From Azkaban to Hogwarts.

"It looks like all the students should be here by now. I'm the last one again. I have to say, the staircases at Hogwarts really like to play hide-and-seek."

William spoke with a smile as he strode quickly to the podium.

“Good morning, everyone,” William said, glancing at everyone’s desks. “It looks like everyone has their textbooks ready—but we won’t need them for now.”

Cheers erupted immediately.

"Um, there might be a misunderstanding. Please quiet down your cheers. Well, the next segment is not very popular."

As William spoke, he opened the paper bag and pulled out a thick stack of papers.

"Sorry, it's time for a quiz."

The air seemed to turn cold almost instantly, and the muscles on the faces of the students sitting at the very front seemed to freeze.

The small stacks of exam papers were handed out to the students in the first row, and then passed down one by one. William could see that the students were obviously whispering to each other while passing the exam papers.

After all the papers had been handed out, William returned to the podium and smiled at all the students.

"Yes, I know it's a bit inappropriate to have a test on the first day of school, but this test won't be for nothing; there's a reward."

"Professor, what reward?"

"It's not candy, is it?"

"Academy division?"

……

"Shhh."

William gestured to his lips to keep quiet.

"If I were you, I promise I would take this exam paper seriously, even more seriously than the final exam."

William took out a remaining exam paper and pointed it out to all the students.

"I think many professors emphasized one thing to you yesterday: fifth year is the year of OWL for Hogwarts students, and the exam paper you have here is an original version of the questions I extracted from past exams."

"Of course, the exam tests practical skills, while this one focuses on theory; otherwise, one class period definitely wouldn't be enough for the exam. However, I don't see any difference. If any student feels their practical skills are better than their theoretical knowledge, they can apply for the practical exam—"

William noticed that many people's eyes lit up instantly; clearly, these children found the actual exam much more interesting—but William had a plan in mind.

"Of course, this is not encouraged. Students who do this and fail to pass the exam should take on the task of cleaning the classroom for the next semester."

The unhealthy trend was stopped instantly.

"The exam lasts one hour, and the results will be determined according to the OWLs assessment method. Students who get the highest grade O can add 50 points to their college—to be honest, that's a bit high, but I will write a special application report to the principal."

"Students who get an E or higher can be granted a one-semester course exemption—you heard right, you can choose whether or not to attend my classes during the first semester. Also, during this six-month period, you can apply to audit sixth-grade classes."

The students below began to erupt in excitement—an exemption from course, a perfectly legitimate way to skip class!

Auditing a sixth-grade class is quite remarkable; it can provide plenty of conversation topics for more than two weeks outside of class.

"Oh, right, there's also a small financial reward, paid personally, seven Galleons per person—seven is a magical number, after all."

Another round of cheers erupted. The glittering Galleons were obtained legally and legitimately from the professor!

Even writing a letter home wouldn't be excessive!

"Students who get an A (pass) or above can learn practical skills while others receive theoretical education. However, in order to take care of students who need theoretical education, most of the time should be spent on self-study."

“All the exam questions are original questions drawn from past exams, and I will point out their sources in the subsequent explanations,” William said, clapping his hands. “So what are you waiting for? Start the timer!”

Everyone immediately threw themselves into the task of solving the problems.

Even an A or higher reward can prevent them from engaging in tedious and boring theoretical learning, especially since they are treated differently from other students, which drives these fifteen-year-olds into a frenzy.

William, on the other hand, took advantage of this quiet time to sit at the lectern and prepare diligently for the next lesson.

He came up with the topic, and he drew the pie in the sky.

He knew just how terrible the Hogwarts course was from the fact that only a few sixth-grade students got in despite the school letting students go easy on him.

He analyzed the frequency of classes for seventh-grade students over the years and found that in the last six years, they only attended two full semesters in one year. The professors left for various reasons the rest of the time, so the students basically had to learn the last part of the textbook on their own.

Moreover, due to the frequent changes in professors and textbooks, there is a significant discrepancy between what students have mastered and what is required by the examination syllabus.

Many of the questions in this exam were things that these students had missed over the years—unless someone collected the same professor's textbook and studied it on their own for five years, even students who had thoroughly mastered it would still have questions they couldn't answer.

This is why William chose to use past exam questions.

Only by using real exam questions can we prevent anyone from complaining that the questions are too difficult or too obscure. Because they are all real questions, almost all students will accept their scores calmly and study hard in the future.

Although William would immediately reward any student who reached the goal, he knew the result of this exam without even grading the papers—a complete failure.

'Using tricks to improve student grades is a noble virtue for professors!'

Chapter Sixty-One: I'm also very sorry.

Fifteen minutes, or less.

The rustling sound of writing began to break out intermittently in the classroom. William looked up from his lesson plan and began to pay attention to the students with great interest.

Unlike his cheerful demeanor when he first stepped into the classroom, most people now showed obvious anxiety, especially those who had looked the most confident when the tests were handed out; cold sweat was breaking out on their foreheads, even though it was only September.

William began to walk slowly through the classroom, his gaze sweeping over the students' test papers. When he encountered a student who had answered a few more questions, he would silently note down the student's name and appearance.

After he spent ten minutes looking through everyone's exam papers, the classroom became incredibly oppressive.

The sound of quills writing on exam papers had disappeared from the classroom. Occasionally, someone would flip through the exam paper and start studying a new page, but the quills they picked up were put back down before they even touched the parchment.

The better the student, the greater the frustration they will experience when facing this exam paper—after working so hard for so long, they feel as if they haven't learned anything at all when faced with the OWLs exam questions.

By the time the exam had been going on for half an hour, the entire classroom had completely entered a period of inactivity.

All the students gave up on answering the questions. Some of the more impatient students had already started to mess with the fine bristles on their quill pens. Like authors nearing the end of the deadline, they frantically pulled out the bristles, as if this would give them some inspiration and allow them to quickly finish this damned exam paper as if they had been given some kind of magical spell.

"Clap!"

William stood on the podium and clapped his hands.

"Half an hour has passed, and I've noticed that everyone seems to have given up on answering the questions—should we collect the papers early to go over the questions, or should we give you another half hour to continue the exam?"

Almost everyone breathed a long sigh of relief. A few troublesome students seemed to want to raise some objections, but under the strange looks from those sitting nearby, they refrained from offering any objections.

"Alright, everyone, please hand your papers forward. Students in the first row, please hand your papers to me. Then, everyone, please take out your textbooks and read the first twenty pages."

An order that would have caused a commotion in the past was carried out with unparalleled obedience today, with the students handing over their exam papers as if they were handing over a hot potato.

A thick stack of exam papers was placed back on the desk, but the students below remained silent, as if they had been chilled by frost.

It wasn't until William began grading the papers that the students below started whispering among themselves.

How did you do?

"A complete failure—you did a little bit at the beginning, but you couldn't even understand what happened afterward. What about you?"

"Same, but when I did a question later, I felt like I hadn't encountered many of the concepts before. Was it really a question from a previous year's exam?"

"I don't know. The professor wouldn't lie to us, would he?"

...

"Hey, Nancy's crying, did you see?"

"I saw it. Keep your voice down. Do you want to be ostracized?"

...

On the podium, William was grading papers at lightning speed. There was very little writing on the thick stack of papers. Even if there were a few bold ones, he could mark them wrong from the beginning. With several questions being graded on each paper, the thick stack of papers was divided into three piles at a speed that was almost as fast as stamping.

When the last exam paper was thrown into the thickest stack, only five minutes had passed since William's scheduled one-hour exam time.

After spending five minutes rewriting the grades, William stood up and scanned the entire class.

"The exam papers are all graded. I guess no one wants me to read out the scores on the spot, right?"

No one responded—they were fifth graders; everyone knew what kind of grade they would get for how many answers they gave.

"Now we'll start calling out names and distributing the exam papers."

William mixed the three stacks of exam papers together in front of everyone, then shuffled them before starting to call out names.

After he had wandered around handing out the last exam paper, he returned to the podium and said in a forced, pained tone:

"Poor, very poor, extremely poor—that's my only assessment of my exam results."

"The best grade is P (poor), but even this grade was achieved by only three students."

“Nancy Varen of Ravenclaw, Guy Walker, and Lena Eddie of Hufflepuff, each of these three students has earned five points for their respective houses as a reward for the best performance—but all are forbidden from applauding.”

"This is not an ideal result, and I don't want anyone to be proud of it. According to the regulations of previous years, such a result would not be enough to get into the advanced class, let alone get the NEWTs certificate."

"I know some people may disagree, so let's give a brief explanation of the test paper."

William picked up his lesson plan book and turned to the pages containing the exam questions.

"Question 1 is from the 1990 OWLs exam; Question 5 is the same question."

"The second question is the eleventh question from the 1979 OWLs exam, the same question as the first one."

...

"The last question, from the 1975 exam, question eight, is the original question with one restriction removed."

William put down his lesson plan and looked around at all the students.

"All the questions, except for three with slightly modified restrictions, are original questions from the last twenty years."

"To prevent any questions from some students about the exam questions I selected that are older than you, I'd like to tell you something in advance."

"The Wizarding Examinations Authority—the organization responsible for the OWLs and NEWTs exams—is headed by Professor Gershilda Marchbane, who once served as Dumbledore's examiner. In my opinion, Professor Marchbane can serve as the head of the Authority for at least another thirty years. Therefore, the past exam questions from this long period will be our most valuable reference."

"Is this for real, Professor?"

"Dumbledore's examiner! Is this for real, Professor?"

"It's true, just like you almost submitted a blank exam paper, it's absolutely true."

William snorted, and with a single sentence, he brought the students, who had become slightly more lively, back to their original state.

No wonder the student was puzzled—he was shocked by the information he found when he was researching the Wizarding Examinations Authority, including Dumbledore's proctor!

It's like finding a photo of a great person in their youth, sparking a desire to explore, but unfortunately—the topic of this lesson isn't exploration.