His head fell into the open book. "I can't." His voice came out a muffled mumble.

It was Friday night and he was studying. Before their liberation from Hogwarts, they had one last grueling slog to pay - Nastily Exhausting Wizarding Levels. He only had a couple to study for, but it was little more than he could bear.

Fig let his head loll onto his left ear exposing his mouth so he could elaborate on his state of affairs to his study buddy Sasha. "How royally screwed would I be if I just didn't?" He knew what Sasha would say. Figaro was, in a way, pleading for permission to just give up, but he shouldn't expect as much. Especially from a guy who was still managing to do well in school despite one of the most cursed lives he'd ever heard of.

"Well-"  The Ravenclaw paused in his scribbling and glanced across the table at the Hufflepuff.  In little over six weeks, all of the seventh years would be sitting their NEWTs and the building pressure of deadlines was starting to get to most of them.  Six weeks and two days, precisely, Sasha confirmed as his gaze dropped to a neat, colorful bit of parchment that lay next to his small pile of notes.  A calendar of the eight weeks between Easter Holidays and the culmination of exams was carefully sketched out on the parchment, and an intricate class and study schedule had been outlined on the calendar. 

Sasha returned his attention to his writing, finished his thought before it escaped him and set the quill back in the inkwell.  He blew briefly on the fresh ink until it no longer glistened. 

"Royally ... unfortunate is probably a bit of an exaggeration."  The Ravenclaw reached his arms up and behind him, stretching his shoulders and back.  "There are a lot of things you could do without NEWTs.  Quidditch.  Serving firewhiskey.  Knight bus.  You'd probably thoroughly regret it within a couple years, though."  The Ravenclaw grinned and tugged the morning's Daily Prophet from his bag and set it on the table. 

"Besides, it's not that bad, is it?"  Sasha was largely oblivious to the Hufflepuff's inner desire to be doing anything other than studying on a Friday night.  "Hard work builds character."

Figaro listened to Sasha's blue collar litany without any reaction. He had given up his pro quidditch dreams due to lack of talent or grit, he didn't want to be a bartender because it's not actually as fun as you'd think it was, and working on the Knight bus sounded tedious. He was almost about to tell Sasha his new plan of working at the Daily Prophet but...

"Hard work builds character."

Figaro slowly peeled his face from the pages about defensive chalk circles to glare at Sasha. "Gross, mate. Why would you say that? How old even are you?"

He sat fully up and rubbed his hair and groaned. However much Figaro chafed at Sasha's old soul adage, Fig knew Sash was right. It would all be over soon.  He sniffed a little laugh and flipped his book shut.

"My dad used to say, 'leave it to the last minute and it only takes a minute'."

"I'm younger than you, aren't I?"  Sasha was fairly certain Figaro had his birthday in the fall but that only mattered if age was simply a number.  The last couple years had left their impact on quite a few in their year. 

And, it only mattered if Figaro wasn't just whining. 

"My dad used to say, 'leave it to the last minute and it only takes a minute'."

Sasha reached into the mouth of his book bag and grabbed a small handful of nuts.  Fridays were blessed with a rare free study period after Astronomy and, as usual, Sasha hadn't taken the time to go to the Great Hall for dinner.  "Yet, here you are.  I suspect that's because you know this will take longer than a minute."  Sasha pointed an almond at Figaro's closed book and popped it in his mouth.  Or, there was another interpretation.  "Or, you have been leaving it to the last minute.  You're just in that last minute, now." 

"My father - or, step-father, - used to say you could always be working harder.  I was trying to cut you some slack."  Sasha grinned, again.  "And, I know you don't mean it; you don't want to give up this close the end.  Just remember what you're working for." 

Sasha never stooped low to meet Figaro, well not often, and that was probably why Figaro put up with his fastidious friend. There was something about the way he related to difficult things that was, well, not uninspiring. Figaro had to give him the win and did bestow that award with a shrug of acceptance.

"Sure."

Figaro could actually take some credit. He had, at least on paper, begun studying well before June.  Not that he'd actually yet attempted to absorb a morsel of information in this session, yet.

He flipped his Defense book open again and it found it's previous page.

"So." He tapped dry quill tip to blank paper.

"We'll have to transcribe chalk circles based on....what?"

There was a complex method of arranging the right symbols in the right order to block certain spells, he thought. But he might have been confusing that with sigils from Ancient Runes class...

Sasha grinned and watched Figaro as the Hufflepuff returned his attention to his papers.  After tossing the last of the handful of almonds in his mouth, he picked up his own quill to scratch out a few more sentences.

Overview of Translocative Charms and Hexes

• Spells to move objects within visible range
• Spells to move objects to an unobservable destination
• Spells to move squishy semi-solid objects

The Ravenclaw looked up from his own notes and across at Figaro's book.  His face scrunched up in a pensive scowl as he discarded his previous thoughts and tried to connect Fig's question with materials from their classes. 

"Do you mean from when we practiced amorphous shields?"  Sasha asked.  Several weeks before break - well, before Professor Storm had ended up in St. Mungo's - they'd been practicing nonverbal shields.  As if nonverbal magic wasn't difficult enough, they'd been given random cards with various geometric shapes outlined on them.  They'd been asked to transfer the shapes from the cards to the floor and enlarge them slightly.  "When we had to make the shield match the shape we outlined?"

Concentrating on casting the shield, maintaining the shape and anticipating incoming offensive spells had made for a typically exciting class.  Their substitute classes during Professor Storm's absence had been quite mundane by comparison. 

"Or, do you mean the barrier runes?" 

Figaro puffed out his cheeks and let the air hiss out between clenched teeth.

"Good question."

He pulled his Defense book closer and started turning pages.  He did the same with a stack of notes he had for Storm's class. "Well, okay." Figaro hadn't really done himself any favors with his note-taking strategy.  He then took out one of their Runes books (there were several) and he had some notes tucked into the back of that one.

"No! Right, yea, I was thinking of Runes. That was barrier runes.  I actually know these..."

Now that he had the right book open, it was coming back to him. "You have to use the right mode for the type of possible threat and those are..."

He flipped to the back of the book. "...are from Scrimshaw's Grimoire.  Ritsa Scrimshaw from...1597."

Figaro managed to engage himself in this manner of revision for at least ten minutes more, talking to himself as he followed along after his train of thought. Then he directed a question directly to Sasha.

"What did you get for #8?"

He realized that the question had no context, and so quickly appended: "For Prewett. The example test question about muggle grocery stores?"

Sasha nodded his head as Figaro worked through his stack of notes and memory, confirming one of the alternate uses of transcribing chalk they'd covered.  He arched an eyebrow at the Hufflepuff's notes and reached in his bag to pull out his Runes material. 

Flipping through the long scrolls, he came to the notes from the relevant class.  With a flick of his wand, the notes lay flat and Sasha slid them over to Figaro. 

"Don't forget, the runes should be set out sunwise when the threat is physical: falling rocks, stampeding hippogriffs or a flying fist.  Counter sunwise for metaphysical: spells and curses and such." 

Sasha turned back to his own notes and resumed his Charms summary sheet.  Exactly how far back were the testers going to go?  Did they have to remember every minutia from their first and second year?  Sasha chuckled, out loud, as the thought occurred to him.  First years.  They were first years, once. 

"Question 8?"  Sasha glanced up from his page, again.  "Muggle grocery stores?"  Sasha leaned back in his seat, shifting his brain from Charms, past Defense and Runes to Prewett's Herbology. 

"Is that the one about what potions plants can be found in a common megamart?"  Sasha asked.  "I put: most common fresh herbs: parsley, thyme, oregano, mint and such.  Also a wider variety of dried herbs and spices.  Most don't carry the types of milk and animal bits we use.    Some specialty stores may carry offal beyond chickens and cows, though."

The Ravenclaw narrowed his eyes as he watched the Hufflepuff.  After a moment, he reached a hand out and set it on top of Figaro's papers.  "In the last ten minutes, you've asked a Defense, Runes and Herbology question.  What, exactly, is your study strategy?"

Figaro had his head down comparing Sasha's market answers with his own.  He paused when Sasha's thin hand came gently down in front of him.

He looked up sweetly. "Hm? Well."

It was a good question. Figaro narrowed his eyes thoughtfully, inhaled through his nose and answered in the form of a question. "Holistic?"

He sat back and grinned, taking in the visual of their shared workspace.  Sasha's was excitingly meticulous. Aggressive, precise, engaged. The workstation of a marathoner.  Figaro's looked like a small explosion around his seat. He shrugged.

"This is just how I do it. Observe: a great mind."  He did take a little pleasure in Sasha's reaction to his mess, as he did when Sophie had recoiled at his particularly rank farts.

"Honestly, how do you even do that? That's got to take more time getting set up than to actually study it."

"And...how is it working out for you?" Sasha asked, eyeing the Hufflepuff's holistic study habits.  If Figaro really felt the strategy was working him, Sasha could accept that.  Maybe confusing Defense with Runes had been a one-off. 

At Figaro's question, Sasha looked back at his own spread of study materials.  The organizational scheme had, really, formed from necessity; there was no way he could have balanced all of his classes - both magical and mundane - without doing so. 

Sasha shook his head, reaching out with his quill and shifting the study schedule with the feathery end.  "I would have spent more time trying to always remember everything I have to do for thirteen classes.  Especially with the five muggle ones on top of those.  Without it, I'd probably forget half of what I need to do." 

He wasn't about to say it out loud, but studying with others slowed him down far more than making schedules did.  The Ravenclaw avoided it, when he could, at least until he was starting to feel overconfident.  They always said you didn't fully understand a concept until you could teach it to someone else.  Studying with Fig was like a random trivia game-meets teaching practice.  It was a study tool in itself. 

Figaro didn't miss the jibe, but he had been Figaro Sellaphix for most of his life and comments about his poor marks didn't sting anymore.  It was all almost over. Even if he wanted to turn things around, he couldn't make up for 7 years of having a good time.  But it barely mattered any more.  He'd decided what he was going to do and it didn't require amazing grades.

"I heard from Meena Maheshwari that you're, um, going to Oxford or something?" 

Like, it was a very Sasha thing to do, but Fig couldn't really imagine why magic folk would do something like that. Who'd want to live without magic? Who'd want to do more school? What did they even teach there?

Sasha sat back in his chair and tapped the end of his quill against his parchment.  He had been aware that there were many in the wizarding world that wouldn't understand or even approve of the direction Sasha wanted to go.  Their class' reaction to Professor Trishna's approach to Astronomy seemed a fairly reliable indicator: some were fascinated, some thought it ridiculous and some thought it was an outright heresy. 

The Ravenclaw hadn't concealed his plans but he also hadn't advertised them.  And, he'd been even more sparing in talking about his longer term plans. 

"I'm applying to the University of Cambridge.  Professor Trishna said there's a small consortium of wizards that study and teach there.  In secret, of course.  Whether I get accepted will depend on the results of my A-Level exams.  They're muggle NEWTs; I sat them over the Easter holiday.  I've also submitted an application to Laevenstrome's which, I suppose, will depend on my NEWTs.  Options for more advanced education seem more limited in the wizarding world but I just want to, you know, understand more." 

In secret, of course.

That's when Figaro's expression turned a little grim.  Sasha explained in more detail how the whole process worked. It sounded intense, but there were few who'd doubt Sasha Schalegenwiet was capable. But, that wasn't what felt so off about the whole thing to Fig.

"But. Why do you want to have to hide?"

He thought about having to pretend he wasn't mad for Quidditch, pretend he knew nothing about magic. He'd have to wear different clothes, and live life totally differently. And the consequences for messing up - well, Fig knew his history - they weren't good.

"Is Cambridge worth all that?"

"I'm always having to hide."  Sasha admitted with a slightly dismissive shrug.  It was a more valid question than Figaro probably realized.  From his magical abilities to his associations with Malvivicus and even the fact that his father was in this very building, three floors below them, he'd always had to conceal something.  As much as it filled him with guilt to think it, things had gotten better since his parents' death but there were still days he wished he didn't have to hide. 

"But, I'd be hiding whether or not I go to Cambridge.  I still have a lot of friends in the muggle world.  Family.  Connections.  My choices are either turn my back on everything I am outside of school or hide.  What's the alternative?" 

He was, of course, making it more complicated and taking a greater risk than Figaro even realized.  "I think it's folly to continue to consider our two worlds as two completely separate identities.  I think there are ... ways to make the world better for both sides without breaching the statute of secrecy.  But, I think it requires an understanding of the world...from both sides.  It's hard to explain." 

This kind of talk was baffling. He could only shake his head. Maybe he wasn't as analytical as people like Sasha, maybe his life wasn't as complicated as what other people had to deal with, he just. Eh. Couldn't figure, couldn't follow. He could only feel bad for Sasha, who was nothing less than genuine and fair.

Maybe Figaro was dim, but it wasn't wizards who had the problem with muggles. Witch executions tales were a part of every little kids' storybooks.  But he didn't feel clever enough to explain himself to Sasha. And what would be the purpose? Figaro didn't think he could say anything that wouldn't come off wrong.

So he shrugged. "Sorry, mate. I just, can't relate, I guess."

He forced himself to brighten. "But you have to owl."