Marie continued on the path to... well she wasn't sure where to, she just hoped it was to the exit of this maze. Turning left then right she felt like she was going in circles and getting nowhere at all. Hearing voices behind her she kept walking but looked back to see who was there only to find no one there. However there was someone in front of her that she ran right into.

Flicking her wrist to let her wand fall into her hand she spun around to see who or what was there in her way. Oh thank Merlin it was only Evan. "Um hey Evan, sorry about that. I thought I heard something behind me so I kinda wasn't watching where I was going." Not a good thing to do in a maze that has obstacles in it.

Louisa walked through this long 'corridor' with chocolate in her mouth. She was kind of entertained so far. It was still five mins since those wall erupted from the ground (WHich was a really nice 'trick' of the Professor). She didn't imagine Arthimancy to be so interesting. She loved it.

"Why am I walking straight forward for ten mins and didn't find a turn to take?" She said to herself. Well, if Enya was here she would've said it was complaing but it wasn't! It was an innocent question. Heh. Speaking of whom, why didn't she attend this class? They would've had fun together. Or not. Louisa could be in trouble like everytime she joined Enya in a class.

"About time." She said smiling at the crossroad she came to. "Now where?" She looked around. The right path looked shorter than the others, she took it. She walked and walked till she came across a 2-block. There is the first block. She took her wand out and pointed it to the block, "Wingardium Leviosa!" Lifting is the first she could think of. And it'd be brilliant if they were on a Charms lesson. Nothing happened.

She stepped back a little looking up and she glanced something on top of the block. She pointed her wand at it, "Accio!" And the thing zoomed down to her. She picked the paper up of the floor and unfolded it. She thought it was kind of instructions of how to pass through this block. However, she wasn't that lucky for the paper said, "Blossom."

Louisa blinked twice and re-read the paper many times. She didn't understand what that meant? She sat on the floor her back leant to one of the walls thinking of what to do..

OOC: To be continued

Keefer continued onwards, waiting for more numbers to loom out of the semi-darkness. Then, he saw it! The exit! He began to run full force, only to smack into something and land on his back. Gasping for breath, he looked for the culprit: a giant number nine. Of course. Nine is about completion, so that would be what I run into right before I complete the maze.

Now, how to get past it? I haven't had to use the Pythagorean system yet, maybe it has to do with that? Nine represented I and R. But what do I do with that?

At the mention of I and R, a note had appeared on the giant number. "Woah, look at that!" Being rather tall, Keefer stooped down to read the note. One word was written on it.

What on earth is that? How do you even pronounce that? He tried to say the word. "Fla-gra-te? No, that sounds wrong. Fla-grate?" A bright yellow something shout out of his wand and left a glowing mark on the floor, where his wand had been pointing. "It's a spell!" he said in surprise.

"Well, the note with the spell appeared right after I said R and I, so maybe I have to use the spell... to write I and R! Flagrate!" He traced out an I first, then and R, leaving two glowing letters written on the giant number 9. The number dissipated into the air, leaving Keefer's way clear. "YES!"

He stepped forward and saw his way clear to the exit. Walking a bit slower this time just in case, he found the opening at last and saw the Professor. "I made it!"

Patroclus was sure he was near the exit, he had to be!

As the boy stepped, he heard a sound, it seemed like a swarm of bees, thousands of buzzy bees.....
Gripping his wand Patroclus prepared himself, I am dead, he winced. A little unknown fact was that Patroclus was allergic to bees.

Breathing in, and thinking of his family, the boy was ready....ready to die. With his eyes closed he awaited the end.



Nothing.




Looking up, Patroclus heard and saw nothing, the bees were gone? Taking a hesitent step, the boy was not ready for what came next.

Shooting from the walls beside him, came hundreds of strands of Bandaging clother, and before he could move, Patroclus was now The Mummy Formerly Known as Patroclus.
His wand was pinned to his side, but luckily still in his hand, "Relashio!" he cried, the spell shooting through the wrappings, only for them to reappear instantly.

"Great!" the boy cried, his temper fuming. "Relashio!" He cried again, with the same result as before....however there was one difference. As the light shot from the wand, it illuminated a line of text that seemed to be repeated over and over again along the wrappings.

"Relashio!" 1545..... "Relashio!" 15455 154.... "Relashio!" 15455 154 256 "Relashio!" 15455 154 256 = 1 39933.

He finally had the whole phrase remaining on the wrappings, burning like a brand.

Now to figure it out!

Evan couldn't believe how easy it had been so far. He hoped that this easiness didn't mean that he was still at the beginning. He had had only two numbers so far, but then again, how many were there supposed to be? There shouldn't be much, because obviously it was still class time and it wouldn't last long, right?

Speeding up a little bit with a hope to finally find the way out, he came across another three-choice way, and this time headed straight ahead. He came to a seven again, urging him only not to use his wand. Pfft. Neat. Really neat. What was he supposed to do, then? Remembering the previous thing, he wrote an imaginary 2 in the air with his finger. The number shook from right to left. He tried writing 7 this time, only to find another refusal. Panicking slightly, he performed the equation of 2+7=9, and the number moved away to open him the way. Smiling, he continued...
...to be stopped by a little girl. Again. Hopefully, this one wasn't as rude as Brittany.

"Nope," he said, stating the obvious fact. Did he look to be having a partner? Though, as he didn't want to frighten the girl, he added more politely "We can be partners." Even though the girl was a firstie, maybe she could still help.

Just as he watched the girl walk away to peer around the corner, he saw a familiar blondie approach.
Relieving slightly--not that he was afraid on his own, he just trusted Marie's magical abilities more--he grinned at her. "Yeah, well... I and..." uh, what was the girl's name? Shrug. "we," he corrected himself, "were trying to find our way out. Wanna join us?" Please?

Freya walked deeper to the maze. She looked around and she only saw walls surrounded her and then she saw a door in front of her. She run towards the door hoping that the door was the exit. She couldn't find a knob in that door. She began to freak out. "Oh. Come on." she said frustrating. Suddenly letters come out on the door.

"What was that supposed to mean?" she asked herself. Magic Number. Magic Number. She has heard about magic number but she couldn't remember where she had heard it or what is all about. Suddenly it hit her. "Merlin's beard magic number is a number of nucleons. So the first number should be 2. Merlin. I'm so stupid." she mumbled to herself. She pulled out her wand and tapped her wand to the door. She wrote 2 on the door. Suddenly the door vanished and another path appeared in front of her. "Way to go Freya" she smirked.

NINE!

The numba nine appeared in her head. She giggled in relief as she tumbled to the end of maze. Light flooded the place and burned her eyes. She panted. She tripped and felt her nose crunch as she hit the floor. She pulled out the already bloody hankerchief and mopped up nose. Her eyes felt swollen and she pouted. "Owwwwch." She groaned and pinched the bridge of her broken nose to stop the flow of blood.

"Dab bas bread dun probeddor." (Of course what she meant was; "That was great fun professor") She smiled as best as she could from behind the bloody tissue. Owwwww.

SPOILER!!: Posties; so you don't have to flick through them all;)

Da route
First Postiee
Second Postiee
Third Postiee
Fourth Postiee
Fifth Postie (up above)

Sarah narrowed her eyes at Oliver and snorted. She knew he was right, it WAS the whole point of a maze, but she was in a panicking mood. This was not just a maze - this was an Arithmancy maze! Her worst nightmare. Confined spaces and numbers put together. Hell in a classroom. "Yes, thank you for that insight," another funny snort, and a poke of the tongue.

"Just make sure you don't. I don't think bouncing over the walls is the whole point of the exercise." A grin spread across her lips as she watched him pout. He knew she was right about this one.

....She was being pulled.

Sarah nearly tripped as Oliver dragged her by the arm, down in the direction of the seven. "Woahhh, okay," she stuttered, as they came to a halt in front of a ginormous number seven. "I didn't know you could get numbers that big." Yeah, she had now officially gone into stupid mode. "We have to think of something to do with seven, right? I mean we can't just stroll past it, it's taking up the whole space."

She started pacing from side to side, rubbing her temples and tapping her wand on her forehead as she thought. "What is there in the textbook?" she wondered out loud, hoping maybe Oliver could think too. "There's seven days of the week, seven deadly sins...seven... I CAN'T THINK OF ANYMORE SEVENS!" They were doomed. Totally and utterly doomed.

Sarah smacked her head against the number, before turning it to look at Oliver. "We're doomed," she muttered, running her hand down the side of the number. It was smooth bar some bumps, and on closer inspection she was that they were numbers as well. "Hang on, there is something here. 1,5,4,5,5..."

LIGHTBULB MOMENT!

Her eyes lit up as she realised what that was. Spinning around to face Oliver, Sarah grinned. "It spells out seven! The numbers from the Pythagoras thingy. If you go across from one to nine, and A to Z, those numbers have all the letters to spell out seven. That must be the answer. Worth a try, right?" Taking a deep breath, Sarah stared right at the overly large numeral and declared..."They spell seven. That's the answer." Right?

As the seven shimmered and disappeared, another path revealed itself in front of them, causing Sarah to bounce on her heels. "Woohooo, lets go." Now it was her turn to grab and drag Oliver along.

Patroclus was begin to have head spins. Starring down at his body wrappings, the boy;s face began to pool with blood, causing his eyes to see white spots everywhere.

Deciding it was best to sit down and do this, Patroclus hopped his way over to the wall, and slide down into a seated position. From this vantage point he had a perfect upside view of his long wrapped legs.

Looking at the numbers on his leg, Patroclus instantly knew what it was; Pythagorean Number System, the code with which, Patroclus had chatted with Evelyn. However he had paper to work out on then, not to mention the use of his arms.


"Think!" he berated at himself, "It will be seven or Two related!"

Hundred of possibilities flew through the boy's mind in what felt like hours, hours of sitting mummified. It in fact had been barely 9 minutes......

It what seemed to be divine intervention, the first three sections of numbers made instant sense, "15455 154 256 , Thats 'Seven and Two'!" he cried," Seven and two equal nine," he shrugged, but found the last section of number incapible of translating into nine....

"Seven and Two equal a.....a? A what!?" He was truly frustrated,A cir, A circle? A circle! Seven and Nine equal a circle" The boy cired, finally solving the riddle, "A circle?" Patroclus was instantly confused......well more confused then before.

"Seven, Two and a Circle.......Seven Two and a Circle...." Something Hadley had said earlier appeared in his head, Nine is the number for "Completion! Nine is completion and a circle is a completion of a rotation!"
As the words left his lips the bandagers disappeared, he was free!

Freya walked on the path that appeared after the door vanished. She walked faster and faster. She really wanted get out of this maze as soon as possible. She stopped. In front of her. There are twelve path. "Great. This getting better and better" she said to herself. Which way to choose?? She asked herself over and over. The suddenly she heard something or someone "The gleaming ruby should adorn,All those who in July are born,For thus they'll be exempt and free,From lover's doubts and anxiety." the voice said.

Freya just stood there don't know what to do. "What was that supposed to mean?How that helped me with this twelve path" she sighed. She rewind what the voice said over and over again in her head. The gleaming ruby should adorn,All those who in July are born,For thus they'll be exempt and free, From lover's doubts and anxiety. "Ruby?July?" she tried to remember what connection Ruby and July had. "Ruby is July's birthstone..!!" she shouted. "So twelve paths means twelve months. So I've to choose path number seven" she walked toward path number seven.

Rowan was hopelessly lost in the maze. She had not come across a single number and felt as though she was walking in circles. She felt very alone and overwhelmed. I will not cry, she thought to herself on the verge of tears. She had been terrified ever since someone had screamed out that someone was dead. Dead! What kind of maze WAS this?!

WOO *High Five*

"YES! We did it Spatulaclaw" Trixie giggled grinning over at the Ravneclaw.

The two had managed to fight their way past the random stray number 9, even though they were totally unprepared for it. Guess their idea to make it imperfect had worked. And the number 7, even though they weren't entirely sure of how they did it. Must have been Vashti's little speech rant she did.

Another thing the number Nine represented, the end, final. Which was definitely true of this number seeing as when it had slipped away the exit to the maze was immediately revealed. Ah finally they had their way out of this place, which was getting kinda claustrophobic.

The Slytherin grabbed hold of Vashti and pulled her out of the maze to freedom.

*Sigh*

Now that was fun. Where was this surprise? *shifty*

After choosing path number seven, Freya walked slowly. She looked around and the view didn't change she still surrounded by walls. She sighed wondering how much longer she's going to be in this maze. She was so deep in thought, she didn't see where she go and suddenly she tripped. "Auch. What was that?" she looked around and saw a stone in front of her. "Why there's a stone in the middle of the path. So weird." before she began to walk away she saw engraving on that stone.

"Great. another riddle" she mumbled

Alright, so nothing awkward. Cool. Once Rae saw the pair of columns she made a face of... 'I don't want to do this'. She might hace fun with this activity, if she was smart, and that was not a trait she carried. She watched Salander try to climb and squeeze through the columns. Nope that was a no go. Now what? He was asking her? She never knew anything!! "Uhh.." She looked at the columns having no idea.. "I think we need to solve something... " But solve what? Why was she so stupid!

Freya stared at the engraving for a few minutes thinking what it means. "Pythagorean Number" she said. She pulled out a piece of parchment from her pocket and wrote down the number.

"Facts?Plural?" she thought for a moment before answering the question. "Okay first of all. The Dark Lord created seven Horcruxes, There are seven days in a week, There are seven colors of the rainbow, Seven is also the number of stars in the constellation, Big Dipper. That should be enough" she said. "You may proceed." she heard a voice said.

"Well yes I KNOW that, I just like the NUMBER better than two. See, we're talking about those two numbers so I just... I like seven more," Ty scratched his chin, not really seeing her logic. As he turned the corner - his hand coming around last - he couldn't help but laugh at the girl's words.

"I'm Ty, by th-" his words died in his throat as something HUGE loomed out of the gloom. Taking a step back towards Weird Girl, Ty's hand unconsciously tightened around the girl's as a HUMONGEOUS number two came into view.

Er... O_O "What do we do now?" he stood on tiptoe and whispered in the girl's ear, keeping both eyes and his wand hand on the monster number two.

Freya speed up her step and a wall appeared in front of her. She went back to where she come from but another wall appeared block her way. She couldn't find a way back. "Great I'm stuck." She looked around for another clue or letters but she couldn't find any. She felt very frustrated. She sat down and leaned herself to the wall. Then she saw something on the wall in front of her. "Letter." she said cheerfully.


"Unity means two, right?" she asked herself. What about the other? Spiritual? Success? Romance? Where they come from. "Wait. Spiritual means seven. Seven is the most spiritual all of numbers." she thought for a moment before saying "Seven plus two equal nine. So that mean seven is spiritual and two is unity. Spiritual and unity equal tolerance, generosity, passion, creative energy, success, and romance." she paused for a moment. "Tolerance, generosity, passion, creative energy, success, and romance means the meaning behind number nine." she added. And then the wall disappeared. She was back to the class. "Yay. I finally did it." she said cheerfully. She looked around and saw a few students already finished too.

OOC: Sorry I didn't post until today. It took me forever to write the stupid riddle.

Carr walked through the maze, looking thoroughly worried about walking through the maze. She wasn't particularly aft at History of Magic, but she did remember terrible stories about similar mazes holding dangerous creatures. And the teacher had specifically told them that, if they got into trouble, they should send red sparks into the air and she would help. She was not looking forward to running into something that would require her to ask the teacher for help here.

She chewed on her chocolate gingerly as she chose turn after turn and was paying so much attention to what could be coming at her from eye-level, that she didn't notice the rock that she tripped over. She landed on her knees a little roughly and, when she looked back up, she found that she was surrounded on all four sides by the walls of the maze. There was no exit!

Her first response was to hyperventilate, but a voice spoke to her and she realized, after a minute, that it was telling her a riddle.

It was a good thing it was so short, or Carr would never have remembered all of it. She played it back in her head. "Oh, no," she said out loud to herself. "I don't... understand." She considered sending for the teacher. "No," she told herself. "I can figure this out."

"Pingo White!" Jenny yelled. Paint poured out from her wand and she quickly wrote a 9 on the wall. The wall quickly disappeared. Together with Kurumi, Jenny quickly walked throughtout the maze, turning a left, then right, right, left...until she met another dead end. Jenny sighed. Oh boy, this was going to take a while...

Jenny noticed that there was some words engraved on the wall. She walked closer to take a quick look.
Jenny gasped. She knew this from somewhere...but even so, how is this compared to seven? Jenny could see how it's related to two but...oh, the three and the four in the riddle add up to 7! Of course! Now the real question: what was the answer to the riddle? And where has she seen this before?

Jenny was about to ask Kurumi when...of course! Man! He crawls on four in the morning, walks on two in the afternoon, and walks with a cane at night! And it came from Oedipus! Wow, did she feel smart. Quickly she wrote the number 2 and "3 + 4 = 7" and the word "man" at the bottom. The wall quickly vanished into thin air. "Let's go!" Jenny said to Kurumi as she started forward again.

"A dirty trick to swindle quick?" Carr asked out loud. No one answered her. "So, a... a cheat. A fraud... A con?"

At this, the letters 'con' appeared in front of her, lighting up in slightly luminescent smoke. "A con!" she exclaimed, grinning to herself. "Okay, um... Why the hippo hates the giraffe. Well, the obvious answer is the giraffe's neck," she said, not really expecting the letters 'nec' to light up next to 'con.' She punched the air excitedly. "And ending's ending is a 'g'," she said slowly, then shook her head. "Or, 'ing', actually, isn't it?"

More letters lit up. 'con nec _ ing' "Connecting!" she said, filling in the blank. "The start of things is easily a 't'."

She frowned a little when she found that she was still trapped by the four walls. Then, she remembered the last line of the riddle and became calm again. "The number two," she said out loud. "Connection is represented by the number two in the pythagorean number system!"

In the next instant, one of the walls disappeared and Carr continued on, running far from the dead end corner of the maze.

Daisy had felt like she'd gotten pretty far theough the maze when she happened upona riddle written upon a piece of parchment and she frowned.

Oi vey. Riddles just confounded her. Pulling ehr wand out she wrote the numbers one through nine in the air and went through the alphabet assigning each individual letter to it's correct number. It was obvious after finding out that the first letter was an s... I mean jeez there was only two numbers. But to be sure she went about doing all the math needed. There was five letters in seven and the second and third letter was the same. So there for it was seven. She drew the number upon the blank wall and watched it to dissolve. She could see a faint glow coming from her right so she followed it.

Carr ran through the maze, making her direction decisions at random, flipping around whenever she met a dead end, her eidetic memory leading her back to her previous turns rather easily. When she entered a larger part of the maze, she jogged across to the exit at the other side, which immediately closed up in front of her. She paused and frowned before turning around, noticing several series' of simple mathematics equations written all over the walls in something like chalk. Only they were written backwards, like in a mirror. How odd. However, this wasn't the first time she had seen something strange, nor was it the first time the walls had moved on their own, so she headed back the way she'd come.. She was almost back to the exit when something quite shocking stepped through the entrance, the wall closing up behind it.

A black, rather scribbly number '7' standing upside down on its flat top walked boldly, but awkwardly, toward her. It's stem was crossed like a lowercase 't', just the way Carr wrote her own 7's. The ends of the cross curled first downward and then upward before straightening out again in an absurd parody of a body builder flexing his arms. Carr suddenly had a very bad feeling about this. She scrambled for her wand, but dropped it and didn't have time to pick it up as the number 7 hurled itself at her. She threw herself out of the line of its tackle and it crashed into a wall, crumpling slightly as it did so. Carr her a slight sizzling noise before the '7' got up, but she wasn't sure where it was coming from and didn't have time to consider it as the '7' dove again, pulling the girl into a head lock. Carr flailed around, but it was no good. The 7's grip was too strong for her to pull away.

She tried swinging out with her foot but was too close to the 7 to do any real damage to it, and it held her tightly and began to tickle her viciously.

"Sophia Lombardi." she said, after the boy struggled to find her name. She had never told him, so it was her fault. She nodded in agreement to what he said, and she walked around the corner, motioning for them to join her. She just wanted to get out of here, as she was claustrophobic.

"Blossom… blossom… What does it mean?" Louisa was still thinking about what she should do. Her minds went through many options but none worked. "It's maybe a secret… a puzzle or a code." She told herself gazing down at the paper.

She clutched her wand and pointed it at the 2-block once again determined to try over again, "Blossom!" Nothing happened. "Ugh! What does it meeeean!" She complained loudly when an idea struck her mind. "Flowers blossom. Flowers express love and relationships sometime!" She jumped on her feet. " Orchideous!" She casted happily causing a bouquet of flowers erupting from her wand.

Almost at once the block has disappeared and Louisa walked forward happily with her wand as a bouquet still. She was proud of herself and thought about telling this to Enya once she's done.

Few minutes later, she came across another crossroad and this time she continued forwards. As she moved on, another wall erupted from behind her jailing her inside with another 2-block in front of her. She looked down at her wand to see the flowers were still there, and there was no note up on the block. "Now, what?" She told herself a bit frightened of being jailed between those walls.

"Finite." And the flowers were gone. She pointed her wand at the block and tried to remember the spell that used to reveal things. "Revolvo? Rovelio? Revealo?" She went on and on for a couple of seconds but nothing happened. "… Revelio?" The 2-block dissolved to be replaced by a giant wall that had her family's picture on it.

Louisa gasped slightly. What was this about? She turned around to see if there were anybody near. No one was near enough fortunately, she crouched on the ground before the painting block and stared at it for a few seconds. She had no idea what this was supposed to mean.

Carr laugh crazily as the 7 continued to tickle her. She laughed until her eyes began to water, but her arms weren't long enough to be able to wipe away the tears. She looked down and something caught her eye. There was a burn mark in the back of the 7. That must have been where the sizzling sound had come from. The burn was shaped like... like numbers, she realized. '2+5' had been burned into the 7. she read out loud. Looking ahead of her and trying to wriggle from the relentless tickling, Carr spotted the equation '2+5' written backwards on the wall where the seven had crashed into it earlier. The beginnings of a thought sprung up in her mind.

"Eight minus one!" she shouted out loud.

The 7 released her immediately and made a high-pitched squeaking noise like a mouse being stepped on. Carr fell back onto her rear end and quickly spouted, "21 divided by three. Ten minus three. Six plus one."

The 7 continued to squeal while backing away from Carr, giving the girl time to retrieve her wand. "Seven times one," she called. She began to smell something similar to burning paper and, the next second, the 7 had burst into flames. It made one more mad lunge for Carr, but she sidestepped it easily and said, "Fifty-six divided by eight."

The flames blazed, causing the he 7 to fall forward and crumple into a pile of ashes. At the same time, the walls opened up to reveal the exits again and Carr continued on through the maze, feeling far more confident than she had when she'd started.