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Lily and Arabella's Hogwarts Life, Chapter 8: O.W.L.'s
They walked in the Potions dungeon and Vector, the potion teacher, started in on them. They spent the entire day brewing potions and writing essays and taking tests about potions ingredients and counter-indications and poison antidotes. Potions took longer than any of their other tests because of the need to wait for things to bubble and brew. At the end of the first day, the gang of fifth years felt great relief that that was over, but there were still more tests to get through.
On Tuesday, they would have Transfiguration and Charms. Lily transfigured McGonagall's desk into a pony, as she'd once seen her do; she changed other inanimate objects into animate ones, and animate ones into inanimate ones, as did the others. They changed things which they'd already changed, taking a shoe, at one point, through five transfigurations, changing it into different things before finally transfiguring it into a breadbox (which in Sirius case actually barked after the previous transfiguration that was a dog). Lily and Arabella stayed to show McGonnagal their Animagus forms. Their Head Mistress at Salem's had told Dumbledore about their ability and this would be included in their Transfiguration grade. Charms went well, for most of them, because Professor Flitwick was so terrible at doing a poker face. There was no chance that a student taking the Charms O.W.L.s had to wait until they received their results to know how they did with him. Lily, Arabella, Iris, James, Remus and Sirius went through the basics and then the intermediate-level charms, Peter only stayed for basics. And then Flitwick asked all students to stay past the usual time who wanted credit for advanced charms.
Lily, Arabella, James, Remus and Sirius were the only Gryffindors who stayed. The test was basically duelling with Flitwick, who'd been a champion in his youth. Sirius, Arabella and Remus went down straight away. Flitwick duelled James for about twenty minutes before sending a hard confusion spell at him making James unable to tell back from forth and right from left. After duelling for more than half an hour, Flitwick and Lily were still at it, and Lily had abandoned her robes and was dripping sweat, while the little wizard was still cool as a cucumber and pacing around humming to himself before aiming his wand at Lily nonchalantly and muttering charms.
After more than an hour, Flitwick stood still and faced an exhausted Lily and lowered his wand.
"Bow, Lily," he told her gently.
"The duel is over. It is a draw."
Lily lowered her wand and bowed, and that's when she heard, "Expelliarmus!" and felt her wand slipping from her grip, felt herself hurtling backward, bracing herself before she struck the wall hard, and, wincing, sliding down into a sitting position. Flitwick smiled and walked over to her, handing her back her wand.
"Really, Lily. You should have known better," he smiled at her. Lily looked up at the professor, her eyes unfocussed.
"I do now." Flitwick helped her stand and patted her on the back. But Lily had a feeling that she hadn't exactly failed advanced Charms.
Wednesday, they started off with Herbology, an entire morning of wrestling with plants in the greenhouse, then taking exhaustive tests about the magical herbs and fungi they'd been learning about for five years. In the afternoon, they had History of Magic. Three hours of sitting in Binns' stuffy classroom writing about Goblin rebellions. Sirius and Arabella actually fell asleep, and when they awoke, Iris was shaking them and telling them to hand in their parchments. Sirius had only scribbled down something unreadable and Arabella had written some nonsense about one named Oscar the Offbeat, who Lily wasn't even sure had existed. The two of them wouldn't be getting any History of Magic O.W.L.s. Sirius sent Lily an evil glare as she was handing in several parchments of closely written script. Even James had had quite a lot to write for History of Magic. When nobody was looking, Sirius crumpled up the parchment and stuffed it in his pocket. He just wouldn't hand in anything at all. Better than the humiliation of handing this in.
That night at midnight, they had astronomy. Lily, Sirius, Iris and Arabella managed to complete it, Peter fell asleep, James forgot to draw in the star their map was supposed to be about on his map, and Remus didn't even make it up to the tower.
The next morning they were permitted to sleep in, because of the late Astronomy test, and in the afternoon they were to report to David, their oldest professor, for Care of Magical Creatures. David had a virtual zoo for them to walk through, and his test was multiple-choice. Lily thought that he was probably being pretty easy on them, and wondered whether Dumbledore had approved this. It was the easiest test so far, they felt. Afterward, they heaved a sigh of relief. Just two more exams to go.
On Friday morning, Sirius, Peter and Arabella reported to Trelawney's tower, while Lily, Remus, James and Iris went off to Professor Vector for Arithmancy testing. All of them went trough every fact and method of work they had covered since their first day with in the two classes since their third year (Lily and Arabella had been taking these classes in Salem too, one reason for Arabella being better than Sirius and Peter in Divination). After lunch, they reported to Defense Against the Dark Arts. Marcus Abilene, the Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher, had them work on a written test about werewolves, vampires and other dark creatures that they couldn't actually bring to class, then they handed in their papers and actually confronted some dark creatures they'd studied. After the redcaps, Hinkypunks and Grindylows had been despatched, he opened a drawer and produced--a boggart.
Lily and Arabella had faced their boggart in their third grade, and the others in their fifth, about all of the boggarts had a different form this time. Remus had the same boggart as he had had last time; a glowing ball suspended in mid air, the full moon. Not surprisingly, Peter's looked like Professor Vector. After Peter had defeated his boggart Iris stepped forward and was surrounded of flames. Weakly she tried to defeat the flames, but Abilene had to get her out. Finally, Lily faced the boggart. Her immediately turned into a dementor. Her grand parents, all four of them, had died when she was a second year, and that year was very sad year for her. That was the first time she had met a dementor. She had been so weak with the flooding sorrow after her grand parents that the dementor sent at her, and it had nearly kissed her, but luckily an Auror had been nearby and had sent it away. After that Lily had learned the to conjure a Patronus.
Lily grimly faced it down, she focused intently on her happy thought, ignoring the crackling sound of flames and Daisy's screams in her head, and cried, "Expecto Patronem!"
A silver-grey tiger emerged from the tip of her wand and raced toward the boggart-dementor. Lily looked at it again, crying "Riddikulus!" and it disappeared with a pop!
Abilene stared at her in disbelief. "Miss Evans," he said, clearly in awe, which shook Lily somewhat. "You didn't tell me you could conjure a Patronus. And what a Patronus..."
Lily swallowed. "I'm sorry. In my second year I met a dementor, and in my third I learned that when confronted with a boggart it turned into a dementor. And then I learned how to defeat one..."
"You're sorry?" Abilene said, incredulous. "You're doing something so advanced most adult wizards can't, and you're sorry?" He shook his head. "You're the damnedest thing I've ever seen, Evans..."
After they did various curses and counter-curses, he dismissed everyone. That was it. It was all done. All they had to do now was wait for the results.
The next two weeks they didn't have to attend classes and just slumped around in the School Park, enjoying the summer warmth.
One breakfast more owls than usual fluttered in the Great Hall. The results. An owl dropped a parchment letter with Lily Evans in green ink down on Lily's plate and flew away.Arabella had already read trough hers, and was up on the table dancing a victory dance. Not to long afterwards Iris joined her with the same score. Lily grabbed an unused butter knife and opened the letter. She pulled out the heavy parchment letter.
"Yes!" Lily jumped up on the table to join Arabella, Iris and a load of others. "Full score!"