This chapter is being reposted after a technical glitch.
As it turned out, Dean's complaint from weeks before about how some students were going home for the Easter Holidays had had an effect – and it was one which worked nicely for just about everyone, except perhaps for Mr. Twycross himself.
While everyone would get twelve weeks of Apparition education, anyone who went home over the holidays would get an extra three weeks (to correspond with the weeks they were unavailable) and so the Apparition Teacher would actually be giving fifteen one-hour lessons instead of twelve.
"It's not like he has to spend a lot of time commuting, really," Dean observed. "And I'm not sure that an Apparition expert has much he has to do, most days of the year."
"Well, maybe he's one of the people they call in to sort out Splinchings?" Hermione guessed. "Or maybe it's a part time thing and he normally works doing paperwork."
She shook her head. "Anyway, I hope you're ready for Quidditch tomorrow, Ron."
"I hope so as well," Ron admitted. "I always feel a bit nervous about all this… we've at least had a lot more drill time than the first match of the year."
"And you've got me," Ginny contributed. "That's got to count for something."
"It does count for something," Ron agreed. "I'm not sure if it's a plus or a minus, though…"
"Oi!" Ginny objected.
"Actually, if you think about that Arithmantically, it is a valid question," Neville said.
Ginny folded her arms. "Not you as well."
"No, what I mean is, you can't just check if someone's a better choice just by looking at how good they are by itself," Neville explained.
He waved his hand. "It's sort of… anyone is better than nobody, but not anyone is better than anyone."
"Right, I think I see," Harry said. "So it's pretty obvious that Ginny is better as a Seeker than not having a Seeker-"
Ginny tried to huff, but sounded like she was torn between that and laughing. "Wow, that's a vote of confidence. 'Better than literally not having a Seeker,' I'll put that on my application for the Harpies."
"You weren't planning on going for the Cannons?" Ron asked.
"Why in Nimue's name would I go for the Cannons?" Ginny shook her head. "They're terrible."
"I mean, that is half of the appeal," Ron shrugged. "You could be the most talented player the Cannons has had this century."
"I'm actually more than half convinced they're cursed or something, like the Defence Teacher position," Hermione contributed.
"Actually, the Chudley Cannons thing is a good example," Harry realized. "So if you have someone like, say, Draco, and he joined the Cannons, he'd definitely be an improvement over their current Seeker. But if he joined, um, the Wimbourne Wasps, then he'd only be an improvement if he was better than their Seeker at the moment, and if he joined the Bulgarian national team then he'd have to be an improvement on Viktor Krum to be better."
"Yeah, that's what I was thinking of," Neville agreed. "That kind of thing comes up when you're trying to derive spells, or something like it, and it seemed like it could fit?"
Ron frowned. "So does that mean Ginny is an improvement or not?" he checked. "Mathematically speaking, I mean."
"I think it depends who the replacement Seeker would be," Hermione told him. "As in, Harry or someone else."
Ginny contemplated that.
"Okay, fair enough," she admitted.
The more Harry got older, and the more that he and his friends were involved with things like being a Prefect or learning Apparition or Hogsmeade trips or things like that, the more he understood how difficult it could be to work out a schedule that nobody actually had trouble with.
The Quidditch matches were just one of those things that were hard to schedule, because they couldn't be on a weekday and there had to be time to allow for a long game – which meant allowing for lunch as well – and so it was about one in the afternoon when everyone took their seats in the stands.
"Hello, everyone, and welcome to another Quidditch game!" Luna told them all, her voice magically amplified by a Sonorus Charm. "I know normally there's a dragon flyover before Quidditch games these days, but instead today we're having a special pre-game display provided by Marauders' Magical Miscellany."
She cleared her throat. "Marauders' Magical Miscellany would like to remind you that, unlike many of their other products, fireworks are not edible. They would also like to remind you that their Mint Bomb fireworks are edible, and leave your teeth clean and minty-fresh for up to twenty-four hours unless you happen to eat something."
"I wonder if they ever tested that one on Sirius," Harry said, out loud. "Are they allowed to have Luna read out adverts like that?"
"I think it's technically a safety warning," Hermione replied.
Then there was a fizzle from by the base of the Hufflepuff hoops, and a matching fizzle over by the Gryffindor ones.
A plume of sparks and fireballs shot skywards from both ends at once, one of them red and gold and the other contriving to be yellow and black. Even the smoke from the fireworks was in theme – black for the Hufflepuff end, red for the Gryffindor end – and fireworks burst in complex patterns which got rapidly closer together until both were pouring explosives into the same space at about the middle of the arena.
Then there was a brief pause, and glittering animals – a lion and a badger – emerged, made of stars and sparks and continual ongoing crackling explosions.
Harry briefly wondered if they were going to have the two animals fight, and if so whether one of them would end up winning (and if it'd be cheating to have Gryffindor's lion win, or biased to have Hufflepuff's badger win, or something like that) but instead of fighting the two animals did something quite different.
They both got on broomsticks – with the broomsticks made out of a tracery of purple fireworks – and shot upwards into the air, first arcing so they were flying alongside one another and then twisting around like a double-helix pattern. Then they both burst in clouds of sparks and smoke, leaving a triple-ring in the sky like a set of Quidditch hoops.
Amid the claps and cheers from the crowd, both Quidditch teams came filing out onto the pitch.
The actual Quidditch game itself was sort of an interesting contrast to the Slytherin game earlier in the school year.
That game had been a ninety-minute-long see-saw, where nobody got more than about a forty or fifty point lead at any point until Draco had caught the Snitch, but this game (after several more months of training for the new Gryffindor Chaser team) wasn't entirely one-sided but it was clear who was winning as Gryffindor's score climbed up to a hundred before Hufflepuff had reached fifty.
Harry wasn't much of an expert on tactics, but he thought one possibility was just that the departure of Cedric had left a big hole in the Hufflepuff team and they hadn't properly compensated for it yet. That wasn't in terms of Snitch-catching – after all, you could only catch the Snitch once and it didn't affect the back-and-forth of the Chasers, Keepers and Bludgers – but in terms of how well the Chaser team was coordinated, which was something Cedric had been able to do at the same time as orbiting on the look-out for the Snitch.
"I wonder what the best position for a Quidditch captain actually is," he said, glancing over at Dean.
"Probably Beater, I think," Dean guessed. "You can stand back and take a look at the ongoing game, and one Beater being distracted at the wrong moment probably won't cost you the entire game as often as the Seeker."
He sniggered. "But it's better for any Quidditch player than for football players, so I guess I should keep it in perspective."
"Oh, right, because for football players they're all on the same level," Neville realized. "Unless Harry's playing."
"I don't think Harry would be allowed to play football?" Hermione asked.
Harry shrugged his wings. "I think I'd make a pretty good goalkeeper. Or a wing position."
"That was terrible," Neville groaned, then pointed. "Look!"
Ginny was stooping out of the sky, aiming for a point that happened to be in the middle of the latest push up the field by Gryffindor, and Ron bellowed an order to scatter. Dennis and Demelza did so promptly, and Cormac delayed long enough to throw the Quaffle directly at Cadwallader – one of the Hufflepuff Chasers – before diving away as well.
Melody hit a Bludger with tremendous force and a whang that echoed around the stadium, sending it at the Hufflepuff Beater nearest the other Bludger, and he was too busy making sure he didn't get hit in the face to focus on interrupting Ginny's dive for the Snitch. That was enough, and she snagged it out of the air before skidding to a halt about twenty feet above the ground.
"Oh, does that mean the game's over?" Luna asked. "I'm sorry, I was distracted by something. This commentary thing is harder than it looks."
The Easter Holiday was always a bit weird, because it was not that long before the end-of-year exams (and moved around a lot, as well) and so while it was still a holiday – with all the holiday characteristics, like being able to get up later in the day and not having to follow a schedule for two weeks – it was also a period when there was a lot of homework to get done and more than a bit of revision.
It was also a period when Harry sat down and had a serious think about what he'd be doing after Hogwarts, something he'd done before but which was more urgent now (or, at least, not less urgent and considerably closer).
The idea of curse-breaking as a career still sounded like a good one, because it fitted with the subjects he found interesting, and it was less dangerous for him than it was for a lot of other witches and wizards who might end up doing it… and, of course, it involved getting hold of treasure, which was always a plus sign.
It also had the prospect of pushing up the list of Weasley siblings Harry had worked closely with to "all of them", which was amusing in and of itself.
He was in the library a couple of days before Easter, reading through an account of the work of an early twentieth century cursebreaker – one of the people who'd been on the Carnarvon expedition, or possibly the Carter expedition, and who had done his level best to make sure that the Muggle discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun did not come with a Muggle discovery of cursed tombs – when someone cleared their throat to get their attention.
"Um…" said a Ravenclaw who Harry didn't recognize. "Do you have a moment?"
"I have several," Harry told her. "Is something the problem?"
"Oh, well… I don't really have many clothes that fit," she explained. "And I know you can visit that Muggle town that's nearby, I was hoping you could get me some?"
It was a bit of an unusual problem, but Harry was used to the idea of growth spurts – he'd had some quite sudden ones, but Ron had grown two or three inches over the summer once, and if you did suddenly grow over your time at Hogwarts then it might be several months before you could go home and get some more.
And if she'd forgotten about that until it was too late to go home over the holidays…
"I'll be able to pay," she added, probably misinterpreting Harry's pause to think.
"I won't say no about that," Harry assured her, doing his best to project the same air of amusement and empathy that Dumbledore managed so well. "I'll probably need to know what size you are now, but I can see what I find."
He frowned. "You have robes, right?"
"Yes, I've got those," she answered. "They still fit, it's just… other things."
After the whole process was finished, and Harry had added some of the charms they'd learned recently about making it so clothes resized themselves (and hopefully the same problem wouldn't come up again) he handed them over to the flustered Third-Year.
Samantha Ackerley (since that was her name, and Harry wondered if she was the sister of Stewart who he'd thought was in the same year) was very happy with the results, and said she could give what she'd borrowed back to her friend now, which puzzled Harry slightly but he supposed it was none of his business.
Harry wondered if maybe the situation he'd just been in (of a teenaged boy buying girl's clothes) was the sort of thing that should have left him very embarrassed.
Then he thought about it a bit more, and decided that even if that was the sort of thing that teenage boys were often embarrassed by in books it was still not really a sensible thing to be embarrassed by. It wasn't like it'd be silly for Dean to buy clothes for his sisters on their birthdays, and once you realized that then it was the same in any way that actually mattered.
In their Apparition lesson the day before everyone who'd gone home for the holiday came back, Harry conjured a large square of red cloth and put it in the middle of his hoop.
That gave it enough of a distinct look to be going on with, and then he concentrated hard on the hoop with the square in it.
Originally, when Harry had been aiming to Apparate, he'd been visualizing the hoop as it would be when he was standing in it. That was a very Pernese approach, but as it had turned out (from what Dean said) that wasn't necessarily correct for how Apparition worked – what Dean had done when it worked was to visualize the target itself, rather than his view from the target.
For going somewhere big, like London or even a house, there wasn't much difference because if you imagined the view from inside it you were still imagining it. But for a small hoop, it could matter a lot whether you were imagining the place you were meant to land or the view from the place you were meant to land.
Harry was sure he'd train that Pern-based wrong way of doing things out of himself at some point, or maybe find out if it really did matter, but it meant he still hadn't managed to Apparate yet. So he frowned, closed his eyes, and focused as hard as he could on the hoop-and-cloth.
Then he turned on the spot without actually turning, and for a moment it felt like he was inside out.
Harry had never actually been inside out before, but much to his surprise it was a sensation he could recognize quite well when it happened. It was very brief, though, and when it ended Harry opened his eyes again to discover that he was – mostly – inside the target hoop.
"All right, Harry?" Su asked. "Didn't end up having to take medicine to all the cottages in Britain, did you?"
"...what?" her girlfriend asked.
"It's one of the books Harry likes," Su told Sally-Anne, shrugging.
Harry shook his head, smiling slightly. "No, but I am glad I've managed to Apparate."
"And you didn't Splinch," Neville pointed out. "Which is lucky, if I do that I'm going to be beside myself."
The groans actually made Professor Flitwick come over and check if everyone was all right.
Harry was still feeling good about Apparating next Wednesday, which was the busiest day of his week as far as school work went and which began with a Transfiguration lesson.
"Today, we will be attempting Human Transfiguration," Professor McGonagall said. "However, first I will make sure that you all know all the rules and guidelines around such a difficult and finicky subject."
She chalked a stick figure on the board, then stepped back. "Mr. Goldstein, what is the Rule of Reversion?"
"Always be ready to Untransfigure who you're working on at a moment's notice," the Ravenclaw Prefect answered.
"And why might that be?" McGonagall pressed.
"Human Transfiguration can be very dangerous, so you need to be able to undo it if you make a mistake," Tony explained. "And it's easier to use Untransfiguration than to reverse a spell by doing it backwards, especially if you made a mistake."
Their teacher nodded. "Correct. Are there any exceptions to this rule?"
This time, hands went up, and Professor McGonagall called on Roger Malone from Hufflepuff.
"If you want a change to be permanent, then sometimes you also want to make sure that Untransfiguration won't make them revert," Roger said. "And you do that by… I think it's that you Transfigure them, make sure you did it correctly, then Transfigure them back. And then Untransfigure them, and it leaves them in what you Transfigured them into."
"Quite correct," Professor McGonagall agreed. "It happens that for that particular situation then it is partly what the subject of the spell prefers which determines which of the two options will become their unTransfigured default, as a result of the Rule of Resistance. Mr. Potter, can you summarize the Rule of Resistance?"
"Someone magical isn't as easily affected by Transfiguration spells from someone else," Harry answered. "It means you need to cast a Transfiguration spell more correctly and more strongly, and that effect gets stronger if someone wouldn't like how they'd end up."
That got Harry a nod. "Indeed, Mr. Potter. This is one of many reasons why Human Transfiguration is dangerous – even if your spell would be quite correct for a teacup or a terrapin, casting it on a human would be less likely to work correctly."
Harry put up his paw, then, realizing there was something he'd never quite thought about before, and she called on him again.
"In our Fantastic Beasts textbook, it says that the Quintapeds were all created by Human Transfiguration," he said. "And a lot of magical creatures seem to have been made by altering non-magical ones. How does that work with the Rule of Resistance?"
"Good question, Mr. Potter," Professor McGonagall told him. "In the first place, it seems that the McCliverts were true experts at Transfiguration, though not – needless to say – in forwards planning, and that the MacBoons appear to have enjoyed what they ended up as."
She tapped the board. "In the second case, yes, magically creating a new species is quite difficult, but usually such species are created by using the Rule of Reinforcement."
Harry nodded, remembering that one. The Rule of Reinforcement was about how you could make a difficult Transfiguration easier by referencing something that you had available, such as Transfiguring a human by referring to "this human but taller", or "this human but with shorter hair" instead of having to describe all the changes individually.
So a griffin might have come about by someone using the Rule of Reinforcement when combining the traits of a lion and an eagle. It still sounded tremendously hard – using the Rule of Reinforcement with one subject was hard enough –which was probably why there weren't more magical species.
It was sort of related to how it was in many ways easier to turn a cat into a cushion than it was to turn a cat into a different sort of cat.
Ernie had his hand up now, and Professor McGonagall called on him next. "If you end up Transfigured in a way you don't want, and you can't Untransfigure yourself, but you're an Animagus, does that help?"
"If you are in a situation where you cannot Untransfigure yourself, Mr. MacMillan, it is quite possible you will not be able to take on your animal form," Professor McGonagall answered. "If you have been turned into a bat, for example, then the Rule of Reflection means you will shortly be thinking only as much as a bat would – so you are unlikely to be able to remember that you can also become a dog."
She paused. "That being said, if you are able to remember that, then it serves as a useful escape. It is also a useful demonstration of the Rule of Resistance, since someone who has been significantly Transfigured in their human form and who likes the change will likely keep it after reverting from an Animagus form; the Rule of Reflection is also demonstrated, as significant changes in either human or Animagus form will be reflected in the other."
"Like with Pettigrew losing a finger, and his rat form missing a toe," Ron said, then coughed. "Um, sorry, Professor…"
"Quite correct, Mr. Weasley, though I will be taking two points off for the interruption," Professor McGonagall told him. "And two points to everyone who answered their questions, plus two to Mr. Weasley for a good example."
Ron looked puzzled for a moment before working out that that meant he'd broken even, and Professor McGonagall told them all to get up for the practical bit of the lesson.
"Mr. Potter, owing to your unusual magic-resistant circumstances, please work with two of your colleagues," she added. "We will be beginning simply, with changing hair colour through Transfiguration instead of the Charm that is more normally used…"
Harry supposed it would also be hard to change his hair colour, on account of not having any. Patterned scales might be nice though.
The date of the first Apparition Test, it transpired, was to be the twenty-first of April.
While the great majority of Sixth Year students, almost three-quarters, could take the test then if they wanted – including Ron, Hermione and Dean – Harry couldn't, and nor could Neville. So Harry had to ask a bit, and it turned out that there were additional tests every two months throughout the year (though those were often undersubscribed, especially the ones from the period when most former Sixth Years had already passed and most new Sixth Years hadn't yet learned how to Apparate in the first place).
That meant that Harry wasn't actually going to be able to take his Apparition Test until near the end of August, which was quite awkward, but at least it wasn't as bad as if the tests were every three months – which would have left the next possible test around the twenty-first of July, when Harry and Neville would still be underage, and the one after that being around Halloween.
"The weird thing about it is that I won't be able to practice for a couple of months before taking my test," Harry said. "That's one way it's really not like driving tests."
"Yeah, good point," Dean agreed. "But then, it's not like if you mess up in a driving lesson you reveal the existence of humanity to… oh, hold on, I started that sentence without knowing where it'd finish."
"Maybe, um, you reveal the existence of cars to wizards?" Harry suggested.
"That'll do," Dean agreed.
He stretched. "The weird thing is that the test's on a Monday."
"Maybe it's for time for the extra lessons on Sunday?" Harry guessed, thinking about the time slots available for people who were doing their tests that April, people who'd been out of the castle during the Easter Holidays and the occasional people who were both. "There isn't really any other time to put those, so…"
"They could have just done the tests a bit later," Dean countered. "And that way Hermione wouldn't be stressed about having to miss Potions."
"I'm not stressed about having to miss Potions," Hermione said. "I'm just annoyed that I might be missing something important, because you know Professor Snape is going to put whatever that is on the test."
Ron nodded sagely. "That is the sort of thing he'd do."
Harry supposed that in his case the best thing to do would be to spend some of August getting supervised practice in Hogsmeade, or something, to make sure he was in good shape.
He was doing pretty well so far, and hadn't Splinched once, but he was still only Apparating about two times out of every three and really wanted to see if he could change the target height – it was one thing to appear on the ground, and by far the safer thing for most humans (whatever your definition of human happened to be), but Harry was only human by some definitions and the idea of appearing in mid-air was one that would give him quite a lot of versatility.
Besides, some days you wanted to glide, and you wanted to do it without first having to go through all the hard work of climbing. Though London in summer could be quite good for thermals.
When everyone else was taking the opportunity to practice Apparition in Hogsmeade the next Sunday, Harry went to look for Neville to see how he was doing.
It felt like a nice, friendly sort of thing to do, and while it was interesting to see Dean and Ron and Hermione Apparating in Animagus form – which had confused the instructor no end the first time – it was a bit awkward to just stand around while Apparating happened (or didn't).
Looking for Neville, meanwhile, was as simple as writing him a letter for Hedwig to take, and that led Harry to a classroom on the fourth floor which contained one Neville, one life-sized wooden mannikin, one Lord Ridley and one painting of a Regency garden party (which was also occupied by a portrait of a knight, who Harry was fairly sure was called Sir Cadogan).
"Wyrm!" Lord Ridley declared, his hand going to his waist to draw his ghostly sword as soon as Harry entered the room. "Begone, foul knave."
"Aren't knaves those people who always lie?" Harry asked. "Or am I remembering a book of logic puzzles?"
Lord Ridley frowned, confused. "I… suppose knaves are known for lying?"
"Knaves always lie," Harry told him.
Since if knaves always lied, and he was a knave, then he wouldn't say knaves always lied, that seemed to cause Lord Ridley considerable confusion.
"How are you, Harry?" Neville asked, as the ghost stepped to the side to try and work out what had happened. "Something up?"
"I was mostly wondering how you were doing," Harry explained, and noticed that Neville had Panthera in his off hand. "Doing more sword practice?"
"Yeah, and getting some Transfiguration practice in as well," Neville replied, swapping his wand and sword over. "Statuam vivit."
The mannikin promptly started moving, flourishing a long rolling pin, and Neville raised Panther into a guard position.
"A bit higher!" Sir Cadogan instructed, and Neville adjusted his positioning. "And move your right leg forwards a little… good, like that!"
The mannikin attacked, and Neville stepped back and blocked the rolling pin before firing a Stunning Spell from his wand.
"That's the spirit!" Sir Cadogan declared. "Keep thinking about measure!"
"That doesn't look like the one in that book I got you a while ago," Harry said, watching, as this time Neville went on the attack.
"It's a bit weird, yeah," Neville agreed, batting the rolling pin aside and reversing the sword to hit the mannikin in the head with a clonk. "I hadn't thought about it before, but-"
"Don't get distracted, lad," Sir Cadogan warned him, and Neville ducked just in time to avoid being clonked himself by a rolling pin. "Give ground if you have to!"
Neville duly stepped back, then stepped back a second time as the mannikin got closer.
"Depulso!" he called, suddenly, and knocked the rolling pin out of the mannikin's grip. Before it could react, he lunged forwards and hit the mannikin with Panthera's tip.
"Fine work," Lord Ridley declared.
"You say that," Neville replied, then waved his wand and the rolling pin rose back into the air. It arrived back where the mannikin could take it, and he promptly froze the animated statue. "Arresto."
Harry shrugged his wings. "It looked good to me."
"There's a lot to think about, though," Neville replied. "Anyway, I hadn't thought about it that muchbefore, but Sir Cadogan and Lord Ridley and a few other portraits and ghosts and stuff know about how to do sword fighting with or without a wand… and while I can't spar against them, what I can do is learn how to sword fight without a wand and then animate this wooden dummy to fight as well as I can."
That made sense to Harry, and he supposed that it must be a bit like sword and dagger fighting from the Dragaera books – only the dagger was a wand, and you should absolutely not use it to block a sword blow!
"One downside actually is that Panthera's really light, for me anyway," Neville went on. "So the mannikin is never quite so good as I am, it's kind of reacting too slowly."
He hid a snigger. "Sorry, mate, you did too well."
"Better than not doing well enough," Harry defended himself.
Neville sniggered again, then animated the wooden dummy again. This time he put his wand away, and Harry watched as he blocked once, then counterattacked, and took a blow to the side from a rolling pin when he misjudged.
"Bugger," he grumbled.
"Watch your side," Lord Ridley advised. He seemed to Harry to have decided to pretend there wasn't a dragon in the room. "Never be thinking only about what you are doing, always pay at least as much attention to what they are doing! Better to give up an attack and try again later than both of you take a hit!"
Neville nodded, then shifted his footing slightly. Panthera dropped, guarding low, and the wooden dummy went for an attack high.
At which point Neville blurred into the form of Lapcat, darted through the dummy's legs, and returned to human shape with Panthera already swinging.
The blow took the dummy's head off.
"Wow!" Harry said, seriously impressed, then noticed Neville was a bit nonplussed.
"I didn't expect to hit it that hard," he admitted. "I'm going to have to fix that now..."
The topic of discussion in Runes on Monday the Twenty-First of April was to do with the defensive rune assemblages you got on old tombs, and Professor Babbling paused halfway through to let them know that, while the term "wards" had no specific technical meaning, as a matter of practicality they could use it as a shorthand for defensive runic assemblages.
Apparently Quirrell from First Year, or possibly Riddle, had overstated things a bit. Harry supposed that that was only reasonable now he thought about it, given that the quality of Defence teachers they'd had had varied a bit widely.
The topic of Apparition also came up, and Professor Babbling mentioned that many old tombs included an Anti-Disapparition rune ward… in fact, more of them did than included an Anti-Apparition rune ward.
There was a rather spine-tingling story about one tomb in the Valley of the Kings which had runic defences written not in hieroglyphics but in Sumerian, and which had tied a particularly nasty curse to trying to Disapparate from inside the chamber… but had included a prominent hieroglyphic rune sequence which looked like a damaged Anti-Disapparition effect.
Still thinking about how sneaky that was, Harry went on from there to Defence – in which, naturally, Professor Diggle had them all thinking about Apparating and Disapparating.
In particular, he said that if you could Disapparate and get out of a bad situation, that was a very good idea.
Then it was lunchtime, and after lunch Ron, Dean and Hermione were all going over their Apparition guidelines again.
"I hope Professor Snape won't be too harsh on what we get assigned this afternoon," Hermione said.
Ron snorted. "Why would he be?"
"Well, Draco is doing his test as well," Hermione shrugged. "So we might have something that's manageable if you come in halfway through. It's just a guess."
"When is the test?" Harry checked, and Dean told him it started at two PM.
Then he shrugged. "Anyone's guess how long it'll take, though. Depends if they go by surname or first-come-first-served or whatever."
"Sounds like I might be near the end of the line again, then," Ron said. "I am used to that, though."
"Also the league tables," Neville twitted him.
Harry chuckled, then saw Hedwig fly in through one of the windows.
She circled once, then dropped a letter to Harry, and he unfolded it.
The letter turned out to be from Hagrid, and it had some sad news. Aragog, the chief of the acromantula of the Forbidden Forest – the one who Hagrid had known for more than fifty years – had died the previous evening, and his funeral was tonight.
They were all invited, including Ginny, and so were Tyler, Anne and the other students from the battle at the forest's edge. Apparently it had made quite an impression on the acromantula clan.
"Nope," Ron said, as soon as Harry had finished reading it out. "Nope, nope, not at all."
He brightened. "Oh, what a shame, I've got Astronomy tonight and Charms tomorrow morning, so I need to sleep during when the funeral is."
Harry tilted his head slightly. "Isn't it more Gryffindor to go to that sort of thing?" he asked, trying not to snigger.
"I think on this I'm more interested in getting in touch with my Slytherin side," Ron replied.
Hermione tapped the Apparition pamphlet on the table. "We've only got an hour, I'd like to concentrate."
Harry couldn't say that much about what the Apparition tests had been like – he'd been busy working on his Runes homework, which was about the ways you could disguise a rune sequence to make it harder to read – but he did go to attend the funeral for Aragog, which was quite an occasion. There were acromantula present, what looked like the whole clan, but there were also centaurs (including Conal) and wargs (including June), and Professor Dumbledore in a rather remarkable robe that glowed in the dark, and of course Hagrid himself along with Nora – the Ridgeback picking her way carefully through the trees and making sure to be on her very best behaviour.
About a third of the big spiders spoke English, and – possibly out of courtesy to Hagrid and the others present – the ceremonies were done in that language as well as in what sounded vaguely Oriental to Harry and was presumably whatever they spoke in Borneo (which Harry remembered was where the acromantulas had come from). They talked about Aragog as a pioneer, as someone who had made sure they would survive in a very different environment to where they had been born, and also as someone who in the last years of his life had been involved in establishing for them a means of financial support – caring for his family and clan until the end.
Harry supposed that had to do with things like acromantula venom, or webs, which were both quite useful in different ways, and he wondered if maybe there were acromantula clothes makers. They didn't wear them themselves, but silk was silk.
At least, presumably.
Once the speeches were done, Aragog was lowered into his grave. That by itself was sort of interesting, it involved eight acromantula with silk lines doing the lowering – one for each leg – and while Harry only recognized one of the spiders doing it (Aragog's wife, Mosag, who was quite elderly herself and easy to recognize) he supposed there was some kind of symbology to it. Then everyone added a spadeful of earth, Harry included, and a yew sapling planted atop the grave.
There wasn't a party, afterwards, because that didn't seem to be the way acromantula did things. Instead everyone sort of mingled and talked for an hour or so, and then Dumbledore pleasantly announced that everyone who had to get up for school tomorrow should probably start heading back.
Dean asked whether they were inside the Anti-Disapparition Jinx, and Dumbledore said that they were indeed. Then he asked where the closest place to the castle where you could Apparate was, and Dumbledore pointed out that while that would be an excellent way to use a new skill it was something which would be a little unfair either on Dean or on Harry – as Harry was not yet permitted to Apparate and could not be brought Side-Along.
"Oh, yeah," Dean realized. "Sorry, Harry, I keep forgetting that."
Harry shrugged. "It's not a problem. You're excited about being able to do something new – you know, like driving everywhere if you've got a car, that kind of thing."
"Quite," Dumbledore agreed. "I myself remember deciding around nineteen thirty-five that perhaps I should dress to impress people a little more, and once I began doing that it has brightened up my day."
He adjusted the glow-in-the-dark robe, which was lighting the way for them all without the need of a Light Spell of any sort. "And, indeed, my night. It has been most illuminating."
Harry wasn't sure whether to chuckle or groan, and did both as a compromise.
April moved on towards May, and one fine day at lunch Professor Diggle announced that he was going to be taking the rest of the term off for the purposes of his health. He added as an extra comment that it would be quite a good idea to finish reading the rest of their appropriate textbooks, and that for everyone except for Fifth- and Seventh-Years he had already written the tests along with a marking guide.
Harry was sorry to see the eccentric man go, because Professor Diggle had managed to convey a lot of insights – some of them in ways where Harry wasn't quite sure if it was conscious and deliberate or just a happy coincidence – and it seemed like his tenure had been much better than that of certain other Defence Against the Dark Arts teachers he could name.
The exams were approaching, though, and that meant several things. It meant more revision, it meant Ernie McMillan getting a bit overly focused on the amount of time he spent doing revision, and it meant the Fifth- and Seventh-years were getting increasingly anxious about the oncoming exams.
That, naturally, was something that Harry had to help out with. One evening it was telling Colin that it would be a good idea to head off to bed, because you were better off with an hour less revision and an hour more sleep rather than being tired and finding it hard to concentrate anyway, and the next it was explaining to Grace Aubrey that, no, dragon tooth didn't make you cleverer, which was a good thing in a way because if it did then she might have lost any OWLs she took when that was involved. Dragon claw was an ingredient in one potion which made you able to focus better, but that was because it was associated with "sharpness" and it didn't work with just the claw by itself.
Then there were the stranger problems.
"I'm worried about some of the practicals," Tanisis confessed. "With the theory exams I'm fairly sure I'll be at least able to do the exams – as long as we can use typewriters, anyway, and Professor Flitwick said he was fairly sure we can as long as they're Silenced – but paws are kind of a problem in Potions practical exams, for a start."
"Have you asked Professor Snape about it?" Harry checked, thinking. "I know he's not setting them, but…"
"Well, that's the tricky thing," Tanisis replied. "My Potions practical marks in all my previous years have been… well, worse than my theory ones, and when I asked about it after first-year he just said that the practical exam was checking that you could make the potion."
"You can make the potion," Luna said. "It just takes you longer, because there are things that are harder to do with paws and you have to make sure you don't rush them. It's because the Potions textbook is very biased."
"Biased?" Dominic asked, sounding worried.
"Yes, it's been written by humans," Luna explained. "So have most of our textbooks, really, though I think last year's second Defence textbook was written by a toad and I have evidence that the author of all of The Standard Book of Spells books is actually a bird."
That announcement led to a few seconds of confusion, then Anne fell over laughing.
"You ninny, that's her surname," the kitsune said, giggling. "Miranda Goshawk."
"I don't mind your reaction," Luna said loftily. "That's exactly how she's been getting away with it all this time."
"I'm guessing that normally you two work together?" Harry asked.
"That's right," Tanisis agreed. "And obviously we can't in exams… Potions is interesting, but it's just so awkward."
"I think maybe what you should do then is to ask Professor Flitwick, or Professor McGonagall," Harry guessed. "They can speak to the examiners and decide if you should get extra time, or someone to help you cut materials, or whatever."
Luna sighed. "It's a pity I couldn't do my first idea for a Runes project, Runes comes before Potions so I could have just given it to you."
That got a nod from Tanisis, though she didn't explain further.
"If it's something that would help with Potions, I'd quite like one as well," June said. "If it were possible."
She inspected her paws, then Tanisis' paws. "I might be a bit better at fiddly things than you? It's hard to tell."
"You should really paint those claws," Flopsy suggested.
Mopsy nudged her.
"What?" Flopsy asked. "It'd be fun."
"Maybe after exams?" June said, then sighed. "I'm just… worried."
She shook herself out. "This is basically the last hurdle before it's impossible for me to lose my wand, but… I'm starting to understand what having butterflies in your stomach is like."
"I'd been trying not to think about that bit," Tanisis grumbled.
Tyler put his hand up. "Actually, I'm wondering something as well… do you know what they do if you use abilities you had before coming to school? Anne and I can turn into foxes and put up glamours and stuff, but we've always been able to do that, it's not because of Transfiguration lessons or extra-curricular work."
Harry had to stop and think about that one.
"I think it'd probably be okay, but you might want to ask the examiner," he said. "Usually they're quite nice about that sort of thing, and you have plenty of time in the actual exam."
"I do sort of think it's going to be funny what happens when the examiner gets to us," Cottontail said. "Next year, I mean."
Harry had to admit that that would just raise further questions.
What would happen if, for whatever reason, Mopsy and just Mopsy failed her OWLs?
Afterwards, Harry reflected on how, really, the Sixth-Year exams were the least stressful ones that came after Fourth-Year. Fifth and Seventh Year exams – OWLs and NEWTs – followed you for the rest of your life, but Sixth Year exams weren't nearly as… well, as important, really. They were just to check that you knew things.
It was funny how that worked out.
AN:
In a (Muggle) British school from around this time period, or not much later at any rate, there was significant stress in the sixth year of your time at secondary school because A Levels – the equivalent of NEWTs – were split over two years with exams in both.
No such situation applies for Harry.
You might also notice that Aragog's fate is a bit different, and there's a reason for that – all the acromantula hard-liners were the ones who attacked during Harry's third year, and they either ended up dead or ended up in Borneo; as a result the acromantula community is trying to be a bit more Human-friendly.
Of course, there's no way for Harry to be informed of that, so I have to explain it here.
There's a lot of other things Harry has no way to know, but I'm not necessarily going to explain those.
