Only a month and he would be free.

Admittedly it was a thought that filled him with guilt. Hogwarts had been so good to him, and to say he'd been eager to escape would have been a lie, but as he reached the final stretch of his Hogwarts career it became less about leaving the old behind and latching onto the new. He'd already signed with the Wasps, so he had a good idea of what to look forward to in his post-Hogwarts life, but his father had made one thing clear from the moment he'd signed the contract with the overly ornamental peacock feather quill: he would need to do well on his NEWT examinations to even think of having such a frivolous lifestyle.

And so he was here, for the third time this month, sitting in small table in the library across from Miss Rowan Yaxley. He'd made sure to pick one of the tables that one of he large bookshelves obscured from view, as the last thing he wanted to explain to his friends was that he was seeking the help of someone who was a sixth year, a Hufflepuff, and a girl to get him through the NEWT exams he wasn't sure he could get a passing score on. (The only reason he'd continued their tutoring sessions was because she'd proven more informative than he liked to admit—that and she answered any question without judgment because of the coins he'd slid across the table at the beginning of each session.)

"I know that's how I'm supposed to do it," he said, the frustration clear in his voice as he looked back between his notes and his textbook. Astronomy was one of the easiest classes, or so he'd thought when he'd received an 'O' on his OWL exam. But now that he was taking it at a NEWT-level, the charts had gotten more complicated and none of it made sense.

---