The week after the dungeon trial felt strangely calm.
Too calm.
After weeks of Luminari's brutal training, enduring near endless practice, advanced theory and development of custom spellwork.
Following the 'final exam' the girls and Cassius entered a different sort of study mode.
Preparing for the hogwarts finals themselves.
Ginny, Luna, and Astoria only had to take the core subject finals once again, while Cho, Daphne, Hermione, and Cassius all had to take every single exam the school had to offer.
And the time had finally come.
The great hall lined from one end to the other with desk after desk.
Endless scritching sounds filling the air as quills inked parchment.
All while the atmosphere itself practically hummed with the feelings of over a thousand stressed students.
Cassius sat in the third year row of student, sitting for the Charms final exam, tapping his quill rhythmically as he waited for Professor Flitwick to finish distributing the exam sheets using a mass Wingardium Leviosa.
Around him, the usual anxieties buzzed.
Not two minutes later all tests had been delivered to their desired recipients.
And with a cry from the front of the hall amplified by magic, Professor Flitwick announced the start of the Final examination.
~
The written portion was simple enough.
Define the magical principles behind multi-layered charm interaction.
List all allowable counter-charms to a Cascading Lumos Burst.
Explain the stability conditions required for a charm to be self-sustaining.
Cassius burned through the lengthy scroll of questions after only slightly more than a half hour.
Hermione shot him a betrayed look as he stood to turn in his paper early.
He sat back down because Flitwick wouldn't let him leave.
The practical portion was next.
A timed sequence of charms: levitation, duplication, shield conjuration, sustained levitation, and charm-layer dissipation.
Cassius completed the desired charm work masterfully, attaining everything that was asked of him and even going above and beyond by performing chantless casting of his charms.
The rest of the class stared in wide eyed horror watching the genius that was Cassius passing once more with flying colors.
Hermione and Daphne performed beautifully as well, both easily taking the 2nd, and 3rd place of the year, mimicking Cassius by performing their spell chantlessly though they were less controlled which was noticed by Flitwick not earning them bonus marks, but still letting both girls receive an Exceeds Expectations for the practical portion.
As for the other girls
Ginny's feather burst into flames midway through the duplication charm.
Luna claimed her feather began whispering to her, demanding to remain itself and not to be copied forming a mere imitation of itself.
No one questioned it.
But even still their spellwork was easily orders of magnitude above their peers easily earning themselve their own (E)'s on their practicals.
~
Transfiguration
Professor McGonagall watched like a hawk as Cassius transformed his teapot into a sparrow, then into a dragonfly, then into an actual miniature dragon… then back into a teapot.
"Mr. Snape," she said quietly, "we do not normally encourage students to create fire-breathing constructs."
"It only breathed once," Cassius said.
Hermione mouthed show-off under her breath.
McGonagall's lips twitched. "You may proceed to the next task."
Daphne also earned high marks — her transfigurations were elegant, refined, and precise.
Hermione aced her written portion, but when it came to practical application she stumbled compared to Daphne still getting to caught up in the details and trying to apply science to the insanity that is transfiguration.
Notably Astoria in the second year had her Cat turn into a tea cup only to have that tea cup chomp down on her finger when she attempted to pick it up.
~
Defense Against the Dark Arts
This exam… was different.
Lupin had clearly been inspired by Cassius's dungeon.
The practical portion wasn't a written spell list or a boggart.
It was an obstacle course.
Complete with hexed tripwires, illusory enemies, and moving targets.
"Remus," Snape muttered at the entrance, "I thought we agreed to keep this reasonable."
"We did," Lupin said cheerfully. "This is reasonable."
Snape stared at a rotating wall of crossfire stunners.
"This is a warzone."
Cassius finished the course in just under four minutes.
Hermione finished in six, muttering counter-hexes the whole way.
Daphne powered through at seven.
For the younger students the 'traps' were considerably easier only making them need to dodge incoming spells rather than deflect or block them.
Ginny charged through physical obstacles with disturbing enthusiasm.
Astoria left a trail of scorched dummies.
Luna walked through untouched, humming, the obstacles simply… refusing to target her.
~
Potions
"Begin" Professor Snape announced from the dungeon room.
His teaching style had not changed at all, even though he had become considerably friendlier to the girls when in private under the cover of the Draconis Dormitory.
But in an offical examination environment no holds were barred, and he mercilessly roamed the examination room looking for anything to deduct points.
All the while his constant roaming around caused more mistakes to occur as the students got more and more nervous the more he lingered around.
~
History of Magic
As always, the real challenge was staying conscious.
Cassius answered every question with crisp detail, including citations of obscure treaties, goblin civil codes, and the political fallout of the 1427 Werewolf Accords.
Hermione matched him answer for answer.
Daphne came close, scoring near-perfect.
Ron Weasley fell asleep face-down on question three.
Professor Binns did not notice.
~
Arithmancy, Ancient Runes, and Electives
These classes highlighted something most students were only now beginning to accept:
Cassius wasn't just brilliant.
He was dangerous.
He breezed through runic construction grids.
He navigated arithmantic matrices like they were children's puzzles.
Hermione and Daphne remained his closest competitors, but even they were only scraping at his heels.
Cho excelled in Runes.
~
Exam week passed in a blur.
Papers collected.
Wands cooled.
Students collapsed on sofas and celebrated the end of academic suffering.
Two days later, the grades were posted.
Cassius: Top student of the year.
Hermione: Second .
Daphne: Third.
Cho, Ginny, Luna, and Astoria all as the various tops of their own years.
Once more House Draconis had swept the board claiming all the top slots for the years they participated in leading to a grand celebration hosted by Cassius within the House Dormitory, cooked for by the Draconis house elves were were rewarded by Cassius with new gifts of addional cookbooks or even cooking implements and tools from the muggle world.
~
Meanwhile a certain event was occuring across the school unbenownst to most.
The first class of Synthetic Muggleborn witches and wizards were graduating this year.
And many if not most of them were leaving the school behind to join the Arcanum Research institute, rather than choosing to work for the Ministry of Magic.
In the coming weeks seeing a mass outpouring of graduates flocking to the Arcanum would have traditionalists within the ministry breaking out in a cold sweat.
If the trend were to continue, one could almost reasonably say the Arcanum, and not the Ministry was the true powerhouse of Britain when it came to managing wizardkind.