Victor spent every summer term revising hard for his NEWTS. In the dozen years that he had been at Hogwarts, he had seen a dozen different approaches to teaching Defence Against Dark Arts, but the external examiners who came to visit the school remained the same, and they had a number of favourite questions that they used in exams three years out of four. But he had to be careful, all the same.

There was an inter-house Quidditch match on at the moment, so Victor was the only person in the library apart from Madam Pince's Squib assistant. 'Do you really need all these?' he asked, as he checked out Victor's stack of books. 'I'd have thought you must know every grimoire in here by heart, by now.'

'I can't afford to get complacent,' said Victor. 'I made a complete mess of a question about inferii in last year's Defence Against Dark Arts exam.'

'I heard,' said Mr Rincewind. 'And your friends that you'd been helping with revision all answered that question perfectly, didn't they? Which question are you planning to answer wrong this time?'

There was an edge in his voice that made Victor look up, more stung by his bitterness than by the fact that Rincewind wasn't nearly as stupid as Victor had assumed. 'Why do you care?' he asked.

'Because I don't understand how you can – have all this magical ability and just waste it!' retorted Rincewind. 'I kept retaking my exams for years too, you know. Not public exams like OWLs and NEWTs. Just the internal exams at the end of the first year. Most of the teachers wanted me to leave, but Professor Sprout said the letter-writing quills in the Headmaster's office knew what they were doing when they invited me to join, and the Hat knew what it was doing when it chose me for Hufflepuff, and that I was a wizard, magic or no magic. But you're a Slytherin, Tugelbend. Slytherins are meant to be ambitious. What are you ambitious for?'

'I don't know,' said Victor. 'Just – not to be a wizard, and not to have to leave school and do some boring job. I mean, I thought about being an Auror, or a Healer, or a Quidditch player, but they all look like too much work.'

'They're wizards' work. If I didn't work here, I'd have to leave and look for a Muggle job. With no Muggle qualifications or work experience. Besides,' Rincewind added, 'If you stay any longer, Dumbledore will probably offer you a teaching post anyway.'

'How do you know?'

'Because he's offered me one. Geography Master, starting next September.'

'But you're not even…'

'A qualified wizard? Neither's Hagrid, and that didn't stop Dumbledore giving him the Care of Magical Creatures job, did it?'

'So, what post…?' Victor didn't need to finish the sentence. Apart from Geography, there was only one teaching job vacant. It always needed filling. And Defence Against Dark Arts was the subject Victor always found hardest to fail in.

'I'd run, if I were you,' said Rincewind. 'But if you're going to go anyway, it doesn't hurt to stay a few more weeks and pass your exams first.'