The language enchantments arrived on the twenty-sixth by owl from a different specialist magical linguist in Edinburgh than he had used in August — Professor Babbling's contact, the one who worked with living languages only and required four weeks' notice for complex tonal systems. Ron had placed the order in November, which was the kind of administrative thoroughness the linguist appeared to appreciate, judging by the promptness of the reply.
He had taken French, German, and Arabic in the last week of July — three in a week, the rule's maximum, each one three days apart. Mandarin, Sanskrit, and Spanish had followed across the last weeks of August, one every three days. Six acquired languages going into December, plus English from both lives and Malayalam from his first life — eight languages total, each present not as vocabulary but as structure, the bones of thought in eight different registers. Lingua in Diagon Alley had carried all six without difficulty. The new order — Japanese, Hindi, Korean — was different. Lingua's stock ran to the major European languages and the most commonly requested others; Japanese was available but Hindi and Korean were not, and Professor Babbling, when he had asked, had directed him to the specialist in Edinburgh who covered the full range of Asian languages with the additional care that tonal and inflectional systems required. He had written to confirm the summer enchantments he got from Lingua had settled properly, which the linguist had appreciated, and placed the new order in November.
The order now was for three more: Japanese, Hindi, and Korean. The linguist had flagged Hindi as requiring additional settling time — 'inflectional tonal register, not pitch-tonal, closer to Sanskrit than it appears, please allow seventy-two hours between this and any subsequent enchantment' — and had sent the three vials with a note reminding him of the spacing rule: one enchantment every three days, no more than three in a week.
He took Japanese on the morning of the twenty-sixth.
Hindi on the twenty-ninth, which was the earliest the three-day rule permitted.
Korean he saved for just before leaving for the train — the first was the earliest he could take it without violating the spacing, and there was something fitting about beginning the New Year with a new language settling in alongside everything else the month intended to bring.
By evening of the twenty-sixth, Japanese had arrived the way the languages arrived — not as vocabulary but as structure, the grammar of it becoming present, the rhythm of sentences finding their shape, the mind discovering four new rooms had been furnished overnight. He sat at the kitchen table after dinner and wrote the same sentence in nine languages — the eight from before, plus Japanese — and looked at the nine versions and felt the particular satisfaction of range.
Ginny looked over his shoulder at the page.
'What does it say?' she said.
'The same thing nine times,' he said.
'What thing?'
He showed her. She read it. She looked at him.
'That's,' she said, 'unexpectedly philosophical for a Tuesday.'
'It's Wednesday,' he said.
'Even more so,' she said, and went back to her book.
He folded the page and kept it.