Chapters between now and then which is Fourteen Days so that averages to two chapters a day.
That's just what I have written so far but there may be more than 23 Chapters between now and then.
They talked well into the night after Professor Dumbledore left, coming up with a viable study plan to help them get everything done that needed to be done. Hermione and Ron would work on the Aromatherapy coursework while Harry would brew the potions on his own from five am until eleven. After lunch they would start doing what needed to done in the greenhouse as a group which usually only took them two hours at the most. Once the greenhouse was finished for the day, Harry would return to any potions work that needed to be done for a few minutes before they started cataloging Tom Riddle's memories for only an hour. By three pm they would start working on their Legilimency until it was time for dinner at five. After dinner they would start looking through the mountain of books Professor Dumbledore left them on Horcruxes before going through the books he had ordered for them from outside the United Kingdom. While Ron started working on learning Ancient Runes or Arithmancy depending on what day of the week it was ,Hermione would be making lists of every sort, be it books that she pulled from the Appendixes of books they already had or a list of everything they could possibly need while on their Horcrux hunt or working on more potions. From there the time turner would be used and they would start all over again on their school work for a few hours.
Ron at first complained about having to learn Ancient Runes and Arithmancy, as if he had wanted to take the subjects he would have taken them in the beginning of his third year, until he noticed that Hermione was staying up later and later to work on translating some of the books Professor Dumbledore had sent them.
When both Harry and Hermione started using the time-turner Harry literally attempted to knock some sense into one of his best friends.
"She's running on four hours sleep a night, working forty hours off of those four hours of sleep. You will learn this, you will know it like the back of your hand or Godric help me I'll turn you into a ferret and leave you as one."
The pale shade Ron had turned told Harry that he had made his point clear and nor a complaint was heard from Ron again as he picked up a book entitled Ancient Runes for Beginners and began studying them in earnest for the first time since he had been given the book only looking up when Hermione set a cup of tea down in front of both him and Harry with a silent nod of the head as she turned back to her Arithmancy calculations she would need to get started on the tent like Professor Dumbledore had requested that she do.
Hours where poured into the learning of the Runic Languages. The Elder Futhark was the most common and the first that most people learned in the Ancient Runes class. The Younger Futhark, specifically the Danish and Swedish versions of the Younger Futhark where very similar in their visual appearances. In the same respect, they are different in their own rights which was confusing to someone who had just started studying a course entitled The Study of Ancient Runes.
The Futhorc on the other had had thirty-three runes for its alphabet and it was giving Ron a headache at the diversity one Runic Language was showing. Hours where spent pouring over the texts and translating from English to Runic, and from Runic back to English in an attempt to learn the Runic Languages before school started back up for them.
Hermione laughed as Ron broke a quill before turning back to them.
"It's best if you think of everything like pictures and all you have to do is reprogram your mind to recognize that, for example, a plus sign (+) equals the letter a, it doesn't in any of the runic alphabets but you get my point. It would be best to make flashcards and move on from there, learning them one by one instead of trying to learn them all in one day." She said, quickly duplicating her old flashcards from her Year Four Study of Ancient Runes course, as well as the basic flashcards from her Year Three Arithmancy course as well, which was a lot more complicated than just memorizing this symbol = ?.
When she attempted to get Ron started on the Ogham Language he proclaimed The Study of Ancient Runes stupid in as many was as they possibly could before they finally after the course of a few days started understanding the Ogham who's symbols kept looking to much like each other for anyone other than those that had studied it since their Third Year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
Thankfully Arithmancy did much better in his eyes than The Study of Ancient Runes. Although it involved numbers it was consistent, such as 2 + 2 would always equal four. The same could not be said for Ancient Runes. If eihwaz was next to ehwaz you would get a slightly different meaning than if it was next to Sowulo.
With constant and consistent studying Hermione was hopeful that Ron would be caught up in both The Study of Ancient Runes as well as Arithmancy by October and at the rate he was studying, he just might be able to. Hermione convinced the boys to make an owl-order from Flourish and Blotts, which turned out to be a rather useful order as there where close to forty moleskin notebooks which where the size of their usual textbooks.
Once the moleskin notebooks came in Hermione distributed them out to the boys, twenty apiece saying that she would get her own when it was time for a Hogsmeade's visit as they had taken to sneaking out to Diagon Alley anytime they had a Hogsmeade visit, even if most of the prefects knew where they were there, Scrolls and Tombs just didn't have the selection that Flourish and Blotts did.
Hermione decided to order her own set of mole-skin notebooks instead of waiting for school to start back up , tripling the boys forty count order and putting in a one hundred and twenty piece order which made her quiet popular with the owner of Flourish and Blotts and when a 50-Galleon Gift Card came with her order the next day she immediately turned around and ordered twenty five more mole-skin notebooks; knowing it would do them well to have the manager and owner of the book store in their back pocket.