look we all know what the best magical creature is
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"Good night."

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And off to bed with them.

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The little bit before the start of classes goes okay, though Umbridge is lurking everywhere. 

The NEWT classes are really fun, and promise to be super intense in a way Anathema's looking forward to. They have two sessions a week for each of the three classes, for one, and the practicals are a lot more intense. McGonagall has them in with the seventh years for now, with some review guides if they need to catch up on sixth year teachings. She settles into Music, Astronomy, and Ancient Greek well, befriending the lower years fairly easily. 

History class, though -

They're not in it, fortunately. But it sounds from their yearmates like Umbridge gave a speech about poor standards and misinformation, and the syllabus is half 'review of mistaught information' and half 'accomplishments of Wizarding Britain.' 

Anathema frowns, borrows copies of the different years' books, then stares into the distance with a troubled look on her face. 

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"That bad, is it?"

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"I - "

"So Fudge and Umbridge are evil, but I don't know they're very good at it?"

"But... These books were written by - I think someone really, really good at being evil. It's not... Like Quirrel was biased in tone? He kept implying or saying that morals were different in history so we can't judge, or 'well we'd consider this immoral now but it's very effective.' But this is..."

"It doesn't even mention any bad things British wizards have ever done, or good things muggles and magical creatures and non-wizard magical humans and foreigners have done, unless it's in the context of - like, shared heritage. And it's... Subtle. There's some damning with faint praise, and some - exalting with faint condemnation - but always in a 'we know better now' way. Like everything is already fixed. Like everything is great."

"I don't - I don't think you'd catch this if you didn't already know a lot of history. Like, Quirrel told us about everything, he just also argued for his shitty positions, but - you could argue back - there's nothing here to argue with, and it sounds like Umbridge isn't even teaching so there's not even her - "

"And it's all. Ways of thinking about things, and ways of looking at history."

"I - in second year the school really focused on teaching the upper years to prepare for their exams."

"I think we need to focus on teaching the lower years, so they don't get caught."

"'Cause - you can disagree with stuff you know about, even if the opinions you're always being told are very one way. You can't form opinions on stuff you've never heard mentioned. And you can't - have politics based on that."

"And... We were talking about getting Fudge out of office, and making sure a Death Eater doesn't replace him - I. Think there's more people to be nervous about them leading the government than Death Eaters."

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"That's... insidious."

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"Yeah."

"It's - easy to spot that Voldemort's evil, even if he's also a really good fighter and general and stuff. And it's easy to spot that Fudge is incompetent - or - looks incompetent. And not quite as easy to spot that he's evil, but you can if you're paying any attention."

"I... Think I see Fay's point about wanting a government that makes war crimes aggressively and loudly illegal, even though it might get her in trouble. I don't want a government that's quiet and polite and - evil in the omission. Because. That's harder to get rid of, I think."

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"It would be, if no one else agrees it needs to go. Because things that are quiet are easier to ignore, I know that."

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"Yeah. It's - easier to hurt someone no one thinks about ever."

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"So. History club. Maybe I've should've taken the prefect badge, I could make attending a requirement for the younger Ravenclaws at least."

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"Lisa got fifth year girls' Prefect instead, didn't she? And Oliver got boys' Prefect. Lisa's mostly going for friendly and approachable but I think people'd listen to her, and Oliver's still on his civil rights tear... Bet he'd get the younger years to attend. And I ran into Sophie earlier, she's one of the Hufflepuff Prefects - I think she's been thinking about how much trouble she can cause for Umbridge already, so. She'd be into getting her lower years to attend." Oliver has maintained his streak about arguing with Ravenclaw's statue about civil rights instead of answering questions. Ravenclaw's statue seems delighted, and they sometimes have to interrupt the latest debate to answer magic theory questions to get into the dorm. Sophie's also in their year - the Hufflepuff was the one who organized getting Snape fired first year. "And Lyra said that Serpens somehow got Slytherin Prefect, though she's squirrely enough she might not really do much... It sounded like her mom's got some kind of long running feud with Umbridge, though."

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"That's probably enough to start with. Gryffindor'll be in even just to tweak Umbridge's nose, I bet."

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"Heh, yeah. Getting consistent attendance might be hard, but - even a little bit should help. And maybe spite will motivate the slackers."

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"As long as we get it to the point where the knowledge is there to be passed down, I think it'll work."

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She nods. "And the library still has copies of the old textbooks - and so do most of the upper years, and not everyone's a book hoarder like us."

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"We can start another pool of copies."

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"Yeah, definitely."

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"Maybe we could pick apart the anti-copy hex for our Defense NEWT and just gemino a bunch."

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"Bet we could, yeah."

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"It's technically illegal, though, so Professor Reynolds might not actually go for it."

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"If we do it as an extracurricular she doesn't have to have her name attached."

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"Loopholes!"

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Giggle.

Now just to get those balls rolling...

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And then it's mostly up to other people.

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A bit unfortunately, though it does reduce the work load on them...

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