A brief silence fell over the room. Albert hadn't expected Professor Broad to bring this up so bluntly, but he nodded to indicate that he understood.
A quick plug for an app: Mimi Reading, an app that perfectly replicates the old version of the popular book-tracking app and allows you to switch sources.
Indeed, ancient runes are no longer useful today, unless one needs to decipher those ancient books.
As for using it to cast spells?
In Albert's mind, Dumbledore might possess this ability. Whether others could use them skillfully was another matter entirely.
This is similar to when you first learned English in your past life. You had to look up each word in the dictionary to barely string them together and guess the original meaning of the sentence.
"May I see the runes on the parchment?" Albert asked Professor Brod, pointing to the parchment on the table.
"Of course, no problem." Professor Brod seemed very curious about the quality of Albert's runes.
He didn't expect the other person to understand it, so he didn't stop Albert from flipping through it, since the runes on the parchment were already very broken.
With Professor Broad's permission, Albert picked up the parchment and read it carefully. He found the runes on it to be very strange. Albert immediately recognized what they were; they were similar to the runes he had used not long ago.
Unlike the runes of the Muggle world, these runes are connected as a whole, and to decipher them, one needs to study them one by one.
Albert noticed that some of the runes had annotations next to them, which were probably left by the ancient rune professors Basilda or Brod.
It means... eyes, trees, springs...
The few words were brief, but they made Albert frown slightly. He felt as if he had touched something, but he couldn't quite recall it.
"These runes... have been scrambled?" Albert asked uncertainly.
"Yes, it's been disrupted." Professor Brod nodded and said, "As you can see, these runes are inherently difficult to translate."
"Yes, we need to break it down and study it to understand it," Albert said seriously.
Is this how all ancient magical script works?
No, Albert had read books woven from ancient runes; this kind of thing clearly belongs to runes.
However, I really don't know who has so much free time that they would bother to create such a bunch of runes.
Albert didn't say this, but that's what he really thought. Few people could understand runes, let alone compile them into runes and then piece them together. How many people could truly understand them?
Or were these runes actually created by Professor Bascida for Professor Brod to practice ancient runes?
Just as Albert was pondering this, there was a knock on the office door.
Katrina McDoug appeared outside the Defense Against the Dark Arts office, looking at Albert, who was standing at the desk in the office, carefully reading a parchment. She couldn't help but blink, seemingly very curious about why he was there.
Albert looked up when there was a knock on the door, and his gaze met Katrina's as she pushed the door open and entered. He simply nodded slightly at her and continued to focus on the parchment.
The more Albert deciphered the runes on the parchment, the more he felt something in his memory begin to loosen, but he still couldn't quite figure out what it was.
"I just played two games of wizard chess with Mr. Anderson, and he's quite good," Professor Brod said casually, noticing Katrina's puzzled look. "However, Mr. Anderson seems interested in ancient runes. Katrina, why don't you sit down and play a game with me?"
Professor Brod is optimistic about Albert.
Katrina had already guessed this. After all, Albert was a genius, and geniuses are always treated specially.
"Focus." Professor Brod noticed that Katrina's attention was wandering and reminded her, "Don't worry too much about other people, just focus on doing your own thing."
"Hmm!" Katrina refocused her attention on the chessboard on the table. However, she ultimately lost the game, and when she looked up in a daze, she found Albert sitting at Professor Broad's desk, writing something.
"How dare he..."
"Professor, the runes on the parchment aren't all correct, are they?" Relying on his mastery of runes, Albert spent nearly half an hour translating most of the runes.
"Oh, why do you say that?" Professor Brod asked curiously. Albert was indeed right; the runes here were only a part of the whole.
"Well, after I translated it, it doesn't form a complete sentence." Albert picked up the parchment covered with letters and walked over.
I think these must be two very famous poems from "The Word of God".
"The Word of God, what is that?" Katrina asked, her gaze fixed on the parchment in Albert's hand.
"Let me tell you the origin of runes," Albert said simply. "Odin traded one of his eyes for the waters of wisdom… In his quest for the secrets of higher wisdom, he hung himself from a tree for nine days and nine nights, and wounded himself with a spear; his blood fell to the ground and coalesced into runes."
Albert translated the runes into text through a combination of guesswork and deduction, then connected them with things he had seen before to deduce their general meaning.
When he first started translating, he really didn't react for a moment.
Later, as Albert deciphered more and more runes, he was able to piece together most of the information.
Katrina looked confused, but she still knew what runes were.
Compared to Katrina, Professor Brod looked utterly shocked and incredulous.
Professor Brod never imagined that Albert would actually decipher it.
Just guessing?
No, that's unlikely.
"Seriously, are you sure you've only just taught yourself runes?" Professor Brod's face twitched repeatedly, his mind screaming, "You have the nerve to claim you can barely understand them?"
If this is considered barely understandable, then what about other guys who are good at writing languages like Nirvana?
"Professor Brod?" Albert looked up and called out in confusion. The other man then snapped out of his reverie and explained with a smile, "I'm not quite sure either, because I'm trying it myself, but I think that should be it."
"Professor Basilda would be very pleased that you chose ancient runes. If you're interested, write to her, or go to the side…" Professor Brod thought for a moment, then felt that this was inappropriate, because he thought Albert might not even need to attend classes anymore.
To be honest, there were still quite a few runes left on the table. Albert didn't even use a spellbook; he just disassembled, translated, and pieced them together.
Professor Brod wasn't sure if Professor Basilda had this ability, but he was certain he didn't.