So it begins. on Cascade Hall

The Wizarding Council's Official Examiners

December 26, 2010 11:54 PM

Ridiculously Anal Testing of Skills by The Wizarding Council's Official Examiners

It was that time of the year again, testing time. Taking exams was always a stressful time for the students, especially for the Seventh years that would be taking the Ridiculously Anal Testing of Skills. The tests would signal the end of their basic magical education, and free them to fend off the real world. One could say that taking the RATS was a very important milestone for the students of Sonora. All of their learning at the school was resumed in two weeks of examination, practical and theoretical. The timetables has been handed the night before and posted on the common rooms, the students did not have any kind of excuse to be late or miss the test. Like always, the hall had been rearranged with individual desks and the waterfalls had been silenced, a way to give students space for undisturbed thinking time.

The examiners were patiently waiting for the students to arrive and take their appointed places. The three examiners sent by the council were no strangers to the school, David Weatherby, Roland Ashburn and Aurora Septentrion, had been the three examiners from last term. Plus, the first two had been the appointed examiners for a few years. Aurora was a little below the average height, her blonde hair fell loose down her back, obviously charmed, since it was neat and untangled. A pair of elliptical spectacles framed her blue eyes. She took her job rather seriously, thus making her the sternest of the three. David on the other hand was a stocky, middle-aged wizard, with the grey in his hair that had outnumbered the brown. There was 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 to the other two examiners, Roland Ashburn, 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.

Once the Seventh-years were accordingly seated, the specialty no-cheating Quills were passed to each one of them. Cheating was a serious matter, and of any of the students attempted it, there would be dire consequences. The despicable action ended in a rather messy situation for everyone involved, something the examiners would rather not go through. Cheating in an exam was like cheating in life.

After the quills were distributed, the booklets and spared parchment was charmed to go to every student. Once everyone and everything was settled on its rightful place, Weatherby charmed his voice “This is your first day of examination. Rules are simple: Nothing dishonest. That means no cheating or any action that would lead to penalization.” While he was talking, Aurora engorgio’d a clock and placed it on top of a desk. Everyone would be able to see it.

“You may begin when the second hand reaches the top. You will two hours and a half to complete the test. Good luck and you may begin.” The examiners watched the students like hawks. There would be no funny business.

Written examinations would take place during the mornings. After them, the students had a break to eat lunch before the practicals began. It would be that way for two weeks, each day was reserved a different subject. It was grueling and hard, but after it they would graduate and be free from Sonora.

OOC: Same as with the CATS, pick your examiner - from those mentioned in the post - for the practicals. Good luck.

Subthreads:

RATS are not Charming by Holly Greer

So it begins. by Thomas Fitzgerald

0 The Wizarding Council's Official Examiners Ridiculously Anal Testing of Skills 0 The Wizarding Council's Official Examiners 1 5

Holly Greer

December 27, 2010 11:49 AM

RATS are not Charming by Holly Greer

Holly's first RATS exam was for Charms. This was good on at least two fronts. The first was that she actually enjoyed and was good at Charms, so it did not require a lot of extra studying and would start her off on a high note. The second was that nothing about Charms scared or traumatized her, so she would be able to take her Charms exam without the debilitating after-effects of, say, having faced something horrible in her CoMC practical the day before.

So she sat down, and took the anti-cheating quill provided for her, and set to work when time began. She diligently answered every question to the best of her ability. She turned in her answers when time ran out with only a small handful left blank (two she had skipped over because she had no idea what the question was asking for, and the last one was a victim of the clock moving too fast for her - the second to last one she might get partial credit for, but it broke off in mid-sentence where she had to put her quill down at the end of two hours).

Lunch was a relatively quiet affair, and she spent most of it flipping through her Charms book to try to figure out those two charms she'd had no idea about in case they turned up on the afternoon practical.

It wasn't so much that she needed a good grade; the CoMC test was far more important for what she planned to do with her life (own and run a Flying Horse Ranch, like the one they'd visited during Professor Kijewski's last year) but Mom was starting to catch on that an 'A' in the magical world wasn't worth the same thing as an 'A' in the muggle world (seeing as how Daniel never got any), and Holly wanted at least one 'O' so that Mom didn't think her only daughter was an idiot child. (Holly did not bother to hope she might best her Aladren brother's CATS grades, which would probably come at the same time, but one little 'O' she thought she could manage and this was her best chance.)

Once lunch was over, she put away her books again, and waited for her name. It was one of the few times she was glad her official last name was 'Greer' and not 'Thistle' because it meant she wouldn't have to wait as long.

Luck granted her the gangly tall guy. She thought she might have had the other guy the first time, for her CATS, but couldn't remember exactly. It didn't matter. What mattered was that she seemed to have gotten the fellow who liked to smile. She hoped that was a good thing.

The practical was surprisingly easy. She remembered all of the charms he told her to do, and she did them. She didn't even need to sip at the vial of anti-anxiety potion she'd been keeping in her pocket in case her mind blanked and she needed to calm down for a test-induced panic attack. Granted, her execution of the hardest one - a charm they'd just learned in class two weeks ago - was a little wobbly, but she accomplished what she was trying to accomplish, and figured that was the most important part even if it didn't look as graceful as it might have.

Then he smiled at her and told her she could go, and she smiled back and said, "Thank you!" and hurried back to Pecari to write home and tell Mom that she thought she did fabulously on the first of her finals.

1 Holly Greer RATS are not Charming 123 Holly Greer 0 5

Thomas Fitzgerald

January 08, 2011 10:59 PM

So it begins. by Thomas Fitzgerald

Charms was usually the largest class offered at the Advanced level, but the group of desks gathered for the RATS exam in it was still very small. Thomas supposed that might have something to do with the entire seventh year only having ten people in it, but wasn’t sure he had enough evidence to call it a sure thing.

More seriously, he wasn’t sure if having people around was going to make it easier or harder to complete this exam at top capacity. On one hand, with people around, he wouldn’t have to feel as much like he, personally, was being watched and judged by the proctors, since he was sure he’d have more than enough of that during the practical exams. On the other hand, other people would finish at different rates, and if he was one of the ones who took longer, every little noise the finished people made would put him more on edge, possibly lowering his ability to focus and remember the material.

I am one of the smartest people at this school. Others may outrank me in some areas by a percentage point or five, but that does not make me unintelligent, as I usually posses greater tenacity and have prepared more thoroughly than they have. This exam was designed for people who are not as smart as me, and the fact that some people may be slightly smarter does not change that fact.

Plus, anything Holly Greer can do, anyone can do.

The thought that someone in the room was definitely worse off than he was made him feel marginally more cheerful. He had no problem with Holly, and did not even consider her unintelligent, but there was at least a chance that she would run screaming from the room at some point and be found hours later huddled in a corner somewhere. Possibly with his roommate; Gray had somehow evolved into not seeming nearly as concerned with studying as was usually considered properly Aladren, but he was getting some pressure from home because of how well his infamous cousin had done on her RATS while juggling a lot more responsibility than Gray was. That was one reason Thomas was glad not to have siblings, adopted or otherwise. He could only be compared to his aunts and uncles and cousins and mother and grandparents and….

That thought wasn’t making him feel better. It was like the entire line had started out as a fuzzy bunny, and had then turned around and revealed that it had claws and massive, venomous fangs. He had no idea how that had happened, just that he didn’t like it.

”…begin.”

Thomas flipped the book open at once, but without excessive force. Making himself feel frantic would help nothing, and giving himself a paper cut would help even less. He forced himself to be equally calm as he read and answered the first question, thoroughly but without dawdling or going off on tangents.

Still, though, he could hear ticking. He didn’t know if it was real and from the clock, in which case he seriously needed to prove his prowess in DADA on the little blonde one, or if it was from watching part of the last season of 24 with his father over midterm, in which case his brain was letting him down in a major way, playing tricks on him at the worst possible time. He shook his head, trying to shake the sound off, but that didn’t help.

27. You have a set of winged, flying keys. Explain why this is or is not a charm as opposed to a Transfiguration.

Oh, they had to be kidding him. This was a gray area even for experts, he could list three articles off the top of his head for each side of the argument, and they expected a seventeen-year-old to answer it? Or was it, as Professor Fawcett seemed to think some of the questions were, designed to see how well they could argue their points of view, with evidence to support and articulate language to persuade?

That question and a few others aside, by the time he put his quill down, with about half a minute to spare, Thomas had decided the exam was mediocre. It was neither as easy as he’d hoped nor as hard as he’d feared, and he was quite sure he had passed it. Now he just had to get through the practical, and things would be fine.

To his immense irritation, there were three examiners, and he was the fourth person in the year’s alphabet. That meant only one person had to finish their exam before he was called, which meant that he had just enough time to get nervous but not enough to do anything about it. He tried to assure himself that nothing was going to go wrong, and that the only reason he was here was having demonstrated his skills on many occasions over the year, but by the time he was called into the Hall by David Weatherby, Thomas was beginning to feel slightly sick.

It was situational. He knew he should feel cripplingly nervous about his RATS, so he did. It would have been strange, out of place, to be out there in that foyer with everyone else and seem calm and collected, and he had been programmed from birth to never be strange or out of place. That was all it was. But damn if it didn’t feel real enough.

Didn’t matter. What mattered was hiding it. He shook the examiner’s hand firmly and with a smile. “Ready to get to work?” Mr. Weatherby asked.

“That’s why I’m here,” Thomas replied.

The beginning of the test was easy. Too easy. If examinations had not been an utterly impartial process, Thomas would have thought he was being played with by Weatherby, strung along into a sense of false security before the real challenges came along and he had no idea what to do with him. As it was, he held no real animosity toward his examiner, just toward the system which was stringing him along.

Since he was half-expecting to be asked to go through the preliminary stages of setting up the Fidelius Charm, though, that animosity never fully blossomed. The final stage of the exam were tough, but not more than he could handle. Once dismissed, he got well outside the range of those still waiting before falling stiffly back against the wall, relying on it to hold him upright for the moment.

That had been nerve-wracking. Possibly more than anything he’d ever done. Tomorrow, though, would be better.

0 Thomas Fitzgerald So it begins. 109 Thomas Fitzgerald 0 5