look we all know what the best magical creature is
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Anathema handles a lot of their early network building, at least among her and Ellie's friends.

She writes Serpens - then Serpens' mom. She promises to tutor Serpens' little sister, Lyra. She discusses safety with Fay, who puts their house under a Fidelius with Sirius as the Secret Keeper, and how to arrange tutoring and meetings over the summer is then a complicated question. Anathema and Lyra end up just meeting in public at the Leaky Cauldron - it's safe enough right now, and Narcissa Malfoy seems interested in making statements to passerby anyways.

She writes their roommates, and then the other Ravenclaws, and the other muggleborns she's even vaguely acquainted with. She warns them about Voldemort, about the attacks on muggleborns and their families last time. They set up a small network already - someone digs up the newspaper reports on attacks from the last war, finds they had a range of times they happened in (always at nights) and the more nervous students arrange phone call check ins during that time - they'll then call Professor Reynolds if anything's wrong. (Nowhere near everyone's part of that network yet, and probably if nothing actually happens it'll fade a bit in people's minds, but - it's getting them talking. It gets them everyone's phone numbers, and the addresses of anyone who's moved since Fay delivered their Hogwarts letter.)

(And to few of those she trusts, Anathema sends instructions on how to cast the Killing Curse and on how to clear your wand of it so Priori Incantatum won't catch it. It's better than your family dying, and she also gets help finding the relevant laws then sends copies of the parts of the legal code about defenses in court for casting it.)

She digs through her mother's vaults - according to the goblins, Bellatrix hasn't accessed them at all since the end of third year - first for paired mirrors and lucks out on a set probably meant for propping up on vanities. They're big, with pretty frames and enough reception to talk from other sides of a continent. She bundles up one and sends it to Elodie early in the summer.

(Sirius gets a hold of a new wand and starts joining their family spars every day. He contacts Dumbledore, explains his case, and offers his dead mother's home as a headquarters for Dumbledore's own network - the Order of the Phoenix. Sirius still stays with their family, though, and he isn't even the Secret Keeper for Dumbledore's safe house. He stays up late at night with Fay planning, discussing which members of Dumbledore's network might be more likely to side with them.)

Anathema arranges a meeting with Dumbledore, to explain Bellatrix. He examines her gravely, and promises he'll do what he can.

And then - training, mostly. They pass all their OWLs with flying colors (slightly lower flying colors in Potions and Herbology, but, well, they at least could still take the NEWT in them if they wanted). Their Transfiguration, History, and Defense OWLs have notable mentions for high scores. They need to pick classes for next year - Anathema does NEWT Transfiguration, Defense, and Charms, and arranges to test into Music (joining the fourth years) and Astronomy (joining the third years), and signs up for Ancient Greek (joining the second years).

Anathema's somewhere between 'exhausted' and 'manic' much of the summer, and she takes to curling up with Ellie as she writes letters.

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Ellie takes the same NEWTs, and switches to Care of Magical Creatures and Latin. That'll cover all the electives but Divination (which is only debatably useful without an inborn talent, in her opinion) between the pair of them. She's hoping they'll do some winged beings in Care of Magical Creatures so she can get a closer look at how they work for her own transformation.

While cuddling Anathema, she works out study guides for Potions and Herbology so they can keep the material fresh if they decide to go for NEWTs in those subjects as well.

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Is Ellie aware Anathema loves her? Because Anathema loves her. 

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The feeling is entirely mutual.

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Kiss.

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Kisses!

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She giggles.

(Ellie also gets an owl offering her the position of school Prefect, though it notes she can turn it down. Included is a post script from Professor Flitwick that if she does turn it down, Anathema's next on his list, so if Anathema could include her acceptance or rejection in with Ellie's possible rejection he'd appreciate it.)

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"D'you think I should take it?"

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"I wouldn't. It'll be a lot of our free time, for not a lot more ability to move around... We could ignore curfew but we already do that sometimes anyways."

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"Good points. A cloak's better than a badge. Want to write up your rejection too? I'll post them together."

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"Sure."

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So she dashes off a quick letter to Professor Flitwick explaining that she doesn't believe she will have time to adequately discharge the responsibilities involved, with regrets, and send that along with Anathema's letter back to him.

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Good.

(Less good is the news - Fudge seems to be refusing to believe Voldemort is back, blaming the Hogwarts attack on a mixture of copy cats and French insurgents. The Prophet keeps slandering the French Minister for not keeping her country under control, and for permitting violent people in through the Tournament guest screening process. France is, to say the least, unhappy about this - but it sounds like France and in general much of Europe are discovering their own pureblood supremacist problems, distracting from any tiffs with the United Kingdom's Ministry.)

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When is the next election, again?

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...Hm, she's fairly sure there's no set election days or years, just an old law that elections can't be held more than seven years apart. She's pretty sure someone other than the Minister can force an election, though, but Fudge got elected in 1990 so has another two years before he'll be forced to hold elections.

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Ugh. He's just- really bad and getting worse.

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He hopefully would have trouble holding onto power if voted out... But, yeah. Maybe the Wizengamot can force an election? Dumbledore's got a vote, and she thinks Narcissa Malfoy actually has two... And Fudge has to have annoyed people...

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They could test out their budding network on something a little less critical.

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They could, though she bets it'll work best if they have someone lined up to challenge Fudge, first.

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That's trickier. She doesn't really know who's in a position to replace him, politically speaking.

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You need to be at least seventeen to run... But to win you'd need to be recognized by the community, yeah, or at least running against someone that everyone loathes... And they'd want to be cautious to run someone with a better chance of winning than anyone Voldemort could put forth as a patsy. Dumbledore's refused to run before... The adult wizards they know mostly have other stuff to do, like Fay, or aren't entirely trustworthy, like Narcissa Malfoy... An Auror would probably be good, lots of past Ministers have been Aurors - there's that Auror they met first year who Anathema's pretty sure secretly works for Dumbledore, Kingsley Shacklebolt, and that Auror Anathema stayed with before first year is nice and turned out to be Anathema's cousin through Bellatrix, weirdly enough...

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They can run the idea past Fay, she might have more ideas.

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Yeah. Sounds good to her.

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She brings up the topic over dinner.

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Fay hums. "A different Minister would make this much easier, yes - but it'll be easier forcing an election than getting someone friendly to us elected... But I suspect the longer this war goes on, the better Voldemort would be able to push through someone favorable to him. He's been avoiding rebuilding his base in the Isles up until now, we think, to avoid detection..."

"The problem would be someone to run against Fudge - the wizarding community here isn't very large, and Fudge won in the first place mostly out of a lack of challengers. Shacklebolt's a solid option, and he's very well respected, but he also has enemies, and he might hesitate to step out into the limelight that much... Someone young like Tonks - I could see her getting a lot of support, actually, she's charismatic and very not the establishment, but she's also inexperienced and not well connected. But... If she had people who were well connected endorse her, like Narcissa Malfoy or Dumbledore... Director Bones is also someone I'd support myself. She's the head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. She's got a keen mind and a spine of steel, and she impressed me last war in fighting Voldemort. She's not the most progressive person, and she's more 'rule of law' than my ideal, but she won't tolerate the sort of shit the last three Ministers have gotten up to and has expressed she wants to import several muggle legal structures - war crimes came up the most often when I was talking to her, but that was mostly context..."

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"You're not allowed to rig the elections so you can get arrested, Fay."

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