Chapter 15
Gorbrin was glad to get two OWLs out of the way.
He had found the Potions exam as absurdly easy as the rest, and had not fallen into the trap of doing one antidote at a time. The only reason he did not leave early was because he was conscientiously rechecking everything.
Transfigurations too had been a breeze. His silk handkerchief had born the arms of Puddlemere United and his tortoise had had a drawer on one side as well as a lifting lid as a broom care kit box and was inlaid with brass in the middle of the lid in the pattern of a snitch and box and ash inlaid brooms edged the walnut lid. Naturally he too restored his tortoise to good health.
The written exam of DADA was divided into two sections, the first with four brief essay questions describing in as much detail as the student could manage the appearance, habits and counters to Werewolves, Kappa, Dementors and Redcaps. Lydia thought it a gift. The second part was no more than short questions on the counters to other dark creatures and to various curses. Lilith could have got an 'O' on it, Lydia thought it was so easy.
Of course it was less easy for those who had not been part of the groups that routinely squared up to at least some of these dark creatures; and ironically there were those who found more to say on Kappa than Lydia, who had never had anything personally to do with them, and less by far on werewolves despite Remus Lupin being firm on teaching the dangers of his previous affliction.
The practical was fairly standard form; chasing a boggart back into a box and countering various jinxes.
The examiner was a trifle startled to have so sweet and doll like a creature as Lydia failing to bother with the ridikulus spell but merely growling at the boggart and chasing it back into its box where it cowered whimpering.
As Lydia also did not even bother with a wand to counter the curses and explained when the examiner asked that one did not need to concentrate hard on nursery curses that needed no wand to either cast or counter the examiner hurriedly passed on to ask if Lydia could produce a corporeal patronus.
Lydia proceeded with aplomb to produce a rampant lion on a broom; her patronus now reflected the arms of Bulgaria because of Viktor.
It had been a small enough shift from the griffon she had previously had to reflect her pride in being a Gryffindor.
It may be said that none of the MSHG had any trouble with the exam at all and many got bonus marks for their patronuses, an eclectic selection ranging from the Chinese Liondragon of Mei and Mad to the rats of Theo and Nell. Lalita of course had a tiger, Leo had a lion and Polly had a centaur and claimed it was because she liked to be the centaur of attention.
The last compulsory exam was Care of Magical Beasts and as the main practical would involve feeding a hippogriff, Buckbeak had this time been led firmly away before the examiner arrived with his pretty female hippogriff.
"Oh she's charming!" said Lydia, bowing to the pretty creature and sufficiently in tune with the beast to have the rat she was to feed her ready just when the big riding beast extended her wings and reached forward for it. Lydia scratched her neck delightedly. "Gosh, sir, if she has foals any time, if I can get a licence I'd like to go on your list of people who'd like to buy" added Lydia "She's so beautiful!"
"Well I have considered putting her to stud; I was thinking of making negotiations with Hagrid over that big fellow he keeps" said the examiner.
"Buckbeak? He's a sweetie" said Lydia "He's shared between Professors Hagrid and Black so you'll have to negotiate with both but I can't see there'd be a problem."
Anyone who described a big brute like Buckbeak as a 'sweetie' was obviously well skilled at handling hippogriffs, thought the examiner.
The written had been easy enough too, in Lydia's opinion, writing a description of each kind of dragon as the long section, and then a series of short questions on other beasts; the graphorn – especially well to the fore of the minds of those who had been watching the Triwizard – crups, erumpants, kneazles, unicorns, jarveys, knarls and others. None of the other Marauders had any trouble, though of the rest Lalita struggled a little, not having had the same exposure to magical beasts – herself excepted – that others had. Still, she had fed the hippogriff with the beast getting only a little restive at her tigery smell and hoped to pass!
The next exam was Herbology; an elective Lydia had chosen to help her with potions and because she also found it quite interesting.
They were to repot a fanged geranium, prune shrivelfig and collect bubotuber pus, none of which differed greatly from any previous years. It was not so much in the preparation as in the skill really, after all. Lydia used the tickling charm on her geranium so it giggled and really did not notice being repotted; pruning shrivelfig and collecting bubotuber pus she had been doing since long before she started school idling around behind Krait in the greenhouses, collecting potion ingredients for Severus, absorbing lectures on the right arithmantic times to maximise effects.
The written part had a long section on self motile plants and Lydia was well away; and produced a NEWT level answer since she knew more about things like Snargaluffs and Huorns than OWL students generally did; and also the little- understood and only recently studied bumbleweed, that muggles saw only as tumbleweed blowing in the wind, though it had self motile capabilities too as well as using wind assist and travelled between termite mounds to send tendrils down and feed on the grubs. Lydia had come across an article about it in a recent copy of 'Herbologists' Handbook'.
There were also shorter questions on the care and nurture of various plants that Lydia answered scrupulously and with more information than was really required; since a discussion on the relative virtues of Granian dung and Abraxan dung fell outside the required knowledge.
Lydia had enough time to finish even so; and felt she could not have answered the questions any more fully.
She was quite right in that!
Mad and Chad had History next and declared it not too vomitworthy; actually they had found it quite interesting.
History consisted of two papers; a long essay question, and after a short break a paper of short paragraph-length questions. One might choose one of three titles given; Mad picked "Discuss the reasons behind the Statute of Secrecy of 1692" and added his thoughts that the book published the previous year by muggle Robert Kirk 'The secret Commonwealth of Elves, fauns and Fairies' in Aberfoyle might have had something to do with it, and the long held insistence by the locals that this local minister had not died on his morning constitutional up Doone hill, the local Rath but had been spirited away into Fairyland. Mad had discovered the book in the Hogwarts library and read it for fun; and the date of its publication had struck him immediately. Chad picked the more conventional 'Trace, with illustration, the rise of discontent of Goblins in Britain and the rise of the culture that made the Rebellions inevitable'. Both rejected out of hand the third question 'Discuss the relevance of the Council of Wizards to the wellbeing of the magical folk of Britain' since neither considered that it had in fact contributed all that much.
After the break they answered questions covering a wider range of history from the integration of Roman wizards with the extant Celtic tradition to the rise of Voldemort. They wrote busily and probably returned more than they had to.
All the Marauders were taking Comparative Magic, as of course was Lalita who scarcely felt she could neglect her brother's subject!
The long paper dwelt on the importance of word and will in different cultures and the subtle differences between usage. Lydia touched on the tradition of using nicknames to avoid coming to the attention of the Brazilian fey, the Jaguar spirits especially amongst the Wayana people who feared the Yolok spirits; compared this to the use of naming magic in the Finnish tradition where a name was important in an incantation, be it a generic name for something – she used as an exemplar the mobilocorpus spell which to a Finn was incomplete without adding homo or femina to say if a body was male or female; and that magic using a specific name – especially a hidden name – had especial power. She suggested that Professor Dumbledore had used this principle when calling Voldemort firmly 'Tom' – his real name – to diminish his powers. By contrast the English tradition, which has a language filled with indefinite articles and no gender differential with the definite article and most plural pronouns, had never been troubled, before the use of the epithet 'you-know-who' for Voldemort, with specific naming superstitions save amongst children, muggle as well as magical, suggesting some folk memory extant in the whole population. Voldemort had found ancient knowledge and had used egophonic magic to hear if his name was used and to catch a portion of what was said about him which meant he must have had a headache when the juniors of his time had enchanted the wheels of railway engines to sing his name constantly. Lydia had come across egophonic magic in an old book in the Hogwarts library, rather dogeared and published some time in the seventeenth century called 'Being a collection of ancient and bizarre magicks from sundry texts and sources' by a Lucius Apul. She had also found a reference to something Apul called a 'Cruentes Horae' rather fancifully named 'wounds of the goddesses of the hours at the gates of heaven' and its description was decidedly a horcrux, something that confirmed her guess that Tom Riddle had read this book and later found the more standard, and probably later, term for the repellent magic. She did not write about this; but she had extracted the book for the Marauders' library and had written it all out and submitted a written report to Dumbledore.
Some of old Apul's collected sundries were very ancient indeed after all and she was still working on deciphering what he was on about since his style could be a trifle impenetrable, especially of magic he disapproved of but was plainly secretly fascinated by.
The short paper covered questions on the views of magical beings in different cultures, paragraph questions on such things as 'compare and contrast the view of middle eastern genie to the fey of Britain and Europe' and 'discuss the ambiguities in society of both the western werewolf and the eastern fox spirit'.
Lydia enjoyed it well enough and wrote right up to the end.
Enchanting came next; Chad and Mad were taking this too. The written had a long question on the enchantments required to ensure the safety and comfort of a modern broom rider, and the safeguards taken against jinxing the same; and a number of short questions over wand woods and the use of quills for enchanted pens and the proper choice thereof for ideal results. Lydia was happy enough writing about how different quills loaned themselves best to different enchantments; such that Phoenix quills were ideal for self-inking pens as they renewed themselves constantly; Parrot quills were ideal for quick-quotes pens, taking down and mimicking precisely speech. It was a matter of Assimilative Correlation as used in Transfiguration and Lydia quoted Waffling on the subject, stating that the law was as true for enchantment as for transfiguration.
The practical required them to enchant three standard useful items; a fire-lighting wand, a self-inking pen and self-warming slippers. Lydia pointed out pithily as she enchanted each that best results would have been obtained from Ash wood, Phoenix feather and recycled pairs of bunnies rather than oak, pheasant and Marks and Spencer.
As Lydia achieved one of the best set of results the examiner saw with the items she had to hand this caused the woman to raise an eyebrow rather at such perfectionism.
Leo, Mad and Chad did Geomancy and declared it 'not bad, fairly standard'. They got back from their practical trips fairly fast except Mad who had been sidetracked briefly to note the position of what he thought was a fey rath in case it became important to know. He had not done, he thought, quite so well in the written as the others anyhow and had a feeling he would drop to an 'E' in any case, whereupon a few minutes delay would not make much difference.
The other Marauders made much of his putting Marauding duties before high grades and Mad felt quite mollified that he had made the choice he did.
Ancient Runes was next, and Chad, Mad and Lalita were doing this with Lydia as well as sundry Ravenclaws, and Stuart Markham of Gryffindor, who was as Lydia said academic enough to be a Ravenclaw but lacking the attendant vices had to be a Gryff.
Mad and Chad had poked her over that.
The exam was nothing but the translations of various passages from the languages they were studying; the three Marauders found it all straightforward enough ,though Lalita struggled rather. Though they learned the languages by magical assimilation, studying and learning the various scripts had perforce to be done by sheer brain work; and Lalita found Babylonic Cuneiform very difficult. Even Lydia declared it 'stretching'!
Arithmancy was the last standard OWL; they were all taking this except Polly who felt that she did elf style magic better for doing it instinctively and not understanding the numbers behind it. It involved heavy calculations concerning the optimal time to break a selection of curses when the time they were cast was known, and orientation if appropriate. Lydia wrote too much as usual and returned NEWT level answers. The shorter questions covered numerologically suitable partners and appropriate wedding dates and Lydia made a case for using different number bases in certain cases such as the fictional witch whose name was given as Ariadne Spinner who might be justified in using base eight and should certainly re-check all her calculations in that base. It was again a NEWT level answer; but introduced to see which candidates picked up on the possibility and Lydia, unknowingly, earned bonus marks for the comment.
Then they were to take Metalwork; at least, Lydia and Leo were. A few others of their class planned to take it over two years and take the exam in the Lower Sixth; Lydia and Leo just drank knowledge.
The written exam came first and covered some questions on the history of smithcrafting and the tradition of 'drawing a sword from the stone' from the time bronze swords were cast in stone moulds; then there were questions on techniques like tempering and annealing and the proper times to introduce particular enchantments.
There were also questions on the precise rituals to produce particular results and how to tailor them to specific items.
The practical was not in any way what the students of Hogwarts were used to; for in addition to a practical exam to test techniques each of them had to submit two disparate items made in the course of their studies. This in addition to tempering a partially completed knife and placing a self sharpening charm upon it in the presence of an examiner.
Leo had made for one of his items an enchanted version of the Swiss Army Knife, with a number of useful things on it; a key that moulded to the shape of any lock, a knife that changed size on command, an automatic bottle opener and a blade of sharpness for cutting out splinters. His other item was a pendant with the shield charm embedded in it, combining goblin magic with traditional wand magic. Lydia had made a silver flute that could be kept in the pocket and would enlarge upon command – this and Leo's key had been part of the lessons on enchantment of mutability – to be a full sized instrument; and a goblet that screamed if poison was put in it. She was not as good as Leo; but she thought she might have done well enough to be permitted to consider pursuing the subject to NEWT, the reason she and Leo wanted to take the OWL this year.
The only other student being examined this year was Lionel Dell who was also impressed by Leo's sheer talent; one of his two pieces was a clockwork musical box with a sleeping tune on it, such as he had learned from chanting, his interest in clockwork having been fostered by Arjelan. He too had made a key that mutated to fit any lock but his was a stand-alone item not part of a set as Leo's was.
The fifth year Marauders, awarded an OWL in Chanting the previous year for the saving of Viktor Krumm, had elected to take the NEWT two years early since they knew as much about it as anyone and more than most. Lionel Dell was also involved in this.
Lucius was slightly irritated that there were no OWL candidates at Hogwarts this year to finish making his cursed bludger safe; and demanded that the Belle Marauders do it while he was there to save himself the trouble later.
The Belle Marauders were quite equal to the task and kindly invited little Sara Barbary of the second to join them for the experience.
The NEWT candidates had already sat the written exam; designing three chants, one to negate poison and pass it through the bladder, another to induce dreamless and healing sleep and a third to halt further damage from a progressive cursed wound. The short questions involved making suggestions of the nature of chants to be used under certain circumstances and was a trifle subjective; that was what NEWT was about, thinking rather than returning learned wisdom. Lydia used musical notation for some of her chants, indicating the use of flute rather than voice, as [had she but known it] Jade also did, though there were differences to their answers and suggestions as well as similarities that Lucius was later to find so fascinating he almost forgot to assign marks.
There were two tests to the practical; Lucius had designed for complexity rather than length for after all, few chants required an hour or more and they had been tested on stamina at OWL. The first test was to uncurse a broom Lucius had chanted a curse into, by adding a counterpoint to a basic chant after ten minutes allowed for preparation. Lydia did it with her flute. The others were more conventional in designing impromptu chants after using their revelaspells on the broom; and none took long.
The second test was to set up a circle of exclusion against spiders.
Lionel might not have come up with the solution that he did had he not been comforting a tearful Fran Longbottom over the last question in her Arithmancy NEWT, an equation including terms of Waffling Logic and Apparition-like equations that had covered the vaults of Gringotts' bank – as Lionel recognised immediately – where if the wrong person tried to open a vault he was immediately engulfed and drawn through the door to await capture.
Which gave him an idea to deal with his spiders.
He scribbled assiduously in his permitted preparation time and proceeded as he then chanted to describe a figure of eight on the floor. He described the shape eight times as arithmantically perfect for spiders.
He sat in his exclusion zone; and as the acromantulas Lucius was using tried to enter his circle they were engulfed and sucked around the edge to be flung into the second circle.
Lucius was extremely impressed.
He had guessed that the ingenious Lionel would do something spectacular – even if it was not as funny as Jade's walzing spiders tying themselves in knots – and he had been proven correct.
Leo, Mad and Polly contented themselves with merely excluding the spiders; Chad's line stupefied them; and Lydia's protective circle turned – apparently – into a basilisk and her arachnid assailants duly fled.
That the Basilisk was wearing shades and had an Elvis hairstyle was a little disconcerting until Lucius recalled that one of the Snape girls had made a sock puppet of a basilisk that had resembled the musician muggles called 'the king' and had done parodies of his songs. Then all became a bit more obvious.
Really, he had never expected such extraordinarily talented and creative students!
He must remember however that Lydia and her group had taken their inspiration from the extraordinarily talented and creative Severus Snape; and not be disappointed if future years' students were a little more pedestrian.
Lionel was also taking a NEWT in Enchanting to go with both his metalwork and the chanting.
The long question was about communication devices; Lionel could find plenty to write about and kept a covert eye on the time to not get too carried away. He added arithmantic notes and wrote of the importance of attuning, noting that precisely similar devices for a two way conversation made this easier but was by no means necessary so long as the attunation was carefully done; and might be done with only an approximately similar device as for wizarding wireless that sent out communication along all ley lines and could be tuned into arithmantically as presumably the new Wizarding Wireless Vision would.
On gates, wands, wards and brooms he wrote as happily in the short answer section, writing rather too much on brooms. Fortunately it was the last question and he was able to wind up his sentence when given a one-minute warning without sounding too hurried.
As for the standard practical of coring a wand and enchanting a muggle shopping trolley to fly, he did fine; and for the trolley he had to add his new aerodyne charm to it just to see if it improved handling.
Which of course it did; and the examiner, flying with him, turned slightly green at the turn of speed he managed.
And then at last the exams were over; and nothing was to stop the Belle Marauders undertaking the ragging of Achille Crouch Villeneuve.
Dealing with his underwear necessitated a visit to Ravenclaw tower; which meant passing the riddling door with its eagle head knocker.
And at a time when Achille was not there.
Heroically, the conspirators decided to miss lunch and see what they could wheedle out of the kitchen elves if the pangs of hunger were too great.
"I had another idea" said Bella "Let's curse his knickers and his voice box using Parseltongue because that SO is going to be harder to undo!"
"Knickers yes; but even for Villeneuve it's a bit unfair to curse his voice like that" said Mimi "'Cos only dad or mother Krait or Jade'd be capable of undoing it. Or Draco I suppose."
"I suppose" said Bella "But as for his undies, he can always buy more; it's not like he's poor. Doing that to Frankie Davenport before HE left would have been pretty loathsome… Villeneuve is loaded."
They knocked as soon as the last few Ravenclaws who had deposited books in their tower had left noisily for the meal; they wanted as long as possible!
"What has no beginning nor end but goes on forever?" asked the soft voice.
"The obvious answer is a circle" said Bella a little dubiously.
"Or possibly a series of prime numbers since they are negative too and so they go on forever both ways into infinity positive and negative" said Mimi "Philosophically, a circle does have a beginning, a point at the centre from whence it is described by the arc of the radius."
"Personally I'd have said 'Homework' covered it quite nicely too" grinned Isabel "Many headed and mutable as it is like the dark arts… and the dark arts have no end nor beginning either."
"Well that is a reasonable amount of cleverly considered and spoken philosophy….disregarding certain facetiae" said the door swinging open.
"I'm jolly glad we have a password" said Bella thoughtfully "With a door that asks silly questions and opens for any old crap any oik can walk in."
"Like us" giggled Maud.
"Precisely!" said Bella "On wickedness bent as we are!"
The conspirators discovered Achille's belongings and spread his underwear – silk for the most part – out on the bed.
"Well it's half way to being effeminate anyway" said Maud. "Heaps of lace and frou-frous then?"
By the time they had finished, Achille's underwear would have been at home in an Ann Summers shop; not that the Belle Marauders had heard of Ann Summers but Maud had a brother who took 'Playwizard' and they bowed to her superior knowledge of what grown up ladies wore to show off in. Isabel and Drusillina were only children; Mimi's brothers had had better things to spend their pocket money on in their teens – mostly Weasley's Wizard Wheezes or potion ingredients – and Bella had never noticed what underwear Narcissa wore because, as she said, it was only undies and she didn't notice irrelevancies like that.
Maud was particularly pleased with the boned basque with spider-web patterned panels of lace up the sides and spider-shaped buttons up the front.
For good measure they also turned his socks into very sheer silk stockings with spider web patterns on some of them and the rest plain.
Then they folded everything up neatly again and put it away and retired giggling.
"How are we going to do his voice and the babbling curse?" demanded Maud.
"Curse something edible and induce him to eat it, like the canary custards?" suggested Isabel.
"That'll wear off though when he passes it through his system" said Bella "Even if we get it lasting longer than the Canary curse does. We need him to pick up a – a cursedish item."
"Or just do it as a ritual" said Mimi "We know his name; if we can get a lock of his hair we can make an effigy of him and chant over that."
"Crumbs, do you think we're hard enough?" said Bella.
"Well I don't see why we shouldn't try" said Mimi "And if it doesn't work we can chalk it up to experience."
"Oh BOTHER!" said Bella suddenly
"What?" demanded Drusillina
"If I'd only had the sense I was born with I'd have put a view-o-sneak in his room to see his reaction!" said Bella.
"Heh, it'll probably be audible all the way down to the dungeon" said Drusillina.
Once a lock of Achille's hair was obtained – by a seemingly random charging mass of children, and Bella wielding sticky tape to brush across his head – they attempted to make a simulacrum in the traditional fashion out of wax, more because wax as a modelling material was easier to get hold of than anything else by purloining candle ends and dribbles of wax.
Making a model of a human out of wax is by no means as easy as old treatises on the matter make out; and pretty soon Bella said,
"This isn't working."
"It's a waste of time!" wailed Drusillina "It won't shape at ALL!"
"Can I suggest plan 'B'?" said Mimi.
"Get suggesting" said Bella.
"We ask all the big girls who wear tights and stockings if they've got any they're about to throw out for being laddered and stuff them and make a doll" said Mimi.
THAT plan went a lot better; and they asked Erica to draw Achille's face to pin on the doll
"Since if it's an unspecific doll it can be used again on other people – if it works" said Bella " – and save us all this work over another time."
With Achille's face and his hairs on it the doll was ceremoniously designated to be Achille and the Belle Marauders duly chanted with elements of sending between the simulacrum and its original.
It was quite fun even if it did not work; and such hard work that they fell into bed and went straight to sleep in the deep sleep only the just or cheerfully naughty children can manage.
Achille had put out his underwear to wash as usual when he went to bed; he had no need to lay out next morning's garments and so it was a total shock when he reached into the drawer for his silk boxer shorts and pulled out…..cami-knickers.
Cami-knickers moreover with a wealth of lace and frills.
Achille emptied the whole drawer on the floor and stared aghast.
Colin Malik regarded the pile with not a little horror.
"Achille, has someone done a switching spell on your clothing?" he asked.
"I don't know but someone is in trouble! I'm going to beat whoever did this black and blue and for good measure use the cruciatus curse on them!" said Achille in a high falsetto voice.
He looked startled.
"I think" said Colin "That someone reckons your propensities for beating on kids smaller than you are rather unmanning habits; and are maybe making a comment."
Achille, being under a babbling curse as well as being in a higher register than anyone but Celestina Warbeck, held forth at length about the horrid children at this horrid school and how they should all be beaten because most of them were peasants and the rest improperly behaved.
Colin, with a great deal of relish, hit him. Hard.
Achille did not babble for several minutes because he was unconscious.
Colin went for Professor Flitwick who, it is to say, was more eager to see the effects and find out how this matter had been accomplished than to rescue Achille, whom he disliked intensely.
When Achille recovered consciousness, he babbled even more furiously to find little Flitwick peering at his underwear and murmuring,
"Remarkable, quite remarkable! Well, well, very competent!"
Achille actually went for him.
He ended up flat on his back without a wand. The Marauders were not the only people in the school who could cast wordlessly and wandlessly; and Flitwick HAD once been a duelling champion.
Flitwick sent for Mei Chang.
"Sorry sir, nothing to do with me" she said, giggling at the pile of frilly and indecorous underwear.
"LIAR!" said Achille and proceeded to add further thoughts about Mei and her friendship with the filthy part goblin guttersnipe.
Mei dropped a langlock on him, turned him deep purple in a flash of purple light – aubergine Kadavra – with purple tentacles.
She didn't even bother to more than glance at him. Flitwick was much impressed.
"Well my dear I know you would own to it if you had been the author of this" he squeaked – his high voice was nowhere near as high as Achille's presently was – "but I wager it has Marauder overtones."
"I'll say" said Mei "I doubt whichever one it was is likely to apologise; he HAS made himself rather obnoxious and he DID volunteer to take peer punishment not a report but he wasn't awfully gracious over it… I'll send the perpetrators to you sir, you'll like to know what they did."
"Yes indeed!" agreed Flitwick rubbing his hands together in glee.