Hearing the fatty's answer, Zheng Qing clapped his hands and wiped the sugar frosting from his fingers.
"Let's go."
He straightened his robe and shook off several dog hairs stuck to it. "Let's see what Doctor is busy with... Perfect, I need to take a look around the shops too. I heard those two Little Rats turned into humans. I still haven't seen what they look like now, and I'm really curious... Oh, right, the trials start tomorrow. Has everyone else from the hunting team arrived?"
"Lan Que and Dylan might arrive tonight. Elder went to visit other club headquarters with his brother. Lin Guo is selling things from his little cart on Pedestrian Street. As always, he's popular with the witches."
The fatty counted them off on his fingers, shaking his head as he spoke. "This year's trials are the first ones held after the school reforms. There's no precedent for the procedures, standards, or objectives. Arriving too early would be pointless."
"I thought they only changed the timing." Zheng Qing picked up the last bean, popped it into his mouth, chewed, and sighed softly.
Before the Class of '08, freshman trials had always been held before first-years officially enrolled. Their purpose was to help new students adapt to university life more effectively. But because incoming students varied greatly in aptitude and learning progress, the trials caused many first-year students to be injured every year, and even killed some.
As the Wizarding World developed, society's tolerance for casualties among young wizards continued to decline. So the school finally decided to reform the annual freshman trials, moving them from before first-year enrollment to before second-year enrollment. The one-year gap would allow freshmen to gain proficiency in certain spells and allow the school to better understand their abilities, so it could