I do hope this chapter turns out all right. This new ff.net formating is driving me insane!
AN: Well, it's been an awfully long time. ::angry readers growl and hurl tomatoes:: Eep! I'm sooooooo sorry for the delay. I haven't been able to write at all since... winter break I think. xP This year has been absolutely insane. I had the beginning of this chapter sitting on my computer for the longest time, but I was unable to touch it. :'(
Summer at last. And with Prisoner of Azkaban in theaters, I thought it was definitely time to update this. (haven't seen the movie yet, how is it?)
So before I am beat up any more, here's chapter 5! "..." is talking, '...' is thought, [...] is AN or definition, (...) is extra info but part of the fic, ... means trailed off, -- means interrupted.
(Last time Prof Osaka/Naru/Molly explained the Legend of the Nine, Rowena Ravenclaw's last prophecy as Nine Hopes that would rise from Hogwarts. Filch freaked out and ran into the Great Hall with a burning Goblet of Fire, which spat out 5 slips of paper, with illegible markings. Osaka passed out. ")
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The common rooms were buzzing that evening. After the initial shock, tongues wagged freely and rumors flew about Osaka's fainting spell and the meaning of her eerie voice. The slips of paper and strange actions of the Goblet of Fire seemed forgotten to all, except a select few.
In the Gryffindor common room, Harry sat quietly in a corner. Cautiously avoiding any eager eyes, he turned the slip of paper over again to examine it more closely. He stared at the markings carefully, glanced at them from far away, scratched the paper, rubbed it, and even sniffed it. Still, he could discover nothing. The faint delicate lines across the parchment remained meaningless. Harry groaned in frustration and threw off his glasses.
"Oi! 'Arry!" cried Ron, making his way slowly through the crowd after completing another enthusiastic detailed tale of the Goblet and the weird spirit that seemed to come over the Japanese professor. In truth, he had been basking in the glory of being one of the few that had witnesses the strange incidents in the Great Hall and wanted to nurse the attention to its fullest before it died down. He was smiling widely, but stepped back quickly at the sullen look on Harry's face. "What's eating you?!"
Harry simply glared at him and thrust out the paper. Ron stared at him questioningly, but then recognition dawned on his face and he took the paper. "Oh, this little thing!" He turned it every direction and looked at it from odd angles. "Think it means anything?"
"I'm positive that it does!" Harry almost snapped. Ron glanced up, alarmed by his attitude, but Harry caught himself and tried to compose his frustration. "It's just... this is what happened last time. With the Egg. I'm sure it means something; the Goblet of Fire doesn't throw out papers every time it has a fancy to. And now the Goblet has chosen me again and given me some obscure piece of paper with scratches on it! How am I supposed to know what it means!"
Behind them, a book suddenly slammed shut. Startled, Harry and Ron jumped up quickly and turned around to be met with a glaring Hermione. "Obviously the two of you paid no attention to Osaka or anything that she said tonight," she declared haughtily.
"What are you talking about?" replied Ron angrily, returning her glare.
"I'm talking about the Legend of the Nine. Portraits aren't stupid, you know."
This meant nothing to Ron and Harry. "And...?"
Hermione sighed with exasperation, and began in a patronizing voice. "Sure, Osaka said many people automatically refer to the Legend when time are bad, but I think there may be more to it this time. I suppose I can assume that you weren't listening close enough to what Osaka said in her trance either, when she read from her slip of paper. It wasn't the greatest poem, but its message was clearly there. Seems like some other hopeful message at first, talking about all the 'eight's. But in the final line, just before she blacked out, she said: 'The Last will come to vanquish the dark might'."
Harry and Ron still looked at her blankly.
"Oh c'mon guys, the math is simple! Eight elements, eight characteristics, eight seeds. But then one more, one which seems mightier than the rest!"
"The Legend of the Nine," uttered Harry softly. He'd almost forgotten about it, until Hermione had made the connection.
"But how does that help us understand this paper?" asked Ron sullenly, still grasping the slip.
"I'm trying to figure that out," said Hermione as she plopped back into her chair and opened her book again. "I got this book from the library just after it happened. Madame Pince led me to some forgotten corner where the older books on legends lay, and I found this."
Hermione held up the ancient book for them to see clearly. The rich navy blue covering was caked with the dust of the ages, and the thin binding had nearly broken to pieces. The silver lettering had almost completely faded from the front, and Harry and Ron could barely make out the title: Lady Lumeria's Legends & Lore. Hermione skimmed quickly, and the handwritten pages rustled noisily.
"Lumeria began her book by explaining her ancestry and scholarly rank among the wizarding world. She claimed some obscure relation to Ravenclaw, which is what called this book to my attention. Pince tried to dissuade me from checking it out because of its age and small size, but I was insistent. Lumeria seems to catalog legends and oral tales that have been passed through friends and family on to her. Ah! Here were are: 'The Legend of the Nine'."
Hermione read carefully. " 'The Legend of the Nine, also called The Prophecy, arose from Rowena Ravenclaw's final and most insightful use of foresight at the time of her death. Inscribed by her son, the original documents have been lost, but the hope of the Legend itself lies at the heart of every wizard.' Then she goes on for awhile again, flaunting about how she is some odd indirect descendent through some aunt's cousin or something. Here we go again: 'After nearly a century of devoted work toward the education of young wizards, Rowena Ravenclaw died in the night, not long the moon had set and the last stars were fading into the morning sky. Some have attributed her final vision to her love and bond to the moon and the stars. A few radicals even claim that the 'Nine Hope's of her vision will arise from other worlds and come to earth's aid. Such an idea, however, is contrary to Rowena's own words.' "
The trio was silent for a moment, and the sound of a Friday night common room reached their ears. "I still don't understand how this helps us with the paper," said Harry at last.
"I know it's not much," said Hermione, betraying a hint of her frustration, "but it's all I could find on short notice. But I think there is something more here, something more than just a haughty lady from nearly a millennium ago."
"Like what?" challenged Ron. "This book has told us even less than Osaka did!"
"Well, the whole mention of the moon and the stars, for example. It seems odd that someone would bother to mention such a miniscule fact. Maybe Lumeria is just obsessed with astrology, I don't know. But I think that maybe Ravenclaw's love of the night sky might be a key to the Legend, maybe something that was common knowledge at Lumeria's time so no one bothered to write it down, but it has been lost over the ages."
"You're being cryptic again, Mione," warned Ron with a smirk.
"I'm just hypothesizing. I was hoping I'd be able to find some kind of translation code in this book, but clearly Lumeria had no thoughts for such a thing. So I'm left guessing on the little that we have."
Meanwhile, Harry was lost in his own thoughts. Hermione's mention of the night sky had triggered something... but what? Something someone had said, someone had whispered...
"Hermione!" said Harry suddenly, interrupted their argument. "The Mistress of the Stars!"
Now it was Hermione (and Ron's) turn to look confused. "The portraits, they spoke of The Prophecy and the Mistress of the Stars!"
A light dawned upon Hermione and Ron. "But..." said Ron cautiously, "they could have just been referring to Ravenclaw, right?"
"Ravenclaw in relation to the Legend! Harry, what if the Mistress of the Stars is the last 'Hope', the greatest one? What if Ravenclaw is the Mistress of the Stars?"
They were silent as Hermione's words seemed to echo through the room. Even the wild laughter of the common room seemed to fade away. "Could Rowena Ravenclaw really have prophesized her return?" wondered Harry out loud.
"We have to ask Osaka," said Hermione with excitement. "She should recover by tomorrow; she only passed out after all. And she clearly knows more about this Legend, more than she lets on."
"Will she answer though?" mused Ron cynically.
"There's only one way to find out," smirked Hermione.
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But Osaka could not be found the next day, nor the following. Instead, the trio filled their free time searching through ancient texts in the dusty corner of the library. However, few books mentioned the Legend at all, let alone provided a translation guide or more information than Lumeria had.
Professor Osaka arrived late to class on Monday, so Harry, Ron, and Hermione were forced to wait until the conclusion of the class to approach the professor. The gossip about the events of Friday night had died down, and Osaka didn't mention it. She merely continued her lesson on the alphabets and writing styles of ancient magic cultures, specifically runes. Hermione carefully noted the different types of moon-letters in her notebookÑone, Lunavidere, inscribed upon parchment and especially maps, whose runes would only appear when the parchment was held up to the light of a full moon, another, Lunapetra, which was inscribed on many ancient monoliths and during the right phase of the moon when the light shone down upon a certain face of the stone, would reveal a doorway or written secret of the tribe. Osaka paid special attention to the final and rarest typeLunalingua, letters written in the long lost runes of Lunarian, whose meaning could only be understood today when read through moonlight. She glanced strangely and meaningfully at Harry during the final part of the lesson.
As the bell rang, Harry, Ron, and Hermione struggled against the crowd towards Osaka's desk. She slowly looked up from her notes at the anxious trio. "And how may I help you?" she asked politely.
"Professor, we need to know who is the Mistress of the Stars," said Hermione quickly.
Osaka paused a moment, but her freckled face did not appear surprised. "Who? I believe your question should be 'where?', for now at least. But as it is, I cannot answer that question."
The faces of the trio visibly fell. "But surely you know, Professor! You are so studied and knowledgeable in this area!" cried Hermione.
Osaka glanced at them knowingly, but did not directly reply. "Many things have been lost to history," she said slowly, her usual meaningful voice gaining even more weight. "But the Mistress of the Stars will not be found through the discover of her identity. There is a great search you and others must begin soon, before it is too late. You hold the map already, but must learn to use the compass," she said cryptically. Then she smiled as she stood and gathered her notes to leave. "Perhaps you should pay more attention to my lessons." With a final grin and a wink, she turned to leave the room.
"Professor!" the trio cried after her.
"Good afternoon," she said cheerfully as she left the classroom.
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As Osaka recommended, Hermione went carefully through her well-kept notes from History of Magic. However, nothing seemed to mention Ravenclaw or the Legend of the Nine at all. She sighed in defeat as she reached the last page of notes once more. How could runes help them?
Then something clicked in Hermione's mind. Runes. A forgotten alphabet. "Harry, let me see that paper!" she cried quickly through the open door of her dormitory.
Harry and Ron hurried upstairs quickly at the sound of her call. "What was that about?" Ron asked peevishly as they hovered on the threshold of the room.
"Oh come on in," said Hermione with a bit of annoyance. "No one will really care if you're in here or not. Now let me see that paper!"
Harry slowly drew out the slip of paper he now carried in his pocket. The markings remained unchanged, but there was a new light in them to Hermione.
"Clearly not Lunapetra and I doubt it's Lunavidere, but there's a chance," she mumbled to herself. "But no, if this is what I think it is... What's the phase of the moon tonight?" she asked outloud suddenly.
"Waxing gibbous," said Ron promptly, "almost full."
"Perfect," said Hermione with a smile. "Let's hope for no clouds. Tonight, we visit Hagrid."
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AN: Hope I didn't batter the Latin too much there, eep. And FYI, I got the idea for the first type of moon-letters (Lunavidere) from Thorin's map that Elrond reads in The Hobbit. :D
Review Responses!
erika - Opps! Sorry this has been so confusing! " The history of Magic professor is Naru Osaka aka Serena's friend Molly. There's more to that coming in the future, so I can't say more. And as for Usa returning... well, think of it as different lives. In one life, she was born into the HP world but killed by Voldemort. She was born into another and claimed her role as Cosmos, and now.... we shall see. ;D Thanks!
Mystical Jade- LOL!!!!! I know, I'm evil and I love cliffhangers... except when I'm the reader. " Sorry it took so long to get back from the cliff lol.
Skittles the Sugar Fairy- ACK!!!! I hope your computer is better!
Lanc- Heh, yah I think it would be awesome to learn History of Magic... provided that you have an exciting professor. And as for Rowena being the last... honestly I dunno why I chose her. I have always thought of her being the last (Slazar running away and dying after awhile; probably Godric next, tired out from battle; then Helga dying like an old peaceful grandma; and finally Rowena, exhausted in old age and wisdom, slowly fading away...) Almost wrote a Founders fic once, and I guess this idea stayed with me. And thanks for the pairing suggestions lol.Kagome-Chan4- yeah, I need to get some DADA in here, just cause Lupin is so amazing. It's coming soon. And as for the senshi... you won't see them waltzing in as the characters we love from BSSM... not yet at least. They will come, but it will take time. There will be glimpses first, then as they are all gathered, they will become more than just spirits or memories...
Kitoky- Sorry that Lupin/Usa will take so long. :( It will come, I promise! :D
Winterfirepixie- I've decided that for both these fics (Spellbound and The Gathering Starlight), the seeds will be the seeds of the senshi proper. There's a chance he might show up in this fic (and possibly ChibiUsa too) in a similar way that Naru did, however.
Eternal Cosmos- Lol, I can't wait for Cosmos to come either, but it must take time. I have it all planned out in my head however. :D I only hope the chapter will appear as grand as I plan it... And I hope that I can coincide her arrival in The Gathering Starlight with this fic. Twould be really kewl lol. :D
Zaeria- LOL!!!!!!!! I dunno though, I've become very fond of my frying pan. I'll keep a mallet handy though. ;D And yes, riddles are coming. yay! "
Thank you also to:
physicschik
x3-staRr3e-x3
Sushi
Tsuki no Tenshi
delete.the.stars
Moon-n-Universe-Goddess
Mayumi-8805
the caffiene fairy
Moonprincess202
raine84
Mistress
Celestial DreamBlaze
DevilWench
Brightness
Chibi-Cola
Vittaria
Birdgirl
Thank you all for your patience and dedication. Hopefully, with school now out, I will be able to write more often.
... Then again, with 11 unfinished fics (and more ideas that I have to restrain myself from) and a service trip and summer assignments, not to mention my Trip to England (SO EXCITED), who knows? '
Lol, thank you all. Ja ne!
Calli-chan