A brief, heavy silence descended upon the Defence Against the Dark Arts office. Albert hadn't anticipated Professor Brod stating the brutal truth so directly: that Ancient Runes were, in the modern era, functionally obsolete, surviving only as an esoteric academic exercise. He nodded slowly, acknowledging the hard reality of magical progress.
Indeed, outside the limited scope of deciphering fragmented ancient scrolls or archaic curse literature, Ancient Runes held little practical use today. They were time-consuming, mentally draining, and delivered a result—if successful—that could often be achieved faster and more reliably with a simple, modern charm.
As for actively using them to cast spells?
In Albert's estimation, only wizards of truly exceptional, almost monumental control, perhaps like Dumbledore himself, could wield them effectively and spontaneously in a combat situation.
For anyone else, it was akin to trying to write a complex treatise in a language you'd only just begun to learn in his past life—painfully slow, requiring constant dictionary lookups, and resulting in barely comprehensible, disjointed sentences. The speed required for dueling was entirely absent.
"Professor, may I examine the runes on your parchment?" Albert finally asked, pointing to the scattered sheets on the desk. He felt an intense pull toward the script, an academic curiosity overriding his manners.
"By all means, Mr. Anderson. Be my guest," Professor Brod replied easily, intrigued by the boy's sudden focus. He made no effort to stop Albert, assuming that as a self-taught beginner, the boy would only be able to recognize a few isolated characters. Brod knew the text was deliberately fragmented and corrupted, a mess of broken sequences he had been trying to piece together himself for days.
Albert crossed the room and picked up the nearest sheet of parchment. As he began to scan the angular characters, he felt a strange sense of recognition. They were unlike the simplified, linear runes he had studied for basic translation; these characters seemed to possess an interconnectedness, each stroke flowing subtly into the next, forming a web.
To successfully decipher them, one couldn't simply look up individual characters; one needed to understand the entire runic syntax—how they worked as a collective system.
He noticed tiny annotations scribbled in the margin, clearly the work of either Professor Brod or his colleague, Basildia. The decoded notes read: "...eye, tree, spring, spear, wisdom…"
These few keywords were disconnected, floating signifiers, but they made Albert pause and frown deeply. He felt a deep resonance, a sudden memory trying to surface from the deepest corners of his conceptual understanding of magical history, but it remained elusive.
"These runes… they haven't just been broken up, have they, Professor? They appear to be intentionally scrambled or shuffled," Albert remarked, looking up uncertainly.
"Precisely, Mr. Anderson," Professor Brod nodded, confirming his suspicion. "The ancient text, whatever its origin, was deliberately jumbled, perhaps as a safeguard, perhaps simply by time. As you've noticed, these runic sequences are inherently difficult to decode precisely because their meaning relies heavily on context."
"Yes, the text requires us to break it down, translate the components, and then re-piece the entire structure together to derive the original meaning," Albert articulated seriously, already beginning the mental process.
Is this the fundamental property of all true ancient magical script? Albert wondered. He recalled reading books written purely in runic sequences that were relatively straightforward. This text was different; it felt like a sophisticated puzzle, requiring immense effort to assemble before any magical meaning could be extracted.
Who in the name of Merlin would expend so much time and effort creating a text that requires this level of assembly just to read it? Albert mentally scoffed. Only a handful of people could truly read Runes, and an even smaller subset could weave them into complex, meaningful chains.
Was this a historical relic, or merely a sophisticated academic exercise concocted by Professor Basilda for Professor Brod's personal practice?
Just as Albert was deeply immersed in this calculation, there was a tentative knock on the office door.
Katrina McDougal entered, looking for Professor Brod for a follow-up assignment. Her gaze immediately fell upon Albert, who was standing at the Professor's desk, hunched over a piece of ancient parchment with a look of intense, almost feverish concentration.
She blinked, visibly curious and slightly perplexed as to why the youngest published Transfiguration genius was currently spending his afternoon buried in Ancient Runes.
Albert looked up as the door opened, his eyes meeting Katrina's briefly. He offered a quick, almost mechanical nod of acknowledgement before his focus snapped back to the parchment.
The scattered keywords were beginning to form a coherent pattern in his mind, and the more runes he deciphered, the closer he felt to a revelation.
"Mr. Anderson and I just concluded a quick chess session," Professor Brod said smoothly, sensing Katrina's inquiry. "He showed an unexpected interest in ancient scripts. Katrina, why don't you sit down and take a turn at the board while he works? It might prove relaxing."
Professor Brod's casual optimism regarding Albert was evident. Katrina, highly intelligent herself, merely guessed that Albert, being a recognized genius, was simply given special access to academic projects.
"Focus, Katrina," Professor Brod gently reminded her, noticing her attention drifting toward Albert's intense study. "Don't let others distract you. Concentrate entirely on your own objective."
Katrina refocused on the board, but her subsequent game against the Grandmaster was equally brief and brutal. She ultimately lost, and when she looked up, slightly dazed by her defeat, she saw Albert sitting comfortably in Professor Brod's own desk chair, a quill in his hand, rapidly annotating the parchment.
How dare he… she thought, slightly scandalized by the casual assumption of the Professor's seat, yet intrigued by the speed with which he was working.
"Professor," Albert said, rising from the chair and holding up the parchment. "The runes on this sheet—they aren't entirely correct, are they? They're just pieces of something larger."
"Oh? And why do you say that, Mr. Anderson?" Professor Brod asked, his casual curiosity deepening into genuine interest. Albert was absolutely correct; the text was incomplete and heavily edited.
"Well, after I translated the sequences and reassembled them, they didn't form a continuous, grammatically sound sentence, but rather two very famous poetic fragments," Albert explained, picking up the sheet of parchment covered with his hasty translations and deductions.
Albert walked over, setting the parchment down. He pointed to the deciphered fragments, his finger tracing the associated keywords.
"I believe these must be two very well-known verses from what is often referred to as 'The Word of God' in Norse mythological texts. This text describes the origin of the Runes themselves," Albert announced, the revelation finally clicking into place.
He recited the deduced meaning: "It is the account of Odin, who traded one of his eyes for the waters of wisdom... and in his quest for the secrets of higher knowledge, he hung himself from a mighty tree for nine days and nine nights, wounding himself with a spear; his blood fell to the ground and coalesced into the runes."
Albert spoke the translation with certainty, having pieced the content together not just through rote dictionary translation, but by recognizing the cultural framework and using it to deduce the context of the fragmented script. The keywords—eye, tree, spear—were the dead giveaways.
Katrina McDougal, though still recovering from her chess loss, was utterly bewildered. She knew what Runes were, academically, but this historical-mythological context was leagues beyond the course material.
Professor Brod, however, looked completely and utterly stunned, a look of profound disbelief flooding his features. He simply stared at Albert, his mind reeling.
He actually deciphered it? Just by guessing the context? No, that's impossible. You cannot deduce the Word of God from a few scrambled, disconnected keywords unless you already know the source material and the underlying runic structure intimately.
"Seriously, Mr. Anderson, are you absolutely certain you have only just taught yourself the runic alphabet?" Professor Brod's face twitched violently, his composure momentarily shattered.
His internal monologue was screaming: He has the audacity to claim he can 'barely understand' them! If this is 'barely understanding,' then what does that make the rest of us who struggle to translate simple declarative sentences?
"Professor Brod?" Albert called out, noticing the old man's frozen, incredulous expression.
Professor Brod snapped out of his trance, forcing a wide, slightly manic smile. "I apologize, Mr. Anderson. That was… an impressive deduction. I'm not entirely sure myself, as I was working through the fragments, but your conclusion certainly seems the most plausible explanation for this specific combination of keywords."
"Professor Basilda would be overjoyed that you've taken such a deep interest in Ancient Runes. You should absolutely write to her, or perhaps attend her advanced session…" Professor Brod trailed off, considering the absurdity of the suggestion. Why would Albert need to attend a class when he could seemingly perform the final exam from memory?
The Professor looked at the remaining pieces of fragmented runic text still lying on his table. Albert had analyzed and translated the core meaning without a single textbook, merely by breaking down the pieces and reconnecting them based on external historical knowledge.
Professor Brod wasn't sure if even Professor Basilda, the Ancient Runes specialist, could have achieved that speed and accuracy, but he was certain he couldn't have.
"The deeper issue remains, Professor," Albert pressed, his voice firm, returning to his original concern. "The reason why this knowledge is considered 'useless' is not because the runes themselves are powerless. It's because the wizards who study them are satisfied with merely translating the script, instead of comprehending the architecture of the magic they contain."
"It's a language of magical engineering, not just translation," Albert concluded, his eyes bright with certainty. "Nobody is digging deep enough."