Chapter 27.3- Doom Days

When I handed the final arithmancy paper over, the examiner looked bored out of his mind. His eyes never flicked up to my scar, and he barely even acknowledged my thanks as I left. He just seemed like he wanted to get some sleep. I could relate with that. Proctoring magical exams must have been so boring. The sheets were already charmed to resist cheating, and the quills had similar enchantments on them as a form of two-factor authentication. It was basically impossible to write down anything on the parchment that was not from one’s head.

You could spy at other people’s works, but you’d just never be able to write it down. It would have been a good enchantment to study and use as the basis for all sorts of intent wards, but it was guarded jealously by the ministries who got the chance to use them. My brain protested the thinking with a sharp spike of pain, and I resolved to avoid all serious topics in favour of fantasizing over what would certainly be a large spread of food waiting for me when I got to the Hotel. Sirius would probably be out doing some thing or the other. The man hadn’t had a good lay in forever, and as he wasn’t stuck with the body of a teenager, he could stand to do something about that.

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The practical exams all take place on the same day, in a set of four rooms. The first room and the venue for the first exam was the Potions hall. We weren’t allowed to bring anything except our wands so the cauldrons, ingredients, and tools would be provided by the ICW. The exam started once the clock struck nine, and the ingredients revealed themselves to us. The IOWL Potions Exam was a bit different from regular OWLS. For one, we hadn’t been given a potion to prepare. Instead, we’d been given a set of ingredients.

Of course, anyone who had done the studying would know that these ingredients when brought together formed a potent shrinking solution. It could also be used to make a strengthening solution, but hat would involver finding a substitute for Re’em’s blood and using only half the ingredients. No. Shrinking solution was the right bet. Figuring out what we were supposed to make was only the first challenge. The test was timed for sixty minutes. A shrinking solution could take up to Half again that long if one didn’t follow the most efficient route. The most efficient route would take about fifty minutes, I remembered from memory as I got to work.

Tom Riddle had been a peerless talent in every wizarding art he put his mind to, and Potions was no different. He’d identified Slughorn as a prime target early on and so worked to make sure he was easily the best in the art in the class. That meant I knew all the little tricks to grind out just that little bit extra that separated superb potions from merely good ones.

Fifty five minutes into the exam, I turned off my burner with a flick of my wand and finally looked up from my board. The room was…..well chaos would be an understatement for the present state.