AR Lesson One

In the classroom, Bridget took a piece of chalk and wrote on the board as the first students were starting to arrive. She ignored them as she wrote- she wasn't technically on the clock yet, so she didn't have to pay attention to whiny little children just yet. She only hoped that some of them showed promise, otherwise she would lose all hope for the future generation. It would be a plus if they could show promise while keeping their mouths shut and not annoying her with the unimportant details of their lives.

Hester sat down in the classroom. She chose a seat close enough to the front to see the board but far enough away to not seem, well, nerdy.

It was nerdy enough to have chosen this subject in the first place, but Hester had loved different languages and secret codes since she was a kid.

She pulled out her quill and ink and saw that there was a task on the board.

Do not use your books

Hester frowned. She tried hard to remember the letters. She had studied the text, but it was difficult to remember, particularly on the first lesson.

Quote :

R-l-s
-r---ss-r
bri-x-t
briflt

She wrote down what she thought the text was. She guessed that she had got some letters right, but she was pretty sure there was something wrong with her last translation, since 'briflt' wasn't a word.

At least she hadn't cheated.

Then she looked at her work and decided that she could guess some letters from what she already had.

Quote :

Rules
Proffessor
Bri-x-t
Briflt

She wasn't so good at spelling so she didn't even attempt to change the teacher's name at the bottom.

Fiona walked into the classroom a little early, but she thought it better than being late. As she entered, the teacher was writing something on the board and, as expected, she was writing with the runic alphabet. Fiona took her seat, sitting closer to on of the walls, but also in the front row, as she waited for the teacher to finish writing. It was a rather simple task.

Fiona took out some parchment and black ink, knowing that normally professors preferred black ink over the rainbow goo some people wasted their money on. This professor seemed to know what she was doing, too, and probably wouldn't allow rule breaking, which was just as good. This class will hopefully turn out to be better than some of my others, she thought with a roll of her eyes. She set her mind to the task at hand and copied down the runic letters from the board onto her parchment, which she proceeded to study.

Within five minutes, using the knowledge of the runes she had studied, and also some common sense and logical thinking, Fiona wrote down her final answer under the runic letters she copied from the board. Her Ravenclaw personality and intelligence probably helped a bit, too.

Quote :

Translates To:

Runes
Professor
Bridget
Briant

Although, the 'i' in 'Briant' was a tad strange, considering the fact that she was certain it was supposed to be Professor 'Bryant', but that was how it was written on the board. If she got it wrong, it wouldn't necessarily be her fault. She placed her quill back in the ink well on the corner of her desk and waited a tad impatiently for the others to arrive. This was actually a class she had been looking forward to, so she had studied quite a bit.

Jenn quickly scribbled down the ancient runes, though making sure that they were the same as the ones on the board. She was sitting in an empty seat, not knowing anyone around her. She sat deeply pondering for a while, trying to remember the letters, here and there, some of it was repeated so she knew what they were as well.

With the sparing letters she had, which was about three-quarters of the runes, she used knowledge that she already had, and a little common sense to see that it translated into the following:

Runes
Professor
Bridget
Bryant

She smiled at her work and put her quill back on her desk.

Pierre entered the classroom and sat down in the very back, looking at the instructions on the board as he placed his bag next to his desk. Taking out his quill, ink well and some parchment, he stared at the board for a few minutes. His father had taught him the Rune basics when he was nine and Pierre had actually read the textbook for this class (he was surprised too). But he was a bit rusty, especially since he had read the book back in first year before the class was cancelled because of a lacking professor.

Smiling slightly, he inked his quill and wrote down his answer.

Runes.
Professor
Bridget
Bryant

Leighton entered the classroom, running her hands through her magically straightened hair. Deciding that on the first day of classes, she would look nice. And her unruly curly hair that she usually wore was not nice. It was pretty, but not professional. Runes was going to be a subject that she was good at. She could feel it.
Sitting down toward the back, she began to pull out her things. Reading the board with speed, she smiled when she looked at her task. Last summer, she spent a lot of her time studying. Not that she had to, but she wanted to learn as much as possible. Runes was possibly the funnest thing (besides Potions, course) that she studied.
Dipping her quill in her black ink, she attempted to wrap her finger around a curl. That't what she did every time that she was dealing with something difficult. Unfortunately, her hair was straight. Leighton had to hold back an eye roll.

This translates to:

Runes
Professor
Bridget
Bryant

Leighton bit her lip nervously. She hoped that this was correct. Even though Leigh was confident in her skills, she still was always nervous. Leighton always wanted to do her best. Even though she knew that her best could never be achieved.

Dree skipped into class (ontime for once) and slipped into the seat next to Fiona (At least she THOUGHT it was Fiona.. the girl she'd met... somewhere...) SHe pulled out some parchment and looked at the board. She'd been so excited for this class and had studied the book quite a lot. She looked at the board for a moment, thinking the wrote what she thought it said on her parchment.

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Translation

Runes
Professor
Bridget
Briant

SHe looked up just to double check her work... Yeah.. that looked right.. SHe hoped it did at least. Sh looked back at the board. The 'I' in Briant sould be a 'Y' she crossed it out and rewwrote the name.

Lavender took the seat next to Hester quickly and quietly before taking her things from her bag and look up at the board. This shouldn't be too hard, she scribbled down what she thought it meant, but crossed that out. Trying again, she slowed her pace, being sure the class wouldn't rush ahead without her. Lavender glanced at Hester, who looked deep in thought. She wasn't going to even attepmt to look at the red head's work, because that was cheating. Lavender Parkinson didn't cheat, even if some of her family did. She wasn't like them.

Quote :

Runes:
Professor
Bridget
Bryant

Bri picked a random seat and copied down what was on the board. She wrinkled her nose when she saw the note about not being allowed to use their books. As everyone around her got to work, she just sat and stared at the runes for a moment. Some of them looked like letters she knew. It made sense to her that those letters would be what she thought, so she wrote them down, leaving blanks for other letters.

Quote :

RNTMS
CR_FMSS_R
BRI_XM_
BRIFT_

It didn't look anywhere even remotely close to correct to her, but she had only just signed up for the class and hadn't had time to read through the textbook yet. She wondered if everyone else was having as much trouble with it as she was, but judging by how sure some of them looked, she guessed not.

Coming into the classroom, Peter took a seat and studied the runes on the board. He'd never seen runes before except for occasionally in movies or books, but they never said how they translated them and even didn't do that sometimes. So, he looked at the runes then when instructed to try and translate them, he looked at the board again then set quill to paper. He didn't think it was anything remotely to what it probably was, but she did tell them to do it without their books.

He was pretty sure the top part wasn't a math equation. It couldn't be. Runes didn't deal with math did it? The boy shook his head and told himself to quit second guessing. Sitting back, he frowned at his first line.

Rntms = Rutes?

Okay, so now the next line was harder and Peter frowned. It made no sense whatsoever! He decided to try his best though. What was that bloody third symbol?

CRAFMSSeR = Crafesser?

Somehow, Peter didn't think that was right either, but moved to the next line.

BRINXMY

Yeah, he wasn't even going to guess and just went to the last set knowing that he was so getting these wrong. Hopefully he'd have time to try and puzzle out the true meanings, when he was done.

BRIFTY

Setting his quill down he looked at his translation and winced. There was no way he was getting any points for this. Sighing, he glanced up to see if he had time to try and 'correct' it.

Walking around the room in stern silence, Bridget took the paper of each student as they finished working. Some of them seemed to have no clue what was going on, which was to be expected, however a majority of them seemed to have no trouble translating the text, which irked her immensely. She had not given them her name, and even if they had heard it from someone else, how did they know that "Bryant" was spelled with a Y, not an I?

"I will make one thing perfectly clear to you all right now. Idiocy will not be tolerated in this classroom, nor will being a know-it-all."

She went back to her desk with papers in hand, her heels clicking on the floor as she went. She sat in the chair and sorted the papers into two piles. The pile on the left had only three papers. "Hester Alderman, Brianna Carter, and Peter Wiggin, please come sit up here," she indicated the table in the upper right corner of the room. "The rest of you move to the other side of the room," she instructed.

She grabbed some blank parchment from her desk and went over to the children who had not gotten the translation correct. At the moment, she was far more annoyed with the now-it-alls in the class, so she was much kinder to these three. "You gave your best effort and effort is to be rewarded," she put the parchment down in front of the two girls and the boy and tapped each one once with her wand, making a new set of runes appear. "You may work together and use your books to make this translation. Additionally, I will tell you that since this set of runes does not have all of the letters that we have today, we make some arrangements to write messages with them. For example, my name is Bridget Bryant, that's with a Y. There is no Y in our Runes, so we substitute it with either I or U depending on the sound of the Y. With the eye sound, like in my surname, we use I, everything else uses the U instead.

"Translate this message as well as doing the proper translation for what is on the board."



She moved on to the rest of the students on the other side of the room. "Some of you have extreme knowledge of this subject, which is interesting to me, considering there was no professor last year. Since you are all apparently well self-taught, you may move on to our next set of runes. There is no need to use your books, since you're all so intelligent, and there is no need for you to talk to each other, since I doubt that you need each others help," she said snidely to the group. She wouldn't be surprised if some of them dropped her class after this lesson, but a lesson in humility was obviously in order. She went to each student in turn and gave them a fresh sheet of parchment, tapping it with her wand to make their new set of runes appear.

"Translate the runes on your paper into their proper meaning and then write the story that they tell."



When she was finished, she returned to her desk and sat behind it. "You all have half an hour to complete your translations using the instructions that I've given you. When you are finished, bring your papers to me. Remember to include your names or you will be given a zero for the lesson."

(OoC: Half an hour really means until a majority of you have made your posts. Also, it's astonishing that so many of you were so close to correct or completely correct, and without even knowing my name. Maybe you should keep in mind what your character knows, since you've never met me before, because not doing so is crossing very far into Mary-Sue territory.)

Hester felt a little embarrassed that she was one of the three who had got it wrong, but also somewhat relieved given the way the Professor was treating the others.

She moved to sit with two other students, a boy and a girl who she didn't know.

She copied down the true translation for what was on the board.

Quote :

Runes
Professor
Bridget
Briant

She kept the 'y' as an 'i' because this was what the rune translated as and she would get confused if she wrote it any other way.

The she copied down the runes on the board. She translated what she could by using her previous work to help her. She wasn't stupid.

Quote :

TEN GA--E-NS T- A-- T-REE -- ---

She studied it again. There were a few more letters she could probably pick out just using her initiative, but she wasn't certain of herself.

"What do you think?" she asked the others sitting with her.

Pierre stared at his set of Runes. Deciding to do the placement method (just putting in the runes that are repeated in the new set), he set to work, eying the beginning set of runes.

---
---E
----

The 'm' shaped one was at the end of rune so......that was the only one he was able to get so far. The 'r' shaped one....how obvious!

---
-R-E
----

He slowly worked through the letters, eventually coming up with:

DSEA
MORE
MYGU

Frowning, Pierre eyed the letters. DSEA? What in the world? The only word that made sense was 'more'. He almost forgot-
DSEA
MORE
MUGU

Frowning, he began to try and see if the letters were all scrambled up.
DSEA- Sead? Daes? Ades? Sade? Frowning, , Pierre decided to try seperating the letters. D SEA. Sea. D. D......it could eb an abbreviation. I'll see what I come up with..

MORE- Rome, not more? D SEA-Rome- Mugu
D. Sea of Rome then.
Mugu was more difficult. It could be an actual word, but Pierre couldn't think of the definition. Deciding to just write something down randomly, he ended with this:

Quote :

Pierre Korsten
DSEA- Dead Sea
MORE- Rome
MUGU- Big fool

The story: When a big fool goes to Rome, he visits the Dead sea. But then the salt sucks him dry when he foolishly tries to swim in it.

That should get him a decent grade...

Standing, Pierre turned in to the Professor, hoping she wouldn't take his supposed 'know it all-ness' from earlier and take it out on his grade.

Jenn scrutinized the runes on the board. It took her a good three minutes to figure that these weren't the same as those that had been on the board previously, well, some of them.

She knew the first one was a D. Then the first letter of the last two words was an 'M'.

D--
M---
M---

After a while, she had most of the runes.

DS-
MRLE
M---

She sighed, she wasn't going to give up. Jenn tried to remember the different runes she had learned, through studying her textbook cover to cover multiple times. She let a small, "Oh," escape her lips, though no one could hear her.

She scribbled down a few more letters, now remembering what they were.

DSEA
MRLE
MYGU

But there was a story to these runes. For all she knew it was gibberish. She could tell that this class was challenging, and that Professor Bryant didn't like 'know-it-all's. She had no idea that there could be a story. She would ask for help, but she could tell the professor wasn't taking a liking to her very much, so she thought it was better not to ask.

She scribbled her name on the top of the assignment, almost ready to turn it in. She continued to think about what a story could be with this. 'Well, something is better than nothing,' she thought to herself as she began writing, making up some strange story.

It takes place by the sea. There is a man who enjoys his time by the sea very much. The man also enjoys taking walks along the shore every evening.

She walked up and turned in her half-good paper. She knew she wasn't going to do well on that assignment, but she didn't know everything, though that may be the impression Professor Bryant is under. However, she knew that if she hadn't have tried to look like a smarty-pants, her and the professor would be on better terms. Oh well, that's why they call it FIRST impressions, not second.

Leighton noticed how the professor seemed not to like her. Rolling her eyes, Leighton pulled out another piece of parchment. Better get this class over with as soon as possible. The sooner she followed the rules, the sooner she would be out of here. Besides, she didn't like being in a hostile environment.
Leighton glanced at the runes, her eyebrows knitted together. Slowly, but surely, they started to form in her head. It annoyed Leighton that the teacher was so prejudice in a way. So what if some of the students took the liberty to study themselves? She should be proud.
DS--
MRLE
M--U
This was beyond frustrating. Leighton was beyond peeved. Boy, did she want to hex someone. She didn't understand how making a good first impression was a bad thing somehow. This was not going to be her favorite class, that was for sure.
Filling in the words, Leighton wrote down in her neat scrawl.
DSEA
MRLE
MOGU
Looking at it, she felt her face heat up. She was either really stupid, or thins task made no sense. She decided to go with the latter.
Now, it was time to make up a story. This was the hardest part. It had to be.
Darkness was everywhere, making the sea feel cold. Murtle sat, tears rolling down her face. It would seem more appropriate to be at a morgue, then here.
Leighton almost burst out laughing at what she wrote. She just entered in the runes in words that were slightly similar. She knew she was going to fail this, but that was not her fault. She tried to study as hard as she could this summer. Leighton wasn't going to let this teacher get to her.
Writing her name at the top, Leighton turned it into the teacher. Giving her a smile, Leighton walked back over and sat in her seat.

Bri jotted down the note about I or U taking the place of Y. That was something she would have to remember. With that in mind, and permission to use their books, she

Quote :

Runes
Professor
Bridget
Briant? Bryant?

She wasn't sure which way the professor spelled her name, so she put both versions, since it was better than nothing.

She was glad for being able to get help from the others who struggled with the first translation. According to the book and her last translation, the M looking thing was actually an E, so she fit those in with the common sense letters, and the little flag looking ones were Ls, so she filled those in as well.

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-EN GALLE-NS -- ALL --REE -- ---

She looked at the Gryffindor girl when she spoke. "The flag ones are Ls," she said, showing the girl her paper.

She had enough of some of the words to be able to work it out with logic from there. "That is probably Galleons," she thought aloud, "Meaning that's an O," she replaced it on her parchment.

Quote :

-EN GALLEONS -O ALL --REE O- -O-

"And if you flatten that, it looks like a T," she said, making the appropriate changes.

Quote :

TEN GALLEONS TO ALL T-REE O- -O-

From that point, it wasn't too awful hard to figure out what the paper said.

Quote :

TEN GALLEONS TO ALL THREE OF UOU YOU

Proudly, Bri took her papers up to the front and handed them to the professor, then went back to her seat.

"Thanks," Hester said to the girl next to her.

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TEN GA--E-NS T- A-- T-REE -- ---

became

Quote :

TEN GALLE-NS T- ALL T-REE -- ---

She opened her book and found the correct page. From there she managed to work out the rest of the letters, despite getting mixed up with the images quite a few times.

Eventually she came out with:

Quote :

TEN GALLEONS TO ALL TUREE OF HOH

Realising that something had gone wrong with a couple of words she studied the runes harder and changed it to

Quote :

TEN GALLEONS TO ALL THREE OF UOU

She then added

Quote :

(you)

next to the last word, because she realised that the letter y must be one of the letters that didn't exist.

She wrote her name at the top and then handed her paper in.

Eyes scanning the students making sure that they followed her instructions, Bridget checked each paper as it arrived to her. Unsurprisingly, the students who were given a different set of runes to translate didn't do very well. Actually, none of them did well at all. Not one single thing was translated correctly.

"As I said on your papers, ten galleons to Brianna, Hester, and Peter. As for the rest of you, you have done dismally at best. However, effort is to be rewarded, so five galleons each to Pierre, Jenn, and Leighton.

"You won't be seeing that particular set of runes again until we meet again so you needn't worry about it for now. But, I will say that it would serve you well to remember that not every set of runes translates directly with the alphabet.

"For your homework, I would like for you to research Egyptian hieroglyphics and write a report of no less than seventy-five words to be handed in to my office by next class. You are dismissed," she said.

Jenn gathered her things, running everything through her head. Study and research the Egyptian hieroglyphics. Seventy five words on those runes. All on Professor Bryant's desk by next lesson. Check, check, and check. Jenn raced out of the class, after thanking the professor, and racing towards the library with her things to get a head start on the seventy five words on Egyptian hieroglyphics.