Tumbleweed, we have a problem... on Cascade Hall

The Wizarding Council's Official Examiners

March 10, 2008 9:51 AM

The Critical Assessment of Talents and Skills (5th Years) by The Wizarding Council's Official Examiners

The day of the exams dawned bright and sunny - just the kind of day you really didn't want to be stuck inside taking tests. And worse, if the charms held true it looked like it would continue for the rest of the exam period. If it was of any consolation to the students, as they were let into the Hall to find it set up with single desks in neat rows, there were some amongst the examiners who would have preferred a little time out in the sun too. As things stood, they had a very busy schedule and there was no putting off the exams. The council would have had much to say if the students of Sonora failed to have their CATS completed before Salem and the Cabinet managed to complete theirs. It was an ever going battle of which was the more competent magical authority - each hoping to one day prove the other completely unsuitable and take their rightful place as the ultimate governing body for Wizarding America. But that was all incidental and aside from the task currently at hand.

Over the next two days, the fifth years of Sonora had to take gruelling examinations in all of the core subjects and, if they took electives, they were stuck inside for an additional day to complete the exams for those. They would have to complete a written section and then practicals. And, where the staff table usually presided on the raised surface at the front of the room, four figures waited.

Nanette Langdon had a well earned reputation for being ruthless and was most decidedly not amongst those who would have liked some time out in the good weather. She was old by Muggle standards, but showed it somewhat more than most of Wizarding ilk. Her grey hair in its rigidly neat, tight bun pulled at her face, emphasising her already pointed features as she examined the students filing in with eyes that seemed able to spot a mischievous thought at fifty paces.

At the opposite end of the spectrum there was Roland Ashburn. Younger than his fellow examiners by quite a margin he was tall and still oddly gawky for a man of over thirty years. He smiled at the students as they took their seats, and it was fairly simple to work out that he was the more obvious candidate for pushover, but predictably that didn't translate into respect.

The third person awaiting the students was Bernard Starsky. Far older than the rest his body was testament to the ravages of age that not even a wizard could escape - his head was nearly devoid of hair and age had bent him far from the straight backed stance that he had enjoyed in his youth. He had his head slightly cocked as he was quite deaf and had convinced himself that the pose made his hearing work better. He wasn't a comical figure, though. It was clear from the look in his eye and his tendency to yell rather than to talk (although this could in part be explained away by his deafness, it was the effect rather than the cause that was noticed most by the students who had taken exams at Sonora over the years) that he was someone to be wary of.

Making up the quartet was David Weatherby, a stocky wizard of middling years with hair that was moving slowly from brown to grey and intense green eyes. If any of the four could claim to be the one most welcomed by the students it was he - he had a well earned reputation of being strict but fair, and both his manner and the twinkle that appeared in his eye when a student did particularly well at a spell had endeared him to Sonorans for over a decade.

It was Weatherby who stepped forward to explain the rules for this year's fifth years. He explained that they were here to complete the written part of today's exams, and that their practicals would start after lunch. He went somewhat into depth explaining that cheating - in any form - would not be tolerated. As it was the hall had been liberally covered with anti-cheating spells, hexes and cantrips in preparation for the exams. And the quills that were handed out were top-notch anti-cheating quills of the latest standard. Papers and the exams were passed out, Weatherby looked at his watch, waiting for the second hand to tick over and nodded.

"You may begin."

****

The practicals were clearly built with stress in mind. Whether you were better off going in first while you were fresh (and the examiners too!) or hanging around outside the hall doing last minute cramming until you went in at a later time was argued hotly for all it made little difference to the traditional alphabetical order. Of course, students who had finished the exams were sent off to their common rooms or out onto the grounds for well earned rest. For those still waiting there was the build up of nerves. What would be asked? Which examiner would they get? Would obsessive cramming or last minute practice of this charm or that make a difference when they were in the room? The answer would only be revealed when the door opened far enough to allow the next student to enter and the available examiner beckon them up to begin the practical exam. All four of the examiners were well versed in all the subjects taught at Sonora, and chose tasks for the students ranging from spells leant way back in the misty past known as first year, all the way through to things they had been working to master the week before (and, in some cases, whilst waiting outside the hall for the exams to start).

Of course, when the door did open and their name was called, there was nothing else to be done but enter and do their very best under the circumstances.

OOC: As usual for examinations, you are given full permission to write for whichever poor unfortunate examiner is stuck with your character during the practicals (and, if necessary in other capacities). Have fun and write good and detailed posts ;) Oh, and rejoice! For the coming of the CATS is one of the signs of the approaching End Of Term. Which also means that the Ball Approacheth. Isn't it exciting?

Subthreads:

My sister's the CAT lover, not me by Gwenhwyfar Carey with

Tumbleweed, we have a problem... by Anne Wright

39 The Wizarding Council's Official Examiners The Critical Assessment of Talents and Skills (5th Years) 0 The Wizarding Council's Official Examiners 1 5

Gwenhwyfar Carey

March 14, 2008 6:00 PM

My sister's the CAT lover, not me by Gwenhwyfar Carey

On the first morning of CATS exams, Gwen woke up cheery and enthusiastic about besting the tests that had made her year and the past two weeks in particular an exercise in how far the limits of endurance could be pushed. She held on to the feeling through the Charms written exam and halfway through the Transfiguration one. By the time she was done answering as much of Defense Against the Dark Arts's questions as she could, enthusiasm had been reduced to a grim determination.

Charms would be all right, but that had never been a matter of debate. Virtually everyone passed and continued that. It was a little harder to say about Transfiguration - how much could one spell model count for? The one had felt important for some reason, but she hadn't been able to bring anything to mind for the gap she'd felt was somewhere in the middle. Defense Against the Dark Arts had been up and down. She had no idea how she'd done overall, which left everything up to her practicals in her mind. She meant to do well on them if it killed her, because she hadn't put up with it all for so long just to be tossed out over vampires and a spell model.

Lunch was a quick affair that, for her, consisted of eating apples left-handed to rest her cramped wand hand and giving anyone who looked at her a mechanical smile. She'd wondered if it was a bit much at the time, but she was now glad that she'd carefully tidied her hair and clothes and put on some makeup. Making a good impression on her examiner might well be crucial, and looking pale and disheveled didn't do that. She doubted she was at much of a risk of looking crazy, but she did have that reputation, and she needed to use any and every weapon against it she could find. Her looks were very useful in that respect, when attended to.

After lunch, because her surname had what was usually the good luck not to begin with a 'K', there was only time to correct her posture and summon up a few weakly reassuring thoughts about her grades and talents and her duty to her family, school, and House before the hateful voice called for "Carey, Gwenhwyfar". She decided to take it as a good omen that they pronounced her monstrosity of a given name correctly and so entered the Hall with her head up, doing her best to walk with complete confidence.

She wound up, not much to her pleasure, opposite the only female examiner, a grey, hard-faced witch who looked like she imagined Anne would in eighty or ninety years. It did seem a bit unlikely, however, that her cousin would match the examiner's severity in the next thousand years. After her brightest and most charming Robinond smile received a stern look in response, she gave the effort up as a waste of energy. There were some people it was pointless to try charming, and she was standing opposite one of them.

"Gwenhwyfar Carey," she said, resisting the temptation to drop a little curtsy and settling for a brief inclination of her head instead. The witch nodded stiffly and went to her notes. Gwen resisted the temptation to go on her toes and crane her neck to try to read them. There was nothing she could do about what the examiner wrote on her papers, and getting her wand out and her head on straight counted for more, anyway.

"This is a Charms examination, Miss Carey," the witch said, not showing any reaction to the surname Gwen could identify as such. It was a relief and a worry all at once. "Make the glass and the candelabra waltz for me."

Charms went, as she had expected, well. The waltz felt too simple - probably her mind going back to those awful early attempts at learning to dance with Julian, who had been as uncoordinated as the average candelabra - but she believed she'd pulled off a perfect Silencing Charm on her crow and didn't actually hit her examiner while Banishing a cushion she'd just Summoned. In Transfiguration, it took two tries to Vanish all of her rat, and the ferret she produced from a fire-poker had strangely loud footfalls. She had an idea that Defense Against the Dark Arts was left for last quite deliberately, so she'd be tired and off her guard. Because of that, she decided to be glad she managed to keep up her defense and not to allow herself to fume too much over her weaker offense. It wasn't as if she had plans to go around attacking people, anyway.

Day One was over. Gwen returned to her dorm room too tired even to needle Catherine. Her chances of surviving through Day Three seemed even slimmer than her chances of making a good match, because that old woman had given her no reason at all to think that her looks outbalanced her defects.

0 Gwenhwyfar Carey My sister's the CAT lover, not me 63 Gwenhwyfar Carey 0 5

Gwen Carey

March 16, 2008 7:02 PM

I'm not that fond of RATS, either. by Gwen Carey

Under normal circumstances, eight and a half hours of deep sleep would have been enough to improve the somewhat bleak view of things Gwen had gone to bed with. Having the eight and a half hours not be nine because of a dream where Cate Raines beat her in every subject and announced it in front of the packed Cascade Hall and entire Carey family counted as an abnormal circumstance. At the breakfast table on the second morning of CATS, Gwen was so absorbed by her third-year Care of Magical Creatures notes that she left a spoon full of grits hanging in midair between her mouth and bowl for over a minute before she noticed it.

She didn't even catch or sense any odd looks. What normally looked like insanity was perfectly acceptable now, provided it came from a fifth or seventh year. They were all going a little crazy.

The exam situation was the exact opposite of the previous day, because Gwen was now depending on her written scores to outbalance her practicals. Unfortunately, all three of them seemed to have been designed with the absolute worst sort of Aladren in mind. History of Magic was a voyage on stormy seas with a torn sail and cut anchor, she lost her head completely when asked about the Clabbert population, and was convinced that she had mixed up the properties of aconite and moonstone twice. Only Astronomy went well.

Lunch was spent with her nose again buried in her notes, a sandwich being attacked whenever the words started to blur together and otherwise ignored.

Afterward, she was again the second person called back into the Hall for practicals. To her great relief, she had a new examiner. If she had gotten stuck with the old hag from Day One again, she was half-convinced she would have fallen all to pieces before the exam even began. The bright smile Gwen dredged up for the youngish, awkward-looking one was tinged with genuine relief. Maybe she could simper her way to some approximation of a decent mark after all.

The gawky wizard smiled back warmly. Probably glad to see a student who didn't look ready to faint or have a breakdown, she thought with some satisfaction. Maybe, if she succeeded in passing these exams, she'd send some small thank-you owl to her old etiquette tutor. She hadn't proved to be much of a credit to Margery, but it was an option. "Good afternoon, Miss Carey," he said. "Ready to get these exams over with?"

Gwen carried on beaming like an idiot. "Oh, yes, sir," she said. "The sooner I finish them, the sooner my scores come back." She wasn't sure that worked quite the way she'd had in mind, but her examiner did laugh, so it probably hadn't been a total faux pas. Somehow, she had trouble seeing him dissemble too well. Appearances could be deceiving, but it was taking conspiracy a little far to think the examiners, who would probably never see them again, would bother with seeming agreeable if displeased.

Since there was no History of Magic practical, they carried on to Care of Magical Creatures. Gwen watched the crate her examiner had warily, wondering what was in it. Though she'd always done enough to keep a pass, she had always seen Care of Magical Creatures as a bit of a joke and focused more on gossip, flirting, and daydreaming during it. A few times in the past year, she had actually ignored Kijewski altogether and spent the period studying something far more practical. When the creature she was being tested over came out of the crate and into Mr. Ashburn's hands, Gwen began to laugh out loud in relief at her luck.

"My apologies, sir," she said sweetly when he gave her a slightly puzzled look. "My great-aunt has one of those." Somehow, now did not feel like the moment to try to work out exactly how she'd been related to Eulalie. "That's a kneazle. Kneazles are known for their ability to tell an honest character from a shady one, and may be aggressive toward the latter. They're also very loyal pets and have good senses of direction."

He had a few more questions - Gwen thought she framed good enough answers for them - and that was all for the Care of Magical Creatures exam. Gwen had a suspicion he was afraid the kneazle would maul her as a shady character because of her surname, but if she got her back up every time someone looked at her askance when she said "Carey," she'd have an awful lot of fights on her hands. It was far more sensible to just be glad she didn't have to demonstrate handling of the kneazle and get all clawed up before the Ball.

She had a little trouble getting the cauldron temperatures adjusted at a few stages of the potion she was set for the next exam, but it did wind up more or less the right color and consistency. The dark Astronomy examination room had a feeling of unreality she found hard to focus around and it made her think of Professor McFarlan, but she didn't think she did anything worse than mislabel a few stars in Orion, and she felt very confident of her constellation, planets, and moon labels. All the while, even in the unnatural dark of the Astronomy room, she kept smiling and gave every try Ashburn made at small talk a pleasant response.

When her star chart was handed in and she was released from the Hall, Gwen walked slowly back to her dorm. Her charming insincere smile faded as soon as she reached the stairs and her pretty face was drawn and pale. Only four exams left to go, two written and two practical, and with luck Divination would allow her to bluff. She was good - very good - at it, anyway, but it was high time her over-vivid imagination was more of an asset than a liability.

0 Gwen Carey I'm not that fond of RATS, either. 63 Gwen Carey 0 5

Gwen

March 16, 2008 10:29 PM

I'm out of bad exam puns. by Gwen

At breakfast on the third morning of CATS, Gwen sat in her usual place drinking coffee with a face like ice, her eyes darting from spot to spot beneath her long eyelashes as if she was searching for an assassin. She had intended to use the precious few minutes to go over the Runes and a few of the more complicated theories of Divination, but had found it impossible going and had elected to cut her losses very quickly. Conserving energy was just as important as having the material down, because cracking up at this late stage, with the end in sight, would be humiliating.

She fiddled with her Council-supplied quill throughout the introduction, feeling jittery all over. It would have been more of a concern if she'd felt so before the practical in the afternoon, but the mind-numbing effects of two written exams would most likely put a swift, sure end to any extra energy she had. When given permission to begin, she opened her exam booklet quickly and had to read the first Ancient Runes question twice before she took in a word of it.

Quite some time - she neither knew nor cared how long she'd been sitting at her table and scribbling - she scrawled the last sentence of a paragraph on Rappacini's Third Theory of Extra-sensory Perception in a hurry and watched with a wave of relief as the papers soared to the front. The worst was, for this round of testing, over. RATS would be worse, for a certainty, but she had her whole sixth year and most of her seventh between her and those. All she had left to do today was take her Divination practical, and then she was free to take things easy until summer. The thought was so pleasant, so encouraging after such a long time of worrying, that she actually managed to study a bit over lunch.

After lunch and the gathering outside the doors, she went back into the Hall with a smile on her lips, though not a wide one. That would have to wait on the examiner, as she found it tiring to keep one up and avoided doing so for a longer stretch of time than was strictly necessary. She'd hoped to get the malleable Ashburn again, but instead was face-to-face with the graying Weatherby. She smiled up at him confidently as he shook her hand and she tried to get an idea of how best to relate to him. "Predicting an easy exam, Miss Carey?" he asked. Another one who didn't react to her name, but definitely not another Langdon.

She laughed at the joke, at least half because she actually found it funny. Word play was a favored passtime in her old circles, though it tended to be a lot more barbed among the purebloods of the South. "I certainly hope that's the right reading of the stars," she said, her accent coming on thick as it did at times. "I've been hoping for one all year."

"I'm sure you'll find it tolerable," her examiner said. The silent addendum 'if you're prepared' was almost audible, or so she thought. "Let's get started. Please demonstrate the proper technique for cartomancy."

She thought it went well. He hadn't said much once the exam began, but he had definitely looked approving while she was handling the cards - she thanked Merlin for the few, secret lessons Aunt Emma had given her in the art of playing cards before she started at Sonora - and did not begin to look as if something was wrong throughout the session. It was a bit sad that Divination was her best subject and, she was sure, exam, but someone had to be good at it, and it wasn't as if she was planning to set up as a diviner after Sonora. There was nothing wrong with having the skill, so long as she did not flaunt it.

After a second exchange of pleasantries with Mr. Weatherby, she was free to go. Her CATS were over, and she was already resolved not to think about them until the owl arrived with her results over the summer. She left the Cascade Hall with a calm, broad smile and went back to Crotalus. She kept her pace measured all the way across it and up to her dormitory room. Once there, she locked the door and took off both her shoes, which she laid neatly side-by-side at the end of her bed. Then and only then did she cease behaving like a grand young lady of sixteen years and begin jumping around on her bed, laughing so hard she was bent over and teary with it.

About three minutes afterward, she let herself fall down to the bed dramatically, unpleasantly hitting something around the area of her knee. Her stomach aching from laughing, she pointed her wand at the door to unlock it and twitched it a little to close the curtains around her bed. She'd let Cate and Nicoletta and Jordanna in, now, but Gwen didn't want to see or speak to them just yet. The canopy of her bed looked a lot better than their faces after her party.

0 Gwen I'm out of bad exam puns. 63 Gwen 0 5

Anne Wright

March 24, 2008 10:42 PM

Tumbleweed, we have a problem... by Anne Wright

"...Wright, Anne."

Anne's head snapped up at the sound of her name, making her first reaction to the call she'd been waiting for a stifled yelp; she'd had a piece of hair twisted very tightly around her finger, and it pulled hard at the sudden, sharp motion. Releasing the now nearly ex-curl, she almost ran toward the doors to the Hall in her eagerness to get her CATS over and done with. The attacks of nerves they'd been bringing on of late were almost certainly the worst she'd ever had, and it was a given that she would only be able to relax after they concluded. The sooner she got in there, the better.

She searched frantically for the name she'd heard linked to her examiner, a middle-aged man with green eyes. She wanted to say it had something to do with storms, but her mind was a blank, a useless, faintly buzzing blank. How on earth was she supposed to get through an exam like this? Doing poorly now meant getting kicked out of school, and she'd lose what sense she had if she had to stay with either family for two solid years while Ben ran her team. That thought failed, in a big way, to quiet her nerves.

"Nervous, Miss Wright?" Weatherboy - Weatherly - Weatherby! That was his name! - asked her. She wanted to laugh, but it was too Gwennish to go into a fit of hysterical laughter at a question. Instead, she forced a smile she was fairly sure made her look something like a gargoyle and nodded, telling herself the whole time that it was nothing to be ashamed of and that everyone got worked up about CATS. It did not mean she was weak or that she deserved to have her own assistant supplant her.

"Understatement, sir," she said, fiddling with her wand to keep from fiddling with her hair. Leaving it down while in written exams had been smart, since she had needed to pull on it to think straight several times, but she should have put it up before practicals. Apart from the possibility of it getting in the way, it also apparently made some people nervous when she started looking likely to bald herself. A nervous examiner was usually an unhappy examiner, and that kind of examiner did not readily give good marks.

"No need to be, Miss Wright. Just do your best." Anne had enough experience of being nervous to feel other emotions at the same time, and that comment brought up a snatch of indignation. She spent more time on strategy than she did on studying, but she was still an Aladren, and the remark sounded to her like one that would be made to a girl with an established history of not doing well. She knew he had no idea who she was, which made it irrational, but it did not go away for that. "Let's get started. If you can..."

Later, Anne would remember most of the first-day practicals as a blur of light and sound and a few approving looks from Weatherby for a few nicely performed spells. The thing that really stood out in memory, however, was the thing that had turned the rest into a blank: instead of charming a pair of wings onto a water-goblet, she somehow managed to transform the water-goblet into a posy, which, almost in a panic, she quickly attached a set of water-goblet-sized wings to.

At least, she unsuccessfully tried to comfort herself later on the Pitch, she might get a good grade in Transfiguration.

16 Anne Wright Tumbleweed, we have a problem... 59 Anne Wright 0 5