B.Q. Book One: Princess of the Blacks

Chapter 25: Are You Ready to Rumble?

Flip, flip. "No."

Flip, flip. "No."

Flip, flip, flip. "Damn it, why can't there be a bloody index in this bloody book?!"

Knock, knock.

"What?!" Jen yelled in frustration, pulling her hand off the floating textbook she had been 'skimming'. She only had an hour before she needed to be present at the arena in the Forbidden Forest for the Slytherin Task, and every moment lost was a moment she did not have to complete her last minute preparations.

There was a pregnant pause, and then Luna's voice came hesitantly from outside her dormitory door. "It's Tracey and Luna. Is it alright if we come in, or... maybe we should just come back later."

Tracey! The Slytherin was in her Runes class; she would be the perfect person to ask. She considered grabbing the shirt laying on her bed but quickly decided it would just be a waste of time. "No, no, it's fine. Come on in."

The wooden door opened slowly, and the two girls poked their heads in. "You're not going to cook us and eat us now, right?" Tracey asked, her voice tinged with humor and a little worry. "'Cause, no offense, but that was definitely not on today's schedule."

"No, I'm not going to eat you. Now get your arses in here and shut the blasted door." Once they had done so, she demanded, "Tracey, which Ogham runes symbolize endurance and speed?"

The other fourth-year was nonplussed for a moment. "Er, ailm and... úath? No, wait, straif. Ailm and straif."

"Of course, straif. I always forget that one." Jen snapped her fingers, conjuring strips of titanium and fusing them to create hand-sized replicas of the two troublesome runes. "There, finally. I spent the past half-hour trying to find those buggers."

"That's why I put them in a single table once Babbling introduced them all. When I forget, all it takes is a quick glance and... shite. Sorry."

"It's nothing, don't worry about it."

Still shamed by her faux pas, Tracey crept closer and looked over the five metal runes floating around her. "Muin, luis, saille. Perception, protection from spells, and flexibility?"

"Balance, not flexibility. Close, though." Jen floated the much-vexing primer onto her desk and pulled the luis rune to her left arm, just below the shoulder. Stretching the horizontal bar, she melded the ends together; the closed circle now spun lazily around her bicep, the two short vertical pieces resting at opposite sides. The other four archaic characters moved to orbit her abdomen just above her navel.

"Quick question," Luna piped up. "Could you please explain to the rest of the class exactly what you're demonstrating before you continue?"

The older Ravenclaw smiled in mild amusement, half of her mind still preparing itself for what she was about to do. A minor effort snapped the loose runes into a large circle with herself as the center, and the crosspieces spaced themselves out equidistantly, just as had happened with the luis rune. This 'evenness' aspect of Ogham could sometimes make interpreting scripts difficult without already knowing what they said, something each member of the fourth year class had learned firsthand. "Okay. Has Babbling explained to you why you start out Ancient Runes by learning Futhark?"

"Um, it's an all-purpose language, right? You can use it for just about anything."

"That's right. Wards, enchantments, rituals, bindings; if you need a runic script for something, Futhark will probably work. The issue, though, is that just as it doesn't have any real weaknesses, it doesn't have any strengths. An enchantment you laid down in Norse runes would be faster to create and more potent if you had used Sumerian. Ward schemes would be stronger and deadlier if they were written in Egyptian or Mayan."