Into the Arena. on Cascade Hall

The Wizarding Council's Official Examiners

May 20, 2011 7:50 PM

Critical Assessment of Talents and Skills by The Wizarding Council's Official Examiners

It was that time of the year, the time were the fifth-year students would be tested on their magical knowledge. It was a hard test, it had to be. The Critical Assessment of Talent and Skills was made to assess the children in everything they were supposed to know by now. It was the first important test in the magical education, but not the last, RATS would come soon enough. The students taking the CATS were a larger group than the ones taking the RATS, because of that, four examiners had been sent from the Council. This year, the examiners were only going to sit down with the fifth-years, there was no graduating class.

The Cascade Hall had been rearranged to serve the exams purposes. Aurora Septentrion, David Weatherby, Roland Ashburn and Nanette Langdon, watched the students pile in and take their places. The four examiners were quietly chatting among them, while the students came in. David Weatherby was a portly, middle-aged wizard with grey hair with a few strands of brown. His characteristically twinkle was always present in his green eyes. He was tough but always gave compliments to students that deserved it. Roland Ashburn was the youngest and tallest of the four of them, always cheerful with a wide smile on his face, not to mention that he was a pushover when it came to the students. Out of the four of them, Nanette could be considered the most fearsome. Back always straight, and her characteristic tight rigid neat bun pulled her face, not one piece of her iron grey hair could be seen out of place. Her hairstyle emphasized her sharp, pointy features and intimidating gaze. It was rumored that she could tell if a student was even thinking about cheating, and she had a reputation for ruthlessness that had been validated by generations of students. In contrast, Aurora´s hair fell loose down her back, neat and untangled. Her blue eyes were framed by a pair of elliptical spectacles. Her less rigid air didn’t mean that Aurora was less stern than Nanette. The Blonde took her role very seriously.

Once the last student took its seat, Aurora used her wand to close the door. She was not a fan of unpunctuality. She sent anti-cheat quills along with the exam booklet to each student. Aurora finally spoke up, “Your time will start in a few seconds. Remember to keep your eyes on your exam, if I see something dodgy going on, it will be an automatic fail,” she looked at the clock. “You may start now.” The theoretical examination would take place during the morning, the afternoon was going to be used for the practical portion of it, a break between the examinations would be provided for food or more revising.

OOC: Theoretical exams in the mornings, practical exams in the afternoons. Mandatory classes are covered over the first two days, any electives your character takes (e.g. independent study of ancient runes) are examined on the third day. You may write for your examiner in the practicals. Have fun!

Subthreads:

Nice CAT by Edmond Carey, Aladren with Edmond Carey

Can I get the kind that meow instead? by Jose Hernandez, Pecari with Jose, Jose Hernandez

Let the fun begin... by Andrew Duell with

Into the Arena. by Marissa Stephenson with

This isn't a cat. by Jethro Smythe

0 The Wizarding Council's Official Examiners Critical Assessment of Talents and Skills 0 The Wizarding Council's Official Examiners 1 5

Edmond Carey, Aladren

May 20, 2011 10:34 PM

Nice CAT by Edmond Carey, Aladren

He supposed he should try to feel a little anxiety, just to be a good sport and not disappoint the professors or, if they noticed, offend any of his classmates, but truly, CATS weren’t of great concern to Edmond. Most of the practice exams had been easy, and Jane, now that they were tentatively speaking again, mostly short asides in the library but better than nothing, thought they were, too, so the only problem he thought he could have would occur if something went badly wrong during the practicals and he attacked an examiner.

That, he was a little worried about. But Professor Crosby, despite repeatedly startling him and occasionally making him want to eviscerate her just as a preventative measure between times when she did something precisely calibrated to make him jump and reach for his wand, was still alive, so he didn’t expect it to be very bad if it did happen. He hadn’t killed his Transfiguration teacher when he just had the calming draughts, and whatever Gwenhwyfar had done – she had described it, but the brain was not something he knew in great detail, so he’d just been able to nod along – had increased his ability to tell real threats from imagined ones. He thought, anyway.

Though he’d been leaving them alone since Easter, he had brewed another of those draughts to take after lunch and before the practicals, just in case.

Now, he was sitting in his desk, willing himself to be still and not tap his fingers on the desk. That was pointless, and he thought it was more a reflection of the anxiety in the room than anything to do with him. He had, he reminded himself firmly, no reason to be concerned about this exam. He did, though, risk glancing over at Cassie and smiling as he realized one of the unfamiliar ladies was about to get them started. Looking at Cassie was distracting and usually made him feel nervous for reasons completely unrelated to academia, and he wasn’t sure how the gesture would be interpreted right before an exam, but it felt somehow necessary.

When the permission came, he opened his exam booklet without hurry, determined not to give into panic, and read the first question. Any nerves he had been experiencing melted away as he began to write in his answer. It was just an exam, not much different from any other except in length. He had been able to do reasonably well on his exams even when it was the worst, when he had been fluctuating between too much and not enough sleep on a regular basis and only had a very limited ability to pay attention in class and get the information he needed for those exams.

Luckily for him, the exams covered all five years, so even if he slipped up on some of the things covered since January, he would still be able to save the score with everything from before Christmas and the four years before that. He had to pause a few times on things from third and fourth year, which weren’t as instinctual as those from the Beginners level or as recent as the harder questions, and sort through his memories until he could find the thing the words were reminding him of, but he still closed his book with two minutes to spare and a feeling that he’d done very well.

0 Edmond Carey, Aladren Nice CAT 0 Edmond Carey, Aladren 0 5

Jose Hernandez, Pecari

May 20, 2011 11:52 PM

Can I get the kind that meow instead? by Jose Hernandez, Pecari

Jose . . . was not as nervous as most people seemed to think he should be but more nervous than he thought he should be. The CATS, after all, meant really very little to a California Pierce who knew what their adult life would look like from about the time they could talk in full sentences. By then, most of them could already juggle and bang on the drums in an almost rhythmic pattern. Talking, juggling, and banging on drums were three of the most important skills a California Pierce had to possess. Anything Sonora taught was just bonus.

In all truth, the only grade his family would look at with anything more than polite interest would be his divination score. If that was anything less than an O, they'd blame themselves, not the school professors or him. He wasn't worried though. Not about that one. His family had done a good job and most of the class lessons had all been review.

The one he was worried about was potions. Nobody at home would give a second thought to it if he did badly, but Jose wanted to do well in that one. Not only well enough to keep taking it at the RATS level, but to maybe become a professional vegan potioneer as a side career. Or even a primary one. Simon had gone to college for acting. Maybe Jose might do the same for potion-making. Give magical vegans a viable option if they wanted a potion that normally had animal bits in it. It was a real problem the California Pierces had run into before.

Jose sat down at his seat, gave a friendly nod toward Tawny and Andrew, and then picked up the anti-cheating quill and started his exam when they were told to begin. The repetitive pattern of read a question - answer it was familiar from all the previous tests he'd taken in his life and he soon forgot that this one was any different from any of them. Except none of those had made his wrist sore from writing so much.

Still, when time was called, he put down his quill and let out a breath of relief that it was over. There had been questions he'd forgotten the answers to, and questions he was fairly sure he'd never known the answers to, but overall, he thought he did pretty good.

Now there were just today's practicals and then another two days of this left.

Jose decided he really didn't like the CATS after all.

0 Jose Hernandez, Pecari Can I get the kind that meow instead? 0 Jose Hernandez, Pecari 0 5

Edmond Carey

May 21, 2011 12:56 AM

...Or not by Edmond Carey

The first exam had been easy, but Edmond knew the day was only half-won. He had, after brief detours to greet a few people and speaking to anyone who spoke to him after that, spent part of lunch reviewing some of the finer points of Charms, perhaps the area he’d lost the most ground in during the bad time, because he knew he wouldn’t have time afterward. He was going to be in the very first group called.

That made him feel a little nervous, though he knew it shouldn’t. If it was a cruel twist of fate that his last name was Carey, the twist earned the ‘cruel’ label for reasons other than the name beginning with the third letter of the alphabet, and his was a small class. There were only going to be two groups. Besides, he didn’t even believe that examiners were harder or easier on people who went early or late, since he had ended up in both slots, over the years, in different practical exams and had not noticed enough of a discrepancy in his scores to back the idea up. He had yet to work out how to control his feelings completely, but he was able to hide them well enough, in the face of how silly they were, and as they all gathered outside the Cascade Hall after lunch and before the exams, he found it in him to stand up and smile at his classmates.

“Good luck, everyone,” he said. “I’m sure we can all beat this exam.”

He felt, for a moment, proud of himself for speaking colloquially. Then the calming draught, taken a few minutes earlier, kicked in, and he ceased to feel much of anything. He took it as a sign of progress that he now found the sensation to be something he would rather avoid than concentrate his existence on entering into.

A moment later, he found himself shaking hands with an individual called Weatherby. He thought he might have initiated the gesture, though his examiner did not return his slight bow. Edmond didn’t hold that against him. Most people, it seemed, hadn’t been raised to consider that proper, just as most of the other males wore very different things with their robes.

Professor Weatherby, in fact, seemed to be more casual than Robert was in dress as well as manner, despite looking more or less the same age. It was a little disconcerting, but between five years of the school population in general and Professor McKindy in particular, he’d become accustomed to most of the peculiarities of clothes not sanctioned by Julia Carey so long as they were for other people. He’d heard that other forms of clothing were more comfortable than his, which he’d thought explained their prevalence, but after that awful five minutes of one Charms lesson, he could attest that this was not true, at least for him. He liked his full-length trouser legs and shirt sleeves, collars and cuffs, shoes that covered his entire foot and were worn with socks, and, yes, waistcoats. Quidditch was the only public occasion on which he felt comfortable deviating from that formula.

All of which was somewhat irrelevant to taking an exam. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, sir,” he said, and decided against mentioning that his older sister had spoken highly of the man. Morgaine's opinion might or might not be welcome anywhere, it was always hard to tell except around the true pureblood conservatives, and he had an impression this would fall, for most people, under attempting to curry favor when he really didn't have an interest in that.

The Care of Magical Creatures exam went well. Identifying the creatures was easy, as was listing some basic facts about them, and he was able to both correctly demonstrate how to tell a knarl from a hedgehog without trouble and stop the one that was a knarl from demolishing the testing area. Handling the bowtruckle took concentration, because his hands were large, but he supposed all those years of piano lessons and mock teas paid off, because he was able, when it counted, to handle something delicate without breaking it. Charms was a little harder. It started out simply enough, a simple levitation and a color change, but toward the end, he was sure he had performed under par at least once. Still, Professor Weatherby smiled and congratulated him at the conclusion of the section, so he supposed he hadn’t completely botched anything.

Then came the real test. Defense Against the Dark Arts.

He had known it was coming because of the questions on the written portion, and it only made sense when Transfiguration and especially Potions were more time-intensive by nature, but he had still hoped, somehow, to find that it had been pushed off until the next day. Another day to prepare himself and hope for the best. When he saw a trunk, though, he felt a moment of hope. A creature, he could manage. They were less partial to making flashes of light and bangs, and were somewhat easier to predict than a grown wizard throwing spells at him – as he’d heard could happen sometimes – would have been.

Then the lid opened and Alasdair Carey’s corpse rose slowly from it and began to clap its hands, completely disregarding its injuries and state of composition or beginnings of a lack thereof. Edmond realized he was backing away a split second before, its hair beginning to assume a reddish tinge completely unrelated to the amount of blood on it, the thing smiled at him.

“Well done, boy,” it said.

“Dif - ” he started, thinking to decapitate the thing, but then he caught sight of Professor Weatherby, and remembered Robert talking to him. His father, assuring him that sharing some blood with a monster didn’t make him one. That everything was going to be all right. This isn’t real, he thought, and focused through that fact. “Riddikulus,” he tried, not at full volume, instead. Nothing happened. He concentrated harder. “Riddikulus!”

Its head, as planned, turned into a bouncy ball. This did not make it go away, though he did begin to giggle a little hysterically. He tried to imagine something else – Jane making faces during an etiquette lesson. Didn’t help, but did keep him from completely losing what progress he’d made. He forced himself, from there, to laugh and force the boggart back into its trunk. Then he put his wand down on the table before placing both his hands there as well.

“Boggart,” he said, once he was breathing more or less steadily. Edmond was aware that he should be embarrassed, but that was distant. The calming draught, he guessed. “Shapeshifter, properly repelled by the use of the riddikulus charm, to make it something amusing. They prey on the victim’s worst fear.” He decided he didn’t want to explain his worst fear. “Does that answer the question, sir?”

The look Weatherby was giving him was not a look he liked. “Are you all right, Mr. Carey?” he asked.

“I’m well, thank you,” he said, not sure himself if it was true. “I’d like to proceed with the exam. Did I answer the question adequately, sir?”

“Of course,” Weatherby said.

Next was defensive and offensive spells, though, he noticed, he was only asked to demonstrate them, not duel the examiner. Either some exam legends weren’t true, or his examiner didn’t quite trust him. It didn’t matter, though. He got all the spells that were asked of him, one after another, done without further incident. And handled the red cap, and defended the tent. By the end, he almost didn’t feel shaky anymore. Just occupied with the marks Professor Weatherby was making on the parchment.

Finally, the older wizard looked up. “You do know your defensive spells,” he said. “You may go now, Mr. Carey.”

“Thank you, sir,” Edmond said, and left.

He was halfway back to Aladren before he noticed that his hands were still shaking and stopped where he was in the corridor, looking at them. That indicated fear, or some kind of upset, but he didn’t feel afraid. He felt…better, somehow, in the paradoxical way he had when he’d finally had to admit to Robert that he hadn’t been all right at that time. A little different, now, because there had been nothing real about it on one hand but he wasn’t having to relive the day Julia died on the other, but similar.

Instead of Potions and Transfiguration, he found himself thinking about the event scheduled for the post-exam period, the midsummer thing. Maybe it wasn’t such a ridiculous idea after all.

0 Edmond Carey ...Or not 143 Edmond Carey 0 5

Edmond Carey

May 21, 2011 1:25 AM

You're a fickle, fickle being, CAT by Edmond Carey

The second day began with a written section just as the first had, but after the Defense practical, Edmond still felt a little grimmer going into day two than he had going into day one. He still, though, made sure to tell Cassie and the other prefects ‘good morning’ with a pleasant expression and an offer to review together during lunch if they wanted before the test began. He imagined he still wasn’t feeling the strain of the situation as much as they were, especially poor Marissa, but it was better to hang together rather than separately at times like this.

He had studied the night before, but not intently, with focus. Fooling his brain into thinking he was leisure reading, or at least only supplementary reading, on the subjects he was to be tested over had been easier than he’d expected, and he’d gotten through a good deal of material without feeling pressure. Much pressure, anyway, and it had been mostly articles and things not entirely on topic, but something was better than nothing, and there was no point in taking another practice exam. They were, he thought now, slightly harder than the real thing had been, and he didn’t have one in his room that he hadn’t already memorized half the answers on.

When they were given permission to begin, he opened his book without hurry again and took in the first question. A Potions one, he was happy to see. He wrote down the recipe for the Shrinking Solution with only two pauses to think, then easily answered another question asking him to identify three uses of caterpillar in potion-making before hitting the first Transfiguration question.

To his surprise, it was one about a wand movement and an incantation…on a basic transfiguration where there were two options. He was afraid, because of that, that he overdid it a little; unsure of which the test would consider a valid answer, he wrote both, with a short analysis of their differences. It was a first year spell, but the theory was more advanced, something he’d only seen in books he read outside of class, one of them the book he’d read last night. When he ran out of room and had to squeeze a few words into the blank in a reduced size, he was sure he’d overdone it, but could only hope it would both help his score and turn out to have not taken so much of his time that he wasn’t able to answer something important fully at the end.

One of the things he didn’t like about how the exam was that, even with his moments of doubt about whether or not he was over-analyzing something put aside, it jumped around in difficulty level. One minute, he would be writing a list of five items; the next, to explain a bit of magical theory that he’d had to research independently before he completely understood in the first place. A nice, orderly progression would have been easier, which was, he guessed, the reason it wasn’t provided.

By the end, he was sure he’d botched one question, about a transfiguration model, completely because he was sure he’d never seen the model in question before in his life, and there had been two potions he thought he got wrong or just hadn’t known what they did, too, but overall, he thought it was another good day. Transfiguration was almost certainly going to be an E at best because that model had been at the center of the last essay question, but still. He would be embarrassed to show Robert anything other than perfect Os, but he was confident, now, that his scores couldn’t mean abject humiliation.

0 Edmond Carey You're a fickle, fickle being, CAT 143 Edmond Carey 0 5

Andrew Duell

May 22, 2011 10:19 AM

Let the fun begin... by Andrew Duell

Andrew made his way to Cascade Hall. He was really uncertain what to feel, he was a little nervous this was an important test. However he also knew that he had done everything he could have to prepare for it, and there was nothing more to be done now. Naturally he knew the nervousness came from his uncertainty if he had done enough preparation, but that was also something in the past that couldn't be changed. Whatever was going to happen at this point would happen. His mother had warned him about this test, from her stories it was a nightmare, a grueling battle of wits and intellect that was nigh impossible to overcome. That had frightened him at first, but then he came to a realization. It was something of a sad realization, and he did hate to admit it, but he got his brains from his father.... not his mother.

He entered the Hall and took a seat. He looked around at the examiners and his fellow students. With all the mixed classes they had been taking, he hadn't really realized how small his class actually was. He returned the slightly nervous smiles and nods of his classmates then got started on his exam when the examiners started the test.

The test itself was pretty much what he had expected. It was like other test he had taken, just very, very in depth. He was very glad that he had found his first year notes again buried under all of his other notes and such in his room. Strangely he found the first-year sections the hardest, he assumed that was because he was still very new to the whole 'magic' thing and didn't really know what he should have been taking notes on and what he didn't need to. Second and third year subject matter was alright, not great, but decent. Fourth year stuff he flew through. Ahhh, the year he buried himself in school, it payed off now. This year was still fresh in his mind so it wasn't to bad either. Potions was the worst, but he was hardly surprised by that, Creatures was only slightly better.

He closed his exam book with a few minutes to spare. He examined his anti-cheating quill a little. How did it work exactly? Were they all linked together to know if it was writing the same thing as another quill? They would need some sort of memory, he could see what someone else was doing and then write it down much later in the test to offset any sort of simultaneous triggering. The quills would have to know everything that was written. What happens though if two people just happened to write the same thing? They were answering the same questions, it was bound to happen. Maybe the quills tracked not what was written but the intents of the people using them. That would probably be easier and more tricky at the same time. What happened if it detected something? Would the quill just stop writing if it was activated, or would it set off some sort of alarm? He was sorely tempted to experiment and test some of these theories, then he figured that this may not be the best time to do it. Another thought struck him, what if they were just ordinary quills? Sure they were called anti-cheat quills, but Dumbo was given a magic feather that allowed him to fly as well. No one would really try to cheat while using one of these quills at the risk of automatically failing. Maybe that's what made them anti-cheat, there wasn't magic behind it at all, just psychology? He certainly wasn't going to put it to the test... therefore it worked. He grinned to himself as the morning session concluded.

2 Andrew Duell Let the fun begin... 145 Andrew Duell 0 5

Edmond Carey

May 23, 2011 1:20 AM

Or maybe you just had a bad afternoon by Edmond Carey

Edmond hadn’t known if he should hope to work with Weatherby again or dread the chance that it might happen, but it turned out to be irrelevant, because the examiners were in a different greeting order, and he ended up with the other wizard, Ashburn – the gawky, younger one who seemed like he had always needed his mother to look out for him, not for the fates of Sonora’s fifth years to be put in his hands.

“Good afternoon, sir,” Edmond said, remembering today that normal people did not bow, at least outside of formal society occasions. This was not one of those. This was an exam. He did not want to call attention to being a Carey. Some people didn’t like formal society people, which he was thought to be one of even though he didn’t really think he was, any more than such people liked everyone else, which was very little. Still, though, he had to be polite. It was against, if not his nature, at least everything he had ever been taught and everything he valued not to be.

Potions came first. There were three cards laid out beside the cauldron provided – no chance of trickery; Edmond could only assume that there was truth to the idea that working with a new or unfamiliar wand would usually have worse results than using your own, or else, the examiners would have most likely provided them with exam wands as well – with three different potions on them: Easy, Average, and Hard. He already knew which he had to do, but politely waited for Mr. Ashburn to finish his spiel on the grades associated with the different levels before announcing that he would work on the hard one.

This exam, he took particularly seriously. He wanted to do well on all of his exams for himself and for Robert and Julia, but if he didn’t make an Outstanding in Potions, he would also have to be the Aladren prefect and Assistant Quidditch Captain who had not reflected well on John Fawcett. He didn’t expect that doing so would lead to repercussions. He thought it would lead to something far worse: Fawcett’s silent disappointment. Edmond had been raised in the most academic environment two non-academics could possibly produce, and anyone who’d written as many books, even if about a slightly suspect subject, as John Fawcett and mastered two separate sciences and done well enough in others to supervise the independent studies was someone who Edmond could not help but respect and want to be respected by. Professor McKindy could, he thought, say as much, but Professor McKindy didn't have an office adjacent to Edmond's common room, and that added pressure. So he read the instructions very carefully before he even began, when there was no steam to blur things up, and then proceeded as cautiously as he could while still staying within time limits. It took effort, and he didn’t have many moments to spare.

To his irritation, several of the moments he did have were thrown off by seeing his examiner out of the corner of his eye and thinking the man was twitchy. Maybe he wasn’t, but something about his demeanor made him seem likely to become twitchy any time, and it was distracting. Still, it wasn’t Mr. Ashburn’s fault or Edmond’s fault, so he just focused on being concentrated more after those moments and tried to hurry.

He did, and in time, though only barely. For once, the ‘they’ in the sky hadn’t lied when they said something was hard. It wasn’t as complicated a potion as he thought he could make, but for the time limit, it was complicated enough. He waited anxiously, though outwardly patient, while his examiner lifted some out of the cauldron and let it splash back.

“Oh, very good,” he said, writing things on his paper and giving Edmond an encouraging smile. Edmond returned it with a polite one, and they moved on to Transfiguration.

It went better than Edmond expected it to, really, though he was still definitely concerned for his score. He’d been instructed to turn a pot into a parrot, but it had come out only two colors, neither of which was the customary red, green, or yellow, and its vocabulary had been limited and quickly silenced. He ended up, too, with a grasshopper with one glass leg, though he wasn’t sure the amiable Mr. Ashburn had noticed that one. He left feeling tired, but determined. Just one more day.

0 Edmond Carey Or maybe you just had a bad afternoon 143 Edmond Carey 0 5

Marissa Stephenson

May 23, 2011 11:15 AM

Into the Arena. by Marissa Stephenson

Marissa did not look much like her usual self as she took her seat in the Cascade Hall before the beginning of CATS. The only make-up she had on was mascara and a little pressed powder. Her long hair was pulled back into a ponytail. She was wearing a t-shirt, sweatpants, and a pair of fuzzy slippers she had purchased, over the summer, specifically for the occasion.

Today wasn’t about being pretty. Today was about trying not to flunk out of school. That meant, in the clothes department, that today was about comfort. Or would have been, anyway, if all the other students had gotten the memo about what constituted proper exam attire where Marissa came from. As it was, she felt a little conspicuous, though she told herself firmly that it was just that imaginary audience effect that Mama had read about somewhere. Everyone here, she was reasonably sure, had bigger problems than wondering about what it was she was wearing and what had possessed her to wear it. It was CATS day. The next seventy-two hours would help determine how their entire lives went. Anyone who did notice might even get what she’d been thinking without having to ask.

Still, she thought she might change during lunch. It wasn’t like she was likely to be able to keep down any food she could force herself to ingest anyway.

The written portion of the exam went by quickly and smoothly. Many of the questions seemed to be rote memorization, and while she hadn’t taken the practice exams’ suggestion that they would need to know a few simple potions by heart completely seriously, she didn’t think that she embarrassed herself too much on those questions. She was particularly proud, too, of being sure that she got every single question about a wand movement or incantation or both correct. She knew her stuff, even if she couldn’t effectively use it.

She finished with a little time to spare, only just enough that she began to feel conspicuous before the first exam period ended. Then, her windpipe beginning to feel as though it was constricting, along with everything in her chest, from sheer panic, she nearly ran back to Crotalus, where, having skipped breakfast as well, she ended up dry heaving in the bathroom and just hoping her stomach wasn’t hurting so much when it was over that it was distracting during the practical exam and being grateful that she didn’t have a roommate to hear all this. Finally, shaking all over, she was able to pull herself upright, eat an apple-cinnamon bar and some raisins and most of her remaining stash of chocolate, and change into clothes that would make a better impression, only just getting back down to the Hall in a timely manner.

As small as her class was, it still had just enough people that they couldn’t all be examined at once. Because her year had the audacity to have a Brockert, a Carey, and a Duell in it when her surname started with an S, she was going to be in the second group.

Some might have been happy about that. Marissa was anything but. There was a reason she usually volunteered to go first for things when she had the choice, and it was because she both couldn’t handle the suspense and because she didn’t want the examiners remembering Edmond freaking Carey making a perfect score in everything and giving the impression that the rest of the year except Cassie Kerrigan was made up of particularly slow trolls even before she failed to perform firstie spells. Now, not given the choice, she couldn’t concentrate, or do anything but eat more raisins, spilling them from the box into her hand and then picking them up one by one. One by one. One after another.

”Stephenson, Marissa,” someone said, mispronouncing her name. It was Ma-riss-a, not Ma-rees-a.

Then she realized what it meant, and forgot all about pronunciation as she began to worry about passing out, or possibly running screaming into the desert. Oh, God. Oh, no. It was her turn. She realized her legs, traitorously, were standing up, her hand taking out her wand. Oh, goodness gracious, her head was actually holding itself high as she walked forward. Didn’t it know this could only end in complete and utter humiliation? That this was going to be the worst day, bar none, of her life?

“I’m Marissa,” she said, her voice trembling only slightly less than her hands as she faced the youngest of the group of executioners – er, examiners.

“I’m Roland Ashburn,” he said, giving her a smile she thought was meant to be friendly. It came across to her as threatening, as though he was just waiting for a chance to rip her throat out with his teeth, but she thought it had been meant to be friendly. “Nice to meet you. If you could step right this way, please…”

For a few minutes, it didn’t go that badly. Her hands began to steady up. Her stomach stopped twisting, or at least twisted less violently. She was able to give Ashburn a tiny smile after she successfully finished a spell they’d learned in third year.

Then he gave her a task at grade level.

Marissa touched her lips with the end of her tongue, her stomach twisting right back as hard as ever as she tried to work herself up to it. She had known this was going to happen. They started it off small, on spells she could actually do, but then they got up to grade level. That was the point – to see if they were good enough to go on to RATS-level study. She had known this was going to happen. She would just have to have nothing happen and move on with it.

“Miss Stephenson?” Ashburn asked.

Oh. She had to do it now. Okay. She could do this. Marissa took another breath – she didn’t think she’d done that recently enough – and held out her wand. Wand movement, incantation, concentrate. That was all there was to it. She could get partial credit, she could - “

The object she was supposed to be charming exploded. Loudly. Marissa ducked instinctively, hitting the floor hard, to avoid shrapnel. Which was present.

For a few seconds, she just stared at it. Then she whispered, “I’m sorry,” and then found she couldn’t really say anything else.

16 Marissa Stephenson Into the Arena. 147 Marissa Stephenson 0 5

Jose

May 23, 2011 5:26 PM

Because the meowing kind are better by Jose

The first day's worth of subjects included none of the ones he was really worried about. He already planned to drop Care of Magical Creatures, if only because it had never really been a favorite. He wasn't bad at it though, and he figured he could pull an easy A at minimum, and possibly score as high as an E. Defense was in the same boat, and Charms hardly even counted as a test, especially practical charms.

In a larger class, he would probably have been spared being in the first group of students called up, but there were only two groups and Hernandez put him alphabetically fourth in line. That put him with the scary woman. She wasn't nearly as scary as Aunt Regina, though, and since Aunt Regina had handled most of the early CA Pierce lessons, Jose remained undaunted.

She had him do the charms first, and he flew through that with ease. Charms had always been his best class, and he had always done better in the practical castings than in the theoretical essays. He would not be surprised if he pulled an O in that class. It was the only one - besides Divination - he had even a dim change of pulling an O, but once she had him put his wand down while she made a bunch of markings on her clipboard, he figured he'd bagged it. There had only been one spell - one of the more recent ones they'd learned - that he'd had even a little trouble performing, but even that had come off perfectly on the second try.

Care of Magical Creatures didn't go quite as smoothly, but he was at least able to recognize all of the animals that were brought out. The knarl still made a horrible mess of the examination room though before Jose was able to get it under control.

Defense, therefore, had a bit more room hazards in the spell casting portion of the exam than was probably strictly called for, but Jose was fine with that. He even used some rubble that used to be a folding chair to his advantage at one point, and he was pretty sure the lady gave him bonus points for that.

Before bringing out the Dark critter though, she had him clean up the debris, and he used the opportunity to show off one of the more difficult cleaning charms he knew, one that hadn't been in the earlier part of the exam. She didn't write down anything more on her paper for it, but he thought she looked a little impressed.

Then the critter came out, and Jose stepped back for a moment in shock as the zombie lumbered from the trunk it had been held inside, and he wondered when exactly Professor Levy had gone over zombies.

In a voice that was a few registers higher than he normally used, he said as calmly as possible, while not taking his eyes off the zombie, "You're going to have to take this one, Ma'am. I don't have my shotgun handy. But I'd be sure to double-tap if I did."

She gave him an odd look and the offer the advice, "It is not a zombie, Mr. Hernandez."

Jose looked at the zombie again. That was definitely a zombie. It looked exactly like the ones in Zombieland. Too much like the ones in Zombieland, now that he was thinking about it.

"Boggart," he realized, and she nodded. He pointed his wand at it and cast, "Riddikulus!" A startled laugh escaped him as he saw the zombie now dressed in a tutu and pointe shoes.

The woman nodded and got the boggart back into the trunk and locked it up. "Good job, Mr. Hernandez," she said, "You may go now." And then she started writing and didn't look up again as he left the room and bid her good night.

0 Jose Because the meowing kind are better 0 Jose 0 5

Andrew Duell

May 23, 2011 8:28 PM

...and now it continues... by Andrew Duell

Lunch was quick. Andrew wolfed something down, he didn't even remember what afterwards, and tried to spend the rest of the break relaxing. He was only mildly successful. Since he was in the first group he didn't get much time, but he was ready when they called him. Or at least he thought he was ready. His name was called by the youngest looking of the examiners, Roland Ashburn. He seemed a friendly sort of fellow, at least Andrew desperately hoped. He greeted the examiner with a smile, and was led to his first challenge.

Care of Magical Creatures. He was starting with Care of Magical Creatures. Great. It started off easy enough, name the critter and list off some information about them. Then came the knarl. That could have gone better, eventually he got the thing under control but not before it demolished a third of the testing area. Andrew himself destroyed about a third as well trying to stop it. Luckily, or perhaps purposefully, Examiner Ashburn remained in the undamaged third. He wrote a few notes as the battle ensued, and seemed to have lost some of his cheerful disposition. Andrew was rather disappointed with his performance. His robe and pant legs were torn and tattered, his hair was more of a mess than usual and he was exhausted. This was only the first one. What else was there to come?

Charms apparently. Charms was not nearly the disaster that Creatures had been. He managed them all, though some of them took a few tries. A very few of them took more than a few tries. In fact Ashburn looked like he was just about to announce that it was time to move on when Andrew finally pulled off the last charm... or at least something that looked like the charm. Andrew felt a little better after that one then he had after the previous one. It wasn't particularly good, but he had at least managed to get them all. That was good, right?

Examiner Ashburn announced that his last challenge of the session was going to be Defense Against the Dark Arts. That made sense in Andrew's logical thought process. Potions and Transfigurations were usually the most time consuming, there would only be two tomorrow to give them more time. As with the challenges before, they started out with the basics learned in the early years and worked forward. Mostly easy stuff. Then he was brought to the trunk and was told to open it. A trunk? In DADA? That sucker had to be trapped. He began by examining it visually, from a distance. He didn't see anything obvious, what charms could he use to try and figure this out? How was it sealed? What did opening a sealed chest have to do with Defense? Andrew looked back at the examiner, Ashburn was rubbing his eyes with his free hand and letting out a sigh. "Your caution is well noted. Now just open the chest. It's not locked or trapped or anything."

Andrew still looked a little unsure, but stepped forward. Two more steps closer and the chest lid popped open itself, Andrew took a quick step back. A dark shadow loomed up out of the chest, fear began to grip Andrew's throat. What was that? The shadow began to take shape, a vaguely humanoid shape shrouded in a black cloak. A dementor!? What was wrong with these examiners?! You can't carry them around in chests! Could you? Regardless Andrew whipped out his wand and without thinking shouted "Expecto Patronum!!" His silvery patronus shimmered into existence. Ashburn looked momentarily startled at Andrew's cybernetic dragon. Andrew was a little startled as well, it was a little bigger than it was last time, but it just stood beside him and glared down at the shadow, it didn't move to engage. He did however feel the fear drain away from him as his patronus shielded him. His mind recovered from the blind panic it had been in. No, you can't carry a dementor around in a box. The 'dementor' looked like it was unsure if it really wanted to be there anymore, but it wasn't reacting how it should with a patronus present. It was a boggart. Bugger, he should have caught that sooner. "Looks like you were a bit overkill bud." he commented to his dragon. "I think I can take care of this one." He waved his wand again and said, almost with a sigh, "Riddikulus." The dementor's hood fell back, and underneath there was a young girl standing on stilts. Andrew nearly burst out laughing as the boggart retreated back into it's chest. "Boggart, cleverly disguised as a dementor. Riddikulus cancels it's power, the dementor is countered by the patronus charm. The dragon seemed to smile as it was mentioned, then dissolved away.

"Yes," Ashburn paused in his scribbling, "We're done for today. You may go." Andrew smiled, hoping he didn't mess up to badly and walked off while Ashburn went back to his writing.

2 Andrew Duell ...and now it continues... 145 Andrew Duell 0 5

Jose

May 23, 2011 11:58 PM

Much better. (wotw) by Jose

The second day was the one that involved potions. Transfiguration, too, but the only reason Jose had any cause to try hard there was because Saul had done well in it and Jose still felt kind of like he needed to prove he was smarter than Saul was even though only a few of the professors who had Saul were still here and the Transfiguration professor was not one of them.

So it was with a bit more effort that he went through the questions on the written part of the exam, and while all of the potions answers came to him easily, some of the transfiguration theories escaped his ability to explain.

Earlier, Edmond had invited the other prefects to a lunch review session and Jose joined them for it. He launched a brief discussion about one of the elusive theories from the last transfiguration essay (he honestly wasn't sure if he came out of the mini-debate understanding the concept better or worse but he now had a few phrases to throw around if it came up in the practical) but mostly they talked about the more technical aspects of the practical work they might have to do that afternoon.

And then it was the afternoon and he was being taken away from his classmates by the older male proctor to brew potions and alter the fabric of reality by temporarily turning one object into another for a grade. Nobody had yet tested in the room he was brought to so there was no pervading odor from a recent brewing to give him a clue as to what he'd have to make.

First though, the man had him do the transfiguration part. Jose did reasonably decent at it. He wasn't sure if partnering with Jethro so much had helped or hindered his learning process, but he got close on all of his transformations, but not exactly perfect on any of them. Well, a couple early ones were flawless, but they hardly counted.

Then there was potions. He looked at each of the recipes laid out and only partially heard the spiel about how the grading worked. Mostly he was noticing that none of them were vegan.

"Um," he said. "If I keep the difficulty the same or greater, and keep final result the same, and use only ingredients here, can I make a vegan alternative to the medium difficulty one?" He would have liked to make the hard potion, but a glance of what was available told him there were no alternatives present for the bicorn horn step. He gave the man a wry look and hoped he had heard of Jose's family. "I'm a California Pierce. We don't touch potion ingredients that come from animals."

Jose wasn't quite sure how to interpret the resultant expression, but he nodded and waved in a manner Jose took to mean 'carry on.' So Jose carried on.

It took a few extra minutes at the beginning to write up his own recipe, double check his conversions, and review it for theoretical consistency before he even started, but once he had that, everything went smoothly. He thought he would have liked to have Professor Fawcett check over his changes before making it, in case there was an incompatibility he wasn't aware of, but the test was supposed to prove Jose could make a potion on his own, and so he was making it on his own.

When he was done, the proctor looked at it a bit doubtfully, but took out a snail from a jar Jose hadn't notice earlier and put it on the table. Before Jose could object to the animal testing, the man had sprinkled a few drops of the potion on the critter and it scurried across the table at a far faster rate than a snail ought to be capable of.

The proctor looked stunned as he marveled, "It actually worked."

Jose wasn't sure if he should feel smug or insulted. Instead, he just nodded and agreed, "Yes, sir."

0 Jose Much better. (wotw) 0 Jose 0 5

Jethro Smythe

May 24, 2011 3:29 PM

This isn't a cat. by Jethro Smythe

Anyone who thought the generally air of anxiety among the fifth year students was entirely pervasive would be wrong; Jethro Smythe was not at all concerned by the impending examinations. He thought he probably had a greater chance of failing everything than his peers, and therefore the pressure to pass was surely greater for him (because if he didn't pass anything he wouldn't be able to take any classes next year) but somehow, in actuality, it hadn't worked like that. Jethro was fairly confident he would be able to scrape a passing grade in something, and only taking one subject next year would be just fine by him. It was actually the smarter students who seemed to be most stressed out - if increasing frequency of ticks and other unusual repetetive habits was any indication of this - and that didn't make any logical sense at all.

Jethro was perfectly relaxed. Anti-cheating quills were provided, so he didn't even need to remember his own. All he had to do was show up on time, and try to remember the write answers, and to write them legibly. He had already shown up on time, and followed the rest of his yeargroup to their seats. His paper was in front of him, and Jethro made every attempt to focus on it and not on the examiners in the room. He just had to keep his attention on the paper, and not the ticking of the clock, or the scuff of other students' shoes, or the scratchings of their quills. Cynthia told him that for a passing grade he had to answer most of the questions correctly to a reasonable standard, and do his best in the practical part of the exam. Basically Jethro had to do his best. It would be easier than classes, he thought, because the question was written right there in front of him.

The examiner told Jethro he could start. He opened his paper. The first question ... well, Jethro didn't really understand what it was asking him, but it said something about concealment charms, so he wrote everything he knew on the subject (which didn't take long) before progressing to the next question. That one he did understand, but he couldn't remember the answer. Cynthia had told him he could always come back to questions, so Jethro passed it for the time being, and hoped the answer would come back to him, too.

At the end of the time, Jethro lowered his quill. He hadn't answered all the questions, but some of them he did actually know, and some of them he even found easy. Some of them had been more of a guess, but maybe the person who marked his paper would give him credit for trying. All that Jethro knew was that his stomach was rumbling, so he had plans to fill it with food before his first practical exmaination in the afternoon.

0 Jethro Smythe This isn't a cat. 146 Jethro Smythe 0 5

Andrew Duell

May 24, 2011 8:36 PM

...it just never ends... by Andrew Duell

Andrew slept well enough over night, and arrived back in the hall with plenty of time before the start of the next testing session. He was ready, he could do this, he just had to keep telling himself that. Maybe if he did, it would come true. He had studied a bit more the night before. Knowing what he already had done, meant he could focus on the subjects for today. Potions and Transfigurations. His best and his worst class, this would be an interesting day. He gripped his 'anti-cheat' quill with a bit of a grin, then opened his book once instructed to begin.

Immediate confusion set in. He was fairly certain that the potion they were describing in the question couldn't exist, so he moved on. The next few weren't bad, then they started getting tricky again. By tricky, naturally he meant 'darn near impossible.' He struggled through what he could, partially answering where he could and explaining where things made sense. It all looked fairly familiar from class, but they must be doing it some other way than the way he had learned. He was getting very frustrated when at last the road before him smoothed out and he could metaphorically run again. He'd hit the Transfiguations section, he breezed through it with little difficulty. He was momentarily confused at the end, until he figured out the model they were using. It was an interesting setup, he may have to try it later. Assuming he didn't fail out completely and consequently got banned from being a wizard. He had some time left, so he went back into the potions section and tried to work out some of the harder stuff. He didn't get to far before he ran out of time.

It was another quick lunch and then he tried to memorize his potions book before his name was called for the practical portion. This time it was the blonde woman, Aurora Septentrion. She looked nice enough, but so did Ashburn yesterday when they started out. He greeted her politely and she led him to a room filled with potion making equipment. Andrew sighed, better to end strong, right? The examiner indicated three cards on the table, each having a potion on it. While he was looking them over, Ms. Septentrion talked about grading and rules and so forth. Andrew knew he had to make a potion, how they evaluated what he did was entirely up to them. It struck him as a little odd that they gave him an option of what to make, why not just assign a potion? Wait... one of these was quite a bit easier than the other two. Would he be viewed as smart for picking out the easy one, or lazy and incompetent for not pushing himself? Maybe he should have payed a little more attention to her. Oh well. He was fairly certain he could pull off the easy one.... but he wasn't absolutely certain. At least not in the time alloted. If he did foul up, it would look a lot worse if he was working on the easy on rather than one of the more difficult ones. Setting the easy one aside, he examine the other two potions. One looked slightly easier than the other, but not by much. He'd go with that one. He would just have to focus and he could get through this. He had all the right ingredients, in the right amounts. He had the fire set to the right temperature and stirred the brew just right. He had no idea where that oder came from, but it was powerful stuff. Andrew nearly choked as he frantically cast a charm to move the smell somewhere else. Maybe it was supposed to do that. He forged onward, and eventually the smell died down a bit. At least the smell in the air did, his robes would smell like this for a week. Not surprisingly, his potion didn't exactly have the effect it was supposed to. His examiner scribbled many notes in her book.

She cleared his mess out of the way. It seemed as though she didn't trust him to do it properly. His next task was to change one of the pots in the room into a parrot. Easy enough. He went through his routine and he produced a beautiful blue and yellow Macaw, it even told a crude joke. Andrew turned red and instantly turned it back into a pot. "Sorry." Oops. It didn't seem to affect her much, she just continued on with the test. She listed various items around the room and had him change them into various other things. None of them were particularly difficult and luckily no more of them insulted her. She dismissed Andrew while writing some more notes in her book. "One more day of this," he thought to himself as he left the testing area.

2 Andrew Duell ...it just never ends... 145 Andrew Duell 0 5

Marissa

May 26, 2011 11:24 AM

Back for seconds. by Marissa

She never worked out how, but somehow, Marissa convinced herself to go to the second day of exams.

She worked through the first section mechanically, sure she did very well, just as she had been the day before. She spent most of lunch pretending to study with the other prefects and trying not to imagine bashing Edmond over the head with the gravy boat. She went back out of the hall while it was being rearranged and the first group was examined. She stared at her shoes.

Then, she heard her name again. The witch, an older lady, pronounced it right this time. Marissa followed her to a testing area numbly, supremely indifferent to what the old lady had thought of her the moment she saw her and to what was about to happen.

Seeing a cauldron, though, sparked something. Taking Chemistry – or, in her family, AP Chemistry, and that was the minimum – had been one of her greater fears when she was still a Muggle, but its nearest equivalent had become the one class at Sonora where she could still do well. Sometimes even excel. She could remember debates, and slight expressions of approval for perfect potions, and essays….

“Hard,” she said flatly, and started working without asking for permission. It might be denied, after yesterday, and while she wasn’t sure if making one good grade would seem like going out with her head high or seem just pathetic, it felt right now like the right thing to do. Get glory where it would come.

She was uncharacteristically vicious as she decapitated dead caterpillars, and by the end she was sweating, bits of brown hair coming out of her ponytail and frizzing around her face, but the damn potion was the right color, and she stepped back almost defiantly before she caught herself and schooled her expression to something more appropriate for her examiner’s benefit as the old lady went to examine the cauldron.

She didn’t say much, but Marissa didn’t get a negative reading from her face. Well, any more than seemed to be intrinsic to the woman’s face. Then came the fatal word: “Transfiguration.”

It was, as Marissa expected, a disaster. It wasn’t, to her surprise, a complete disaster. She even finished one of the fourth year level spells, and got about halfway through a fifth year one before it melted. She was so shocked that she was unable to so much as get the next two to do anything at all. How had that happened?

She still hadn’t figured it out when she was dismissed for the day. One more to go.

16 Marissa Back for seconds. 147 Marissa 0 5

Edmond Carey

May 30, 2011 1:32 AM

The Final Day by Edmond Carey

The first day had been emotionally draining. The second day had presented its own challenges. The third day, though, was the first one he was a bit concerned about going in.

In the morning, he would sit written exams in Astronomy, Ancient Runes, Arithmancy, and History of Magic. Only the last one was something he considered easy, and even there, writing the required number of essays in the time block was going to present a challenge. At midnight, he would have the Astronomy practical, and that was where things would be really tricky. He had gotten somewhat used to being up at night because of the occasional Astronomy class, but it was still automatic to do as his parents had told him six years ago and go to bed at ten o’clock, and after the stress of the past two days and the morning, he knew he was not going to be his best when he was working on the practical exam.

If he had been taking Divination, with a fifth written exam crammed into the morning session and then an afternoon practical before the night practical, he was not sure he would have been able to manage well. He would have passed everything, he was sure, but he would have been completely exhausted by the end of it, and he would not have made the best grades on anything that he could have otherwise. So he was glad Julia had firmly said she didn’t think Divination was a good idea, even if, knowing how she thought that the idea of being over-booked was for slackers, he knew she had not so much been thinking that he would have a hard third day of CATS if he took it as she had been thinking about Alasdair.

A great deal of his life, he had put together in the past few months, had been defined by Alasdair, in that his life had been structured to make him as close to Alasdair’s opposite as possible. He supposed part of him resented that. That the entire family was half-expecting him to turn out like that just because he had, theoretically, at one point in time been Alasdair’s son. No one, as far as he knew, expected Morgaine to start cursing up the emergency ward any day now because she was Alasdair’s daughter, and the old man had raised her, even seemed fond of her, in a twisted way, long after he’d renounced Edmond and Gwenhwyfar. It was a double standard, and he didn’t appreciate it. He did believe they’d had good intentions, though, so he chose to just focus on not having to push himself quite as far as he thought he could go now at the end of his CATS.

When they were given permission to open the books, he went for Arithmancy first, since that was going to be the hardest after the first few questions of being asked to pull the numbers associated with his name and whatnot, and then into Ancient Runes. When he finished that one, his usually precise script becoming a little jagged as he scribbled in the last line he could come up with about rune casting, he glanced at the timer and felt a moment of cold fear, just short of panic, as he deliberated over which exam to tackle next before grabbing the Astronomy book.

The first question was a technical one about comet trajectories, which made the second, about the naming of the moons of Jupiter, seem almost comical. He realized he was nearly giggling and stopped himself before he caught any more strange looks from the few people still present, instead directing that energy into scribbling everything he knew about the Shakespeare person down and moving on to the composition of the rings of Saturn.

He chose the essay option involving debating the planet status of Pluto, then cursed himself because his main thought was that it was annoying to have something be a planet and then not, and he was fairly sure the Council examination authority wouldn’t consider Edmond Carey’s need for order in the universe as a valid reason to continue to regard Pluto as a planet. That simple fact made the essay harder than the one he had no particular feelings about, but he’d already written his introduction, and he didn’t have time to start over. He plunged on, sure it wasn’t that good, but maybe it would be good enough. He certainly didn’t have enough time left to stop to think about it before hurrying on to history.

After about three questions of that exam, he found himself becoming calmer, which made it harder to make himself write fast. It didn’t help, either, that one of the American history questions startled him by mentioning a scandal involving an election and a corrupt bargain his great-great-grandfather’s brother had allegedly had something to do with; he had to consider for a second whether or not he should just ignore Anthony III entirely or risk taking a stance on him, especially since the balance of probability was in favor of him having cheerfully taken part in the whole sordid business. Getting back into sixteenth-century goblin rebellions in Bohemia was a relief.

Hitting the essays, though, was not, especially since he thought they had to be formatted. He was still scribbling, his handwriting now a scrawl he was only bothering to keep barely on the right side of legible, when time was called, and for the first time in his life he found himself desperately finishing a sentence a second after his quill was supposed to be down. It was not a feeling he relished.

The sense of accomplishment that came with watching the exam booklets be taken away, though, that was better. He had almost made it. He would go to lunch, try to take a nap, and then study, and then…then it would all be over.

0 Edmond Carey The Final Day 143 Edmond Carey 0 5

Edmond Carey

May 30, 2011 1:48 AM

And it's over by Edmond Carey

He didn’t know how it had happened, because he was sure he had timed everything exactly, but somehow, Edmond found himself only just arriving at his Astronomy practical exam on time. His hair, never a model of decorum, now looked vaguely akin to a clown wig, his robes were wrinkled where he’d fallen asleep in them, and there were dark circles under his eyes. His relief upon realizing that examinations were not going to be individual was as great as any he’d ever felt in school, because he knew he didn’t look like anything to impress anyone.

The format, too, seemed straightforward, which was about all he felt up to right now. He just had to use the telescope to find certain heavenly bodies and plot them on the sky map he’d been given. He assumed the examination authority had some reference to where everything was in the sky tonight to compare their exam papers to, so fudging a little wouldn’t be permissible. Rubbing his eyes one more time, he started adjusting the telescope he was assigned to in order to begin.

It didn’t, as he’d predicted, go as smoothly as he might have hoped, because the past three days had caught up to him during the two naps he now thought might have only made things worse, but he thought that it went better than he had expected when he was fully conscious. At least, he thought he found everything. The problem, the real problem, with things where he thought things were coming together well was that he then couldn’t help but believe it was all wrong, somehow, and he was missing something important. Surely it had to be harder than it seemed.

He finished with a few minutes to spare, and checked his work over before one of the proctors called time. Then he handed in his paper and began, at once, to feel almost giddy as he walked back into the building and toward Aladren. It occurred to him to try dancing back, occasionally declaring the depths of his affection for Sonora Academy, but, perhaps in the best interests of everyone, he was still awake enough to not give into that impulse. It was a little deflating, too, to go back in his room and realize he had no one there to commiserate or celebrate with.

He sat down on his trunk, contemplating his expression with distaste. “Well, then,” he said aloud, just to not have silence for a moment. “That’s all done.”

0 Edmond Carey And it's over 143 Edmond Carey 0 5

Jose Hernandez

June 01, 2011 6:31 PM

I'm naming my cat "Astro" today by Jose Hernandez

As he wasn't taking any independent studies, the last day of exams consisted only of the two electives - both of which he had opted to take. He expected to fly through the divinations part and since his only interest in Astronomy was how it related to Astrology, he considered them pretty much the same subject anyway. There were be some more scientifically inclined questions on the astronomy part, and some how-do-the-moon-phases-affect-magic? type questions, but he thought he'd paid enough attention in class and did well enough on his homework and projects, that they shouldn't really pose too much of a difficulty.

He expected an O in Divinations and an E in Astronomy, and he felt fairly confident that he'd get them.

Sure enough, the written exam went so smoothly, Jose finished before time ran out (the first time in the three days of tests that had happened, though he'd been really close the second day). He was reasonably sure of all his Divination answers - in as much as Divinations was an inexact art and some of the questions could have been interpreted in a few different ways. Astronomy, he thought, had gone as well as could have been hoped, and even before the practicals, he was ready to declare his grade predictions true.

The Astronomy final wouldn't be until midnight, but the Divination one was right after lunch. Midnight was not going to pose a problem for Jose since the California Pierces had been known to keep some very odd hours depending on the job they were hired for, so he'd known to prepare for it by going to bed later and taking evening naps for the last week.

The div practical went well. He sat across from the young woman proctor, in front of crystal ball and made a reading there. Then he threw some runes on the table and made another reading. Then she handed him a tea cup with leaves on the bottom and he interpreted that as well. Sadly he hadn't made any terribly interesting predictions, but he justified every interpretation he made and felt even Aunt Lois couldn't have done better.

That night, he looked through a telescope and located . . . about eighty percent of the planets, stars, and constellations he was expected to find. At least one of them had been a trick question though; he was quite pleased to be able to tell the youngest male proctor that Pisces was not visible in Arizona at this time of year.

1 Jose Hernandez I'm naming my cat "Astro" today 149 Jose Hernandez 0 5