Advancement Program Applications

RP to Advance: /400
parchment in her hand that stated she'd be held back and unable to Graduate with her friends. It felt like a punishment for being unconscious in the Hospital Wing. Granted, technically it was mostly her fault. Had she not been so curious, and have a love for exploring and adventure, she'd have not been out of bed in the middle of the night, in the Room of Requirements. But, as it were, her curiosity always wins out. And one could almost always find her exploring something.

seventh floor, stopping at a tapestry on the wall depicting Barnabas the Barmy. She remembers while studying that tapestry, her mind wandered. She found herself thinking about her wishing she'd find something interesting to explore on that floor she was on. Suddenly, from behind her, it sounded as if stone scraped on stone. As she turned around, she spotted the bare stone wall distorting and then turning into a large door.

corridor into the shadows, then right down the corridor into the shadows, she seen no one around. She listened closely for any sounds that might indicate people being around, more importantly, professors, Prefects, or even the Caretaker.

quickly stepped inside and the door closed behind her on its' own. Stepping forward a step, suddenly light bloomed within the large, cavernous room. Towers of trinkets, books, vintage items all stacked high. There were many wardrobes. In fact, nearly everything in the room had been vintage. Some things had been so old, that Rikkali believed if she would pick up one of the trinkets, that it would just disintegrate beneath her touch. There was even some color changing wigs. Not the simple color changing like dyeing or a simple change of color hair. These wigs flashed colors as if they were the lights on a festive Yule tree.

old chair beneath a tower of trinkets, books and junk. Opening the book, she realized this book should have been in the Library in the Restricted Section. That had been her last thought before something shoved hard out of those pages. It had looked like a huge dark cloud yet felt solid when it slammed into her chest. Which caused her chair, with her in it, to be knocked backwards. That had started a chain of events. She had slammed hard into that tower of old decrepit junk, which in turn had fell, hitting another tower of stuff. Rikkali tried getting up, to run, but the air had been knocked from her lungs by whatever it had been that came out of that book.

books and junk to fall into the next and continued around the room. Rikkali had been in the path of the destruction. She tried running to get out of the way but was struck in the head by something. She fell to the floor, unconscious and was buried. Only her hand and a part of an arm cold be seen outside the pile.

friends had found her; she was taken to the Hospital Wing. Unfortunately, she remained unconscious for too long missing her classes as well as her exams. Her friends visited often, staying as long as they were allowed. When Rikkali finally woke, she remembered nothing since the accident, only the parts her friends had told her. Which meant that she still had at least two days of missing memory.

spoken to some of her professors about seeing what could be done about her making up the work she had missed, which she wouldn't mind. Just before leaving for home for the summer, she already had known she would need to take home every textbook, as well as a few Library books.

clothes at home still. As she was about to leave the school, to head to the train, she had a letter delivered to her. It was the official letter of her being held back, unless she studied all summer, take the exam to possibly advance to the next year with her friends.

well. On one hand, she felt it was all unfair. But, on the other hand, she understood. Had she of never gone exploring that night, the chain of events that led up to this day, would have never happened had she just stayed in bed that night.

textbook and started studying. Her foster Parents waited for her at platform 9 3/4. She was to give that letter to them, but she just couldn't yet. She didn't want to see or hear their reactions there with so many people around. So, she waited until they had arrived at home. She had given them the letter and waited for their reaction. It hadn't been as bad as she had feared, in fact it was better.

does that it had been partially her fault the accident had happened that led her to missing classes and exams." I shall start dinner; you get to that studying. I'll call you when it is time for dinner." was all her foster mother had said. Rikkali did just that. She spent her entire summer break studying every class that she had missed. When it came time for her to take the exams, her foster mother had contacted the school. They had sent out one of the professors that taught the older students, those who were sixth and seventh year. Rikkali didn't know the professor personally but had seen him a handful of times during their meals, as well as occasionally in the corridors. She sat for the exams and was told she'd be notified later of how she had done and whether she'd be advanced up a year.

her exams. She had no doubt in her mind that she had done well. Despite spending her entire summer on studying, she was bound and determined to study hard and do her best to be allowed to advance to the next year with her friends.

window as the train started moving. Eventually, her friends found her compartment and join her. They had all gotten treats from the Trolley Witch and sat stuffing their faces. Her friends were still worried about her, because of the accident. She assured them that she was doing just fine. They had made her promise them to not go exploring again, well at least not without them. They sat there discussing what each had done over the summer break. Giggling like school gals, which technically they were.

whole new school year. Rikkali couldn't wait to get back there, to start learning more in Charms classes, as well as Transfiguration, Defense Against the Dark Arts and Herbology. But most of all, she really can hardly wait for Care of Magical Creatures class to finally open up to her. She really looked forward to learning about any creature magical and non-magical. She knew deep own, that Care of Magical Creatures would become her most favorite class, once she gets there.

“FREEDOM!”

Lyudmila grinned, stretching her arms wide towards the skies. Morning sunshine stretched inviting arms beyond the clouds, enveloping her in a bubble of warmth. Warmth was soon joined by a playful breeze, its gentle wind caressing her cheek and weaving through her umber brown locks. She collapsed onto the soft emerald grass with a delighted hum, sprawled lazily to bask in the glow of dawn.

6 months. That was how long the brunette had been in confinement, kept away from civilization and the light of day down with sickness. With spattergroit, of all things! How Lyudmila had contracted the disease was a misfortune in its own right. It had been the final week of winter break, and all the children in their countryside invited her out to play. To Lyudmila’s excitement, they decided to do a “Test of Courage” game that day. First one to make it through the forest and return with a piece from the abandoned gardener’s shed would win. The brunette had always been unable to say no in the face of a challenge, much less such a silly one where all she had to do was to walk 1 whole round in a nice patch of forest and get proof of her entering the abandoned gardening shed. Naturally, she accepted it and conquered the forest without hesitation.

To be honest, the challenge hadn’t even been that bad. At most, the forest had been dense around the end, and the thick foliage had blocked much light. Nothing that a bit of extra attention to her footing couldn’t fix. The girl had entered the shed almost boringly so, bumping around the place before managing to peel off a ratty glove from a pile of overgrown moss in the corner as her proof of success. Then, she had been on her way to boast her incredible victory to the other children. Except, nobody had been at their starting point when she returned. The only trace that there had even been a group of children in the area were the overlapping footsteps trailing the path out of the forest. Remembering that she hadn’t encountered the other children on her path, Lyudmila had thought they must have bailed. Hmph, cowards! had been her initial thought. If only Lyudmila of the past had been more careful. Turns out, she was the absolutely stupid idiot!

Barely a day after that anticlimactic, dumb test of courage, disaster struck: The worst, most unbearable itching pain erupted under her skin and illness struck her body with a scalding fever. It was to the horror and despair of her dear father, who had come looking for her after she hadn’t bounced into the dining room for breakfast as she usually did, that vile, purple pustules had emerged on her pale skin. The horrific sight would have sent grown men screaming… and it did. Isidor Ostrovsky had bolted down to his wife’s underground laboratory with a panicked shout, much to the alarm of Lyudmila’s mother and his mother-in-law. One glance at the girl from the women, and the sentence for her stupidity was confirmed: A nasty case of spattergroit.

The next few weeks had bled together into one big, messy slop of being rushed from facility to facility, awful treatments and bitter medicine, and being quarantined like a criminal.

The sear of a torturous fever, and that unyielding, burning itch on her skin…. She would rather put her head in a dragon’s mouth than to do that again!

Burying her face in the soft cotton collar of her sweater, Lyudmila rolled around in the warm grass with almost a trill of utter relief. All those horrible days were one-hundred-percent over. Fresh air and the outdoors were the absolute best!

“LYUDMILA!” The voice of her mother made her shoot up from her comfortable position on the grass. Oh, shoot! She nervously peeked behind her down the side of the hill, only to be met with the stern, questioning expression of her mother in all of her maternal glory.

“Mila, what’s this I’ve been hearing about you running away from your poor Dedushka Vyacheslav?” Serafina rested her hand on her hips. Lyudmila paused.

For the duration of her recovery and “post-illness rest period”, the brunette had been away from school and her studies had been thrown to the back of everyone’s minds as her family frantically sought to cure her in both body and mind. However, now that she was due to return to school after the summer, it was clear that her learning had fallen behind her peers. Hence, in an attempt to help her catch up with her peers at Koldovstoretz, Lyudmila’s paternal grandfather had been tutoring her. Normally, a tutor trained in education would have been more conventional and fitting. Lyudmila knew why she didn’t get one though. Even if her family had tried to keep it far away from her eyes and ears, she knew that money had been scarce. The hospital’s inpatient care and treatment bills couldn’t have possibly been easy on the family’s finances. It had likely eaten away whatever little profits her mother’s potion business and the Ostrovskys’ surviving observatories generated. Maybe it even dug into their savings vault. With most of the qualified tutors in the country going after the wealthiest wizarding households and seeking wages that only increased by the year, to hire one was a distant dream.

Lyudmila flopped onto the ground and buried her face in her arms, kicking her feet with a groan. It was not that she did not understand all this and the sacrifices of her family– of course she understood! It was just that her grandfather was just too much sometimes. She loved her dedushka, but who could stand to listen to that husky, posh voice ramble on and on about magical theory and spell-casting methodology for more than 15 minutes? She would have melted away if she had stayed there any longer! She had run to spare her grandfather the sight of his granddaughter combusting.

“Noooo,” Lyudmila whined. Her mother let out an exasperated sigh. She pointed up at her daughter and back onto the ground, “You get yourself down from that hill and back here if you know what’s good for you. Do you not want to continue school? Is staying at home and being a sleeping rock what you want to do?”

Sufficiently reprimanded and honestly embarrassed by being compared to some common rock, Lyudmila petulantly dragged herself up from the grass and swivelled her legs around. She slid down from the hill with a practiced ease, huffing as her mother wrapped a steady arm around her and fondly brushed the blades of grass and dirt off her daughter’s pants. “Tsk, look at you.” Her mother patted her arm affectionately as she led the two of them back to the manor. “Come now, you’ll be back to school in no time. You’ve got plenty to show the world, mio tesoro.”

Thus, the beginning of Lyudmila’s (eventually successful) month of studying to catch up to her Koldovstoretz syllabus, or as she’d call it: Torture.

Summer exams had become uncomfortably familiar for AJ unfortunately. Even though he'd only taken one in the past. He'd hoped beyond hope he wouldn't have to take another. And yet tragedy often has a way of subverting your hopes and expectations.

Perhaps tragedy isn't the right word exactly. His Great-Grandfather Constantine had been old, very old by Muggle Standards especially. No-one could argue he hadn't lived a long, full life. His death had also not exactly come out of nowhere. The old man had been ill for a while now, passed in comfort, in the hospital.

And yet that didn't soften the grief. AJ and his great-grandad had been very close. It was unlikely that Constantine had a favourite amongst the youngsters of the family of course, but AJ had always listened to the long-winded stories and long streams of consciousness that seldom went anywhere whereas his cousins would often find other things to do as soon as the old man started speaking. It had seemed as though the rest of his family were more concerned with how everything was getting divvyed up. Often times it felt to AJ like he was the only one who had actually shed a tear. It had hit him harder than anyone in his family it seemed, the grief. Even though it had been nearly a month now, he still missed the old man dearly.

But he had to push all that aside. He had an exam to pass if he wanted to actually graduate with his peers. Grieving or not he would certainly lament having to repeat Seventh year.

Just one exam left to go now. Care of Magical Creatures. This was the important one, if he didn't absolutely nail this one. He could kiss his dreams of Dragonology goodbye. He swallows, blinks back the tears that had been threatening to spill from his memories and focuses on the parchment in front of him.

Of the Horse-Like Beasts, which hold an M.O.M classification of XXXXX?

They were starting off easy, with relative confidence AJ writes Thunderbird, Thestral and Centaur. Though as he thought more, his confidence began to waver. Exams had this way of making you doubt your knowledge even when in any other circumstance you would be able to answer with absolute certainty. Regardless he had to push on, if he dwelled like this on every question he'd never finish the exam, nevermind pass it.

Question after question came, each one testing his knowledge more and more. Ultimately he had to do his best and hope that his best was more than good enough. He had been dreaming of Dragonology since he was a second year. He obviously had to hope his scores were good enough to graduate, but he hoped beyond hope that his scores were enough to allow him to achieve his dreams.

Only the grading Professor would be able to tell him.

WC: 485

It was great to be back at Hogwarts after an entire year. This was his school, his home. Even though he had spent less time here than at his muggle elementary school, it felt that the formative years of his life -- and the life that made him who he is -- all happened here. While it took him some time to get used to the admissions that upended his life, this new world became his new normal.

Sighing with envy at the students attending summer camp, he hopped up the steps and entered the castle, breathing in the cool air within the stone, his feet taking naturally taking him to a familiar classroom. He waved to the familiar portraits, and told them to wish him luck, even though some certainly didn't. Rude. Joke's on them, he was going to do well anyways. He had a feeling.

Avery slunk into the back row right on time, and took out his ink and quill while the professor gave their instructions. Finally, he received his exam paper. My, my, he hadn't had to deal with his chicken scratch handwriting in a while, having typed up all his notes and most of his homework on a laptop at home while studying. He boxed up the muggle curriculum he'd had to deal with over the past year, and focused his mind on the Hogwarts textbooks he had studied so carefully each afternoon. That was his life the past year: Muggle schoolwork in the mornings (primarily math and science were what his parents had pushed for), Hogwarts curriculum in the afternoons, and a summer magical curriculum cram session for a few weeks right before this exam. Juggling a bit of both was the only way to appease his muggle parents while making sure he had a chance to not get held back at Hogwarts.

Here was his chance to prove that the past year of hard work had paid off! He fanned his quill to his cheek as he read the exam questions, and wrote down what he knew. Although a couple of the questions stumped him a bit, he felt he had a general understanding of what most of the questions were asking for. There was no need to panic.

When time was up, he breathed a sigh of relief and set down his quill. It wasn't so bad, after all. Sixth year, here he comes.

When his parents raised the request to keep him at home for a year, he understood. There was nothing more important than focusing on the business problems at hand, and the less distraction his activities would cause, the better. He didn't need his parents worrying about what kind of drama would be stirred up at school with his return to Mahoutokoro after their family business controversies, nor did he welcome the distraction of fellow classmates in a school environment after all that had happened last summer.

The fire that had swept through the family's retail properties did more than take the lives of several people. They took his parents' soul, for a while. It was only natural that they would keep their only son at home, away from the prying eyes of the public, until all this fuss died down.

Did he believe the people who shouted that his father's company committed fraud on the properties' fire safety and maintenance certifications? Not one bit. There was no question that his father was an upstanding businessman, with loyal employees. And with some indignation towards their company's competitors who were spreading these false rumors, Akira focused on his studies at home with his tutors.

Learning at home was not the same, he had to admit. There was no dueling practice with classmates; no handling of magical creatures that were kept by the school's menagerie or forests; no exposure to the stupid spell mistakes that other students would make that would cause spells or potions to backfire. Some elements to his education at home were simply lacking when compared to a classroom environment.

But, once he arrived for his summer exam at Mahoutokoro, his doubts faded. The material came in front and center; he was confident in what he knew. In a year with limited distractions, he had plenty of energy to focus, and that was when he operated best. The characters seemed to write themselves on his exam paper, and nothing else in the world seemed to exist. And this was where he found peace: alone with his knowledge.

As time was up, he set down his brush. Although there were quite a few questions where he thought the answer could've gone multiple ways, he wasn't worried at all about passing. He had written what he believed was correct, and if the professor disagreed, that was that. There would be no denying that his answers were carefully thought out and based on foundational principles. There was no point scoring 100% on a pass/fail exam. Satisfied, he exited the room.