Chapter Seven: The Diploma of General Mastery of Magic

The Admissions procedure in the Academic Committee of the Most Magical and Secret College (especially in today's context and present realities) can only be made exclusively in two modalities: either a letter of endorsement arrives at their doorstep from a Professor of competence by submission of sponsorship in the desired field of mastery, or a Scholarship Grant from the Wizengamot was awarded on the basis of extreme merit and promising dissertation proposal, called in the enrolled statutes of the Ministry of Magic as the Harry Potter Wizarding Grant.

The confidentiality of the student selection of the Secret College was also as mysterious and as secretive as the process involved in the magical enchantments of the Sorting Hat being used in the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardy. As it has always been the opening lines of the Sorting Hat's song, and before the formal sorting begins in the renowned school, the singing goes,

Oh you may not think I'm pretty, but don't judge on what you see, I'll eat myself if you can find a smarter hat than me.

The mystery to its context has been revealed with the associated clarity and convenience of the lyrics of the remaining lines, and most accomplished Wizards agree to the literal sense of the melody of the song, too, as part of the ceremony of the solemn tradition.

Whatever that purported message is.

This song is as telling as the objectives and academic purposes from where the reputation of the Academic Committee stands on its granite footstool, the pedestal of higher education involving "extraordinary mastery" on several extended subjects not normally covered in OWLs and NEWTs examintions (and advanced study of the core disciplines). Although there has been a belief once before that traverse the many years and centuries of History of Magic in the Medieval Times, and beforehand in the same era, the qualifications of Magical Education can only consist of two standardized gruelling tests administered by the Wizarding Examinations Authority: the Ordinary Wizarding Levels (or OWLs) taken in the fifth year, and the advanced level Nasty Exhausting Wizarding Test (or the NEWTs).

Although still a very important consideration, the results of these two tests are not the sole determinant of admission in the Secret College as it has been proven by the diversity of the selected entering class from the last ten years of the admissions cycle. While there are magical spells involved in the entire selection process, the admissions decision remains extremely competitive. Not even the most capable Professor of Charms can adequately explain the complexity of the magical properties involved in the imposed system.

The famous Sorting Hat of the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry gave an account of its own genesis in a series of songs. During the opening banquet at the beginning of each school year, first year students of the renowned school lined up and their names read aloud alphabetically by last name. Each then took a seat on a stool and placed the hat on their heads, preparing to be designated to the four Houses: Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, Slytherin, and Hufflepuff.

By physical standards, the hat looks battered and old by 1991; it was patched, frayed, and extremely dirty. In order to speak and sing, a tear along the brim opened like a mouth. It spoke to the wearer inside of the hat with a small, quiet voice, using Legilimency (the subject in Magic responsible for the act of magically navigating through the many layers of a person's mind and correctly interpreting one's findings). After a time of careful consideration, the hat announced its choice aloud for all to hear, and the student joined the selected House. The moment of consideration varied in time period from less than a second to over five minutes (known in school lingo as natstall).

A bona fide accepted student to the Secret College is now standing in front of a brick wall, in a train station somewhere in Brussels, and currently reading from a scroll to carefully dicepher the letter of the Dean of the Faculty Division for Basic Magical Mastery; he was trying to solve the answer to the complicated riddle lifted from the lyrics of the song of the Sorting Hat in order to gain access to the secret location of the Academic Committee's campus.

Attached to this scroll is the prospectus of the First Term of the Diploma of General Mastery of Magic, which reads as follows:

• Methods in Magical Mastery
• Strategic Magic
• Advanced Potions
• Advanced Transfiguration
• Advanced Divination
• Introductory Wandlore
• Duelling in Advanced Defense Against the Dark Arts
• Magical Geometry
• Thesis Proposal and Technical Writing

He glanced at the list of subjects anxiously while still trying to gain access to the door behind the red brick wall. His answers are futile so far, and the riddle has now become very frustrating. It was a bad omen for him (he has a strange fascination in the subject of Divination), and the first term has not even started yet.

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The Chapter is paid for by Emporio Armani.