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March and April roll by in the blink of an eye. She's still a bit jumpy, like, if Stevie runs up behind her and throws arms around her she's likely to flinch away, or if Ripley shouts at her from across the courtyard, she'll jump a foot into the air, but she's gotten most of the fear out of her head through hours of research.
Sage also spends a fair amount of time in the owlery, scrawling letters to her father. She disguises her questions about his old friends by bringing up the jumpers she wears and asking him stories that happened while he wore the jumpers. He always remembers, and he usually tells her because he thinks nothing of it. She starts to think she should've been a Slytherin, with all this sneakiness she's acquired.
Sometimes, she hangs out with Harry. Sage tells him stories about his parents, stories about Arielle and his parents, stories about Flick and Arielle and his parents. Harry grows to love his parents more than he did, and Sage learns that it's easy to alter the past to fit what somebody needs to hear.
Then it's May and it's time for exams. And, Merlin, Sage hates exams. She and Stevie and Ripley are sitting by the lake on the day of their last one; Sage is tearing pages from her History of Magic textbook and folding them into paper planes, Stevie has her nose in parchment she's collated over the year, Ripley is gazing at a fifth-year few boys with their trousers rolled up, wading in the water.
Ripley's fine with them; she's a bloody Ravenclaw, isn't she? And she's not really one of the really smart Ravenclaws, the ones that make everybody think Ravenclaw is the smart house. But she's good at retaining information when she needs to. And right now, she needs to.
Stevie's suffering. They can tell because she's already cried twice this morning. The first time was because a butterfly landed on her study notes and Conner pecked it up and ate it, the second time was because she spelled a word wrong. They have to make her take regular breaks, in which they force-feed her jam tarts and iced buns.
Sage is doing okay. Not as good as Ripley, not as bad as Stevie, but okay. She supposes it's because her dad and Flick and Billy have drilled her with studying techniques since she was old enough to hold her head up on her own. She's got her girls with her, and she's got a plan to sneak into the kitchens after the exam, and she's going to write a lovely letter for all the important adults in her life later. So she's doing okay.
She's doing okay, until she spots Hermione dashing by them with about eight textbooks in her arms and notes flying out of her hands like there's a tornado around her. So Sage tells Ripley to put their flashcard questioning on hold, and Sage jogs over to pick up the parchment Hermione's dropped.
"I- thanks, Sage," Hermione pants, almost bent over double to catch her breath. But Sage is looking down at the page on top of the stack she collected, which is Hermione's timetable.
"'Mione, it says here that you have your Muggle Studies and Defence Against the Dark Arts class at the same time," Sage asks. "Did they write it down wrong?"
