Kurumi watched and winced as several of her classmates attempted to open the box and squeaked several times as a few of them tried more direct ways to opening the box. Unfortunately, none of them were successful. Although, it did make Kurumi feel better to know that simply casting Alohamora wasn't the answer.

CURSED?! Wait...Professor Hadley had brought in a cursed...oh, never mind. The tension in Kurumi's body eased a bit as it was explained that it wasn't the sort of cursed object one would really find in the wizarding world. It was nice to know that at least one of her professors wasn't completely insane. Designed for educating. Okay. That was good.

Kurumi's eyes flicked towards the box when the numbers appeared and she studied them for a few moments. She looked down at her parchment and began to scribble a few things as well before raising her hand. "Two of the number combinations you asked us to think about are in it, 080 and 52."

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.

Jesifur hadn't realized what happened til the spell wore off, she was left shivering. She caught the last part of what the teacher said. Numbers 2808052749. Looking at the numbers Jesifur saw 28, 080, 52, and then the 749. She raised her hand, "The first few are number groupings you gave us earlier. 28, 080, 52, the 749 I am less certain off."

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.''

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.

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.

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.

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?"

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..."

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.

"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.

"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.

Ouch! Jenny had to cringe every time someone got cursed off by the box. She was definitely not planning to keep one of those in her home...although it seemed like it did provide some great security.

Jenny quickly scribbled down the number on her parchment. 2808052749...2808052749... Quickly Jenny raised her hand. "There's 28 and 080 from before, professor."

Then she went back to her parchment. What next? Jenny kept her hands to her side, preventing herself from pulling out too much of her hair. It was frustrating indeed. And she still couldn't get over how she lost a few house points back then...

52...and 749? Then she heard someone else mention it. Of course! Five plus two equals seven, then square the seven, and the answer will be...you-know-what. How the logic of math can be so confusing sometimes.

Jenny grimaced. Arithmancy was definitely becoming one of her least favorite classes ever.

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 !!

Alyssa looked over at Penny for reassurance. She was a very smart girl and Alyssa hoped that maybe she had an answer to Professor Hadley's question, because even though she, Alyssa had given an answer, with her lack of knowledge of Arithmancy, chances were that her answer was wrong. But looking over at Penny, Alyssa realized that Penny was having a tough time too.

"Oh well, at least we're trying, " Alyssa told Penny.

After seeing you needed your wand and since Minerva didn't know enough spells yet she decided to chicken out. She thought about the numbers the professor had just given them.2808052749 "Well professor looking at these numbers compared to the ones you had given us before. 080 and 52 are two you had given us and then looking at our book with the meanings could it have something to do with change in authority or authority of change?"

"I agree with Minerva also I think that the number 28 tells the box that we are humans with human magic and that we have authority over the box. Also the numbers 749 I think have something to do with myths or magic and also could be the end of the spell as number 9 is about endings." He knew he was wrong but he had a go at least.

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.

"Yes, previous number groupings." Fina smiled at the students who caught onto those numbers in the larger number.


"The use of the number?" Did that student just ask that? Oh it was a good thing she was a nice Professor. "You'll see in just a moment. But numbers, no matter how large or small, have meaning."

Josephina stared at the Seventh Year Gryffindor for a moment. Did he seriously just ask that? Joshua Carter knew better; Fina knew that. "You can't just eliminate numbers, Mr Carter." She said shaking her head. But they could do something else.

"The first two numbers are part of the answer..." Hadley explained, still not really leading onto much more.

Reducing? That was almost as bad as Carter's suggestion of omitting numbers. "Reducing numbers is not necessary for this topic of Arithmancy." Fina reiterated upon, sure she had mentioned something similar before.

Ah. Smart claw! "Not human authority, but you're thinking on the right page with your mention of humans." Yup.

"Breaking it up would help, yes!" Fina beamed at the Lion. But not in the way she was suggesting.

"Because you're trying to make this more complicated than it is..." Yup. No need to figure out patterns or anything; just having an understand of number characteristics.

"Why are we omitting numbers again?" Hadley frowned at the Ravenclaw. "All numbers are there for a reason."

"You're on the right track with recognizing those number groupings..." Well the ones she asked them to. So no, Alyssa, you're not as bad as you think you are with this subject.

"You're right in that... 080 is a special part of the number..." Hadley reiterated again, still not revealing much.


Aw. One of her Hufflepuffs had this dazed look on her face. Clearly curse breaking was not in her future. "No worries if you don't get these concepts right away. There are many wizards and witches that will never understand the inner workings of curse breaking."


"We're not eliminating any numbers," Hadley said again. Sorry to disappoint.

Flicking her wand at the hovering, glowing number, she broke it apart in four places. "As several of you mentioned, the number 080 is very important to the spell."

28 080 527 4 9

"The order of the numbers is important as well, and yes, the groupings can be confusing. But there are four essential parts for a numerical spell. Unfortunately there is no easy way to determine this, but usually by tapping the sections of the spell it can be guessed." She paused, and flicked her wand again at the board this time.

Basis
Kernel/Core
Range
Cline/Type

"Tapping the wrong part of the number will not break up the numbers, as their groups always always remain intact." She paused, letting this sink in for a moment. "The basis, first part of the spell, determines what the spell affects. The kernel or core, is what the spell does. Next is the range, which says how the spell is activated. And the final part of the spell, which is the last two parts actually, is what kind of spell it is."

"With that said, what does the core of the spell, or 080, say about the spell does?"

WHYYYY? Why not omit the numbers and then see the meaning of the one remaining? It was much healthier to the mind, Louisa could tell that from the explanation the Professor started reciting.

O__o

And to have a thread of hope that Arithmancy was finally making little sense. Heh. Louisa stared at the 080 number and then back to the numbers meaning.

"It...changes...the material?" Of the box or something inside it. Louisa kept her hand raised in the air as her eyes gazed down at the book. Yes, her hand was still raised even AFTER she'd answered.. mind blocks did that to people.

Kurumi thought for a moment about everything that Professor Hadley had just told them. So, if the first two numbers were related to what the spell effects, in this case the box and - going on the number's meaning - the success of human magic - then the 080 had to be related to that, right?

Kurumi slowly raised her hand. "It...opens the box?" she asked cocking her head to the side. "Or rather, it gives us the ability to be able to open the box?" Sorry, Professor Hadley, but you were going to be given a follow up question to your own. "When you say that the first two numbers are what the spell effects...does that mean that the spell effects the box or it effects US, the witches and wizards trying to open the box?"

And if that was the case, did they actually need a house elf to help them open the box?! 7 was listed there in the third set of numbers that seemed to be implying that the spell needed the physical touch of both wizards and house elfs themselves, or their magic, to open the box.

Could a house elf please please PLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEASE come to class?!

What does the core say that the spell does? Hmm...

Vashti glanced down at her notes, focusing particular on the characteristics of the numbers zero and eight. She read them a couple times silently in her mind, trying to think of something the spell could do based on these traits. Then, suddenly, the words "nothing" and "movement" caught her eye. Hmm. Vashti decided it was worth suggesting, so she raised her hand. "Does it stop movement?" Hadn't some of the students, when trying to open the box earlier with magic, suddenly stopped moving? So perhaps that was what the spell did.

Amethyst thought about it. The whole point of talking about this had started with the box. So, maybe...Amethyst raised her hand up and began to speak. "Well, the curse was placed on the box, so..." She stopped for a second but continued. "the spell prevents someone from opening the box?"

Alyssa heaved a sigh of relief and was glad that Professor was nice enough to acknowledge her effort. So she decided to try harder to get closer to a better answer than her last tries. After thinking for awhile, Alyssa raised her hand when she thought she might have an answer that made better sense.

"Professor you mentioned that the first series of numbers determined what the spell affects. So 28 was to tell the spell that it would be focused on the box. The next series of numbers 080 is the kernel or core, which is what the spell does. In this case, I would say that the numbers affect how one opens the box. Of course the normal way would be just to open it manually. The spell prevents the opening of it through the usual means and will only obey the command that will open it."

Ashley was a little confused on all of the numbers, but he made sure to write everything down so that he could really look over it later. For now, he just tried to concentrate on what the professor was saying, in hopes that it would sink in that way. He looked at the numbers, and then thought about the question, raising his hand when he had somewhat of an idea.
"Does the number..." he paused and glanced at his page of notes. "Maybe it changes your authority into nothing? So that's why you can't just use a spell to open it?"
It... sounded like an answer, sure.