The first two sentences of this chapter make complete grammatical sense.

Saying that the human-who-lived was excited was like saying that the fact he was excited was obvious. It was obvious. Why was he excited? It was his first ever ancient runes lesson, and it was a double lesson! Harry loved ancient runes, and he seemed to have an affinity for them. Ron had taught him the basics in his absence; apparently Hermione was more suited to Arithmancy, which Harry found odd but understandable. Harry had managed to create a stone that pulsed with light when magic was applied to it, similar to a dim Lumos, which Ron had assured him was incredible for the amount of practice Harry had gotten.

Professor Oldston, the thirty-six year old Ancient Runes and Arithmancy teacher, was a rather round lady, who always wore a jolly smile on her plump face, and Harry would have found himself hard pushed to not like her. He had sat between his two best friends, and rather than questioning his previous absences, she was simply delighted to welcome Harry into her class.

"Today, class, I have a rather fun practical in store for you. Please take a runic stone from the cupboard, along with a small chisel and mallet from the tool rack, and we will experiment with the..." Harry could no longer hear the Professor as everyone stood up as one, drowning out the rest of her speech.

Strange. He knew she was speaking loud enough to hear over the squeaks of chair legs, but he simply couldn't concentrate on the right sound. Harry chalked this up to yet another strange Boggart instinct (although this would explain how they were so easily confused), and joined the rest of the class in their clamouring for a runic stone.

Unfortunately, since Oldston hadn't expected Harry in the class, there weren't enough to go around. Harry shrugged, then transfigured his parchment into a similarly shaped rock, and got to work chipping away the grey-blue material.

The boy-who-lived was frustrated. Why wouldn't he be? His runes weren't working, no matter how perfect they seemed. He'd triple-checked the centric runes, the connections and nodes, but the stone, which was simply meant to produce water, remained stubbornly bone dry, no matter how much wandless magic he poured into it. The boy didn't dare use his wand to activate the runes, as the results would be largely unpredictable.

It wasn't until his quadruple check that he realised something. Runic stones were imbued with natural magic, which forced Harry's largely useless wandless magic to spiral over their surface, according to the textbook. Because Harry had created his own stone, this magic didn't exist at all. Harry had two choices. He could attempt to Shift his magic to have the exact same properties as the runes.

There were two problems with this. Firstly, the teacher had seen Harry transfigure his stone, so she knew it wouldn't work. Why she hadn't stopped him, Harry couldn't say, but the fact was that he didn't want to have to give away the secret of Shift if he was asked how he had created the magic. Secondly, an explosive reaction, which wouldn't be too unlikely, would prove fatal as Harry would still be attached to the magic.

So he set off carrying out the probably less deadly plan. He would carve spiralling passages for the magic to flow down naturally. Unfortunately, that could cause an even bigger explosion. It was a risk Harry was willing to take, however, and he started the painstaking carving.

Harry hadn't noticed the eyes upon him for the past hour, as he worked to fix his runes with the unfathomable power of tiny little indents. Ron had noticed the change first; Harry had gone from frustration to thoughtfulness in a millisecond, then broke into a face-splitting grin and started working quadruple time on a pattern that the redhead had never seen, despite being fairly good at runes.

When he had pointed Oldston towards Harry, he seemed to be caught in some kind of trance, not taking note of the world around him. Oldston had chuckled at his enthusiasm, but that was before she recognised the inscriptions. She had paled a little at that shock; weren't those supposed to be NEWT level? As she watched the boy more closely, however, her trained eyes zeroed in on the ambient magic of the stone.

There was none. She should have realised sooner, with the fact that Potter had transfigured himself one, but she hadn't given it a second thought. She decided it best to interrupt. "Mr Potter, would you care to explain the strange runes on your stone?"

Harry didn't flinch, or give any other sign that he had heard his teacher. He merely blew a little dust out of the perfectly crafted grooves along the equator, then returned to his chisel and scraped out a few more ridges.

By now, the entire class was staring at Harry, a few having caught sight of Oldston's incredulous expression. Little did they know, Harry was laughing inside. He had forced himself not to react, because this was too good an opportunity to miss. Harry liked going above and beyond. Ask him to levitate a boulder? He'd levitate a dragon. Ask him to create water? He'd tack the word 'fall' onto the end. Ask him to experiment? He'd build a tornado.

The boy was currently retracing his old carvings, attempting to repair them wandlessly as using a wand would-

Do what, exactly? Mess with the non-existent natural magic? Harry shook his head at his own stupidity and pulled out the holly stick, then undid his first carvings. He then murmured something under his breath, and miniscule grooves appeared on the surface of the rock.

None in the class had ever dreamed of the intricacy on Harry's stone. The pits were on multiple layers; some sections bleeding into others, others digging straight into the core of the rock itself. The pattern seemed rather like that on... None of them could place it, exactly. It was so familiar, yet so different than what they were used to. What was infuriating was that they didn't know what they were used to.

Ten minutes later, a clatter of tools surprised almost everyone in the room, and Harry raised his item in celebration. "It's done!"

"What might 'it' be, Mr Potter?"

The boy looked the Professor in the eyes, apparently startled, but laughing in an evil scientist sort of way on the inside. "Ah! Oh, uh, how long have you been standing there, Professor?"

Oldston chuckled at the boy's awkwardness. "Around an hour, son. I think we're all glad you're ok. You didn't react to anybody while you were sitting there. I thought you'd been cursed or something!"

Harry grinned sheepishly and ruffled his hair, then turned to inspect the now ball-shaped stone. "It looks like it might be ready now..." Harry's tone was unsure, which he didn't actually have to fake. He had no idea whether this would work or not. Hs thoughts were interrupted once more, this time by Ron.

"What does it do, mate? I think I've seen a pattern like that on something... Flying?"

"Well done Ron." Harry pulsed a small amount of magic into the ball, and they class goggled.

the ball had wings.

"Bloody hell," Ron managed, as the homemade snitch whizzed around the room in a frenzy.

Harry's first Ancient Runes lesson is a huge success!

Next time, I have no idea. Maybe I'll kill someone off.