I'm not sure about this.

First of all, it is mentioned that not all that many students test out above their year, perhaps a handful in any given year - Harry is mentioned to be the exception, as is Calypso testing into 3rd year Dark Arts.

Additionally, I believe in Harry's discussion with...either Kosarev or Romanov, I can't remember which, about sensing magic, it is mentioned that Harry could attempt it during 6th-7th year, after he's finished Charms. Even Harry only tested above level in Dark Arts, Charms, and Transfiguration, after all, so he'd still have to stay for 7th year material in History, Herbology, Potions, and his electives. And I think any student who excelled that much would WANT to stay and study as long as he could, even if he took his NEWTS in the tested-out subjects in his 5th year, like Harry presumably will. Whatever school said student attends probably has the most comprehensive library and collection of magical resources available to a young wizard. Short of a magical college, but I know those aren't mentioned in canon and I don't recall Santi referring to any.

So in my opinion, just about any wizard would, in fact, stay for his 7th year at Durmstrang.

 

Yes, Dumbledore used passive legilimancy on Harry. Harry's also 13 and is proud as shit to be able to detect a wizard of Dumbledore's caliber at all. Instead of raging, Harry probably had a trollface moment.

 

Harry actually tested into higher courses in every subject aside from Dark Arts and Spell Creation, and he sabotaged his Dark Arts exam for fear of his parents' reactions. As of Harry's second year, the only age-appropriate class he takes is Spell Creation.

 

That's not taking into account his electives. It's safe to assume he'll have some advantage in Astronomy, but he shouldn't be speeding by in all of his classes. Especially since I don't see him realistically reading/studying thoroughly ahead when he's spending as much time as he is with Occlumency.

 

Assuming he takes Astronomy, of course; but I don't think Harry will take that course. I mean, Astronomy might actually be useful in some way (there was a castoff reference earlier on about how it influenced certain potions and plants), unlike canon, but I suppose we'll have to wait and see.

That said, I'm quite certain he will pick Magical Creatures, or possibly Arithmancy/Ancient Runes if Santi goes that routes where either or both of these are related to wards.

 

I seemed to recall that these were mentioned, and after a quick look at ff.net i found this authors note after chapter 3:

"Alright, allow me to clear something up. Durmstrang will not be a Miranda Flairgold style super!school. Harry will not learn Necromancy, Bloodmagic, or Soul Magic. Durmstrang is a school that teaches a curriculum similar to Hogwarts with the exception of having Spell Creation in place of Astronomy (which will be an elective during Harry's 3rd year). I always thought it was odd that Hogwarts didn't have a class on Spell Creation, especially since we know that it's possible to make your own spells. Please note that there will be nothing about Arithmancy or Ancient Runes involved in the Spell Creation class. Arithmancy is, according to canon, a means of doing divination with numbers, and Ancient Runes is a language."

So Arithmancy will be divination and Ancient Runes are just a language and nothing more. Does Harry even believe in divination? I suppose I could see him learning AR, if it would allow him to read books and whatever written in that language. Though I wonder why he needs to study it so much, if he was able to learn to speak in german so quickly with the aid of magic.

 

He was able to learn German so quickly due to him being surrounded by it, and hearing it all the time. Ancient Runes, I suspect, is learned in the old fashioned way.

 

But would it not make sense to take advantage of magic to learn since we know its possible. I mean why not have linguist develop a spoken version of ancient runes(if it does not already exist), and then have the teacher speak it for the students while they are under the language spell, accelerating the learning process. In a world where magic can be used to learn languages, it should be possible.

 

Because written langauge != spoken language? Because runes are used to the best of our knowledge in the written form, and so a translation spell does fuck all in terms of knowing how to write them or manipulate them or whatever the hell they need to do? Because a story where Harry goes to magic school, spends a half-hour having learning spells zapped into his noggin and walks away the next Dumbledore is boring?

Take your pick.

 

Not necessarily true. The translation spell helped Harry with reading German faster than it did speaking German. It could easily help with a written language.

If Harry does take the course I would expect a paragraph or two explaining why a translation spell doesn't work.

 

In this story atleast Ancient Runes really seem to just be a language rather some inherent magic with power of its own. Atleast thats what it said in chapter 3. To again quote Santi: "Arithmancy is, according to canon, a means of doing divination with numbers, and Ancient Runes is a language."

As for the whole written/spoken thing, even discounting what CleanRag said, if you re-read what I said earlier, I wondered why some skilled linguist had not CREATED a spoken version of the language? There are people who create entirely new languages from scratch out there, I have no doubt that it would be possible to create a spoken version of AR, and probably easier than it is to create a brand new language. This then would give wizards the benefits of the charm and as such make it easier to learn the written version too.

We are talking about a language here. Not magical skills or spells, but merely a language. Presumably some ancient language used by some oldie wizards before english/german or something that is still in some use. Magically learning Ancient Runes would no more turn Harry into a Dumbledore, than magically learning German did. They are both just languages rather than magical skills.

And since in this particular story we already SAW magic being used to learn a language, well, to repeat what Cleanrag said, the obvious question of why that would not work for AR should be addressed.

 

Are electives mandatory in Durmstrang? From what Ive seen of Harry's character so far he seems to enjoy classes that focus on spells over ones that are more based on theory. Not sure if that really makes sense hm...

What im trying to say is that he seems to care much less about classes like Herbology,History and to an extent Potions then the more spellcasting oriented ones like Charms,Transfiguration and Dark Arts. Reason I add Potions to the list is because I believe thats what Lily focused on teaching them the most of before Hogwarts and hes still only in fourth year Potions compared to fifth year Charms and Transfiguration.

Not saying he wont care about the electives or take any but it would definitely cut into his more interesting side projects like his animagus transformation.

 

Where does it say that? In canon, I mean? I got the impression that JKR just thought there was some sort of "math" subject needed at Hogwarts, and thus stuck a fancy word for "number" in front of "mancy", much like the treatment "Necromancy" is often given. Because, y'know, Necromancy was originally divination via the spirits of the dead. That's what it means. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Whatevermancy

 

No idea.

I am not really all the well versed in what is canon and fanon. However what I said about AR being a language was a quote. Check out the ff.net version of this story and read the authors note at the end of chapter 3. That is where I got that from.

After reading that, I presume that in this story atleast, ancient runes will indeed be just a language, and as such the problem of why one language (german) could be learned magically, but another (AR) could not inevitably comes to mind.

 

The lack of use of the translation charm could be explained through the similarity between languages. English was originally a West Germanic language, so if you know English, you'll have an easy time learning German through the translation charm. If you try to learn Aramaic on the other hand, you might be short out of luck.

 

I've always figured the Ancient Runes to be a class about a series of Ancient written languages, such as Egyptian or Mesopotamian. On top of that the runes wouldn't mean actual words more as effects. The spoken language would be different.

 

A language is so much more than just a set of fixed words and phonemes. Since we even have only scant ideas how to pronounce Latin, much less Germanic runes, I'd surmise that there isn't enough framework to "cheat" ones way through Ancient Runes. But still it's MAGIC so anything is possible and no logical progression is necessary.

I always imagined AR as more of a mythology, symbol meaning and significance course than just a language class.

 

It's not from canon; it's from an interview with JKR.

Stephen Fry: Can you explain in words of not more that two syllables, What is Arithmancy?

JK Rowling: Well your guess is as good as mine Stephen. Arithmancy is predicting the future using numbers. I’ve decided there’s a bit of numerology in there as well but how you do it I really don’t know.

If you want to just focus on canon, then the HP Lexicon is usually your best bet.

 

Ancient runes don't form a language. Writing systems in general are not languages.

Ancient runes simply form a set of letters of an alphabet used by various Germanic peoples to write their various Germanic languages. Runes are no more a language than the Latin alphabet is (and the Latin alphabet is used to transcribe hundreds upon hundreds of languages with only minor variations such as the ñ in Spanish or ß in German.

Since individual runes carved onto small stones has been used by diviners for a very long time, it stands to reason that Ancient runes is little more than a class that explains the symbolic meaning of each rune, and what the various combinations of them mean when you use them to divine the future.

I doubt that they cover anything other than Futhark, though it is possible that they also teach other writing systems which have also been used as divining tools such as Chinese characters. More advanced classes might also teach hieroglyphics and other ancient writing systems so that curse breakers can do their jobs without getting their faces blown off (it might be handy to understand things like "ENTER NOT LEST YE BE CURSED" in hieroglyphics or ancient Mayan, etc . . .

EDIT: and whilst I have my rant on . . .

The other thing that irks me is when people treat runes in fiction like they're Chinese characters (where each character represents an entire word or concept). There aren't 10,000 runes, there's only about 22 of them. Yes, you can play with them by writing them upside down to mean the opposite (congrats: you've managed to make 44 meanings), and you can combine them to form bindrunes, but again, you're working with an extremely limited set of concepts so even combinations that make any sense whatsoever are severely restricted.

And if you just start writing entire words using Futhark, then you might as well quit wasting time with it and move on over to the International Phonetic Alphabet, which grants you access to over a hundred unique symbols that let you accurately transcribe any sound or word produceable by any human being for the purposes of speech. It seems to me that what specific letters you write doesn't matter, but what magic you put into the character or words you're writing to produce an effect.

 

This, along with JKR saying "Your guess is as good as mine" leads me to believe Arithmancy is more than just Divination. The number seven has more uses than just in Divination (I imagine a prediction using seven dice is more accurate than one with six or eight) as far as we can tell... And why would a curse-breaker need to divine the future? It doesn't make sense if we go with Arithmancy as Divination, just as it doesn't make sense if we go with Necromancy as Divination. Sorry for getting my inner rationalist on, but that's just how it is.