Year Later – O.W.Ls and N.E.W.Ts

Kenneth woke up early in the morning feeling refreshed, Nagini was in deep sleep and naked next to him. It actually took him three months to completely put down his barrier and get intimate with her. He still remembered their first night, she acted as thought she was ready to battle to death and him being a "man" only fought back for dominance in the bed. Funnily enough, even though they wanted dominant position, they also gave into each other at times.

He kissed her on the cheek before getting up and getting dressed. It has been a year since he woke up in Voldemort's cave and a lot had happened since then. Well, by saying a lot, it was mainly on the front of magical knowledge and few connections he made due him creating personalised spatial items.

There was an influx of people coming into their store due to the promotion from Madam Malkin. The personalised spatial items had drawn in another influx of customers, to put it simply, their spatial abilities had become well known in the magical community. Not only that, they had decided to offer another service to customers, it was to increase the interior space of magical households within hidden areas such as Diagon Allay or Hogsmeade.

In the past year, he did not have much time to train in his innate magic, he was too busy either creating spatial items, personalised items or studying all the books he bought. Other than studying all the subjects to N.E.W.Ts level, he also started on Occlumency and Legilimency. Thanks to his mind scape he had perfect memory, this allowed him to memorize all the theory content in one go, however, even though he could memories everything, it did not mean he could comprehend them, it actually took him a whole year to go through everything and comprehend them. The subject he hated was potions, not because he lacked anything, it was easy for Kenneth to make the potions with his perfect memory. It's just that every potion took a long time to make, the easiest one actually took about 45 minutes and the longest ones took more than 3 hours, he found it incredibly boring and time wasting. Thankfully, he still could work on occlumency while waiting for the brew.

The concept of occlumency was very simple, it was to protect the memories that was in a person's mind scape. A person needed to create defences in their mind in order to stop consciousness of another person from reading or destroying the memories. Kenneth thought of how he wanted to build his defences, instead of blocking the opponent, he decided the delaying tactic. After all, a Legilimencer would need to keep continuous focus on the mind art in order to be successful, all Kenneth needed was to buy time in order to stop them. The first thing he did was to convert his soup bubble looking memories into canvases in the size of A3 paper and brought them all together. He then sorted the memories into two groups, one group he kept all his memories regarding the Bones Family, his previous life, Voldemort's experiment and all his innate and unique magical abilities, the other group he had the rest of his memories, this includes the common knowledge in magic. He also created few fake memories of his "time in France" and placed it in the second group.

The next thing he did was to recreate his and Nagini's home in the middle of his mind scape and placed the first group of memories in it, he then assigned the 7 mythical creatures to guard the place. Then, Kenneth created 7 identical homes in different locations of his mindscape, he copied the second group of memories 7 times before placing them into each of the houses, then he assigned a different type of dragon from his multitude of creatures in his mind scape to guard the 7 houses. He then started building a 3-dimensional maze, if the intruder was strong enough and had enough time, they would be able to go through the maze and find one of the 7 houses, but the maze would never lead to the core memories. Even if someone brute force themselves to finding his core memories, what was waiting for them was the 7 mythical creatures and Kenneth's soul body that was refined through 60 years of battling in the soul world. Not only that, Kenneth decided to build the entire maze in polished silver, the mirror effect only made the navigation of the maze more of a headache as direction within the maze became harder to discern.

Kenneth knew that wizards and witches who specialized in mind art like Dumbledore would be able to penetrate the mind without the victim realising it. So, Kenneth assigned all the other creatures to patrol around the maze. They will act as scouts to warn Kenneth of intruders.

Even though that was his plan for his mind scape, he still had not completed it. Even after an entire year, he was still at the 25% completion mark. He did not mind the time it was taking, he was keeping a low profile, by the time he went against someone who was good at legilimency, he would be ready. He also asked Nagini to start learning occlumency, even if he could not tell her everything, he would help her become stronger witch that did not need to fear anyone. After all, there will be a time in the future that he would have to reveal himself to the world and Voldemort, he could not be next to her to protect her all the time.

Legilimency was even easier for Kenneth, with his affinity with magic and his soul body, it was easy to invade others mind. He was in Diagon Ally, so there were many people he was able to practice on. However, he never read their memories, the moment he was able to access their minds, he pulled out.

His transformations improved as well, it was more fluid and more instant between the transformations. He also gained the ability to partially transform, for example, he could turn in eyes into an owl's eyes for night vision. He could bring out wings from him back if he needs to fly, although he could still do that by using gravity magic.

As for his quality of magic, it was still blue. Although the alicorn rune and the blue orb had continually been absorbing the atmospheric magic and refining it, it had not increased into the next level. Kenneth understood the reason. There was a large gap between the red magic available in the atmosphere and the blue magical force in his core, so he knew it would take even more time to jump into the Green magical core. It did not concern him too much either, because in the past year, of all the people that requested a customised spatial item, there was only a handful at the level of blue magical core.

"Heading out for the exams Mr. Webb? Today is the final day, isn't it? good luck as always!" said Jennet the day shift manager. Kenneth had gotten close to all the staff at their store and gotten to know few more shop owners and regulars in Diagon alley.

"Yes Jennet, I have placed all the required spatial items in the workshop, just take the ones that you require for the day. Also, Nagini is sleeping, don't wake her up unless it's important, she had an eventful night," Kenneth winked at the girl. Jennets face blushed with her mind going into a fantasy world at the two words, "eventful night".

The last three weeks, Kenneth has continually been going to the examination centre assigned by the Department of Magical Education (DEA) and Wizarding Examination Authority (WEA) to attend both O.W.Ls and N.E.W.Ts level exams. Although in Hogwarts you can only do your N.E.W.Ts after you completed your O.W.Ls, adults who wished to take the examination could do so by registering beforehand. Today was the last day, it was a practical examination on charms.

Kenneth transformed into the black cat he registered as an Animagus in the ministry and jumped onto the roof and started using time magic and accelerated through the rooftops of the alley towards the examination centre. People in the alley was already used to seeing his cat form running on the tops of the buildings. When he got to his destination, he transformed back into human and landed in front of the building.

"Good morning, professor Tofty," Kenneth called out to a grey-haired bald man that had a kind face. Kenneth had walked into an old looking building with the words "O.W.Ls and N.E.W.Ts examination centre". Tofty was an examiner in the WEA.

"Good morning, Mr. Webb, last day, is it? Come, let us start your examination, Professor Marchbanks is waiting to start," said Professor Tofty, then he went onto leading Kenneth in to an isolated room where another person was waiting for them.

"Good morning, Mr. Webb, let's get this over with, Tofty, please lead the examination, I'll just observe," called out the witch that was in the room, she was dressed in a scholarly fashion and long black robes. She had blond hair and dark brown eyes and wore a pointed hat. She was Griselda Marchbanks, the head of the WEA. She was not pleasant to work with, and was someone who valued connections, Kenneth not having such a connection made her dismissive of him. Of course, Kenneth did not mind, the less attention he got the better.

Prof. Tofty nodded at her and said, "Well then Mr. Webb, as we said in your previous practical examinations, in accordance to the guidelines given by the DME and WEA, two examiners will assess your examination for the fairness of all candidate, the examiners are myself and professor Marchbanks. Now we will give you a list of charms for you to preform, depending on the quality of your spells we give you a mark. Do you understand?"

"Yes," replied Kenneth. He then took a parchment handed to him by prof. Tofty and looked at it. it contained many high-level charms like anti-alohomora (anti-unlocking) charm, ascendio charm, gouging charm, extinguishing spell, reductor curse and many more. There was a note that said that if the spells were casted wordlessly there was additional marks for it.

After reading the parchment two times, Kenneth asked, "Professor, am I allowed to cast a charm that is on a higher level? Will that also be graded?"

"What charm would that be Mr. Webb?" asked prof. Tofty. They were both surprised, the charms on the scroll they handed over was already difficult, but the candidate wanted to cast a higher-level spell. Kenneth had attended 8 N.E.W.T level exams, normally people only go for 5, this made Kenneth more impressive.

"A Petronus charm," replied Kenneth.

"Oh my, you can do a Petronus?" asked prof. Tofty, raising his eyebrows.

"If you are unable to perform a full Petronus we will be deducting your mark, Mr. Webb. Are you sure you wish to proceed?" asked Prof. Marchbanks.

"Yes," he replied and drew his wand from its holster. He filled his mind with Nagini, then pointed his wand and made a circular spiral. The tip of his wand flashed a silver light and a jet a silver light transformed into a form of a cat. Kenneth's Petronus was not a cat, he could have it change into any creature in his mind, but he knew most Animagus had a Petronus that resembled their animal form.

"A-A-A wordless Petronus? A full corporal one at that?" stuttered Prof. Tofty.