But this time around, she doesn’t hazard a prediction on how long the resulting war pitting France against Austria and Prussia would last. What puzzles her is the meaning of the 3 parameters of this equation obtained through automatic writing.

  I feel like it might be about the Triwizard Tournament. B might represent the probability that I be chosen as Beauxbatons’ champion, but why is it double-weighted? If B represents that probability, then X might represent the number of Ottoman students at the other two, and A the probability any of them get chosen, Nurcan tries to rationalize what she obtained by automatic writing. Regardless of what these parameters mean, there’s a 3/16 chance that there’s an Ottoman student competing, and I then have at most a 3/16 probability of realizing what the Bab-I Humayun hopes I do! More like 3/32 at most because there has to be some Ottoman at Durmstrang that will attempt to enter!

  She also feels the need to revise the automatic writing theory, on which it was brief, but could come up on the ASPIC. And how similar it feels to dream interpretation.

  In the days to follow, she also study some arithmancy to ensure that she remains sharp. Also, because she knows BUSEs and ASPICs are administered in French, she re-reads some older textbooks such as Mathémagie: La Totale, or the Divination textbook used during her previous stint at Beauxbatons.

  When the day comes for her to leave home, once again, after having packed her horse pocket with her Beauxbatons uniform and her other supplies, along with some tryrinats from her last payout from The Rise of Miss Irad-I Cedid. Which, while smaller than past payouts, still allows her to pay for her educational expenses.

  “The time has come for me to leave home for duty. I might not come back for months, and this is going to be much more dangerous than last year…” Nurcan hugs her mom first.

  “Witch!” her dad sermons her. “Does your mission involve magic?”

  Nurcan freezes in place, but not like someone petrified. Oh, crap. I really shouldn’t have presented my being a witch as a spy trainee’s codename! But, if dad asks me to do magic in front of him, all I’m legally allowed to do is divination. Probably tarot card reading.

  “The time has come to reveal the cold, hard truth because the danger to me for the upcoming year is going to be all too real! The people at what you refer to as the spy academy told you I was chosen to become a spy trainee. Yes, the Empire does use wizards as spies. Yes, I’m a witch. Yes, this mission involves magic. However, please be advised that you’re not allowed to tell anyone about my true nature as a witch any more than you could tell others I’m a spy trainee!”

  With her everyday clothes among Muggles, along with her horse pocket, she sets out for the local Floo network connection on her second exchange.

  Upon returning to Paris, while the city’s Métro-Floo station has remained largely unchanged, what changed for her compared to how it was pre-Bastille is that the gate of the Barrière de la Ferme Générale closest to the station is gone. I guess, the Revolutionaries did a number on the gates of the Barrière in the past 3 years!

  But first, she needs to inquire about the prices of meals as well as inns on her way to échange Scolaire Officielle, knowing that she must spend 3 nights in the city as per the plan, and budget accordingly.

  And, of course, while she checks in at that location, she goes to the inbound students’ floor, realizing that, behind the intake officer’s desk, there are several tables and other stations for extraordinary administrations of BUSEs and ASPICs.

  When Nurcan’s turn to get to the intake officer arrives, discussions turn to the implications for her schedule.

  “Mademoiselle Topkara, si vous réussissez le BUSE et l’ASPIC, que ce soit en divination ou en arithmancie, vous serez exemptée de ces cours pour l’année. Cependant, si vous ne réussissez que le BUSE, vous devrez suivre le cours en question au niveau ASPIC!” (Miss Topkara, if you pass the BUSE and the ASPIC, whether in Divination or in Arithmancy, you will be exempt from these courses for the year. However, if you only pass the BUSE, you must take the course in question at the ASPIC level!)

  It goes without saying that, if I fail the BUSE, I must retake the course at the BUSE level, but they delay teaching these things by 2 years at Beauxbatons, As such, there’s no excuse for me not to pass the BUSE, nor the ASPIC, Nurcan starts sweating as the intake officer asks one last question for her before moving on to the other inbound students:

  “Vous avez deux examens : quel examen voulez-vous passer en premier?” (You have two tests; which test do you want to take first?)

  “Arithmancie!” (Arithmancy!)

  The intake officer then gives her the version of the testing schedule with Arithmancy first, and when its ASPIC would take place, if passed, just as the other two inbound students are arriving.

  The other two inbound students arrive after her, so she gets seated first into this room used for extraordinary test administrations, but also used for remedial classes, at a wide, single-seater table.

  The intake officer is also responsible for proctoring the theoretical portion of the test. Today, there are three inbound students taking the written portion of either a BUSE or an ASPIC test. One in Astronomy, the other in Herbology.

  When the exam papers are being put face down on the examinees’ tables, and the Anti-Cheating Quills, prepared, the intake officer explains the regulations surrounding the written part of the test. Banned items include Auto-Answer Quills, Remembralls, Detachable Cribbing Cuffs and Self-Correcting Ink.

  “Au nom de l’Académie des Examinateurs Magiques, bonne chance!” (On behalf of the Académie des Examinateurs Magiques, good luck!)

  As Nurcan predicted, weeks before she returned to Paris, she breezes through the Arithmancy BUSE, with the first 2 questions being about uncertainty calculations and a common mathematical problem in Astronomy respectively.

  This looks far too much like a repeat of my Arithmancy final in fourth year at home, maybe a bit harder, but even predicting the duration and effectiveness of the Estates-General three years ago could have been a two-parter BUSE long-answer question! On the hard side for BUSE, though, Nurcan is then reminded of this whole deal of getting hexed over using Arithmancy for forecasting a Muggle political event’s outcome. But still relatively easy for a SBD, or what I think an ASPIC would be like.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  The intake officer finds it a little disturbing that Nurcan finished the Arithmancy BUSE a little too quickly, believing that she was perhaps a little foolhardy.

  But, as he sets out to grade it, he’s simply amazed, while Nurcan is waiting outside the testing room, reading more advanced material.

  She checks against the schedule of tests to see how long she would get to grab something to eat before she could take, if applicable, the Arithmancy ASPIC.

  Now I have a better idea why extraordinary administrations must be requested in advance. Trying to get an examiner available for one is not instant, she makes her way to the Confiserie Enchantée de K. Rammelle.

  Upon entering the shop, Nurcan can’t help but ask the owner, Kristian, about something personal to her from her previous exchange.

  “Bonjour; est-ce que Léon fait partie de votre famille?” (Hello; is Léon part of your family?)

  “Oui. C‘est mon fils cadet, il joue pour les Tapesouafles!” (Yes. He’s my younger son, he plays for the Tapesouafles!) Kristian answers her, while she looks around for sweets.

  “Je l’ai aidé avec le Geminio!” (I helped him with Geminio!)

  But there’s one thing that catches her attention and, somehow, she never ate on her previous exchange: corne de licorne bretonne en sucre, that not even Vincent gave her during the 5 days she was there at the Estates-General.

  After buying one for 10￠, she realizes that the corne de licorne bretonne en sucre reminds her of something else she ate after the Arithmancy SBD at Karakalem: qarn eghzel, which is native to the Eyalet of Algiers.

  Once the corne is finished, she returns to échange Scolaire Officielle for her Arithmancy ASPIC, among a crowd of wizards she notices isn’t in the best of moods, and a lot of them seem to be worried about their safety. Especially when the storming of the Tuileries took place recently, they fear they’ll get caught in the Muggle crossfire.

  Upon return to the inbound student floor, the intake officer tells her what she earned on the Arithmancy BUSE: Optimal.

  When the Arithmancy ASPIC begins, under the eyes of a different proctor, she can definitely feel that it’s harder than the test taken in the morning, but not consistently harder than the Arithmancy SBD taken at home.

  Meanwhile, another examiner for the Herbology practical test of the other student, Paulinho, is herded in a different room with a series of plants for it.

  But this time around, Nurcan takes much longer to get through all questions. With one question left to go about a concept called potion decay, which seems foreign to her…

  This feels like a FYBS-level Potions concept, as I know potion decay just wasn’t on the Potions SBD. If I can understand potion decay, it will help me get through FYBS-level Potions! I won’t let my lack of knowledge of potion decay get in the way of the ASPIC! Nurcan wracks her mind to wrap her head around potion decay. If a decaying potion’s effectiveness is halved every 10 days…

  But she can feel the clock ticking in on her when she attempts to model it mathematically. And, with only a few minutes left to go, she feels like she could get an equation for it for her to solve for. Even with an equation on hand, she must think as hard as she possibly can to solve it, and get the solution in time.

  Not one second too soon! she sighs when the solution to the potion decay problem is done.

  She then proceeds to book a room for 3 nights at the Griffon Somnolent, putting the tab in the Bab-I Humayun’s name. She first eats frog legs, along with a glass of nettle wine, for a total of Bz1.20, before going to bed.

  The following day, she returns to échange Scolaire Officielle, this time for the Divination BUSE. The student who wanted to test out of Herbology yesterday, Paulinho, is back, now wanting to test out of Care of Magical Creatures.

  As with Arithmancy yesterday, the Divination BUSE appears to be very easy to Nurcan as it tests what is, to her, a fourth-year level, so she’s confident that she could proceed to the ASPIC, scheduled for the following day.

  The same pattern repeats in Divination as she had with Arithmancy earlier on this journey: after earning an Optimal on the Divination BUSE, the ASPIC’s written portion increases in difficulty while the practical portion, on the other hand, feels a little different.

  When the practical portion begins, she can kind of feel like she needs to act like a professional diviner to score high enough on the Divination ASPIC.

  Over the previous summers, especially in July, there were people who stopped by my village to get my fortune-telling. I should be able to handle it, Nurcan starts hyperventilating.

  As soon as the examiner arrives, she starts pretending that she is a diviner:

  ”Bonjour. Bienvenue chez Nurcan; qu’est-ce qui vous amène vers moi aujourd’hui?” (Hello, welcome to Nurcan; what brings you to me today?)

  “Des problèmes d’amour!” (Love problems!) the examiner, a middle-aged man, answers her.

  “Une méthode particulière?” (Any particular method?) Nurcan asks.

  “Tarot!”

  As Nurcan shuffles the deck 7 times, and then cuts it with her left hand, she draws 3 cards, face down. At the examiner’s insistence, she brings them face-up.

  Oof. I can see the examiner has had affairs from earlier in life that he’d rather forget. That he must come to terms with an old flame to move on, but to do so, he must face her without being mean to her, Nurcan thinks about the interpretation to give him of this tarot drawing, the reversed hanged man, the upright 8 of cups, and the reversed queen of swords. The examiner’s old flame is probably another woman I knew from a different source.

  Luckily for her, it’s still in broad daylight outside, so there’s no astrology involved, and the absence of tea leaves means no tea leaves either.

  But when the turn of palmistry arrives, her attention is turned to financial affairs.

  “échangez tout ce que vous avez d’argent moldu contre de la monnaie de sorcier tout de suite!” (Exchange whatever Muggle money you have for wizarding money immediately!) Nurcan leans on what little she gleaned about the assignats, both from her previous nightmare at Prussia’s Erkstag, and from the previous 2 nights at the Griffon Somnolent.

  As for career, on the other hand, the examiner asks to rely on bibliomancy instead, using a book he supplied for the occasion.

  “Au-delà de votre r?le à l’Académie des Examinateurs Magiques, vous devriez peut-être faire des potions médicinales!” (Beyond your role at the Académie des Examinateurs Magiques, maybe you should make medicinal potions!) Nurcan alludes to, but without outright mentioning, the war against Austria and Prussia that she predicted France would be mired in for years to revise for this test.

  Work at the Académie des Examinateurs Magiques is highly seasonal, the pressure is on you to grade hundreds of tests administered in a matter of days, the examiner reflects on what his current professional life is like, triggered by Nurcan’s suggestion. The rest of the year? You’d better have a second job because extraordinary administrations, like this one are unstable.

  And, for health, as a follow-up, she’s tested on automatic writing. He starts letting his subconscious write for him, under Nurcan’s watchful eye.

  Most people who go see diviners will want to go to one for a small set of specific issues, provided they aren’t despondent enough to get addicted. But getting a client asking for this many methods in a single session? I hope never again to do so, except at the Divination FYBS in 2 years, in which case I hope the examiner won’t be a divination addict, Nurcan ponders her final thought when the conclusion she draws from the interpretation of his automatic writing is forthcoming.

  “Je crois que vous avez obtenu cet emploi parce que vous étiez accro à la divination et c’est la seule manière que vous aviez trouvé de le faire sans frais!” (I believe you obtained this job because you were addicted to divination, and it was the only way to feed it for free!)

  “Vous avez vu beaucoup trop juste pour être vraie!” (You saw far too clearly to be true!)

  Three more items are added on crystal gazing, numerology and dream interpretation, in that order, for a total of seven test items. When the final item is done, the grade arrives: optimal.

  “Woohoo!” Nurcan jumps for joy upon seeing the grade for the Divination ASPIC.