JILY - AN UNEXPECTED RETURN

62. OWLs - 5

PREVIOUSLY IN JILY RETURNS

The OWLs and NEWTs begin.

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That weekend, unfortunately, flew by. There was studying for their remaining exams, and Harry spent a few hours with the twins, going over their plans for opening the business as soon as summer started. They had already found the premises, and there were quite a few pranks ready to be mass produced. They had finished the magical flash bangs, and were planning on bringing them to the Hogsmeade trip to show him, not wanting to risk McGonagall's wrath by setting them off during exams. They showed him the Punching Telescope and the Patented Daydreams, which lasted for thirty minutes. Harry couldn't help laughing at the last one, and could only imagine some of the teacher's reactions to them, and understood why the twins hadn't sold them while still in school. He congratulated them, after having tested them himself, and was excited to learn about how they had managed the Daydreams.

The twins, never ones to miss an opportunity to brag about their products, spent the next two hours detailing every step of the production process. Harry could not get over it how intelligent they were when they put their minds to a task. He asked them if they had given any more thought to products that could be geared towards the war effort, and they told him that they were currently working on Shield Hats, but were having some issues with the Charm work necessary to make them last for longer than a handful of curses, especially the more powerful ones. Harry told them that he would get together with them after the Hogsmeade trip, so that the three of them could hopefully figure something out.

On that Monday, they had their Potions exam. As Harry had suspected, the Blood Replenishing Potion and the Calming Draught were all heavily covered in the written exam. Thankfully, Harry had brewed both of those quite a bit over the summer and the school year, so he wasn't worried about that. After lunch they had their practical, and were asked to brew three potions: Burn Paste, a common antidote, and the Draught of Living Death.

Harry thought he did alright. The burn paste he did without looking at the instructions once, having made it at home and for his personal potions stock quite a bit. His Draught was a hair too thin, but it was the right color and texture. The antidote was the one that Harry was a bit worried about. He tried to remember everything Blaise had told him about them, but there was always a chance that he had messed it up.

That night they spent a small amount of time on their star charts. Harry wasn't worried about passing it to be able to go on to the NEWT, because he wasn't continuing with it. He just wanted to do a good job for Sirius. Sure, he'd said that he didn't expect Harry to follow the Black tradition of loving Astronomy, but he hoped that it would still mean something if he did a good job on the OWL.

They had their written exam in the morning, which Harry thought he did reasonably well on, considering how often he was too tired to stay awake during those late nights in the Astronomy Tower. After lunch, Ron went to take his Divination final and Harry and Hermione their Arithmancy. They had their dinner, and then spent a few hours relaxing and then going over the charts one last time.

Thankfully, the exam passed without too much mention. He thought he did fairly well on it, but he would have to wait for the results to find out. It was finished at 4 in the morning, and Harry immediately crashed asleep in his bed. He and Ron were bleary eyed throughout breakfast, and Hermione was frantically quizzing them in History, which was their last exam.

He fought through the sleepiness, knowing that he could relax afterwards, but he needed to bully his brain into focusing on all of the dates that they had covered over five years, for which there hundreds. When he put down his quill, once again nursing a sore hand, he couldn't help cheering with the rest. They had actually made it through their OWLs.