Tickling the Giant Squid and other Grand Adventures

51. Avila

"I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THIS EVEN MEANS?" Karou yelled. Madam Pince appeared out of nowhere and gave her evil eyes. "Sorry!" Karou squeaked.

"One more sound out of you," Madam Pince growled, "and you can say goodbye to the library for the rest of the year."

Karou nodded and stared at her book. As soon as Madam Pince was out of sight, Karou pushed her book to me and showed me a paragraph written in Latin.

I glanced it over and shook my head at her. "It's talking about levitation anyway." I pointed to the word leviosa, which was recognizable from the charm we had learned at the beginning of the year: Wingardium Leviosa.

"The whole thing's in Latin, though." She grumbled. "I can't read any of it."

I muffled my laugh and offered her my book. "Trade?"

"I don't know how you'll do any better, but sure." She took my book, which was a collection of rather interesting charms, and I took the book in Latin. It seemed to be full of spells based on the air and was rather interesting.

A few minutes later, I came across a page that introduced a section all about water. "Huh."

"What?" Karou muttered absently. I closed the book, using a finger to save my place, and read the title. Naturalis: De Magia Elementum Theoriis. "Whoa. Dude, where did you find this book?"

"On some high shelf near the restricted section. Why?"

"It's all about basic elemental spells. This must have a spell that will let us breathe and talk underwater!"

"Or we could learn sign language," Aaron whispered sarcastically.

"Do you want to spend your summer doing that? Because I certainly don't." I muttered back.

"Me neither." Karou agreed. "But-"

I tuned them out as I turned the pages in my book. I found one near the end of the water section that talked about breathing underwater, and at the end... "Oh, this is perfect!"

"What?"

"This page," I pushed the book onto the table so they could see. "It's got something called the bubblehead charm, and a few variations, and there's a bit at the end about connecting them so we can talk..." I paused and focused on the bit at the end. "Oh but it's just a theory. That's ok, we can give it a go..."

"Wait, is this the Latin book? You can read Latin?" Karou asked.

"Let me check it out, this is an interesting book anyway." I got up and took the book with me, heading to Madam Pince's desk at the front.

"YOU CAN READ LATIN?" Karou called after me.

In an instant, the crone was in front of me, though her gaze was directed at Karou. "Out!" She whisper-shouted over my head. "Both of you out! And I'd better not see either of you until next school year!" I froze in front of her, slightly confused. Either she hadn't seen me, or my half-hearted conversations about the books I'd read had paid off, because she stalked around me, grabbed Karou and Aaron by their ears and pulled them towards the door, with their stuff floating along behind them.

I raised my eyebrows and pursed my lips in surprised amusement. I caught a glimpse of Karou's face, which silently called for help, and tried not to laugh. When the Librarian had pulled my friends out of my sight, I sighed and turned back around to retrieve my own things, as well as the book I'd been reading before. I quickly checked out both books, affording Madam Pince a small smile in hopes of getting on her good side, and exited the library.

Karou and Aaron were waiting for me just outside the doors, and we rushed away from the library before speaking since the doors were open. I started laughing a few corridors down, and Karou punched my arm. "I stand by my outburst. Since when can you read Latin?"

"Since I was small. I grew up listening to and reading in it, I know it as well as English. It's as natural as a first language." Well, the exorcisms are anyway. I thought to myself. I had grown up surrounded by the language but in unconventional contexts. I found I understood it rather easily, and Uncle Sam had supported me in learning the language, and then Cas used his angel mojo to make me basically fluent in it when I asked him to for my birthday a couple years back. It helped with spells here, they were mostly in Latin, or very close to it, and I could often guess what a spell would do. I'd made it a little game with myself to guess what a spell would be for certain tasks, then research it to see if I was right.

"THAT IS SO COOL!" Karou shouted. Her voice echoed off the walls, and Wendy came rushing around the corner and crashed into me. Karou gasped, dropping down to pet her. "Hi, little pud-pud! How are you? It's been a while! You're really not a little pud-pud anymore, though you weren't when I met you either, were you?"

Karou was right. Wendy had grown since the beginning of the school year, and was roughly the size of a large Maine Coon cat, though she wasn't even a year old yet. Aaron and I pet her too, though she shied away from him. He offered her his hand to smell, and she did, then looked up at me as if asking 'Where's the other one?'

"This is all of us now Wendy. It's just the three of us, has been for a while. I thought you noticed." I tried to avoid saying Farid's name, as she was still a sensitive topic for the three of us, but mostly Karou. Karou didn't seem to be listening though. She was still rambling on about Wendy's amazingly fast growth.

"So, is that why you get spells so quickly?" Aaron asked me after we stood up again. "Because you know Latin? I know they're based off Latin. Most of them anyway."

I nodded. "I think that's it anyway. It's the only explanation I have." I glanced at Wendy, who was leaning up against Karou's legs since she was petting her. "Want to come to the Lake with us Wendy? If you want, you can even meet the giant squid." Wendy stood up straight and shot through the halls like a bullet, headed for the Entrance Hall. The three of us laughed and followed her.

---

"Thank goodness it's warmed up," I said as we arrived at the lake. We each took our robes off and laid out bags on top of them, and I pulled out the Latin book. "Ok, so-"

"Wait wait wait." Karou put her hand on top of the book, keeping me from opening it. "I wanna learn Latin. What's the cover say?"

I sighed and shook my head. "This word here," I pointed to the word Naturalis, "means natural, and I suppose that's the main title of the book. The rest of it can be read two different ways. De means 'the', so literally, it would translate into 'The Magic Element Theories'," I pointed to each word in De Magia Elementum Theoriis as I said the English translation, "But that's not necessarily how it would be translated. It's a pretty blocky title, and Latin has different conjugation than English. I think it's meant to be Theories in Elemental Magic. Understand?"

Karou nodded, and Aaron said, "Yep."

"Cool. So, this page is about an old version of the bubblehead charm, which we won't learn until, like fifth year, or something. But it spells out how to do the charm pretty clearly, and how long it will last, so I think we can give it a go."

"Okay! Let's do this! What's it say?" Karou asked, jumping up and heading towards the water. Wendy seemed to be thinking along the same wavelength because she got up and followed Karou.

"Wait! I wasn't done! Do you wanna be able to talk once were under there or not?" Both girl and cat froze and spun around to face me. Not for the first time, I wondered just how much Wendy could understand us.

"Talk?" Aaron asked. "I didn't know that was possible."

"It's a theory about connecting the bubbles at the end here, but it's pretty solid and once we've got the bubblehead charm down, I think it'll be possible. Though maybe we should wait until next year to try that part..." I trailed off, reading the Theory with a little more scrutiny than I had earlier."

"It's worth a shot," Karou said, and I could almost hear her shrug. 'And if we don't figure it out by summer break, then we have all of next year to figure it out as well."