Felix flipped through the Daily Prophet as he ate breakfast in the school great hall, Rita Skeeter reviewed Alastor Moody's mess yesterday with a biting and undiluted touch, she also mocked Mr. Weasley in an article.
In that article, Moody is presented as a difficult man who "can't tell the difference between an ordinary handshake and an attempted murder," while Mr. Weasley is mistakenly called as " Arnold Weasley" and an old reference also made about the flying car from two years ago.
Felix reread the article, and he has to say that this woman is very good at reporting the facts in a half-arsed way - Taking just the part of the facts she needs and then adding her own distorted understanding to reach an absurd conclusion.
But overall, some useful information can still be discerned, such as a reference to a female official who disappeared for many months, most likely referring to Bertha Jorkins.
...
Felix walked into the Ancient Runes classroom ten minutes early, and there were already a few students seated sporadically in the seats.
"Hello, Felix." Luna looked up from her magazine and greeted him cheerfully, as if she were not in the classroom but some other place where she met him by chance, like the empty spot in the forbidden forest.
Felix smiled, "Hello, Luna. You're a third-year now?"
"Yeah." She stared blankly for a moment, but Ginny next to her know her enough to pull the magazine towards her, they had just been playing a magazine quiz with prizes for correct guesses.
Luna stared at Felix with big misty eyes and said, "One more thing, I like your Christmas present, did I tell you that?"
"Oh, uh, yes, I remember it was mentioned before ..." Felix drifted into a rare trance, the question was something he didn't expect, "Nine months ago."
Two rows away, a gray-haired boy suddenly raised his hand and looked at him with an expectant expression.
"Hello?"
Felix felt a little surprised as he drew out a long piece of parchment and looked carefully at the red pattern on the boy's wizard robes for a couple of moments, then he lowered his head to look for the boy's name in the Gryffindor House column.
"Hay, Professor Hap, my name is Colin, Harry Potter recommended me for this class, and I love golems!" He spoke with his arm still raised high in the air.
Felix ran through the list on the parchment and nodded at him, "Creevey, class has yet to start, we're just talking."
"So, will we be able to get the golem today? Can I pick one myself?" Colin asked excitedly.
"Of course, I will also give all of you access to the 'Answer Space' for the Ancient Runes class, and many of your assignments for this school year will be accomplished in it ..." Felix said.
The classroom gradually filled up with students.
Luna and Ginny clutched the Quibbler magazine and tried to guess the puzzle on it, Luna lifted the page with the puzzle on it and looked at the shadows on it through the light, "I think it's an origami hat."
"How come I don't see anything?" Ginny said, "By the way - why are you calling the professor by his name?"
"Because we're friends." Luna said jovially, taking out a quill and sketching out the shape of the origami hat.
Ginny pondered over the riddle: "A thing with an empty belly that favoured the wise; not seen when used, seen when it is not used." She tossed her fiery red hair and snapped to attention, "Yes, what else could it be?"
She grabbed Luna's pen and wrote the word "hat" in the blank space for the answer, and then the page in the magazine fluttered off and folded itself into a hat, which Ginny placed it on Luna's head.
"Well--" Felix stood at the podium, looking at the packed classroom, and said, "Welcome, students! I'm glad to see a few more people signed up for the Ancient Runes class this year."
He finished the roll call and swept his eyes over the young wizards in the room, who looked at Felix warily.
"While the new school year just started and your minds are still clear, let's talk about something worth thinking about." Felix spoke, his voice not as uplifting as it had been at the beginning, but much calmer, and the students underneath quickly got into the flow.
"I certainly want you to excel in this class, but first I want to clarify one fact -
If you want to stand out or make some difference in this field... whether you want to become a purely academic, or want to merge runes and alchemy to recreate ancient artefacts; or if you want to follow the footsteps of ancient wizards and experience the wonderful feeling of powerful and brutal ancient magic taking shape and unleashed from your hands. I can teach you all those knowledges, provided that you meet my requirements.
Given the increasing abundance of teaching aids for this class and the decreasing difficulty of learning, I will raise my expectations for you accordingly. The benefits are obvious - you will gain more than previous years' students, and this time, I will lead you to look into more interesting, and more mysterious domains."
He raised his hand and dozens of cards flew out of his robes, landing precisely in front of each of the young wizards.
"Rune cards." Felix said briefly, "I debated over and over between the Rune Carving Knife and the Rune Cards, but in the end, I decided that the Rune Cards are more suitable for beginners who know nothing."
"And the Rune carving knife is actually suitable for carving rune circuits, and you guys are still far from that step."
The young wizards listened attentively, a little confused by these unfamiliar concepts for a while, but Felix didn't intend to expand on them in detail, but simply made the distinction and pushed the class progress to the next step.
He held the card in his backhand and showed the front to the students. As he injected magic into the card, the original traces on the card were gradually lit up, and he introduced it at the same time, "The reason why it is suitable for beginners is that the only thing it requires from you is to infuse stable magic power, and since you have already had two years of magic practice, this step is not considered as an impenetrable obstacle."
When he finished speaking, the lines on the card had been completely lit up, and a bright egg-sized sphere of light was projected from the card, consisting of countless tiny dots of light, clouded and bright, looking from afar, it looked like a bright, fluffy orb.
"This is the rune that signifies light, you only need to know it, for now, look, does it look like a small glowing ball of fluff?"
"It corresponds to the rune symbol on the card, kind of like a torch, and the real appearance is this-"
An invisible hand appeared in the air, outlining a golden symbol, and the young wizards compared the symbol with the pattern on the card, and it really looked exactly the same.
Felix smiled and grabbed the golden rune, "In later lessons, you will understand the meaning of this rune, and then you will be able to translate it using the image you see in the projection, that is its rune symbol. Like this-"
His closed palm spread out and displayed in front of the students, the golden rune turned into a small glowing ball of light, then Felix released the bindings, and it completely turned into a fluff of bright white light.
"Alright, let's start practicing."
Felix announced. The young wizards held their cards in unison, their brows furrowed as they tried to inject magic into them, and before long, Felix saw small, suffocating faces, their mouths tightly closed, so serious that one would think they were about to run into a duel that could kill them at any moment.
He shuttled between the students and reminded, "Think about how you felt when you transfigured the goblet in the Transfiguration class, let the magic flow evenly and steadily ... learn to relax, deliberately forcing it will only make your magic disconnected, it's just a game... ..."
Under the power of speech, the young wizards calmed down, and their progress began to accelerate.
Felix muttered in a small voice, "I'm so glad we didn't employ the Weasley twins' prank cards, or the classroom would have been overflowing with rats."
Surprisingly, but justifiably, Luna was the first to succeed. Perhaps she is the only one in the entire classroom who actually treated it as a game, "Look at that, just like Puffy." She said.
For the first time in a long time, Felix heard a creature he knew from her.
Puffskein is a very popular pet for wizarding children, they have a spherical body covered with soft creamy fur, which does resemble somewhat like the ball of light projected by the rune card, and, the key is - this creature is not made up, it really exists.
"Plus ten points for Ravenclaw, and besides," Felix displayed a stack of cards in front of her, "pick another one, Miss Lovegood."
Luna stared, fascinated, as she asked, "Is there a rune that represents a Crumple-Horned Snorkack?"
"... No."
Felix handed her a rune card that represents frost, he thought both of them needed to calm down ...
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