Fred and George and the Toilers of Trouble (Year 1) ✔

Chapter 17:7

"We should crack on," Angelina encouraged, looking thoughtfully down at her parchment. "Hen and Hare. What's the significance? Though neither can know their destiny with the other not standing near. Hen and Hare... I think I've got it. We know they are letters, and that the identity of the second completes the identity of the first. So if the further letter in the sequence creates a question when added to Hen and Hare, the other letter should give us the answer. That's it!"

"Angelina, I don't mean to sound disrespectful..." George began, twiddling his fingers. "Well, maybe I do. But how in the name of Percival Weasley can you add letters to animals?"

"By painting them on, naturally," Fred answered.

"Ah, that's the trick," George declared, laughing. "Very clever. We're meant to find the hen and hare. They must be hiding somewhere in the castle."

"It's because they're not animals, you buffoon."

Angelina dipped her quill in ink and scratched a line through her drawings. Ever so carefully, she spelled out the words 'HEN' and 'HARE', then stared up at the glittering letters.

"Stamped at the base of each, a Hen...and at the top, a Hare..."

At the Hufflepuff table, Cedric Diggory was sweating profusely. Below his chair was a pyramid of crumpled parchment. "Maybe one of them is an Inferius?" he offered in a clipped voice, to his constantly nodding housemates.

Fred shivered at the mention of the undead and leaned in a bit closer to the conversation.

"So what's our answer?" he asked.

"I was going to suggest the letters 'F' and 'G'. The riddle does mention twins," said George smartly.

"Has anyone else noticed that the 'A' in 'Hare' is sparking more than the others?" asked Nettles, who was chewing absentmindedly on the tip of his quill.

Angelina looked more closely. "It's faulty!" she breathed eagerly.

"That investigator's not such a great wizard after all," George huffed.

"No, imbecile. It's misspelled! Of course, why didn't I see it straight away?" She scratched out 'HARE'. "Solve the Who, thinking When," she murmured, breaking to draw a 'W' before 'HEN'. "Answer What, thinking Where." Angelina wrote it out slowly. "Hare is spelled H-E-R-E. Add the 'W' and..."

"Where!" Patricia shouted, before hastily covering her mouth.

"So, we've solved it?" Towler asked incredulously.

"Part of it, yes!" Angelina replied. "One of the wizards missing from the twenty-six crypts is the letter 'W'."

"Who's the other wizard, then?" asked Nettles.

"It's easy. 'When?' and 'Where?' are the questions. The last lies the question...the first its pair," Angelina said, beaming. "The answer to 'When?' is 'Then'. The answer to 'Where?' is 'There'. The wizards are the letters 'T' and 'W'!"

"Oh, you've solved the riddle!"

"That has to be the correct answer, right?!"

"Yes!"

"I think we should let her bring it up to him."

"Well, hang on...any of us could bring it up to him."

"George Weasley, are you seriously going to try and take credit for this?"

"We should put it to a vote, at least."

As the other Gryffindors bickered back and forth on who should present the answer to Professor Parsimonae, none of them could stop Angelina from planting both feet on the desk and waving her arms enthusiastically over her head.

"Yes, what is your name?" asked their new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher.

"Angelina Johnson," she said at once.

"What is your solution, Miss Johnson? Loud and clear, so your fellow classmates can understand properly."

"You gave us the solution, Professor. Answer Who, thinking When. Answer What, thinking Where. The Who are the two wizards. The What are the two questions."

The investigator nodded slowly. "So who are the wizards?"

"The letters 'T' and 'W'."

"The questions?"

"When and Where!"

"And your answer to those questions?"

"Then and There!!" Angelina shouted with a tiny leap, as if the imposing runic stone at the center of the room was the very Sphinx from her comic.

"Well done, Miss Johnson! You've solved my riddle. You should be immensely proud. Thirty points to Gryffindor," said Professor Parsimonae with a broad smile. "Now, please...carefully step down from the table."

Above them, the lightning blue script reformed to illustrate twenty-six crypts with twenty-six coffins, all but two holding a letter of the alphabet. Then, glowing from within the two empty coffins came the missing letters of the riddle. As Angelina sat, the rest of the class cheered exhaustedly until the fiery blue diagram faded into the dusty rays of yellow sunlight that continued to press in from the windows.

"What do you think, class? Is there a future Magical Investigator in our midst?"

The Ravenclaw students shrugged and shuffled back to their seats, clearly irritated that, out of all the houses, the nearly impossible riddle had been solved by a Gryffindor.

"Now," Professor Parsimonae said, shuttling the blackboard aside, "on we go to the lesson."

Silence fell on the room with a perceptible thud.

"No, that wasn't the lesson?!" Montague blurted in despair, staring earnestly at his wristwatch.

"That was practice."

Lee shook his head groggily. "Thinking like a Muggle sure takes its toll."