p class="MsoNormal"Germany had been a fucking nightmare these past few years. Ellen and her family had moved into the wizarding heart of Berlin just months after her graduation from Hogwarts, fleeing the inevitable rise of Voldemort. That's what her family did. Run away. All of Ellen's old friends and their families had stayed and fought in the Second Wizarding War, not necessarily all on the winning side, however. Arn Redford, her father and an experienced practitioner of wizarding law, was easily able to secure a position in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement and was also able to snag Ellen a role as a clerk in the Auror Office. They were set for a reasonably comfy life in Berlin, away from the radical ideologies which were spreading through most of Britain and with most family members in favorable positions in their career./p
p class="MsoNormal""You should count yourself lucky, Ellen. Not every eighteen-year-old fresh from their N.E.W.T.s are fortunate enough to find themselves able to step foot in such an important Ministry office," Ellen's dad used to and would continue to say for the next two years. But now the war was done. The shining face of the new British Minster of Magic, Kingsley Shacklebolt, danced across the papers she dropped on the Aurors' desks one morning with the headline "Time to Rebuild" plastered on top. Ellen knew it was time for her to go home. She had been working as a clerk for two years and still her only responsibilities were making sure the Aurors knew their schedules, got their memos and cleaned up their messy paperwork. She was nothing more than a glorified em style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"accio /emspell. Two fucking years in the same office. Well no more. Ellen had experience in Ministry, she had done well enough in school, she had always wanted more and most importantly, the Ministry were desperate. There were too many of Voldemort's followers that needed to be captured and not enough Aurors to do it. This was her chance to be somebody. Something. Maybe even Minister one day./p
p class="MsoNormal"And that was the logic that led Ellen Redford, at the age of twenty years, to travel back to her homeland… via broomstick. Do you know how boring it is to fly a broomstick from Berlin to London? How long it takes? How cold it is? Where do you shit and piss? She'd only just begun her new life and Ellen already wanted to kill herself./p