Etching the runes took a bit longer, but fortunately wasn't quite as hard as putting the nodes in place had been.

That was the whole point of the nodes in the spell, really, they sort of protected the rest of whatever it was you were working on relative to where the nodes were, and you could use that to help a lot in getting the positions of the runes just right – because you couldn't go too far out of the way.

The fact that the rune bit wasn't as well polished – and so was a little bit dull – actually helped with making them more visible, because it meant they showed up as dark on a shiny background. Harry was quite pleased with how it looked, really, though of course that wasn't the point.

The point was at the end furthest from the hilt.

Finally, after everything else, Harry carefully cast the Unbreakable Charm on the result. That would make sure that it didn't get damaged, which would be a shame after so much work, and Harry wasn't sure if the iron-aluminium alloy he was using could rust but it seemed a simple enough precaution.

It was late enough that Harry was quite glad the curfew wasn't as much of an issue during the holidays – otherwise he'd have to take points off himself – but Neville was one of the ones who was still up, working with Hermione on some Potions revision to make sure he'd got the effects of obscure potions like the Polyjuice just right.

"...at least if the Animagus potion comes up I can describe that one," Neville consoled himself.

"I doubt it will, it's not in any of the textbooks," Hermione said. "They might have a 'describe a potion' question, though."

She looked around as Harry approached. "Oh, there you are, Harry – did it go well?"

By way of reply, Harry opened up his wing and took the sword out from where he'd been carrying it.

It had given him a bit of trouble working out how to carry the thing, because it was quite sharp and he hadn't remembered to make sure there was a scabbard, but fortunately pressing it against his body with his wing had worked fine (and been less likely for him to accidentally bite his OWL Runes project in half).

He put it on the table as Neville cleared away the Potions notes, and Hermione touched it gingerly before picking it up.

"Whoof," she said, with a sharp breath. "These are heavy, aren't they?"

"It is made of metal," Harry pointed out defensively. "It's not as heavy as you'd think."

Neville took it from her, carefully rolled his wrist around a bit to see what it felt like, and frowned. "It's not as heavy as all that. It's, what, a pound and a half?"

"There's no way that's less than a kilogram," Hermione replied. "Hold on, I think there's some scales in the bathroom."

She went off to get them, and Harry noticed that most of the people who were still up this late were watching them.

"Did you make that, Harry?" Sir Nicholas asked, drifting closer. "I must say, that takes me back."

"Or your neck," Lee Jordan called.

Sir Nicholas gave Lee an amazingly withering look, then returned his attention to Neville. "If you could hold it out, please?"

Neville did so, his elbow by his side, and Sir Nicholas inspected it closely.

"Hmm," he said, critically. "It's quite good for a first effort, I should say. Is it all one piece of metal?"

"That's right," Harry confirmed.

"It probably shouldn't have been," Sir Nicholas informed him. "And the edge is quite uneven, and I'm not sure about the extent of the fuller…"

He glanced at Harry, who was feeling quite defensive, and clarified. "Don't forget, I've seen these from people who did it their whole lives. Yes, I'd say that overall this is quite a good first piece of work, though you could definitely do better."

As Sir Nicholas floated back a bit, Neville tried a flourish. The sword spun through a complete circle with impressive fluidity, and even Neville himself looked a bit surprised at how well it had gone.

"I've got the scales," Hermione told them, returning. "Let's see how much it weighs."

She put them down, and Neville put the results of Harry's work on the top. The dial spun around to rest on one point five kilograms, or three pounds, and Hermione looked pleased.

Neville, on the other hand, looked mulish. "That's heavier than it felt."

"Has anyone got a bottle of water?" Hermione asked.

Someone did, indeed, have a bottle of water – specifically one they'd brought from the Muggle world, which was plastic and held about half a litre of water.

Testing with that meant that they had something which even Harry himself had to admit was very strange and not something he'd been aiming for (though it was very neat) – which was that, to Neville, the sword weighed about as much as a one-pound bottle of water instead of the weight it was to everyone else.

"I wonder if it's because it's called Panthera," Hermione said. "And made for Neville, I mean, and it fits with his Animagus form."

"Does this mean I need to make another one called Raptor?" Harry asked.

Hermione looked conflicted. "Well… I don't think you need to, but it would be interesting?"

"This does mean that it's a proper magic sword," Neville pointed out, sounding quite pleased with that. "This is great, Harry, thanks!"

Harry smiled at that.

He felt quite vindicated, really.

On the last of his trips to Fort William before the resumption of term – and quite possibly the last before the exams, depending on how busy it would be – Harry, naturally, went to see what new books had come in in the book shop.

There were quite a few that were interesting, like a new Dragaera book and another sequel to the book series about the intelligent moon-spaceship Dahak – as well as a book with the encouraging name of Dragonmage of Mystara.

Most surprising, though, was actually a new arrival in the library which was a book Harry had somehow missed when it came out. It was a new book by the same author as the one behind the Honor Harrington and Dahak books, and it was set in a sort of fantasy world which (from what Harry read when he had a look) felt a lot like a Dungeons and Dragons sort of world, only a bit more… real, somehow.

It was also called Oath of Swords and had a main character with a truly enormous sword, which was sort of amusing with what Harry had spent his time on recently.

When the new term started, it was all OWL related stuff all the time.

Harry had had a discussion with Draco before about what to have the Defence Club do, and it was now in a schedule where there was one session a week for each age group focused on 'theory' magic – which meant discussing the important bits from several chapters of the Practical Defensive Magic books that Remus had pointed him at – and one session a week focused on 'practical' magic, which was practicing things that were likely to come up on the OWLs.

As Draco pointed out, it wasn't as if people didn't have the time to read the books. Everyone had those strange holes in their schedules which had helpfully been labelled with 'DADA', just in case they needed a specific time to do their reading – and the Practical Defensive Magic books were a lot easier to read and absorb than either of their official Defence textbooks had been this year.

"Although, then again, so would a record of seventy-five years of the proceedings of the Muggle Parliament," Draco had added, and Harry had to agree.

He'd heard they sometimes got excited in Parliament.

That was only the first of the things that weren't strictly related to a school subject (or, sort of?) that Harry had to contend with, though. The start of the Summer Term meant a meeting with Professor McGonagall about careers, and in Harry's case his meeting was at half past three on Monday afternoon.

That was during the Defence Against the Dark Arts time slot, so at least Harry could console himself that he wasn't missing anything he didn't want to miss.

Even though there'd been careers leaflets and stuff all over the place during the Easter Holiday, Harry was quite unsure what he wanted to do with his life after Hogwarts. Some of the leaflets looked sort of interesting, like the one about curse breaking, but Harry couldn't quite shake the idea that it was a lot like what Bilbo had been hired to do in The Hobbit and as a dragon he felt like he should probably overall come down on the side of the dragon on that one.

He wasn't sure, though. Maybe it would be okay because whoever had lived there had died a long time ago, but… it was one of those funny things, anyway.

Thinking about working for Gringotts did give him the idea of working there as a guard, but really he wasn't sure he was intimidating enough compared to other dragons. Though come to think of it Nora wasn't very intimidating compared to other dragons.

It'd make a good job for Empress, though, because anyone who tried to get past her would probably end up petrified?

Harry shook those thoughts off as he knocked on Professor McGonagall's door, then opened it at her invitation and headed inside.

"Mr. Potter," she greeted him, and Harry had to quickly suppress a giggle.

It wasn't anything about Professor McGonagall herself that was funny – in fact, she was entirely serious and proper. But there was a pile of pamphlets on her desk two feet high, and it was the way that she was next to the pamphlets which made it all seem quite thoroughly silly.

"Please, take a seat," Professor McGonagall added, and Harry duly did so. "Have you given much thought about what to do after Hogwarts?"

"Well…" Harry began, trying to combine his various thoughts into some kind of order. "A lot of the dragons in the books I read seem to have their job just be, well, being a dragon, but that doesn't make much sense."

"Would that it were so," Professor McGonagall noted, with a little smile.

Harry smiled back, feeling a bit more confident about the meeting, and went on. "And I had some ideas about using the things that I'm good at, as a dragon – things like Quidditch for how good I am at flying, or curse breaking because I'm magic resistant, or talking to Muggles because I look more normal to them than most wizards."

Professor McGonagall nodded along, extracting some pamphlets, and showed them to him.

Harry would probably be able to get a position in any Quidditch team, because of his undeniable Seeker skill, though she did point out that his career might not last very long if he was catching the Snitch in ten minutes in every game. Curse breaking was a difficult and somewhat dangerous job, and required good NEWTs in Charms, Transfiguration, Arithmancy and Defence Against the Dark Arts with a preference for applicants who also had Runes to at least OWL level and a History of Magic NEWT.

Muggle Relations, on the other paw, was something that (technically speaking) Harry was not on track for. It required fewer qualifications but did ask for both History of Magic and Muggle Studies, and Harry hadn't done Muggle Studies at OWL, but Professor McGonagall did mention that as a Muggle-Raised student he could probably start straight off doing Muggle Studies at NEWT if that was really his interest.

Then she put those pamphlets down, and fixed Harry with a look.

"I think there is an interesting question to ask, Mr. Potter," she said. "We have talked so far about what you would be good at because of your physical peculiarities, but what do you think you would enjoy doing?"

Harry had to turn that one over for a bit, thinking about it.

"I quite like the Defence club-" he began, but then the door opened.

"Excuse me, Professor Umbridge," Professor McGonagall said, in a voice which had dropped forty degrees Celsius since her last sentence. "I was in the middle of a discussion with Mr. Potter."

"That's why I'm here," Professor Umbridge replied, sweetly. "Since I seem to have so much free time at the moment, I though I'd pop in and see how Mr. Potter is getting on!"

She smiled, in a way which seemed distinctly unpleasant. "Just pretend I'm not here."

"I would rather not have to," Professor McGonagall replied.

Professor Umbridge more-or-less ignored that and sat down in one of the other chairs, and Professor McGonagall seemed to be debating something with herself.

"You were saying, Mr. Potter?" she asked, eventually.

Professor Umbridge started writing, and Harry's ears flicked slightly before he tried his best to ignore the other Professor in favour of his Head of House.

"Well, I've quite liked teaching in the Defence Club," he resumed, and there was a faint snap sound from behind him. "And depending on how well my OWLs go, maybe teaching Defence would be a good thing to do?"

"That is a ridiculous idea," Umbridge said.

Harry looked back at her, and saw to his surprise that both her hands had pink ink on them.

Her quill appeared to have broken in half.

"On the contrary, Professor Umbridge," Professor McGonagall replied. "Mr. Potter is a diligent student with very good marks, particularly in Defence-"

"The school board would not stand for it!" Umbridge insisted. "Hiring a Beast would be – it would be-!"

"You appear to have forgotten, Professor Umbridge," Professor McGonagall replied, as Harry looked back and forth between them like it was a game of tennis, "that one of the recent Defence Against the Dark Arts teachers this school has had – and I would say perhaps the best – was Remus Lupin, who-"

"That just shows-" Umbridge tried again.

"Excuse me?" Harry asked, holding up his paw. "I had some questions to ask about the idea of teaching Defence."

Umbridge looked as though something about the situation simply did not fit with her expectations, and Harry took the opportunity to keep going. "It's because I couldn't really go straight into teaching Defence, or I don't think so. So I was wondering what would be a good short career before that."

"An excellent question, Mr. Potter," Professor McGonagall said, apparently deciding to just keep going as if the interruption hadn't happened. "There are certainly several options. You could, for example, join the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, which does require a Care of Magical Creatures NEWT."

She pulled that pamphlet from the pile, then continued by displaying two more. "Or there is the career as an Auror, one which would require a minimum of five NEWTs at Exceeds Expectations or above, and – well, most Ministry jobs would serve you quite well, I think. There is also the option of simply taking a sabbatical and developing your own skills privately, which would be more in the nature of further study than anything."

As Harry left the meeting a few minutes later, still without a certain idea for what to do after school but with a better idea about what NEWTs to try and do, he overheard Professor McGonagall say that she was quite sure that Professor Umbridge should be back in class teaching it.

There was still nobody in her class, but – as they'd already been told, at dinner by Dumbledore in fact, the absence of students actually present at a class did not remove it from the timetable.

"How did it go?" Ron asked, as Harry rejoined his friends in the Common Room.

"It was pretty useful," Harry summarized.

He picked up his own copy of the second Practical Defensive Magic book, which he'd already read but was reading again, and paused before opening it. "Well… I didn't really decide on a career, but I've got more idea about it?"

"I think that's the most they can really expect, at this point," Dean shrugged. "In the Muggle world a lot of people don't actually get a normal job until, what, four or five years after leaving school? Because they go and get degrees from university first, but that's not something wizards do."

"Blimey, four more years of learning stuff," Ron said.

"What sort of thing are you thinking about, then?" Neville asked.

"Mostly things that would help with, well, talking to people and teaching?" Harry said, wondering how to summarize it.

In hindsight, as soon as he said it he was pretty sure he had to rephrase it. It didn't apply to everything.

"I had some ideas about things like cursebreaking, or Ministry work where I'd be helping people out," he resumed. "So either getting better at Defence Against the Dark Arts, or getting better at making sure I can explain things to people properly, because I feel like one of the things I really want to do is teach Defence Against the Dark Arts."

"Oh!" Hermione said, looking up from her own copy. "That's a lot like what I was planning on doing… well, sort of?"

She looked slightly embarrassed. "I like the idea of teaching as well. It's been interesting, hasn't it?"

"Well, nobody's fallen asleep in the Defence Club, so you're both better than at least one teacher on staff," Neville said.

"Two," Dean corrected. "You don't do Divination, and… yeah."

"Are you going to be okay in the OWLs?" Harry asked, suddenly worried.

"Oh, we do learn stuff," Dean assured him. "The textbooks are good, and she's really focused on how to do the practical stuff – it's just that you're never sure if she can actually do it, because she's predicted my death about a hundred and fifty times so far."

"I think I'd be a bit worried about that," Ron said.

"Nah, I worked it out," Dean explained. "She never gives a time. I just look both ways when crossing the road and that seems to sort it out."

Harry had to hold in a chuckle.

"Though I sort of think I should have done Muggle Studies," Dean added. "I had the idea that maybe I should go into the Ministry, as a career, and be a Muggle Expert."

"Which is based entirely on what you know because you're Muggleborn," Neville said out loud, following along.

"Or possibly half-blood," Dean corrected. "We don't actually know. But yeah, I could correct the textbooks on some of this stuff."

"It's about grandparents, so it's sort of funny that it's just Muggleborn, Half Blood and Pure Blood, not… you know, quarter blood," Ron mused.

Dean snorted. "In the eighteenth century they came up with all sorts of stupid words for people who were mostly black or mostly not black, so it could be a lot worse."

"How stupid are we talking?" Harry said.

"Hexadecaroon was the silliest," Dean supplied. "Anyway, you're meant to have a Muggle Studies OWL to work with Muggles, officially, but they don't really bother checking that as long as you're actually knowledgeable about this."

"Maybe that's because the people who do the actual work in the department have to know?" Ron suggested. "So the people who'd be deciding if you're worth hiring would know that people who grew up Muggle have a pretty good idea."

"Probably," Dean shrugged. "There were some other things, though, like the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. Or being an Unspeakable, though I'm not sure I'm allowed to talk about that."

Harry gave Dean a little bit of applause for that one.

He'd heard of the Unspeakables before, in a magical detective novel – they were sort of the researchers of the Ministry, though they also handled things that had to be kept secret in general.

Dean would probably fit in quite well, in some ways at least.

"What about you, Nev?" Ron asked. "I'm going to guess it involves Herbology."

"Well… yeah," Neville agreed.

There were a few seconds of silence.

"Nothing else to say?" Dean checked.

"I know what I'm good at," Neville said. "And Herbologists are often in demand."

"I'm kind of interested in what Ron's going to do," Harry said. "I know you're interested in going to space…"

"Yep," Ron agreed. "And I'm kind of interested in Quidditch. Apart from that… well, not really sure, to be honest, but isn't that enough to be going on with?"

"I'd say a job in your dad's department in the Ministry would be a good idea," Harry mused. "Or you could work on making Muggle stuff work for Wizards, or the closest thing."

"That's a good point," Ron admitted. "A lot of it works without needing anything done to it, but you still need stuff like electrical power and for some reason televisions don't work."

"There you go, then," Harry said. "Admittedly it's one of those things that's either a hobby or an independent business, so you might have to set stuff up first."

"I'm going to end up with four or five side jobs and no main job, aren't I?" Ron asked, sniggering. "Well, if the worst comes to it I can just live in a tree or something."

"It'd be a good way to hide from wizards," Harry contributed.

As the OWLs got closer and closer, Harry's Prefect duties got a bit different.

He still had to patrol, though that was a lot easier with the Marauder's Map – but he also had to make sure that people weren't making too much noise or disturbing fifth- and seventh-years who were studying for their increasingly imminent exams.

Then he had to make sure that people who were fifth- and seventh-years who were getting a bit stressed out knew they could go to him to talk things out and let off a bit of stress. And, just incidentally, make sure to keep control of what was a surprisingly persistent trade in ways to magically improve concentration or things like that.

At least Fred, George and Lee were too busy with their own peculiar brand of revision to try selling Marauder's Memory Maker or something like that.

Or maybe it was just something Sirius had told them. He'd confided in Harry that during his own exams he'd actually managed to get hold of a tiny pinch of powdered dragon claw, spent three hours in History of Magic writing a tremendously detailed answer to the first question, and ended up with a terribly poor mark.

That led to Harry getting out his copy of the first Red Dwarf book and reading out Rimmer's revision timetable, and that led in turn to Harry reading it out three more times – once in each of the three Defence Club practical sessions over the course of the week – and it gave everyone a much-needed laugh, released a lot of tension, and generally helped out no end.

Dumbledore stood up a week or so before the start of the OWLs to tell everyone that answers which were factually correct were extremely unlikely to result in poor marks in the OWLs and NEWTs, and to add that he would personally be looking over the non-OWL papers of anyone who felt themselves to have got poor marks as a result of the teacher incorrectly marking correct answers as incorrect.

It took Harry a moment to work that one out, but he was fairly sure he'd got the meaning right.

All of a sudden, the OWL and NEWT exams were upon them.

The Fifth- and Seventh-years had no lessons that day, obviously, and instead they all went into the Great Hall to take a seat at a set of eighty individual tables spread throughout the room. There was parchment, a quill (the now-familiar anti-cheating quill), ink, and an exam paper on each table, along with spares of all four at the top table, and Harry wondered briefly whether they'd remembered to ask about typewriters for next year.

Could you have an anti-cheating typewriter?

The theory exam for Charms had more than two dozen questions, and only two hours to do it in, and while it was more of an Arithmancy problem than a Charms problem Harry could certainly work out that that meant he should only spend about four minutes on each question.

That helped him out a lot in telling how much writing he should actually do – it would have been silly for him to spend twenty minutes on the first question, that sort of thing – and as he was writing Harry hoped that his friends had made the same realization.

Then after lunch came the Charms Practical, which was done in alphabetical order. That meant Hermione went first out of his friends, then Neville, and Harry was third.

"I'd say break a leg, mate, but I don't think you can," Dean said, doing his best to lighten the mood, and Harry quickly smiled his appreciation before following Sally-Anne Perks and the Patil twins into the Great Hall.

When he left, Harry thought it had gone quite well overall.

Some of the things he'd been asked to do involved the exact spell, like turning a rat orange, while other things (like making a wine glass spin around in the air and do cartwheels) were technically open for whatever spell could achieve the goal that the examiner asked for.

When asked to heat up a dinner plate, Harry simply couldn't resist showing off slightly and casting the bluebell flames spell with his breath instead of his wand – or using a simpler Heating Charm – but the examiner (a wizened wizard by the name of Professor Tofty) was quite impressed and told Harry that it was a creative use for the spell, executed well.

He also got a chance to demonstrate the first spell he'd really invented, the Xenographica spell, by making an exact duplicate of Professor Tofty's notes in Latvian at the examiner's request. Since Professor Tofty spoke Latvian, he was able to check the translation, and he told Harry with a smile that it was quite grammatically correct.

Hopefully it would make up for how he'd mixed up the Silencing Charm (Silencio) and the countercharm for the Sonorus charm (which was Quietus) and so hadn't actually silenced the target at first. Professor Tofty had simply smiled understandingly and told him to try again, which was nice, but Harry had the feeling he was going to lose some marks on that one.

"Okay, so, first thing," Ron said, when he arrived in the Common Room after his Charms. "I don't want to hear anything else about Charms, all right? Not until August. Or ideally September."

"But I was going to ask how you got on with that question about the Disillusionment Charm," Hermione protested.

"Look at it this way, Hermione," Ron replied. "If we spend half the time going over the Charms exam, I'm going to end up stressed. And because I'm stressed, I'm going to end up making a mistake on the Transfiguration paper because we won't have as much time revising that."

He glanced at Neville, Dean and Harry, and Harry nodded his agreement.

"Too right," Dean agreed. "If we're going to spend hours fretting about exams let's at least have it be the exams we can still make a difference in!"

"And if it's not Transfiguration, it should at least be Herbology," Neville suggested, and Ron rolled his eyes.

"All right, mate, but you know all that stuff already," he said. "Hold on, what's the timetable again?"

"Transfiguration tomorrow, Herbology on Wednesday, then Defence on Thursday," Harry rattled off. "Runes is Friday, so that's a day off for some of us, then next week it's… um, Potions, Care of Magical Creatures… Astronomy is Wednesday and they've stacked Divination and Arithmancy on top of one another."

"I think that's going to be my favourite day this fortnight that doesn't begin with S," Ron said firmly. "Nothing but Astronomy."

"You say that, but the practical's going to include midnight," Dean pointed out. "History of Magic on Thursday afternoon, remember."

"And then Muggle Studies to finish out the week," Neville completed. "Are you going to be okay with Wednesday, Hermione? That's three subjects and two of them are on top of one another."

"I'll find the time," Hermione said. "I am looking forward to having a normal schedule though."

"Normal, she says," Neville sniggered.

AN:

And moving right on to GCSEs. Or OWLs, if you're magic.

For the record, Harry's sword for Neville was not made in the right way – he was sort of improvising some of it – and as a sword it leaves something to be desired.

As a magic sword, however, it's definitely a magic sword.