Students who'd taken a beating on the written papers were mostly counting on the practical exams to pull their grades back up.
Compared with the dull, miserable written tests, the practical portions were more varied and a lot more fun.
Transfiguration's practical exam was to turn a rat into a snuffbox.
Leonard managed it with ease. He even added delicate patterns across the surface of the snuffbox.
He got an O (Outstanding) without breaking a sweat.
For Leonard, that was perfectly normal. Once he'd learned how to control the flow of magic, Transfiguration had become the spellwork he was most comfortable with.
For everyone else, though, Transfiguration was still brutal. Some students couldn't fully get rid of the rat's features, ending up with snuffboxes that still had whiskers or even a tail.
Those were docked points without exception.
Compared to Transfiguration, the Charms exam was downright entertaining.
Every student had to use magic to make a pineapple tap-dance its way across a desk.
It sounded complicated, but it actually involved only one spell: the Levitation Charm.
After all, it was a pineapple. No hands, no feet. Expecting real tap-dancing would be absurd. The Dancing Feet Spell was second-year material, so there was no way it would show up on a first-year exam.
What Professor Flitwick really wanted was for it to wobble and sway left and right, just enough to look like it was "dancing."
The tricky part was using the Levitation Charm with finesse, not floating something stiffly in midair like a dead weight.
Leonard still got an O, effortlessly.
The most miserable practical exam, on the other hand, was Potions: brewing a Forgetfulness Potion, with Snape personally invigilating.
Leonard had never seen a professor so petty. The entire time Leonard was brewing, Snape stood right behind him, watching every single movement like a hawk.
Leonard was already especially sensitive to hostile attention. Over the course of that exam, he had the urge to kill Snape seventy-seven times, and two hundred and fifty-nine times he imagined shoving the half-finished brew—mildly corrosive, and liable to leave scars—straight onto Snape's head.
In the end, for the sake of the Phoenix feather, he didn't do it.
He hadn't forgotten his wager with Dumbledore. If he placed first in the year, he'd be allowed to pluck a feather from Fawkes. Just thinking about it made his blood run hot.
Even though Leonard's potion was flawless, Snape still refused to give him an O, marking him only E (Exceeds Expectations).
It was ridiculous. Of all four houses, it seemed like only Slytherin students ever got O's on the Potions practical. A professor behaving like that was disgusting, plain and simple.
Fortunately, Slytherin didn't have many students worth worrying about. Even if they had a slight edge in Potions practical, Leonard could still beat them by miles.
Potions practical was the last exam. Once it ended, every student let out a long breath, as if they'd just completed some grand mission.
And once people started filing out, the complaining exploded.
"Snape's insane!" Justin shouted. Halfway through, he shrank back guiltily, craning his neck to check around. Only when he didn't spot Snape anywhere did he keep going. "He stood right behind me the whole time! I could feel him breathing on my neck!"
Leonard thought that sounded a bit unbelievable. With Justin's height, Snape would have had to bend down for his breath to reach Justin's neck…
The mental image of Snape hunched over, leaning in toward Justin's neck during the exam made Leonard's skin crawl.
"Still, at least we're done," Ernie said, stretching. "The practical part wasn't bad. Now it all comes down to the written papers. I just hope I did well enough, or my parents will nag me to death."
Justin laughed. "I don't have that problem. Even if I do badly, my parents won't say much. Honestly, my mum still hasn't forgiven me for choosing Hogwarts instead of Eton."
Eton was a famous private school. The students who got in were either exceptionally talented or had extraordinary backgrounds.
But Ernie had no idea what Eton even was. He didn't care about Muggle schools. Even if it were the greatest school on earth, could it compare to Hogwarts?
What shocked him more was that Justin's parents didn't care about his Hogwarts grades at all.
"That's too good," Ernie said helplessly. "If I get anything below an E, my parents tear into me. If I dare get below an A, they'd actually hit me."
He sighed again, then looked to Leonard. "Leonard, would your parents hit you if your grades were bad?"
Leonard gave him a strange look. "If they hit me, I'd probably be pretty happy."
"Huh? Why?" Ernie asked, baffled.
"They've been dead for seven or eight years," Leonard said matter-of-factly. "If the school could mail my report card to them and they could crawl out to beat me up, wouldn't that be worth celebrating?"
"...Hiss—" Ernie and Justin both sucked in a breath, Ernie especially, suddenly feeling like his teeth hurt.
Was that really something you could say that casually, like it was a joke?
Ernie had thought he'd hit a sore spot and was already about to start feeling guilty, but now his emotions were completely derailed.
The conversation just… died. Justin and Ernie had no idea how to follow that.
In the end, Leonard was the one who broke the silence.
"Exams are over. Let's go unwind," he said with a shrug. "Picnic? We'll split up. Ernie, you go grab snacks. Justin, you get a tablecloth."
"What about you?" Justin asked, confused.
"...I'll tag along with no shame and eat."
Justin and Ernie: ???
He was obviously joking. They all laughed and went to fetch things.
Justin headed back to the dorms, Ernie went to the kitchens, and Leonard went straight to the Great Hall to "borrow" milk tea and cups.
It was afternoon tea time, and plenty of students who'd just finished exams were in the Great Hall grabbing snacks to relax. There was no shortage of treats or drinks.
Ernie hadn't gone there because it was a hassle; he wanted to take a lot at once.
Leonard stepped into the Great Hall and started collecting supplies.
Of course he wasn't going to take only three cups, and there definitely wasn't going to be just one pot of milk tea.
It was supposed to be a picnic for three, but with Hufflepuff being what it was, it might easily turn into a small gathering by the time they settled down.
So Leonard used the Levitation Charm to float along a clattering cluster of teapots filled with milk tea and juice, with a whole string of cups trailing behind, and headed out of the castle.
By then, plenty of people were already wandering around the Black Lake. But none of them were anywhere near as prepared as Leonard's group.
When they saw Leonard walking along with several teapots and more than a dozen cups floating behind him, everyone stared. Even Ernie and Justin were stunned.
People had seen someone walking a pet before.
No one had ever seen someone walking afternoon tea.