chapter 50

Question twenty three, however, was a different matter. He had no idea how the Great Fire of London had actually been caused. He, like everyone else thought it had begun in a bakery, but the question clearly said that it didn't occur there, the muggles just thought it did.

Similarly Harry had no idea when the Ministry had first labelled the torture, killing and imperius curses as being unforgivable. He had heard of Gideon Flatworthy and his group of anti-muggle extremists, but he had no idea what they had called themselves. Nor, for that matter, could he say he knew what dangerous Scottish sport was outlawed in 1762. Therefore he left questions twenty four, twenty five and twenty six unanswered.

After pondering it for a bit he also left question twenty seven (who, in 1811, laid out the current definition of a "being"?) unanswered.

For question twenty eight (what mode of wizarding transport was first put into operation in 1865?) he took a wild stab in the dark and put down The Knight Bus.

Question twenty nine turned out to be a doddle. The Ministry passed the Decree for the Reasonable Restriction of Underage Sorcery in 1875. He knew that because that law had screwed with him on several occasions in the past.

The final question, like question twenty eight, was also filled in as a wild stab in the dark. Harry had never heard anything of the so called "Squib Rights Marches" and so had no idea which decade they had occurred in. Hoping that perhaps the squibs had been somewhat influenced by what was going on in the muggle world at the time, Harry wrote down "the 1960's" and hoped for the best.

He looked through his questions and found that he had only answered exactly half of the questions, and of the answers he had given there were more than a few that he was unsure were correct.

After thinking hard on it, Harry finally got the answer to the question about the dragon, the sunbathers and Tilly Toke. Given that the event was known as the "Ilfracombe Incident" it followed that the incident had taken place in Ilfracombe, which was in the county of Devon, which was where Ron lived, like he had thought.

He glanced up at the front desk where Professor Umbridge had set up an hourglass. He appeared to have fifteen minutes or so remaining.

To his right, Hermione's quill had stopped its scratching movements over the parchment before her, though whether this was because she had finished or was stuck was anyone's guess.

There were no sounds of quill movements coming from Harry's left either, though it was most likely that this was because Ron was stuck.

Harry looked back to the question about the Leaky Cauldron. Who had built it? He felt like he ought to know this. He was relatively certain that it was a woman who had built the pub, but her name escaped him. He had a feeling that her first name might have been a flower, but he couldn't… It hit him! Daisy. That was her name!

He wrote it down. Daisy. But Daisy what? Harry pondered it, and for some reason that her name might have something to do with the way you would describe an old person in an un-complimenting way. Senile maybe… no. Crackpot… probably not. Doddering… yes, that sounded right.

Daisy Doddering. It seemed to fit, but not quite. After a few moments of thought he changed it to Daisy Dodderidge. That sounded more fitting.

He went through several of the questions again, and came upon the one about Gideon Flatworthy and his group of anti-muggle extremists. What was their name?

For some reason, the summoning charm came to mind. He had a feeling that the incantation for that spell (accio) was important here, but he could not think why. In his mind he said the incantation over and over again, but each time added a different letter of the alphabet on the end, hoping that sounding it out like that would help. Accioa, acciob, accio and so on until accion which sounded right and a moment later he had his answer.

Gideon Flatworthy and his group of anti-muggle extremists had called themselves the Accionites.

Proud of himself, he jotted down the answer.

After that he read through all of the unanswered questions again and thought really hard, but he was unable to come up with any more answers. He did, however, change his last answer from the 1960's to the 1970's, purely because he was so unsure. But then he changed his answer back, reasoning that Squib Rights Marches, and squibs subsequently getting better rights during the latter half of the 1960's would have driven more pure-bloods to Voldemort's side when the war began in 1970.

Finally Professor Umbridge called out "Put your quills down please, and swap your papers with the person sitting next to you for marking."

Harry dropped his quill back into the ink pot and then handed his question papers to Hermione who, in turn, passed hers to him.

He was quite surprised to see several unanswered questions.

"Very well," said Professor Umbridge "If we are all ready, we will go through the paper together. Question 1, when did the war with the dark wizard known as You-Know-Who officially begin, anyone?"

Deciding that he might as well commit to the class, Harry raised his hand as Hermione did the same.

"Yes Mr Potter?" asked Professor Umbridge.

"The 4th July, 1970."

"Very good." said Professor Umbridge.

As most moved to mark their neighbour's answer, Seamus Finnigan raised his hand, prompting Umbridge to call on him.

"Dean got 1970, but not the 4th July bit." explained Seamus.

"Then he gets half a point," replied Professor Umbridge "Moving on…"

And so it went on until "And finally, in what decade did the Squib Rights Marches take place?"

Hermione was called on and she replied "The 1960's."

"Excellent," said Professor Umbridge "Now would you all please total up the scores of the papers you are marking and then hand them back?"

Harry totalled up Hermione's marks and scribbled down on the first page the number 21.5. Except for one instance when she only got half a mark, all of her other answers had been completely correct. The remaining eight points lost related to eight questions that she had been unable to answer. Perhaps unsurprisingly, two of the questions that had been unanswered were the ones relating to Quidditch.

He handed the test back to her, and Hermione returned his to him. He looked at his score and saw that he had gotten a measly 15.5. He had thought that he had done better than that, but looking over his parchment there were at least three examples of him only getting half the answer.

Well, at least his guesses about the Knight Bus and the Squib Rights Marches had been correct.

"Now then," said Professor Umbridge, who was now sitting down at her desk with a large piece of parchment in front of her "when I call your name, please call out your score so that I can make a note of it. Abbott, Hannah?"

Hannah's cheeks were slightly pink with embarrassment when she called out "Eighteen."

"Well she did better than me!" thought Harry.

"Bones, Susan?"

"Nineteen." Susan called.

"Brown, Lavender?"

"Ten." the Gryffindor girl called out meekly.

It turned out that Lavender had very little to be ashamed of. At least she had gotten up to double figures. Many who came after her could not say the same. Hermione was the only person to score in the twenties, and Harry's score actually placed him in the top five, with Neville, somewhat surprisingly, beating him by half a mark with a well-rounded sixteen.

Ron's ears were bright red when he was called upon last. His mumbled "six" was barely audible. That placed him at the bottom of the class, and even then it was debatable how many of those answers were his own and how many were copied from Neville before he was caught.

"Very well," said Professor Umbridge as she rolled up the sheet of parchment containing their scores "please pass your question papers to the front, and I will use them to plan out what areas we need to focus on as the year goes by. I should warn you that we will be having a test again somewhere in the near future so that we can see how much progress you are making."

Most of the class groaned at this news, but Harry noticed Hermione sit up a little straighter after hearing that she was going to get the opportunity to beat her score.

Harry actually thought that this was a good way to learn. Back in primary school, the maths teacher had used this method every Friday afternoon to make sure that they were all learning. Harry had found that to be a much better way to learn his times tables than when they all sat there droning out "One two is two, two twos are four, three twos are six…" and so on.

Also that there might be a test at any time (Umbridge had not stated exactly when it would happen) could only mean that they would spend more time studying the course material.

Shortly thereafter, the lesson ended.

"Class dismissed," said Professor Umbridge brightly "Mr Potter, could you stay behind please?"

Wondering what she could possible want now, Harry swung his the strap of his book bag onto his shoulder and made his way to the front of the classroom as everyone else headed towards the door at the back of the room.

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