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Chapter 35: Running On Empty

OWL Exams: May and June 2022

Some people felt that OWLs were the worst exams. After all, they were the first. By the time it got to NEWTs, you had some sort of idea what it was like to do real examinations, ones where your examiner didn't have a familiar face and ones where you wouldn't get the results for months.

Alice disagreed. OWLs were, in her opinion, the best exams. A chance to show off her knowledge, without having to worry about anything depending on them. She already knew that she'd be good enough to do the NEWTs she wanted to, and so there was very little stress attached. She didn't have to strain to be top in the year – that title was claimed so completely by Rose or by Aisha that there was no point.

In the weeks and months leading up to the exams, she participated in the massive lie that everyone told.

"Oh no, I haven't started revising," most students would say, with some obvious exceptions such as Rose.

Alice began to modify her actions a little though. The books she normally read in the mornings, when as she often did, she woke long before her alarm began to be schoolbooks and textbooks rather than the fictional stories she'd enjoyed before.

Her taste in boyfriends moved towards the more scholarly in their year. You couldn't say that Alice was biased – she'd dated popular boys and unpopular ones, sporty boys and smart ones. Some who were both sporty and smart, some who were both popular and sporty. It depended on her mood, and they would all jump at her lightest wish.

The boys she chose now let her revise with them. Multitasking was something she was very good at.

Scorpius, on the other hand, opted for denial. If he didn't accept that the exams would be soon, they wouldn't be. If he still took part in Quidditch as though there was nothing more important, there wouldn't be.

If only the world were so simple. Thankfully, his friends didn't allow him to indulge in this fantasy for too long. Rose dragged him out of it with her insistence on working lunches and revision timetables.

Branwen, Scorpius' new girlfriend, wasn't too keen on this. She, too, loved Quidditch, and didn't want to spend time cooped up in a library with her boyfriend and his female friends. They'd begun their relationship in a blaze of publicity - Scorpius had flown in the Quidditch final, despite having fallen off his broom only a few months before and nearly come to permanent harm. His excellent Keeping had resulted in victory, accompanied by Branwen's superb Chasing.

In what was to Neville Longbottom, who was watching as he congratulated the team, an eerie replay of the first time that Ginny and Harry Potter kissed, Scorpius had entered the Gryffindor Common Room to an embrace, a kiss, and then a girlfriend.

The ghosts could have told Neville, however, that relationships began like this all the time. Emotions running high over Quidditch - it was to be expected.

Scorpius and Branwen had had little time to adjust to being boyfriend and girlfriend, however, before being plunged into the world of exams. Denial was the only option, up to a point.

Still, the first moment that it felt properly real to Scorpius wasn't when he received the exam timetable, telling him that the Charms written exam would be his first exam and the Astronomy practical would be his last. Although then he really did buckle down, turning up to revision sessions without having to be dragged there.

It wasn't when lessons finally ended for the year, the Professors believing they'd given their students all the help they could. Now it was up to them.

Nor was it when they woke for their last breakfast before an exam.

No, the first time that it really hit home that it wasn't a dream was when they called his name to move him into the exam room. When he sat, amidst dead silence, on the single desk already laid out with parchment, quills and ink. When he turned over the first page of his exam paper to reveal his first question. Which, to his relief, he could answer.

Not knowing the answers suddenly wasn't his problem. Slowly and methodically, he worked his way through the paper, scrawling down answers, splashing ink on his page. When he looked up again, he saw to his horror that the time was nearly up. And he wasn't even halfway through.

He began to hurry up. His hand cramped and he ignored it, scribbling answers that he knew were mostly right, even if their details were missing.

When he left the room, pale-faced and shocked, it was to his relief that he heard Alice whisper to one side of him, "I didn't even finish that exam!"

They didn't talk much about the exam over lunch. Rose liked to do so. Liked dissecting every question, everything she could have written. Aisha, on the other hand, hated it and Scorpius fully agreed.

Albus was also in agreeement. He hated exams, written ones all the more. He couldn't put his answers into words, into the perfectly formed sentences that came so naturally to Lysander, Aisha, Rose or Alice. Lia was in agreement with him, he knew. He and Rose alone had finished their paper, the others putting so much into their earlier questions that they never reached the last ones.

With Rose, no doubt, the reason she'd finished would be that the answers had sprung so quickly to her mind that she'd raced through. But Albus remembered the shivering panic of sitting there, staring at questions and not even understanding them, let alone how to answer them!

The exams passed, all of them blurring in his memory. He began to lose what little interest he'd had at the beginning. Now he understood why they did written exams first. It was hard to find motivation, as time wore on, to push himself to revise, to tear himself away from beautiful blue skies.

He hated whoever had decided to put exams in summer, when all students could do was stare at the lovely weather that they ought to be enjoying.

Soon, but nowhere near soon enough, the written exams were over. Now it was time for the practicals. What scared him here, not that he told anyone, was a fear of freezing up. Both he and Scorpius joked about how much easier they would be, especially ones like Defence Against the Dark Arts or Charms. Most of the eight had spent a lot of time wandering the school at night, but Albus and Scorpius even more than the others had had mock duels with each other, or more serious duels against others. They'd even once fought (and won) against Aisha and Rose, who'd put up a spirited defence, but hadn't worked as well with each other as he and Scorpius.

He was relieved, though, that you didn't have to do these exams in front of everybody, just the three others who were near you in the register.

This, people supposed, must be an especial relief to Lorcan, Lysander and Aisha. Along with Demelza Sloper, they were a group of four. You couldn't say that they had no friends in the exam room.

But Lorcan wasn't sure if this was that much of a positive. He knew how much his twin wanted him to do well. He did. But he also knew that, no matter what he did, Lysander would beat him. He didn't really mind. Lysander was interested in all of this stuff, in school and in exams. Lorcan was just interested in the knowledge he needed to do what he wanted.

He had some pride though, and it was never easy, to be consistently beaten in everything. To see Professors, who had known that they had one of the twins in their class, sigh as they realised it was the stupid one. In a way, he'd encouraged his distraction as a way of coping. If you didn't try, then you couldn't fail.

Astronomy was always the best, and the worst exam. It had been the last exam for many years, after people realised that it was unfair to try and force people to do an exam or revise for one on the day after you'd had to stay up past midnight, squinting down a telescope. That was what made it the best exam.

The atmosphere was also alternatively good and bad. On the one hand, it didn't feel like an exam. They could speak a little more, they were all in the room together, and some people enjoyed the feeling of being awake while the rest of Hogwarts slumbered. But that was a disadvantage to those who did their best in exams from the adrenaline that pumped into their brains and increased the speed of their thinking.

Regardless of their personal feelings on exams, no matter whether they had revised hard or not, in spite of some, like Lia, Albus or Scorpius needing good OWLs to follow their vocations, it was with great relief that they returned to the Inter-House Common Room after that exam. Nobody went to bed. They were too awake by this point. By common agreement, they didn't discuss the exam. Or any exam.

Summer activities, the weather, their needs for sleep – these were the topics. Branwen insisted that Scorpius dance, and then they went out for a night-time flight, as this was one of the few nights of the year when the curfew could be ignored.

Alice, too, vanished from the Common Room before long. She had spent the last month of the exams with one boyfriend - the longest she'd ever spent with any one boy. A seventh year who had just finished his NEWTs, Samuel Smith was tanned and blonde with at least a head of height over Alice, they acted as equals in a relationship rather than the boy always chasing her.

House-elves had supplied pumpkin juice and enough snacks for an army. The R-word (results) was banned. They celebrated until the late morning, although people began to slip away as the night wore on, some just falling asleep on the couches where they sat and others having the intelligence to at least reach their own common rooms.

Their first official exams were over. It was a rite of passage, part of growing up. And they were all relieved to be out the other side.

Well, that's the first named relationship. Now, why do I get a feeling people won't like it?

Chapter title from One Minute

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