She'll work up a draft, then, and ask Professor Reynolds to proofread it.

She's rather happy to help, and to help Ellie anonymize the source so it can't be traced to her (good practice, if nothing else).

(The Quibbler publishes Ellie's letter rather quickly. The Daily Prophet doesn't, even the more subtle variant Professor Reynolds suggests.)

Bah. Well, she did write it. And dwelling on it won't help her cast a Patronus, so she tries her best not to.

Their classes progress even outside of Dementor-related concerns, of course. Defense this year focuses a lot on the dangerous but relatively easy to learn how to handle magical creatures - the module they're moving into after Samhain is the less dangerous creatures that feed on emotions. Dementors are obviously an example of the broader category, but they're an unusually threatening and normally unusually rare one.

Most such creatures can't actually inspire the emotions they harvest - boggarts are the only ones you'll meet in the British Isles, other than Dementors, that can, so they spend a whole class period on those.

The practical half's a bit different than usual - the TA comes in to supervise the bulk of the class in work on general tactics for capturing and moving creatures (and knowing when to contact the relevant department) while Fay calls students across the hall one by one and in alphabetical order, where she has a wardrobe with a boggart locked in it set up.

It'll show what it thinks is your worst fear, she explains, though they're not always very good at it - if your worst fear is something abstract, it'll try to approximate that, even if the approximation makes you feel less afraid than a concrete representation of something less deeply terrifying would. (She jokes that a truly efficient boggart would just always turn into a spider, unless it's facing Hagrid, making the class chuckle.) Boggarts can't stand laughter or bravery, and the usual way to handle them is the Riddikulus spell, cast by imagining the boggart turning into something funny - ideally with some connection to what it originally turned into.

Seems like that might be a bit difficult, with some fears.

You can also try to confuse it - they get disoriented if there are multiple people nearby. But, yes, one of the great difficulties with boggarts, especially older, more clever ones, is that fears are often hard to laugh at. Many boggarts, especially as they get older, can also produce a fear aura, and they can sometimes trigger flashbacks.

So probably they should try to think about what their greatest fear is in advance?

She nods - as well as things you find funny, especially if you can think of ways to turn what you're afraid of into something humorous.

Right.

Anathema goes before Ellie, of course, as one of the first in their class. She comes back pouting a bit.

"All right?"

"Yeah."

"Stupid thing turned into a dementor... I guess I wasn't surprised, at least."

Bump. "That sucks. Did you manage the charm?"

"Yeah. Tried the Patronus first and got a bit of a shimmer, too! And then I turned it into a dancing vampire cloak. With paper fangs." 

Hee.

"That does sound funny."

"Yeah! It wasn't a very good dancer, though I guess that makes it funnier."

"I dunno what I'll do for mine."

"Do you know what it is?"

She shakes her head.

"Guess that's harder to figure out... You could always put whatever it is in a silly hat, I guess?"

"A classic. Or give it cat ears, maybe."

"Cats aren't funny," she says, mock serious. "They are elegant, vicious murder beasts."

"Right, so it's the juxtaposition that makes it amusing."

Giggle. "True."

Hee.

"I'll find a way to make it work."