Chapter 21
"Well? What have you discovered girl?" demanded the head that hung greenly in the flames.
"I have found out why the English are more efficient, My Lord Pyotr" said Danica.
"Ha! There is a secret then – what is it? A potion? Snape is a potioneer. Have you been given this?" he demanded.
"It's not a potion, My Lord" said Danica "It's much simpler than that and more profound."
"Well tell me quickly child!"
"It is to instil a love of learning and discovery in children and to make them work hard, and yet to rest appropriately and play games and exercise for their good health" said Danica. The green face became a rather horrid shade of brownish magenta as the face of Lord Pyotr Tirlichov became angrily suffused with blood.
"Don't be stupid, girl! Do you seek to make game of me?"
"No My Lord; and it is not stupid. The regimen is improving my own ability to study" said Danica.
"Nonsense! You are being fed some potion secretly; you are to find out what it is and try to steal some for me!" said Tirlichov didactically "It is unfeasible that a mere regimen can have any effect on study! Have you anything actually useful beyond such fairy tales of your own incompetence?"
Danica flushed.
"I know that Professor Snape and those closest to him have some kind of a blood magic ritual that they practice" she said "It may be that the ritual is the source of their power."
"Ah, now that's more like it! You must find out more – and see if you cannot spy on such ritual. I would give much to know what occurs; what sacrifice is required to fuel his power" mused the Russian Boyar.
"I only know that it is important that any sacrifice be willing" said Danica.
Tirlichov sneered.
"It is not really important you silly wench; that is just the squeamishness of the English. I suppose you are making a good enough start; but it is up to you how much you find whether you are worthy of a place in a decent school you know! You will have to put up with being with mudbloods and animals until you have proved yourself."
"Yes My Lord" said Danica submissively.
She was shaking as much with rage as with fear when he cut the connection and the green flames flared and died away.
"He is horrible!" she said.
Dione put her arms around her, as did Krait and Sirri.
"And that is why such as he are doomed to fail" said Krait, crisply. "He ridicules the concept that growing minds and bodies perform best with appropriate regulation; and he does not in the least understand the nature of blood magic. A willing sacrifice always presents far more power to any ritual than one where the sacrifice holds back and does not willing give their all."
"So that is why it was all right to tell him about it?" said Danica.
Krait chuckled.
"More than all right; it misleads him beautifully! You see he and his ilk could never actually come to terms with the idea of SHARING; for those who care about blood status and social rank, it is inconceivable to share and be equals with all who are a part of the pact. They can only see any pact in which others give blood FOR them. When we started this, for Harry Potter, we all had some hazy idea that we were joining with Harry FOR him; it was only later that we discovered that it was all for one AND one for all as you might say. That any one of us might be the focus. We generally make Severus the focus because he is perceived the leader – which he is to some extent, though we have no pure leader as such, having merely those who have more experience to whom the rest of us tend to defer. Severus is good at focussing the power however and at needling any opponent into doing something foolish. And it's him they tend to attack. We were prepared to die for Harry; because the main part of blood magic is the love that goes with the sharing. You could come in because you quickly learned to love Beta and the twins. And we respected your courage enough to know we could learn to love you. Harry was very pleased that it was an equal sharing; because he IS the Chosen One, and he's the Chosen One because he cares more for his supporters than he does for himself. No megalomaniac can manage that. No prideful self-willed, stuck up little…."
"Krait!" said Dione.
"You don't know what I was going to say" said Krait.
"No but I know you, darling, and I could guess" said Dione "And she's only a little girl and she isn't used to your colourful language yet."
"Well, if I call him an idiotic arrogant twerp that's suitable enough" said Krait equably "Mudlo in Russian comes fairly close, and oh dear, I've shocked the poor child! Anyway, what that Pyotr fellow is can't manage to share with anyone, only arse-lick those more powerful than himself and stamp on the bollocks of those under him."
"I give up" said Dione "She's angry on your behalf, Danica, for the way that fellow was speaking to you; I was sitting on her through all the conversation to stop her turning him into a woodlouse right through the flames because she's actually powerful enough to pull off a transfiguration over the floo. We are all angry at him for you."
"And we are SO going to GET him at some point!" squeaked Beta, who had been permitted to come along.
"You're all so kind to me; it's so different to what I'm used to from powerful people!" cried Danica.
"Possibly because" said Sirri, dryly "We're all SO ruddy powerful we don't actually have to posture and pose. Ah, Severus is back."
There was the light TIC! That heralded a very controlled apportation.
Severus nodded to Danica.
"Your parents will come here" he said "As your father is a cauldron maker he will work with Hette and Vava's father for now, and will join the metalworking classes with you; I find him a reasonable and fair man and when we start interfering in Russia – as I fear we shall have to do – he will then be able to manage sundry factories that we take from the unworthy who treat their workforce badly. Such we are doing in Germany. Thanks to your buying of time they can pack discreetly; I will send elves to help them and to bring them here, and they might then have all their savings and possessions instead of having to be rescued in a hurry. Your keeping of our enemy occupied also made it easier for me to visit them unobserved."
"Thank you sir; for everything!" said Danica sincerely.
"Little sister; there is no need" said Severus. "Now you two children get off to bed; I don't want you yawning in class tomorrow!"
oOoOo
Krait woke in the middle of the night with a yell.
"What?" Severus was concerned and Dione and Sirri stared with frightened sleepy eyes.
"Sorry" said Krait "I just had the most DAISY of an idea!"
"Grammar however lacking" said Severus.
She poked him.
"Stop that or we'll never hear the idea" said Sirri.
"True, oh best beloved" said Krait. "I suddenly thought; we vanished Ivan the Testeronical's castle to the evanesco place; but why not use another version of the vanishing spells and bring the whole ruddy house here for Danica's parents? The hole in the ground will convince Lord Flexi Jerkoff that we discovered the girl and punished her parents too and then he might well be running scared." She could not resist the film reference though the MSHG would NOT ever get to see Flesh Gordon, the X-rated pastiche on Flash Gordon.
"It certainly has a lot to commend it" said Severus "But we shall have to encircle the house to chant to move anything THAT big; and there ARE watchers."
"So Silvina puts them to sleep with a tune" said Krait "Simples!" and she made a noise like the puppet meerkat on the muggle TV advert.
It seemed appropriate to reference Russian meerkats somehow.
"Why somehow do I think that Pyotr Wotsitov is going to end his days as a meercat?" muttered Dione.
oOoOo
Silvina stood in feyspace to start the playing of the sleep-inducing tune that would hold any who succumbed in magical sleep akin to the effect of the draught of living death save that it lasted for a length of time determined by the number of repetitions the player made. Silvina played it through once; twenty-four hours was quite sufficient for their purposes.
And then Severus and his wives and the senior chanters of Prince Peak excited fey space and Severus went to knock to suggest that Danica's parents wait without for finding a normal apportation likely to be less uncomfortable.
The Russian couple watched astounded as the chanting group danced around their little dacha several feet above the ground – Hermione had needed a lot of coaching to be comfortable with performing fey magic and had only managed it when Krait presented her with four pages of closely written arithmantic notes – and as they came to the final syllable and clapped their hands the whole silently vanished leaving a shallow depression.
"It's not as deep as usual" said Ron, peering in. His task had been, as always, overwatch.
"Of course not you prune; we only dug a shallow hole to drop it in at the Prinzhorn because of the lack of topsoil" said Krait. "That was why we were more careful in defining the volume of…. You don't actually care, do you?"
He grinned.
"Not really; I leave the clever stuff to Hermi, Sev and you" he said. "Why are we waiting?"
"Answering silly questions" said Krait.
They linked hands and apported back to the wizarding village at the railhead; where the dacha was settling gently into its hole. Krait chanted over the edges to blend it in a bit more and bed it down.
"It would have done it of its own accord" said Severus.
"It was unfinished and untidy; right is right" said Krait.
"You'd have made snippy comments if anyone had done it that wasn't us" said Hermione "And insisted on smoothing it yourself; you always say, just good enough is NOT good enough."
Severus held up his hands, laughing.
"All right; I shall resist being mellow in my old age" he said. "It's a lovely job now. We'll send Danica down in the morning; she may have the morning off school, but no more. She has too much to catch up with."
"Truly, Professor Snape, you are a mighty Warlock, you and your ritual team also" said GospodinPaslenov.
"We are no more powerful than the power of love" said Severus "You and Gospoda Paslenova settle in; I don't think you'll find anything very disrupted, but an elf will be down to check out your needs. And Herr Breuer will be up tomorrow afternoon to discuss cauldrons and metalwork with you."
oOoOo
Danica was amazed in the morning to be told she might go down to the village to greet her parents – and found that their entire house had been moved! She embraced her parents and cried a little and then went straight to the head's office on her return and cast herself upon him thanking him. Severus gave her a hug and gently disentangled her.
"Now you have no distractions, you may work hard, hmm?" he said. "And now we hope that Lord Pyotr Tirlichov will have many distractions and an outsize headache over what may have happened."
Danica giggled.
"I do hope so!" she agreed.
oOoOo
Severus had traced the floo connection made by Danica and activated it when Tirlichov had had a reasonable amount of time in which to discover what had happened.
"Ah, Lord Flexi Jerkoff" said Severus. He liked Krait's reference.
"My name is Tirlichov" said the Russian coldly. "Snape. What do you want?"
"I want you to leave my school and family alone, old boy" said Severus "I get snippy when people start interfering; like I got snippy with Gerhardt. I also get snippy with people who abuse children. I don't like you."
"I don't like you either; I consider you interfering."
"Funny" said Severus "The only one of us so far to do any interfering is YOU – your troops attacked MY school; YOU sent a spy to MY school. I don't start the interfering; but believe me, unless you back off I WILL finish it. I have so far restrained my wife from turning you into a meerkat. The assimilative correlation is easy enough after all even at a distance. This is your only warning."
"And if I choose not to take any notice of your warning?"
Severus shrugged.
"Then you will instead take the consequences" he said.
The angry Russian used cancelling powder to break off the communication. That STUPID brat had obviously been caught while she was leaving the room she had used to chimney-talk with him; and Snape had punished her and her family. Such talk of abuse of children! She would of course be cited as a martyr to the cause, but how like the foolish wench to be stupid enough to be caught! He should have used an adult who looked still enough like a child to pose as one; save that he had feared that Snape would use a Revellaspell to discover the age of a new pupil. Threatening him with being transfigured at a distance too; that was utterly impossible.
Everyone knew it was.
Ancient legends were just that; legends.
The Sons of Zirnitra would CRUSH Snape.
The Sons of Zirnitra were a little depleted in power by the setback of the failure of any of them to return from the Prinzhorn; there was obviously some good reason for that. As the Order of the Dragon was now backing out of any association they had evidently turned coat at the last minute and aided Snape; because they knew of the timing of the attack and were able then to lend their ancient and superior aid to him. It must be superior; it was of Russian origin, though these Ukrainians must always be considered suspect. Their turn would come; once the source of the English power was in the hands of the Sons of Zirnitra they would then use it to punish the Order of the Dragon. It was a mighty artefact, obviously, that the girl had misunderstood the use of; though she had confirmed what he suspected, that it was powered and operated using blood sacrifice. And if muggles had to be slaughtered in their hundreds to power it sufficiently he would use it to crush all their enemies for the prince, Alexandr Tsarevitch, born of the lines of Tsars of Wizards and a mighty necromancer. The only fear might be that there may be two such artefacts; since Odessa had failed at both Prince Peak and at Hogwarts school; perhaps Dumbledore had been great enough to create a duplicate for his protégé Snape. But if they might obtain one, then the other was at an impasse, because there was balance; more than balance because the English would only use willing blood sacrifice because they were weak and feeble mentally. A necromancer in the true Russian tradition would be able to drain away every last portion of life force of any sacrifice and get more out of the thing!
Theorising without facts or only partially understood facts can lead to very great misconception.
oOoOo
The school as a whole cared very little for the misconceptions of Russian megalomaniacs; there were more important things to consider like exams. As usual Chanting was to be early to allow for Lucius Malfoy travelling around Europe; which was, as the NEWT level chanters said a real swizz because one might have thought that the Germans would have managed to get their own examiner by now to test in Schloss Adler and Durmstrang; and now Beauxbatons also required Lucius' services. As the NEWT level chanters consisted only of the Lowther twins and Rory, nobody took a great deal of notice of their grumbles; and the OWL students declared that getting the most physically exhausting practical test out of the way would be actually rather good to do before the weather got too hot.
"It's the principle of the thing though" said Fred "That these wretched Germans are too lazy to test lessons taught in their own schools."
The three school children were too to be joined by Lizena gan Otuel, the goblin nurse who had worked extremely hard to cover three NEWTs over the year, one of which was chanting; and though she was not expected to get high grades she hoped at least to have her experience taken into account to train properly as a healer.
oOoOo
The practical of the chanting NEWT required the four to deal with a rather nasty cursed book that Lucius had picked up on his travels in Egypt – setting up false clues to great power for another would-be dictator as it happened – and he thought the chanters might as well destroy it as anyone else. The book had the power of draining the life force of anyone who read it, and had presumably belonged to some lich or similar, acting in a similar way, though more insidiously constructed, to that of the knife belonging to the Lich Abaris. The three boys and Lizena were told to make a chant individually and refine it using each other's effort. This they did with relative ease, though Lizena struggled more. The boys were used to working together but they drew in Lizena's ideas too. They got on with it and soon the book was neutralised; the chant itself took about an hour and a half, which was tough by anyone's standards. Lucius knew however that if this lot failed to deal with it, he could call on the Belle Marauders in Hogwarts to finish the job adequately.
They would not have to; the Muggle Marauders might not be the strongest or even most competent group of Marauders that there were but their abilities were solid, and they worked as a foursome, asking Lucius leave to have Randolph place protective sigils and patterns around them. Under the circumstances, Lucius agreed; it was a dangerous thing and might have safeguards built in. He was glad to have agreed because though the four young chanters did not notice it, there was a definite attack on their circle that met Randolph's patterns and bounced.
Lucius made a note to pass that on to Charlotte Malfoy as a definite use of NEWT level pattern magic to credit to the boy.
Lizena would never have managed but as part of that group; whereas Lucius felt sure that any two of the boys might have succeeded. But then, the reduction of such a cursed item was somewhat post NEWT in scope and her efforts were sufficient to have passed any standard NEWT exam. And if she looked downhearted now, hopefully – if she did not blow the written- she would have a pleasant surprise later. Lucius judged her borderline between 'A' and 'E' and how well she did now depended on her knowledge of theory. Her practical applications would, after all, improve with practice.
oOoOo
The OWL students had, as always, an easier task; the hour long chant after ten minutes preparation. Nine were taking the exam and Lucius divided them into a four and a five; the Bee Marauders in one group and the rest in the larger group. That some of those were blooded too was of no moment; it had symmetry.
By the time two groups had chanted thoroughly, it seemed unlikely that any tree frogs would ever menace the great hall of Prince Peak.
Having had an experience he would have preferred to have avoided in London, Lucius had considered having the chanters make an exclusion line against West Ham football fans; but decided that the explanations, especially to the German chanters, would become too complex to make the comedy value worth it.
When the exams started in earnest – the NEWT students were permitted to take the chanting exam first at the same time as the other students across Europe – everyone was as ready as they might be, having tested their knowledge in quizzes and brought themselves up to speed in anything they were weak on.
And the three taking chanting wrote industriously in the chants they were required to design and the curses to be broken; and a chant to minimise the use of sun symbology, which caused a few raised eyebrows since all the blooded knew about the attempted rise of Achille Crouch-Villeneuve to be a Sun King in France, hence Lucius' side trips to Egypt. Doubtless he would be putting the best ideas to practical use; and why not? And besides, such raised the awareness of the chanters in Europe who might then have some idea of neutralising any symbolism Achille saw fit to use. As Peter said after the exam, with a Sun King in France and Father Frost in Russia the current batch of would-be dictators were trying to be Thor or something.
"The god Thor rode off to war upon his spotted filly
'I'm THOR'! he cried, the horse replied,
'you forgot your thaddle, thilly'" said Fred.
Peter poked him.
oOoOo
Randolph wished, in light of having used a few sigils by rote in his protective circle, that he had studied ancient runes; but it was too late now. This was the province of only Marius and Fred; and contained the usual three texts to translate with discussion on the subject matter and how it related to the cultures. The texts were creation myths, one in Finnish from the Kalevala; one in hieroglyphs; and one in ancient Hebraic which was at least a well enough known story to guess wildly at any parts that were unknown. Marius struggled with that; he had studied Hebraic only recently to look at the laws of Solomon as contextual to his law studies. Fred thanked his lucky stars that he had become involved in a certain high level discussion with Lilith in the holidays and had let her bully him into brushing up the little HE knew to argue the gematria with her, which as he said was beyond his Arithmancy anyway.
And at least the examiner seemed well aware that it was a study that most had only touched upon for having kindly put in some vocabulary for the Hebraic text.
oOoOo
Marius was with two other marauders for the next exam, Arithmancy; the province of Rory and Randolph. There were no surprises in this apart from a rather nasty three-fold simultaneous equation to find the location of a ley node – the marauders were of the opinion it was Malfoy Manor and were relived, after the exam, to find that they agreed, when comparing notes – and Marius drew an approximate position on a sketch map. The final long question to be explained was the engulfing charm on Gringott's bank; which no marauder had any excuse for not knowing since it was such a useful charm.
oOoOo
Charlotte Malfoy travelled out for Randolph's Art exam, and explained that he had been credited with part of the practical, that of demonstrating how he might use his art, in having protected successfully against an attack from a cursed book.
"It DID fight back then?" said Randolph. "I am glad I did the pattern then! I used some cuneiform writing – I don't know as much runic stuff as I ought, I guess – because the book was Egyptian and the Hittites and Egyptians were enemies and it seemed like a good idea."
"My husband tells me it worked very well; he was watching on a different level to check the book was not fighting back and that it had been made inert" said Charlotte "He made his eyes temporarily see directly as though casting the revelaspell, able to see magic; but unable to see anything BUT magic. It's a tricky ritual as I understand it but worth doing under certain circumstances. Voldemort, not being human any more, could apparently see in that vision in concord with normal vision. And neither of them as efficiently as concentrating on either, I wager" she added.
"That's really interesting, ma'am" said Randolph who was fascinated; and wondered what it would be like to see like that and then later paint what one had seen.
He had produced, for his portfolio, the pattern he had used to reduce the agony for Clovis Geirek when he was the sacrifice for the elf compulsion removing chant, and the pattern on the bodhran; and a painting of Draco Malfoy superimposed on a map so that the painting always pointed to exactly where the living counterpart was to be found. This was an invention of his own that he had been working on for Alastor Moody to use with all the aurors; and Charlotte was much impressed.
"If the auror in question then dies he can act as a normal portrait and too give information about why and how he died" said Randolph "Though if anything was hard enough to cream Draco I shouldn't think there'd be enough of England left either for there to be an auror's office to notice."
The written exam was one of three papers on the candidate's choice of field; and Randolph had chosen the Art of Portraiture for his field. This formed one of two written papers, the other being a paper of shorter questions on general techniques. Randolph thought he had acquitted himself well on the general paper and too on the specialist one, which included some half a dozen long paragraph style questions and an essay, the title of which was 'the surroundings of the subject of a portrait may facilitate or inhibit the ability of the subject to interact with the living; discuss'. Naturally the surroundings had to be appropriate; placing Phineas Nigellus into a setting akin to one of Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema's exotic paintings would either have the irascible headmaster ignoring anyone outside the painting or ogling any scantily clad classical maidens rather than talking to anyone else. And the degree of perspective too gave a greater or lesser feeling of freedom to the subject and would give them confidence to move around and converse if there was plenty of room, as much as if familiar objects were to be found near them. Portraits were the most awful critics. And whilst they might wander off into other paintings in the same building with less than suitable settings, they chose to do so. Once paint them in the wrong setting and the chance of getting a peep out of them was low to vanishing in any painting even in what they considered a proper millieu. Randolph quite enjoyed himself!
oOoOo
There was only one entrant for the Astronomy exam; and that was Pru Buffer. As with the OWL, the written exam was in the morning and then the afternoon was given to resting so that the practical might take place after dark. Pru wrote industriously about various constellations, naming stars from memory and drawing them in, adding paragraphs about each; and charting the motion of planets across the sky over a given period as well as writing details about certain significant stars. She thought it quite easy and not at all as she had feared! She went to bed for the afternoon with a mug of cocoa and a storybook to relax her and was soon snoring gently.
The evening brought the examiner who exclaimed in joy at such clear skies; and set Pru to finding certain objects in the sky. This was where the NEWT practical differed from the OWL; for at the lower level, the examiner found the objects and the student had to identify them. At the more advanced level, it was the ease with which the candidate found the given heavenly bodies that counted towards marks. Pru had been poking around the skies for fun as well as during her set periods for a goodly while now, and was extremely confident in her searches.
Well that was one that was over, thought Pru cheerfully; and a good omen of the others.
Her next exam was to be the next exam tested; Care of Domestic Beasts.
There were two who were taking Care of Magical Beasts as well as the Domestic aspect; and as both Muriel and Mungo were studying both the exams had to be scheduled round them.
The domestic carers had to demonstrate the ability to ride a flying horse, check its hooves for chizpurfles, and demonstrate the correct way to set the amputation gear for the second tail of a crup. Muriel and Mungo then had to take a trip to Africa with the examiner and demonstrate how to set up the cushioning charms to hold an erumpant and bind it in order to milk the explosive fluid from its horns; a dangerous task but one they had been well drilled in. Professor Ross had made them practice with animated desks galloping about the hall with cardboard horns because it was as good a way to practice as any without actually upsetting any erumpants unnecessarily. They knew too how to collect re'em blood, or gather murtlaps; Ross was young enough to actually enjoy making something of a game of various tasks that might be expected.
The two written papers covered slightly different aspects too; the domestic beasts paper covered types of horses, ponies and dogs, with – to Muriel's delight – a longish question on nifflers and their uses. The other paper covered types of dragons and the ranges and terrain types suitable for various different creatures. Muriel and Mungo enjoyed themselves no end.
The domestic beast exam was favoured by more people; Pru was joined here by Frieda, it being one of the brain-damaged girl's two NEWTs, Randolph, and Peter as well as Muriel and Mungo. Frieda was good with all types of animals but had opted to take the exam covering domesticated magical beasts as likely to give her a better chance at a job. Her precision charms were not fast enough for dealing with erumpants, nor even spraying water on mackled malaclaws so she was glad that she had stuck to the exam she had chosen! Dealing with flying horses was easy; and when answering questions on magical horses in the written she managed to stray onto the subject of unicorns which she loved too.
oOoOo
It was not often that there were more candidates for care of beast exams than for charms; but this year only the Lowther twins, Randolph and Leneli were taking charms.
The long essay was on locomotor charms and it may be said that all the marauders strayed a little in writing about the use of Finnish naming magic to facilitate these. Randolph, the arithmancer of the group, wrote too many arithmantic notes on the energy required to lift any given weight by a given height and then the additional energy to move it horizontally noting that the energy requirement to cartwheel an object was theoretically no more than to move it horizontally since half the time one had gravitational assist when it was tumbling but that the effort of concentration meant that most wizards seemed to find it more stressful and use up to twice the energy theoretically required since they used a lot of unnecessary sweat on powering their poor little brain cell to understand circular motion.
There were questions on memory charms and barrier charms and the protean charm, none of them long or complex.
The practical was as standard as always with the obliviation or confundment of a muggle who had seen Tibbles – here Fred had to deal with a hysterical mother and a toddler having a tantrum because she wanted to pet the 'big f'ying tat' – and, as locomotor charms had been the long question it was no surprise that the Protean Charm was required as a practical demonstration. Fred smiled blindingly and drew the dark mark on his arm and on the examiners and the other candidates with a felt-tip pen and used his Protean charm to make the skull stick out a tongue beside the snake and blow raspberries. The others stuck to more or less conventional solutions with coins, chocolate frog cards or playing cards.
oOoOo
The chanting written exam was no surprise to the four who were taking it and they wrote knowledgeably and well; and if Lizena gan Otuel did not stray into post NEWT answers she was well on track.
oOoOo
Randolph was alone in taking Comparative Magic; and was delighted to get a long question on Rangoli, Kolams, and other protective patterns. He was well away. Normally a solid 'E' student he had every good chance of an 'O' from so fortuitous a paper if he did not blow it on the short questions.
Generally speaking he thought he had done rather well and was almost purring when he left the exam room.
oOoOo
As there was only one Divination student, Pru was fitted in before the large class taking DADA. She had a good portfolio of experiences to present concerning the problems from the Sons of Zirnitra. Pru used a lot of astrology in her divination – her astronomy after all was very solid – and she cast the horoscope of the examiner with some detail and suggested that it was a little silly being embarrassed about bladder problems that St Mungo's could so easily fix and so too probably could the headmaster or Madam Malfoy if he only cared to ask because the casting she was getting suggested pain that was unnecessary. The examiner, who was suffering from bladder stones, which WERE painful, took her advice and bashfully asked 'young Severus' what might be done about it.
Severus used a complex vanishing on the problem and told him that he needed to cut down on fry ups or only eat them when he was doing heavy ritual magic that would dissipate the excess fat.
Severus forgot that he and his team were probably the only wizards and witches in the world who routinely did heavy ritual magic to that degree!