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OWLs

CORE
Astronomy ~ O

The night sky seemed like a subject of beautiful, distant mystery, and uncovering those secrets was of great interest for Echo Angharad. The observational part was simple enough–the hardest part was justifying her opinion in the occasional debate over whether Neptune was periwinkle or brandeis blue or ultramarine or something. Her quick mathematical skill helped Echo excel at the theoretical side of Astronomy– learning the formulas that had been developed to understand movement of the heavenly bodies greatly helped her with understanding the positions. Next to that, memorizing facts about the planets and constellations was no factor.

Charms ~ O

Charmswork was essential as part of Momma Wellbelove’s design process, and Echo of course was dead set on mastering the magical and practical side even as she struggled with original designs. Understanding how the spells worked, their limits, and their uses was helpful to performing them, and Echo found ways to practice her charms, making sure each movement was crisp, precise, and elegant. If she couldn’t be the designer, she could at least make sure her wandwork was pristine.

Defense Against the Dark Arts ~ E

For the spellcasting part of DADA, Echo treated it much the same way as Charms– practice, theory, perfection. Her time in the Order of the Stick had inspired a sort of belief in the fantastical, and she took to mastering each DADA spell with an extra bit of confidence and secret pride. Learning about dark creatures was a simple matter of understanding each creature– she treated each like a rival designer and broke down each creature, memorizing each one’s strengths, styles, and weaknesses. It was by no means her favorite subject, but she still performed excellently for the exam-- excellent, however, was not quite enough, and a few imprecisions--from exams stress or otherwise--cost her the O.

Herbology ~ O

Echo found very early on that her insistence on doing everything herself and her academic pride won out over any squeamishness she had about getting dirty. Herbology smelled great, and learnign to make perfumes with their scents meant learning about the plants themselves. As she grew increasingly aware of her friendlessness, she came to recognize plants as her companions. As her life seemed to isolate her in fifth year, Echo felt more and more like her plants were her pets and she could express her anxieties around plants in a way that she couldn’t show others. Expressing these anxieties helped her relax around the herbology itself, and earned her better grades—and understandings—of the magical herbs.

History of Magic ~ O

Professor Powell’s critiques on the Order of the Stick helped Echo connect to History as more than History of Fashion. She would have done excellently just memorizing facts and timelines, but her attention to the stories of magical social movements really bolstered her understanding of changing fashions.

Potions ~ O

Potions theory was a constant area of study and pain for Echo who believed she should be excellent at it—the calculations were easy and her potion-brewing technique was excellent– but she struggled with substitution theory and any of the more creative aspects. Thankfully when it came to following procedure and regurgitating theory, she had spent many, many hours studying, she was more than fine.

Transfiguration ~ O

Echo didn’t care very much for transfiguration at first, but she immediately saw its uses– quick fixes, color changes, and even slight transfigurations could turn a mundane item of clothing into a fantastic fashion piece. With a little effort, transfiguration theory was simple enough for Echo. While at first she strived for the O simply because she expected it of herself, in later years she was striving for the O because she wanted to make sure she had mastered the material.

ELECTIVES
Alchemy ~ O

After her insights from the first two years of Transfiguration, Echo developed an interest in perhaps not creating things, but just being able to transform them. This was the mindset with which she approached alchemy. Her early studies of textile material properties helped her with the material sciences aspect of alchemy, and her attention to detail ensured each aspect of her alchemical solutions were neatly detailed.

Arithmancy ~ O

Echo had always excelled at numbers, and coming to understand the magical properties of each number not only made sense to Echo, but seemed natural and essential. She found plenty of ways to slip numerology into her fashion analyses for the Daily Dragon fashion column–if her own designs weren’t creative and original, at least she could overanalyse the details of other designs to precision.

Art ~ E

Art may as well have been a mandatory class as a Wellbelove. While original creations might not have been a strong suit for Echo, art history, color theory, and identifying patterns in works was something Echo had excelled at since she was very young. Her role as Daily Dragon writer and editor also helped ensure she could clearly, precisely, and concisely describe artistic techniques and styles, making the written portion a breeze. Echo though, was never much of an artist herself--her expertise lay in materials and putting together scents and calculations. And rather than play to her strengths, she overplayed her hand at Art and produced a sketch that did not impress the proctor.

Study of Ancient Runes ~ O

Echo was inspired by Professor Powell and her intrigue with historical patterns to take Ancient Runes. While she didn’t particularly love reading runes, she loved the aesthetic of writing in secret runic code and decorated her sketchbooks in fourth and fifth year with notes in runes. This led to a natural way to practice, and once she learned of ways to do divination—the class she had to drop— by runes, her efforts were smugly redoubled.

Mythology ~ E

Echo took Mythology not because she enjoyed the fantastic stories of myth, but because Yari often criticized her for not having imagination–mythology was likewise imagination grounded in reality, and Echo felt she could learn something from mythology. Or at least have it serve as inspiration. Echo certainly took these inspirations to heart– she made it a challenge to have sketches of outfits for each character discussed in class, labeled and explained: every embroidered edge, the material of the clothes, each detail had to reference something specific in the figure’s story, and Echo’s assignments listed out and explained each of these details. While she didn’t always accomplish this, she did always do her homework and submit it with interesting analyses. However, her downfall was in her rigid insistence on a single correct mythological interpretation.

Wizard Law ~ O

As she promised her Momma, in 4th year, Echo dropped divination simply because she had gotten an E on an exam– her first ever E. That exam was her third year law final. She held a grudge against Professor Li since then, but the failure spurred her efforts, more than earning her Os from then on. She read as much as she could, rehearsed the arguments, and while she wasn’t the best at finding creative holes in others’ arguments, she mastered knowing the counter-arguments and rebuttals that other writers had established. By fifth year, she knew any laws relating to dress and clothing inside and out and prided herself on being very familiar with these laws.

Wandlore ~ O

At first, Echo thought Professor Kieran’s self-reflective philosophy towards wandlore was spiritual rubbish, but she still took every assignment seriously and eventually found it quite insightful for developing a sense of how she learned and worked best. Echo’s early experience in studying textile material properties for fashion studies gave her an early advantage in understanding the material sciences aspect of wandlore, an aspect others might find overly technical or difficult. While she was no craftsman, Echo could expertly identify and analyze any wand presented.

Rationale for above average grades: Aside from her cleverness and detailed disposition, Echo has assiduous study habits. While at first she hid this to only her quadruplets, she has gradually allowed others to see her study more. Echo prides herself on being an excellent student–it’s her way of “making up” for feeling not very original. She prepares for classes over the summer, and makes neat study guides–flashcards, diagrams, flow charts. As she promised her Momma, in 4th year, Echo dropped divination simply because she had gotten her first E on an exam. These were hard fought for grades, even if Echo would rather people believe it was all her innate ability.

Other responsibilities:
Daily Dragon (maintaining clear, concise writing and reporting)
Art Club (mostly an inspiration source and place to practice with her quadruplets)
Order of the Stick / LARP (this is Echo’s creative outlet for putting her fashion creativity into some practice, and another physical outlet. She cut back on it in 5th year to dedicate more time to studying.)
Quidditch (physical outlet)
Studying fashions and makeup trends (more practice collating and organizing information)

NEWTs

CORE
Astronomy ~ E

Echo continued Astronomy over Mythology in part because it was beautiful, but also because it felt like something she would do better in and require less creativity that she didn’t seem to have. As expected, she continued to do well—she didn’t need to come up with complex models and systems of stars, merely understand them and extrapolate accordingly. Her E was due to a few details she hasn’t been in class for—in her hedonistic pursuit of answers and pleasure those last two years, she did occasionally miss a class.

Charms ~ E

Clean, crisp, elegant magic remained Echo’s standard. She approached nonverbal and wandless charms with the same theory first, specific test-relevant spells done to perfection attitude—only she didn’t bother with practicing every spell to perfection this time. Her grade reflected it accordingly–still exceedingly elegant, but not perfect.

Herbology ~ O

The time normally devoted to potions—including time spent trying to figure out a dilution plan for Milan’s addiction to sleeping and waking potions and alternatives for dreamless sleep—all fed into Echo’s understanding of how the herbs involved created those potions. She had always been better at understanding herbology than potions after all and potions theory was basically carried by her excellent herbology knowledge. Her practical herbology had ironically improved as she pulled away from human companionship during OWLs prep but the experience she gained there remained with her.

(Echo’s particularity and outstanding understanding of herbology is part of why she is so careful about her hallucinogenic magical mushroom dosing, not the other way around. She knows– and is proven right– about exactly how to mix them properly and what to expect.)

History of Magic ~ O

While art history and in particular fashion history was of particular interest and knowledge, Echo excelled in history generally as well– she saw it as fundamental for journalism and writing, and applicable broadly. Even in LARP, what Echo lacked in creativity she made up for by adopting historical characters and speeches.

Transfiguration ~ E

Self-transfiguration turned out to be Echo’s greatest challenge yet. While practical transfiguration—particularly the envisioning of a specific object -- had always been a struggle that followed master of theory, self-transfiguration added yet another layer of complexity. She did outstandingly on the written portion, exactly adequately on the practical, and landed squarely in the margin for exceeding expectations.

ELECTIVES
Alchemy ~ O

Echo had taken Professor Narain’s “read one of these three” as “read all three” and all bonus challenge questions as mandatory– it was great for Harlynn perhaps, who could readily find an answer with Echo, and Echo herself felt useful because of it. After snapping in sixth year, she no longer bothered with the overkill. But three years of overkill had created a very solid foundation, and Echo’s “slacking off” was still doing the assigned work. She still thought through bonus challenge questions and still kept a keen eye for detail in potions procedure.

Arithmancy ~ O

Even if it was by default, Echo embraced her talent with numbers post-OWLs. She had always found Numerology natural and fascinating, and divination by arithmancy made a lot of sense. She was well prepared and very confident for this NEWT.

Art ~ E

Practically, Art was still a struggle for Echo to do– executing an original concept from start to finish was ever a struggle for her. Even if she could make a decent seamstress, Echo knew she was not the kind of designer her siblings were. Where Echo shined was art history, color theory, and describing art: the written portion of the Art NEWT was flawlessly written: clear, precise, concise, with specific details pointing to historical designers and artists.

For her practical though, Echo still tried to assemble a collection of original dresses–only to recognize at the end her designs were simply poor replicas of things that various designers had showcased over the last fashion show. Ultimately, it was Echo’s acknowledgement of the copy that saved her from being reported for cheating and ironically, proved her ability– when the examiner asked her about the work, Echo resignedly but immediately rattled off everywhere she had taken from other artists—the line, season, designer, and even how specific techniques had been used in the original outfit. So while it wasn’t worthy of an outstanding, she was also not marked down as cheating.

Study of Ancient Runes ~ O

Runes grew on Echo over the years. She admitted she had minimal interest in translations of historical texts–only insofar as learning what the text was about–, but she did adore the magical uses of Runes. Runic magic and divination were, indeed preferred forms of casting, and she was, of course, well versed with its uses in crafting

Wizard Law ~ O

Echo Angharad Wellbelove knew any and every wizarding law regarding dress, fashion, and production. She knew the philosophies behind different stances, the counter-arguments and rebuttals that established icons promoted, and could fluently discuss just about every case where the Statute of Secrecy had been cited in a matter of clothing. And even if that was about where her interest ended, she knew the principles underlying wizarding law such as the muggle-wizarding secrecy and divides-- so well that she was able to apply them to other areas. She wouldn't consider herself a lawyer, but she had an impeccable facade of confidence and gave a textbook presentation.

Wandlore ~ E

Echo stopped taking Professor Kieran’s reflective assignments as seriously but she still paid careful attention to the material properties of wandlore and how these properties worked together as a whole–and especially how these might apply to textile properties or techniques. What she aimed for with Wandlore was what she gained– a clear understanding of how magical material properties were used in magical crafting– but she wasn’t acing the exam this time.

What changed: Echo’s “snap” and turn to hedonistic pleasures after receiving her OWL grades is twofold: It comes first from her frustration at not achieving all perfect scores. This frustration only fueled her feeling helpless and useless.

Crucially to these grades, Echo in 6th and 7th still studies and works very hard–studying is one of the few things under her control and thus one of the few things she “enjoys”. She still turns in homework and attends class–although she does miss a couple. This is less “not studying” and more “not overkilling”.

The only non-O OWL that has been continued is Art, which she was persuaded to continue by Milan and because it is her crucial link back to her family’s work.