The practical exams came at the end of May.
They were held in the classrooms where the students had spent the year, the desks pushed back, the examiners sitting at the front with their parchment and their quills and their faces of stone. Edmund moved through them like a man walking through a dream, his wand steady, his mind clear.
Professor Marchbanks asked him to perform a Cheering Charm on a wooden bird, and the bird sang for a full minute before she silenced it. Professor Wainwright asked him to transfigure a matchstick into a needle, and the needle that appeared on his desk was straight and silver and sharp. Professor Burke asked him to brew a Cure for Boils, and the potion that steamed in his cauldron was a perfect turquoise, the bubbles rising in the steady rhythm that Burke had demonstrated in September.
Professor Merrythought asked him to demonstrate a Shield Charm—a third-year spell, technically, but one that he had been practicing in the Room of Requirement for months. He raised his wand, thought of the wall of protection he had learned to build, and the charm shimmered in the air before him, solid and clear.
Merrythought looked at it for a long moment, then nodded. "Dismissed."
He left the classroom with his heart pounding, not knowing if he had done enough, not knowing if the charm had been too advanced, not knowing if he had made a mistake that would cost him.
The system pulsed as he walked back toward the common room.
**System Notification: Second Year Exams Completed**
*Your performance in the second-year examinations has been recorded. Final results will be available at the end of term.*
*Preliminary assessment: Exceptional.*
*Note: Your performance in the practical examinations was consistent with your coursework throughout the year. No anomalies detected. Your progress remains on track with the roadmap objectives.*
Edmund dismissed the interface and kept walking. The corridors were empty, the other students still in their exams, and his footsteps echoed on the stone as he descended toward the dungeons. He did not know what the results would be. He did not know if he had done enough to earn the marks he wanted. But he knew that he had done everything he could, and that, he had learned, was enough.
---
The last week of term was a blur of activity.
The exams were over, the results not yet posted, and the students threw themselves into the kind of celebration that only came at the end of a long year. There were Quidditch matches on the pitch, the older students showing off for the younger ones, and picnics on the grounds, the second years sprawled on blankets in the sun, their books forgotten, their faces turned toward the sky.
Edmund went to the Quidditch matches, because Cassius insisted, and because he wanted to see what the older students could do. The Slytherin team was good—not great, but good—and the matches drew crowds from every house, the stands packed with students who had spent the year in classrooms and were now ready to spend their days in the sun.
He sat with Cassius and Horace and Astrid, who had returned from her holiday with a new book and a new determination to be seen at the matches. She did not seem interested in Quidditch—she spent most of the match reading—but she sat with them, and that, Edmund understood, was its own kind of statement.
"You're not watching," Cassius said, during the Gryffindor match, when the Slytherin team had already been eliminated.
"I'm observing," Astrid said, not looking up from her book.
"Observing what?"
"Social dynamics. The way the houses arrange themselves in the stands. The way the younger students cluster around the older ones. The way the Hufflepuffs sit together even when they're not playing." She turned a page. "It's fascinating."
Cassius looked at her like she was speaking a foreign language. "It's Quidditch. You're supposed to watch the game."
"I am watching the game." She looked up, just for a moment. "The Slytherin seeker is going to miss the snitch. He's been looking in the wrong direction for the past three minutes."
Cassius turned back to the pitch, his mouth open, and watched as the Gryffindor seeker caught the snitch on the opposite side of the field. He stared at Astrid for a long moment, then shook his head.
"Remind me never to play against you in anything," he said.
Astrid smiled, a small, private thing, and went back to her book.
---
The last evening of term, the second years gathered in the Slytherin common room for a celebration that was not quite official and not quite secret. The fire was high, the room warm, and the students who had spent the year together—the Blacks and the Malfoys and the Notts and the Crabbes, the Greengrasses and the Lestranges and the Rosiers, the Princes and the Warringtons and the Slughorns—sat together in the green light of the lake and talked about the year that had passed and the years that were to come.
Edmund sat by the window, watching the water shift beyond the glass, and listened.
"—my father says Grindelwald is going to make a move in the fall. He's been gathering followers for years, and now he's ready—"
"—the Potters are already positioning themselves. Henry Potter thinks he's going to be Minister someday. He's been writing letters to everyone who matters—"
"—my grandmother says the Board of Governors is going to change the admission requirements again. More restrictions on Muggle-borns. She says it's a disgrace—"
Edmund listened, and he learned, and he filed away the names and the alliances and the secrets that were not secrets at all, but simply the currency of a world that had been running on the same tracks for a thousand years.
He was part of it now. He had been part of it since the day he woke in the Prince manor, since the day he walked through the barrier at King's Cross, since the day the Sorting Hat had called his name. He was a Prince, one of the Sacred Twenty-Eight, the last heir of a family that had been respected once and was now barely remembered. But he was also something more. He was a boy with a system and a roadmap and a school to build, and he was only just beginning.
---
The end-of-term feast was a spectacle.
The Great Hall was decorated in the colors of the house that had won the House Cup—Gryffindor, this year, to the dismay of the Slytherins, who had been close behind—and the enchanted ceiling showed a sky of deep summer stars. The food was more abundant than usual, the conversation louder, and at the high table, the professors who had guided them through the year looked down on their students with expressions that ranged from satisfaction to relief.
Edmund sat at the Slytherin table, between Cassius and Horace, and ate the food that appeared before him without tasting it. He was thinking about the year that had passed, the months of work, the failures and the successes, the moments when he had wanted to give up and the moments when he had pushed through. He was thinking about the year to come, the subjects he would study, the spells he would learn, the work that would carry him toward the milestones he had set for himself.
When the feast ended, Headmaster Black rose from his chair. The hall fell silent.
"Another year has passed," he said, his voice carrying to the farthest corners of the room. "Some of you have distinguished yourselves. Most of you have not. You will return in the fall with the same opportunities you had when you arrived. What you do with them is your own affair."
He paused, his eyes sweeping the hall. "The train departs at ten o'clock tomorrow morning. Do not miss it."
He sat down, and the hall erupted in noise, and the second years who had spent the year learning to be wizards gathered their things and made their way back to their common rooms for the last time.
---