Chapter Fifteen
The O.W.L.'s and the Ashes
The next few months passed relatively without incidence. Lawrence and Rosalind became regulars in Harry's ever-growing circle of couples, and they would all go down to the village together on Hogsmeade weekends. However, those were becoming less and less frequent, as the inevitable and inescapable grew on everyone's mind until you could practically see "O.W.L.'s" written on all of the fifth-year's foreheads.
The testing involved questioning the students on their classes since their first year in a written exam, and a few personal tests in Transfiguration and Charms. They were administered in the first week of June, and the fifth- years were exempt from their end-of-year exams, leaving them with nearly a month of freedom before school let out. Some teachers were intent on starting the next year's curriculum, a couple of the older students had informed Harry and his friends, but quite a few became lax, and if you think you did well on the test, that June could be one of your fondest memories of Hogwarts.
Harry began to get seriously concerned about his grades and performance in the O.W.L.'s. If he didn't do a good job, he wouldn't be able to get a well- paying job as he would want, and he knew that the second he turned legal adult age in the Muggle world he would be kicked out of Privet Drive for eternity. He figured he would get a job in the wizard world and save up for an apartment while living with the Weasleys. He felt a little guilty about depending on their generosity, but he also knew the only thing lying between being the Dursley's responsibility and being another Weasley child was a couple of papers and a few signatures.
Hermione was taking the impending O.W.L.'s rather well, conpared to what Harry thought she would be like at this time in the year. Ron actually caught her reading a book entitled "The O.W.L.'s Aren't Everything" by Dan Nitchecronk. "It's stress relief!" she had claimed.
"It's you being bored because you're memorized everything," Ron had replied.
But the book didn't seem to help when the fateful week finally arrived. Hermione was just as gaunt as the other fifth-years on the first day's morning. Ron pushed around oatmel in a bowl while Harry chased a piece of bacon with a fork on his plate. Hedwig broke his morose trance with a short message from Sirius.
Everything comes down to these days, huh? I know you do well under stress, but good luck anyway.
- Howard "Snuffles" Smith
Harry made a mental note to send Sirius his results first thing after he received them at the end of June. Just when he got in the mood to actually eat breakfast, McGonagall made an announcement at the end of the table.
"Fifth-year Gryffindors are to proceed to the Defence Against the Dark Arts room for the first written portion of the O.W.L.'s. The tests are set up mostly the same, and the rules are the same, as your standard finals. I wish you all good luck, and may I remind you that the O.W.L.'s are not to be taken lightly."
"There goes my last shred of confidence," said Ron sadly.
"Let's just get this over with!" groaned Harry, and he got up from the table.
"I think I'm going to be sick," Neville admitted.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The O.W.L.'s on Monday were hard, Tuesday's were worse, and things just went downhill on Wednesday. Thursday and Friday were mostly spent waiting in a silent hallway with the rest of the students. When it was time, there were ten tense minutes when a random Charm had to administered in front of Flitwick (or, as some students discovered, to him) on Thursday. On the last day, there was another fifteen minutes of pure agony when something had to turn into something else under the watchful eye of McGonagall.
But, just as the O.W.L.'s arrival was unpreventable, its departure was also inevitable. Like an unstoppable oceanic tsunami, the test's power was predetermined, forewarned, prepared for, weathered, and now the students could pick up the wreckage and get on with their lives.
"I feel like a jellyfish," commented Ron, who indeed looked boneless, as he was flopped into an armchair in the Common Room that Friday night.
"My brain hurts," whined Harry. "I'm not functioning correctly."
"I'm never going to get out of this chair."
"What are we going to do tonight?"
"Absolutely nothing!" Ron smiled and closed his eyes.
At first, the idea of doing nothing appealed to Harry, but he soon found himself prodding at the ashes in the fireplace with a poker. The fire hadn't been lit for a few weeks, due to a heat wave that had rolled in after the latest Gryffindor Quidditch game, versus Hufflepuff (240 to 20, and Lawrence was okay with both lost goals). Harry's absent-minded playing in the ash soon brought him to attention, as he realized he was unearthing pages crumbling, scorched parchment. Taking a closer look, he saw that they were half ashes, and the rest practically carbonized, but he could still see and understand a small amount of the writing.
He carefully lifted the most intact parchments out of the fireplace, hoping that no one was looking at him, and went right underneath a lamp to try and read the text. He could only pick out a few words here and there, but some of them were rather interesting words:
REBIRTH
UNDER GROUND
BLOODY
DAMNED BOOK
OHIO
And, perhaps, the most interesting one of all:
IS IT ME OR MY HERITAGE?
That was when Harry remembered where he had seen those quick, erratic capitals before.
The parchments were in Llewellyn's handwriting.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Llewellyn? Harry wants to see you," Hermione called into the dorm.
"Give me a minute." She was lying face down on the bed and slowly rose up to a sitting position, but Hermione wasn't waiting. Llewellyn sighed and slung her aching body down the stairs into the Common Room. If she knew what was waiting for her at the bottom of the stairs, she wouldn't have bothered.
"Where did you get those?" she whispered angrily when she saw what was in his hand. She tried to snatch it out of his grip, but he held them back quickly.
"Tell me what they are," he replied, just as angrily.
"They're mine - they're personal, dammit! What did you do, sift through the ashes? Give them to me!!"
"Llewellyn!" he snapped, eyes flashing in anger. He suddenly remembered that they were in the Common Room and softened his voice. "Come into the hall with me. Now."
She grudgingly followed him, infuriated. When the Fat Lady was out of sight and no one was around, he turned on her.
"What are these? Tell me the truth."
She glared at him, and said, very icily, "A story I was trying to write. Am I allowed to be an author?"
"Yeah, right. Why would you burn it if it was just a story, huh?"
"Harry," she said, suddenly very gentle, "just give the papers to me."
A light suddenly went on his head as he put two and two together. "This isn't fiction. This is your diary or something. And when things started getting weird, you burned it. Am I right?"
Llewellyn said nothing. There was an extremely pregnant silence. Finally, she mumbled something.
"What?"
"I said, I was just trying to draw conclusions."
"Conclusions from what? What's going on?"
"Things you wouldn't understand."
Harry began fuming.
"We promised Visilio we would tell him everything. Everything! What's going on that we don't know about?"
She closed her eyes. "I...I can't tell you."
"Well, that's just great, huh? Can you tell Visilio?"
"Maybe."
"You're going to."
Llewellyn sighed shakily. "Can I have my papers back now?"
Harry thought for a moment. "We're going to Visilio's first. And we're going - now."
The O.W.L.'s and the Ashes
The next few months passed relatively without incidence. Lawrence and Rosalind became regulars in Harry's ever-growing circle of couples, and they would all go down to the village together on Hogsmeade weekends. However, those were becoming less and less frequent, as the inevitable and inescapable grew on everyone's mind until you could practically see "O.W.L.'s" written on all of the fifth-year's foreheads.
The testing involved questioning the students on their classes since their first year in a written exam, and a few personal tests in Transfiguration and Charms. They were administered in the first week of June, and the fifth- years were exempt from their end-of-year exams, leaving them with nearly a month of freedom before school let out. Some teachers were intent on starting the next year's curriculum, a couple of the older students had informed Harry and his friends, but quite a few became lax, and if you think you did well on the test, that June could be one of your fondest memories of Hogwarts.
Harry began to get seriously concerned about his grades and performance in the O.W.L.'s. If he didn't do a good job, he wouldn't be able to get a well- paying job as he would want, and he knew that the second he turned legal adult age in the Muggle world he would be kicked out of Privet Drive for eternity. He figured he would get a job in the wizard world and save up for an apartment while living with the Weasleys. He felt a little guilty about depending on their generosity, but he also knew the only thing lying between being the Dursley's responsibility and being another Weasley child was a couple of papers and a few signatures.
Hermione was taking the impending O.W.L.'s rather well, conpared to what Harry thought she would be like at this time in the year. Ron actually caught her reading a book entitled "The O.W.L.'s Aren't Everything" by Dan Nitchecronk. "It's stress relief!" she had claimed.
"It's you being bored because you're memorized everything," Ron had replied.
But the book didn't seem to help when the fateful week finally arrived. Hermione was just as gaunt as the other fifth-years on the first day's morning. Ron pushed around oatmel in a bowl while Harry chased a piece of bacon with a fork on his plate. Hedwig broke his morose trance with a short message from Sirius.
Everything comes down to these days, huh? I know you do well under stress, but good luck anyway.
- Howard "Snuffles" Smith
Harry made a mental note to send Sirius his results first thing after he received them at the end of June. Just when he got in the mood to actually eat breakfast, McGonagall made an announcement at the end of the table.
"Fifth-year Gryffindors are to proceed to the Defence Against the Dark Arts room for the first written portion of the O.W.L.'s. The tests are set up mostly the same, and the rules are the same, as your standard finals. I wish you all good luck, and may I remind you that the O.W.L.'s are not to be taken lightly."
"There goes my last shred of confidence," said Ron sadly.
"Let's just get this over with!" groaned Harry, and he got up from the table.
"I think I'm going to be sick," Neville admitted.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The O.W.L.'s on Monday were hard, Tuesday's were worse, and things just went downhill on Wednesday. Thursday and Friday were mostly spent waiting in a silent hallway with the rest of the students. When it was time, there were ten tense minutes when a random Charm had to administered in front of Flitwick (or, as some students discovered, to him) on Thursday. On the last day, there was another fifteen minutes of pure agony when something had to turn into something else under the watchful eye of McGonagall.
But, just as the O.W.L.'s arrival was unpreventable, its departure was also inevitable. Like an unstoppable oceanic tsunami, the test's power was predetermined, forewarned, prepared for, weathered, and now the students could pick up the wreckage and get on with their lives.
"I feel like a jellyfish," commented Ron, who indeed looked boneless, as he was flopped into an armchair in the Common Room that Friday night.
"My brain hurts," whined Harry. "I'm not functioning correctly."
"I'm never going to get out of this chair."
"What are we going to do tonight?"
"Absolutely nothing!" Ron smiled and closed his eyes.
At first, the idea of doing nothing appealed to Harry, but he soon found himself prodding at the ashes in the fireplace with a poker. The fire hadn't been lit for a few weeks, due to a heat wave that had rolled in after the latest Gryffindor Quidditch game, versus Hufflepuff (240 to 20, and Lawrence was okay with both lost goals). Harry's absent-minded playing in the ash soon brought him to attention, as he realized he was unearthing pages crumbling, scorched parchment. Taking a closer look, he saw that they were half ashes, and the rest practically carbonized, but he could still see and understand a small amount of the writing.
He carefully lifted the most intact parchments out of the fireplace, hoping that no one was looking at him, and went right underneath a lamp to try and read the text. He could only pick out a few words here and there, but some of them were rather interesting words:
REBIRTH
UNDER GROUND
BLOODY
DAMNED BOOK
OHIO
And, perhaps, the most interesting one of all:
IS IT ME OR MY HERITAGE?
That was when Harry remembered where he had seen those quick, erratic capitals before.
The parchments were in Llewellyn's handwriting.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Llewellyn? Harry wants to see you," Hermione called into the dorm.
"Give me a minute." She was lying face down on the bed and slowly rose up to a sitting position, but Hermione wasn't waiting. Llewellyn sighed and slung her aching body down the stairs into the Common Room. If she knew what was waiting for her at the bottom of the stairs, she wouldn't have bothered.
"Where did you get those?" she whispered angrily when she saw what was in his hand. She tried to snatch it out of his grip, but he held them back quickly.
"Tell me what they are," he replied, just as angrily.
"They're mine - they're personal, dammit! What did you do, sift through the ashes? Give them to me!!"
"Llewellyn!" he snapped, eyes flashing in anger. He suddenly remembered that they were in the Common Room and softened his voice. "Come into the hall with me. Now."
She grudgingly followed him, infuriated. When the Fat Lady was out of sight and no one was around, he turned on her.
"What are these? Tell me the truth."
She glared at him, and said, very icily, "A story I was trying to write. Am I allowed to be an author?"
"Yeah, right. Why would you burn it if it was just a story, huh?"
"Harry," she said, suddenly very gentle, "just give the papers to me."
A light suddenly went on his head as he put two and two together. "This isn't fiction. This is your diary or something. And when things started getting weird, you burned it. Am I right?"
Llewellyn said nothing. There was an extremely pregnant silence. Finally, she mumbled something.
"What?"
"I said, I was just trying to draw conclusions."
"Conclusions from what? What's going on?"
"Things you wouldn't understand."
Harry began fuming.
"We promised Visilio we would tell him everything. Everything! What's going on that we don't know about?"
She closed her eyes. "I...I can't tell you."
"Well, that's just great, huh? Can you tell Visilio?"
"Maybe."
"You're going to."
Llewellyn sighed shakily. "Can I have my papers back now?"
Harry thought for a moment. "We're going to Visilio's first. And we're going - now."