giant snakes? in my magical boarding school? it's more likely than you think
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"Recommended reading would help."

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She makes a list of books for them, then, including 'old History textbooks' with chapter recommendations, but also including a few more narrow focus history books.

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Professor Reynolds is great.

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"If you two have questions about anything in the books, I might also be able to help..."

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"We'll keep that in mind."

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"Yeah."

"Thanks, Professor."

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"You're both welcome."

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Smile.

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The conversation drifts elsewhere, after that - though Ellie and Anathema will eventually have to go back to their dorm and back to the grind of classes.

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Such is student life.

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Student life, sadly, continues dominating their lives over the next month and a half. They don't get Lockhart fired, or even a really systemic solution to History education set up - a couple of Professors work together to get the fifth through seventh years enough classes to not flounder too much, but the lower years are left to their own initiative pretty much. Professor Reynolds ends up helping supervise a mixed years club to learn at least some history. Professor McGonagall apparently gets annoyed at Lockhart enough to start offsetting every single time he rewards or takes away points, which makes the requirements to attend his class or serve detention with him basically toothless.

And then, on October Thirty First - a Saturday, so the first day of Samhain week, full of feasts and stories and laughter and their magical culture roommates setting up altars for the dead, curfews entirely suspended for the entire week -

Late in the evening of October Thirty First, as Ellie and Anathema are walking down the hall -

Ellie hears a voice.

Kill.

It repeats itself, soft, susurrating, rising and falling like a hiss of sand on stone.

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"-Do you hear that?"

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"The voice? It's soft, but... I think it's saying - 'kill.'"

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"Oh good, I'm not going mad. We should go tell Professor Reynolds."

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"Yeah."

"Probably there's a ghost messing with us but 'cause it's Samhain it could be something weirder and messing with people like that is bad on Samhain."

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"Never had a ghost mess like that before."

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"Yeah. Peeves isn't this subtle." She glances around, unsure, trying to figure out the best way to Professor Reynolds' quarters from here.

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"This way, I think." Ellie sets off.

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The voice recedes, vanishing.

And - in the direction they're going, nearby -

Someone screams.

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Oh that had better be a ghost prank-

Ellie summons a house elf. "Can you find Professor Reynolds and tell her that we might need help in this area, please?"

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The house elf nods, solemnly, and vanishes with a pop.

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"Should we - wait?"

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"I think we should go see what that was."

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She nods, setting off at a careful run.

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Ellie trots after, wand in hand.

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