8.3 The Study of Ancient Runes

In the first week back after the holiday, classes were dull as students moved sluggishly through the corridors toward their classes. They were all physically in attendance, although not all of them managed to stay awake through entire class sessions. It seemed that many of Rose's classmates had returned in body only. Their brains were still on holiday. Rose, on the other hand, was eager for classes to begin again, and she attended each with a certain amount of anticipation for what was to come. It felt as if she was striking each note perfectly on pitch, performing well in class while her fellow sixth years seldom even raised their hands, showing up for prefect rounds with a noticeably dragging Yates, and accomplishing her homework well ahead of time - enough time that she was able to help Al get his done too.

After all, if he was going to be Head Boy, he needed to show that he could keep exemplary grades as well.

On the first Thursday in January, all the NEWT level sixth years had Ancient Runes together right after breakfast, and that was when Rose first felt her tenuous hold on perfection began to slip. Once again, all the seats in class were filled except for the one beside Malfoy, and she was forced to march between the rows of desks with her chin jutting stubbornly against the unwanted attention she received. Somehow, in spite of many of their NEWT level classes coinciding, Rose had managed to avoid sitting with Malfoy again without having to make any real effort. With a slight pang of guilt, Rose realized that she hadn't noticed until this year how many classes she and Malfoy had in common, not even when the Gryffindors and Slytherins were assigned to class together. She had no clue how well he did in Ancient Runes; she had no clue how he did in any of his classes aside from Potions. His feelings might be wounded terribly to know that Rose hadn't been paying attention to his performance in class, aside from the fact that he was behind her in the rankings. Everyone was, or else why even bother taking a class?

"Malfoy." Ignoring him gave him even more importance, so Rose tossed off a bored greeting before leaning forward to greet the girl sitting on Malfoy's other side. "Gracie. I wanted to talk to you about something we talked about at the prefect meeting last night." The meeting that Malfoy hadn't attended, as he wasn't a prefect, and thus could not participate in their conversation.

Gracie, looking more flushed than usual, began to offer a tentative invitation to speak after class when Malfoy put his elbow on his desk and effectively ended their conversation. "Good morning, Rose. How was the holiday?"

Gracie peeked around Malfoy, giving Rose a look that was all big eyes and surprise, and Rose knew exactly how the girl felt. What was this, then? Calling her by her given name and asking after her holiday? If he hadn't sounded completely sincere, and if there hadn't been a lack of Slytherins in this particular class, Rose would suspect him of mockery, a joke she didn't understand but still somehow managed to be the butt. Even still, she figured he was trying to confuse her. When someone didn't have the goods necessary to perform a given task, he often resorted to childish tactics such as this.

Or perhaps the favor she'd asked of him before Christmas, and the fact that he was now rather close to her own friend, made him feel that efforts at friendship were required. If that was the case, Rose ought to reciprocate, particularly since he had done her such a favor with Jayne. Her response came just a moment too long after his question, and she couldn't quite force her tone into entirely casual cadences, but Rose managed a, "Quite good, thank you. And... yours?"

She expected an equally evasive answer, but Malfoy gave her a keen look when he responded. "Restful, I suppose. And thought-provoking." There was something in the quality of Malfoy's voice that suggested he knew more than he was letting on, which Rose supposed was uniquely Slytherin. It piqued her curiosity too... just what was Malfoy curious about?

There wasn't opportunity to ask, however, as Professor Bathsheda Babbling announced her presence in the room with the quick click-click of her heels as she crossed to her desk. Her trim mauve robes swished over the pointed little granny boots the woman favored, and she gave the class only a cursory flat look before turning to the board. Babbling was a demanding professor and intimidated a number of students out of her class each year both with the rigor of her classwork and with her strident personality, both of which earned the woman all of Rose's devotion. On the first day of class in third year, the woman had paused during roll call and gave Rose a squinting look through old-fashioned wire framed spectacles. "Granger's girl, is it? Don't you think you can rest on her laurels, girl, or you'll be out of here faster than a billywig on coffee beans." Most of her classmates had looked aghast, but Rose just grinned happily and accepted it as a mark of honor. Her mother had been outstanding in Ancient Runes, and Rose was going to be at least that good.

Even upon showing up at the start of this year with her "O" OWL in hand, Babbling had given her that same steely squint through the spectacles and said, "See if you can't make it all the way through this course, Weasley. Most of your classmates won't have the luxury of skipping the entire seventh year and still getting a plum job at the Ministry." Her classmates might be inclined to bristle at the rather pointed jabs coming from Babbling over their four years in her classroom, but Rose enjoyed the challenge - both from the material and in proving Babbling wrong.

"You should all have your Spellman's Syllabary and Rune Dictionary with you this morning. If not, please return to your common room to retrieve them, and do not bother to return. I cannot abide time wasters, and you are all old enough to remember to bring a text to class. You will receive incomplete marks for today's work, but I'm a generous soul and will allow you to complete the homework for partial credit." Babbling never turned from the board as she wrote out a series of runes, her neatly pinned chignon bobbing as she spoke to the wall. Early on in their career in this class, Slytherin Selina Evercreech had made the mistake of murmuring under her breath about Babbling's talking hair style, and the girl had been barred from returning to class when she was overheard. No one spoke without permission since that day.

When no one departed, Babbling smugly nodded and gestured toward the tidy pile of ancient texts stacked on the corner of her desk. The covers were well worn and faded, but even from several rows back, Rose could see the runic lettering on the spines. "Independent study. I have no desire to deal with incompetence today. You will each work silently at translating the first chapter. Whatever you do not finish will be completed as homework. There will be no talking or sharing of work, and I want you to check your notes thoroughly before bringing asinine questions to my desk." Her hair bobbled as she finished scrawling out the assignment, in runes, of course, and then Babbling took to her seat and picked up a book of her own to read as they worked.

Independent study in Ancient Runes wasn't unusual; it wasn't a subject that leant itself to continuous class lecture after the history and usage was delved into over the first three years of study. NEWT level classes were more devoted to practical and historical usages, in addition to the more popular runecasting. Most of the classmates who dropped out of the class did so upon realizing Ancient Runes wasn't another Divination class, where showing up and pretending to see things in the glass would achieve a passing grade. Babbling had repeated again and again in their studies that no one could properly read a runecast without fully understanding the mythology, culture, and history of the people who had developed the runic alphabet. Rose likened the subject more to a Muggle foreign language class, albeit one in which there were no native speakers of the language and in which the very letters held inherent magical properties. The class was one of her favorites.

Malfoy brought back a copy of the text from the front of the room for herself and Gracie, and although Rose ignored that look from the Ravenclaw prefect this time, she still stared at the book on her desk for a full minute as if expecting it to reach out and bite her if she opened it. Were they friends, then? It would take some mental adjusting to think of him as such, especially because she could count on one hand the number of conversations they'd had and she could count on zero fingers the actual truths she knew about him. A thing was only true if it came from the source, so she had to logically discount all those things she believed could be true simply because they'd been passed around from person to person.

If she made an effort, though, and she was wrong in her assumption that his gestures were friendly, then she would be mocked for being overly familiar. Nothing would please Burke or Nott more than watching a stupid little Gryffindor fumble at Malfoy. Lily was already making a fool of herself, and she saw how it amused them. Rose wasn't allowing herself to fall into that trap. If Malfoy was sincere, he'd have to make much bigger steps to prove it. And if he was trying to make her look stupid, then he was fooling with the wrong Lion.

Having reached that resolution, Rose cracked the spine of her text carefully and began the slow work of translating the old runic letters into English. It was meticulous work for her, as she puzzled over verb tenses and worried about intention and interpretation for every carefully uncovered sentence. Translation was more than just swapping one language for another, and Rose wanted to make sure that the finished product made sense and retained the integrity of the original work. It wasn't brainless work at all, but when they were over halfway through the class period and Rose found she was only halfway through her text, she felt as if she was making steady progress. There would certainly be work left over, but less in the long run since her finished product was so carefully translated. Considering Swinbourne and Belby were still in the first pages and AnneMarie Caxton had her head down on her desk, Rose was going to chalk up the Malfoy confusion as a blip in her otherwise perfect streak.

Beside her, Malfoy closed his text and stretched silently. Much as Rose tried to stay immersed in her work, she couldn't help but watch him make his way to Babbling's desk. The professor ignored him for a long moment as she finished a paragraph in her book, and then she closed it with her finger marking the page. If Malfoy wasn't careful, he'd get a reaming for interrupting the woman with a ridiculous question, and Rose felt a fluttering of nerves on his behalf. She scolded herself over it; she should have been pleased or at least politely disinterested. Perhaps they were friends.

"What, Malfoy?"

"What would you like us to do next, Professor?"

"Next?" Babbling regarded him with mild surprise. "You've finished?" Rose flipped through her own text with ink-stained fingers, but she still had several pages to go. How could he be finished when the rest of the class wasn't remotely close?

He offered his roll of parchment silently, and Babbling perused the first few lines with a critical eye. Malfoy shot an amused look in Rose's direction before Babbling handed it back, and Rose dropped her eyes back to her work guiltily. More than getting caught watching him, the shared intimacy of that moment befuddled her. She caught up the line she'd been working on in her ancient text and tried to find that place where the world ceased to exist aside from her and her project.

"Well enough, Malfoy." The crinkle of paper suggested his parchment had been returned, but Rose focused on her work. Ehwaz. Perth.

"Thank you, Professor. What should I work on now?"

"Entertain yourself for the next twenty minutes. Surely you can manage that."

Against her will, Rose glanced up as Malfoy returned to his seat, and they shared an amused look for half a moment before she recalled herself. She slid down a bit in her seat and redoubled her efforts on the translation, ignoring the funny warm feeling. It wasn't often she got to be part of the joke, either because she was the joke or because the things she found amusing seemed to pass other people by without notice. In fact, Rose hadn't realized anyone else found Babbling's bark as amusing as she did, and the fact Malfoy did made him just a bit more accessible.

"I'll beat you next time," Rose murmured, a subtle swipe at an errant curl blocking her words from Babbling. She flicked her eyes at Malfoy and gave him a fierce little grin.

"Give that a shot," Malfoy encouraged with a quirk of his own expressive mouth. Beyond him, Gracie shot panicked looks at the professor, who pretended to be unaware that there was talking in her otherwise silent classroom.

She shoved back the sleeves of her robes and returned to her work, and to her surprise, Rose was easily able to finish the rest of the chapter by the time class ended. Perhaps proper motivation was all that was required. Yes, she'd been upstaged by Malfoy in Runes, but she found she didn't mind it as much as she thought. It certainly gave her something to work toward in their next independent study period. As Babbling dismissed the class and Rose packed up her textbooks, she lingered thoughtfully. It wasn't usually difficult to pin a name to what she felt about things, as Rose spent a lot of time identifying and describing her feelings in her journal, but the confusion and warmth she felt at the moment was new. And while not at all unpleasant, Rose felt it best to quash anything she couldn't explain before it got out of control.

Malfoy reached across the aisle as the rest of the class streamed from the room, tapping her wrist with his finger. The skin there was pale and puckered slightly from a burn she'd received in her youth, although Rose didn't recall the specifics at the moment. She was too shocked at his breach of her personal space, and she raised disbelieving eyes to his face.

"Looks like it hurt. You have to watch out for those salamanders." He gave her that smile again, the sincere one that actually reached his eyes and didn't make her feel mocked in the least. At his words, she did remember receiving the burn in Care of Magical Creatures class several years back as she fought a particularly wriggly little lizard and nearly fell face first into the fire. But how did he...?

"It did," Rose touched the spot herself and glanced back up, but Malfoy was gone.