OWLs
CORE
Astronomy ~ A
- Sonora’s experience with Astronomy is constantly sleeping through it and try as she might to study it, there’s only so much she can get from memorizing a book before an exam. Since second year she recognized it as a problem and attended the Astronomy club for extra tutoring. Jonah and Lena’s tutoring are probably the only reason this isn’t a failing grade.
Charms ~ O
- Charms was one of Sonora’s favorite classes and she enjoyed opportunities to practice her charmwork in even mundane ways. She and Vespera would also brush up on spells by thinking of creative ways to use each spell and then either trying them or looking up use cases. While she didn’t always pick up new spells with ease, diligent practice, creative ways of practicing and using spellcasting build up her skills over the years.
Defense Against the Dark Arts ~ O
- DADA was another favorite subject from day one, and Sona appreciated the practical aspects of the class. She would pay careful attention to her readings on dark creatures, thinking this would be essential to know for her future cursebreaking aspirations. She applied the same dedication to spells in DADA as she did to Charms.
Herbology ~ E
- Even though she was initially afraid of Professor Hill and being locked in the greenhouse, once her fears were mollified by knowing she had friends around, Sonora was happy to focus on the plants. What she knows about Herbology is still based primarily in plant uses in potions, and she was never afraid of getting her hands dirty to care for and collect a few extra herbs for extra potions practice.
History of Magic ~ A
- While fine for the first two years, History became unintentionally sidelined in third year, and Sona never really recovered from that. While on the whole she enjoyed the subject and found ways to connect History to possible cursebreaking sites or other interests, her uneven treatment of the subject and having many other classes to study for didn’t do her favors on the written portion of the exam.
Potions ~ O
- Sona’s mother is a potioneer, and helping out over the summers kept her potion skills and knowledge fresh over the breaks. She was inspired by Professor Blodwen’s ability to fix or adapt existing potions to use and aspired to reach that level of understanding and familiarity. While late night potions classes starting 4th year took a toll on her, she was generally quite proficient, particularly once she started studying and practicing more complex potions in preparation for animagus classes at Professor Drage’s recommendation.
Transfiguration ~ O
- Figuring out transfiguration theory was a puzzle that once figured out, helped Sona understand the rest of her classes. Between creative ways of using transfiguration in dueling and studying up in preparation for attempting an Animagus transformation, she put plenty of practice and study into transfiguration. Professor Drage’s office hours were one of the ones she frequented, either because she had questions or updates about animagus things or simply to discuss what they were doing that week.
ELECTIVES
Arithmancy ~ A
- Simple enough in her third year, Arithmancy started becoming a problem in year 4 and in order to keep up, Sonora basically resorted to just memorizing facts about the numbers instead of doing her usual patient search for patterns and underlying understandings. It frustrates her because her mum is quite fond of arithmancy and because Sona feels that she would quite enjoy doing predictions with arithmancy if she was only more familiar with how the numbers worked. In any case, she maintains a basic enough understanding for using it but usually relies on Kam or even August or Lee’s help to check over more complex calculations.
Ancient Runes ~ E
- Sonora took to Ancient Runes with particular enthusiasm because of its relevance to cursebreaking. She and Kam used to spend entire weekends working on practice translations and carefully analyzing potential translations and she kept up this practice with other friends.
Cursebreaking ~ O
- Cursebreaking had been a matter of fascination for Sona since childhood, listening to her grandfather’s cursebreaking adventures. In class, she really enjoyed figuring out the puzzles required. In studying, she connected as much of her classes to practical things that cursebreakers might encounter, and viewed everything through this lens. In her free time she would keep up to date on adventures of other cursebreakers, and even had a notebook filled with notes on known sites of unbroken curses.
Healing ~ E
- After her encounter with a werewolf after year three, Sona redoubled her efforts in healing. Studying with Vespera, who was dedicated to the Healing path was helpful as well. She practiced the spells learned with her usual dedication to spellwork, and focused on capturing big ideas and understanding how things hit together.
Music ~ A ← So there’s a reason to be nervous come NEWTs!
- Sonora had been playing piano since young, and keeping up practice in the music club and over the summers from year one. Earlier in the year she had Kam to review music theory with, but after their breakup, she found studying it terribly lonely to study and focused mostly on playing. Still, Music should have been an easy O, but come exam day, there was a short part on the written exam that made her stumble, and that second guessing later manifested as an uncharacteristic stumble in a performance she had been quite practiced for.
Wandless Magic ~ A
- Sona has always been mediocre to start but excels because of consistent and diligent practice and creative use of the spells in her arsenal. When it came to Wandless magic, her hours and hours of dedicated practice built up with her wand was temporarily negated and doing any kind of complex magic--namely her favorite transfiguration spells-- seemed all but impossible. She’s much better with unspoken spells with her wand as they extend off her familiarity with the spell. For her exam, her written portion was fine, but for practical purposes she had really only mastered enough wandless magic to stall long enough to summon her wand back.
