Study Date | James Potter

Chapter 19 - "Hopeless Romantics"

The Quidditch season was over and exam season had officially begun. For weeks, the fifth years had been poring over notes, textbooks and whatever else they could find, but as their O.W.Ls drew closer they became ever-more frantic to fit that last bit of studying in.

Eventually, after Matthew had fallen face-first into his breakfast, and Rose had almost collapsed in the middle of the hallway, Rose and her friends saw sense and made sure they scheduled in adequate time for rest, as well as revision. The rest of the fifth years were not all as wise, however. By the day of the first exam Madam Pomfrey had dispensed calming draughts to at least half of the students, all were exhausted, and the smell of black coffee hung around the castle.

Potions was the first exam. In much irony and to the despair of many, the practical in the morning consisted of brewing a Draught of Peace - a notoriously tricky potion to get right. Rose was pleased to see that hers was a turquoise colour and emitting a silvery vapour when she had finished, as was Regulus's beside her. In the afternoon they had the written paper, which was mainly based around the Strengthening Solution

The next day was Charms, which Rose breezed through, and the day after it she had Muggle Studies, which she had taken for an easy O. Unfortunately her weakest subject, History of Magic, followed directly after Muggle Studies. She came out of the exam cursing herself for forgetting the date for the International Warlock Convention, which she of course remembered was 1289 as soon as she left the hall.

There was another practical exam on Thursday morning, for Herbology, in which Rose almost got bitten by a Chinese Chomping Cabbage. Luckily she just managed to escape unscathed for their theory exam in the afternoon.

Thankfully, Herbology was the last exam of the week, leaving the fifth years a three day weekend to berate themselves for the first lot and prepare themselves for the second lot.

With Monday came Transfiguration, which thanks to James's tutelage, Rose quite enjoyed by now. She easily turned her goldfinch into a golden snitch, and wrote about the theory of vanishing spells.

That same night was their Astronomy exam, up on the tower. For some reason in the past few years, Astronomy lessons had been taking place on the Training Grounds Tower - something about a student almost falling from the Astronomy Tower. This was perhaps the only reason Rose had never been caught up on the Astronomy Tower past curfew.

Since the Astronomy exam took place at night, they had the next day free of exams. Most used it to revise for DADA which was on Wednesday.

For Rose, the Defence Against the Dark Arts exam was almost too easy. The practical involved performing various spells on a dummy, while the theory exam focused mostly on warding off dark creatures.

Finally Thursday came, and with it the last two exams. For Rose, these were Ancient Runes and Arithmancy.

While all of her friends had taken Ancient Runes with her, they had also all taken Divination and Care of Magical Creatures rather than Arithmancy and Muggle Studies. Their Divination exam had been in the first week, and their Care of Magical Creatures exam took place at the same time as Rose's Arithmancy exam in the second week.

The last two exams passed by rather quickly and easily for Rose, although she was told that in Care of Magical Creatures Matthew got a rather bad bite from a fairy, and somebody else's fire crab escaped and almost burned Tina.

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A few days later, the end of June came, and with it the End of Term Feast. It was a rather cheerful affair, despite Gryffindor winning the House Cup, mostly due to their win of the Quidditch Cup and the points that came with it.