Go, CATS, go! on Cascade Hall

The Wizarding Council's Official Examiners

October 16, 2008 8:54 PM

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

There came a time, in each and every student at Sonora's fifth year, when examinations had to be faced. And not just any examination. The Critical Assessment of Talents and Skills. It was second only to the Ridiculously Anal Testing of Skills which the seventh years were going to be subjected to - starting next week - and there was a good reason for relative quiet on the part of students from both years over the past few weeks. The fifth years were almost certainly entirely grateful that they only had two, or three at the most, days of exams to face. The seventh years had two weeks.

Four figures stood waiting at the front of the room, waiting. The only witch amongst them was Nanette Langdon. She was older than two of the others, and looked far sterner than all three other examiners. Her back was ramrod straight and her face stretched and pulled tight by the rigid neat bun that held her iron grey hair. It emphasised her sharp, pointy features and made the sharp, intimidating gaze that greeted the students entering the hall even less comforting. It was rumoured that she could tell if a student was even thinking about cheating, and she had a reputation for ruthlessness that had been validated by generations of students.

Bernard Starsky was the oldest of the examiners. Nearly bald and bent with age, it was hard to believe that in his prime he had been a straight backed, handsome man with a full head of thick, glossy dark hair. His general examining style included his head being slightly cocked to the left - Starsky was quite deaf, but had convinced himself that by effecting this pose his hearing worked better - staring at the students with suspicious beady grey eyes and communicating several decibles louder than necessary. While his tendency to yell might have, at least in part, have been explained away by his deafness, the whole package was more than enough to make him a figure to be treated warily.

The most popular of the examiners was David Weatherby. A stocky, middle-aged wizard, with the grey in his hair starting to outnumber the brown and a twinkle that appeared in his intense green eyes when a student did particularly well in their practicals. Weatherby was tough but fair, and it earned him respect.

In contrast, Roland Ashburn might as well have been a joke. He was the youngest of the examiners - in his mid thirties at most - and easily the tallest. He carried his height awkwardly, being oddly gawky for a man of his years, looking like he simply had never grown into his body. He was by nature cheerful, prone to smiling at the students and a complete pushover. Being regarded with respect was just one of those things that remained completely foreign to him.

Quickly the students were encouraged to find their seats where they were handed the latest anti-cheating quills, examination books and papers were handed out. The hall had been prepared earlier, and spells, cantrips and hexes to prevent cheating had been liberally cast. Ashburn, after being on the receiving end of one of Langdon's patented 'are you an idiot?' stares, beamed at the seated students. "Your first examination will start in a few minutes," he told them, checking his watch to be sure. "I just want everyone to do their very best and remember that cheating is not a good idea. Anyone cheating will be caught and will get an instant fail," he managed to look apologetic as he said this, while still smiling at them all. "If you finish early, please just sit quietly and don't disturb your fellows. Er... I think that's about it! Are you all ready? Good luck! You can open your examination booklets..." he paused while the second hand on his watch ticked, ticked, ticked, "now."

OOC: Theoretical exams in the mornings, practicals in the afternoons. Mandatory classes are covered over the first two days, any electives your character takes are examined on the third day. You may write for your examiner in the practicals. Have fun!

Subthreads:

Kit CATS by Saul Pierce with

CATS among the pixies now by Rosalind Rabindra

Here a CAT, there a CAT... by Geoffrey Layne

Go, CATS, go! by Morgaine Carey with

I'll skip the CATS related puns. by Adam Brockert

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

Saul Pierce

October 16, 2008 11:46 PM

Kit CATS by Saul Pierce

It was here. The day Saul had been dreading since January. His professors hadn't let him forget about them since September, but he'd actively avoided worrying about them until after midterm. Once classes resumed though, Saul had come to a couple of conclusions.

(1) He was going to fail potions. Thus, he didn't have to worry about that one.

(2) He had a natural talent for Charms. His practical score could pull him through and get him an Acceptable even if he flunked the written part. So he didn't have to study that one either.

(3) Muggle studies was something you either knew or didn't know, and after growing up on the border between muggle and magical, Saul figured he knew. He didn't have to study for that either.

(4) History was all about dates and facts and memorization. Not his strong suit by any means, but he was pretty good at making stuff up and making it sound relevant, so he though he had an even chance of passing. He wasn't going to go out of his way to get that A though. Besides, with an assigned essay of 250 feet due at the end of the year, Saul was putting more than enough time into that class. He considered himself an expert on the goblin rebellion.

(5) COMC was a fun class but Saul had little interest in pursuing it further, so there was no pressure to do especially well. But he liked animals well enough and Professor K (as well has her substitute) had been relatively successful at keeping his attention, so he though he'd pass anyway.

(6) DADA was Briony's dad's class. Failing the subject taught by your potential girlfriend's father was just a bad idea all around. Studying was required. It did open the potential for study dates and Saul had no problem with that.

(7) And that left Transfigurations. He'd been failing and frustrated with the subject in January, but he wanted to keep taking it. Of all of the subjects, he thought it would be the most the second most useful subject in his future career, after Charms. And so he'd convinced Simon to start tutoring him. And it paid off. On this day of examinations, Saul felt apprehensive but ready.

So the day dawned and Saul dragged himself out of bed, got dressed, put on Echo's shoes by mistake, figured out they were too small, exchanged them for his own, and made his way down to the Hall. He took his seat and fidgeted as the youngest of the proctors explained the rules and procedures. Saul heard about half of it.

The order to begin was given and Saul opened his examination booklet. He was prepared the fail the written in all subjects. He knew his reading comprehension was limited and his writing was atrocious. So when the first three questions were multiple choice and about topics he'd known for four years, he was surprised and hopeful that maybe he wouldn't utterly botch the written.

Unfortunately, they got harder.

He had to read one particularly complex question six times before he figured out it was even about transfigurations, never mind knowing what the answer was.

And then he got to the short answers and essays. He really hoped spelling and grammar didn't count. ('Yunnikorn' definitely looked wrong but he had no idea how it was supposed to be spelled - just one 'n' maybe? But that didn't look right either.) But other than that, he thought he came up with reasonable answers for most of the questions. And for those that he didn't know, he just wrote down everything he knew that was remotely related to the subject and some things he made up on the spot.

Unfortunately, he still had ten questions left when he ran out of time.

Still, he felt better about his written score than he'd expected to. He thought he had a good chance of having gotten half of it right.

1 Saul Pierce Kit CATS 82 Saul Pierce 0 5

Saul

October 20, 2008 4:55 PM

Practically speaking by Saul

While Saul anxiously waited in the hall for one of the proctors to call his name for the practicals, he watched his classmates, mentally determining whether they would be cannon fodder before or after him. As the number of people with last names alphabetically before 'Pierce' became increasingly small, Saul's fidgeting increased until his anxious pacing reached the point where it would be better described as 'bouncing off the walls.'

However, as soon as the youngest of the proctors called out, "Pierce!" Saul's entire demeanor changed. Like the flipping of a light switch, he was suddenly calm and all of his seeming excess energy was transformed into a bright grin for the man and a light step as Saul followed the guy to the testing room. It was showtime.

As they walked, Saul voice was cheerful and friendly as he introduced himself. "I'm Saul Pierce. I never thought I'd be glad to be taking a test, but I am so ready to put this one behind me." He entered the room and took the center of it as though hitting his mark on stage. With a flourish, he turned back to face the proctor and drew his wand with dramatic flair. "I'm as ready as I'll ever be. Hit me."

Roland Ashburn smiled at him, seemingly amused by the confident front Saul was putting up. He took out his own wand and said, "Since you asked," before firing off the first jinx.

Saul countered with a protego and a half skipping side jump to get himself out of the way in case the shield didn't hold back the full power of the hex. Six more offensive spells came at him with increasingly less time between them until the last three were right on top of each other. Unable to remember any specific counters under the onslaught, Saul put up shield after shield, and continued to do his best to dance out of the way as well. He used the furniture of the room to his advantage, too, turning over an empty desk to create an additional physical barrier to supplement his magical one.

When the barrage stopped, Saul had a slightly pink tinge to his hair, but was otherwise unscathed. As he slowly lowered his guard and took the opportunity to actually look at the man again, Saul saw him writing something down into his pad. He tucked his wand away and righted the desk as he asked, "So, how'd I do?" He thought he'd weathered the attack pretty spectacularly, but wasn't sure what kind of grade to expect from it since he'd just been using the same first year level spell over and over again.

"You've a strong grasp of the shielding spell, and creative utilization of your surroundings in your defense, but you relied solely on that one spell and you never counter attacked."

Counter attack? He'd been supposed to counter attack? "California Pierce," he admitted, raising one hand as if answering to a roll call. "We're pacifists."

The guy gave Saul a wary look. "You're not going to protest animal rights when we get to potions and transfiguration, are you?" He sounded like he'd have no idea what to do if Saul took the family line on that topic.

Saul let him off the hook, with a grin and dismissive wave. "Nah. I'm an actor, not a protester."

"Oh, okay. Good," Ashburn said, relieved. "Can you show me some jinxes now?"

Folding on the pacifist issue almost instantly - it being more of an excuse for why he didn't think to send any counter strikes back, than it was a policy he personally adhered to - Saul nodded. "Yeah, sure." He cast the first three he could think of, none of which were more than a third year level, and all of which Ashburn countered easily. Saul lowered his wand, and Ashburn picked up his quill again. Before he could put the nub to his score sheet, though, Saul shot one last spell at him, quick and accurate, and well practiced. It was a spell well suited to sneak attacks with the verbal component barely audible out of simple habit. It wasn't one he'd learned in class, but it did tie the man's shoelaces together with perfect precision.

Ashburn gave Saul a raised eyebrow look, and Saul grinned and shrugged. "Hey, if you're tripping on your face, you're not shooting hexes at me, right?"

"Fair enough," he conceded and wrote down a few notes onto his page before untying the laces and retying them properly. Once his shoes were back to normal, he waved his wand and summoned a plain piece of rock toward them. Giving it to Saul, he said, "I'd like this turned into a hamster."

Saul bit his lower lip. "Can I make it a mouse instead? I don't think I know what a hamster looks like good enough to make one."

The young proctor waved his hand invitingly. "Sure, be my guest."

Saul grinned. "Great! You'll get to meet Roni, then, my pet mouse. He's the best pet ever. He looks a bit like," Saul paused for a moment and waved his wand over the rock, "Adfectio Ferrum," he tapped the rock and it turned into a metal statue of his mouse with a level of detail any sculptor would envy, "like this, but rather a lot more," and he waved the wand again and set another set of spell words, transforming the mouse statue into a perfect replica of his pet mouse, "soft and cuddly and, you know, white."

He put his hand out in front of the transfigured rock and invited, "C'mon, Roni, step into my hand." He reached into his pocket for one of the ever present bits of cheese he kept for his real pet. Putting that on his palm to entice the fake mouse to step onto it, Saul grinned when the mouse cautiously climbed into his hand, sniffing curiously at the cheese bit. Saul lifted him up and presented him to the proctor for examination with the confident pride that came with knowing there was absolutely nothing that he could take points off for. Saul had practiced transfiguring rocks into both mice and owls so many times over the last couple of months that he could probably do it in his sleep now.

"Hey, buddy," he coaxed, sliding one finger under the mouse's forepaws and manipulating it to stand up more on its hind legs, "Show the nice man and handsome you are." The mouse's nose twitched, but without the real Roni's training it seemed disinterested in posing. It backed off of Saul's finger and took a renewed interest in the cheese, chowing down on it with far more gusto than one might have expected from a mouse that was actually a rock.

Ashburn seemed suitably impressed. He poked the mouse with the feather end of his quill and it stopped eating to give him a dirty mouse look. He took back his quill and started writing again. Before he was done, the mouse relapsed back into a metal statue, and Saul waved his wand again, ending the spell and turning it back into a rock. "Good job," Ashburn said, still writing as he wandered over to the side of the room. He stood facing the wall for a few more seconds as he finished his notes, then bent down and picked up a small cage with a hedgehog in it.

Opening it, he let the animal out on the desktop that Saul had put the stone and leftover cheese bits onto. It went to sniff at the cheese, but it turned its nose up at the rock-mouse's leftovers and went to explore the rock instead.

"Turn him into a cup," Ashburn instructed, a little warily, apparently still a bit nervous that Saul might turn into a raging animal rights activist.

Saul sighed, and gave the hedgehog an apologetic look. "Hey, bud, I'm told this doesn't hurt. I think it's still gotta be kinda weird, but just pretend you're playing charades, k? The category is cup. All right? Ready? Good." Saul cast the transfiguration and the hedgehog transformed, though not quite as perfectly as the rock had become a mouse. It was still a little spiky. Saul frowned in annoyance and repeated the spell. The spikes melded into the ceramic lines of the coffee mug. The brownish hedgehog color brightened to a brilliant blue and yellow words rose up in relief advertising "Maggie's Coffee House - Santa Barbara, CA" - a perfect replica of one of the mugs Simon used during their practice sessions.

Saul gave it another quick inspection then nodded. "Good job, buddy, that's a perfect impression," he congratulated the hedgehog before picking it up and handing it to the examiner. Ashburn looked it over, poked at it a bit, then handed the mug back. Saul put it down and quickly turned the hedgehog back into its natural form. "There you go, buddy, it's all over," he assured with a bit relief.

He saw very little point in transfiguring real animals into inanimate objects, and it felt a bit wrong to do so, but the heavenly manna that was pepperoni left him a bit disillusioned on his family's adamant activism of animal rights. If animals weren't meant to be eaten, they wouldn't taste so good. Turning them into a cup for fifteen seconds seemed a few steps down from devouring them with ravenous zeal so Saul felt he had very little moral ground to stand on in that respect.

When Ashburn finished writing, he smiled and nodded toward the door. "You can go. You'll have Potions and Charms tomorrow."

"Great! Bye!" Saul left, glad to be released, but feeling that he'd done as well as he possibly could have. He'd had a decent rapport with his audience and while his performance itself was not perfect, it had been more than respectable. And he'd been completely solid in the mouse transfiguration. Depending on his written score, he thought he might even have a chance at an E.

There was happy bounce to his step as walked away from his first day of CATS. He'd thought it would go much much much worse.

But, then, potions wasn't until tomorrow.

1 Saul Practically speaking 82 Saul 0 5

Rosalind Rabindra

October 25, 2008 10:37 PM

CATS among the pixies now by Rosalind Rabindra

Rosalind paced outside the door whispering spells and odd facts beneath her breath so quickly that if anyone had strained to listen, they would've heard something akin to a breeze rustling through the trees. Her concentration was completely focuses, so she didn't actually notice the doors were open until she felt a slight shoulder brush as someone walked past her. She quickly file in line and upon entering the room found an empty desk right up front and stared straight ahead, still whispering facts to herself as she eyed the examiners.

Three men and one woman. Her grandmother wouldn't be very happy about that. For all the traditional pureblood values she has, she's rather the feminist. Rosie thought the one woman look rather stern and thought that she and her grandmother would get along just fine. The men wouldn't fair so well. But the grey-haired man looked very friendly and Rosie half-hoped that she get him for all her practical exams.

The youngest one began talking and Rosie listened with rapt attention. If she was going to do anything wrong, it would not be on a technicality. With one hand on a quill and her other on her exam book, Rosie waited on the edge of her seat for "now". When it came, she opened the booklet enthusiastically and stared at the first question for a full 10 seconds before sighing and smiling, her heart-rate evening out for the first time in an hour. Rosie dipped her quill in the ink provided and sent her pen racing across the page in her small, but very neat handwriting

~*~*~*~

Practicals were a different matter. Her wandwork, when she got something, was perfect. But it always took her forever to get a spell right. If she was asked to do a spell she may have only just glanced over, she was in big trouble. While she waited for her name to be called (why did 'R' have to be at the end of the alphabet?) she muttered incantations under her breath and doing miniature motions with her wand. Every once in a while, the wand would emit sparks or warm up in her hands as though it were as eager to get this over with as she was.

"Rabindra, Rosalind!" she heard a voice call out after a few minutes. It was the woman. Rosie took a deep breath and walked up to the woman, who from up close looked like what fairy would look like if they ever got old and very mean, and curtsied, She really didn't know what else to do. The woman raised an eyebrow at the move, but made no reply to it.

Rosie waited quietly while Nanette Langdon wrote something down and then looked back at Rosie. "Miss Rabindra, this is the transfiguration practical. Please turn this tortoise into a teapot." Rosie took a deep breath and tried to keep her hnads from shaking. Another deep breath and a wave of her wand and the tortoise turned into a small silver teapot. Rosie grinned. This wasn't so bad. She watched Ms. Langdon make some notes on her clipboard and without looking up again, pointed to a statue of an elephant with many arms. "Switch the nose of the elephant with the spout of the teapot."

Switching spells were a little more difficult, but Rosie had some confidence from her last spell and after a brief hesitation, perfectly switched them. Another minute of note writing and then, "That is all, Miss Rabindra." Rosie sighed. Only a few more days of this and then she could relax.

0 Rosalind Rabindra CATS among the pixies now 73 Rosalind Rabindra 0 5

Geoffrey Layne

November 04, 2008 8:49 PM

Here a CAT, there a CAT... by Geoffrey Layne

An exam booklet landed on his desk, and Geoff saw his life flash before his eyes.

While everyone around him had been frantically studying, he had been carefully building up his confidence. As a result, he hadn't cracked a book for two days - it only made things worse, as a rule - but had come into the Hall sure this was going to go well. Now, though, he was starting to wonder if he should have taken Helena up on that offer to stab him if it went badly.

This was, quite literally, the most important thing he had ever done. There were jobs that required not only the RATS but some CATS as well, and he didn't even want to think of secondary programs. The competition for places in them and for scholarships was huge, and while his family was a long way from poor even now, they weren't up to putting him and his sister through school without serious help. He'd never seriously thought about things going wrong because nothing ever had, but - things could go seriously wrong.

Half a second after Ashburn's "now", Geoff had his booklet open and had started to write feverishly.

********

After the exam, Geoff sat semi-catatonic through lunch, not paying much attention to Anne as she rambled on. She'd been more bent out of shape about his CATS than he was since the start, and he couldn't afford to let her nerves rub off. If he went into the practicals anxious, he was dead, because a portion of the day's work was Transfiguration.

Once he realized how stupid it was to panic, it hadn't been too bad. Luckily, he'd realized this by the time he reached question ten, which was why he'd been able to finish with a measure of composure. It was too soon to say if he'd made a perfect score on anything, but he felt fairly sure that his written scores were at least E-level before his performance in the practical exams was factored in.

"...Good luck!"

Anne's shrill, would-be encouraging tone jolted him back to reality in time to notice that lunch was over and he needed to rejoin the other fifth years to wait to be called in for practicals.

********

It wasn't, all things considered, a long wait, and it felt shorter than it was. Part of that, of course, was the size of his year. Another part was in him having spent the time listing advanced potion components. Potions was not on the schedule for the day, and the potions he'd memorized would not be on it then, so the exercise was soothing; it took a degree of concentration, so he couldn't focus on the exam, and it made him feel smart in the bargain.

He started moving toward the door at "Layne" and shook the hand of, if he wasn't wildly mistaken, David Weatherby. He thought that was a good thing; Anne's talk about CATS was, to put it mildly, disjointed, but he was sure she'd said a few approving things about this examiner. Since Anne was a suspect source of character judgments, it didn't hurt that Geoff thought Weatherby looked like the steadiest of their examiners. "G'afternoon, sir," he said.

"Afternoon, Mr. Layne." Weatherby smiled politely. "Ready for your exam?"

"Hope so, sir," Geoff said, taking out his wand. "What're we starting with?"

"Defense Against the Dark Arts," Weatherby told him. It was the last thing he was told before the 'duel' began.

Geoff had to concentrate hard on what he was doing while he acted and reacted, because if he didn't, he was afraid he'd forget that he wasn't practicing with Anne. She'd meant the best in offering to help him, but her style wasn't quite on the same plane as his CATS prep books. He wasn't capable of Transfiguring his opponent's foot, but he'd started to pick up on some of her eccentricities during their secret bouts, and he doubted any of them would win him approval.

In the end, however, Weatherby looked approving, and Geoff was pleased. Defense Against the Dark Arts was going to be a pass by his standards, which meant he'd made at least an E. His smile faded, however, when the first item he was to Transfigure came out. Awkwardly, he rubbed the back of his neck and glanced at Weatherby almost guiltily. "This isn't my best subject," he admitted stiffly.

Weatherby smiled kindly, understandingly, which just made it worse. He didn't want...that from his examiner, whatever that was. "Just do the best you can, Mr. Layne," he said. "If you could turn this into..."

He had practiced this with Anne, too. She had explained the concepts to him, walked him through the incantations to the point of taking his wrist to guide his wand movements. Now, without her, with a stranger, and with everything riding on it, he made a total mess of it. By the time he finished, if he could be said to have finished, Geoff couldn't even look the examiner in the eye.

He thought he might have traded a year of his life to take the written exam over again. If he hadn't done better than the best there, he was doomed.

16 Geoffrey Layne Here a CAT, there a CAT... 72 Geoffrey Layne 0 5

Saul Pierce

November 05, 2008 12:02 PM

Day 2 by Saul Pierce

The second day, Saul was much calmer than the first. The subjects were different, but he knew what to expect. His successes in the previous day's practicals gave him confidence even for the written part in the morning. He still took the full time and didn't get to the last ten or so questions, but that was more to do with his reading and writing shortcomings than any hesitation in answering the questions he did get to.

It helped that the two practical subjects covered today were Charms and Potions. Charms was easily his best subject. The only things holding him back there were his tendency to forget to do his homework and his poor essay writing skills. On a practical level, he had the subject down. He was even pretty confident about most of the multiple choice questions he encountered in the written exam.

Potions was the opposite end of the spectrum. He wasn't nervous because anything better than a Troll was bonus and if he did get a Troll that was all he expected. Furthermore, his family wouldn't care if he did get a Troll. Neil had consistently scored a Troll from first year until his CATS and he'd been applauded. Whenever Saul passed the class with the help of his partners (which he'd managed every year so far, if only by the narrowest of margins), he got in trouble. He didn't mind too much though. He thought it would be awesome if he didn't completely fail, but there was no pressure to do better than that.

Saul answered what questions he knew, guessed on the ones he didn't, and wrote down the first things that came to mind that seemed even vaguely related on fill-ins and essays he had no idea about. He turned in the unfinished exam when time ran out feeling he did better than the zero he'd been assuming he'd get. The Charms questions in particular had seemed fairly straightforward and he harbored the secret hope that he'd pull an E. History was going to need a Sight level of luck on his guessing to pull an A, but he thought he'd tested better than the Troll he'd feared. Potions was about as hopeless as he'd expected, but that came as no surprise; he'd put no effort at all into really learning potions.

---

While waiting for his name to be called for his second day of practicals, Saul sat against the wall with his feet out in front of him. He kept shooting spells at his shoes, turning them different colors or giving them fur or otherwise taking his boredom out on the unfortunate pair of running shoes.

They had a leopard print when his name was called out. Saul looked up and grinned brightly when he saw he'd gotten the same young guy he'd had the day before. He bounced up to his feet and followed the man back to the testing room again, keeping a steady prattle of whatever came into his head.

The proctor cleared his throat and gave a Saul the standard 'shut-up-now' look that he tended to see two or three times a day. Saul stopped talking. Ashburn nodded approvingly and then said, "Today, you'll be doing Charms and Potions."

"Charms first, please," Saul requested.

Ashburn nodded again almost eagerly, seemingly as willing to put off potions as long as possible as Saul was. The Charms work went quickly. He named a spell or told Saul to accomplish a task, and Saul did it. Even the harder fifth year spells went off without a hitch. Saul felt very accomplished as he watched the proctor take down his notes. He'd bagged this E.

When the quill stopped scratching away, though, Saul's grin faded. It was time for potions. Even Ashburn looked as wary and apprehensive as Saul felt. "Potions, Mr. Pierce." Saul sighed heavily and went over to the table with the cauldron set up on it. "You have a choice of three potions. They are of three difficulty levels: Easy, Medium, and Hard. If you do the Easy one, the highest grade you can get is an A. A Medium will let you get an E. Doing the Hard one is the only way you can get an O."

Saul looked over at him with a wry look. "Even if I do the Hard one, I can't get an O. I've never gotten an O in my life."

He looked surprised. "Your charms work was O level."

A warm feeling buzzed in Saul's chest. He briefly wondered if that sensation was what motivated Aladrens, but then dismissed the thought. He shook his head, the feeling fading, "My written will blow it," he admitted realistically. "It always does. How much does spelling count in the CATS anyway?"

"It matters, but it won't be the difference between letter grades," Ashburn said, trying to sound encouraging.

Saul didn't believe him. An O was impossible. Saul didn't get Os. He barely managed As. Es were on the very verge of credibility. Os were unheard of. Saul was always optimistic and generally believed himself capable of anything he attempted, but he knew aiming for an O was as likely to succeed as spontaneously turning into an elephant or jumping over the moon. He was idealistic, not completely removed from reality. "We'll see," he said, the same way Saul's dad had said the same thing when Saul asked for a puppy when he was six. It meant 'Not in this life time.'

Saul looked down at the potions options and grimaced. "If I try the hard one and fail, will I fail better than I would if I tried the easy one and failed?"

"I suppose it depends on how badly you fail."

Saul frowned, not finding the answer helpful. He looked over the three recipes and sighed. He picked up the easy one. It had a lot fewer steps for him to mess up, which was probably why it was called Easy.

He read over the ingredients and was glad to see there was a lot of chopping and slicing and mashing to be done. Those were the steps that his partner usually allocated to him. He picked up the jar of rat tails and counted out four of them.

Ashburn held his breath and Saul could hear him let it out in relief as Saul began slicing without so much as a making a face at the animal part mutilation. "I'm the conservative heretic of my family," he told the man with a small grin. "I eat meat and attempt to actually do my potions."

"Oh, good," Ashburn breathed out.

Saul grinned at him and finished slicing up the rat tails. He put them aside and counted out twelve dried nettles and began crushing them with his mortar and pestle. "I wouldn't relax too quickly, though," he warned. "I'm about as talented at potions as I am at playing guitar."

Ashburn looked confused. "Don't you people -?"

"Yes," Saul cut off the question, knowing the gist of what the rest of it was already. "My people do, but I suck. Actually, I'm better at potions. If I touch a bezoar, the cauldron doesn't explode."

To demonstrate, he picked up the bezoar, showed it to the proctor, and then put it beside the rat tails. He finished smashing the nettles and checked the water to see if it was boiling. Realizing belatedly that there was no heating source under it yet, he used his wand to light a magical flame.

While that was heating up, Saul grabbed the vials of bubertuber pus and leech juice and put them with his other ingredients.

Now came the hard part: waiting until the right time to put everything in. As he always did when waiting with someone else; he filled the silence with words. The water had probably been boiling for most of a minute before he noticed. He dropped in the bezoar, double checked his next step, check his digital watch (which was currently about two hours slow and didn't really work right in Sonora at the best of times), and hoped he'd notice when five minutes passed.

It was about seven minutes later that he put in the nettles and leech juice. He re-read the instructions again then began stirring counter clockwise. He counted to fifty (losing track around 34 and starting again at 30) and then put in the rat tails. He checked his watch again, checked the instructions again, and began stirring clockwise. He watched the seconds zoom by on his watch, going a little faster than he though a second was, but it was probably close enough. When two minutes had passed by his watch's count (though if he'd triple checked the instructions he would have seen he was supposed to wait three minutes), he dumped in the bubertuber pus, estimating the amount by sight.

Once he felt there was enough, he put the vial back on the table and capped it. He stirred the potion for eight figure eights and checked the color and consistency. It was supposed to be blue and clear. It was brown with bits of nettle, rat tails, and bezoar clonking about in its murky depths.

He looked over at the proctor and shrugged. He hadn't really expected to pull it off. He just couldn't keep track of the timing and he tended to mix up numbers. Saul required a partner to even hope to complete a potion correctly. "A troll?"

"Maybe not that bad, but you're not getting the A," Ashburn told him sympathetically.

Saul spread his hands and made an oh-well expression. "My family would disown me if continued with the subject anyway."

1 Saul Pierce Day 2 82 Saul Pierce 0 5

Morgaine Carey

November 05, 2008 9:01 PM

Go, CATS, go! by Morgaine Carey

There was an art to test taking, or so any number of books claimed. Morgaine had a stack of such books on her dresser in her dorm, but she wasn't sure how much good they'd done her. The material on the CATS changed every year, so there didn't seem to be a great chance of any given book getting it right, and there was too much material to learn it all. She was going to have to trust to her luck, which she felt was fair to middling most of the time.

She twisted the hem of her gray skirt between her fingers as she waited with her year to receive the exam and their instructions. There was no point in paying much attention to her classmates, and paying attention to their proctors made her feel ill. She'd taken a potion to prevent one of her headaches - there was a point where good sense had to win out over her pride - but it was doing nothing for her nerves. That was good in that she wasn't a drooling mess, but she doubted her jitters were the constructive kind.

The young proctor's speech irritated her, which cut through some of the nervousness. Getting irritated with wizards who smiled too much was normal and everyday, unlike sitting her exams in the Cascade Hall. When the permission came to open their tests, she picked up the unfamiliar quill and started to work. Almost immediately, she began to feel calmer.

Morgaine finished the written section a few minutes early, so she used the time to read back through all the multiple choice questions. She didn't touch the short answer or the essay portions, because she knew her writing would seem as awful as soap opera dialogue just now and that she was too late to fix it now. Rubbing her eyes after the papers were taken up, she wondered if she needed to take a second dose of that potion before the practical exams and decided that she'd wait and see how she felt after lunch.

In the end, getting food on her stomach (her breakfast, so carefully made to line up to the standards of those books, seemed to have vanished during the last part of the second exam) brought her close enough to back to life without any further medication. Because of her surname, she was in the first group called back in for her practical, and her luck apparently ran out just before she walked back through the door, because she got stuck with the old one.

"Carey?" he shouted at her, his head held at an odd angle. Morgaine winced and made a point of not looking at anyone. That way, she didn't have to know for sure that people had turned to look at them. She also tried to tell herself the wretched old man looked at everyone with suspicion and not just Careys.

"Yes, sir."

"Defense Against the Dark Arts and Transfiguration exams," he yelled. "Demonstrate a Stinging Hex."

She wouldn't be starting the Bernard Starsky Fan Club any time soon, and it didn't seem likely that he was all that much fonder of her, but in the end, Morgaine thought that she'd done well. Whether or not she'd done well enough to please herself was another question, but at least she was done thinking about it for a month or so.

One day down, two more to go.

0 Morgaine Carey Go, CATS, go! 81 Morgaine Carey 0 5

Morgaine Carey

November 06, 2008 6:22 PM

Preferrably far, far away. by Morgaine Carey

On the second morning of exams, Morgaine didn't follow the rules her books outlined about breakfast. Part of this was the lack of rewards generated by following them on day one of exams. The rest was that she had spent so long brushing her hair that she'd been late. Her breakfast had consisted of three pieces of buttered toast and half an orange. They had tasted better than anything she'd eaten for weeks.

She wasn't totally relaxed, but Morgaine felt better about the current set of exams than she had about the ones she'd taken the day before. She was stronger in the subjects for Day Two, and she expected that to be at least a little bit reflected in her scores. The straight Os she'd wanted were probably out of the question, but she felt sure that she'd do pretty well for herself.

The book was finished more quickly than the previous day's, and Morgaine felt good enough about it not to review all of her answers. Second-guessing herself wasn't likely to help, not at this point, and it might even hurt her. She'd read a figure about first guesses being better than second, and if she couldn't remember the exact number, she did remember it had been big. She still felt tired as the papers were taken up, though.

After lunch, she was again in the first group, though with a different proctor. She immediately decided she liked the middle-aged man better than the old one, not least because he didn't yell her surname out for everyone and his ferret to hear. If he had an opinion about it - or if he even had a clue what it meant - she couldn't tell, and Morgaine was far from being unhappy about that.

Her Charms exam was, in her opinion, unremarkable. Oh, she got a few approving looks, but she felt as if she could've done much better on a few points - making her teapot dance a jig, for example, and turning a parakeet three different colors. When given the Potions options, she hesitated only for a moment before picking Hard. All-Os might not be very realistic, but it couldn't hurt to try.

"I hope you don't mind if I talk," she said, really hoping he wouldn't. There was something awkward about making some potion with the proctor watching while acting as though he wasn't there.

"Feel free," Weatherby told her.

She did - more or less. Morgaine talked, more than half to herself, about what she was doing. About why she found the subject interesting, though she picked and chose her words there to keep from sounding too power-mad. She imagined it might have unfortunate results if she did. In the end, her potion wasn't quite as perfect as she would have liked for it to be, but it was good enough.

"Very nice," Weatherby told her. "Have a nice day, Miss Carey."

"You, too," she said, and left.

Two days down, one more to go.

0 Morgaine Carey Preferrably far, far away. 81 Morgaine Carey 0 5

Morgaine Carey

November 06, 2008 6:46 PM

Another galaxy would do. by Morgaine Carey

Morgaine had pancakes for breakfast on the third morning of exams, not caring one bit that eating maple syrup before an exam was considered inadvisable. Once the examiners took up her Ancient Runes exam, her CATS were over and she could do what she wanted in the afternoon, which was go back to bed. She hadn't found any of the exams as excruciatingly hard as legend had them to be, but the sense of urgency was tiring.

To her mild frustration, Muggle Studies sat its exam first, which kept her from getting it over with quickly. Since she had quite a bit of time on her hands, she spent it on Norse mythology, her weakest point in the year's material. Myths, like standard fiction, seemed pointless to her, and she had trouble remembering what seemed pointless. Runic magic was, from all she could see, real, but Thor and all those worlds were a different story.

When it was finally time for Ancient Runes, she slid into a desk and tapped her quill impatiently against the top until they were finally given permission to open their test books and start. The multiple choice was easy - asking what names of runes were, what elements they were associated with, and the like - but the translation was fairly challenging and a full-essay question about properties of runes in divination kept her worried for a few minutes. In the end, though, she passed up her exam with a definite feeling of satisfaction. She had done well. She was, finally, done with her CATS.

Two months to go until she got her results...

0 Morgaine Carey Another galaxy would do. 81 Morgaine Carey 0 5

Adam Brockert

November 09, 2008 5:44 PM

I'll skip the CATS related puns. by Adam Brockert

Adam should not have been anxious about the CATS. School came fairly easily to the Crotalus and due to lack of a social life and the fact that he relatively enjoyed doing so, Adam spent the vast majority of his time studying. He even had a good idea of what he wanted to keep and drop.He was definitely keeping Charms, Transfiguration, Potions and Ancient Runes and definitely dropping Care of Magical Creatures. He still wasn't sure about Defense or History of Magic. Adam was fascinated with the material in HoM but Flatt wasn't very nice and made him rather nervous. On the other hand, very few people would probably take it.

However, he wanted perfect CATS, all Os. If Adam couldn't be anything else, if he couldn't be social and athletic and well-liked, at least he could have that. But he wasn't sure he could do it and that was making him nervous.

As the exam booklets were handed out, Adam swallowed hard. Little butterflies were fluttering in his stomach. I will not throw up. That would have been a disaster, especially here, where everyone could see. If that happened, Adam would never live it down.

He began the written portion of the test. This part was a cinch. Adam quickly filled in the multiple choice questions, all of which he knew, then began the essays. He knew the material fine, but he still was worried about the way he presented it. Writing was a form of communication and communication was not Adam's forte. He kept going over his answers again and again until time was up. He was certain his answers were decent, but were they O level?

His name was naturally the first one to be called. Adam gulped inaudibly. Maybe this was for the best, the waiting would surely be worse than the actual tests. The first exam was Defense, which didn't thrill him. There were some pretty awful creatures out there but all he had to do was a duel with the proctor. After disarming Mr. Ashburn, Adam managed some pretty good jinxes. A few of the higher level ones didn't work as quickly as he'd like or have the exact desired results but it wasn't too terrible. Adam just hoped it was good enough for an O.

11 Adam Brockert I'll skip the CATS related puns. 78 Adam Brockert 0 5