Closed A Textbook Case

[Corn Seymour VII]

Approval ID #122620​

OWLs. OWLs. The thought that had obsessively plagued Cornelius' every thought for a year was here, leaving him nowhere to hide. He had studied, Merlin how he had studied. He felt as though the pages of his textbook were burned into his retinas, for all the time he had spent staring at them. And yet somehow, Cornelius had managed to take nothing in. The information was all tangled and knotted in his brain, information that should be tidy and clear instead tied into a rat king of terror. He was stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid, a complete and total failure, the end of the great line of Cornelius Seymours. Matter of fact, that was the only way he had ever managed to be outstanding. Such a complete and total f*ckup that he was undoing seven generations of heritage, all in one lifetime.

It was a thought that made Cornelius sick to his stomach, and had led him to desperate measures. He couldn't fail his family, there wasn't a single worse fate that he could think of. And it wasn't cheating... not really. Just a memory aid, really. When you thought about it. Other people could keep information nice and tidy inside their heads, herds of walking textbooks roaming the halls, but Cornelius had never been cut out for that life. No, he was no good at storing information inside his head. So what was so wrong with storing it on the outside instead? He was just putting himself on an even playing field, really. And this way he could answer all the questions easily, get through his OWLs, and avoid completely shaming his entire family.

Cornelius could feel his heart thudding in his adam's apple as he was checked for the standard cheating apparatuses - enchanted quills and the like. He hadn't gone for anything quite so obvious, and he couldn't see any reason it wouldn't work. The scans were looking for magic, after all, and he had removed as much of that from the equation as possible. He had even used a muggle pen to be safe, painstakingly copying pages and pages of his Defense textbook onto his arms in the tiniest font he could manage. It had taken most of the night, he had barely slept at all, but he was fairly sure his exhaustion would be chalked up to a late night cram session. Which, he supposed, it had been, really. He had just been cramming the information onto his forearms, instead of into his brain.

Scans passed, Cornelius let out a shaky breath as he took his seat. He had made it. All he had to do was keep his head down and make sure Professor Cade and the Ministry proctor didn't see him rolling up his sleeve. The adrenaline had his blood rushing in his ears almost loud enough that he missed the call to begin. But he turned over his parchment with the rest of his classmates, an entire roomful of students descending into the same misty unknowns. But Cornelius was unique, the scrawls on his arm a light in the darkness, his saving grace. He didn't even check what the first question was before inching his sleeve up - it hardly mattered. Even if he thought he knew the answer, going by the book was going to be a much more surefire way to go. He winced when he actually saw his arm - the nervous sweats had smudged a lot of the writing into unreadable blurs. Far more of it than he could afford, frankly. As if to rub it in, Cornelius felt his nervous sweats get even worse at the revelation. But it wasn't all a total write off, and thankfully he could see the first answer he was looking for, jotted neatly just over his radial artery, and he quickly began copying it onto his parchment. This was going to work, he was sure. Most of the writing wasn't totally smeared, and it would be plenty to get him past this horrible, nightmarish ordeal, and cruising through towards his future as an Auror.

Despite needing a bit of help, Cornelius couldn't help thinking he was actually the smartest person in this room.