The arrival of monthly exam week also meant that the full moon would soon return.
This time, Lupin did not take leave a week in advance. Instead, after getting the potions from Douglas, he drank a different one each day.
Each could greatly alleviate his hidden irritable streak.
Lupin also adjusted part of the course, adding swamps, mist, thickets, and so on, and placing the corresponding dark creatures inside. Most importantly, the difficulty of this physical fitness test would not change according to year level; all students would be treated equally.
During one fifth-year class, Douglas had said:
"For written questions, you must not settle for thinking you know how to answer them and memorizing things by rote. You should learn to analyze them as a whole, examining the patterns and scope of the questions. You should know that staff turnover at the Wizarding Examinations Authority is very low...
"Everything has its own patterns, and this set of 'Seven Years of N.E.W.T.s, Five Years of O.W.L.s' contains all the actual seventh-year and fifth-year exam papers from those years. It fully illustrates the basics of professionally written questions, the examiners' styles, the topics already tested and those not yet tested...
"So I hope every one of you will keep a separate sheet of parchment on hand to record common question types, their mark allocations, and so on. Preferably, make a table. That way, when you revise, you can exchange notes and have something to guide you...
"Of course, the same applies to practical exams..."
Douglas's original intention was to address how, ever since 'Seven Years of N.E.W.T.s, Five Years of O.W.L.s' had appeared, some students felt that memorizing most of its questions would be enough, sparing them from digging out their first- through fifth-year textbooks to revise again.
What he had