Ron had not done poorly enough on his tests to be held back a grade, so he was relieved about that. As expected, the study group had had very little problem with the tests, though Snape had tried hard to stump them. He'd placed three antidote mixtures onto the test that they'd first encountered in the third-year texts, so it was good that they'd all read ahead over the summer at Hermione and Padma's insistence.
"Interesting. Those weren't on the Ravenclaw/Hufflepuff test," Padma commented, as they were studying in the library on Sunday evening.
"Probably because he doesn't hate the Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs," Neville figured.
"I wonder if the Slytherins in the class had those questions," Harry said.
"They were straightforward enough, if you knew about them," Hermione shrugged. "He probably just told them about it in advance."
"More importantly," Lavender asked, "did Wood cry when you told him you didn't want to play quidditch this year?"
"He might have, but then Ginny stepped up to try out," Harry explained. Both of the youngest Weasleys were still at the initial quidditch practice. "I think she's going to do alright."
"Should we… uh…" Dean asked, looking at Parvati, "should we be going to the practices? Is watching practice for the person you're dating encouraged?"
Harry considered. He was pretty sure the twins were dating Angelina and Alicia, two of the team's chasers, so they'd always be at the practices. He wasn't sure if Oliver Wood or Katie Bell were dating anyone. "Dunno. If I was still on, I wouldn't have expected Lavender to go. But probably show up for matches?"
Dean nodded, "And I guess another set will be up by the time we have our first match."
Harry shrugged, "I think it's the week after Halloween? I basically just have to show up in case they need me as an alternate. Are we going to try to work through the runes material?"
The others thought that was a fine idea (even Luna who wasn't taking it yet but was interested). They still hadn't totally figured out how they'd handle the electives that only a few members of the group were taking, but runes was at least just about everyone.
"I already find it fascinating," Hermione observed. "The text tries to downplay it, but there's a much more significant similarity between the commonly used Vanir and Aesir runes and witch runes than there is with the sigils used in sorcery."
"Witches?" Lavender asked. Over the course of the week, she had been experimenting with sitting closer and closer to Harry during study sessions, but they weren't really cuddling yet.
"A völva, in Vanaheim terms, I think," Padma clarified. "Where the Earth sorcerers are more like seiðr."
"Oh, I get it," Lavender nodded. "Yeah, over here's it's basically whether you go to Hogwarts or not. Völva do a lot more with potions and runes, and don't really have a wand or do much actual spellcasting or transfiguration."
"Witches are trade school, sorcerers are university?" Dean joked.
"Sounds about right," Hermione agreed. "Or like the difference on Earth between midwives and doctors that deliver babies."
"The Masters seemed pretty down on witches?" Harry added, remembering that had come up in some of their discussions over their last summer camp.
"They think they're more likely to make dangerous, freeform bargains with dark powers," Hermione explained. "Where sorcery usually uses much more codified rules for what you have to give principalities to get access to a certain spell."
"There's some of that here, too," Neville added. "Since they don't have wands to more easily use Vanaheim's energy, some have made bargains with outside powers."
"Why don't they just go to Hogwarts?" Harry checked.
"Probably politics," Neville shrugged. "Too poor. From one of the hinterland areas. Different beliefs about how magic should work. Or maybe they just don't test well. I know for me I was barely able to prove I had enough magic to go to school."
"We could ask Preceptor Babbling when we have class tomorrow?" Hermione suggested.
Runes was, in fact, the first elective Harry had on Monday, in the middle of the afternoon. Those with divination or cultural studies had an elective period right after lunch, but having only two electives left Harry with that period free. He actually had quite a few free periods in his schedule, both because he didn't have a third elective and because the second-year load was a bit lighter in general to make space for electives. They were on to only taking two periods of their core classes throughout the week (though the rumor was that homework was increased). That meant they only had to take one double-period of chemistry each week, which was a nice change.
Preceptor Babbling hadn't changed her look much from when they'd met her at the electives day the previous year. Her Persian features still hinted that she had some recent Midgardborn ancestry, for all that her accent was the Vanir-standard (and very similar to the Received Pronunciation of Britain). She talked quickly, as her name suggested.
"This year is really an overview of the subject," she started, once they were all assembled, sitting around at long tables with good light from the windows and magical torches. Draco and a few of the other Slytherins had also chosen the class, and were trying to sit as far as possible from the study group. "We'll be working on a basic reading comprehension of both Latin script, the Elder Futhark, and core Mandarin characters, and you'll have a personal choice of another runic script to investigate. I know that sounds like a lot, but we're not expecting anything like fluency from you, and all tests will be open-book. If you have the memory to learn a whole set of languages, it's a big help, but most runecrafters and curse breakers always have reference books to hand.
"We'll also be trying to develop your, for lack of a better term, penmanship. We'll be working on both getting the runes right in chalk and ink, and also doing a little bit of carving on wood, bone, and clay once you have that down. Nothing we do this year will actually have magic bound into it, but I want to get you used to making beautiful, accurate marks. The dirty secret of runes is that you can make a nearly-illegible scrawl do something, but it takes far more power and concentration than if you scribed it correctly.
"Let's start the day with some primer glyphs, so you can get a feel for the difficulty of rendering them exactly," she finished, as she started passing out pages with example symbols and empty space for the students to ink them in.
While they worked, Harry asked, "How were the classes last period?"
Hermione, the only one of the current set taking cultural studies, gestured for the others who had divination to go first. "It was great," Lavender grinned. "She's so cool. We're starting off with tea leaves, and we got to do a reading first thing!"
"She said Ron was going to die," Neville nodded. "He got the Grim in his cup. Trelawney said she thought it was almost literal, death would be stalking after him like a black dog."
"Huh," Harry had a thought, flipping through the Latin book they had for runes. He found the entry for Sirius, where it mentioned another name for it was the Dog Star. "You all don't think a black dog and "Dog Star" Black are related…?"
"Why would he be after Ron?" Hermione wondered. "I guess the upper years did say that she always predicts someone's death. And that would be a pretty good warm reading guess…"
Parvati stuck her tongue out at Hermione, and quoted, "'Cold and warm reading are tools that are used by prognosticators and forecasters, and have no place in the toolkit of true diviners.'"
"Wow, she said that to you in your first period?" Harry checked. "I guess she really does not like arithmancy. Cultural studies?" he checked.
Hermione made a slightly disappointed face and admitted, "I brought up cell phones and it derailed the class for half the period. She said that Earth's communications relied on massive wires strung across the planet carrying electronic messages. I'm honestly not sure if she meant phone lines or the telegraph. She was simply fascinated by the idea of wireless communication."
Lavender nodded, "That is fascinating. Long range magic is hard. Not a lot of wizards have the power to open a portal to have a conversation. I don't think even Asgard has the kind of communications devices you've been telling us about." She was still profoundly annoyed that she wasn't able to have real-time conversations with Parvati over the summers the way Parvati apparently had with Hermione, Harry, Dean, and even Seamus.
"Preceptor Babbling, are we supposed to be chit chatting?" Draco tattled from across the room, pointing at Harry's table.
Everyone in the study group stared angrily at Draco as Babbling wandered over and looked over their work, "Well it looks like they're well ahead on their scribing," she said approvingly. They'd all been diligently copying the glyphs while they talked. She moved over to the Slytherin group and suggested, "Perhaps you should focus on your own work rather than the conversations of others, Mr. Malfoy. While I agree a silent environment does aid focus, there will be many times in your runemaking careers where you'll need to be able to tune out distractions."
They didn't really get an opportunity to quiz the professor about witches, but the triumphant grins at Malfoy carried them into their next periods, where Dean went to meet Ron and Seamus at husbandry while Hermione followed Harry to arithmancy.
Unlike the brightly-lit runes class, Magistra Vector seemed to be a programmer at heart. She'd chosen a classroom with few external windows, and they had opaque drapes across them to serve as blackout curtains. The room was separated into individual desks, each with its own hooded magical flame basically providing enough light to see by on the desk surface, and minimal lighting in the rest of the classroom.
Besides Harry and Hermione, the only other student in the class was Ernie Macmillan from Hufflepuff. They'd forgotten that they wouldn't have the class with Padma that day: because Ravenclaw and Slytherin had a last-period herbology class, they had to take arithmancy in a different period, at least on Mondays. In theory, the electives would have a rotating collection of students, as each day they'd be assigned to the morning or afternoon class based on what the rest of their schedule looked like. And the professors would have to essentially teach the same lesson twice each day.
Harry thought that the school should just hire more teachers rather than using such an obscure arrangement.
"The Gryffindor/Hufflepuff sections are always sparse," Magistra Vector noted somewhat petulantly in her faint Russian accent. "I hope you're all ready to work."
Hermione nodded, "Yes, ma'am. Harry and I have been keeping up with our maths for the last two years." She looked expectantly at Ernie.
The blond boy nodded, "My mother insisted that I learn, so I could go into spell research if I wanted."
Vector gave a faint smirk and nodded, "Sacred twenty-eight, yes?" she asked, referring to the Macmillans being a renowned pureblood family on Vanaheim. "Though I assume you're not prejudiced against Midgardborn?"
"No, ma'am," Ernie nodded. In the dim light, Harry realized the boy was finally putting on height. He'd been chubbier than Neville their first couple of years. "We don't think like that in Hufflepuff."
"Are you Midgardborn, ma'am?" Hermione asked. "Only, I noticed the Russian accent…"
"I am," the professor nodded, her dark hair unmoving in a stern bun. "And I schooled at Durmstrang." Clearly Harry and Hermione weren't familiar, so she elaborated, "The Masters of the Mystic Arts have a blind spot in Russia and Eastern Europe, and we are lucky if Durmstrang finds us. Anyway, what I was going to say is that this should provide an interesting comparison. Granger, Potter, I understand the two of you are near the top of your year and were both raised on Midgard. I hope you'll be an object lesson that we should be teaching more and earlier maths."
"Yes, ma'am," both of them agreed. Ernie looked uncomfortable at being made an object of Vanir unpreparedness in the face of Midgardian mathematical education.
"Then let's review," Vector nodded, walking over to hand each of them a page of mathematical notation. "You have half an hour to complete this short quiz. The problems grow in complexity from the beginning to the end, though each should be easy if you understand the technique. Begin, now."
Harry checked his paper, and, indeed, the questions started with simple addition and subtraction, moved on to multiplication and division, then started asking about concepts from algebra and geometry. There were even some problems at the end that were probably trigonometry and maybe even calculus that would have been way beyond Harry's grade level even if he'd stayed in school in California.
As the time progressed, he heard Hermione starting to make an unconscious, distressed whine as she hit the harder problems and didn't know how to proceed.
For Harry's part, he just tried to make educated guesses. He knew that sines and cosines had something to do with triangles and maybe circles, but that was all. He felt pretty good about the probability questions, however, since that was the kind of thing that you learned playing D&D. And they had worked ahead to do basic algebra.
"Time," Vector called, and Hermione barely restrained a shriek of anguish at not having finished. The professor walked over and collected the pages, with Hermione fighting her for a moment before releasing the incomplete document. Showing that she was definitely from Earth, the professor produced a red pen and starting marking up the assignments, quickly racing down each of the three tests and making noises of consideration as she went. Hermione was getting increasingly tense throughout the grading process. Finally, Vector finished and announced, "Not bad. Better than most of my morning class. I think we could skip all the way to trigonometry here without too much remedial work." In the dim light she finally realized, "Breathe, Granger. You're already working at a secondary school level, were you still on Earth. Freshman university students probably wouldn't have been able to finish this test."
Hermione finally let out her held breath and wheezed, "Thank you, ma'am."
The professor nodded, and began to explain, "Since I now know you at least have enough geometry to follow me, I'd like to lecture today on why spell forms take predictable geometric patterns…"
Even Harry had to admit the information was fascinating, and Hermione was drinking it in with all her mental prowess. He worried she'd be too full on math to eat any dinner. He made sure she filled her plate before she started gushing to Parvati and Lavender about arithmancy, before asking Dean, "How was husbandry?"
"Pretty chill," Dean nodded. "Just us and the Hufflepuffs this time, so Hagrid had it easy."
"Same," Harry nodded. "Me, Hermione, and Macmillan. We may have to deal with Slytherins on Wednesday, though."
"Yeah," Dean agreed. "Us too, I guess. I think the big man is tense about it. He seemed a little freaked out about the morning class they were in. Hopefully he's not going to mess it up."
Two days later, they'd had another session of their electives (and about half of their core classes; potions, defense, and herbology weren't until Thursday and Friday).
"He messed it up," Dean nodded, sadly.
"What happened?" Harry checked. "Our Slytherins weren't too bad. We just have Nott, Greengrass, and Zabini. They're fine without Malfoy around."
"We had Malfoy," Dean agreed.
"He tried to ride a hippogriff. Without bowing," Ron explained.
"Is that bad?" Harry asked.
"It was the first rule Hagrid told us," Dean said. "Malfoy didn't think it applied to him. Buckbeak—that's the hippogriff—cut Malfoy's arm when he tried to run up at it. He was bellowing about writing to his father."
They all looked over, where Malfoy was cradling a bandaged arm. Parkinson was cutting up his food for him as he clearly milked his injury for all it was worth.
"Aren't hippogriffs a little advanced for the first week?" Hermione checked. Even though she'd been talked out of taking the class, she'd still done some of the reading.
"You know Hagrid," Dean shrugged. "Wanted to start with something cool. Probably thought it would never hurt anything."
"Could have been a dragon," Harry nodded.
"He looks miserable," Lavender noted, glancing up at the staff table. "We should do something for him."
It was still a little weird to Harry that Lavender was always around unless they didn't have class together. Prior to the dating experiment, she'd mostly been Parvati's friend. But, he had to admit, it was nice to have another perspective between his and Dean's very boy method of handling problems and Hermione's very logical one. "Yeah?" he simply asked.
She nodded, "I'll find out when he has a free period. I bet he's pretty full on classes, now. Maybe after dinner tomorrow? He could probably use some friends."
Harry was still not totally sure that he and Hagrid were friends, since the big man was around eighty years old (for all that his Vanir and giant blood made him look younger), but he certainly was the adult on Vanaheim that Harry spent the most time with, socially. "Okay," he agreed.
Before then, however, they finally had their first defense seminar on Thursday afternoon. Snape hadn't been too bad in chemistry that morning (other than a bizarre display of bullying to force Ron to help Draco with the cutting for his lab assignment due to his injured arm, rather than letting one of his housemates help), and it was otherwise a day with few classes for Harry, so he was in a pretty good mood.
The defense classroom was spartan, with even less decoration than Gamora had provided. It made sense, since Lupin had come to the school with only a backpack. Fandral had taken his arsenal (most of which they'd never used) back with him to Asgard. The simple chairs of the previous year had been replaced with group tables, and the windows were open to let in sunlight and airflow. Lupin himself was standing behind a lectern, clearly still uncertain about his position of authority. "This is third years, huh?" the teacher asked.
"What are we learning this year, sir?" Hermione asked, notebook already ready.
"Let me, uh, just get roll real quick," he put her off, checking through the page of names and trying to match them to faces. He passed Harry faster than others, seeming to already recognize him, probably from the train. Finally, he explained, "Miss, uh, Granger, right?" She nodded, so he continued, "I understand your last two years you've basically been taught to fight."
"Nae so much last year," Seamus corrected.
Lupin smirked, "Believe me, I've heard about that, too. But I'm still not really a fighter. I know a bit. Shame all the science teacher positions are full," he scratched the back of his head. "No, what I'm going to teach you this year is escape and evasion."
He left a long pause, until Ernie Macmillan asked, "Escape and evasion, sir?"
"I was hoping for, 'Why'd we want to learn that?'" Lupin gave a wry grin. "It got about half the Slytherin classes so far. But, yeah… basically, how to avoid a fight, get away from people chasing you, and hide until they give up. It's not as flashy as martial arts, but it'll keep you alive for longer."
Lavender raised her hand and, when called on, asked, "Is this just like, if bad guys have trapped you in a bad spot?"
"That's some of it," the teacher nodded. "I know you're all too young to remember the war, but I understand that sometimes the Death Eaters would show up at houses, and there were too many to fight." Harry winced a little at that, and Lupin seemed to notice and nodded sympathetically. "We can always hope that will never happen again, here. But if it does, it's better to have another option than fighting. But, yeah, uh, my real strong point is cross country evasion. What do you do if the bad guys have won and you need to get out of the country? Or you get trapped on another world and need to get somewhere safe to figure out how to get home?"
"Are you on the run on Earth, sir?" Dean checked.
Again, that small, self-deprecating smile, and Lupin admitted, "Let's just say, that when the headmaster contacted me, this sounded like an excellent opportunity to let the heat die down. It beats hiding out in rural Canada. I miss the internet, though."
"We all miss the internet," Harry agreed. The Midgardborn in Hufflepuff nodded along as well.
"Right," Lupin said, "let's start with packing. What do you absolutely need to take with you? What do you need to have packed and ready to go at a moment's notice? What things do you think are essential but you can just buy them wherever you wind up? Where do you put the real essential things so you can grab them on the way out? Mr., uh, Finch-Fletchley, what do you usually pack for a weekend trip?"
"I… I'm not totally sure," the boy admitted. "The staff tends to do my packing for me when we go on holiday, and anything I need that we don't have, we send someone to buy." He looked a little embarrassed to be so wealthy. Harry still wasn't sure if he was just rich, or a British aristocrat of some kind.
"Pretty much same," Harry said. It wasn't really true. For all that she was now CEO of one of the biggest companies on Earth, Pepper had been a secretary for years (if a highly-paid one with a trust fund from her parents), so had never allowed Harry to get spoiled. It was bad enough he got to fly on private planes so often. Really, though, Harry didn't want to make Justin feel like the only out-of-touch rich kid in the class. "But do you mean, like, go-bags?"
"Exactly," Lupin agreed. "But, honestly, being used to buying stuff you don't have works in a lot more situations than you'd expect, if you're hiding in a city. I want everyone to think about what things they actually use on a daily basis. If you're in a hurry, you might grab a lot of things that are easy to replace where you're going, and forget irreplaceable items. It's sentimental, but when you're on the run, pictures of your family wind up meaning a lot more than you'd expect."
They spent most of the class period talking about packing. What did they absolutely need? What might be replaceable in the city, but they'd need to bring in the wilderness? How heavy were some of the things (especially things like bedding), and what could they replace them with that was easier to carry in a backpack? What could magic make for them on Vanaheim with their current skill at transfiguration, but they'd need to bring if they were in another realm? Everyone wound up with interesting lists of what they'd want to throw together if they needed to get out quickly.
"Of course," Lupin eventually began to change the subject, "none of this matters if you panic when you need to get out. That's part of why so many people have the go bags that Mr. Potter mentioned: you keep everything packed and near the door, so you can just grab it and go. It's faster than having to find and pack everything, but it also lets you think through your checklist when you're not in danger. Your worst enemy when you're trying to escape can be fear.
"It's tradition around here to do a lesson with a, um," he had to find a note he'd written to himself, "Kkallakki. That's a lot of Ks. They're this weird bug demon that makes you see your worst fear. The headmaster caught one and locked it in a wardrobe. Like seventy years ago, so I wonder if he's had to replace it in the meantime. Anyway, that seems a little much for any students, to me. Especially third-years. So I'm just going to ask, and only let me know if you feel like it. What are you scared to death of?"
Justin offered, "Giant ghost snakes." Harry hadn't been sure he'd seen the Nidhogg serpent that had paralyzed him, but he must have with that fear.
"Just regular sized snakes," Parvati added. "Particularly cobras. Or maybe mummies." She still had Ron and Ginny's stories about Egyptian tombs on the brain.
"Spiders," Ron shuddered, continuing the theme of venomous animals. It was probably better that he hadn't gone to meet Aragog with Hagrid.
"A banshee!" Seamus yelled from further back in the room.
"Professor Snape," Neville half-joked, but couldn't make the smile reach his eyes. Lupin frowned, and looked like he was making a mental note.
"Loose body parts. Like bloody eyeballs," Susan Bones, from Hufflepuff, said through a disgusted face.
"Rats," her friend Hannah nodded. Ron looked offended so she said, "Not nice pet ones, but wild ones that crawl on you…"
"That crawling claw thing from D&D," Dean remembered based on what Susan and Hannah had said. Off everyone's look he pantomimed his hand moving across the table like a spider and said, "Like, just a human hand that walks at you. The Addams Family movies messed me up, you guys."
There was a lull as everyone contemplated that, into which Harry's quiet comment of, "My parents dying in front of me," landed like a bomb. Horrified looks spread around the room, as the kids remembered that Harry had seen some shit in his short life.
That reminded Hermione, who added, "That troll in first year that was about to kill all of us. Not the troll itself, just knowing that we could be moments from being dead."
Lupin gave an apologetic smile, saying, "Thank you—everyone—but that was what I was trying to get at. Think about how you felt when your life was actually in danger. Do you have the mental capacity to plan? Or are you just going to fight or flee? Maybe just freeze in place? If you're attacked in your home, you might panic and go running barefoot into the night with no supplies, and you're not going to make it very far.
"That's another thing I want to work on in this class: mastering your emotions. If you can get used to staying calm in a crisis, that makes it a lot easier to remember what you need to do to actually get away safely." He scanned the class to make sure everyone was okay with what he'd just said, then suggested, "And I think we can call it there for today. For homework, I just want you to all really think about what scares you, be honest about how you might respond to being in danger, and we'll start talking about how you can control those emotions."
Harry hung back as the Hufflepuffs filed out, and his crew clearly moved out into the hallway but were planning to wait. When it was just him and Lupin he asked, "Was that too much?"
"Your parents dying?" Lupin checked. Harry nodded, so the professor said, "No. Like I said, I was hoping to get some real fears out there. Though, uh, I guess around here, some of those monsters could be a genuine threat that could chase you out of your house. Maybe even more likely than guys with guns pointed at you." He seemed to be remembering something from his own past.
"That wasn't even in my top five for the last year," Harry nodded. Lupin's eyes widened as he realized that Harry had recently had guns pointed at him, so Harry hurriedly explained, "I was really more afraid for my friends, or that I'd have to reveal my magic to get out of it."
"Pretty much," Lupin grudgingly muttered. "I guess… uh… you're on Midgard, then? I'd have assumed you'd be raised here."
"Nope. Squib aunt," Harry shrugged, guessing that maybe the Midgardborn Professor Lupin didn't know as much about him as everyone else on Vanaheim seemed to.
"Oh, right, Virginia," the professor nodded. Realizing he may have revealed more than he'd planned on, he added, "Uh, was there anything else? Next class in a minute."
Harry didn't have time to puzzle over the mention of Aunt Pepper's real name, so just asked, "Are we doing any escapology? Like, getting out of handcuffs? Hermione, Dean, and I learned some of it last winter holiday, and it's really useful."
Lupin nodded consideringly and said, "Then I might have to tap the three of you to help teach some of that. It's not my strong point, but I agree it could be useful." He looked up as Katie Bell and some of the other fourth-years started to enter the class. "But we can talk about that later."
"Okay, thanks Professor," Harry said, rushing out to catch up with his friends.
On the way back to the dorm, he suddenly remembered that his aunt had mentioned another of his dad's friends with a weird name. And Remus Lupin was a pretty weird name, even for Vanaheim…