MAEENA COOPER: SUMMER, 1972
Maeena refused to study, just as she had the rest of the year. The only change she had made, was that she was pranking people in the corridors with Draya Matei. The two hadn't necessarily been close the rest of the year, or at the time, but Maeena decided that Draya was good company (after winter holiday, she seemed more willing to disobey Leonie).
Leonie made Maeena want to rip her own head off with the constant worrying. Cyrano Vasco was constantly threatening the mischievous girls due to his obsession with getting top marks. Even Carolina was so stressed that she refused to participate in any trouble making. Dazai, on the other hand, was just as relaxed as Draya and Maeena; but still would not accept their initiations. Maeena took this quite personally, but refused to confront Dazai about it.
The exams themselves went just as badly as Maeena had expected. First up was Greek and Latin, where they had to translate an entire paragraph into both Greek and Latin—Maeena did better than Dazai. Draya, Leonie, and Carolina all executed their task flawlessly. Maeena and Dazai's translations, on the other hand, were not necessarily Greek or Latin. Dazai had surely failed the exam.
Maeena wondered why Dazai had seemed relaxed in the first place because now that she was thinking about it, she couldn't think of a single time Dazai had studied.
Transfiguration was nearly worse; they were turning stag beetles into pepper shakers. Maeena managed to get hers to remain still, but it still had legs and antlers, even after an hour. Draya completed the task in minutes, barely concealing her pride as Professor Leatherwood commented that it was the best example of small scale transfiguration he'd ever seen from a first year (Maeena thought this had to be bullocks, given how many students Professor Leatherwood must have taught). Leonie's pepper shaker was still shiny and black. Dazai did surprisingly well with this task; her stag beetle looked porcelain but still had legs and it would cough whenever you shook it but pepper would come out nonetheless. Carolina was just behind Draya, transfiguring her beetle completely into a pepper shaker but having the same cough as Dazai's when Professor Leatherwood attempted to shake it.
Invocation and Sacred Scripture were both written exams. Maeena didn't care much and was actively prepared for the exam portion to be done with. She knew that she had failed, without remorse, and wished that everyone would stop talking about what grades they thought they were going to get. Potions was harder than she expected – they had to brew a cure for warts from memory. Maeena hadn't payed an ounce of attention to anything Druig Morningstar had told his students that year, she regretted this for a moment before forcing herself to stop.
Between exams, Maeena continued her reign of terror with Draya, slipping trick quills into students' bags, creeping about under the invisibility cloak, and putting the last of their dung bombs to good use. They were almost caught by Salem (Kiernan Morningstar's familiar) a few times but managed to evade capture—although Cyrano Vasco did threaten to report them to Druig Morningstar if they didn't stop levitating inkwells in the common room.
The days grew steadily warmer, and by the time June rolled around and exams finished up; Dazai, Carolina, and Leonie were finally ready to join back in on the mischief making. This was horrid, as Carolina wanted to ensure that their last prank was "memorable" and Leonie was too afraid to do any actual pranks. The girls were not necessarily known for pranks and what they considered to be pranks (as a group) was much different than Ronan Hofer and his friends' pranks.
"It's got to be big," Carolina said decisively, as they lounged by the lake, "Our last hurrah."
"Not our last," Draya reminded her, "We'll be back in two months."
