-Please take your seats!- The voice carried across the hall, rising above the murmur of conversation.- Each of you has been assigned a seat. Please hurry.
Draco glanced around. He was sitting in one of the lower rows of a large lecture hall built like a Greek amphitheatre. At the very bottom of the quarter-circle-shaped room was a massive pulpit with a sloping desk. Standing next to it was an elderly wizard with completely grey hair contrasting with his dark complexion. He seemed to pay no attention to the people sitting in the benches in front of him. Behind the lecturer was a board consisting of several segments that could be swapped around.
-Silence, please! – one of the dozen or so assistants moving efficiently around the room spoke up again. – We’re about to begin.
The dragon swallowed hard and looked at the tabletop, at an envelope bearing a short inscription:
Draco Ignis
Transfer
Profile: Military
Year: 3
He looked around. He was sitting in the middle of the third row, with a girl in a rich dress sitting next to him with a haughty, smug expression on her face, and a nervous red-haired boy dressed in a worn linen shirt. While the prospective student ignored everything going on around her with superiority, the young man reacted to every loud noise by jumping up and looking around anxiously.
-Attention!- The assistant standing in the middle of the hall clapped his hands, and the thunderous sound echoed through the room, causing the wooden benches to shake.- The rules of the exam are as follows. In front of each of you is a set of sheets with tasks relevant to your applications. Depending on the type of test, the time will vary. Those retaking exams after their last year have forty-five minutes for each subject, up to a maximum of five hours. If someone passed the previous semester but wants to change their profile, they have three hours for the test. Those transferring from other schools and anyone who wants to start studying from a higher year have five hours for the exam. If
