A Secret Message from a Secret Santa Errand Gift Solo

Jack did not like to do anything half-heartedly. When he had signed up for the Secret Santa event for the professors, whom he had a great deal of respect for, he had fully intended to do all the research he could in order to find them the perfect gift. However, the teacher he had been assigned ended up being one who he hadn’t taken classes with yet, as the Study of Ancient Runes – the subject over which she presided - was an elective and not one open to first years. Still, Jack was determined not to let that stop him. It just meant he had to try harder than ever to achieve his goal.

Professor Béatrice Lydursdattir was not an easy woman to learn about, the Slytherin boy quickly discovered. From what he gathered, she pretty much never left the tower where she taught her classes and it was rumored that she was over 100 years old. However, others who had met her stated that she looked more along the lines of 30 or 40 years, so Jack became quite perplexed. As far as he knew, there was no spell or magical artifact that could reverse one’s age. Preserve it, perhaps; maybe even prolong or extend it, but not reverse. That had to have been an illusion of sorts, or else the professor knew secrets beyond those recorded in the library books.

In the hopes of dispelling all rumors, the first year attempted to owl the professor with a request to meet her in person and get to know more about her. As his favorite subject was history, he thought such a well-aged person would have been in an ideal position to tell him of her experiences throughout her supposedly long life. Unfortunately, this too was met with a dead end. Professor Lydursdattir was evidently so busy this time of year that she could only agree to meet Jack once the holidays had begun. Of course, that would have been around the time she would have been due to receive her Secret Santa gift from him, so he couldn’t wait until then to learn more about her.

Deciding to keep the appointment anyway, Jack concluded he would just have to work with what he knew of her and see how off or on the mark he was later when they finally had their meeting. He doubted every single student who was assigned a professor knew exactly what kind of person said professor was, but that was where Jack had wanted to exceed. To that end, he began to research all he could about runic scriptures and runology in general – not for Professor Béatrice’s class, but to come up with a suitable gift.

The Slytherin boy began by picking up an edition of Spellman’s Syllabary by Rosana Amorim from the library. From there, he quickly learned about Germanic runes and runic alphabets as well as runic numerals. It was fascinating to find that the numbers were associated with different magical creatures, but that was the easiest part. On top of deciphering runes, one had to translate the words they spelled out as well, for they didn’t spell out words in English. There was a particular attention to detail one had to have, such as being able to tell the difference between the translated word ehwaz and eihwaz, and it soon became clear to Jack as to why Ancient Runes was a class only meant for third years and older. He began to wonder what, exactly, he had gotten himself into.

At the beginning of the first book on runes he found, he discovered a warning that writing runes was not something to be taken lightly. Evidently, each rune held power, so to write a rune without knowing what one was doing was inviting disaster. It was a shame, since Jack had hope to incorporate runes into the gift idea he'd had in mind, but he decided to use the next best thing. If muggles had runes, wouldn't they probably be something like Wingdings?

Eventually, Jack decided he would use the muggle Wingdings alphabet, but to spell out English words. It bothered him somewhat to have to compromise on his original plan, but he told himself his Secret Santa recipient probably wouldn’t have wanted another student’s atrocious translations and potentially horrid magical mistakes to correct for her gift, anyway. Besides, he could probably make it up to her in the future once he actually had the time to properly study the subject matter she taught.

So the young Slytherin set to work. He took his time between classes to construct a message and form it into a poem to send to the professor. Once he had come up with a satisfactory poem, he sat down and translated each letter into its corresponding Wingdings symbol, taking the time and trouble to make sure each symbol was crafted carefully and well as if it were a rune. It took several tries and many copies to come up with a final draft he thought was worthy of sending to its intended recipient, but at last, the task was complete.



He even included a hand-made key for her to decipher his letter with in case she wasn't familiar with muggle Wingdings.

Pleased with his work, Jack could only hope Professor Lydursdattir would be, too. In a way, he realized he was glad he didn't have her as a professor yet, because although he had been assigned her for the special Secret Santa, he didn't want her to think his efforts were to get on her good side or boost his grades or anything like that. Jack didn't often express true gratitude, as proud a person as he was, but this was one of those instances and he didn't want to risk any chance that it could have been misinterpreted.

The first-year put the written Wingdings poem and its key into an envelope, wrote the professor's name on it, and went up to the owlery to get it sent. He thought it was a little ironic that the paper was merely traveling from one of the Hogwarts castle towers to another, but the speed of flight beat the speed of going up all those stairs on foot. Besides, to have given it to her in person just wasn't how Secret Santa gift exchanges were done - even if this wasn't a typical Secret Santa exchange.

It may not have been as pretty or well-packaged or as clever or creative as Jack was sure some of the other students had made their gifts for their teachers, but he had done his best and put his heart and soul into it. His main objective was to get his message of gratitude across rather than to compete with his fellow students. However, that didn't mean he didn't plan on out-doing everyone eventually. Jack was still a first year and he was bent on giving his new magical academics his all. With all the passion and hard work they put into teaching, there was no way he was going to let his professors down, and he wanted them to know it.