Coffee and Spearmint Toothpaste - Dramione

18-Numbers

A week had past and Harry had agreed not to say anything to Ginny and Ron about her and Malfoy spending time together, even though he still didn't know about them working on the clue together he seemed to be suspicious.

A few times now Hermione had transfigured herself and sneaked into the slytherin common room so her and Malfoy could start trying to work out what the numbers meant. She was now sat on his bed, twisting the signet ring he had given her on her finger, something that she did quite often now, and Malfoy was stood by the window.

"Maybe it's coordinates." She said as she flicked through the pages of the note book she had been writing in.

"It's not, I've already checked."

"Maybe it's the chapter, row and word in a book or something."

Suddenly there was a crash and the door to the dormitory swung open revealing Pansy. "Draco you have to come see this." She looked Hermione up and down. "You too Granger."

"What is it?" Malfoy replied.

"Well it's been there all week, I can't believe people have only noticed just now."

"What is it Pansy?"

"Just follow me."

They followed Pansy out of the common room and straight to the great hall. "Draco you see the board at the end of the hall with all the team names on." She pointed to the board.

"Yeah."

"At the top of the board is our team name, 'Green and Gold', and next to it is says task one completed."

"Wait, how has that been up all week and no one has noticed?"

"I don't know, I don't think anyone realised it would happen. Anyways I'm going to go, I got homework to do." She lifted up a book from her hand and headed towards the library as her and Draco headed back toward the dungeons.

"So we are the only group in the school that knew it was Latin."

"Looks like it. You know it makes me wonder if we have to translate it again."

"What do you mean?"

"Well maybe it can translate from numbers to letters."

"Would that even work."

"Well I have seen number ciphers before and a basic one involves the letters in the alphabet being in number order."

"So a number would equal a letter maybe."

"I think we need to check this immediately." With that they started to rush back to the common room, there footsteps the only sound echoing down the corridor. Just as they reached the door to the common room they heard a scream coming from down the corridor.

"Umm Malfoy, what was that?" There was another scream and what appeared to be voices from the girl's toilet at the end of the corridor.

"I don't know." He pulled out his wand and started to walk toward where the scream came from, Hermione followed closely behind, her wand drawn too.

They got right up close to the door when they heard voices. "I can't find it." One of the voices said. "I can't find it, I have looked everywhere on this floor."

Another voice replied. "Keep looking."

There was a long pause and the door opened to reveal the Ravenclaw boy they had met in detention. He seemed in a rush and walked right past them as if they weren't there. Hermione quickly stuck her head in through the door and saw that there was no one else there.

"That was odd." Malfoy stated.

"The understatement of the year award goes to you Malfoy."

"Ha ha ha." He mocked. "Let's go and see if we can work this clue out with a number cipher then."

They walked back over to the common room and went straight to the dorm room. "Okay so how should we go about doing this Malfoy."

"You get the clue out, I'm going to write out the alphabet on some paper and then the numbers."

They were there for about half an hour switching all of the numbers to letters when they finally saw a result. "Really Granger, is this it."

"Looks like it." She sighed.

On another piece of paper they were left with yet again another clue.

'Stella Draconis'

"This is so frustrating, why couldn't they just make it simple."

"Ugh I don't know. I think you should go back to your common room now, show your face a bit so nobody gets suspicious."

"Yeah." She picked up her books and headed for the door.

"Granger." He said just as her hand brushed against the door handle.

"Yeah?"

"Remember to detransfigure, you don't want the weasel to see you in slytherin uniform do we."

"I don't know mind, might be interesting." She smirked and left through the door. She transfigured as soon as she was in the corridor.

Finally she had some time to herself, as she walked through the halls all she could think about was putting her feet up with a mug of coffee so she could finally finish Pride and Prejudice. 

As soon as she stepped into the common room she was met by Ron who had clearly been waiting for her by the door. His hair was incredibly untidy and he had bags under his eyes as if he hadn't slept in days. . "Hermione can we talk?" He sounded broken.

"No, I don't want to." She tried to get past him to go up stairs but he wouldn't let her. "I don't want to ruin our friendship." She barged past him but as she did he grabbed her hand. "Let go of me Ron."

"No I want you to listen to me." His grip on her wrist was tight.

"Ron please just let me go, you lost your chance last summer."

"Just listen please, things can go back to the way they were."

She pulled her hand free but as she did she suddenly realised that something was missing. She looked down at her hand and saw that the signet ring Malfoy had given her had gone.

She turned to Ron and immediately saw horror in his eyes as her looked down at the silver ring in his hand.

"Hermione why do you have Malfoy's ring?"

The whole room had gone silent now and were looking at them.

He opened his hand, and all she could see was the letter M shining in the common room light.

"Hermione?"

She did the only thing she could think to do. She grabbed the ring and ran.

A/N: Hay, thank you all for reading so far. Hopefully the next chapter will be exiting and I'm sorry for leaving you on a cliff hanger, I just couldn't help it. ;) BYEEE!