She Walked Away
CHAPTER TWO: And Time Passes
Authoress Note: I'm feeling generous tonight. You may get a third chapter tomorrow but that'll be it until Wednesday. It'll depend on how my Favs/Follows/Reviews are doing.
January soon melted into February and February melted into March as increasingly stressed out Year Five and Year Seven students were known to flip out over the smallest of infractions. Someone sneezed during a Potions practical and all of the fifth year Gryffindors and Slytherins made hushing noises as they shot poor Neville the nastiest look he had ever been on the receiving end of to the point that even Professor Snape almost felt sorry for the young boy, almost being the operative word.
Soon enough you couldn't walk through the library without finding people who used to spend their weekends outdoors tucked away, behind piles of books you'd never thought you'd see them under; as they were frantically searching for this spell or that incantation, attempting to get it just right.
It got so bad that Professor Snape, Professor Flitwick, Professor Sprout and Professor McGonagall had decided to host a Saturday session together where they went over the finer points of essay writing for the cost of six Galleons to cover the cost of the books and workbooks they would be using. When the notice was posted almost all the fifth year and seventh year Gryffindors signed up for it, and without a doubt all of Ravenclaw house had, even the little fourth years who were already starting to feel the pressure for their OWLs that where coming in a year's time.
The Saturday session was split off into two rooms. The Ravenclaws and the Gryffindor's where to descend upon the Great Hall after breakfast and stay until lunch time at one where they were released for an hour so everyone could eat and then return to their session from one until five pm. The Slytherins and the Hufflepuffs where to descend upon the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom which would be expanded and desks added to it to encompass almost the entirety of the fifth and seventh year Slytherins and Hufflepuffs and follow the same schedule as the first group of students. While this was going on it had been mentioned that those not in fifth or seventh year would do good to be outside the castle or inside their common rooms as the fifth and seventh year students got more and more anxious as the date of their tests slowly loomed in the horizon.
When the notice had gone up Hermione and Harry immediately signed all three of them up, as well as Ginny who was starting to feel the pressures of her OWLs the coming year and went to pay the six Galleons that was required to cover their course material; when Hermione and Harry insisted on paying for both Ron and Ginny they were met with a stone wall of protest but where finally able to convince their friends that six Galleons was nothing to them if it helped both of them do better on their OWLs.
The morning of their Saturday session finally came, much too quickly for anyone's liking but no one was likely to complain too loudly as they trekked down to the Great Hall for breakfast, not surprised to see it so packed at seven thirty in the morning with there being the essay writing session this day.
Harry piled his plate high, surprised to see Hermione doing the same thing which caused him to raise an eyebrow in her direction.
"It's not like they'll let us have a snack break now is it?" she said not taking her eyes from her parchment, as she started taking notes, every now and then while munching on a sugar quill. Just as breakfast was about finished the mail arrived and every student who was attending the essay writing session was met with a rather large package landing in their breakfast plates, as most had not been quick enough to catch them.
Harry, luckily enough, had managed to catch his and Hermione's, as she had been seated next to him and tried his best not to laugh when Ron was soon covered in hot cake syrup as his package hit his breakfast plate.
Quickly opening the packages, they left the brown paper on the table, knowing it would disappear with the breakfast dishes, before quickly glancing over the workbook, book, quills and ink they had received as no one had been told before hand what was included in the materials for the session, even those that had asked.
As soon as the mail had finished coming most students made themselves scarce from the Great Hall if they were not sitting in on the session which left all of the Ravenclaws and, surprisingly enough, most of Gryffindor stayed as well, minus the Weasley twins and a few others that Harry recognized from the Qudditch team that where in younger years. All the sixth year students stayed, wanting to get a leg up on studying for their NEWT classes the next year.
Once everyone that was not attending the session had exited the Great Hall Professor McGonagall started handing out the handouts that would be covered in the session as well as a muggle binder that held typed notes for them, as well as example essays from past OWL and NEWT students.
Hours where spent going over sentence syntax and how to avoid run-on sentences as well as reviews of what an adjective, noun, pronoun, and verb where as they hadn't been gone over by anyone since they did their grammar schooling before coming to Hogwarts and by the time lunch came, half of their workbooks where full of scrawled handwriting. By the time five that evening rolled around every student that had attended the seminar now knew at the very least: how to write a paper, how to write a thesis paper, and how to write a basic dissertation which apparently was required in their final year of Hogwarts.
The seventh years had already had a dissertation seminar earlier in the year while the sixth years had a thesis seminar, but this was a refresher for them, as well as a reminder, that their dissertation and thesis papers was coming up due. It also served as a glimpse into the future for those fifth years that had attended and let them know that they would have to write a thesis the next year and that their topic choices where due by the night before they left for Hogwarts for the summer or over the summer before they returned for their Sixth Year, if they were having trouble making up their minds. That following Sunday, and every minute of free time thereafter, was spent either in their private study corral pouring over pages and pages of notes as the OWL's crept up on them day by day.