Author's Note: Enjoy another chapter! I can't promise to update this frequently, as I do have other things to do, but I wanted to get second-year over with and move on to the Phoenix Club's third-year.
On the last Saturday of April, Kurt had his Bar Mitzvah ceremony in the synagogue in Windmere. His parents, younger sister Esther (who was due to start Nightwind School the coming school year), grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins (three of whom were older and already at school and two younger, one of them named David who was friends with and same age as Esther) attended. His friends, the second-year teachers, Headmistress Nakamura and Deputy Headmaster Ihejirkia also attended.
Kurt had been nervous about the ceremony in the weeks leading up to it, but he showed no sign of it during the actual ceremony. He read from the Torah in a strong, clear voice, and though none of his friends knew Hebrew, he did not appear to stumble over any of the words or make a mistake. Over his dress robes he wore a Jewish prayer shawl called a tallit and strapped to his arm and forehead was a set of small black leather boxes called tefillin, which contained scrolls of parchment inscribed with verses from the Torah.
After Rabbi Goldberg had blessed Kurt and concluded the prayer service, everyone headed to the Windemere Inn, where the seudat mitzvah, or celebratory meal, was being held. The teachers present gave Kurt a certificate for eighteen Galleons worth of books at the Book Corner (as the numerical equivalent of the Hebrew word 'Chai', or 'life', was the number eighteen). His relatives gave him various gifts as well, with his aunts and uncles giving him monetary gifts in multiples of eighteen for his school supplies and spending money account. His grandparents gave him some religious texts and items, and his parents gave him a set of writing materials and a lap desk/writing box to keep it in. His cousins for the most part got him sweets, except for his six-year old cousin Anna, who gave him a picture she had drawn of him fighting a dragon and a stuffed lion. The Phoenix Club had gotten together and bought eighteen Galleons worth of art supplies for him (which resulted in good-quality paints, pencils, and brushes for him.)
In May, all the second-year students were each given a list of the elective classes and a description of each that they could take next year and were asked to go over the list and choose which ones they wanted to take. They had to take at least one, but more than three was not suggested, as it would be hard fitting them into the schedule in that case. They were to circle the electives they wanted to take and turn in the list in a box in front of Deputy Headmaster Ihejirkia's office no later than the end of the school term.
The Phoenix Club spent all of a Saturday afternoon going over which electives they wanted to take. Lily wanted to take them all, but knew she couldn't since there would be no way she could fit them in her schedule without recourse to a Time Turner, which the staff wasn't just going to hand out to a student without a better reason than that. "There's no point in your taking Muggle Studies, Lily, even if you feel that it would be fascinating studying it from a wizard's point of view," Severus said.
"Besides, if you really want to know about the class, I can tell you about it and let you look at the textbook next year," offered Sirius, who had decided to take Muggle Studies since the class would be relatively easy. He also still had the habit of doing things that would annoy his parents, even though he no longer had to care what they thought.
"And there really is no point in taking Divination unless you have some ability to see the future," Amina added. "It's not a subject that you can really be taught in. That is, if you have the Inner Eye, you can learn to master it, but if you don't, all you'll get out of it is the theory. It'd be like a Muggle or Squib being able to learn the theory behind spells, but not able to actually learn how to do them."
Lily sighed in disappointment. "I guess you're right, Amina. And Sirius, I will take you up on your offer for Muggle Studies." She circled Magizoology, Arithmancy, and Study of Ancient Runes on her list as the electives she planned to take next year.
Remus had also wanted to take all the subjects (except for Divination, since he had no abilities in that area), but after much consideration, decided to take the same classes as Lily and just study Muggle Studies on his own.
By dinnertime, the Phoenix Club had decided on what electives they wanted to take. All of them had decided to take Magizoology, since they were curious to learn more about magical creatures. Amina and Katya had signed up for Divination, as they were the only ones that had some ability to see the future, though in Katya's case, it was mostly limited to sometimes seeing images in crystal balls and divining things through tea leaves and tarot cards. Sirius, James, Nicole, Fiona, and Kurt signed up for Muggle Studies. Besides Lily and Remus, Severus, Claire, Yuki, Marshall, Yun, Amina, and Makena signed up for Arithmancy and Dylan, Katya, Severus, Marshall, Yun, Nicole, Fiona, Kurt, and Claire chose Ancient Runes. With that decided, they dropped off their lists with the subjects they chose in Deputy Headmaster Ihejirkia's box on their way down to dinner.
Meanwhile, review for the final exams were going on. After having done so well last year, Lily was less panicky about them, but she was still focused on revising for the exams during much of her free time. James and Sirius took a very relaxed view on things, since they knew the material in all the classes dealing with magic use, and the ones that didn't (Astronomy and History of Magic), they still knew enough to pass the exams. However, since their friends were studying, they did make an effort to at at least spend some of their time doing the same.
On June 4th, exam week started. The schedule for the second-years was pretty much the same as last year's, except that their Astronomy exam was on Wednesday, and as consequence, the theory and practical portions of their Herbology exam were held back-to-back on Thursday afternoon.
The following week everyone was able to relax. The Phoenix Club celebrated Katya's birthday on June 13th, with early ones for Dylan and Fiona, like they had last year. On Friday, the exam results were announced (except for the fifth and seventh-year students). Unfortunately, despite all the studying he had done, Dylan had managed to get his dates so thoroughly mixed up during the History of Magic exam that he did much worse than last year, scoring a Below Average grade of 67.
"How is it that I can be interested in historical events but so horrible at keeping track of the dates?" he groaned. "With what we've been graded on in class, that brings my overall grade in History of Magic to a seventy-one. That's barely passing!"
"At least you did much better on the other exams, Dylan," Fiona pointed out. "You've got Above Average on most of them, with a score of eighty-five or better, and you got an Excellent in Charms, with a score of ninety-seven."
"Yes, but that's not going to make things better with my mother, who is a wizarding historian and got all Excellents on her History of Magic exams when she was at Nightwind School," Dylan retorted. "She'll probably tell me that my science fiction books are distracting me and forbid me from reading them all summer, having me instead review the history I learned this year! That's not what I want to spend my vacation time doing."
"Maybe if you point out that if reading science fiction really distracted you, you would have done poorly on all your exams, your mother might change her mind about forbidding you from reading for pleasure," Sirius suggested.
"Maybe, but I'll still have to review all the history I've learned so far," said a dispirited Dylan. "Neither me or Dad can talk her out of that. She understands that not everyone is going to be as interested or good in history like she is, but she still expects me to be able to at least pass the class."
"I got a seventy on my Astronomy exam," Nicole pointed out, in an attempt to make him feel better. "If I had gotten one more question wrong, I would probably have failed it."
"And I completely failed my Potions practical," Remus added. "I got a sixty-eight."
"But you got a perfect score on the written part, so you still managed to get an eighty-four and Above Average overall, Remus. And Nicole, you still passed the Astronomy exam, even if it was just barely. I'm the only one in our group that actually managed to fail an exam!"
"It's not the end of the world, Dylan," Katya said. "We're not going to like you any less or stop being your friend just because you failed an exam. Besides, History of Magic isn't an integral part of the careers you are interested in, and it's not that you don't know the details of wizarding events, you just have trouble remembering the dates correctly. If the exam had put less emphasis on the dates and more on the details of the events, you would have gotten a passing grade."
"I guess. At least if I tell Mom that, she might just drill me on the dates and focus less on what happened during the events."
On Sunday the Phoenix Club had their little going-away party. Claire handed out photos that she had taken throughout the school year for them to add to their albums. In the evening was the end-of-year feast, and the following day school let out of the summer. Makena was returning home to spend the first few weeks with her family, until her sister Nomusa got her acceptance letter. At that point the two of them would go to Windmere and stay with Professor Afolayan, as she had volunteered to look after them and help Nomusa adjust to a life without dealing with apartheid. The students that lived elsewhere took their respective Portkeys home, while those that lived in Windmere gathered their trunks and set off for the town.