An American at Hogwarts

Chapter Fifty-Four

The party celebrating Gryffindor's win didn't stop for a full week.

Everywhere you looked, Gryffindors, Ravenclaws, Hufflepuffs, teachers, and even some Slytherins were smiling and cheering at the outcome of the final Quidditch match of the season. Honestly, I think some of them were happy for Oliver more than they were celebrating the actual outcome of the game.

The week after we won the Quidditch Cup was one of the best of my life. Everybody was happy and smiling, and the weather was finally getting nice again.

I should've known it couldn't last.

If anything was going to kill the happy vibe I was feeling, I expected it to be the storm mystery I was working on. I was so focused on that I didn't even see the bigger threat on the horizon:

Finals.

Fifth years were expected to take O.W.L.s, which stood for "Ordinary Wizarding Levels". Based on what my fellow fifth years were saying, it was like a placement test crossed with the SAT. Your scores would determine what classes you could take in the future (and through that which jobs), and you couldn't retake the tests.

And, on top of all that, I was coming into these tests with one year of studying for everybody else's five.

Needless to say, I basically started living my life with a book in front of my face. With six weeks to go before exams started and teachers piling on homework to get us ready, I didn't have a moment to spare.

"Okay, okay, I need to practice spells, read up on history of magic, practice potions..." I muttered to myself as I sat cross-legged on my bed Tuesday night after the end of celebrations, papers spread out all around me. I needed to make a schedule to help me finish all this stuff, or I was going to crash and burn within a week.

At least Quidditch practice wasn't in the mix anymore.

"And then next week I have to actually figure out some times to sneak back home and take my AP tests..."

"ALERT! NEW INFORMATION FOUND."

I damn near fell out of bed at the sound of Ana's voice. I'd asked her to set her volume to the highest level in case of some new development in my storm case so that I would definitely hear it and I could get excited, but I was suddenly regretting that decision.

I swore under my breath and fumbled for my glasses. I heard a text book go crashing to the floor as I stretched for my dresser, but I'd just have to deal with that later.

"Ana, what is? What do we have?" I asked once I managed to get my glasses on.

"I've been working on recovering and cleaning up the readings I got before crash landing in the lake," she started. "Now, I think I may have found something of interest in the data."

"Well don't leave me hanging! Pull it up!"

Not two seconds later, all the statistics from the storm popped up on my glasses. I could see the figure at the center of the storm, and Ana got a fair amount of vital readings before getting thrown into the lake. Just like last time, every single vital sign was telling me the person in the storm should be dead. Based on their crazed Hercules run into the forest and away from me, however, I was pretty sure they were still alive and kicking.

"What am I looking at Ana?"

"Zoom in on the x-ray reading of the person." I did so, and I realized what was so interesting at the same time Ana spelled it out. "Scans show that the person in the middle of the storm has some kind of bionic chip in their head."

"I can see that..." I trailed off and zoomed in on the image, but I couldn't get anything more from the limited readings I had. "That's insanely weird."