Sparks Fly || A George Weasley Story

Year 4: Study of Ancient Pains In the Ass

"That was dreadful," Pandora sighed as we walked out of Ancient Runes. 

"Come on, Dora, it wasn't that bad." I shook my head. 

"Yeah, if you thought that was hard, I don't know how you dealt with this class last year. The end of year examinations were much harder than that little pop quiz." Tamara shook her head. 

"It's not that it was hard," Pandora shot a look over at Tamara, "It's just who in merlin's name gives a quiz on the first day of school? I wasn't prepared."

"I heard that she's not even grading it," Angelina said as she danced passed us, twirling about in the hall.

"Now why would she go out of her way to make us take it if she wasn't going to grade it?" Tamara asked. 

Angelina shrugged, without saying a word. 

Whether she was grading it or not didn't matter to me. What I was worried about was the unholy amount of homework she had assigned. We had to read through the entire first three sections of the textbook, Ancient Runes Made Easy (which we had almost completely covered last year) as review, and pages 6, 27, and 49 of Magical Hieroglyphs and Logograms. Not to mention the parchment as long as my arm of runes that we had to translate, and I was thankful that I'd remembered to pack my copy of Spellman's Syllabary. 

I was going to try and get at least some of this homework done during my thirty-minute break that I had before lunch. There were many other things I'd rather do than flip hurriedly through my rune dictionary while I struggled to make it through chapter after chapter of materials that I'd already been over several times last year, but you have to do what you have to do.

Last year, I was so scared of falling behind that I read the whole thing cover to cover once a week. That, along with the constant studying for charms and literally everything else, my evenings that weren't spent in detention were spent pouring over pages of information. I needed to be the best, or at least one of the best students in my classes.

It wasn't an option for me to not try my hardest and be average. In a family of five children, we were always striving to find our "things" that made us stand out, while simultaneously living up to the legacy of the ones that came before us.

Rosemary had been so smart, and she had been prefect, and head girl. She had been every professor's favorite student. The only thing she hadn't done was play quidditch. It had been something that she found relatively interesting considering that it was one of the only sports that the wizarding world had to offer, but never interesting enough to play it herself. She was far too busy studying to get herself out on the pitch.

So, that had been my thing from the very beginning. I had thrown myself full force into the world of quidditch and never looked back. I loved everything about it. The wind in my hair, that tango of anxiety and excitement that whirls in my stomach every time I got on a broom, not to mention the pride that swelled in my chest as I created a new trick.

Quidditch became my whole world, when I didn't have my nose in a book that is. I'd been standing in Rosemary's shadow when I had first begun taking studying seriously. It had been so common in my house that I had found it fun even before I had to take in on. So, when I turned nine, and Amaryllis passed down Rosemary's old textbooks, I gorged myself on knowledge.

Then, I got to Hogwarts where I could play quidditch and they had the biggest library I'd ever seen. I spent my first year hidden away in those shelves. I still loved to lose myself in there for hours of reading when I had the time, which the older I got became less and less.

Then, I was congratulated on my sportsmanship and my grades. I stood out without making Rosemary feel as though her achievements meant any less. That was how things had always worked in our house. Everyone had their thing, and we were all praised for it.