Chapter 12

The only herbologist was Ludmila Yaxley, though there were a number of the special sixth taking the brevet exam. Teela and Lucy were taking it with a view to using healing plants, another girl named Laura with intent to back up her one good subject of potioneering, and a boy, Tony, who was considering working in a plant nursery.

The full exam practical was the old standard of harvesting Mandragora and Ludmila wondered whether this was in response to a large number of DADA students using the duracorpus option. She was not musical, but had learned a musical charm that was soporific to plants since horticulture was her major hobby and she cared about the feelings of her plants. She had no trouble. Much of the rest involved testing various composts and producing mixes that were optimal for a list of plants, which was, Ludmila thought, a very sensible test, and moreover ideal for those people to whom aggressive plants were offputting.

The written covered self-motile plants, redacted for the brevet exam, wand trees, soil types, and the correct times to harvest a selection of plants, and their proper preparation. Ludmila enjoyed it and went to tell her Saggitarius spinifora all about it.

History, Metalwork and Muggle Studies were also subjects with no takers this year; so the next exam was Potions, which almost the entire year was taking, albeit in the case of some in brevet form.

The high flyers here were Zajala, Oliver Prince, Arthur Pippin and Laura, with those hopeful of an 'E' being Nigel, Lycos Rafe and Danzo. The special sixth were largely taking this as an adjunct to healing, or in the case of Tony, to add to his knowledge of plants. Kevin had never had any intention of jeopardising his other three NEWTs with a skill he did not hope to do more than pass, and Cecil Burke agreed with him. So too did Storm and Zephyra, who were taking five NEWTs and did not want to jeopardise them! For some students, like Charms, it was a second or third NEWT to go with a single skill. As the special sixth became better established, there would be less need to feel that this was necessary, as more vocational skills would be available.

The full exam students had prepared their potions and Zajala, Oliver and Arthur had matured their Felix Felicis on the beach in New Zealand, with repelling spells towards anyone under seventeen, more to prevent accidents than in expectation of deliberate tampering. Laura had stuck to Veritaserum, as had Lycos and Danzo. Nigel had decided to aim high for Felix as well, in the hopes of grabbing extra marks, as it was all a case of being methodical. His confidence had improved no end, and he was very pleased with his result, even if it was not so clear as that of the other three brewing it. The Brevet students had prepared Liberamore Major as the most complex potion they would have to produce. The practical for both was to identify ingredients by look, smell and feel, and to show preparation techniques.

The written was of course much stiffer for the NEWT students, and involved complex questions using Golapott, the analysing of potions through Malfoy lines, printed, and so on. The brevet students had to complete a little more than half the number of questions.

Zajala enjoyed it and Nigel proclaimed it 'not too bad.'

Only Lilith was taking the exam in music, and this was her only NEWT this year. The written was first, and required the crafting of short passages to perform a selection of functions, and Lilith enjoyed herself and added more complexity than was strictly necessary. Adding counterpoints to already crafted tunes was simplicity, though the addition of three extra parts all adding to each other was not required. Lilith was like that, though.

The essay question this year was 'trace the musical influences on current western trends and expand upon their use and possible origins in magical bases.' Lilith wandered a little too deeply into jazz and its significance in voudon, became too arithmantic on the relationships of the distinctive sound of classical jazz and the blues, and completed the rest of the essay at merely 'O' grade writing.

The practical involved sending a volunteer to sleep with a soporific tune, and then waking them with a counter-tune. Lilith's volunteer was Rose Gaunt-Moody. Rose was then set dancing by Nils to the Elf-king's tune, and Lilith didn't bother to read the music of it backwards to counter it, but played it from memory. Rose giggled.

"I could have done with the sleep after that," she said. "It was ever such a nice one, felt like I'd had a whole night's rest."

"Well that was why I added the extra twiddly bits, so you'd be fresh to dance," said Lilith. "The tune is supposed to be a forty-eight hour soporific but I knew you'd be woken up, so I figured I'd add enough to make that like a whole night."

Nils made a note of this, having missed it, and marvelled again over how talented Lilith was.

Transfigurations involved Zajala, Nigel, Storm and Kevin, Damian, Lycos, Danzo, Pericles Bullivant, Cecil Burke, Lucy Barnett, Martha Bones, Reginald Pike, a Ravenclaw, and Randall Corner. Teela Guffy was taking the brevet form, though Madam McGonagall had tried to persuade her to take the full NEWT. Teela lacked confidence rather than ability. However, if she felt safe taking this new brevet, Minerva sighed and hoped she would pass well, rather than fluffing it for panicking.

The summoning went well enough for most of them, though Randall Corner accidentally summoned a swarm of snitches instead of a flock of birds, and Cecil, who was with the other examiner, just ahead of Randall, was flustered enough to turn the violin into a snake with a passing resemblance to a basilisk because of the unofficial Slytherin house quidditch mascot, Basil the Basilisk. He lost it totally and retired in hysterics, leaving Zajala to stalk in, subdue the not-basilisk and turn it into a kneazle, that promptly bit Randall.

Zajala's own violin was a ragdoll, because nobody she knew had attempted that breed before, but the examiner credited her with the kneazle being worth more marks. There were no further serious upsets, as Teela was taking a separate exam, and so was unlikely to be made hysterical by things she had not seen.

The written covered Gamp's Law and its exceptions, and nobody in this group, much to McGonagall's relief, were inclined to argue with the premises laid down by that theoretician. The essay on Assimilative Correlation was completed with more or less foray into post NEWT concepts, as this was less of a Malfoy thing than a Snape thing, and the talented in this year were Malfoys or their cronies more than Snapes. The two Prince boys were not as close to their Snape relatives as some of their ilk.

And Cecil had been calmed down with glumbumble juice and wrote well enough.

All in all it was a relatively peaceful and ordinary year.

Even if that idiot Corner boy had let his mind wander onto the only thing that held his attention for more than a few minutes at a time.

And the NEWTs at Hogwarts were over.

The NEWTs at Prince Peak had of course been taking place at the same time.

Ancient runes was the province of Fred, AHHa, Julian, Albert and Silvina. Silvina thought that the comparison of ways of farming was very interesting, but had to work hard to catch up time as she was sidetracked into writing the start of a tone poem about the waters of the Nile laughing over the cataracts and flooding in a majestic spread across the fields. Fortunately she had made her musical notes on one of the extra sheets provided that she had transfigured into being staves not lines. Julian asked,

"Did you write it down? What you were humming?"

"Of course I did," said Silvina. "Might cost me the 'O' grade as I had to write pretty fast to cover the ruddy trees, but meh."

"She's a composer," laughed Fred.

"I did make some notes on what you hummed, but had to scrawl out staves … d'OH!" Julian smote his head as Silvina showed him her transfigured staves. "Well, I'll think of that another time."

"And thanks for taking the time to make the notes," said Silvina.

"I'm not anticipating higher than an 'E' anyway," said Julian, "and preserving the music of our resident genius is more important."

"That's true friendship," said Silvina, moved.

Severus might hold that Arithmancy was the key to higher magic, but this year was notable for its lack of numeracy; and only Flo and Silvina were taking it to NEWT. Silvina managed to concentrate though this exam, and completed it in plenty of time. She made notes on a tune that one might use to increase the flow of power for the exclusion line defined in the final equation. Flo, who was a very competent arithmancer, calculated the power required to animate an inferius and added some terms to the equation to partially power the exclusion line as it came into use by breaking the enchantment holding the will into the decaying body and using that magic to add to the exclusion line. Severus was quite delighted when she showed him her workings and hugged her for coming up with a piece of original research on the fly.

Disappointingly for Pru, nobody was taking Astronomy to NEWT, but her classes for potioneers and diviners had been well attended.

George and Yelisaveta were the only ones taking care of domestic beasts, and George declared to Ross that it was 'a doddle'. Having seen his practical, Ross knew fine well that this meant that George had done well, since none of the Ingates were given to flights of imagination or unreasonable expectations. Yelisaveta smiled and agreed that it had gone well.

The chanting theory paper followed, which was taken by everyone except the Jorkins twins and Kate Grant, and nobody had any problems.

Charms was being taken by Vya Kalinka, Rose Hubble, Kate Grant, Albert Jorkins and Sara Barbary, and Sara hoped for a high grade as she was taking only three NEWTs, the other two being chanting and music, the whole reason for her being here. Her talents were particular rather than general, but that she had a real talent was reason enough for her to be in the school, and Severus made it clear that he was in no wise disappointed that she was not taking the five or more NEWTs that all but Granville, Yelisaveta, Kate and Hanna-Leena were taking. Those four had decided that four good grades was better than risking blowing it with five.

None of the candidates had any trouble with either obliviation nor moving trees around, since shifting trees for dryads and obliviating tourists was part of life on the Prinzhorn. Sara declared that a babe like Radagas could have passed it. She had a horrid feeling that the Constitutional Marauders would also be capable of throwing around such terms as Extrinsic Alteration, and with as much understanding as anyone in the sixth, even if they could not manage a protean charm.

In this she was probably partially correct.

It was probably fair to say that the upper and lower sixth were the last years containing families traditionally sent to Cackle's or Hellibore's who might not all have passed the stringent exam Severus now had in place, since Severus was taking only the brightest to keep his numbers low. And at that, even those of his original Cackle's girls, who had left the previous year, had achieved more than they would have believed possible, and reached for standards above those that Hogwarts considered necessary.

But that was the whole point of a school for the highly talented.

AHHa and Hanna-Leena Tommila were the only ones taking Comparative Magic, disappointing perhaps for Freya, but her few students did work assiduously. AHHa wrote busily about the different perceptions of shapeshifters in various cultures, compared and contrasted demonology with the use of loa in the voudon tradition and discussed knowledgeably how the exigencies of geography shaped the importance of spell tradition. AHHa had debated this with Freya as a matter of using the Egyptian tradition to entrap Achille, pointing out how many of the stories of Egyptian magic show mastery over water, when water was the single most vital commodity in the land. He cited freeing the waters at Elephantine, though noted in passing that this was probably the act of an engineer rather than a magician, and the parting of the waters of the Nile for a female rower, who was entertaining the pharaoh, to pick up her lost hair ornament. For the Norse, mastery over rock and metal was important, with such tales as Odin's magic auger that could bore clear through a mountain, the magic of the supposed dwarf who could build a wall in a night, and the forging of weapons. He rather ran out of time and had to complete the paper of short questions in a hurry. Hanna-Leena produced answers that were less erratic, but were more pedestrian.

It was only Sara who was not taking DADA. The class wrote with a knowledge that showed their understanding to be well past the expected level of NEWT, absently diverging onto discussions of liches, wights and such esoteric undead, and demonstrating arithmantic knowledge of protection from demons. For the practical, Madam Trewkettle resigned herself to drinking a lot of mandragora. None of Severus' well-drilled army suffered any ill effects from the curses cast at them, and Severus did not bother to point out that Madam Trewkettle bore the words 'patronising durak' in zits on her forehead for having commented in the hearing of the students that as all the Cackle's girls had left now, she trusted that the students would all be shown to be quite as efficient as Ravenclaws.

Madam Trewkettle had once been a Ravenclaw.

Severus had replied mildly,

"Oh, my children are nothing like Ravenclaws, they are all hard-working, efficient and singularly well balanced mentally. You need have no fears that I am permitting even my most talented to emulate that sort of thing."

Madam Trewkettle didn't like him anyway, so that could hardly be worse, and the feeling was mutual.

It may be said that since the entire year, including Sara, had chanted to put the zits on Madam Trewkettle's head, using Finnish naming magic and the power of twenty three, she had to pay the talented Mardo Monk to get rid of the manifestation.

There were no Diviners in this year, but then Carmenta preferred that state of affairs to having her subject treated as a soft option. There were no enchanters either, being a year which preferred to go for what might be a brute force chant to cover the same options. Those studying metalwork had covered some enchantment, but as Fred pointed out, five NEWTs was enough for people not surnamed 'Snape'. As Silvina was taking six, she put her tongue out at him, since so was AHHa.

Geomancy was the province of only Sandalla, who felt that as the princess of a magically hidden land which was unplottable, it behoved her to understand how Zorn was protected.

She calculated the fastest way to get from one point to another, which was not always the obvious matter of nodal shift, listed the destinations of the Knight Bus in probable magically significant order Aldeborough, Loughborough, Beccles, Daventry, Granchester, Jarrow, Maidstone, Maidenhead, Beachy Head, Yarmouth. She made a note that Aldeborough, Loughborough, Beachy Head, Maidenhead, Maidstone, Beccles and the rest was probably also valid, but less elegantly managed. An essay on the logistics of transport to big sports venues completer her written work, and Sandalla was taken to England where she collected a wheelchair from Bath, a chastity belt from Maidenhead, some torn fabric from Rippon and a roll of toilet paper from Lewes. Sandalla considered that there was somebody in the Ministry of Transport who probably should be transferred for the sometimes rather stretched Assimilative Translocational Correlation. However, this was her penultimate exam and she was glad to get it over.

Granville, taking Herbology, was glad to be dealing with Mandrakes; when he married Svetlana, and his twin married Sandalla, they would have some responsibility for the wild mandrakes at the entrance to the country of Zorn. He considered the practical on manures very sensible, and enjoyed the written. Rose was also taking this exam, as she liked plants, and she beamed at him afterwards, and declared it was lovely to have such a nice easy exam, and not a snargaluff in sight.

Sandalla was also taking history, which was sensible for a ruler-to-be, but she was taking the German ZH in European history, as Percy felt it to be superior to the English exam. Sandalla found ancient history more interesting than modern history, but had opted for the latter as more use to her. She wrote steadily on the history of rivalry between wizards and goblins, on the religious schisms of the muggles that had lead indirectly to the Statute of Secrecy, on the problems caused by the differences in muggle and wizarding country boundaries, and on how to recognise the rise of dictators and at what points they should be stopped. Sandalla managed not to say "With a bloody good spanking before they even got to school", but she thought it.