Harry Potter: From Muggle Cousin to Conceptual Wizard

Chapter 323 End-of-Term Banquet, College Awards Results!

It is now the third week of June 1992.

The academic year is coming to an end, and in two days the end-of-term dinner will be held to announce the final rankings of the college awards.

Prior to this, the final exams for all grades at Hogwarts had been completed during the first week of June.

This includes the OWL exam in the fifth year (the common wizard level exam) and the NEWT exam in the seventh year (the ultimate wizard exam).

The exam results were all released in the second week of June.

Therefore, the individual grades of the Hogwarts students, whether they were happy or sad, have now been settled. Whether they cried or laughed, it's all in the past.

The only remaining, and biggest, suspense for this academic year is the ranking of the college awards.

Thanks to Hogwarts' sweeping educational reforms, students from all four houses are working exceptionally hard this academic year, as if they've been injected with adrenaline.

The scoring hourglasses for the four colleges in the main auditorium on the first floor showed a rare occurrence where the scores were very close.

The four academies are all very close, so the rankings change every day. Until the very last moment, it is impossible to determine who will win the academy award.

Therefore, even though there were only two days left, the students of the four colleges did not give up and were all trying their best to perform and win extra points for their colleges.

Dudley had no interest in college awards or bonus/deduction points; he didn't even take the final exams, and no one objected.

However, this atmosphere where all students are working hard for their own college will generate a great deal of identification and love for their own college, and a great deal of loving energy will be absorbed into the symbolic flags of the four colleges.

This is quite advantageous for Dudley and his friends' plan to use the power of love to protect the four great treasures of Hogwarts.

So, after the experiment with the Soul-Anesthetic Potion was over, Dudley used the remaining two days to add fuel to the fire.

He added points to the students on the trial space leaderboard according to their performance in clearing the challenges, making the competition among the four academies even more intense.

They then sought out Dumbledore and conspired with him about the College Awards and the arrangements for graduates.

They also secretly added traces to the seven-year students who failed the four tests of the Sorting Hat and were about to graduate this academic year, without anyone noticing.

Time flew by, and soon it was time for the final dinner two days later.

Unlike the Christmas dinner, Ecclesia was unconscious and unable to attend. Snape knew that Lily was on the verge of resurrection and that he wouldn't have to serve the madwoman anymore, so everyone at the banquet was genuinely happy.

Yes, at least until the results of the Academy Awards are announced.

The end-of-term dinner consists of eating first, followed by the announcement of the college awards.

To prevent students from knowing the results beforehand and losing their appetite, the scoring hourglass was covered yesterday with a silk cloth imbued with concealing magic.

And so, the students secretly calculated based on their scores from the day before yesterday, and the dinner tasted much less delicious.

Finally, we finished eating dinner.

Everyone put down their cutlery, and Dumbledore began to speak.

He began by briefly summarizing the positive changes that had taken place at Hogwarts this academic year, and then encouraged all the students.

The gist of it was that everyone worked very hard, the result wasn't the most important thing, and that friendship came first, not competition.

But not many people listened.

Friendship is important, and so are rankings.

If it weren't for this result, why would we have argued for so long?

Dumbledore knew these words were useless, so he only mentioned them briefly before getting to the point.

"Let's reveal the final results of the Academy Awards!"

As Dumbledore spoke, he waved away the silk cloth covering the hourglass, “Fourth place, Gryffindor, 567 points; Third place, Hufflepuff, 569 points; Second place, Slytherin, 574 points; First place, Ravenclaw, 576 points.”

As soon as the results were announced, many of the flags floating above the auditorium were replaced with the Eagle School flag.

And the students' reactions below...

The Griffith College students could no longer laugh.

The Badger students felt pretty good; they neither laughed nor cried. With the score so close, they still managed to get third place, which could be considered a blessing from Merlin.

The Slytherin students cheered sparsely and reluctantly, because they were used to being number one and didn't feel good about being number two.

They believe that the end of the pure-blood supremacy ideology this academic year, and the emergence of Dudley, has deeply frustrated the pure-blood Slytherins and more or less affected the performance of Slytherin.

The students from Takahashi were thrilled to have won first place, but intelligent people rarely laughed unrestrainedly; they simply clapped their hands with a little more force.

Therefore, even though the scores of the four colleges were far higher than in previous years, the applause and cheers in the auditorium were far less than in previous years.

Seeing this, Dumbledore offered words of comfort:

"The scores of the four colleges are all very high, and the difference is not big. This ranking does not mean anything. Everyone is excellent."

Dumbledore was met with another sparse round of applause.

This made Old Deng very upset. According to the original plan, he wanted to find a few more scoring points for Gryphon and push Gryphon to first place, but Dali seriously rejected his idea.

Dali believes that some rules can be disregarded, but overall fairness and impartiality must be guaranteed.

If it were like the original story, Gryffindor would be ranked fourth, but Dumbledore would still give Hermione 50 points, Ron 50 points, Harry 60 points, and Neville 10 points, which would just surpass Slytherin, who was ranked first.

That would truly be bullying a child.

Not to mention that all the extra points for the main characters in the original story were related to the Philosopher's Stone challenge arranged by Old Dumbledore, these points were obtained unfairly in the first place. Even if they were to be given extra points for this, it would be too outrageous to give them extra points of fifty or sixty points at a time.

You should know that students usually score one or two points each time, maybe five or ten points at best, and at most twenty points.

After the rankings were revealed and the first-place winner was overjoyed, the last-place winner was given an extra 170 points, surpassing the first-place winner. This favoritism is outrageous.

Now that Hogwarts' ideological education reforms are beginning to show results, such blatant cheating must never happen, and should never happen again.

Otherwise, it would be a huge blow to the achievements of education reform.

But letting the students remain so sullen is not an option either, as it would hinder the collection of the last wave of love and support by the four colleges' symbolic flags hanging on the wall behind the faculty and staff seating area.

So Dumbledore spoke up according to the plan he had discussed with Dudley beforehand:

"The results of this academic year's college awards have been determined and cannot be changed, but the results of the next academic year and beyond are still unknown."

To make the House Awards more relevant to Hogwarts' current educational reforms, we will be making some adjustments to the rules and adding new content.

Now, please welcome our First Assistant Teacher of Hogwarts, Mr. Dudley Dursley, to provide a detailed explanation.