The Potter Cartouche
DISCLAIMER! This Harry Potter story was written for fun. All rights belong to the wonderful lady (JK Rowling) who gave the world Harry Potter to read and enjoy. Looking forward to the next movie! Yeah for Fanfiction – a great place to stretch your imagination and enjoy someone else's creativity too!
Chapter 3 Experimentation and Patronus(Finally! Harry gets to play with Runes! Look out world!)
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In runes class, Professor Babbage had her students clear their desks but for a sheet of parchment, quills and inkpot. Then she had each of them draw the cartouche from Ancient Egyptian times on the parchment. This took a great deal of time using the quill and in several cases, she banished the parchment of a student and forced them to begin again. Harry had to 'erase' his drawing once but didn't have his parchment destroyed.
"Runes require a magical substance to process the magic. The wizard or witch ignites the rune but then the magic around the rune carries the function into the world."
Once everyone had a suitable cartouche drawn, Babbage revealed three runes on a blackboard that she wanted each of them to draw on the parchment. Her explicit instructions were to place the runes completely inside the cartouche and in the same order as seen on the board. Again, this group of students – Ravenclaws, one Hufflepuff and one Gryffindor – completed the assignment quickly.
Babbage soaked up some class time by reviewing the creation of the cartouche, drawing the runes, and examining each student's parchment. Then she asked Justin Finch-Fletchley to ignite his parchment by tapping it with his wand.
"There is no verbal command to ignite a rune. Just tapping anywhere inside the cartouche will activate the rune."
Justin did tap his wand against the parchment, and it grew bright and vanished in an instant flame, leaving no ashes behind, only a faint scent of sulfur.
"Bravo!" Babbage declared. "Now, Miss Lee, if you will…"
The witch touched the parchment and there were similar results as with Justin's paper. Going around the room, Babbage was pleased when each student received the same results. Harry's parchment flared a moment longer and much brighter, but that was not a surprise.
"Professor, what happens if you do this on regular paper?"
Confused for a moment, Babbage didn't answer until Harry explained, "I mean muggle paper."
"Oh, well, nothing, I suppose. The parchment itself isn't magical, but after it sits here in Hogwarts for a month or two, it has absorbed enough of the natural magics here to empower the runes when you ignite it. But this is just a training exercise – you'd never get runes to function properly on a piece of parchment. They always burn away."
When class was dismissed, Harry was slow to leave the room. Justin inquired if his friend was feeling well, and Harry nodded. "I'm just thinking. Parchment is terribly expensive, and if practice runes burn it up, it can't be cleaned and used again for another lesson."
"I guess we could use our regular paper for practice, just don't touch it with your wand."
This led Harry to the front of the classroom, where he asked Professor Babbage if touching your wand to the parchment ignited the runes, how did wizards get the textbooks for runes not to explode the first time? A wizard accidentally touched the paper with their wand. Babbage explained, "There is a hidden rune array printed inside the book that prevents that from happening on this particular parchment."
"Hidden?" asked Harry.
Nodding her head, the professor continued, "It is a patented rune array protected by ICW law, the Guild of Rune Masters, and all the magical banks in the world – goblin and dwarf. The wizard or witch who owns that patent is very wealthy, I'm certain."
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That evening, Harry slipped away from his 'friends' and hid in a deserted classroom nowhere near the dormitory. Once the door was locked, he called for Dobby. With a pop, the little elf appeared, hugged Harry's leg, and asked, "How can Dobby be helping great and kind wizard, Mr Harry Potters?"
"Hey, Dobby. I'm working on my runes homework and need more parchment. But it has to be parchment that's been inside Hogwarts for a time to soak up the magic."
"Dobby can take parchment from professors, students and classrooms," the elf offered.
"No, I don't want to steal anyone's parchment. Has anyone left any from previous years? Some parchment that no one will look for or miss?" Harry inquired.
"Dobby goes and looks, Mr Harry Potters," replied the elf before he popped away. He returned less than one minute later and said, "Dobby found. Dobby show Mr Harry Potters where be all parchment he ever needs."
They climbed to the hallway on the seventh floor, where a large tapestry of some wizard trying to teach trolls ballet dancing hung on a wall. Waving toward the blank wall, Dobby said, "This be hidden room at Hogwarts where be's all things lost and forgotten. Mr Harry Potters walk back and forth three times thinking about a room with lost parchments, the door will appear, and youse have parchments."
'Not the craziest thing magic has shown me in two years,' Harry thought as he did walk back and forth in the hall, thinking about spare parchment and paper that students and professors threw away or forgot about.
A simple wooden door appeared, and Harry opened it and watched Dobby run into the room. He followed and found a cavernous space where there were stacks of parchment, much of it tied with ribbons or twine into neat stacks. The parchment lay on tables, chairs, bookshelves, and piles on the floor.
Dobby said, "This room be called 'Come and Go Room' and 'Room of Requirement'."
"Thank you, Hogwarts," Harry said aloud as he examined some of the parchment. It was in perfect condition, soaked in magic and ready for use. Wishing he had a chair, one appeared, and Harry sat to contemplate the treasure in front of him. Deciding to take only one handful of parchment, Harry stepped outside and closed the door. He paused and walked back and forth in the hallway again, thinking about regular 'muggle' paper, pens and quills and bottles of ink.
When the door appeared this time, he stepped into a warehouse setting where boxes and packs of muggle paper, ink pens (biros), quills made from many different birds, and baskets filled with bottles of ink were stored.
He took only one pack of muggle paper and again said, "Thank you, Hogwarts. You are great!"
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Experimenting in his familiar deserted classroom, Harry learned that the muggle paper stored in the Room of Requirement soaked up magic and worked just as well as parchment for practising runes but the quill and ink didn't work on the thinner paper. Only when he used the biros to draw did the cartouche and runes process correctly (and burn up). When he stopped to think about this, he discovered that a blank book with another biro had appeared on the table, and he used it to write down his observations and experiments. He added a page about the castle providing the supplies and wrote down questions to consider.
Should I tell Babbage about this? Should I tell anyone about the Room of Requirement? Is there some way to put the cartouche on the paper without drawing it?
'Not yet, and no,' he decided. 'Professor Babbage knows runes, but she's got blinders on about other ways to do things. Maybe later…and I won't tell anyone about the Room of Requirement. People like Ron would raid it for supplies and then sell 'em to the muggle-born.'
'Say…I gotta check if the room has old books and old essays…I learned more DADA last year by reading the old tests and essays stored in the library than from Fake Lockhart,' Harry remembered as he wrote down that question. It was far beyond curfew, and Harry dreaded any confrontation with a professor on patrol.
At just that moment, Dobby popped into the classroom with a cup of hot chocolate and pointed to a new door at the back of the room. Cautiously opening that door, Harry discovered that it led into his dormitory room. His roommates were all asleep, and Harry slipped into bed without anyone being the wiser.
Mother Magic, or maybe it was Hogwarts, hummed in happiness that night. It had been a while since a student deserved a private study that none of the teachers nor the headmaster could access or even know about. The young wizard would move ahead with his discoveries and help magic as well as his fellow students here in her school.
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When Babbage spoke in class about runes that protected people and ones that attacked people, Harry asked, "Professor, I can see how you could make 'fire breath worm' from Norse runes for a dragon. But would it be possible to make a rune array that would repel dementors? 'Soul sucking demons' might not be specific enough for a runic array to work."
"I wouldn't want to test it!" a Ravenclaw piped up.
"That is a limitation the guild of runemasters has to work with every day, Mr Potter. Excellent question. Runes are hieroglyphic – pictures that have one primary meaning. Words such as aeroplane from the muggle world and Patronus from the magical world are difficult – impossible – to use in runes."
Again Harry was lost in thought, and Justin guided him to the History classroom, where he sat quietly while most of the other students slept as Professor Binns droned on about goblin rebellions.
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Visiting the Room of Requirement for a few biros, Harry asked Dobby about providing 'some' parchment, quills and ink, or paper and ink pens, to any student studying and needed supplies. Dobby smiled and said, "Dobby has enough work thank you, Mr Harry Potters. Maybe other elves in the castle need work?"
"Would you ask?"
The Room of Requirement was instantly filled with about fifty elves clamouring for work. Hogwarts was a large building, but the industrious elves kept it spotless, the clothing clean, and the meals cooked to perfection. They still had extra minutes in every hour with nothing to do.
"Okay, okay," Harry said before he explained in minute detail to the elves what he wanted them to do. "No one gets a huge supply of parchment or paper. Just enough to finish their work."
Just before Halloween, Harry began to think of ways to get around drawing the cartouche every time he wanted to practice on a sheet of paper. When he asked in class, Professor Babbage sighed and told Potter that drawing the cartouche (on practice paper) or carving the cartouche (on sandstone plates) was necessary for the wizard's magic to be injected into the drawing so the runes would ignite.
For the first time, Professor Babbage was irritated by Harry Potter's questions, and she attributed his inability to accept 'magical requirements' to be a result of being raised by muggles.
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The strange attack on the portrait that guarded the Gryffindor tower disturbed everyone that first week of November. The Dementors remained about the school though it appeared they had not done a good job in keeping the mass murderer Sirius Black away, and everyone had spent the night in the Great Hall for protection. When almost everyone except for Head Boy, Percy Weasley was asleep, Harry rose from his pallet and made his way over to the table where Percy pretended to be reading a book on Wizarding Law.
The seventh-year wizard glanced over and asked, "Aren't you supposed to be sleeping, Mr Potter?"
"Evening, Mr Weasley," Harry replied. "Could I talk with you for a few minutes?"
For some reason, Percy didn't snap back a reply but just nodded his head. Harry slipped onto the bench opposite and asked, "I wondered what you want to do when you leave Hogwarts?"
Percy's face closed off a bit, and he replied, "When I get my NEWTS results, I'll interview with the Ministry for Magic for a position there. Once I have a job there, I'm set for life."
"And is that what you want to do?" Harry asked. "Work at the ministry every day for the rest of your life?"
"We need competent ministry workers, Potter. And I'll get married, have a few kids, send 'em to Hogwarts, and help keep Magical Britain going."
Harry considered Percy's words and nodded in understanding. Then Percy said, "Mr Potter, not everyone has a family fortune behind them. You will have commitments to meet for that with the ministry and with the goblins, but you won't be stuck with a ministry job."
"People say I should be an Auror," Harry replied, noting that Percy knew about his wealth hidden in vaults that Dumbledore had been unable to access in the last twelve years.
"Your father was only an Auror because of the war with the Dark Lord. Lord Potter would never be involved with drunks or dealing with burglars," Percy said. "His time should have been spent on making Britain stronger with new businesses or researching new magical spells."
"I had not thought of that," Harry said. "Thanks, Mr Weasley."
Surprised, the head boy replied, "You're welcome, Mr Potter."
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