Originally Posted by alchemist_18

The box was cursed? Wow...

Then a large number in orange appeared to float above the box

2808052749

She felt confused, then she asked Professor Hadley.

"So, actually what is the use of the number?" asked her.

Originally Posted by Lara_the_Firelady

Nevermind?

He really found this annoying when people said that to him but whatever the girl had no idea about it so she was innocent. An innocent huffie huh? Well...no, maybe not this one. Maybe, though. He was not sure of that yet. When she asked whether he wanted to sit, he was about to say 'no' yet he smirked and jumped sitting on the desk and the parchment. Hahahahaha. ''Sure. Why not? Thank you'' the desk and parchment was comfortable too.

Write 28? Ah yes the numbers, blinking at the Hufflepuff again, Josh turned to Hadley then looked back at Nessie ''Well...while i do agree with your idea about that number. I think it's time to move on since the professor did so.''

Yeaa...there she was talking about this box and huh? There were numbers above it. What had happened while he was distracted by numbers on parchment and the Hufflepuff redhead?

''Professor...i see what Kurumi said too. But i also see numbers zero, eight and two are repeated twice. So can we eliminate those and focus on 5749 instead?''

Well...

''Just an idea.''

Originally Posted by sweetpinkpixie

Kurumi thought a bit more before continuing. "When I was thinking about how to open the box, I thought about the number combination of 2 and 8 and thought that perhaps the answer lied in those two numbers." She pointed towards the orange floating numbers. "The first two in the sequence are just that, 2 and 8." Kurumi bit her lower lip and thought a bit more. She knew next to nothing about Curse Breakers. "Is it possible that the first two numbers in the sequence are...the answer?"

If that word was even appropriate for the given circumstances that is.

Originally Posted by Quick Quotes Quill

2808052749

Blink. Blink.

Gwen stared at the number for a while, then tried to figure out what she had to do. 28... Number we already had... 080... already done... 52- again, done... and then there's that annoying 749 I have no idea about, the second year thought, trying desperatley to focus. 'Can't we just reduce this whole number to ... 9?', the young Ravenclaw mumbled, angry that she had no idea what they might do next. Ugh... maybe I should have payied attention when dad kept explaining stuff to me about curse-breaking. Meh...

Glimpsing back at Kurumi, the second year started thinking why she had only used 28. 'Why not write the whole number?', she said, more like to herself.

Originally Posted by EW_FAN

Harvey looked at the numbers and then his textbook and he then put his hand up

"Could the numbers show your human authority over the box and asking the box to reveal its secrets or curses maybe." Harvey had no idea but decided to contribute to this question. He was enjoying this class.

Originally Posted by Granger1814

Kourtney stared at the box for a few moments, watching as the number popped up above it. Interesting....so they could use that particular spell to reveal any spell on a cursed object?

2808052749.

So, yes, she did notice several groupings of numbers mentioned previously in class, but how did they know how to break apart the groups of numbers? It could just be 2...80...or could be 28, 08, 05...

She raised her hand "Professor, how do we know how to break the number up? I mean, it's just one big number and you can break that up into either groups of one number, two numbers, three numbers etc to make it easier to figure out the mechanism of the spell, but is there a special way to go about doing so? How do we know whether to break it up into say....the number 2, the number 80, the number 80 again versus the number 28, number of 0, and the number 80. Would that change the way that you would interpret the meaning of the spell?"

Originally Posted by Anna Banana

Any interesting groupings in the numbers? Whaaa?!

Sierra stared at the professor as if she'd just grown three extra heads and nine extra arms. This was...confusing, to say the least. She stared at the number, trying to figure out it's meaning but coming up with nothing at all. But then...

2808052749

"Well..., two plus eight is ten, and ten times eight is eighty," she said, raising her hand and then marking something down on her paper. "Then...five plus two is seven, and seven times seven is forty-nine. So, ...all of the numbers follow that pattern pretty much." She looked down at her parchement and wrinkled her eyebrows in confusion. "...but I'm not sure how that can help us figure out what the numbers means and how they relate to that box..."

Originally Posted by Magical Soul

Louisa watched intently as the volunteers went in and tried to open the box. The fourth year girl herself didn't find it really worth trying for, what would they get? Chocolate? professor Vee already gave them that last week. Big deal. Besides, her suspicions about numbers being involved proved to be right - after casting the spell, a HUGE number appeared on the box and now they had to decode it.. or whatever.

With a sigh, she looked down at her textbook, then at the huge number, back at the textbook. "Umm.. how about.." She started, raising her hand without lifting her head, "..we omit the numbers that are repeated twice? two, zero, eight? and we're left with five, seven, four and nine." The girl stared at the remaining numbers and went on, "It kind of makes sense to me; five plus four equals nine... and seven.." Why the heck did seven get in the way? "OH! OH!" She almost jumped, "What about we omit the nine and four plus five? We end up with seven!" A proud, big grin was on Louisa's face as she looked up, finally, at professor Hadley.

Originally Posted by FireboltAvis88

"Hah! now that was a neat trick. Should have figured that it would be something as simple as just asking the box to reveal the answer to us. Of course I would first of all need to learn the spell to ask that question. Oh well. Now that the box is open, I hope that Professor Hadley will still share those chocolates with us.....just for our bravery and effort,"Alyssa thought and grinned to herself.

But until then, on to serious matters. Alyssa wrote down the numbers that the Professor had recited. She noticed that some of the numbers that the Professor had mentioned earlier in their class. 28, 080, 52. "That leaves us with 7 and 49. Or wait ,maybe it is 74 and 9. 9 means completing a task. So maybe saying nine last completes the spell. But at the same time 49 means solving a problem and 7 means something hidden, and the square root of 7 is 49. So maybe double the hidden power in order to solve the problem?". "Geesh! this is one subject I'm so bad in," Alyssa told Penny.

But Alyssa raised her hand and decided to try answering the question.
"Professor, the series of numbers 2808052749? You told us that these numbers made up the spell you used on the box. We were asked to figure out what 28, 080 and 52 and basically came up with the same conclusion. So that leaves us with 7 and 49"

Alyssa then remembered what Sierra had said earlier about the grouping of numbers. It all boiled down again to 7 and 49. She silently thanked Sierra for coming up with that brilliant conclusion. "Is that it? 7 hides the object and 49 being the square root of 7, doubles the power of the spell?."

Alyssa knew that she wasn't making any sense at all, but hoped that the Professor wasn't going to admonish her for tagging onto Sierra's conclusion and adding on to it. "I know that I may be entirely wrong, but again, at least we tried. We wouldn't be in this class, if we already knew the answers,"Alyssa thought to herself.

Originally Posted by PhoenixAuror169

"Professor," She began. "You said earlier that the numbers 080 were special, however you didn't elaborate much about it!" She smiled softly, wondering if now the secrets of 080 wold be revealed.

Originally Posted by Trish

Penny had absolutely no idea of what to make of the box or the numbers being mentioned - actually she felt a little lost...

Arithmancy last year had been fun and productive - this class really make any sense to Penny at all..

But she still obediently took notes of what was going on, even if she didn't fully understand - maybe Alyssa would shed some light on the matter !!

Originally Posted by iceblossom22

Elise wrote down the number, trying to make sense of it.

"Two of the numbers you gave us before are here, professor. 080 and 52."

Now to figure out how the curse works.

2808052749.

"We could eliminate the repeated numbers, which would leave us with 52749." Elise said. "5 plus 2 would be 7, then 7 squared is 49. That's how the numbers would relate to the box."

For the code cracking, that was a different story. Elise scribbled into her notebook her ideas for the cracking.



Well, Ellie was prepared. Nothing wrong with that.