Tears continued to roll down Aurora's eyes the entire time she held her brother's hand, wishing that she didn't have to let go. He looked so sad in there. She didn't blame him, and he was FREEZING. He was practically turning into an ice sculpture! Still, she forced herself to finally let go of his hand after she retrieved what was clasped between his fingers.
It was a piece of paper. She knew it was a clue of some sort, but she sort of hoped it was a message of reassurance from her brother. It wasn't, of course, but it would have been NICE. The best thing, of course, would have been to just not have her brother in here at ALL. She was so upset over all this that she didn't even feel the blinding cold on her face, forming small tracks of frozen tears on her pink cheeks, or the tingling feeling in her fingers as they continued to freeze closer and closer to the dreaded frostbite threshold. She paused and cast some more hot air on her fingers and toes, as well as on her face as well, to give herself a little boost. Right. Back to the task at hand. She could not let her brother's presence here derail her completely.
The message was a series of numbers. At first she thought perhaps it was a combination to a lock - but that didn't make sense. The lock had dots, and unless those dots were actually BUTTONS and the message indicated what order she had to hit them in, she didn't think that had anything to do with it. What she DID notice was the spaces between the groups of numbers - there were three, like it was spelling out words. Perhaps it was Arithmancy related...
Taking her wand, she stabbed it into a nearby patch of snow, writing out the numbers 1-9 and assigning them numbers. She remembered how to determine what the numbers were, but it was much easier for her to visualize it, even if it meant writing out the ENTIRE chart by hand. She went as fast as her frozen fingers would let her, knowing that time was precious in this challenge.
Quote:
1---2---3---4---5---6---7---8---9
A---B---C---D---E---F---G---H----I
J---K---L---M---N---O---P---Q---R
S---T---U---V---W---X---Y---Z And now for the message. She peered at it again, and then using another area of the snow as her chalkboard once again, she assigned possible letters to the numbers.
Quote:
285 6995 19751
B-H-E F-I-I-E A-I-G-E-A
K-Q-N O-R-R-N J-R-P-N-J
T-Y-W W-Z-Z-W S-Z-X-W-S Ok, so the first word was very clearly the word "the". That had been easy enough. Now for the second word - the first thing that jumped out at her was "fire". Although she supposed it could also be "wire" but in the context of this challenge, "fire" seemed like it made more sense. The last one was stumping her, though. Sixes? Ugh, this made no SENSE. She thought back to that other number system...what was it called again? Something that started with a C...but no, that couldn't work. That only went up to number 8 if she recalled and there were a ton of 9's in this riddle. Ok, so
"the fire sixes" was her best guess here.
Unless she had to add all the numbers up, instead of assigning letters to them? Ugh this was awful. She HATED Arithmancy.
Very quickly, she summed up the numbers, just in case that was what she needed to do. Her heart was racing and her brain felt like it was getting frazzled again. This was HARD and time was running out before her brother turned into a hunk of frozen Quidditch player.
Quote:
285 6995 19751
2+ 8 + 5 = 15 = 1+5 = 6
6+9+9+5 = 29 = 2+ 9 = 11 = 1+1 = 2
1+9+7+5+1 = 23 = 2+3 = 5
6+2+5 = 12
1+2 = 3 Alright, so she had two possible interpretations of these numbers now. But were either of them right? Her head was pounding and preventing her from seeing straight now. Tiny block dots were appearing in front of her eyes and she had to take a few moments to pause and close her eyes, rubbing her temples.
She could do this, she COULD do this. She just had to repeat that to herself over and over again. Over and over and over again...
Whatever the answer to this puzzle was, she KNEW it had something to do with the lock. The lock still reminded her of a constellation, and wondered if the answer to the riddle was in relation to a group of stars or something she had to press to get the lock to open. The fire sixes...did that mean anything at all? It was all she could think of as she stared and stared and STARED at that final word, wondering if her bizarre answer was ACTUALLY the answer...or if she was completely missing something else totally obvious...