Unlike the bustling Fencing Club, Kayson in the alchemy office leisurely took a fine bottle of wine from Dumbledore's cabinet. After letting it breathe, he poured Ollivander a glass.
As for why he was here...
It was all that damned Voldemort's fault.
Ordinarily, the OWL exams were, strictly speaking, supervised by the Ministry of Magic, while the examiners themselves were all seconded from the Wizengamot. Since the Wizengamot and the Ministry of Magic were closely connected, no extra Galleons were needed to borrow them—at most, everyone would have a meal and drinks together afterward.
Then each person would get a... gift worth a thousand or eight hundred Galleons, and in the end, the Ministry official in charge could still pocket... ten thousand or so.
But this year, Voldemort, that old bastard, had won the resurrection match, while Fudge had been forced out of the ecosystem and replaced by the more aggressive, more hard-line, and more capable Barty Crouch.
Now, every single member of the Wizengamot had been morally blackmailed by Barty Crouch into becoming bricks... the kind that got moved wherever they were needed.
Naturally, those old-guard wizards could no longer serve as OWL examiners. They were currently running all over the world on business trips.
So Dumbledore had assigned this miserable task to the professors.
Every professor had to find an outstanding candidate in the subject they taught, and the professors themselves could not directly serve as examiners, since they had to avoid suspicions of favoritism.
Kayson could not help laughing the moment he heard that reason.
The entire wizarding world was only so big... avoid favoritism?
Tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk...
And Ollivander, sitting before Kayson at that very moment, was the alchemy examiner he had found for Hogwarts.
After all, within the Alchemy Association, Ollivander was the only