little red bird

It being the first good sleep he’s had in a long time.

Inej gently shaking his shoulder, hating to wake him up but knowing that they’ve got to get back to the Slat.

Kaz, still half asleep, seeing Inej and lifting his arms to her like a toddler wanting to be carried.

Like, making grabby hands and all.

It’s only then that he realises that Patroclus’ skin is way too white and as glorious as Achilles was, he definitely didn’t light up like a glow stick in the night. It’s not them. It’s just Nico and Will.

So u know how we've complained for YEARS that Harry's scar doesn't look like an actual lightning bolt??

I just figured out why (maybe somebody else figured this out already idk but im excited)

It's not a lightning bolt at all. It's eihwaz.

Let me explain. There's been speculation over the years that Harry's scar looks more like a backwards Z than a lightning bolt because that's the wand movement for Avada Kedavra.

We know that the wand movements in spells tend to ~kinda~ correspond to what the spell does (i.e. ascendio being a loopy upward motion)

But I would be willing to bet that certain spells (like powerful curses) would want to pull on something more powerful than "wand motion for up spell is up". Solution: ancient runes as wand movements.

Anyone who's read the Harry Potter books probably remembers when Hermione starts taking Ancient Runes and she has a line about mixing up the runes "ehwaz" and "eihwaz" during her exam. Therefore, we know that Elder Futhark (Old Norse) runes are part of the Harry Potter canon, and are significant enough that there's an entire class dedicated to their study.

As anyone familiar with the runes knows, each of the runes has multiple meanings. Eihwaz's most literal translation is "yew tree" and it has a multitude of figurative meanings, the most notable being death.

Yep, you read that right. It makes sense, seeing as the yew tree has been associated with death for centuries, which I believe is why JKR picked that as Voldy's wand wood.

What better way to give a killing curse some more oomph than to make its wand movement literally mean die?

Here's the kicker. Eihwaz looks like this: