Ancient Runes and modern Wards

As Gaude was looking at the remaining Galleons in the house in a trunk, he discovered something rather unsettling – The small pile had been reduced to around half of its former glory and he hadn't even done all that much. Sure, he had a fully functional complex of greenhouses with around eight hundred different species of herbs and a magic ingredient zoo with thirty species of magical creatures, even a year's reserve of potions ingredients, but what he sorely lacked was a steady and strong stream of revenue.

In the short term, he could still rely on the stashed away fortune, but looking at the bigger picture, he definitely needed a large cash injection, the sooner the better. After all, only with more liquid assets could he set up more streams of income.

Luckily, Gaude knew of a few ways to obtain that income. As Gaude didn't feel like pickpocketing would be able to sustain his needs anymore, he instead sent his elves on a new mission – obtaining information about organized crime in the area.

As Gaude was taking notes on the ways to use Ancient Runes and taking notes on the similarities and differences of the effects the same rune could produce under different circumstances and when connected to different runes, he reached a conclusion that he would need somebody that was actually knowledgeable in the topic to explain it to him a little – for some reason, the books had simply glossed that part over.

There was one more thing Gaude wanted to get started on as quickly as possible: learning Gobbledegook, as he had heard that if one was to negotiate with the Goblins in their native language, one could haggle for much better terms.

Gaude ended up going to his potions store – from the job interview, he had learned that Linda Perkins, the young brunette witch that wouldn't look out of place on the cover of witch weekly, had also been Outstanding in Ancient Runes, Charms, Potions, Dueling and Defense Against the Dark Arts.

Sure, she was overqualified to be a salesclerk, but that was the position she had applied for and that was the position Gaude had hired her for. So far, Gaude had no complaints about her, she was extremely punctual, arriving just early enough to change the sign to open when the second hand struck 9 AM and changed the sign to closed when it was precisely 5 PM. She tended to use the Floo a lot during the lunch hour, but that was perfectly understandable, lunch hour was for taking a break and conducting personal matters.

The Floo logs also showed her occasionally coming to the shop at night or other odd hours, but the contract wasn't broken during any of those times, so Gaude had decided to cut her some slack. She must've had her own reasons for that, perhaps simply suddenly remembering something. It was truly terrible to be forgetful at a young age.

Unless, of course, she was deeply in love, as a symptom of such a condition was indeed absent-mindedness. In that case, Gaude might just have to get a standby replacement for any special circumstances that would be likely to come up in Linda's future.

It was Thursday morning, 8:54 AM and Gaude was waiting inside the store, near the fireplace. The fireplace itself was in the storage room, out of sight of customers. It was also protected with blood wards so that nobody could possibly Floo in unless they had Gaude's (old man Charles') permission to do so and had given him a phial of their blood to add them to the wards' whitelist.

In general, the storage rooms in the Wizarding world were a bit different than they were in the Muggle part of the town – they were relatively small rooms with a row of trunks with labels on them that gave a short description of what was inside. It was a good way to organize and saved a lot of space since the insides of each of the trunks could be as large as a big Muggle warehouse.

A few seconds later, the Floo flashed and Linda walked out. Her perfume was struggling to cover up a faint scent of copper emanating from her body. 'Must be from her handling all those Knuts, from selling all those cheap-ass low quality potions.', Gaude thought to himself and dismissed the matter entirely.

There were two things that Gaude didn't notice, partly due to him being in his child form and partly due to not looking out for it: Linda was suppressing heavy breathing, and the fact that there was a large bloodstain on the back of her blouse as well as a deep gash on her skin underneath it.

Linda smiled brightly and spoke: "Good morning, young master Vywin, what an unexpected surprise to see you here so early! Please wait for a few moments, I'll get a few things in order and I'll be right with you."

She then skillfully avoided showing her back to Gaude and walked to the storage room. Linda quickly walked to one of the trunks that looked a bit out of place, it was one that didn't have a single type of potions inside, instead it contained quite a large variety. In addition, it looked different from the rest of the trunks inside, as if it wasn't part of the same batch.

Linda took out one of the potions inside, she uncorked the phial, took out two mirrors from her handbag and after a wave of her wand, both of them floated in air. Linda took off her blouse and placed it atop the trunk. She moved one of the mirrors behind her back and the image shown in the other one displayed her back as well, letting her get a better look at the wound. She then dripped some of the phial's contents onto her fingertips and smeared it onto the wound.

While curse wounds couldn't be healed with a simple spell, Essence of Dittany would most definitely still stop the bleeding and if it wasn't a particularly vicious curse, even drive it out and heal the wound entirely, only leaving a scar behind, as was the case now.

As the potions in Linda's personal trunk had been paid for with her own money, there had never been a breach of contract.

Finally, Linda cleaned and repaired her blouse with a few spells and redressed. She stacked a small pile of phials onto her left arm and making sure that everything was in its place, returned to the front.

Linda restocked the shelves with potions and finally, returned to Gaude that was still patiently waiting.

"Good morning auntie Linda!", Gaude finally said. She had been in so much of a hurry for some reason that Gaude hadn't had the chance to even greet her yet.

"Why are you here, did something happen to Grandpa Charles?", Linda asked.

"No, Grandpa Charles is doing fine, I think he's teaching a young witch martial arts, they were shouting so much! I decided that I should start learning a lot too so I can make Grandpa proud! He says I'm too young to train my body too much yet, so I thought I should start with the basics. Grandpa always said that Ancient Runes are the basics of the basics. Will you teach me, auntie Linda, please?", Gaude made the best attempt at begging puppy face that he could.

'Silly child, puppy eyes have no power here! I'm a cat person!', Linda thought. Yet, there was something in the way that Gaude asked, other than those detestable puppy eyes that made her think. While she still had a few contracts pending, she had already gotten sloppy once, perhaps a small change of pace was what she needed, to remind herself that life wasn't only about the next job, otherwise, one day, she might not make it back to her 'safehouse' that was this shop.

"Fine, fine, I'll teach you. Can you return after closing hours? Right now I have to do my job.", Linda said, her smile once again bright and warm.

"Okay, I'll go ask my Grandpa about that. I'm sure he'll allow me."

Gaude didn't go home just yet, however. He still had a Gobbledegook tutor to hire.

Finally, after just half an hour of negotiating with a witch that had picked up Gobbledegook as an elective subject in Hogwarts for her own purposes, they had come to an agreement on the finer terms and conditions, meaning that she was properly contracted to teach Gaude until he learned the language. Gaude summoned a house elf and returned to the mansion, then had the illusion of Grandpa Charles cast over himself. Then he returned to the store once again.

The store was already open and there a few customers inside, conducting business as usual. Once the store had emptied out a bit, 'Charles' approached Linda and said: "My grandson told me earlier that you agreed to teach him about Ancient Runes. Is that true?"

Linda had given 'Charles' a few more glances than usual and didn't hold eye contact as long as usual. She said: "It's true, I'll start after hours. It's in the contract anyway, so I might as well make a little bit extra, am I right?"

"Good, good. The kid at the very least has excellent taste.", Charles said, giving Linda a wink. He then continued: "You taking him for lessons would certainly free up some of my time. I'll tell you what, you do a good job teaching my grandson, let's say enough that he can carve runes and make some basic artefacts by himself and I'll give you a bonus and a raise. How does that sound?"

"Sure thing, as long as I'm not otherwise occupied, I can teach little Gaude.", Linda said with a smile. She wasn't going to give the apparently perverted old man the satisfaction of reacting to his implications.

'Charles' then looked outside the store window and said: "Linda, when you look outside, tell me what you see."

Linda looked for only a moment, then she said: "The Diagon Alley, what about it?"

'Charles' then asked: "In your life, how much have you traveled?"

"Qite a bit.", she admitted. "How does that have anything to do with it?"

"During your travels, you must've been to many different towns and cities. Now look again, really look, and tell me what you see."

"I see a street full of medieval wooden houses, most of them in the same style, most of them in need of a bit of repairs."

"Now, recall the outside appearance of this store. Tell me, how does it compare?"

"The store is definitely unique, the architecture gives a clear idea of what you'd find in this shop from far away, it also just looks somehow like anything sold in it would be higher quality than the other apothecaries on Diagon Alley."

"You've got a damn good pair of eyes on you, looks like I wasn't wrong to hire you.", 'Charles' then gave her another glance. "Not wrong at all."

"However," he continued, "that also means there's a big problem. Something that needs to be solved as soon as possible. Ah, I guess I'll get to it once I have some spare Galleons."

Naturally, there wasn't anything that would happen between the two, Gaude was just having a little bit of fun making his non-existent Grandpa seem like an older gentleman that had not gone too far past his prime yet. Who knew, perhaps demonstrating that his bloodline had such vigor even during the autumn years would be good for something.

Later, that evening

Berkel, one of Laly's subordinate elves took Gaude to the Potions' shop. His body had grown enough to resemble a proper five-year old. There was no need for Polyjuice or illusions or any other trickery, he could simply go around in his own body. There was only one problem: as Gaude tried to cast spells and charms, he had discovered that while practicing, the expenditure was quite large, so he could only try a few before he ran out.

Not knowing how to guide magic to achieve a certain effect had truly become his greatest predicament – as soon as he did it wrong, the entire spell collapsed, costing him all the magic he had put into it and even drawing some extra out of him for some reason. Gaude didn't know it, but that was still a safety feature created by the care package, diverting the backlash of a failed spell from his body.

What Gaude was doing with wandless magic was somewhat similar to spell creation. When a witch or wizard in training used a wand, they would use an incantation and wand movement to interact with the magic of the world, in a way letting it guide the magic inside them. Those more sensitive to magic would be able to identify the flow of magic inside them required for each individual spell and would be able to cast the same spell without a wand while those not as talented would at least be able to cast spells consistently with the help of a wand.

The magic of the world had many mysterious properties and one of them was connecting everything and everyone that was within a continuous area of ambient magic, allowing the knowledge and experience accumulated by those that treaded the path before to guide the novices. As for the incantations, they were sort of like linking devices, creating a connection between the knowledge left behind by the original creator of the spell and the student.

Naturally, such a guidance worked far better for those that completely emptied their mind of useless thoughts of worrying about failure or their own ideas of how the spell should be cast or forcing the effect out of their wand. Such thoughts would only act like a dam or a handbrake on a car, making it a lot more difficult for magic to move.

That had also been the reason why Gaude had such ease growing his skills with telekinesis and increasing the capacity of his proto-core, he didn't think, he simply did with a singular purpose during his months of lacking awareness. However, as he was starting to have his own ideas and theories about how one spell or another should work without having much knowledge about magic theory, it became much more difficult for him to find the right way to do things.

As for why the failsafe that the care package installed into him was a good thing – just consider trying a spell with a large magic requirement. If one were to mess it up at the stage where the magic needed to control it hadn't fully left their body, it would naturally wreak havoc within their body, causing various effects from change of skin color to an entire arm going through a gory explosion to instant death due to the spellcaster's magic core exploding.

The failsafe's function was to flush any magic already carrying the signature of a spell that had critically destabilized, cutting its connection with the host's magic core and expel it from their body, keeping them safe from any negative effects.

The failsafe had been an absolute must as everyone involved in the creation of the Archmage system and the Care Package had felt that if the host decided to dabble in spell creation, they would have to be kept safe at any cost as the last chance of humanity.

In the shop, Gaude found one of the first employees he had hired and said: "Auntie Linda, I already know the basics of Ancient Runes, what each of them means and how to write them. Would you please teach me how to make permanent enchantments by carving runes into items like the runecarvers in my family's compound do?"

"Of course, I can show you, but I'm quite certain you won't be able to do it yourself yet. I'm afraid you don't have enough magic in you to finish even a single rune.

A single rune, all by itself wouldn't do anything useful. As you already know, each rune has many meanings, so a functional rune is in fact the combination of a main rune and at least one modifier rune that have meanings that can interact with each other and by so doing bring out the desired effect.

If there are multiple meanings that can interact with each other, then the relative placement of the main rune and the modifier becomes more important, as it determines the meanings that will have the greatest influence over the end result.

If the placement of the runes or the runes themselves are incompatible, unpredictable things can happen. Best case, your artifact won't work at all. Worst case, it'll explode and take half your house with it. That is also the reason why the practical application of Runes should always be done within a properly warded room.

An entire functional rune should be carved in one go, that way the flow of magic will be uninterrupted, and the best results can be brought out by the rune.

While you may be able to carve a main rune, I doubt that you'll have any magic left to do the same with even a single modifier."

"I understand, auntie Linda. I'm sure we'll find a way around it together."

After she had closed the shop, Berkel took them to the dedicated training room. It had been warded against explosions, fires and spying by the best cursebreakers money can buy. There was just no way that Gaude was going to be stingy when his life could end due to going a little too much to the left or any other direction while carving a rune. At least the books had been very clear about the negative consequences of trying to self-study the art.

Linda took out a diamond-tipped tool that looked a lot more like a fountain pen than a carving tool. She had probably gone for a shopping trip just to properly teach Gaude. There was no good reason for anyone to just be equipped with Runecarving tools unless it was in your job description. There was no good reason for anyone to be equipped with a lot of things one could find in Linda's handbag, but Gaude was blissfully oblivious to its contents.

"This is a Quickrune carving knife. While in the past the Runecarving was done with a specialized carving knife for each material, these days one tool is suitable for all materials. It even has the feature of imbuing your magic into the runes you've carved so you don't have to use an imbuing quill on the runes to empower them."

Gaude was glad to find out that Runecarving had in fact gone past the archaic and slow methods of old that had been described in the books he had found on the subject. It even sounded like Linda was quite an expert on the matter. Gaude suspected that she had even learned under a master for a while.

Linda proceeded to demonstrate the process. She took a stone tile and began dragging the carving knife across the surface. The surface crumbled a bit after the knife had passed over it, leaving behind a golden line.

Once the entire rune was finished, the line shone for a moment and lost its color, leaving behind a rune-shaped indentation, that was the combination of Laguz in the center of the tile and Rād on top of it, which Gaude interpreted as something that could possibly make the tile float on water, using the interpretations of 'Water' and 'Ride'.

"An additional enchantment gives color to the partially completed runes so that you don't lose track of how far along you are, should you get distracted midway. The color of the line can be changed with a simple spell."

"Can I try a rune too now?"

"Yes, you can, but I recommend you use a piece of chalk to mark the rune down first, that way I can see if it's shaped correctly before you start carving it."

Gaude took the piece of chalk she handed to him. He had no idea how she had already stashed one in her extended handbag. He used the chalk to draw a big Hægl in the center of his tile and a Rād in the top center, and an Ehwaz in bottom center just to be sure. Gaude was trying to combine the interpretations of 'Air', 'Ride' and 'Force'.

The rune scheme depicted in the book only had the first two runes for a levitation charm, but Gaude found that a bit lacking. The last one was meant to give additional oomph to the spell, hopefully making it do more than just float on the spot.

Gaude showed her the rune he had created.

"Very good, Gaude. Now try to carve it.", she said with a smirk and handed him the Runecarving knife. Having seen the devious expression on Linda's face, Gaude's intuition told him that something unexpected would happen if he finished the rune in a single go. She didn't know it yet, but his magic levels were likely close to an eleven-year old's.

"Just remember, keep some of your magic running into it when lifting the knife up and going from the main rune to the modifier. That's the only way to properly thread them together.

For the second modifier it can be done in one of two ways: if you want to modify the effect of the first modifier, you should keep the magic flowing until you start carving the second modifier.

If you want to apply the second modifier to the main rune, you should cut off the flow of magic, touch the main rune at the meaning you want to modify and then lift it and start drawing the second modifier.

It would be best if you tried it both ways, so you can see the difference."

Gaude dragged the Runecarving knife slowly along the chalk lines, carefully avoiding running the same line in both ways on Hægl and did the rest of it to give Ehwaz as a modifier to Rād.

Once he was done, the tile zoomed out of his hands in a miniature tornado and smashed into the ceiling, shattering on impact.

"I think the tile was defective." Gaude spoke, still staring at the ceiling. If someone were to say he was unhappy with the result, they could easily be called a liar, or someone that didn't have a grasp of Gaude's feelings at the moment at all. He was actually elated, quite easily visible from his ear to ear grin �� he had carved three simple runes into a tile and caused a powerful effect to occur! Some might even say he had created a self-propelling projectile!

Linda was smiling as well, the child seemed to be quite talented, if not at a genius level when it came to magic reserves. She might've been backing away in fear if she knew the child's actual age, however.

Linda decided that she had found what she was looking for, and in the most unexpected of places – usually, children were recruited from the streets, she had been a runaway from her family before she had been taken in by her master. Yet, it would be a shame to let such talent go, this boy would likely not only grow up to be her successor, but more than likely, become her assistant, and within ten years, he might even become her equal.

"Well done! I see that for some reason you have quite a lot of magic for your age, you can already carve three runes in one go.

Now you can try modifying Hægl with both, and perhaps connect the modifiers to the meaning of air."

Gaude did as she had recommended. The tile shot up once again but gone was the vortex of air around it and it assumed a hovering position at the height of two feet. Linda tried pushing it down with her hand but the tile stubbornly maintained its altitude.

Next, she stepped on it. The tile was pushed downwards by a few inches, but as if on fairly rigid springs, it refused to be lowered more than that.

"It seems that you have created quite a powerful levitation charm, and that with only three runes. Usually, to achieve such power, five or more runes would be necessary. Unfortunately, there are no runes that would replenish the magic that is spent by holding all the weight in air, so it should run out about…", she paused for a few seconds and then continued, "now."

Just as she finished speaking, the tile slowly glided down to the floor, with her still standing on top of it.

Initially, Linda wasn't going to tell Gaude about the intricacies of gathering ambient magic and redirecting it into the rune scheme to replenish the magic in it, but after he had shown himself to be quite talented for such a young age, she had decided to take a gamble and start his training already.

The earlier she started with his indoctrination, the more effective it would be. After all, children's minds were very malleable, and if there wasn't a mother figure present, it was even better. With a grandfather that was an old dog that liked to spend more time in the shack than with his grandson, it would be easy as giving candy to a baby.

Linda continued the lesson: "There are many ways to supply magic into a runic charm. I'm sure you already know about imbuing one's magic into the charm directly, however, a runic charm can't store a lot of magic within itself. Such charms can rarely work more than a week without being reimbued with magic.

That is why Wardstones are often used to provide magic for runic charms, wards and shields.

Wardstones come in many shapes, sizes and forms. The one thing they have in common is that they can be found in magically rich areas.

The stones that have been filled with magic are delivered to locations that have little natural magic, to provide the magic to the runic arrays, as is done in Gringotts. The depleted stones are returned to Stonehenge for recharging.

For locations that are rich in natural magic, the runic matrices can draw the required magic from the air. If such matrices are properly carved, they'll need no maintenance after they have been finished."

She then shoved her hand to a pocket of her robes and took out a piece of white marble with dark blue specks in it.

"This is a depleted Wardstone. It is no longer capable of supporting a magic array or even the simplest of rune clusters."

She returned the Wardstone into her pocket and took out a piece of granite with blue dots of light in it.

"This is a fully charged Wardstone. That floating cluster that you carved earlier could be maintained for up to a year by it. It could also maintain a defensive ward around the shop for a minute while it's constantly hit by bombardment curses by mediocre wizards.

Gaude had learned quite a few new words from her short lecture just now. It was a good thing that according to the contract, she would get double pay for tutoring him. At least, that was what Gaude thought, unaware of the real reasons behind her willingness to go above and beyond to teach him.

"What are runic arrays?"

She took a seat on a nearby chair and explained, "Runic arrays, often used synonymously with magic circles and less frequently rune schemes, are magical constructs that contain many rune clusters that have been connected by a thread of magic to a carved geometry on the artefact or structure that the array is meant to affect.

While the runic arrays do often take circular shapes, magic circles are a term used in Ritual Magic. The difference between magic circles and runic arrays is the fact that runes are not always used in magic circles. Even if they are, the purpose of the runes is to form rune schemes and arrays to produce the effects needed for the ritual.

The term rune scheme instead is an all-encompassing term for anything that uses connected runes. It is mostly used for the depiction of an array or rune cluster when it's written on parchment for study or teaching purposes.

Any self-respecting Runesmith and Wards Master have memorized thousands of rune schemes and derive any rune schemes they would need from those that they have memorized. As such, the lowest requirement to become a Wards Master is to know at least one thousand primary rune schemes."

"Oh, so the rune clusters carved into my family's Herbology department were actually Rune Schemes, or runic arrays. What about Stonehenge though? Won't the Muggles notice when the stones in it are swapped out?"

"They're Muggles. They don't see anything, they don't hear anything. Even if they do, they're Obliviated."

"Obliviated?"

"Yes, the memory of them seeing magic happen is erased to uphold the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy."

"What is the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy?"

"You see, the Wizardkind has been hidden from the Muggles for centuries, ever since the witch hunts. Muggles don't even know that magic is real!"

Gaude decided to stop with the whole wizarding secrecy line of conversation right there. Instead, Gaude took a shot at determining how advanced the magic detection methods were.

"You said that wardstones can be found in magically rich areas. How would I find such an area?"

"Magically rich areas are places where you can find denser populations of magical flora and fauna. A very good indicator of such a place is the presence of Fairies around the nearby trees. In plains, the only indicator is usually grass that grows unnaturally fast and tall as well as the presence of magical herbs."

"I see, so if I wanted to find such an area, I should just keep my eyes open.", Gaude said, thinking about the lush meadow right next to his newly-finished compound. Not to mention lush greenery, the elves had managed to find a whole five different species of magical herbs and two species of magical creatures from it.

After the little Q&A, Linda taught Gaude a few rune clusters that she considered to be the bare minimum one should know before anything else.