Towers - Fred Weasley

29

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EBONY AND ANGELINA ARE CURRENTLY SITTING TOGETHER IN THE LIBRARY, making their project together for Ancient Runes. Madam Pince -- the Hogwarts librarian -- had already forced seven students out of the library who were all following Victor Krum like little fangirls.

"Do you reckon Harry put his name in the Goblet or did somebody else do it?" Ebony asks her new friend carefully. 

"He probably did it himself, he wants more recognition, more attention though I don't think the attention he is getting now is the one he expected to get." Angelina replies, continuing to read in one of the Ancient Runes books she had found on the shelves earlier that evening. 

"Here!" She suddenly says, pointing to a specific paragraph in her book. "The Runes -- or Runic Alphabet -- are an alphabet developed by Germanic speaking peoples during the Roman Era based on letters from both the Roman alphabet and the Greek alphabet. It was later used for writing Gothic, Old Scandinavian, Old Norse and Anglio-Saxon/Old English and some letters such as thorn -- þ -- were used to write and, In fact, the use of þ for 'the' survived in English for many centuries and is still used in Modern Icelandic and Faeroese."

"Sounds about right." Ebony replies, dryly.

"There is more." Angelina continues. "The letters all have names like thorn (þ) for 'th' /θ/ and isaz (ᛁ) 'ice' for /i/. Ancient Germanic did use them for 'magical' purposes but they also used it for everday writing. For Germanic languages like English, it's actually a little more efficient because it has single letters like thorn (þ) for sounds that need to be written with two letters in the modern Roman alphabet."

"They used it for magic?" Ebony asks, a sudden interest blooms inside of her. She leans closer to read over Angelina's shoulder. "Because the Runic alphabet was used over several centuries and for multiple languages, there are several variant forms for many characters, and the same character may be pronounced differently in different languages. Two key stages are Elder Futhark (Old Germanic/Old Scandinavian) and Futhorc (Anglo Saxon), but other variants exist."

"Do you think that maybe there are spells which use the Runic Alphabet?" Angelina asks, curiously.

"If there are and we manage to find them, then we definitely earn some extra points for our project." Ebony replies, eagerly.

"Right, but where will we ever find that?" Angelina asks, closing her book. "There aren't any books on that here, we would've known if there were." Ebony's mind suddenly travels.

"Not here, no." She mumbles back. "The restricted section however might."

"And how do you plan on getting in there?" 

"You really don't know me, do you?" Ebony asks, smirking. "Don't worry about it, I'll make sure I sneak in there tonight and look through the possible Runic books."

"Cool, let's head to dinner before we are late." The two girls pack up everything and return their books to the right places before leaving the library. "I'm a bit sad that I didn't become the Hogwarts Champion but at least Harry is a Gryffindor."

"Does Gryffindor need anymore spotlight though?" Ebony asks back. "You guys have Harry Potter and win most of the House Cups not to mention, you won the Quidditch Cup last year."

"Thanks to you." Angelina replies. "I don't like to admit it, Black, but you did a very noble thing last year."

"I got kicked off the team for it too."