Almanac

The thing that is harder to bear than midnight is the darkness before dawn, and the thing that is worse than back to school is the week before it. At least, for most of the students, that's the truth.

An ancient Greek sage once said that those who finish all homework at the first few days of the holidays are the enemies of all mankind! Only the kids who stay until the end of August with half of their homework left undone are normal human beings!

There were three normal human beings sitting around the living room table in Lovegood Castle and writing furiously.

"Waaaaaaaahhhh - it's not me finishing the homework, the homework is finishing me!"

Ginny was the first who break down, throwing her quill, putting her foot on the edge of the table and bucking up her chair.

"Harry, go make some shaved ice!"

"More? No headache now?"

He went to the kitchen anyway, drew his wand out and started making shaved ice.

Luna not only commandeer Harry, but also his wand. She claimed that since Harry has already used it once, so why not go all the way? Listen, the Ministry of Magic people don't understand about flexibility, using it once you got a penalty, using it a hundred times you still got a penalty, you're going to get a penalty anyway, why not maximize the benefits?

With Luna's threats and enticement, Harry turned into a magical ATM, always ready to be used and easy to access.

"I want strawberry flavour" Ginny shouted into the kitchen.

"I want raw eggs and a sprinkling of minced seaweed." Luna's taste was very, let's say pioneering.

A minute later, the three of them were staring at the ceiling together with their shaved ice in hand.

"Ten minutes break?" Ginny suggested.

"Aye!"

Usually, in this situation, ten minutes would be endlessly extended and the homework session would turn into a symposium.

"Three Hundred Questions About Magic Spells, let me see... Ooh, what did you write here? The Literacy Status Of Wuthering Heights?" Luna pulled over Ginny's notebook and looked at it.

"It's Granny Emma. she made me read Wuthering Heights, and keeps commenting when I read it, bashing Catherine, Heathcliff, even the passerby tenant. So far I haven't finished three chapters, and she let me write a four-page reflection of the book or she won't pay me for my work. But how!"

"Just put in more good words for Heathcliff. Such a gloomy, cold and scarred male always evokes affection from older women. I bet Mrs. Emma loves this book, she only commenting and bashing to cover up her shy love." Luna seemed to know all about this sort of thing.

"Cannot understand that realm at all." Harry held his spoon in his mouth, his eyes full of confusion.

"It's a subtle emotion that you boys would never understand." Luna stared away loftily.

"Tch... Men always remember love because of romance only."

"That's Marlboro!"

They talking around topics they didn't understand at all, saying things they didn't even realize what they meant, and letting what little was left of the summer sneak by.

It was the first summer holiday of Ginny's life and by far the most hectic summer. Although she had spent a tough time at Lovegood Castle, she has become a little reluctant to leave as she's so used to it.

Handing out newspapers was fun and could practise her throwing skills, she hits nine out of ten of those letterboxes now. Walking the dogs was also fun, they were easy to control if you know their personalities. Surrounding by kids screaming "Sister Carrot" was not so scary as the beginning, just play a few games with them and they'll treat you like a god. Editing magazines, doing housework, listening to old ladies' gripes, playing chess with old men, disturbing Pansy at the hospital, all became things that are and should have always been in life. When Ginny spoke this idea out, Luna said it's the servility in humans, while Harry said it's the passion in life.

But the summer holidays eventually came to an end, like every day in the life, they were gone and never going to return.

On the evening of August 30th, Ginny stepped out of the shower and found the house that had been normal thirty minutes ago has transformed into a maze.

She couldn't really guess what Luna was feeling, she only wandered around, hoping Luna would recover sooner, or find the exit with luck. As she walked around, she ran into Mr. Lovegood, who had been released from the hospital not too long ago and had been hiding in the lab lately.

"Commander Lov..."

"Good evening, Ginny." The Commander greeted leisurely, "Nice house, isn't it?"

"I like it." She said out of politeness.

"Me too. Luna's mum designed it, back then she said in the future when Luna goes to school, we could know if she is happy."

Suddenly, Ginny couldn't continue the conversation. Talking about Luna's mum might upset the Commander, and simply boasting about the house seemed too careless, so she stammered and stood, blaming herself deeply for her clumsy tongue.

"Lance Corporal Ginny!" Luna's dad came to a standstill.

"Yes, Commander!" Ginny couldn't help but reel into his rhythm.

"Let me tell you how to deal with a maze. According to topology, this kind of maze can always be solved by following a single wall down the same pathway. The secret is to persist, persist, and persist!"

"Yes, Commander!"

"Very well. Let's have a race. I'll take the left wall, you do the right, and see who can find the exit first."

"No problem!"

They took two different paths. Ginny followed the right wall for a long time, failing to find the exit, but a familiar staircase, which on the top floor and led to a white door that had never been opened. Ginny had once asked Luna what was in there, and Luna said it was her mother's study room.

She noticed the white door was slightly opened with yellowish light leaking from it.

Thinking Luna might be in there, Ginny walked up the white steps to the top.

A spacious study came into her eyes with soft light emanating from the vaulted ceiling and white carpet, the four walls of the outer room filled with bookcases, and the inner room filled with medicines and test benches. The room was exquisitely furnished, various books filled the bookcases, and in the centre was a set of tables and chairs with a vine pattern, on which Luna, who looked like she had been crying, lay asleep, two books beside her head.

Ginny picked up the two books and found out one of them was a collection of newspaper clippings, all about missing people, another of them was even odder, the cover was white and snowy clean, nothing was written on it, there were two words, EVIL and GOD, on the title page, with page numbers in the corners, but not a single word in the whole book except twenty-four ghost-like letters.

These twenty-four letters swam around in the book, and no matter what page Ginny turned to, they immediately followed to there, insisting on wandering in front of her eyes, but refusing to set foot on page three hundred and sixty-six in any case.

Besides, starting on page three hundred and sixty-seven, secretly-headed letters appeared, and on closer inspection, the first sentence seems to be a cold joke.

"Ginny... "

Luna woke up. Ginny close the odd book and sat down in the chair next to her.

"Umm... how are you?"

"As you see, I fell asleep." She rubbed her eyes and yawned, seeing the book in Ginny's hand, "You were reading this?"

"What's this?"

"It's an almanac. An almanac of magic. We learned in History of Magic, three hundred and sixty-five kinds of magic."

In the seventeenth century, the study of magic came to a standstill and no new spells were created for a hundred and fifty years. It was not until the mid-eighteenth century that Chevast Nikon, a jurist living in the Balkans, discovered that the sources of magic were time and space, not light and darkness as the public had always believed. His research pointed out that the nature of magic runs in tandem with the world, that is, it changes periodically every 23 hours, 56 minutes and 4 seconds, which is equivalent to a day. His theories caused a great debate of ideas in the academic world of his time.

To make it easier to understand, the children's textbooks explained simply that each of the 365 days of the year was dominated by corresponding magic, and that magic was all the meaning of that day. No matter how hard the wizards try to invent, the spells are always based on the most basic three hundred and sixty-five, with at most a little novel combination. The magic stretches on and on, never-ending, with only one day off on the twenty-ninth of February, which comes once every four years.

"I can't understand any word of what's written on the almanac."

"That's Ancient Runes, in which real magic must be written, and our textbooks are for the younger wizards to understand, using modern language."

"You can read it?"

"No, I'm just flipping through it. This almanac was my mother's and it records all the basic spells, one page a day, otherwise known as the Book of Three Hundred and Sixty-Five Pages."

"Not three hundred and sixty-five, it has many pages more!" Ginny remembered what she just saw.

"Does it?" Luna flipped lazily through the almanac, the last page was marked 365 and then the back cover. "Looks like you're the one who just fell asleep and got lost."

"No! it has... has jokes written on it... " Ginny rushed back her memory to prove her innocence, "One line was 'The president of the hide and seek club has not been found yet even till now."

Luna laughed so hard that she couldn't straighten up.

"You mean the three hundred and sixty-sixth spells? Magic went to hide and seek on the twenty-ninth of February, so there was no magic that day?"

Ginny tried to argue, but Luna stomped her foot and the light from the dome and carpet disappeared.

"I'm so tired, let's go to bed, we need to go to Diagon Alley tomorrow."

She took Ginny by the shoulders and walked downstairs as the maze of the house disappeared.

"Before you go to sleep, come to my room, and bring Harry too."

Ginny found Harry and went with him o Luna's room.

Luna was sitting at the table, pulling two envelopes out of the drawer.

"When I went to look for work, I left my family's bank account number. Your month's wages were wired in and I'm going to charge you for room and board." Luna took one out of each envelope and gave the rest to her two "coworkers".

"Is that enough for you?" Harry asked.

"I gave you guys spinach for food every day and thank Merlin I still got paid instead of having to pay you back." Luna smiled and said apologetically to Harry, "I'll take thirty percent of your salary into Ginny's as she has to pay off Hermione's debt, there's not much left, but it should be enough for tomorrow's shopping."

Harry simply shoved the rest into Ginny's hand and said graciously, "Take it all and pay your debts, I have money in the bank."

That night, Ginny lay in the tiny cupboard with no sense that she would leave tomorrow, holding a copy of Doraemon and reading nothing but how happy she was.

She held out the two middle fingers of her left and right hands and admonished herself over and over again to be a hard worker, to be positive, or else she would be sorry to this wonderful world.

Then it was late at night, she was asleep, they were all asleep, and only Mr. Lovegood was still crouched in the doorway, thinking happily: I won, I got out first!

But why hasn't Ginny found the exit yet?

In the midst of deep sleep and persistent waiting, the summer holidays came to an end.