Getting Your Grade
This test and individual grades are graded in one of two ways:

• Reply to this thread.
  Follow the instruction and form on how to complete this exam, and then reply to this thread with a role played post of your student taking the test. Based on that post, I will determine their grade for the test and then add it to their overall grade for the class.
  
  
  • and/or
  
  Send Ananke Cosmos a PM.
  Title your pm with "Year / Student Name" and then fill out the following form.

[b]Student Name: [/b]
[b]Requested Grade: [/b]
[b]What have they done to earn this grade?:[/b]
[b]How did they complete their exam?:[/b]


• Provide as much detail as possible on your student's performance, this will make it easier to determine a grade. If I feel it is necessary, I may question your reasoning, especially if your requested grade is sharp contrast to your student's performance in past class threads and on the board as a whole. 

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9:30 AM - 11:00 AM
The Divination classroom looked like it usually did, except the side of the classroom was lined with tables littered with trinkets and baubles someone might find in an old antique store or pawn shop[1]. Ananke Cosmos sat at one of the round desks alongside other students with several quills and parchment floating at her side, ready to take notes on each student and how they preformed their exam, whether the students decided to write a short report or made enough raucous to earn the attention of their classmates.

Name:
School/House:


If you have not already done so turn in your Affinity Aid. Then each of you will present[2]  your Divination techniques, that you have developed this term, either by writing a short report or by presenting to the class. You each may divine an object available on one of the tables, or you may choose to divine an abstract idea or some event in the past of future (but be sure to announce this to the class.)[3]

To preform your Divination technique you may use tools available in the classroom or ones that you brought with you to class.

2.	There won't be a question and answer portion for those who choose to do presentations, and I won't be posting Ananke unless something outrageous and out of control happens that requires intervention. So feel free to have your student complete their test, and then get permission from the professor to leave.
3.	Examples: reveal the history of an object, reveal the future of an object, reveal your students' future, or foretell some event in the near future.

1.	These objects can be anything. Have fun with it!

Gloria fiddled with the Affinity Aid she had been wearing as a bracelet. She had been trying so many things to find "her" signature style of divination to little avail. Divination by far had the lengthiest of glossaries because there were so many different ways of doing it beyond the most well known of scrying through crystal balls, tea leaves, tarot cards or being lucky enough to naturally have The Sight. Gloria had been burning incense the in the common room fireplace and studying the smoke (capnomancy) then looking at the burnt logs from the fire afterward (spodomancy for ash, xylomancy for burnt wood). She'd tried people watching for various facial expressions, odd lesions on their body parts or palm reading a friend or two. Not that getting anywhere diving through other people may have helped with this exam and imagine if your Affinity Aid told you your passion for divination was rumpology, divining someone's fate by their buttocks!

So many things drunk, burnt, traced, folded together and observed and her Aid was cold for everything, remaining a dull color. Gloria had started going for broke and seeking out the really oddball terms in the glossary, like randomly interjecting herself into conversations people were having in the hall and trying to figure out what they were talking about (transataumancy, divination by things accidentally seen or heard) or a pesso-pego-mancy experiment where she had spent all of a free period before dinner chucking pebbles into the fountain in one of the courtyards. "I'm going divination homework!" she said to those that thought she was just goofing off.

The fountain bit (pegomancy) hadn't fit but her Affinity Aid had a mild reaction to the pebble chucking, although that didn't transfer to geological observations. Something about things bouncing or spinning caused the most consistant reactions to Gloria's Affinity Aid although she still didn't know what that meant, as spindles (sphondulomancy) didn't trigger the same warm hot pink as just having things spin. It might be related to some kind of dowsing or a very obscure process of determining people's guilt by tossing a pearl into a pot on the fire and waiting to see if it bounced (margaritomancy, which she could not afford the pearls to attempt it).

Gloria was gung ho to start her exam even if she hadn't got all the particulars worked out yet. She looked over the things on the table of items provided and found a pretty jewelery box to be the most interesting. She rattled it to hear the contents shake inside. That felt like it was in line with her style.

Taking it back to her desk, Gloria opened the box and examined the contents. Jewels and baubles too gaudy for her tastes but shiny and pretty nonetheless. She sorted things on the side and placed her wand in the middle of the desk for easy access. Tongue sticking out of the corner of her mouth, Gloria began spinning the rings, just like coins. Some didn't get spinning right but some stayed to it and when one silver and opal ring spun far longer than physically possible she knew she was on the right track. A lot of the rings that didn't spin for long had a warped or busted quality to them, and the jewelry box also appeared to have a dent.

Gloria was on the trail of the object's past then! She began to make notes. The jewelry box and its contents had been broken recently, even if some things looked perfectly fine, they had been broken and repaired via magic. What kind of magic? Hmm. Gloria got everything spinning again, then picked up her wand, miming the wand motions of different spells over the box as the rings and jewels spun around it. Not using magic but just seeing if the motions triggered anything. If the damage had been reccent...hang on a tick! Hadn't their defensive final the other day also used junk shop items like these ones they had to work with in their divination exam? One jewel, a blue one, actually spun so hard it left the table and spun around in the air, which Gloria recognized as the same motions Peeves had made in his dive bomb attacks in the defense final. Gloria was really on the right track now! So she tried the motions to defensive spells the students arguably would have used in the exam the other day. When she mimed banishing the jewelry box itself flipped, bouncing once and cracking the lid apart from the box when it landed. Mostly everything stopped spinning. More notes were made.

This was actually fun! She knew, or could reasonably guess, this item had played a part in someone's defense exam. Now to find out who. Gloria repaired the lid of the jewelry box and selected one one piece of jewelery, the opal ring that spun the best out of any of them, to spin. Once that was spinning she pointed her wand at it and tried to cast Wingardium Leviosa to make it float and still spin at the same time. She got it to some measured bounces and then she didn't need her wand at all, the ring bounced and spun all on its own accord. She watched excitedly as it made it's way towards the edge of her desk. After another prompt from her it dropped out of the air and rolled away, coming to rest by Naomi Foley's desk. "Sorry!" Gloria said as she went to retrieve the ring, eager to get back to her desk to set quill to parchment because now she had a story!

With past recorded, Gloria wondered if she could figure out the future of this jewelry box the same way. Once she had all the jewels spinning again, she tried to think about where this object could have come from. A lot of the junk being used in these practical exams could have come from Dervish and Banges in Hogsmeade, which often traded junk. Some of the jewels rolled off the desk in the direction of the village which Gloria knew from looking out the window. Getting returned to sit on a shelf and gather dust sounded like a sad fate. Then the rest spiralled off from their spinning and fell into her open bookbag. Gloria felt something had been spent and there would be no real reason to get things spinning again.

She retrieved the jewelry from her bag. Nothing of it was a style she fancied so why should there be a connection to her?

By the end of the examination period Gloria had finished her divination report:

By divining the past of this jewelry box and its contents through use of gyrations, mimed spells and watching which way things where moving, I am able to strongly suggest that this jewelry box played a part in Naomi Foley's defense exam yesterday. This is information I cannot possibly know because Professor Storm was strict about each individual student taking their exam with privacy in regards to the other students observing, and Naomi and I didn't talk about our exams with each other. To be as accurate as I can be, Peeves threw this object at Naomi during her defense of the giant vase, when she banished it away and the box burst open upon impact with the wall or floor, scattering all its contents.

When trying to divine the future of this object, the jewelry box and most if not all of its contents appear to be at the curiosity shop it Hogsmeade, Dervish and Banges. At some point some or all of the conetents may come into my possession but I don't like this kind of ritzy jewelery. Perhaps I'm meant to give them as gifts, which actually would help make my Christmas shopping easier.

For a long while after turning in his Affinity Aid, Alvis paced the edge of the classroom examining the various trinkets provided to them. There was a lot to choose from: mirrors and old toys, goblets and plates, empty bottles and decorative pins. Gloria Gibbon claimed a jewelry box as he passed her; on the other side, a Slytherin boy[1] dug a rusted knife out of a drawer of silverware.

Alvis made two full laps clockwise around the room and a third in the opposite direction before finally settling on a curiosity he'd uncovered in the back corner. From a distance, it appeared to be an old wooden doll, about nine inches from head to toe, with faded paint and tattered clothes. Poised as a ballerina, it balanced on its toes with its arms stretched high over its head. But upon closer examination, he found that the cracked wood and thin cloth hid a skeleton of bronze and copper. Its limbs were jointed, as though they could be moved.

Curious, Alvis took the doll back to his desk and carefully examined it from every angle before starting the exam proper. He tried moving the arms and legs, but they refused to budge. He found that its feet were weighted, so as to counter-balance the rest of the body's weight. And finally, he uncovered the tiny buttons that held the dancer's dress on her body, which folded away to reveal a cavity in its copper back, which contained only a keyhole and a few empty spokes.

It wasn't a doll at all. It was an automaton, a clockwork dancer missing its most vital inner workings.

Alvis hummed thoughtfully to himself and unfurled the turquoise pendulum he'd come to favor over these last few weeks using his Affinity Aid. It dangled on a tin chain, attached to a ring around the middle finger of his left hand, which he held flat and steady as he stood, careful not to disturb its swing. The pendulum rocked back and forth a moment before it settled, its point bare centimeters above the doll's head. Then it spun in a small circle, as though thinking. After a long moment of this, it began to move, rocking back and forth in swings that grew wider and wider.

When Alvis moved this time, his steps were long and steady to avoid interference. He moved to match the direction of the pendulum's swing, as though using a compass. In a few steps he'd matched it, the point guiding him down a straight path to a table on the opposite side of the room. When he'd practiced tracking down lost things in the common room, Alvis figured out that the pendulum's swing grew shorter the closer he got to the object in question. It the did the same here until he extended it over the table and it finally came to a stop, pointing directly at a tiny, hinged circular box.

Alvis took the box back to his desk before he opened it, reveal about a dozen gears of various sizes, though all were smaller than a knut. They'd been the box a long time -- Alvis could tell by the cool, coppery smell that clung to the cloth interior. He loved the scent of metal. It reminded him of Gran's workshop, one of his favorite places in the world.

He dug a pair of tweezers out of his bag and took off his glasses, his nearsightedness helping him focus on the task at hand. It seemed like ages since the last time Gramps had given him a broken pocket watch to rebuild, but it came back to him as easily as riding a bike. In about ten minutes, he'd rebuilt the automaton's missing parts, only to stumble on another hiccup -- it was a wind-up toy with a specialized key, and that key was nowhere to be found.

Alvis took up his pendulum again, but this time it lead him away from the tables, past all the junk, and back to the trap door, which he circled twice before coming to the conclusion that the pendulum was leading him out of the room.

"Um?" he called, catching Professor Cosmos's attention. "Ma'am, I'm not leaving, I swear. But I think you dropped something on the way up. I'd like to get it if that's okay...?" He waited for confirmation before going down the ladder and stepping out onto the circular stairs.

A dozen steps down, the pendulum stopped, going still over what appeared to be an empty step. Upon closer examination, Alvis found a tiny brass key wedged into a crack in the stone. He Summoned it out and returned to the classroom, grinning as he wound up the automaton for the first time in what must have been decades. It came to life slowly, its old joints first protesting but then sliding into the smooth rhythm they were built to do.  The doll started up a slow dance of spins and long steps without music to match.

After watching a moment to make sure it wouldn't dance off his desk, Alvis turned to his parchment and wrote a quick, concise summary of what happened. At the end, he added a few extra notes of his own:

If I had to guess, from the current state of the automaton's inner workings, I would say that it was originally built around the end of the Victorian era, most likely by a muggle toymaker, since there's no sign of magic in its inner workings, just springs and coils. The gears were removed much more recently, probably to keep them from locking up with rust, though somewhere along the way they got separated from the automaton's body and were placed in a different part of the display.

The key is more problematic. It's unique and would only work on this particular machine. I think it must have been in the same collection, but fell out while it was being transported up here to the Tower. It could have been lost for good, which would have rendered the doll completely inoperable. It's good that that didn't happen. Once the doll stops moving I'm going to place the key inside its body, so it won't  get lost again.

I'm not very good at predicting the future, but I hope that this object doesn't get taken apart again anytime soon. It's rather pretty and the product of excellent craftsmanship. It would be a shame to loose something like that for good.

1.	random NPC is random