Fifth year had its own particular flavour of pressure, and the O.W.L.s were most of it.
The structure was simple and brutal. Fifth-year O.W.L.s determined access to sixth and seventh-year N.E.W.T.-level classes. No O.W.L., no N.E.W.T. No N.E.W.T. certificate, no professional qualification in that discipline. The Ministry's standards for desirable careers — Auror, Healer, Curse-Breaker, anything with genuine standing — typically required five N.E.W.T.s at high grade. Which meant the O.W.L.s, two years in advance, were effectively the first real gate.
Snape required an Outstanding on the Potions O.W.L. Full stop. An Exceeds Expectations would not do. The rationale, never stated but universally understood, was that the advanced Potions curriculum was genuinely dangerous at the N.E.W.T. level and Snape had no interest in teaching students who would kill themselves or others due to inadequate fundamentals. Whether or not this was entirely true, the standard was the standard.
Harry and Ron had arrived at Kevin's workroom that morning carrying the specific expression of people who have done accurate self-assessment and don't like what they found.
"You're a Potions professor," Harry said. "You teach it. You must know what's going to be on the exams."
Kevin looked up from his notes. "O.W.L.s are set by the Ministry's Examination Board, not Hogwarts staff. I don't receive the papers in advance. Nobody does."
"Can't you at least predict—"
"Professor Flitwick's been teaching for forty years and he still gets surprised." Kevin returned to his work. "What do you want me to do, commune with Trelawney?"
They deflated onto the sofa in tandem, with the synchronised despair of long-practised partners.
Kevin kept annotating his notes. Their Potions fundamentals were actually solid — he'd been quietly feeding them corrections and refinements since second year, filling gaps without making a production of it. The problem wasn't knowledge. The problem was that the moment they sat down in Snape's presence and picked up a ladle, every piece of that knowledge apparently evacuated their heads completely.
"I finished a study guide last week," Kevin said, to the ceiling. "Fifth-year Potions, exam focus. Might be useful to someone. Might not. I was talking to myself."
The sofa produced sounds of violent motion. Harry appeared at his elbow.
"Kevin," Harry said, with great feeling. "Absolute legend. I'd compare you to Merlin but Merlin never helped me pass an exam."
"Kevin." Ron appeared at his other elbow. "I will personally ensure that Ginny names her firstborn after you."
"Ginny will name her firstborn whatever she likes and it won't be Kevin."
"Kevin—"
"Here." He closed the notebook and handed it over. "Don't just memorise the Draught of Peace and assume that's the exam. Study everything in it."
Harry clutched the notebook.
The door opened. Hermione walked in, took in the scene — Ron was now horizontal on the sofa, one arm draped over his face in relief, Harry pressing the notebook to his chest as though it were a sacred object — and looked at Kevin with an expression of patient exasperation.
"What did you give them?"
"Study notes."
"Perfectly good study notes that were available the whole time?"
"Apparently."
She sat down beside him, opened her own Transfiguration text, and after a moment, without looking up: "What do you think will come up in Potions?"
Kevin considered. Not what he remembered of the films — those were unreliable at this level of granularity — but what made sense given the curriculum progression, what demonstrated the range of skills the examiners needed to assess at O.W.L. level, what a well-designed exam would include.
"Draught of Peace, possibly. It covers precision, temperature control, ingredient timing. Good O.W.L. territory."
Harry and Ron both went very still.
"You know," Kevin said pleasantly, "I could be wrong."
He was, he thought, probably not wrong.
The corridor outside the Transfiguration classrooms was dim at this hour, most of the torches banked down for the night. The stone held the cold the way it always did in February, and the sound carried further than it should.
Draco stood with his shoulder against a pillar, arms crossed.
Across from him, the man in the Ministry suit had his face in shadow and his voice at the precise volume of someone who is accustomed to conversations that need to stay private.
"Half a month, Draco. The Dark Lord isn't known for his patience."
"If he wants the thing so badly, he can come get it himself." Draco kept his voice flat. Tired. "The castle is enormous, the Room of Requirement doesn't announce itself, and I can't go crawling around in there every night without someone noticing. Kevin is — present. Constantly."
"You want to die?"
"Careful how you finish that sentence."
"The Dark Lord will—"
"The Dark Lord," Draco said, stepping forward, voice dropping to something quieter and considerably more dangerous, "is not here. You are here. And you don't get to stand in this corridor and tell me about dying, Greider, when you know as well as I do that if I fail, neither of us is walking away from it."
The man — Greider, Ministry badge, Death Eater behind it — said nothing for a moment. His face moved into the torchlight long enough to show a blank, calculating expression.
"Find it," he said. "End of month."
He stepped back into the shadow and turned away.
Draco stood in the corridor alone and said nothing. His fist was tight at his side. He pressed it against the pillar once, hard, feeling the stone.
Then he walked away.