I needed to charge McGonagall more for all the tutoring I was doing.

With the irrepressibility of youth, Ron didn't seem to be traumatized by nearly getting eaten by a leucrotta. But he did intellectually understand the danger he'd been in, and was keen to keep getting defense tutelage from me and his brother. It didn't help that Quirrell wasn't teaching anyone much, and that wasn't unusual for the defense position. Everyone said it had been cursed, and it had been decades since a professor had lasted more than a year. Pickings were getting slim for talented instructors.

When it became clear that I was teaching Hermione and Seamus to use foci, and I was tutoring Ron in defense, it didn't take long for Neville Longbottom to think that he should be getting the same attention from me as his friends. I wondered when the other first-years would want special treatment from me.

His parents were aurors, so Neville planned to get dueling tutelage at home during holidays, though was happy to show up to Ron's sessions when Ron wanted a dueling partner that wasn't years ahead of him. Similarly, Neville didn't lack the finesse that kept me and Seamus from using wands effectively, so didn't see a particular need to learn to use foci. However, when he found out I was going to be working on some enchanting projects, he was immediately interested, for the opposite reason I was.

My magical power was way ahead of my control. Slower magic, like rituals and enchanting, gave me the opportunity to set up a stable magical construct and then just dump power in without worrying so much about it misfiring. Neville was on the other end of the scale from me as far as power went, and I'd even heard kids that didn't like him call him a squib. He had a hard time putting a lot of power into spells. He thought maybe enchanting would allow him to essentially trickle-charge more powerful effects than he could do in the moment.

Hermione had been, of course, interested in getting her own head start on runes, and the twins had also been surprisingly interested. I hadn't realized they were taking runes as one of their electives, but it quickly became clear they had just as much interest in making enchanted toys and jokes as they had in deploying them. Percy and Penny dropped in when their schedules allowed.

One evening toward the end of January it was just me, Neville, Hermione, and Penny in the runes workshop. Percy had an early prefect patrol and the twins had detention. The two first-years had mostly sat quietly watching Penny and me work on our projects, since they were still a long way from even having the rudiments of being able to help. Neville eventually spoke up and said, "I still don't understand. You can't just be writing the runes or anyone could do it. What are you actually doing with enchanting?"

"You know you don't have to raise your hand, right, Hermione?" I asked the muggleborn, who still sometimes got excited and reached for the sky when she knew something. "You want to explain?"

She nodded and started reciting a memorized explanation from a textbook that should have been way too advanced for her. "All magic is about intent. When casting a spell, the proper wand movements and words create a shape for the magic to take, but your intent causes your magic to enter this created matrix. Similarly, runes can create their own long-lasting matrix based on their signifiers, but it is the witch or wizard's intent that fills the space created by the runes and empowers the object or ritual."

"So, putting down runes is basically instead of waving your wand and saying the words?" Neville summarized.

I glanced at the blonde Ravenclaw, knowing this was the same topic that had us arguing in our first runes class, but explained, "Basically. But the devil's in the details."

Penny looked ready to jump in, so I let her continue the explanation, and she said, "There's a lot of arithmantic significance in wand movements and words. If you write down a spell's wand motions and how to pronounce the words, you don't even really have to tell someone what it's supposed to do. If I had you learn this wand movement and then told you to say 'Wingardium leviosa' while you were doing it, and you'd never even heard of the levitation charm, it would probably still levitate what you're pointing at."

"Unless you're Seamus," Neville said and Hermione grinned.

Penny looked confused, so I explained, "Seamus Finnegan tends to cause things to catch fire and explode whenever he tries something new. It's why I'm teaching him to use foci instead of a wand. But that's because he's getting the gestures and words slightly wrong. Somehow that usually accidentally creates an unstable matrix that can blow up."

The prefect shook her head at the bad luck of Gryffindors, but went on, "Runes aren't exactly like casting a spell. I could write runes on an object that I was enchanting, and then someone could create a duplicate of the object or just use really good penmanship to copy what I did onto their own object. But mine would work when I put power into it, and the copies wouldn't. Because the runes don't actually do anything on their own. This is Eihwaz," she said, sketching the rune. "It's used to mean 'defense' and you'll see it on most protective enchantments."

"That's on Harry's shield bracelet!" Hermione said, recognizing it. I nodded and shook the bracelet out of my sleeve to show her and Neville that the rune did, in fact, show up on a lot of the charms hanging from the jewelry.

"Right," Penny continued, "but it's not the only rune on there, and it's not just put on there arbitrarily. You have to understand the spell you're trying to create, ideally on an arithmantic level, then place the runes to match that in a way that resonates with you." With a nod to what I'd explained earlier in the year, she finished, "The runes are really just a visual aid for you, to make it easier for your mind and magic to press the energy of the spell into the object."

Hermione seemed to get it, but Neville still looked like he wasn't quite there, so I just said, "If you could hold the whole spell in your head all at once, you wouldn't need the runes. They're just there to make it easier to imagine the spell and will it into the object."

He finally seemed to get it, and proposed, "So if I made a good copy of your shield bracelet, it wouldn't be magic, but it would be easy for you to enchant it the same way you did the first time?"

I nodded, and said, "That's how they make so many magical toys and candies and such. You get it working once and then have the same wizard do the same enchantment over and over."

Penny added, "You do it enough, especially for simple things like chocolate frogs, and you don't need the runes anymore. Pay attention for when runes show up on your frogs, because that probably means someone new started at the company and doesn't have the spell memorized yet."

"How long does it take to learn to do this?" he asked, suddenly struck by the enormity of it.

"You do really basic stuff at the end of your first year of runes, and more and more the longer you're in it. Harry's ahead of the rest of us because he had to know it to make his own foci, but I can at least mostly follow what he's doing."

Both of the first-years nodded, not really getting it but deciding that it didn't seem impossible that they would by the time they were our age. Though I suspected that Hermione would try it even earlier, especially since she was interested in foci and ritual magic.

Penny's watch chimed. Somehow she'd spelled it to work like a digital alarm clock, with multiple alarms at different times. "Ten minutes to curfew," she warned us. "Why don't you two head back and I'll walk Harry up when we're done packing up."

"The advantages of being friends with prefects," I grinned at her. She smiled shyly back and turned to pack her enchanting gear up, but I thought I caught a bit of a blush, which confused me.

It did, in fact, take me past curfew to get to a safe stopping point where none of my enchantments were in a state they'd fall apart from being unfinished, and then put my gear up. As we closed down the lab room and headed toward the towers, there was a minute of strangely tense silence before Penny mentioned, "Hogsmeade weekend coming up."

Thrown by her blush earlier but still mostly oblivious, I said, "Yeah. I'll have to figure out a way to entertain myself while you and Percy are off. I wonder if Oliver wants to hang out or if he's asked someone…" I trailed off as I realized she'd stopped walking. Behind me, she had a weird, unhappy look on her face, and I blundered on, "Has Percy not actually asked you yet?"

"Percy is going to ask me?"

Dumb 16-year-old that I was, I missed the emphasis and just got offended at my roommate for dragging his heels on asking the girl he was in love with out for Valentine's day. I just said, "He said he was going to. Days ago, actually."

I was too dense to follow the lightning-fast series of emotions that flitted across the blonde Ravenclaw's face, but after a couple of seconds she said, "Oh. Okay. I, um, just remembered that I have to get straight to the tower. Can you get back to Gryffindor safely?"

"I think so. Good night, Penny."

"Good night, Harry," she coughed out, before scurrying away from me toward Ravenclaw tower. I watched her leave with a frown, confused in the way that only oblivious teen boys can be about what had just happened, and then headed toward my own tower.