"You're welcome."

And: back to the Cauldron. Professor Reynolds explains who they'll have to contact on the way - mostly one of the Ministry officials in the Department of Law Enforcement, as well as the Headmaster of Hogwarts, Albus Dumbledore. "Dumbledore is - a bit of a meddler," she says. "It'll be simpler to get things squared away with the Ministry first, and then inform Dumbledore of what we've decided, only bringing him in if the Ministry thinks you should stay at Hogwarts until the start of term..."

"If he's the headmaster and doesn't like this, couldn't he make things difficult at school?"

"Not easily - his involvement with the actual students and even professors is fairly minimal, and changes to that have to go through the school board, which has enough contentious politics they mostly get nothing done. The majority of policy decisions are delegated to the Deputy Headmistress, right now - she's the one who sent me to check in on you. The Headmaster makes hiring decisions and budgeting decisions for the school as a whole - and he would be the one who'd have to approve a summer residency program, but he's refused to do that for decades, even in answer to cases far more severe than yours. The most likely way he'd try to intervene would be forcing you back to your family over summer breaks - which he can't legally do if the Ministry's already made a decision about your guardianship."

"He could exert soft pressure on some professors, admittedly, to change how we treat students, but - he's not vindictive. Just very, very blindly convinced that blood is more important than anything else."

Ellie makes a face.

"He has good intentions. Which does sometimes end up with him very efficiently paving the road to Hell."

"Should pay more attention to where he's going," she mutters.

She nods, tightly. "Humans are often blind to where they're going, and an obsession with blood family is a common failing of wizarding culture. But the people currently in the Ministry's child protective services in many ways push in the opposite direction - and unlike muggle social services, they actually have any funding."

Nod.

"The Ministry offices should still be open, so I'll use the floo to contact Child Protective Services directly, rather than a letter - the floo is a sort of magical network of fireplaces, allowing transit and communication through them."

"Should I be there?"

"They'll likely want to talk to you at some point, yes, though I suspect they'd ask us to actually come in for any interviews."

"Okay. I'll be reading."

She nods. "I'll come get you if something changes."

And back to the Cauldron. Professor Reynolds heads up to the bar, asking to use their floo.

Ellie heads upstairs and pulls some books out of her trunk, settling down to read.

And Professor Reynolds comes up thirty minutes later.

"We have an appointment tomorrow morning," she says. "The visitor's entrance is in London proper, so we can do some shopping afterwards if you want."

"Sure."

"The appointment's at ten thirty. Do you want me to wake you at a specific time?"

"An hour before we have to leave?"

"Alright. Can do."

"Thanks."

Nod. "Do you want me to answer more questions, or help you with your spell work, more tonight?"

"Spell work? I have more books to read before I have questions, I think."

"Alright."

"It'll probably help to focus on Wingardium Leviosa a bit - it's a well understood spell, and a good example of the working parts of most charms..."

"Right." She gets the fir wand out.

And Professor Reynolds runs her through all the details of the charm - and how that ties into wider magical theory, and the similarities with related charms... She also helps Ellie develop mental models of what she wants to happen, and challenges Ellie to come up with creative uses of the charm for different scenarios. (Some of which weave in education about other fields - 'if you know a troll is weakest to concussion, but resistant to fire and magic...')