Throughout Hogwarts, Defense Against the Dark Arts is perhaps the most unique course.

If defined according to ancient standards, this course, which should have been called "Magical Combat," is not a general education subject in the conventional sense, but rather a compendium teaching wizards how to integrate their knowledge and power.

Potions, Herbology, Astronomy, Divination, Charms, Transfiguration, Alchemy, Magical Creatures, Runes... all of these are categories and summaries of magic that wizards have developed over time. Each piece of knowledge itself represents power. The reason for this course's existence is to teach people how to transform this knowledge into power and how to protect themselves from harm.

For example, this class will teach young wizards how to deal with Boggarts, Grindylows, Red Caps, Hinkypunks—magical creatures that still pose some threat to wizards. This course will teach young wizards how to handle poisonous nettles, Devil's Snare disguised as agave, angry Gurdyroots, and undiluted Bubotuber pus. This course will tell young wizards how to distinguish between chocolates laced with love potions, brandy mixed with choking potions, or lethal doses of Draught of Living Death...

Of course, more importantly, it mainly focuses on how to properly use spells for magical combat and how to break various curses.

A few days later, the content of the practical exam set by Professor Apocalypse gradually spread throughout the school, quickly becoming the focus of daily discussions among students, even overshadowing everyone's attention to O.W.L.s.

Due to the frequent changes in the professor teaching this course, the exam questions and methods vary slightly each year. If it were just a normal practical test, it wouldn't have caused such heated discussion. What the many young wizards never expected was that this assessment was actually a large-scale activity that could be participated in repeatedly, and the difficulty and rewards also exceeded everyone's expectations.

The name of this test is "The Defense Against the Dark Arts Trial," but students privately prefer to call it "The Devil's Trial."

If it were just an exam that could be taken repeatedly, that would be one thing.

The most crucial point is that this Defense Against the Dark Arts practical exam is clearly a comprehensive practical test involving multiple subjects!

According to the professors, the students' performance in this activity will also be used as a practical score assessment for other subjects, included in the overall score of each subject in a certain proportion, and will be one of the topics for the next parents' meeting.

On the other hand, any team of young wizards who successfully pass all the assessments can also win a summer vacation package sponsored by Gringotts Wizarding Bank for their families, with travel destinations covering dozens of well-known magical countries, including Egypt, Greece, Italy, Germany, France, Russia, Ukraine...

Of course, it can also be exchanged for a Galleon reward, worth about five hundred Galleons.

From the start of the exam until the end of the semester, everyone has one chance to participate in the assessment each day.

Except for the first attempt, subsequent assessments do not restrict team formations across grades or houses, and the difficulty of the assessment content will be adjusted accordingly based on the average grade level, to ensure relative fairness.

Regarding this year's unique exam method, the school's professors also made a joint statement.

The professors stated that the assessment content in each stage would not exceed the knowledge that students have learned in class, neither intentionally increasing the difficulty nor letting things slide to accommodate the emotions of the young wizards. If, by the end of the semester, the number of teams of young wizards who successfully pass the trials is greater than 33, then not much homework will be assigned for the summer vacation; otherwise... it will be doubled.

However, as of now, no team of young wizards has been able to successfully pass all the trials.

After experiencing several failures, a strange saying suddenly appeared in Hogwarts: this is actually a declaration of war from the school's professors, wanting to find a seemingly reasonable excuse to increase the amount of summer homework.

On the other hand, Hogwarts also hopes to lower everyone's scores through this format, so that when the professors face the parents at the next parents' meeting, they can have more to talk about.

As this well-reasoned conspiracy theory gradually spread, more and more students began to agree with this, and they formed strategy groups in private, preparing to unite and destroy the professors' evil plan, gathering everyone's strength to break through this final exam as soon as possible for a pleasant vacation.

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"Based on the current intelligence, almost all the professors of the main subjects have participated in it and have set up different levels according to the characteristics of their subjects. In other words, the team that wants to successfully pass the trials must ensure that it covers all subjects..."

In the Great Hall of Hogwarts, the atmosphere was extremely solemn. The prefects of the four houses and the members of the strategy groups gathered together to exchange the information they had obtained. Everyone's expression was particularly serious, even more focused than during the exams.

The information that the young wizards possessed was mainly divided into two categories: one was the experience and lessons they had summarized after repeatedly failing in "The Defense Against the Dark Arts Trial" these days, and the other was the information revealed by Ailina Kaslana.

Since there may be dangers in the practical test, each group of young wizards will be accompanied by Ailina throughout the entire process after choosing to start the test, to provide treatment or terminate the continuation of the magic test at any time. Even if she cannot directly help the young wizards participating in the test due to the professors' requirements, she has quietly revealed a lot of information these days.

Although at the beginning, many older students once thought that Ailina was also in cahoots with the professors, the friendship of jointly "running dungeons" these days gradually dispelled the young wizards' suspicions.

Even though Ailina Kaslana's current identity belongs to an "official NPC," she has been playing the role of guide and healer throughout the entire "dungeon." This is like in a dungeon that tortures players to near death, there is a righteous partner who always accompanies the players, so naturally, they would not be a bad person.

In comparison, the young wizards would rather believe that the professors, in order to restrict Ailina's performance, forcibly excluded Ailina, who had the ability to disrupt the situation, from this assessment with the reason of "Potions teaching assistant," preventing the students from successfully passing the trials.

After the Quidditch match, such a result would actually be reasonable.

"According to Ailina, there are a total of seven levels, and the final level can only be opened after passing the first six levels. Otherwise, only a certain bonus can be obtained. If there are no accidents, these seven levels should cover most of the course content, including Flying class. And the most excessive thing is that each level will automatically adjust the difficulty and assessment standards according to the different personnel entering."

Percy Weasley's face was a little ugly.

As a top student, he hadn't even passed the second level, and his overall assessment only got a poor score—even though as a fifth-year student, he wasn't actually required to participate in this assessment. At first, he just had a playful attitude, but this was still an unacceptable defeat for him.

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Chapter 1, Holy Moly!!

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