Disclaimer: I am not JKR. No one steals what I write.
Author's Note: A big thank you to Andromeda2000 for supplying me with the text for the translation. Enjoy!
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Thursday, September 15th 2022
Ravenclaw Common Room, Hogwarts, Scotland
Grace stares at her translation and lets out a frustrated sigh. It makes no sense! She closes her eyes and counts to ten, before looking at each Rune in turn and studying it closely.
"You look ready to throw something." She can't help but smile when she looks up to find Lorcan standing in front of the table.
"Hey," she says as he pulls out a chair and sits next to her.
"So what's wrong?" He picks up one of her spare quills and tucks it behind her ear.
"It's just… this," she picks up the runes she's supposes to be translating and waves them around. "It makes no sense! Like… at all. I've checked all the runes. Four times! I'm not getting them wrong, I checked with both Spellman's Syllabary and the Rune Dictionary, but it just…" She drops the sheet of parchment with another frustrated sigh.
His lips twitch, and he's probably laughing at her at least a little. "I could have a look," he offers, "I mean… you were always better at Runes than me, but I did take that class for three years."
She smiles at him. "Would you?"
He smiles back for a moment before focusing on the runes. "This means… dinner, right?" He points to one of the runes.
"I went with table, because of this rune right here that means trees," she points it out to him, "But it does mean dinner as well."
"Right and then this one means to take place, yes?" He doesn't even look at her for a reply, before he continues, "And here we have world, so something takes its place in the world. And then lots of verbs… Right, can I see what you have?" She nods and hands it to him and he reads it out loud. "Then from the table," he looks at her, "You put a question mark here, why?"
"I figured it might mean wood or something… table just doesn't make sense," she shrugs.
"That on the other hand does make sense. Alright so… Then from the table of newly-formed trees, astonishing and curious, took its place in the world: it was winged, it walked, it crawled, it ran and it sang." He looks up from her translation. "You're right, this makes no sense."
"I know!" she exclaims, before she lowers her voice a little, "I mean… it's a table, it can't do all those things… even if it's wood, it can't!"
"It's more than that, though," he points out, "look here, this part 'from the table'," he looks at her, "can we just go with wood?" She nods and motions for him to go on, which he does. "Right so, 'from the wood' implies that something comes from the wood and that's the thing that's astonishing and whatnot and can do all those things."
"But… there's no other noun in the entire sentence," she sighs.
"We'll just have to check again," he grabs Spellman's Syllabary from the table and hands the Rune Dictionary to her. They sit in silence for a while, checking each individual rune over until he grins. "I've got something! Here about to take one's place: 'in many myths, it also holds the meaning of creatures." He looks at her, still grinning. "There's your noun, Gracie."
"Thank you!" she smiles widely and kisses his cheek. "How did I not see that?"
He takes a moment to reply and clears his throat before he does, "It's on the next page. You know the Spellman has a terrible layout sometimes." He rubs the back of his neck "Oh and our dinner, table, wood rune also means bark."
"You are the best, I swear," she smiles widely and scratches out the sentence viciously, before taking a moment to work out what the runes actually mean. "Here, how's this? 'Then from the bark of newly-formed trees, astonishing, curious creatures took their place in the world: they were winged, they walked, they crawled, they ran and they sang.'" She looks at him expectantly.
"Much better," he smiles crookedly and she just has to kiss his cheek again.
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