Silver Calligraphy
Hermione awoke with a start the next morning, it wasn't even breakfast yet and she could hear excessive noise coming from the common room, the voices getting louder for each second she was awake. She rolled over, desperately trying to go back to sleep, even if it was only half an hour before she usually got up.
Now she could see the light shining in the the window, the bright beams landing on her face waking her up further. As she opened her eyes she saw that she was the only one left in the dorm room, all of the other beds made and empty. Slowly she rolled out of bed and went down stairs still in her pyjamas. This was very unusual.
The common room at this time of the morning was normally quiet and only had early risers lazing on the sofas drinking tea or coffee but now it was practically full.
Dotted around the room were segregated groups of people all talking loudly. Hermione quickly spotted Ginny's bright red hair across the room and walked over, noticing that Luna, Harry and Neville were also sat with her.
"Hay, what's going on?" She asked Ginny as she sat down in the arm chair with them.
"Good morning to you too." She laughed.
She looked over and saw that Harry had his head in his hands and Neville seemed to be skimming through a book, frantically looking for something. Luna on the other hand was twiddling her thumbs and humming to herself.
"Sorry I'm just a little tired after being woken up by all of the noise down here."
"I should have told people to quiet down when I got up. To answer you're earlier question, we are all trying to work out this riddle."
"Oh, any luck yet."
"Nope, I this is the most complicated thing I have ever seen."
"Good morning you three."
Harry and Neville both answered half heartedly as if they were still asleep but Luna answered with a bright, "good morning Hermione."
It was strange to see Luna in the common room. Her light hair was in stark contrast to the red background making the blond tones peak through.
"Luna how exactly are you in here?"
"Oh, the teachers have said that because there were so many students working with people from other houses that we would all get a password per group allowing the people to enter each others common rooms until the last day of the challenge."
"How do you..."
"How do you know what the password is?"
"Yeah."
Suddenly Luna was rolling up her sleeve on her left arm. Then she proceeded to point towards her inner wrist with her other hand. "It's a small tattoo thing, I think it looks quite pretty." She said. Hermione leaned a little closer and it was true that there was a small tattoo of a word written in cursive on her wrist, the ink a very light silver colour that glinted slightly like water in the sun.
To Hermione's shock she realised that she might have on two and slowly pulled her pyjama top sleeve down over her wrist as she got up from her chair.
"I'm just going to get dressed, I'll meet you downstairs for breakfast okay."
Ginny responded with a nod of her head and turned her attention to another book that they had open on the table.
She quickly rushed up the stairs back to her room and as soon as soon as she got there she slammed the door behind her. She rolled up her sleeve and just as she had thought, there on her hand was a thin silver word written like calligraphy.
Icarus it said. She had heard of that before but couldn't for the life of her remember what it was. She had to find some way of hiding this tattoo otherwise people would see it and ask questions about what team she was on.
Hermione pulled out her wand as she moved to sit on her bed and tapped her wrist while saying an incantation hoping to transfigure it so it wouldn't be visible but the spell did not work, the silver letters remained staring up at her.
She decided that covering it was probably her best bet. So she put on her watch and thankfully the strap was just thick enough to cover the writing.
After a few minutes she was walking through the corridors towards the great hall. Whilst she was walking she had her hair tie between her teeth as she put her hair up in a messy bun and the tied it up.
As she got to the hall she noticed the there were crowds of people outside looking at what appeared to be a large black notice board with each of the team names written with gold metal letter.
Suddenly she felt a tap on her shoulder and turned to see Ginny. "I think it's got something to do with how close the teams are to winning because there are three empty spaces next to each team."
"So maybe there are three parts to the games."
"Oh gosh, I should write that down before I forget." She chuckled. "It's to early to use my brain right now."
"Weren't you just looking through books though to find out the clue?"
"Yeah but that was Neville's idea."
"Really?"
"Yeah. Let's get breakfast I'm starving."
After breakfast in the great hall everyone started to head off to their classes so Hermione too started to walk over to potions with Harry and Neville.
"You know this reminds me of something I read in a book of herbs." Neville was saying as he held one of the small rectangular pieces of paper with the clue on.
"I hope we can find out what it means." Replied Harry.
Hermione still hadn't looked at the clue since yesterday, but she knew that she was going to have to look at it at some point.
As they walked in to the class Hermione's eyes immediately shot to the chalk board at the front where written on it was everyone's names. She knew it before she saw it. There was her name, once again right next to Malfoy.
Quickly the class started to fill up and after Professor Slughorn had given them all instructions to make a potion of felix felicis, with the partner they were with last time Hermione started to make her way over to Malfoy.
"Why hello team mate." He smirked.
"Will you be quiet, someone will hear you."
"Oh come on, I was only joking."
"Hmm."
As she went over to the bench Malfoy turned to her and said "Let's get the ingredients."
Just as she was about to reply with a snarky comment she suddenly noticed the serious look on his face and decided that it was best to not say anything and just go over to the cupboard once everyone else had gone back to their tables. Once there he turned to her.
"We have a problem."
"What do you mean, we have a problem?"
"Well it seems that Ravenclaw have decided to show their true colours. I can't really tell you now because there are some Ravenclaws in this class and they are listening to everything so I'll have to send you a message and speak in private."
"Why all the secrecy Malfoy?"
"I can't explain right now. Let's just make this potion and I'll contact you later."
"And how exactly are you going to contact me?"
"I guess you will just have to wait and see Granger."
"Okay fine."
The lesson seemed to go relatively quickly, and to Hermione's surprise they didn't argue as much this time. Maybe Malfoy really was concerned about whatever it was Ravenclaw were doing.
After that she finally had a free lesson and decided that it was finally time she had a look at this clue. She knew she couldn't let anyone else see her looking at the clue so she went to her dorm. When she got there she pulled the small slip of paper out of one of her books where she had been keeping it as a bookmark and placed it flat of her desk in front of her. It seemed this was going to be difficult she thought to herself.