People do start peeling off after a little bit, in small groups led by upper years (Professor McGonagall doesn't want any younger students wandering off on their own) - Anathema's been having a low key sort of fun, but she does glance at Ellie to check if she's getting tired or bored.

She's willing to stay if Anathema wants to.

Lean. "Maybe another hour?"

"Fine by me."

She grins and goes back to listening.

And, about an hour later, she stands to slip away with one of the groups - slightly bigger, though it seems a good number intend to stay until midnight at least.

No thanks, it's bedtime.

Giggle.

Back to the castle, then - curfew's been suspended for tonight, of course, but Anathema's tired, too, and heads back to the dorm.

"Thanks for going with me."

"It was kinda fun to hear all those stories."

"Yeah! It was - really nice." Smile. "Lots of them were actually pretty different from what I grew up with..."

"I hadn't ever heard any of them. Muggles don't really celebrate this stuff."

"Huh. I knew muggle holidays were different, but didn't know it wasn't at all..."

"Christmas is the really big one."

"Huh. Yule's kinda important? But..." She shrugs. "I haven't done a lot of group holidays and stuff of course, but my impression was the winter ones are mostly ones you spend with your family quietly, not... Big celebrations? Though the equinoxes and solstices mostly are lower key... Samhain and Beltane are the huge ones for us, even people who don't really celebrate anything celebrate those."

"Yeah, Christmas is like that."

"Huh."

"Religions are weird."

"Yeah."

Shrug.

Bedtime?

Zzz.

There's nothing to do except study and play and relax for the next week, at least, until classes start up again Monday. Anathema spends a lot of it reading about spells and spell theory, ends up branching out some into some cool stuff they're not really centrally studying but that the school library has books on anyways - like rituals. Still, that's less definitely very cool than fight spells.

You just need to put more work in up front, but rituals are still pretty cool.

Yeah. There's a lot of big unique stuff they can do if you're good.

Professor Quirrell probably knows a lot about it.

Yeah, it sounds like he does from the way he talks...

They could stop by his office hours sometime, maybe.

Yeah. Maybe he can at least give reading recommendations.