"Argh, Malfoy. What was that for, you great prat."Said Ginny after
recovering herself from her recent shock.
"Ooh the little Weasley was scared was she?" said Malfoy in his usual drawling voice.
But they were saved from any further arguments when professor Vector entered the class.
"Good evening students" said professor Vector merrily smiling at the two of them. "Just a second. I need to get the files for your project." she summoned the files.
"Aah yes. Since you two are the top of your years in arithmancy, a special project has been given to you. You will be working on the many dairies of Randolph Rampant."
Seeing the surprised look on their faces, and rightly assuming that they did not know who he was, she continued. "He was a great arithmeticians. Fortunately all his dairies have been saved. You see he died more than a hundred years ago. Since then no one has been able to decipher all the dairies. That is why the project has been handed on to you." she beamed at them.
"How do you know that we can solve it? I mean, since none of greater wizards have been able to do it?" asked Draco his voice full of curiosity. This was starting to get interesting.
"In all 50 years of my teaching of Hogwarts, I have not known 2 such children who are so brilliant in their work." She paused. "I wasn't so sure of giving this project to the both of you. At least until a few days ago. When I was browsing through some old divination folders, I found some parchment. Its color suggested that it did not belong there. I took it out and read it. Imagine my surprise when I deciphered it. It pointed to the works of the great works of Rampant. It went on to further say that the works could only be deciphered by fire and ice. At first at pondered over it. Then the conclusion came. They were talking about hair color! Since my best students at arithmancy have the hair color of red and silver, the conclusion was easy. I pondered over the remaining scriptures and they all pointed to you, miss Ginny and Mr. Malfoy. It all fit together like a puzzle. Now he only thing left is for you to solve it.
Ginny was shocked. She did not know what to think. Just imagine plain, old Ginny Weasley in a prophecy. She smiled. This was the most exciting thing that ever happened to her, except when she got selected for Quidditch. She smiled again. But her only regret was that she was going to have to work with Malfoy.
She could see Malfoy covering his expressions of shock on his face and putting on his usual bored one. She wondered why he was so...so aloof. Then she snapped her self out of it. She was feeling sorry for a Malfoy. He did not need pity.
She went back thinking how exciting this project would be. She was suddenly startled by Draco's voice,
"It all sounds great, professor Vector. When do we start?" Said Draco. This was something new to him. Sure, he was smart, but he did not think that arithmancy would get him anywhere. He had taken it to as he was very interested in adding and finding out the future and stuff like that. But he was not going to tell anybody that. Draco Malfoy was secretive and kept his thoughts to himself and only opened his mouth either to insult somebody, give orders to Crabbe and goyle or to answer teachers.
"You will not be working in the library. It will be too disturbing, as these papers have rather complicated designs and figures. You will not be able to work with all the noise there."Professor Vector said addressing the two of them.
"I have spoken to professor dumbeldore and he has agreed to what I suggested," she continued. You will be getting a separate room to work in. I will give you the map. You will find everything you need there. You are expected to start from today. Since this is a special project, you will have extended time. You will be informed when you have to stop. It could take well over two years to complete. You will have t work very hard" she said shifting her gaze alternately from Draco to Ginny.
"You can leave now." she said handing out the maps leading to the room.
Once outside the door, Ginny found Ron waiting for her. 'Probably wants something from me, like some money to buy yet another present for hermione' she thought bitterly. Ron and hermione were going out since last year, and Ron loved to buy her gifts.
She was right. He stepped out and directly asked her for money, but not before eyeing Draco, who was standing behind Ginny, waiting to talk to her.
"Tonight, eight o'clock Weasley" said Draco with his customary smirk. He knew this would anger Ron. And how right he was. He rushed to punch Draco. Ginny whipped out her wand and put a restraining charm on him, long enough for Draco to smirk at Ron and walk away.
Ron was furious. "You are going out with the bloody prat." He spat at her. And then he slapped her. Hard. He did not want to listen to her excuses. For a minute Ginny was shocked. Then she put a spell on him. And then bellowing on the top of her voice explained about the project. Ron looked sheepish and apologized to her. She just gave him a look of pure discontent and stomped of.
Ron did not bother to run after her. He just wanted some money; he did not want to apologize again to his baby sister.
Draco was watching all this. He had been hiding behind a statue of a stone gargoyle. He was surprised that Ginny had stood up for him. He expected her to let Ron beat him up.
'This is going to be an interesting year' He said a slight smile on his face.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Draco stood staring after Ginny. He was still surprised that she had stood up for him. He grinned
Draco had grown in the past few years. He was no longer the thin, tall boy who taunted potter. He was now tall and very handsome. Instead of his silvery hair, which he had earlier, he now had golden hair, which girls were irresistible to. His body had filled out as well. He was very muscular after years of Quidditch training. Most girls found him irrestible.
Draco slowly made his way down to the library. He wanted to think this over. The redhead was very pretty and she did not even acknowledge it. She had lovely curves, which highlighted her great body. Unfortunately her robes hid everything.
He reached the library. He entered it softly as to not anger the grouchy Madame pince who seemed to be telling at a poor first year for 'disturbing the peace and silence of the library'. For once Draco agreed with her.
Draco decided that he would look awkward without a book, so he went behind a bookshelf to search for one. He wondered what to take when he remembered Randolf Rampant. He searched a few shelves and came across a book with the title; arithmancy's great scientists and achievers .he smiled this was what he wanted.
He took the book with him and sat at an empty table. He swung the heavy book on the small table. He opened it and looked in the index and found what he was looking for;Randolf Rampant the unknown. He wondered why the strange name until he saw the page; there was only about half a page on him given in a very curly, swirly script. He sighed. He had planned to read at least five pages on Randolf Rampant. Thinking that it was probably better to copy it down, he reached into his bag and pulled out a quill and a piece of parchment. Slowly he copied word by word. There were long words and it was in Latin so he had to translate each sentence before writing it down. After nearly an hour he was done. He inspected it one last time before keeping the book back in the shelf and checking the name of the book.
Randolf Rampant
Randolf Rampant was a great arithmetician and wizard, though not much was known about him. There are just a few well-known facts about him. Randolf Rampant lived in Scotland .he studied in durmstrang in Bulgaria, as he was not very rich and education then was very expensive. After his graduation, he remained at durmstrang, though not as a student but as a teacher of the then highly favored and extremely difficult subject of the dark arts. He had taken the job out of two reasons: he badly needed the money and the only thing he had qualified better than any of his peers was at the dark arts.
From the defense against the dark arts, the class changed to the powers of demonstrating and the use of dark arts, as it is today. However Rampant taught in a way that was most abusive. It was said that he regularly put students under dark spells, including inperius (the other unforgivables weren't invented yet) for long periods of time. After a while the head master of the school, none other than professor Idril gave him the pink slip.
Furious, and now with no money, Rampant retired back to Scotland at the mere age of 25.he spent most of his time in an house, an old beaten up shack. However after a little while, he accumulated great amounts of wealth, which he claimed he had inherited from a rich uncle.
People however had other thoughts, especially his neighbors who would be woken at sometime in the night by loud cursing and swearing. They also heard mutterings of dark curses.
After accumulating his great wealth Rampant moved into a new neighbourhood.with his great wealth he bought a new house, but he continued his late nights and his regular periods of disturbing words and curses still occurred.
It is said that Randolf Rampant maintained his life in pages and dairies. These were found a year later after he died which was in 1862.all his papers were in code. But a few papers were translated and they revealed the spell wingardium leviosa, which is in great use of today. They also revealed a few other spells and charms which are less popular today.
After his death, his dairies were transported to the ministry and to record are still there today. Great scientists still puzzle over the dairies of Randolf Rampant.
~@~
That was all that was given. Draco stared at the piece of parchment in his hands, suddenly noting that the time was half to eight and also how hungry he was. Deciding that he would show his new information to Weasley, he put it in his pocket, and headed to the great hall for a quick dinner.
________________________________________________________________________
Ginny was in a good mood. Today nearly everything had gone her way. She smiled happily.
Looking up from her happy daze she saw the time and panicked.there was less than an hour left for her meeting with Malfoy. After having a quick shower, she went down to the great hall for dinner.
On reaching the great hall and seeing her friends sitting with their respective boyfriends, she made her way to an empty seat and the end of the table, deciding to be inconsipious as possible to avoid anyone from seeing her lack of friends.
A little while later, after finishing her dinner she made her way back to the common room. As soon as she sat down on one of the most comfy chairs, all prepared to go to sleep, she remembered the project. She had not been able to do much research during the day due to the time consuming nature of quidditch and lessons.
She rushed up the stairs to her dormitory, where she had kept her bag. Grabbing a few quills, a couple of sheets of parchment and her arithmancy translation's and dictionary, she rushed down, grabbing the map on the way.
She found the room with ease. It was only a short walk from the Griffindor tower. The door was of great oak and was very huge. Timidly she opened the huge door and entered. She gasped at the sight that met her eyes.
The room was large, no doubt. There was a long table and two couches.there were also a number of boxes, which were as far as Ginny could see, were stuffed with parchment. There were at least twenty boxes.
"Welcome Weasley" said a loud drawling voice from one of the couches. "Finally decided to show up." Ginny jumped she had not noticed Malfoy as he was hidden by the massive piles of parchment in front of him.
"At least try to be civil, while we are working together." snapped Ginny.
"Right" said Draco much to Ginny surprise. He made his way to the table and gestured her to sit besides him.
Putting her bag on one of the couches, she made her way towards the table, and took a seat next to Draco. He started explaining what they were starting.
"The boxes aren't labeled so we have to sort them out. Since you did not show up, I chose one to start with. It looked like the one with the least parchement."He said as if picking an excuse for choosing that particular box.
Ginny looked at the sheets in the cardboard box. She took out a couple of them. They had writings all over them. "Where should we start? They all look the same to me." said Ginny with obvious confusion.
Sighing Draco took the papers from her and said, "let's start with these. They look like these are the beginnings of a paragraph." He took out what he thought to be the first page and placed it before them. Then is muttered 'copius' under his breath and then almost instantly there were two copies of the sheet.
Draco leaned over and pointed out from where to start. Ginny took out the parchment she had brought along and started translating.
Ginny bit her lip. This was very tedious they had been at it for nearly three hours. The time was nearly eleven. So far all they had translated was 2 paragraphs. The main information was about the history of arithmancy, a lot of which she had not known, and something of what to expect in the other papers. She revised her paper once before comparing it with Draco's
Arithmancy is an ancient form of fortune telling. But unlike divination, arithmancy is not based on interpreting fuzzy images, or attributing meaning to random shapes and squiggles, or to reading of shapeless tealeaves, but on hard-and-fast rules and mathematical calculation.
Arithmancy is derived from the Greek word arithma meaning number and mancy meaning prophecy. This more or less accurate form of divination has been used by wizards, for more than two thousand years, to analyze and develop their strengths and talents and chart their future paths.
However, over the past five centuries, the meaning of arithmancy has changed. It is now being used as a code and the old meaning of arithmancy has faded. This, my personal dairy, is all recorded in arithmancy and as you read on you will also learn about my life and my works. I have placed a spell over all my works so that they can only be read if fire and lightening are put in the same room, if they are together. They will be destined to create great things.
'So I am fire' thought Ginny silently, to herself 'well it fits, doesn't it? I mean my hair is red like fire and I have a quick temper and a fiery demeanor. And Draco, Draco has silverish-blond hair like lightening. Also it is hard to imagine him losing his temper, which means that he has a cool nature. Then are really destined to do great things together? We fit the prophecy, don't we? I wonder what will happen. What else is in those papers? I am dieing to find out.'
She was interrupted from her smooth train of thought by Draco's voice.
"Have you finished with that yet? Because if you haven't please hurry up, it getting really late and in case you haven't noticed tomorrow we have classes."
To her surprise she felt a blush coming on her face. She bit her lip forcing it back. "Yes, I am done" she murmured. Just then Malfoy leaned a little closer. She could now smell is cologne. It smelled like cloves and lemon. She was so caught up in it that she did not notice how close they were. Malfoy head was looking into her paper and his hand was just inches away from hers. 'What perfect hair' thought Ginny. 'It looks so soft. I wish I could run my hand through it.' Then immediately she slapped herself mentally. She was thinking about Draco Malfoy. The Draco Malfoy.
Draco jumped at the sudden movement beside him. "Are you all right" he asked her, with a hint of concern in his voice.
Ginny felt the familair blush creeping on her face. "Yes" she muttered. She was becoming just like on of his groupies!
Thankfully, Draco went back to reading her translation. Ginny was relived. 'What is wrong with me ' she mentally asked herself.
"I think we will continue this tomorrow. It is already very late." Said Draco looking at the clock near the entrance. It said 'much too late for children'.
Ginny, too tired to respond nodded in reply. Picking up her bag, she went out of the room after bidding a good night to Draco, who was still in there, as he had volunteered to tidy up the table.
As Ginny left, she smiled to herself. She felt tired and very happy.
____________________-
Draco looked around the room in which he was alone in. there was not an awful lot to clean since they had barely opened one box. First he stuffed his papers neatly in his bag, separating his translations from the originals, in a muggle folder he had found in a junk shop in Diagon-Alley. He hated the wizard folders. They would organize his papers and more often then not he would find his arithmancy papers (which constituted most of the papers) mixed with his transfiguration homework.
As he cleaned the table and put the papers and stationary in their respective places, he thought about his life. now with the downfall of voldemort his life had taken a drastic detour. His father, you-know-who's right hand man now had little to be proud of. True, the Malfoy name still held some respect, but Draco felt it was more out of fear then out of respect.
His father, for a while after voldemorts downfall, had become quite mad. After a few months, he became all right. Now he started followers who were still loyal to the dark lord. Cornelius Fudge who had been thrown off his post of minister of magic for not taken action against the dark lord, was regularly seen at the malfoy manor. Fudge, whose motto was 'if you can't beat them, join them' had teamed up with lucious . 'well fudge is a dunderhead, father will have complete control over him' draco thought to himself.
It was true that Fudge was stupid, but he had contacts all over the wizarding world, who were helpful to lucious. 'hah, I will never be able to call him father, not after last summer.'thoght Draco .
Draco's vacation at the Manor was pure and utter hell. Lucious angry, thet his son had not taken his side while fighting for voldemort had resorted to whippings. Narcissa, draco's mother was not able to help him as she was under the imperious spell. Draco in the dungeon and whipped him with a hard belt or used crucitas every time he cried out in pain.'the only thing I learned at the malfoy manor was tolerance. Tolerance of great pain.' Draco thought bitterly he still had a couple of white scars left after a faithful house-elf had managed to ' tidy him up a bit' as he had sarcastically put it. Dinky was the only creature in the wretched Manor who did not snarl at the sight of him.
By this time he had finished cleaning up the small mess they had made. Too tired to crawl to his dormitory, he put his bag in a corner of the room, and curled on one of the comfortable couches.
~~~~~~~~~~! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ginny was bored. she had been up for nearly an hour. There was no quidditch practice also. She had nothing to do. There was to be a special assembly that morning for the whole school. That was what had woken her up nearly an hour ago. A messenger of dumbeldore's had gone into every dormitory and woken the person closet to the window. Unfortunately it was Ginny in the girl's griffindor dormitory. And no one else had woken up either, so she had no one to talk to. With a sigh she wondered what dumbeldore's special assembly was to be about. Deciding she had enough of the lonely common room, she decided to take a walk around hogwarts and grab something from the kitchens as well.
As she stepped out of the common room, she remembered last night. She wanted to know more about the papers. Deciding that it could wait, she hurried to the kitchen to eat grab a bite before the rumbling in her stomach got any louder.
As she reached the kitchen, she fondly remembered how she had discovered it. One night, when Fred and George were celebrating and needed some food, they had come to the kitchen. unknown to them, Ginny had followed their every step and found out the location of the kitchen. She loved to tickle the pear as she thought it was highly spirited and extremely amusing.
Dobby and the other elves greeted her warmly. They loved her a lot and usually delivered a lot of her midnight snacks right to her bed. After greeting each one warmly, she sat down at a small table and waited while dobby brought her the food. In the corner was a visibly old house elf. He had long, white hair which was splattered rather messily across his large forehead. He was staring at Ginny which large tennis ball eyes. Ginny was growing rather scared of him. When Dobby came up to her she asked him who the old elf was and why he was staring at her so.
"ol' nobby is my father. He is very old. He knows a lot about ancient times. He probably thinks you are mentioned a couple of thousand years ago in some cave men drawing's or something. Ignore him, he is batty."
Ginny stared at dobby. This was the first time she had heard him speak proper English. She was rather astonished.
Dobby, as if reading her mind said, " I have been taking some speaking classes with my monthly pay. Very useful, don't you think so? next I will learn French, so I can speak to the lovely ladies from beauxbatons." he said proudly banging his tiny fist on his maroon-jumper clad chest.
Ginny could hardly resist her laughter. "I am sure that you will do very well dobby." she said, her voice a little shaky because of her laughter.
After eating her breakfast, she made her way towards the room for a little work before she went into the great hall for the announcement. She quickly went into the room. Once again the majestic beauty of the room held her. Full of her breakfast, she decided to rest for a while on one of the couches. She was so relived to finally sit down, that she did not notice the long body of a handsome slytherin lying on the comfy sofa and sat down on him.
"Ooh the little Weasley was scared was she?" said Malfoy in his usual drawling voice.
But they were saved from any further arguments when professor Vector entered the class.
"Good evening students" said professor Vector merrily smiling at the two of them. "Just a second. I need to get the files for your project." she summoned the files.
"Aah yes. Since you two are the top of your years in arithmancy, a special project has been given to you. You will be working on the many dairies of Randolph Rampant."
Seeing the surprised look on their faces, and rightly assuming that they did not know who he was, she continued. "He was a great arithmeticians. Fortunately all his dairies have been saved. You see he died more than a hundred years ago. Since then no one has been able to decipher all the dairies. That is why the project has been handed on to you." she beamed at them.
"How do you know that we can solve it? I mean, since none of greater wizards have been able to do it?" asked Draco his voice full of curiosity. This was starting to get interesting.
"In all 50 years of my teaching of Hogwarts, I have not known 2 such children who are so brilliant in their work." She paused. "I wasn't so sure of giving this project to the both of you. At least until a few days ago. When I was browsing through some old divination folders, I found some parchment. Its color suggested that it did not belong there. I took it out and read it. Imagine my surprise when I deciphered it. It pointed to the works of the great works of Rampant. It went on to further say that the works could only be deciphered by fire and ice. At first at pondered over it. Then the conclusion came. They were talking about hair color! Since my best students at arithmancy have the hair color of red and silver, the conclusion was easy. I pondered over the remaining scriptures and they all pointed to you, miss Ginny and Mr. Malfoy. It all fit together like a puzzle. Now he only thing left is for you to solve it.
Ginny was shocked. She did not know what to think. Just imagine plain, old Ginny Weasley in a prophecy. She smiled. This was the most exciting thing that ever happened to her, except when she got selected for Quidditch. She smiled again. But her only regret was that she was going to have to work with Malfoy.
She could see Malfoy covering his expressions of shock on his face and putting on his usual bored one. She wondered why he was so...so aloof. Then she snapped her self out of it. She was feeling sorry for a Malfoy. He did not need pity.
She went back thinking how exciting this project would be. She was suddenly startled by Draco's voice,
"It all sounds great, professor Vector. When do we start?" Said Draco. This was something new to him. Sure, he was smart, but he did not think that arithmancy would get him anywhere. He had taken it to as he was very interested in adding and finding out the future and stuff like that. But he was not going to tell anybody that. Draco Malfoy was secretive and kept his thoughts to himself and only opened his mouth either to insult somebody, give orders to Crabbe and goyle or to answer teachers.
"You will not be working in the library. It will be too disturbing, as these papers have rather complicated designs and figures. You will not be able to work with all the noise there."Professor Vector said addressing the two of them.
"I have spoken to professor dumbeldore and he has agreed to what I suggested," she continued. You will be getting a separate room to work in. I will give you the map. You will find everything you need there. You are expected to start from today. Since this is a special project, you will have extended time. You will be informed when you have to stop. It could take well over two years to complete. You will have t work very hard" she said shifting her gaze alternately from Draco to Ginny.
"You can leave now." she said handing out the maps leading to the room.
Once outside the door, Ginny found Ron waiting for her. 'Probably wants something from me, like some money to buy yet another present for hermione' she thought bitterly. Ron and hermione were going out since last year, and Ron loved to buy her gifts.
She was right. He stepped out and directly asked her for money, but not before eyeing Draco, who was standing behind Ginny, waiting to talk to her.
"Tonight, eight o'clock Weasley" said Draco with his customary smirk. He knew this would anger Ron. And how right he was. He rushed to punch Draco. Ginny whipped out her wand and put a restraining charm on him, long enough for Draco to smirk at Ron and walk away.
Ron was furious. "You are going out with the bloody prat." He spat at her. And then he slapped her. Hard. He did not want to listen to her excuses. For a minute Ginny was shocked. Then she put a spell on him. And then bellowing on the top of her voice explained about the project. Ron looked sheepish and apologized to her. She just gave him a look of pure discontent and stomped of.
Ron did not bother to run after her. He just wanted some money; he did not want to apologize again to his baby sister.
Draco was watching all this. He had been hiding behind a statue of a stone gargoyle. He was surprised that Ginny had stood up for him. He expected her to let Ron beat him up.
'This is going to be an interesting year' He said a slight smile on his face.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Draco stood staring after Ginny. He was still surprised that she had stood up for him. He grinned
Draco had grown in the past few years. He was no longer the thin, tall boy who taunted potter. He was now tall and very handsome. Instead of his silvery hair, which he had earlier, he now had golden hair, which girls were irresistible to. His body had filled out as well. He was very muscular after years of Quidditch training. Most girls found him irrestible.
Draco slowly made his way down to the library. He wanted to think this over. The redhead was very pretty and she did not even acknowledge it. She had lovely curves, which highlighted her great body. Unfortunately her robes hid everything.
He reached the library. He entered it softly as to not anger the grouchy Madame pince who seemed to be telling at a poor first year for 'disturbing the peace and silence of the library'. For once Draco agreed with her.
Draco decided that he would look awkward without a book, so he went behind a bookshelf to search for one. He wondered what to take when he remembered Randolf Rampant. He searched a few shelves and came across a book with the title; arithmancy's great scientists and achievers .he smiled this was what he wanted.
He took the book with him and sat at an empty table. He swung the heavy book on the small table. He opened it and looked in the index and found what he was looking for;Randolf Rampant the unknown. He wondered why the strange name until he saw the page; there was only about half a page on him given in a very curly, swirly script. He sighed. He had planned to read at least five pages on Randolf Rampant. Thinking that it was probably better to copy it down, he reached into his bag and pulled out a quill and a piece of parchment. Slowly he copied word by word. There were long words and it was in Latin so he had to translate each sentence before writing it down. After nearly an hour he was done. He inspected it one last time before keeping the book back in the shelf and checking the name of the book.
Randolf Rampant
Randolf Rampant was a great arithmetician and wizard, though not much was known about him. There are just a few well-known facts about him. Randolf Rampant lived in Scotland .he studied in durmstrang in Bulgaria, as he was not very rich and education then was very expensive. After his graduation, he remained at durmstrang, though not as a student but as a teacher of the then highly favored and extremely difficult subject of the dark arts. He had taken the job out of two reasons: he badly needed the money and the only thing he had qualified better than any of his peers was at the dark arts.
From the defense against the dark arts, the class changed to the powers of demonstrating and the use of dark arts, as it is today. However Rampant taught in a way that was most abusive. It was said that he regularly put students under dark spells, including inperius (the other unforgivables weren't invented yet) for long periods of time. After a while the head master of the school, none other than professor Idril gave him the pink slip.
Furious, and now with no money, Rampant retired back to Scotland at the mere age of 25.he spent most of his time in an house, an old beaten up shack. However after a little while, he accumulated great amounts of wealth, which he claimed he had inherited from a rich uncle.
People however had other thoughts, especially his neighbors who would be woken at sometime in the night by loud cursing and swearing. They also heard mutterings of dark curses.
After accumulating his great wealth Rampant moved into a new neighbourhood.with his great wealth he bought a new house, but he continued his late nights and his regular periods of disturbing words and curses still occurred.
It is said that Randolf Rampant maintained his life in pages and dairies. These were found a year later after he died which was in 1862.all his papers were in code. But a few papers were translated and they revealed the spell wingardium leviosa, which is in great use of today. They also revealed a few other spells and charms which are less popular today.
After his death, his dairies were transported to the ministry and to record are still there today. Great scientists still puzzle over the dairies of Randolf Rampant.
~@~
That was all that was given. Draco stared at the piece of parchment in his hands, suddenly noting that the time was half to eight and also how hungry he was. Deciding that he would show his new information to Weasley, he put it in his pocket, and headed to the great hall for a quick dinner.
________________________________________________________________________
Ginny was in a good mood. Today nearly everything had gone her way. She smiled happily.
Looking up from her happy daze she saw the time and panicked.there was less than an hour left for her meeting with Malfoy. After having a quick shower, she went down to the great hall for dinner.
On reaching the great hall and seeing her friends sitting with their respective boyfriends, she made her way to an empty seat and the end of the table, deciding to be inconsipious as possible to avoid anyone from seeing her lack of friends.
A little while later, after finishing her dinner she made her way back to the common room. As soon as she sat down on one of the most comfy chairs, all prepared to go to sleep, she remembered the project. She had not been able to do much research during the day due to the time consuming nature of quidditch and lessons.
She rushed up the stairs to her dormitory, where she had kept her bag. Grabbing a few quills, a couple of sheets of parchment and her arithmancy translation's and dictionary, she rushed down, grabbing the map on the way.
She found the room with ease. It was only a short walk from the Griffindor tower. The door was of great oak and was very huge. Timidly she opened the huge door and entered. She gasped at the sight that met her eyes.
The room was large, no doubt. There was a long table and two couches.there were also a number of boxes, which were as far as Ginny could see, were stuffed with parchment. There were at least twenty boxes.
"Welcome Weasley" said a loud drawling voice from one of the couches. "Finally decided to show up." Ginny jumped she had not noticed Malfoy as he was hidden by the massive piles of parchment in front of him.
"At least try to be civil, while we are working together." snapped Ginny.
"Right" said Draco much to Ginny surprise. He made his way to the table and gestured her to sit besides him.
Putting her bag on one of the couches, she made her way towards the table, and took a seat next to Draco. He started explaining what they were starting.
"The boxes aren't labeled so we have to sort them out. Since you did not show up, I chose one to start with. It looked like the one with the least parchement."He said as if picking an excuse for choosing that particular box.
Ginny looked at the sheets in the cardboard box. She took out a couple of them. They had writings all over them. "Where should we start? They all look the same to me." said Ginny with obvious confusion.
Sighing Draco took the papers from her and said, "let's start with these. They look like these are the beginnings of a paragraph." He took out what he thought to be the first page and placed it before them. Then is muttered 'copius' under his breath and then almost instantly there were two copies of the sheet.
Draco leaned over and pointed out from where to start. Ginny took out the parchment she had brought along and started translating.
Ginny bit her lip. This was very tedious they had been at it for nearly three hours. The time was nearly eleven. So far all they had translated was 2 paragraphs. The main information was about the history of arithmancy, a lot of which she had not known, and something of what to expect in the other papers. She revised her paper once before comparing it with Draco's
Arithmancy is an ancient form of fortune telling. But unlike divination, arithmancy is not based on interpreting fuzzy images, or attributing meaning to random shapes and squiggles, or to reading of shapeless tealeaves, but on hard-and-fast rules and mathematical calculation.
Arithmancy is derived from the Greek word arithma meaning number and mancy meaning prophecy. This more or less accurate form of divination has been used by wizards, for more than two thousand years, to analyze and develop their strengths and talents and chart their future paths.
However, over the past five centuries, the meaning of arithmancy has changed. It is now being used as a code and the old meaning of arithmancy has faded. This, my personal dairy, is all recorded in arithmancy and as you read on you will also learn about my life and my works. I have placed a spell over all my works so that they can only be read if fire and lightening are put in the same room, if they are together. They will be destined to create great things.
'So I am fire' thought Ginny silently, to herself 'well it fits, doesn't it? I mean my hair is red like fire and I have a quick temper and a fiery demeanor. And Draco, Draco has silverish-blond hair like lightening. Also it is hard to imagine him losing his temper, which means that he has a cool nature. Then are really destined to do great things together? We fit the prophecy, don't we? I wonder what will happen. What else is in those papers? I am dieing to find out.'
She was interrupted from her smooth train of thought by Draco's voice.
"Have you finished with that yet? Because if you haven't please hurry up, it getting really late and in case you haven't noticed tomorrow we have classes."
To her surprise she felt a blush coming on her face. She bit her lip forcing it back. "Yes, I am done" she murmured. Just then Malfoy leaned a little closer. She could now smell is cologne. It smelled like cloves and lemon. She was so caught up in it that she did not notice how close they were. Malfoy head was looking into her paper and his hand was just inches away from hers. 'What perfect hair' thought Ginny. 'It looks so soft. I wish I could run my hand through it.' Then immediately she slapped herself mentally. She was thinking about Draco Malfoy. The Draco Malfoy.
Draco jumped at the sudden movement beside him. "Are you all right" he asked her, with a hint of concern in his voice.
Ginny felt the familair blush creeping on her face. "Yes" she muttered. She was becoming just like on of his groupies!
Thankfully, Draco went back to reading her translation. Ginny was relived. 'What is wrong with me ' she mentally asked herself.
"I think we will continue this tomorrow. It is already very late." Said Draco looking at the clock near the entrance. It said 'much too late for children'.
Ginny, too tired to respond nodded in reply. Picking up her bag, she went out of the room after bidding a good night to Draco, who was still in there, as he had volunteered to tidy up the table.
As Ginny left, she smiled to herself. She felt tired and very happy.
____________________-
Draco looked around the room in which he was alone in. there was not an awful lot to clean since they had barely opened one box. First he stuffed his papers neatly in his bag, separating his translations from the originals, in a muggle folder he had found in a junk shop in Diagon-Alley. He hated the wizard folders. They would organize his papers and more often then not he would find his arithmancy papers (which constituted most of the papers) mixed with his transfiguration homework.
As he cleaned the table and put the papers and stationary in their respective places, he thought about his life. now with the downfall of voldemort his life had taken a drastic detour. His father, you-know-who's right hand man now had little to be proud of. True, the Malfoy name still held some respect, but Draco felt it was more out of fear then out of respect.
His father, for a while after voldemorts downfall, had become quite mad. After a few months, he became all right. Now he started followers who were still loyal to the dark lord. Cornelius Fudge who had been thrown off his post of minister of magic for not taken action against the dark lord, was regularly seen at the malfoy manor. Fudge, whose motto was 'if you can't beat them, join them' had teamed up with lucious . 'well fudge is a dunderhead, father will have complete control over him' draco thought to himself.
It was true that Fudge was stupid, but he had contacts all over the wizarding world, who were helpful to lucious. 'hah, I will never be able to call him father, not after last summer.'thoght Draco .
Draco's vacation at the Manor was pure and utter hell. Lucious angry, thet his son had not taken his side while fighting for voldemort had resorted to whippings. Narcissa, draco's mother was not able to help him as she was under the imperious spell. Draco in the dungeon and whipped him with a hard belt or used crucitas every time he cried out in pain.'the only thing I learned at the malfoy manor was tolerance. Tolerance of great pain.' Draco thought bitterly he still had a couple of white scars left after a faithful house-elf had managed to ' tidy him up a bit' as he had sarcastically put it. Dinky was the only creature in the wretched Manor who did not snarl at the sight of him.
By this time he had finished cleaning up the small mess they had made. Too tired to crawl to his dormitory, he put his bag in a corner of the room, and curled on one of the comfortable couches.
~~~~~~~~~~! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ginny was bored. she had been up for nearly an hour. There was no quidditch practice also. She had nothing to do. There was to be a special assembly that morning for the whole school. That was what had woken her up nearly an hour ago. A messenger of dumbeldore's had gone into every dormitory and woken the person closet to the window. Unfortunately it was Ginny in the girl's griffindor dormitory. And no one else had woken up either, so she had no one to talk to. With a sigh she wondered what dumbeldore's special assembly was to be about. Deciding she had enough of the lonely common room, she decided to take a walk around hogwarts and grab something from the kitchens as well.
As she stepped out of the common room, she remembered last night. She wanted to know more about the papers. Deciding that it could wait, she hurried to the kitchen to eat grab a bite before the rumbling in her stomach got any louder.
As she reached the kitchen, she fondly remembered how she had discovered it. One night, when Fred and George were celebrating and needed some food, they had come to the kitchen. unknown to them, Ginny had followed their every step and found out the location of the kitchen. She loved to tickle the pear as she thought it was highly spirited and extremely amusing.
Dobby and the other elves greeted her warmly. They loved her a lot and usually delivered a lot of her midnight snacks right to her bed. After greeting each one warmly, she sat down at a small table and waited while dobby brought her the food. In the corner was a visibly old house elf. He had long, white hair which was splattered rather messily across his large forehead. He was staring at Ginny which large tennis ball eyes. Ginny was growing rather scared of him. When Dobby came up to her she asked him who the old elf was and why he was staring at her so.
"ol' nobby is my father. He is very old. He knows a lot about ancient times. He probably thinks you are mentioned a couple of thousand years ago in some cave men drawing's or something. Ignore him, he is batty."
Ginny stared at dobby. This was the first time she had heard him speak proper English. She was rather astonished.
Dobby, as if reading her mind said, " I have been taking some speaking classes with my monthly pay. Very useful, don't you think so? next I will learn French, so I can speak to the lovely ladies from beauxbatons." he said proudly banging his tiny fist on his maroon-jumper clad chest.
Ginny could hardly resist her laughter. "I am sure that you will do very well dobby." she said, her voice a little shaky because of her laughter.
After eating her breakfast, she made her way towards the room for a little work before she went into the great hall for the announcement. She quickly went into the room. Once again the majestic beauty of the room held her. Full of her breakfast, she decided to rest for a while on one of the couches. She was so relived to finally sit down, that she did not notice the long body of a handsome slytherin lying on the comfy sofa and sat down on him.