Chapter 10 – OWLS and Portugal.
[8th January – Madrid]
The whole test week had been tiresome, hellish, and plain irritating, but now she was finished with all of it, and she could not help but to feel like she had accomplished something great by herself – though, she had some help from Lucius and Severus after her longish talk with Lucius.
It had been waking up, her physical training routine, then breakfast, thereafter, reading a whole lot of books of every genre, then lunch, practical application of every spell, dinner, read and magic and muggle book. Thereafter, she could go to sleep.
That is how things went before the second of January, then began the test of hell. It had been a lot tougher than she had believed it would be, so, she knew the next time she would take the other test she needed to have a lot more than this to prepare for something this intensive. Nevertheless, except for her tiredness, she knew that she had passed all her subject though not all of them will be O's, no one will have been T, P or D.
That was a refreshing thought to have finished them within the time she had spent here in Madrid, but she knew as soon as she got the results, she would pack up her stuff and head out on the roads again heading for Portugal.
Right now, she was sitting here with her journal writing to both Lucius and Severus, because they wanted to know how it had been this week since this was the first time, she had talked to one of them in a week, though, she missed talking to Lucius the most, though, she loved Severus's dark humour.
…though, I am so glad that the whole thing is over and done with, so, now all I must wait for is the results. Cassiopeia finished with retelling both Lucius and Severus in both journals each, as she had given the sour professor one part of another journal pair so that they could at least say something to each other if they wanted to.
At least you finished them with grace. - L
The sarcasm Cassiopeia could hear in that one sentence was ginormous, but it was so like him that it did not do much to her other than make her laugh.
Good, at least you have done something with yourself, other than laze around. - S
This came just a few minutes after she had been finished with telling them of her experience, and this was how Severus always told her things. Praise and Insults – it was his thing but now she understood it more as something that had always been integrated into him from his childhood.
Also, she could not fault him because of how his childhood had been crappy and her own father had not done anything to help him in that regard.
Has there been something interesting happening in Britain lately, because the Prophet is not writing much lately? Cassiopeia asked them confused over that there had not been more slander of her disappearance from school, and defiantly now that she hadn't been to that godforsaken Yule Ball at the school but had been nowhere in Madrid – making her believe that this had been something she had to do.
If that had been the case it did not have to be at the school, but it just had to be one another place! Though, it had been an awesome experience.
After the first article, Dumbledore stopped the reporters from asking questions, something he should have done years ago when it came down to you. Until now he has stopped every article about you from being published something that has taken up a lot of his time it seems like.
The whole school is in disarray, Minerva is overworked with all of the things she is doing now that Dumbledore is never here, so, the others try to help her with it all.
Dumbledore has also been spending more and more time in the ministry, maybe hoping to catch you and trying to find a loophole that would bring you back.
Hearing all of this made her want to know what the hell that barmy headmaster was thinking leaving McGonagall hanging with all her assignments, after all, she was a professor, head of the house, deputy headmistress and now part-time headmistress. It was no wonder she never had the time to rain us lions in or stop us or teach us about life in the castle when we were first years and handed out a lot of power to the perfects.
It is no wonder that McGonagall never had the time to talk to us students when we first came to Hogwarts when we were eleven, we never saw her other than when we went to her class. Also, what was Dumbledore thinking? She wrote this to Severus, making it so that when she wrote to him, she also spelled it to be written to Lucius, though, she always remembered to cancel it at the end of the days when she only talked to one of them.
I do not know, but we need more teachers in this school. We are understaffed, maybe we need teachers to teach the advanced and the beginners.
This was a whole other side to the Potion Professor, but it was good that someone saw the need for the better meant of everyone in that school. I must agree with you, Professor.
Hell must be freezing over!
Stop it you two!
Cassiopeia could hear the expiration in his voice, though, the humour was there, and she was thinking that he was loving their teasing of one another. Must go now, have to plan my next road trip I have to take, after all, my next stop is Portugal.
Saying goodbye to them wasn't hard, but she knew it would be a long time before she even had the time or the need to talk to one of them again, but they could talk or say something to her if they wanted to, but she wouldn't go out of her way to tell them anything now, since she had taken the time to tell them her website name, so they could follow her on that instead of her taking the time out to always telling them through the journals.
Though, knowing Severus he would often tell her to buy some potion ingredients if she came over some rare ones that you would not get in their part of the world. The same could be said for Lucius, as he had a very intense relationship with everything alcoholic – yes, he had. Though, do not listen to him if he tells you he does not!
The internet has to be one of the best things the nonmagical world has done to this day and age, she could do a lot of planning by knowing how to use it and use the maps of different countries.
In the end, she thinks she has the best plan of attack when it comes down to how she would do it with planning her route to Portugal, going through some places in Spain and just taking everything in over her. The whole experience was something she loved to do, to take the time to see everywhere at once even if she only would stay there a couple of minutes or hours.
The whole thing with it was to discover and explore places she never would have done if she had stayed, though, some of the things she had done until now hasn't been much but it has been filled with fun, though, sometimes she wonders if she should have taken someone with her when exploring because it would have been fun with a travel companion.
However, she did not know anyone like that but sooner or later she had the feeling that she would meet some people who she will love to have with her when travelling. Someone that would not criticise her when they found out that she had been travelling alone for quite some time.
What no one seems to have understood was how she wasn't afraid of the unknown, afraid that something could happen to her – of course, she was afraid but she knew that being healthy afraid of something going wrong was part of growing up. Also, if you were afraid of everything that could go wrong you never will be able to move forward in life and then you are stuck. In the end, she had never felt like she was only fourteen years old, sometimes she felt like she was in her early twenties with all the near deaths she has had in life, also, with everything on her shoulders, she looked quite older too.
Also, she valued talking to people that knew that she was on a road trip – Isak and Isabella were two of the people she had been talking to regularly, and some of them that followed her blog every day and commented had to be good people, though, she never would meet them without doing her joust research.
In the weeks away, she had become great with computers as she had taken courses in programming making it something that would be there to help her if she wanted information, but she never would become great at hacking. It was not something she liked to do, and she did not want unwanted attention around her if she happens to be discovered.
[15th of January – Madrid]
ORDINARY WIZARDING LEVELS for Cassiopeia Luci Potter-Black
Congratulations on achieving your ordinary wizarding level test, you have passed all of them to our astonishment and we are glad to file these scores to your permanent records. You can't take the next sets of tests before it has gone two years, but you have exceeded all of our expectations. – Feliciana Serrano, Head of Education, Spanish Ministry of Magic.
O – Outstanding P – Poor
EE – Exceeded Expectations D – Dreadful
A – Acceptable T – Troll
Potions
Written – O
Practical – O
Overall – O+
Herbology
Written – EE
Practical – EE
Overall – O
Healing
Written – EE
Practical – O
Overall – EE
British History (Ma)
Overall – O
Spanish History (Ma)
Overall – EE
British History (Mu)
Overall – O
Spanish History (Mu)
Overall – A
Transfiguration
Written – A
Practical – EE
Overall – EE
Charms
Written – O
Practical – O
Overall – O
Arithmancy
Written – O
Practical – O
Overall – O
Ancient Runes
Written – O
Practical – O
Overall – O
Defence against the Dark Arts
Written - OO
Practical – OO+
Overall – OO++
Astronomy
Written – O
Practical – O
Overall – O
Law
Overall – EE
Political
Overall – A
Warding
Written – EE
Practical – EE
Overall – EE
Enchanting
Written – O
Practical – O
Overall – O
Care of Magical Creatures
Written – O
Practical – O
Overall – O
You have gotten and passed 19 owls, and good luck on your travels around the world!
Reading through her test results was nerve-wracking, but as she did, she was elated over having gotten every one of her OWLS, no one was below an acceptable – making it quite the achievement for her who never took her studies seriously back at Hogwarts. Finally, she had managed to get everything right without making a fool of herself to this ministry for taking the chance of her taking them before her time.
Lady Potter-Black
Congratulation on passing your Ordinary Owls Tests, we knew that you had it in you. Good luck on your travels, we will seemingly place it under your name with the ministry here without anyone noticing.
Regards
Ragnarök III
The note from the goblins was reassuring, now she was packing up her suitcase with the help of both Dobby and Missy.
"Where are you going to now, Mistress," Missy asked her quietly, as they were packing down all her things, she needed to have with her, and as they popped it invisibly down to her lovely car with all its enchantments.
"I am thinking about heading north towards, Aranda de Duero – it is a small town with unique wine cellars, to see if there is a gift, I can give Lucius or even Severus for sticking by me, thereafter, I will be driving west towards Portugal," Cassiopeia told them with a smile, and so, she did it by driving up there though it took a while maybe six hours as she took her time to look at the landscapes around them as she drove carefully towards the small, interesting town.
Aranda de Duero – when she got there it was interesting to see the culture, and she got to experience it quite literally as soon as she got there. In such a small town there was a lot to see, and so, it had to be that she realised that she had to book herself into one of the smaller motels here, so that she could see more of it the next day.
In the end, she figured that it was one of those towns you had to explore and take your time to not get bored or not judge a book by its cover, or in this case not judge how the houses looked outside, but when you came into to those different places they were transformed to give visitors one of a kind experience of their culture, but also be one of the highlights of coming to their town.
After having dinner in a quiet restaurant, and trying a dish called Lechazo a local speciality – roasted baby lamb and is usually served with a basic salad and much "torta" bread for dipping in the meat juices.
-POTTER-
In the next couple of days, until she came to the border between Spain and Portugal, she drove through a couple of interesting, photographic small towns, to see and to just take a break from her driving.
Castrillo de la Vega, Fuentecén – where she stayed over one night and discovered Pino Redondo a tour area, and looked at the scenery before she drove on to her next place on her journey.
Valladolid, yet a place where she stayed another day to discover more of it and to look through her pictures and wrote in her journals and published yet a couple of more chapters on her blog for everyone that wanted to read whatever that fell her in on her journey.
Where she walked through, Casa de Cervantes, Palacio de Fabio Nelli and Alameda Park, and everywhere she looked things was not the same and that made it relaxing.
After having been in Valladolid, she drove on to other places and as the days went on she managed not to think about everything other than just being herself and other things that brought her down.
Tordesillas, Zamora were her last stop before she made her way into Portugal where she will yet again drive through and see everything that she had always wanted to see, but she knew that she would never be fond of that country, she hoped!
It didn't take long for her to reach Bragança, Portugal as it lay close enough to the border to Spain, it was there she would rest and relax, the whole town was small and there was little to do, so she managed to read, and like everywhere she wants she talked to everyone and had lively discussions about everything and nothing.
The more she talked to the citizens the more she understood them and their history, and it was quite some history they had – it was quite the relaxing time for her, but it became quite boring by doing nothing in this little town so, she managed to tell everyone goodbye and started up her car and started to drive.
[21st – 30th January. Vila Real, Porto and Lisboa]
In the next nine days, she had managed to explore a lot of things that she would not have been able to do without magic, though, she drove some of these miles, she had her elves pop her to some of these places because she wanted to do something more than just drive all over the place without seeing them.
The only place she drove to at first was Vila Real, after this she had her elves pop her to the different cities around Portugal so that she could discover and explore those places. In Vila Real, she loved looking at the old buildings around town and seeing the old creativity, the architecture of the place that was so special in times past because of conquerors and histories past.
Museu de Arqueologia e Numismática de Vila Real – an Archaeological museum, somewhere she thought of as interesting. Miradouro da Vila Velha – a place she took some great pictures over the whole place, getting some insight into the whole town. Casa de Mateus – one of the castles that seemed to be in a very good state of the structure, and she loved the garden and how many pictures she managed to get that she needed to have in her next post in her blog.
After having seen the whole place, she asked her elves to pop her to Porto the biggest city in Portugal after Lisboa, it is a port city and has a lot of different things she could do and with the help of being in so good shape, she managed it without becoming dead weight at the end of the day.
In Porto she managed to see a lot of different castles and places, she also managed to eat everything that sounded interesting. Fort of Saint Francis Xavier, Igreja dos Clérigos, Fonte dos Leões, Jardins do Palácio de Cristal and Parque do Horto das Virtudes – everywhere she went there was something to see and it wasn't quite as interesting as she first had thought it does be so it wasn't long before she managed to get her elves to pop her down to Lisboa, close enough to a hotel that she had managed to book herself into.
Lisboa was bigger than expected, and not even that interesting if she had to be honest because it was quite boring because of the small difference in how both Portugal and Spain did things which was not that much.
In the end, she did not stay long here, either way, other than just the normal and boring sightseeing, not that she bought much either way, though the only interesting was her talks with her friends, yes, they had become friends.
From Lucius, she had heard that he was on his way to get a divorce from his wife because she had been caught cheating, and so he could do it without precaution other than it is a big scandal.
Hogwarts was still in disarray, other than the whole Triwizard tournament that was still going on, that they may be are going to cancel because of everything else going on in that school. Which she thought was a good thing, but the second task they were holding was soon upon them and if things with Dumbledore continued to go down hill drastic measures were being taken either way.
On the 30th of January, she said goodbye to Lisboa, and then made her way into Spain again because she had to make her way down to Morocco, with a pitch stop in Sevilla, Spain before making the best of Morocco and the rest of Africa.