They certainly didn't care much for adjustment time at Hogwarts, so before I really even had a chance to meet too many people in my house, we were in bed and then having to get up early for classes. The nightmares had at least woken me up early enough to not have to fight four other guys for a shower. But after the summer, I wasn't really prepared to go to class first thing in the morning.
Professor Babbling seemed nice. She was a thin Persian woman who nonetheless had one of the rural English accents that I couldn't place. She came off like an academic, which may have been why nearly half the small class was made of Ravenclaws. Two or three members of each of the rest of the houses rounded out the baker's dozen of students. For Gryffindor it was me, Percy, and a Chinese girl I hadn't met yet.
The professor had spent the first part of the class doing a brief review, which was a bit redundant since I'd heard much the same thing at my placement test. It probably helped the others who may not have done much work over the summer. Toward the end of the review, Professor Babbling pulled back up to a higher level and asked, "Why do we use ancient runes for inscribing magic?" A Ravenclaw girl with long, curly blonde hair and a shiny prefect's badge raised her hand, and the professor called on her. "Ms. Clearwater?"
"Because their meaning is no longer changing. They have a fixed meaning for magical purposes," answered the prefect.
That got a sharp, small nod from Percy, but apparently I gave a look because the professor asked, "Do you disagree, Mr. Dresden?"
"Well it's not wrong…" I started, but since everyone was staring at me now, I couldn't bring myself to back down from pontificating. "But I think it has to do more with traditional education. They still only have the meaning the wizard ascribes to them. You use ancient runes because they're more likely to have everyone agree on the meaning."
"You have something to add, Mr. Weasley?" the professor suggested, clearly seeing that Percy was frowning at me.
"Harry just said what Penelope said, only less succinctly," explained the redhead, with a nod to the other prefect.
Babbling gave me a look that implicitly challenged me to defend my position. She was either a really good teacher or an unrepentant instigator. I shrugged, cut off a strip of parchment, and wrote out a series of runes. "What does this spell do?" I asked Percy and Penelope.
"That's a protection rune, followed by a rune of anticipation, and then fire," considered the blonde.
"That's almost always used as a flame trap ward," Percy concurred. "We learned something similar in third year."
"What if I told you it was placed by a German hill wizard who never went to school and taught himself runes from nearby historical structures?" I added.
They both paused, looked at each other, and Penelope said, "Still a flame ward?" Percy concurred.
"But he doesn't know the correspondences of the symbols. He just knows the sounds they make. And he's tried to write 'angst' the best he can with the runes he knows. To him, this is a fear spell," I explained.
"It can't be a fear spell!" Percy snapped. "None of those runes have a correspondence to fear."
I tried to explain it in a way that wasn't smug, I really did. "Not for you. Because you've been taught their generally accepted meanings. But they don't actually mean anything. They're just anchors for you to concentrate your intentions into your enchantment. The more certain you are of what they mean, the less concentration it takes to envision the effect you want and lay it into the material you're working on." I shrugged, "I bet powerful wizards with good concentration, like Dumbledore, can enchant items without having to lay runes on them to help their concentration, and could even enchant an item counter to what the runes said, just to confuse people."
Penelope looked upset, she turned to the professor looking for her to contradict me, but Babbling just allowed, "Mr. Dresden is correct."
"Then why are we bothering to learn any of these, Professor?" asked the blonde prefect. "I could have apparently been making up squiggles and using those to cast, as long as I believed in them hard enough."
The professor took pity on me and actually taught her own class for a second. "Because what Mr. Dresden said originally was correct: everyone basically agreed. His example of the uneducated wizard is so rare, I've never seen anything like it. In practice, you and Mr. Weasley would have been correct, though you should have also considered whether the runes made a recognizable word as a second layer of meaning."
"Then why does it matter, if we were right?" Percy complained.
"Because, Mr. Weasley, you can't innovate without a deeper understanding. Wizards and witches can go a long way with just the standard meanings of the runes. But they only describe the most common concepts. There are spells you might want to enchant that, should you only have the traditional understanding, you cannot find a way to convey in runes. You'll have to take a step into improvisation to create them, and so you need to know that's possible." She looked around and saw that everyone seemed to be getting it. "Five points to Gryffindor and three points to Ravenclaw for the edifying discussion."
Penelope was looking at me in some combination of consideration and shock, while Percy's neck appeared almost as red as his hair. I didn't think earning points was going to go far toward mollifying him.
Sure enough, as our next class was a double-length potions lesson with the Slytherins, Percy made no secret of sitting as far from me as he could. He grabbed Alexis, the girl's prefect, at the door as his partner and clearly whispering complaints. That seemed to suit Oliver fine, who waved to me to sit next to him. "Cai said you showed up Percy in runes. You as good in potions?" the quidditch captain muttered to me.
"I hope so. You as good at stopping Flint from throwing stuff into our cauldron as you are at stopping… waffles?" I replied, glancing at the trollish Slytherin glaring at us from a nearby table.
"Quaffles," Oliver corrected, "and, yes. You take point on making sure our potions turn out and I'll play defense against the snakes?"
"Sounds good to me," I agreed, as Professor Belby swept into the room.
The professor was an interesting guy, looking something like if Hamlet were put on by 70s gutter punks. His outfits were inevitably ostentatious velvet frock coats with tight sleeves and delicate runic embroidery. Whatever enchantments he had put on his expensive clothes to keep them from being ruined by potion fumes did not carry to his person, and his mid-length graying black hair was inevitably greased up in some strange spiky fashion. He seemed to have an unstoppable nervous tic of running his fingers through his hair, and the potion residue did the rest.
Also, his first name was Damocles, and he was a direct descendant of the guy that had invented the statute that Dawlish was using on me, which didn't make me feel great.
He sat behind his desk and steepled his fingers, proclaiming, "Fifth year. OWL year. You'll have a lot of homework. You'll need to prepare. The curriculum suggests we start with Draught of Peace so you can self-medicate for anxiety. I don't like it. See Madam Pomfrey if you need to be medicated. Instead, we're starting with a review of Strengthening Solution. It's much more useful. Instructions on the board. Who can tell me why the stirring pattern is indicated?"
Percy's hand shot in the air, anxious to show me up. This was going to be a long day…
