A paragram? Ariadne couldn't recall hearing that word before. But maybe breaking it down would help...Paragram...Para Gram...Gram could stem from the word Grammar...

'Does it have to do with language, like maybe a word game of some sort?' she ventured a guess.

Ooooh...pretty numbers with letters too! When will she be doing one of those?!?!?!?!?!?!

"A pun?" Savannah guessed. "I'm not sure what it mean in Arithmancy, but..."

Yay, she gave a good example! It was a good start then... or not? Because the question had almost nothing to do with Arithmancy. Oh well.

Helena listened carefully to everything that professor Hadley said, even though it seemed that she was talking in some other language. But when it was finally over, Helena raised her hand again. "Something like a... wordplay?" She was talking about the Paragram, of course.

Having settled in one of the back seats, Evelyn took her time in getting her notebook, quill, ink....and whatever else she needed. Or, she really just took as long as she could in getting her materials out. Either way, she missed the first question, which she didn't really mind.

However, she did finally pay attention in time to see Hadley's name being written on the board, along with the associated numbers for each letter appear underneath. And...what? A paragram? "Isn't that like...to play with words an their meanings?" Not an actually play as if putting on a play/musical for others...just the humorous part of it. To mess around with them and their meanings. Hmm.

Woahwoahwoah, what?

The boy opened his mouth to answer back but he shut it soon after. He would have a mind debate with himself instead. Sure, if the cat was ginger, it wouldn't be a coincidence, but it was BLACK, the bringer of bad luck. Jamie frowned to his desk. He didn't like getting things wrong.

The professor was speaking in a different language, he was sure.

"Summin' about words and numbers." He said lazily, then attempted to further his answer, "linking letters with numbers?" Like she had just done with her name on the board. Honestly, Jamie wished he was in an easy lesson right now. Numbers were pointless and rubbish.

Kimalia sighed in relief that she was at least partially right. "Hmm, next question, Paragram.." Kimalia raised her hand. "Paragrams, are puns but without jokes, so they are like a play on words."

Knox didn't know what a paragram was.. according to his classmates however, it was something to do with words? Like a pun? Uhmmm.. first coincidences and now puns?

"Professor Hadley, isn't Arithmancy supposed to be about numbers?" The Slytherin asked, hand in the air. He had gotten the right class, hadn't he?

o_O

Pyth-ag-or-ean. Right. That. That was the chart in their book and it was named after Pythag-somebody. If she couldn't understand the actual Arithmancy, at least she could understand the chart they used. Mhm.

"Totally," Ellie agreed. Even after a good few Scourgify's, something about eating random foods was sketchy. And icky.

As Hadley moved on, the fourth year quickly became confused. She thought she lasted longer than any other Arithmancy class, though. It was quite a feat. But this Gematria, isn't that what they did? "I thought that was called Arithmancy?" They assigned numbers to the letters in their name for all those Life numbers. Were they unknowingly doing Gematria all along?

She wouldn't mind that, actually. Doing something without knowing she could do it was an appealing thought. Especially in Hadley's class when she hardly ever knew how to do anything.

As for Paragram, Ellie didn't have the foggiest. Time to let the overachieving firsties answer.

Samira ran a hand through her dark hair nervously. She was not good with numbers. It made her uneasy being out of her comfort zone. Her usual confident personality was replaced by anxious finger tappings and leg jiggling. But...coincidences. Samira was good with those. They weren't exactly numbers, so Samira felt a bit better.

She raised her hand to answer the question. "A paragram is like a...pun." Merlin she hoped she was right. "So it's like a play on words."

Olivia thought through the question carefully. She knew that a paragram was a pun... but what did that have to do with arithmancy? She could think of nothing else, but this teacher seemed to encourage exploration, so Olivia rose her hand anyway. "Well, paragram commonly means pun or a play on words. Is there a different meaning in arithmancy?" She thought there must be. She couldn't think what puns had to do with the study of numbers.

"Professor Hadley?" Rebecca said. "I have a question. Are the numbers that represent your name the same as each letter in the alphabet?" She was really curious about this because the letter "A" in the professor's name matched up with the number "1".

Words? Puns? WHAT? Alex was SOOOO lost. He blinked a couple of times, trying to scribble down the answers of his fellow classmates as they spoke. He looked at the Slytherin boy who'd asked about Arithmancy being about NUMBERS and nodded. That was certainly HIS interpretation of the class when he'd signed up for it.

He raised his hand. "Well, paragram is like a pun or play on words, so maybe because we're assigning numbers to the letters in words they...overlap somewhere?" he suggested. GAH this class was HARD! Why did he do this to himself?!

A- a paragram? This was somewhat confusing to Ariana, since paragrams were words and Arithmancy was numbers... well, being who she was, she couldn't resist answering the question anyway!
"I... well, a paragram is a word pun, but, that doesn't really have much to do with Arithmancy, as far as I can see...." Ariana blushed at herself. She was sure Professor Hadley had some very good reason to ask that question, that would tie in to the whole 'coincidences' thing as well as numbers. She just had to wait and see what Professor Hadley said.

Kyle listened to what others said her mind was on fire and not exactly the good-type of fire. Sometimes numbers just made her go all confused and stuff. Then she decided to atleast give an answer - even if it weren't exactly the right one.

"Well, it is a pun but more a play on words...if you look at the word pun itself is a palindrome - which you can also consider the word anagram here...and if you look deeper into that you might find that a paragram in itself is a double entendre." She spoke her words sounding slightly more French on the last word. "but those are just adjacent words none of them are the actual meaning really except for the first bit of the pun or play on word" boy was she talking a lot.

Nervous.

She just sounded utterly ravenclaw like she read dictionaries as bed time stories.

"Of course!The class had begun so I can not talk to you but my name is Zenobia",she replied faintly,with a smile.

Aaaaaaaaaaah how Kurumi had missed Arthimancy. She was practically beaming from her seat in the front as she listening to Professor Hadley speak. No chainsaws, no strange viking clothing, so suspicious activity...just her and numbers and calculations.

Listening to Professor Hadley speak, Kurumi jotted down appropriate notes and then shot her hand up in the air to respond to her question. "A paragram, from my understanding, is similar to a pun, but is created by altering a letter or several letters in a word and creates a sense of irony or humor. The word itself means 'jokes by the letter' in Greek. An example of a paragram would be if one were to take the ballet 'Swan Lake', replace the 'a' with an 'i' and add an 'e', and turn it into 'Swine Lake' where pigs perform ballet."

It was also the most common form of bullying she had encounters. Some of the things her classmates came up with in regards to her name were just terrible.

Zenobia raised her hand in a jolting motion.Not sure if she would be called upon she waited.Thinking to herself the answer to the question,"Mere coincidence erm..."I certainly am not going to gamble that mere coincidence brought me to this pass; your talent makes most sophisticated use of coincidence."
— A Spell For Chameleon . Thinking back to a book she read from the library at home.That is the only time she has ever seen something of that nature."Hopefully I am on the right path she thought to herself."

When Kurumi had brought up the idea of switching letters the thought that popped into Kyle's well it felt right like it fit. "Brilliant point there" she commented to her with a smile, then turning to the Professor she brought up her little idea. "In a sense seeing as Kurumi brought up switching letters for other letters in order to make a pun - could people say, switch letters for numbers in the same respect." She asked with a slightly eyebrow raise. "And adding the numbers in that sense would simply equate to Numerology and Arithmancy where you ad the numbers together to get your core numbers" oh yeah she knew her stuff. To a point.

Theodore scribbled furiously on his parchment, his quill scratching away as he attempted to take down nearly every bit of useful information that escaped Professor Hadley's lips. Exhaling smoothly as there was a lull in his note-taking, the sixth year took the tip of his quill to scratch an itchy spot on his curly head. "Well..." He began. "A paragram is a pun... which, considering the subject of arithmancy, could be oxymoronic or paradoxical in itself."

" that which one writes beside like in muggle txting when the 8 on the key pad can = t u or v " he didnt think she was joking os pun didnt seem to fit

Nika smiled at professor Hadley as she spoke. True Arithmancy was a lot of maths, but it wasn't too bad. Besides it's very similar to Divination which just so happens to be Nika's favorite subject. "Oh! A paragram is a pun!" She said eagerly. And puns are fun. "And Puns are plays on words to make them sound funny or to make them sound punny." Hehe. See the pun Hadley? See it?

Gavin raised his hand and when the professor looked his way, he said: "Professor, can it be changing a word in a sentence, their spelling I mean, to say something else? For instance, you would write 'Have a M-A-R-Y day' instead of 'Have a M-E-R-R-Y day'?" he asked, trying to get his point across by spelling Mary/Merry.

Isobel perked up when she saw what she did to her name on the board. She had been flipping through her Arithmancy textbook a few weeks ago and had seen this, so she had started calculating out people. ANYWHO... "A paragram is where a certain number is for different letters," she said. That sounded weird, the wording did, hopefully professor Hadley would be able to understand what she was talking about.

Josephina nodded at the additional response about a coincidence, but said no more on the topic and instead listened to what these kids had to say about paragrams.

But before she could comment on any of the responses, she heard a faint whisper from somewhere in the room and her hazel eyes narrowed in on a small Slytherin girl. "Three points from Slytherin for speaking out of turn after I've begun the lesson." She'll learn next time to use facial expressions or faking note-taking instead of her vocal cords.



Nodding at each of the students, she smiled. "You're all indeed on the right track. Paragrams could be considered a type of wordplay, which is to say that they imply words to be graceful, well-placed even. It is commonly used in literature, in particular, poetry with all lines having the same sum." Perhaps some of them would see where she was heading now with the lesson... But before she went further, there were confused students.



Smiling at the two Slytherins, she nodded. "Yes, Arithmancy is indeed about the mysteries associated with numbers. In which I do believe I've been leading up to..." Hadley said, albeit still vaguely. For a moment. "But if you bear with me, then you'll see in a moment how creative and poetic some of these paragrams are. And how you do have to have a knowledge of numbers in order to be able to write them yourself."


"Yes, yes. This is Arithmancy. Gematria is just simply another name that the Ancient Greeks used." Among other people, but they didn't need to worry too much about that. Just a basic history was all they really needed. Hopefully she wasn't confusing the poor girl by using different terminology that ultimately meant the same things.

Smiling at the Hufflepuff first year, Fina shook her head. "Not particularly. The number system that we'll be using for pretty much most of your Arithmancy careers, unless otherwise stated or you delve further into Numerological studies would be the Pythagorean Number System. This is found in Chapter Two of your textbooks," Hadley informed them, waiting for those who wished to do so to turn to that appropriate page. "Using the chart listed, you'll assign each letter in the word the number. Add up all the numbers in the word together, but in most cases where we reduce to a single digit, with Paragrams, you're NOT going to reduce."

Hmm, perhaps they ought to practice with simple words for a bit. "Okay, so take a few moments to practice this by taking five words synonymous with who you are and translating them to a number equivalent, as I did with my last name, Hadley."

Five words synonymous with who you are… Kurumi repeated in her head. Picking up her quill and setting the tip against her parchment, Kurumi thought long and hard for a moment about what words best described her.

Of course, the first word that popped into her mind was COOKIE, so she immediately wrote that one down before pausing to think of another. She decided another one she should add would be her last name since that was a part of who she was, so she wrote HOLLINGBERRY down next to COOKIE. Thinking a bit more, she opted to include her mother’s maiden name since that was also half of who she was and thus, KUROKAWA was added to the list. She still needed three more and, preferably, short ones. NAÏVE came to mind, so she added that to the list and paused as she thought of one more before settling on STUDIOUS.

Now came the hard part: calculations. Rolling the sleeves of her robes up a bit, Kurumi got to work.


Having completed this portion, Kurumi set her quill down and picked up her parchment to take a better look at it. She found it interesting that most of her calculations had ended up in the 20’s, with the exception of HOLLINGBERRY, and wondered if this was a trend with everyone else. Was there something significant with numbers in the 20’s? Was it bad if one of the numbers was much higher than the rest? Kurumi supposed she would just have to wait and see how things turned out.

Looking around, she wondered if Treyen and Connor were alright with these calculations. They both seemed to be rubbish at Arithmancy.