Disclaimer: By writing this piece I am making no claim to ownership of Harry Potter, or associated characters and merchandise. I mean, if I were going to claim ownership of Harry Potter, I'd start by snagging a couple million quid, not by writing this for free on the internet. I mean honestly.
Author's Note: Yes I know there are other things I should be posting, but I had to do seven personality tests today and I felt the need to write about it. Ergo: Quiz-based fun for all the Hogwarts students. I also firmly believe that Crabbe is a deeply insightful genius in his spare time, a belief which makes itself known later on. You have been warned. The Ministry's "interesting results" will be revealed tomorrow.
"Talking is not permitted. You may not leave your seats. If you get stuck on a question, move ahead with the paper and go back to it later. No questions may be left unanswered. You have two hours. After that I will come back and collect your answers." and with those fateful words, the Examiner left the Great Hall.
Everyone looked around nervously upon his departure. Every student, from first year to seventh year, was crowded into the Great Hall and sat at their House Tables, which usually only occurred at mealtimes. But now, there was no food or plates laid out for them. There was only a question paper, an answer paper and a basic crow quill provided, with pots of black ink dotted along the table. It would have been quite odd anyway, but the number of purple-swathed Ministry personnel that patrolled the room made it about fifty-times stranger.
The Ministry, in all it's wisdom, had decided that, in light of Voldemort's return and everything, House Unity was important. Continuing in that same theme, the Ministry had taken it upon themselves to bring the houses closer together by showing them all just how similar they really were. They hoped to do this by giving them these tests and revealing the more interesting results for all to see, clearly demonstrating the students invariable sameness and encouraging them to gather together in peace, love and harmony and avoid being slaughtered by evil wizard with a snake fetish. As several students had, rather vociferously, pointed out: If they were all really that similar then the Sorting Hat wouldn't have put them in different Houses. It was really rather ironic when you considered that each and every house had come to this conclusion on their own, but that was hardly the point. The Ministry had, nonetheless, refused to listen to such logic and basically told them that they were doing the damned tests whether they liked it or not.
Nervously, the entire Great Hall glanced around once more, before flicking open their question papers and reading question one…
- - -
"What is your favourite colour?" Pansy Parkinson rolled her eyes. What sort of stupid question was that? Of course she was going to say green. She was in Slytherin, after all. What other colour could she, in good conscience, mark down? She sure as hell wasn't writing red. Nor was she writing purple even if it was kind of pretty… With a barely concealed growl she marked down her answer "All right… Question two…"
- - -
"Do you consider yourself to be a role model? Uh…" Neville Longbottom glared at the paper. How was he supposed to know if he was a role model? Who was he supposed to be a role model to, in order to be considered a role model? He didn't, for example, consider himself Malfoy's role model. Nor most other people. He'd done brave things, he supposed. And he'd joined Dumbledore's Army the previous year, which was pretty impressive. But he'd sort of done ot by accident rather than on purpose. He'd stumbled into it, too afraid of Hermione to do anything else. He was hardly a role model… not that he really knew what made a role model. But he was fairly certain that role models didn't keep falling through invisible steps. His quill hovered between Yes and No before he finally sighed and constructed another box on the page labelled, 'Don't know'. He checked it and continued with a small shrug. "Question three…"
- - -
"If you were an animal, what animal do you think you would be?" Ginny Weasley felt her brow wrinkle in confusion. "Well not a snake, that's for sure." she muttered. She still had issues with snakes. Rather a lot of issues. But it was the only animal she seemed capable of considering at that particular moment. Like she had a mental block or something.
Ginny took a deep breath and cleared her head. She was taking this too seriously. She wasn't a snake, badger, lion or any type of bird. So that ruled out the Hogwarts creatures. She ran through a list of animals in her head but none seemed quite right. She looked around her as though hoping for inspiration. All she got was Ron sitting next to her staring blankly at his page. His page which, she noticed, was at least three ahead of hers. Either he was doing much better than she was or he was skipping a lot more questions. Either way, Ginny figured she'd better get a move on.
Michael Corner had told her once that she looked like a cat. Actually, a lot of people had told her that she looked like a cat. So she supposed she could mark down cat, but that didn't seem right somehow. People taunting her with string just didn't seem very likely to happen. Besides, if she was going to be an animal she'd rather be a wild animal. Something that people were afraid of, that had a little bite… Ginny grinned and marked down Wild Cat.
"Okay…" she muttered. "Question four…"
- - -
"If you were trapped on a desert island what are the three items you would take with you to amuse yourself? What the…" Hannah Abbot groaned and pinched the bridge of her nose. How on Earth would she know?
If she were going to have to opportunity to pick three items to amuse herself them surely she'd have the opportunity to stay off the blasted thing in the first place, wouldn't she? Unless some diabolical scheme was constructed by Death Eaters to land her on a desert island with the opportunity to pick three random items. Even then, she could Apparate off. Or swim out far enough to Apparate if there was an Anti-Apparition jinx on the area. Or… kill herself with a coconut or something rather than just hang around for eternity with only three things to amuse her. Muttering slightly under her breath, she realised that ten minutes had already gone and she had one hundred and forty six questions left to go. She wrote down 'fully-functioning motor boat, cooler full of chilled drinks and fresh food, and a wand', before moving on. "Question five…"
- - -
"Part A- Do you believe in soul mates? Part B- Do you think you have a soul mate?" Jack Sloper frowned. How the hell did he know? He'd never sat down and considered it. Did he really believe that there was one person he was destined to spend the rest of eternity with, forever and always? Now that he thought about it, it sounded faintly sinister. Like a binding magical contract or something.
He had a sudden image in his head of standing in front of a Minister with a strangely faceless girl and getting married in front of all his friends. The Minister took out a large set of glowing, unbreakable shackles and clamped them down around his and his bride's wrists. The phrase "Till Death Do You Part" echoed around in his brain, followed by malevolent cackling. He turned to look at his faceless bride, searching for comfort and reassurance, only to see her replaced by the looming figure of a Dementor. It took a deep, rattling breath before lowering it's hood and swooping down upon him to suck out his very soul, with a bouquet of flowers still ridiculously clasped in it's spindly fingers…
Jack shuddered. "Part A- No. Part B- God I hope not." he wrote sincerely. "Right. Question six…"
- - -
Eleanor Branstone re-read the question several times. "Are you a cat person or a dog person?"
It seemed like a simple question, but it wasn't. She was a neither person. Cats unnerved her. They were always staring at her like they saw right through her, or like they expected her to be serving them better. Like they were rulers from on high or something, and were very disappointed with what they saw. Dogs, on the other hand, were so unbelievably cheerful and loyal and adoring that they made Eleanor feel unworthy, almost. She didn't like it.
Staring at the page she wrote, "I'm a pig person."
Her friend Owen Cauldwell looked over her shoulder at the page. He raised his eyebrows. "You freak." he told her candidly.
Eleanor bristled. "Winston Churchill said that dogs look up to us, while cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals. I agree with him."
Owen shook his head despairingly. "You're barking."
"No." Eleanor corrected him shortly. "I'm oinking. Question Seven…"
- - -
"What is your favourite type of jam?" Luna Lovegood paused with her quill held thoughtfully above the page. It was a good question.
She'd found the other questions somewhat lacking but that one was excellent. After all, anyone who wrote down strawberry was obviously under the influences of the mind-altering Kinkernuffles and couldn't be wholly trusted. Similarly, anyone who said gooseberry jam was their favourite had very bad taste and should be completely ignored just because of that. After a few moments debate Luna wrote down "raspberry jam" and moved on.
- - -
"Question number nine… What is your favourite kitchen utensil and why?" Seamus Finnegan almost felt his eyes pop out of his head in horror. He didn't have a favourite kitchen utensil. Did anyone have a favourite kitchen utensil? Was he in some way peculiar because he didn't have an unnatural attachment to a garlic crusher or something? When he was a kid he'd pretended that his grandfather's bottle opener was a man drowning at sea. Maybe that was his favourite kitchen utensil. But… well he couldn't put the reason 'It resembles an innocent man gasping for air as the waves pull him under to his watery doom' could he? No, he couldn't. But he could put 'reminds me of my grandfather'. Yep. That'd work. Moving swiftly on…
- - -
"Question number ten… Do you like shrubs?" Ron cringed and threw his head backwards so that it connected solidly with the back of his chair. The resulting thud drew quite a few startled looks from around the hall but he hardly noticed.
This was ridiculous, he thought. Who in their right mind had any particularly strong feelings about shrubs? Was there someone around him who was currently writing a bitter diatribe against topiaries? Or perhaps someone who was utterly delighted at the very thought of a bramble bush and was currently relishing the joy and happiness it brought them. If there someone of either type then Ron wasn't entirely sure he wanted to be attending Hogwarts much longer, just in case he ever came across the nutter in question. He looked back at the page and saw the Yes and No boxes there together. With a small sigh he randomly picked one as his answer and looked at the next question, hoping that they would somehow start to make sense in the near future.
- - -
"Question number thirteen." Ernie Macmillan murmured to himself. "If you could be any inanimate object for the day, what would you be?" he screwed up his face in concentration and thought about it. If he were being completely honest, he would probably say the mirror in the girl's showers. But then he'd have to watch Nicolette Midgen naked, so perhaps not.
He wouldn't want to be anything that anyone sat on, that was for sure. Just thinking about someone sitting on top of him, completely disregarding him and treating him like… Ernie looked down nervously at the bench he sat on. Poor bench, he thought. That bench had at least a hundred people sitting on it. It was a very poorly treated bench. He wondered vaguely when last it had been cleaned or polished. Some inconsiderate git had even carved graffiti into it. 'S.B. luvs S.S. 4eva' Ernie frowned. SB? Susan Bones? But that couldn't be, because who with the initials S.S. could Susan possibly have a crush on? Sammy Summerby? No, couldn't be him, she called him a Quidditch obsessed moron. Sherlock Stebbins? Probably not. He was obnoxious. Stan Shunpike? Ernie snorted. That was laughable. Salazar Slytherin? Hmm. Despite how interesting the relationship would no doubt be, he doubted it. Severus Snape?
…
Ernie felt his eyes widen. Susan had a crush on Snape? No. Couldn't be. Couldn't possibly be. He glanced down to where Susan was sitting, scratching away at her answer paper with a perfectly comfortable expression on her face. Well, perhaps not comfortable, but certainly not the expression that a sick and perverted would wear. Not the expression that someone who had… had… those thoughts about Snape would wear. No. Not Susan. Couldn't be Susan. It was probably… er… Sirius Black. Yes. That was it. Sirius Black had a crush on Snape. Back at school the two of them had a blistering affair or something. Ernie felt his eyes widen in horror as about a hundred images danced through his mind, each of them more depraved than the last.
By the time Snape danced through his mind in a French maid's costume he was seriously considering beating himself to death against the bench upon which he sat. As the consideration entered his mind he remembered the question he had been trying to answer when that depravity had attacked him. Blinking repeatedly in an attempt to clear the mental pictures, he jotted down that he would be a bench.
After all, he reasoned, no matter what ill-treatment a bench had to suffer, at least it didn't think things like that. He read on, hoping desperately to distract himself.
- - -
"Seventeen. Would you rather be a troll or a goblin?" Gregory Goyle read aloud. He glanced over at Draco for guidance but Draco was scribbling away with a bored expression, completely oblivious to Goyle's plight. He scratched his chin with a quill.
Which would he rather be? Goblins were smart, he supposed. And tricky. And well-respected. But then Trolls were strong and defended themselves. Nobody messed with a troll. A troll had never had to have a rebellion to get treated right, that was for sure. Then again, if a troll was getting treated badly it was probably too stupid to realise it. So which would he rather be?
He sighed and marked down Goblin. He'd been compared to a troll for most of his life, after all, so he supposed he may as well go with the option he'd never tried before.
- - -
"Question twenty two. If you were out walking in the wilderness and you came across a cave, would you explore it?" Marietta Edgecomb stared at the paper like it was particularly moronic slug.
What a stupid question! Of course not. Who knows what could be in there? It could have bats, or rats, or dangerous creatures. Or slippery, mould-covered rocks which you could slip on and kill yourself. Even if it didn't it would probably cave in or something. Marietta had a bad history with such things. Things that other people thought were just fun and exciting, but perfectly safe, somehow always ended badly for her.
Skating on the lake with Cho in fourth year? She spent the whole afternoon talking to Cedric Diggory and explaining what ice-skating was, while Marietta had fallen through the ice and ended up in the Hospital Wing. Camping with her Uncle Kenneth in the Cotswalds? She'd broken her leg. Taking her sister's pet poodle out to the park in London? The horrid little mutt had ended up in a fight with an Alsatian, had its throat ripped out and Marietta had been grounded for three months. Completely ridiculous. Besides, it wasn't as though her sister wanted her around the house after that; every time she'd laid eyes on her for a month afterwards she'd burst into tears about Fifi.
Slightly annoyed that there wasn't an answer more emphatic than "no" available, Marietta answered the question and moved on, shaking her head.
- - -
"Question twenty-nine: Truth or dare?" Cormac McLaggen didn't even pause as he scrawled down dare. Though later he wondered if he should have been more specific, and perhaps given examples…
- - -
"Question thirty-five. In your opinion, what is the most destructive thing that one wizard could do to another human being and why? (Bearing in mind that in this instance the word Wizard refers not just to male magical human beings but to…) Urgh." Crabbe rolled his eyes at the Ministry disclaimer and went back to re-read the question. "What is the most destructive thing one wizard could do to another human being?" he murmured to himself.
The obvious answer would be Avada Kedavra. It didn't really get much more destructive than snuffing someone else's life out. Or did it? He wondered. Crabbe knew there were plenty of ways to kill people. Sure, the Killing Curse was the most effective and involved the least effort, but there were still loads more ways. Levitation Charms could kill people after all; you could float a sword through them or drop a piano on them or something, and they still taught that to First Years. A summoning charm could be deadly as well. You could summon someone's heart out, or if you were feeling vindictive he supposed you could summon their kneecaps out. Hell, Crabbe thought with disdain, even muggles killed each other. Some of them could do it nearly instantly too, from what he'd heard. No. Death definitely wasn't it.
What about the other Unforgivable curses, he thought. Surely one of them? The was the Cruciatus Curse, which could torture people into insanity for heaven's sake. It could fracture your mind, destroy your spirit, and wear down your very soul, if applied properly. Or, alternatively, it could cause you a bit of pain and leave you unscathed. For evidence of such usage, see Harry Potter, he thought sarcastically. Imperius? It certainly scared him. Being a prisoner in one's own mind was something he didn't want to think about. When Moody, or rather the nutcase pretending to be Moody, had done it to him last year, he had felt completely helpless. He'd also felt rather sore after those gymnastics he'd had to do, but pain he could deal with. It was the fact that throughout the entire episode, he had been completely certain that his life could be thrown away and that he could do absolutely nothing to prevent it.
Even with Avada Kedavra you could duck, for God's sake. True, that was pretty much all you could do, but still. With Imperius you were nothing more than a puppet. But then, you could fight that too. By the time Moody was done with them, the entire fourth year had started fighting it off… There had to be something. Something to do with loss of control. He screwed up his face and thought about all the Defence Against the Dark Arts Classes he'd ever had. Nothing in them had really terrified him. Had Snape been teaching the class, he was fairly certain it would be a different story… Crabbe had a sudden inspiration. Snape. Potions. Snape said that almost anything could be done with a potion, including some truly horrific things that couldn't be done any other way… But what was the very worst?
"Imagine no control. Your thoughts, your feelings, your very essence, all centred on one idea from which you cannot escape. Your entire existence becomes fixated upon this one thing and there is nothing you can do to prevent it." he pictured Snape telling the class.
With a shudder, Crabbe wrote down his answer. "Give them a Love Potion. Because…"
- - -
"Question forty-one. Are you a people person, or to you prefer to keep your own company?" Lee Jordan read aloud.
"Shh." Angelina snapped beside him. Lee looked up at her, to see that she was staring straight at one of the Ministry personnel who was walking by them. His beady little eyes were glaring at them suspiciously, as though this test were of overwhelming importance or something.
As his purple bedecked back retreated down the hall, Lee read the question out again in an undertone. He turned to Angelina. "What if I'm a people person who keeps his own company by default, owing to the fact that his two best mates rode off into the sunset in an overly dramatic fashion some months ago?" he asked her.
Angelina shrugged. "So mark 'none of the above'." she suggested, frowning at her own paper.
"Well there's no option for none of the above." he said. "That possibility would obviously introduce too many variables into their empty little heads, resulting in a cataclysmic mind implosion." he put down his quill angrily. "I hate this."
Angelina smiled understandingly at him. "We all do." she assured him. "Just mark down people person and move on. It's not like anyone really cares what you put."
Lee glared at one of the invigilators. "That's not the point." he muttered.
"Oh. So the point is that you miss Fred and George." she said confidently. Lee's glare switched to her.
"I do not."
"Do too."
"Do not."
"Do too."
"Do-"
"Is there a problem here?" A female Ministry worker asked, swooping down on them in a manner that would have made McGonagall proud.
"No." Both Lee and Angelina responded, looks of pure innocence on their faces.
"Well if that's the case, I would request that you two keep this… this flirtatious behaviour, for another time." the woman said, before going off to scold a Hufflepuff.
Lee and Angelina stared after her in shock.
"We weren't being flirtatious." both hissed simultaneously.
Lee felt a flush rise up in his cheeks while Angelina glared at him. He returned quickly to his paper. Both went back to answering questions with sudden enthusiasm.
- - -
"Question Fifty nine. In times of emotional upheaval do you prefer to be by yourself or with others?" Cho read quietly to herself. She thought about it seriously.
She came from a large family. Sure, she was an only child, but she had innumerable cousins and aunts and uncles and god-knew-what else. When her father had left them, her mother had run immediately back to the bosom of her family. She said that in times of need you could always rely on your family and friends to make you feel better. Cho couldn't tell her family about Cedric's death, since they were muggles, and her friends had all basically agreed that Harry Potter had probably killed him and stopped talking to her. Except Marietta. Who'd betrayed her to Umbridge.
A slightly stubborn look took up residence on her face as Cho marked down "By myself."
- - -
"Question Eighty Three. Imagine yourself in Azkaban. Why are you there? What crime did you commit?" Theodore Nott read.
It was really two questions. To the casual observer the second one looked like a reiteration of the first one, but it wasn't. If he imagined himself in Azkaban. The howling wind, the air of impenetrable misery, the grossly substandard food… Why was he there? Because he clearly hadn't been careful enough when committing whatever crime it was that had been committed to land him there. If he had been careful enough, then the Ministry never would have caught him and it wouldn't even be an issue. All the people who landed in Azkaban had done so because they hadn't been careful enough when they were caught.
Take the Death Eaters at the Department of Mysteries, for example. His own father had been stunned early on by Hermione Granger (an insult in itself. Not because she was a Gryffindor, or a muggle-born, or even Harry Potter's friend, but just because being stunned so early was always humiliating). Yet, even despite this fact, he had kept his mask on throughout the confrontation in the Ministry. He had known the risk of the Anti-Apparation jinx and had brought an emergency portkey just in case. He didn't know Dumbledore would be there. He didn't even suspect Dumbledore would be there. Nor those adult friends of Potter's who'd turned up. But he'd planned ahead, all the same. The act of keeping a cool head and planning for every eventuality, meant that you need never worry about getting caught.
So if he were in Azkaban, it would be as a direct result of his own foolishness. Simple as that. But what crime he committed? That was a tricky one. What crime could he possibly be driven to that would cause him to lose his calm completely? It would have to be something that struck him in a weak spot. Everyone had a weak spot, and most people's weak spot was ridiculously apparent to everyone save themselves. Even the Dark Lord had an Achilles' Heel. Voldemort's weak spot, so far as Theo could see, was his pride. Potter's weak spot was his friends. Dumbledore's weak spot was his students. Malfoy's weak spot was his family. Of the four of them, Theo could relate to Malfoy the most.
Theo's family was his weak spot. Hurt them and he might just lose his cool. It was more likely that he would seethe with icy rage and plot your terrible, painful death for years and years until you least expected it. But there was a slight possibility he could go the other way. So… killing his father's killer? Doubtful. Theo had long since resigned himself to the likelihood of his father's death. His mother's killer? Nope. He didn't think so. His mother, though he loved her, was hardly what one would call integral to his life. She was always working on a new spell or another, trying to figure out this, that, or the next thing. She was a magical developer, she lived off her inheritance, and she had little time for Theodore or his father anymore. Due, in no small part, to his father's renewed participation in the Dark Lord's service. His little sister's killer?
Theo felt his hand clench around his quill just thinking about it. After a moment he looked down at his white-knuckled grip on the black quill with a feeling more akin to surprise than aggression. The thought, the mere thought, of anyone touching Elisa had him making fists like some sort of barbarian. Theo thought over the question again in his mind.
Why was he in Azkaban? Because he had found someone who had hurt his little sister and had ripped them limb from limb. Be they Ministry, be they Death Eater, be they Merlin himself, he would kill them on the spot and do so in the most painful and deliberate manner known to him.
He jotted down an abridged version of that answer and moved on with insouciance.
- - -
"Question One Hundred." Padma read quietly. "Do you think you have a good memory?"
I forget, she scribbled down; even sounding sarcastic in her head.
Her friend Mandy Brocklehurst looked down at the answer. She sighed. "You're not taking this seriously Padma." she said darkly, as though this were some great tragedy akin to the Titanic, only less well reported.
Padma raised her eyebrows at her. "Are you?"
"Of course. It's a test."
"It's a waste of time."
"It's still a test."
"Mandy, last year I walked down into the dungeons after accidentally leaving my book bag in the Potions classroom." Padma said patiently. "I took a wrong turn and walked in on Millicent Bulstrode trying to teach Gregory Goyle how to dance. It was the blind leading the blind. I swore to myself then and there that it was the biggest waste of time I had ever witnessed. This test has surpassed it." she declared. "By quite a margin as well."
Mandy rolled her eyes, while on the other side of her Padma heard Su Li and Lisa Turpin giggling quietly at her story. After a moment of maintaining a disapproving scowl, Mandy turned back to her test. Padma shook her head, mentally resigning herself to the fact that the girl was a lost cause.
She leant into the middle of the table, re-inked her quill and moved on with the test.
- - -
At the Gryffindor table, Parvati Patil was having similar trouble keeping her answers serious. "Question one hundred and one. Have you ever been known to procrastinate?"
I'll tell you later. She wrote carelessly. Lavender looked at her with surprise. Parvati stared defiantly back and after a moment Lavender grinned, shrugged and went back to her own test. It was so nice having understanding and accepting friends, Parvati thought. She glanced up at the clock. They had twenty-five minutes left.
- - -
"One hundred and eleven. Would you rather have too much of responsibility, or none at all?" Susan Bones read. She had to read it about eight times before the question actually penetrated her brain. Her brain which was, at that exact moment, turning to mush. She could have been doing something useful with her time, she thought bitterly. She could have been revising potions, or reading a classic novel, or… or… hell, she could've been playing with her hair. But this was ridiculous.
She re-read the question one last time. Too much responsibility or none at all? Her immediate answer would be none at all, but that didn't seem quite right. No responsibility meant no power or control. If she had no responsibility then she would have no control, which would mean someone else had control over her which was something she doubted she could cope with. And how much was too much, anyway? Was it an overwhelming amount? Because anything that initially seemed overwhelming could usually be broken down into amounts that were… well… whelming. Manageable. She would rather have control and the burden that went with it, than be a carefree slave.
She marked down her answer, then raised her head to glance around and see if anyone else had finished. From the looks of things nobody had, though Ernie was, for some reason, staring at her suspiciously. Slightly unnerved, Susan turned back to her work.
- - -
"Question one hundred and twenty six, Would you rather be blind or deaf?" Blaise read to himself. He smiled and began pondering it. He liked this quiz. The self-reflection was nothing short of amusing, and the difficulty everyone else seemed to be having with it was, frankly, hysterical. His answers had surprised himself on a few occasions, either because he'd never considered the question before or because the answer was quite different to what he thought it would be.
This was a question he'd never thought of before. Blind or deaf? Hearing was nice. He liked hearing things. Like music, or laughter, or, on certain occasions, silence. But then he liked seeing things. Like the landscape, like his mother's happy face as he came off the school train, like his dog, like storms… and books. He liked books. He liked reading. He didn't know if he could ever get used to not reading. Sure, there was brail and books which could read their words aloud, and things like that but… the act of reading. The act of absorbing the meaningless signs and symbols that litter a page and translating them, in his mind, to words and sentences and concepts and ideas, it was magical.
Would he rather be blind or deaf? He'd never listen to the Weird Sisters again, so long as he could read their lyrics. Which, he supposed, answered the question for him.
- - -
"Question number one hundred and forty seven… Of the following which is your favourite word: Nitwit, blubber, oddment, tweak?" Hermione Granger came back to the question several times. Nope. She hadn't been hallucinating. That really was the question. She'd done the rest, only that one was left. She began to consider each word separately.
She didn't like Nitwit. When she was five years old her cousin Davey had told her that when someone called someone else a Nitwit it meant that they could hear lice making fun of them. The wit of the nits, he called it. After a few strange and garbled conversations with her parents she'd ended up thinking that lice would take over the world through an evil plan involving dangerously acidic shampoos and lethally pointy combs. So she didn't like that. She didn't like Blubber either because it made her think of fat people crying and she didn't like people crying no matter what their weight. Nor did she like Tweak. It was a silly word that rhymed with other silly words like squeak and leek and bleak… alright maybe those words weren't that silly. But tweak itself was certainly a silly word and she didn't like it.
That left her with Oddment. She supposed she liked Oddment. It was sort of like oddity but somehow more open to debate. It was a good word. She marked it down and looked up at the clock. She had thirty seconds to go...