Tests and Courses

A/N - I'm in the process of moving to a different country and a new job. the slow releases are due to all the packing, cleaning and moving. thanks for understanding.

_______________________________

Next day, Kenneth arrive early morning to the training ground. The first course was to be on concealment, stealth, infiltration and tracking. He had thought that this was two courses, however, they both lead to a single building and was conducted at the same time. Therefore, he made a assumption that both courses was similar and was taught together.

With the help of the map they were given the previous day, Kenneth navigated through the training grounds and found himself in front of the building block A. This was were the class was to take place in. The building itself was fairly large, it had a metallic structure and looked like a old abandoned warehouse. In front of the building there were about 30 people standing around. With one look Kenneth knew that 20 of them was his batch mates, he guessed that the others were from the previous years, although he did not know why they would be here.

"Jason!" a voice called out to him, Kenneth turned to the families voice and replied, "Hey Isaac, how is it going?" the voice belonged to 29-year-old man named Isaac Garnett, a muggle born, after graduating from Hogwarts, he had gone back to the muggle world to help his family business. But after working for more than a decade, not being able to use magic freely made him feel depressed, so he left the business to his younger sibling and started looking for a job in the magical world. Since his N.E.W.Ts scores was fairly outstanding, he had decided to apply to become an auror. Personality vise, unlike Kenneth, Isaac was a social butterfly. He had introduced himself to everyone from their batch the previous day. Towards the end of the day, Isaac just ended up hanging around Kenneth the most. Kenneth did not mind, he found that even though Isaac talked a lot, he was not the annoying type, he knew when to talk and when not to.

"Nothing much, excited to officially start the training," Isaac replied, as if knowing what Kenneth was going to ask next, he continued, "I asked around, the extra people are from the previous years, apparently, the building had a section where they are able to train and gather knowledge themselves. They would not go into detail and said the senior auror will explain everything to us."

As if on cue, the door to the building A opened and a short, chubby man walked out of it. The man had a clean shave, bushy black hair and brown eyes. He was dressed in a old three piece suit and had a pocket watch with a chain attached to it that was coming out from his vest pocket. If not for his aged skin, one would think he was a 15-year-old child with his build.

"2nd and 3rd years, go in," he commanded and watched as the 2nd and the 3rd years enter the building, then he continued, "You lot must be the first years, quite the number compared to the previous years. First, let me introduce my self, I am Theodore Kenworthy. 80 years in the career of an auror, 50 of it as a senior auror. Due to my deteriorating health, I have taken up the role to train the new blood. To be honest, there is no point in my getting to know all of you. Only half of you will pass the training, and half of that will probably either die or be critically injured to continue the job in the first 3 months. In the end, if you are lucky, only 5 of you will actually experience the proper life of an auror. Now, follow me please." He turned around and lead the first years into the building.

Inside of the ground floor was extremely spacious, there was only one item in the place. "Is that what I think it is? If that is the case, then their method of imparting practical knowledge is pretty neat." thought Kenneth. It was a large, round plate like shallow basin that was filled with silvery liquid. Large enough for 50 people to stand around it, 4 of the trainees from previous years was standing around it with their eyes closed and their hand touching the liquid.

"Can anyone guess what this is?" asked the senior auror Theodore.

"It's a pensieve, a device made to store and recall memories," answered Isaac immediately, few of their batch mates nodded in affirmation and the rest took a second glance at the object.

"Right you are," smiled the senior auror, he continued, "this is one of the main reasons we do not need to lecture you all day. Inside the pensieve, there is a collection of more than 1000 successful missions since the establishment of the DMLE. You all can go through the experience of your predecessors and learn from their methods, if you head upstairs you will find all the books related to the magic they used in their missions."

He paused for a minute for what he said to sink in as the the first years started to mummer to each other, then continued, "You should know that the courses you need to complete are Concealment and Disguise and Stealth and Tracking, Battle Instinct, Best-Laid Plans, Dueling in the Dark, Field Training, History of the Dark Arts, Method in the Mad-Eye, Resilience Training, and The Auror Advantage. Of these courses, Best-Laid Plans, History of the Dark Arts and The Auror Advantage are theoretical, the rest are practical courses. The theoretical courses are the only ones that you will continue to receive lectures on, the practical courses will only get an introduction and the method of evaluation. The rest will be up to you. You are allowed to tackle the course evaluation test once a month for three years, when you are ready, simply speak with the senior auror that is in charge of the course and he will arrange the test. Field training course is the last one you will attempt, you will need to pass all the other 8 courses in order to attempt it. In this course, you will be assigned to one senior auror and complete few missions with him. If the senior auror deem that you are ready, only then you will be come a full fledged auror. Any questions?"

One of the recruits whom Kenneth did not know asked, "How is the concealment, disguise, stealth and tracking course evaluated?"

"I was just getting to that, please follow me," the senior auror lead the group in to the back of the building. There was a large fence and behind it was a dense forest, Theodore explained, "Inside this forest have different camps and colonies of creatures, you will find both intelligent and non-intelligent creatures in there. Although you will not find any 5X creatures, there are creatures from trolls and giants to centaurs and merpeople. There are three tokens like this hidden with in this forest," he pulled out an metal token with the DMLE insignia engrave in it showed the group and continued, "the location of these tokens change every month, sometimes they are guarded by the creatures, sometimes they are not. When they are not guarded by creatures, you will need to collect information from them for clues on where the token might be. Your job will be to retrieve all three tokens within a month's time from the start of the test WITHOUT being detected." He emphasized and continued, "If the test is completed correctly then you will not need to fight any of these creatures, but on the event of you being discovered and is in need to fight, you are not to kill any creature in the forest, they have also promised us not to kill any of you as well. However, we can only assure you that the intelligent creatures will follow this rule, creatures like trolls, giants and acromantula are harder to control and they might get heavy handed sometimes. I warn you now, there has been deaths before, so I suggest that you only attempt this test when you are fully equipped. any questions?" he asked.

Isaac asked, "Can we team up with people?"

"You can, but you must register you team before you enter. Also, if a single member of your team is detected then your whole team fails the test and will need to restart the next month. For your information, we almost always get groups formed when taking the test as the forest is large and it would be difficult for a single person to track and locate all three tokens." replied the senior Auror.

Theodore asked if they had more questions and when no one raised any he simply told them to start using the pensieve and the books on the first floor, and that if anyone was injured from failed magic, others should help them to go to the building block H for treatment and left the first years alone.

The first years started to mummer and form groups while Kenneth asked Isaac, "what do you think?"

"There is not much to think about, we should really prepare for the task, most magical creature's hide is magic resistant so we really should focus on stealth and concealment, do you want to team up?" He asked.

"Not for now," Kenneth replied, "I think we should do the test every other month, not to pass, Theodore said that the forest is big, but I think the camps and colonies won't move around much. We should scout and create some sort of a map, of course, before that, I am very interested in the magical library upstairs. Even in N.E.W.Ts transfiguration we only ever learned to partial transform out bodies, some even had difficulty in transforming their hair color. The magic upstairs should be more advanced than than."

Isaac nodded while they started to make their way back into the building. Isaac started to use the pensieve while Kenneth headed upstairs to the library. He would go through few of the memories stored in the pensieve, but there was no way he was going to waste time in going through everything as it would take too much time. He wanted to train quickly as possible to get into the field. With that Kenneth started getting into another routine.

Days flew by as Kenneth got to know more about the other courses.

Best-Laid Plans had strategic theory in it. The theory consisted of strategies to use when one is fighting an individual fight, multiple opponent fight, two groups of fighting each other and strategies used in a war like situations. The course was theoretical but there was a pensieve that they could use to watch different applications of the strategies that was taught, used in real life.

Battle Instinct was simple yet hard, the building consisted of 50 domes, a single person could enter one dome any given time. Inside these domes, there were floating crystals, these crystals shot out beams of non-lethal magic randomly. The goal of the trainee was to deflect, dodge and defend against 100 of these beams of light consecutively. Each dome had 5 different difficulty levels, if the trainee passed the 5th difficulty level, then they pass the course.

Dueling in the dark, as the name suggested, the trainees was placed randomly inside a barely lit building that had a setting of a city that was in ruins. It was a free for all fight, the goal was to be the last man or women standing. If you were able to be win 20 times you pass the course. You were allowed to team up, however, there can only be one person left at the end of the fight.

History of Dark Arts was interesting, not only did they studied the history of dark magic and who invented them. They also studied the lives of the people who invented these dark magic, their personalities, their actions and their reason for inventing such magic was also discussed and speculated. Kenneth noticed that no matter which person they talked and studied about, the senior auror always emphasized on how "evil" these wizards and witches are.

Methods of the Mad-Eye was skin crawling, they had to train in the unforgivable curses on animals and other various and cruel way to torture to get answers. There was no "test", when Mad-Eye Moody deemed that you are "tough" enough, you pass.

Resilience training was about you standing in one place and getting hit by different spells. There was a set of spells each trainee had to experience with their body, this includes the cruciatus and the imperious curse. The goal was to shake off the after effects of these spells, jinxes and curses and to get back on your feet before a set time and be ready to fight again.

The Auror Advantage was about different and difficult situation an auror might have to face while on duty, and what sort of response the auror had to take on each situation. Kenneth summed up that every situation had a simple solution, as long as he picked the "greater good" or "lesser of the two evil" he would pass the theoretical exam.

To Kenneth, a lot of these courses was easy, however, due to the advance magical books available. He was going to take his time in passing the courses. Only when he had a copy of each book in his mind-scape he would tackle the tests.