Lenore McCrea, House Domina Weather Witch

"You totally riled him," Zora said, as they wound their way around the other large groups of students. Into the dorms they would go. Up into the nearby tower (through a number of still-confusing stairwells), the pair of House Domina members went.

"I suppose," Lenore said. "He's kinda cute."

Zora almost came to a stop, on the stairs in front of Lenore, but recovered.

"You okay?" Lenore asked, and Zora nodded, smirking.

"I guess," she said. "Cute? He's about as cute as Slytherin's House snake."

"No, really," Lenore said, as they entered the large roundish room where Zora's House was located. "I mean, yeah, he could use a little smackdown on the attitude, and he could lay off the hair grease, though. But he's like what, sixteen? So he's cute."

"Your age?" Zora asked, smiling. "I think he's about that."

"I'm fifteen, I'd have been here," Lenore said as she put down her backpack and shook out her hair, "a couple years ago, but my jackass parents decided that they didn't want me leaving."

"But they were in America?" Zora asked, sitting. She indicated a plush but well-worn violet colored cushioned chair, and Lenore plopped down into it with the relief that it would surely bring.

"Yeah - I wasn't born until after they got there anyway." Lenore looked over the decor in the room, and liked it. It was like... A lot like a trendy music-stuff shop or tv show's set. There were gadgets like role-playing-game dice, computer discs and a Lego model of 'something' on the shelves, right along side the requisite skulls and books and potion jars. There were two huge almost dust-covered tapestries hanging from old old beams near the ceiling. As Zora watched, Lenore took a visual tour.

The tapestries were dark, showing a scene in a forest that had mysterious creatures peeking out from behind trees, stars barely visible as shining silvery threads over the treetops, and what appeared to be the dark outline of a big winged creature flying overhead. The other was complimentary, showing something like an underground scene of that same spooky forest - glimmers of gold ore and possibly diamonds hidden among the stones, with dwarven humanoids glowering from dark areas.

Lenore put herself at ease. The last few weeks of her life had finally culminated in arriving where she ought to have been since about age twelve - Hogwarts School.

"So McGonagall said you didn't have a cauldron or anything, right?" Zora said, interrupting Lenore's long silent gaze at the scenery.

"Oh - yeah." Lenore wasn't too happy about being dragged back into reality like that.

"Well, don't worry. I have a bunch. Hey - do you want to do something fun?" Zora grinned.

"....aaaannnndd, what might that be? After a day and night like I've had?" Leny chuckled.

"How about this? We dye your hair?" Zora said, conspiratorially. "It does wonders for the inner-child. Can't hurt the outer-child either."

Lenore took a lock of her hair in front of her eyes. It was a dull shade of dishwater blond-tan, nothing special and she'd always hated it. "Sure, why not?"

Zora beckoned from a doorway. Beyond it was a kind of smallish dressing room, something that looked rather like it was a ladies-room lounge but with all the over-done trappings of a magic school strewn about. To say that House Domina's dorms were 'cluttered' would be a great disservice to clutter around the world.

There was a lighted mirror - Lenore noticed that the light was coming not from stage-light bulbs, but small incandescent and obviously magical spheres suspended in glass. Lenore looked at herself in the mirror and was a bit shocked. She looked so much thinner than she'd been before starting out. A week worth of hitch hiking, sneaking on trains, hiding in basements and running from police - an agonizing sixteen hour plane ride ("don't you want a round trip ticket? No? How old are you missie?") and then the week of wandering half-aimlessly around England looking for this train of theirs... Had taken its toll.

"I like your hair," Lenore commented. "How about that color?"

She looked at Zora, whose hair had turned a pale peachy yellow color while she wasn't watching. Blinking, Lenore raised her eyebrows.

"Y'like?" Zora gloated, as her hair color did tricks.

"I like it. Can you teach me that?"

"I certainly can."

***

Eighteen Months Ago

There was a perpetual storm brewing over the tower which housed Domina's dorm. Zora had certainly noticed it, as well as the other professors and many students. It was close to the end of the School year, and after that strange Winter break they'd had, no one doubted why this cloud was hanging over the House.

It was a real cloud - small, intense, swirling occasionally with the glimmer of a static charge. The School's weather crafters were dismayed but then realized that the source, while magical, wasn't a threat. This was no attack.

This was that odd American student, Leny. She was young, and couldn't quite control whatever subconscious magic she was doing. It would happen from time to time. Many young pyrokinetics would do this too - occasionally burning things without even realizing they were the source.

This time, it was a storm cloud. But why, that was the more pressing question.

Zora watched her sole student and was worried. Leny would fret quietly while she thought no one was watching. She was an exceptional student of course, Zora wouldn't have accepted her if she thought Leny wouldn't do well among mages. But now she was withdrawn, snippy, even almost coming to blows about nothing - especially when Draco or his cronies would involve themselves.

Even though Lenore clearly still had that 'love at first sight' crush on the little blond terror, she never once held back when he'd start something up with her. It almost might seem that he was impressed with her, but he had better things to do - he was third year, after all, and she just first. They weren't more than a few months apart in age, but that didn't mean anything in school - particularly this school, particularly to a Slytherin of 'breeding' like him.

Their insults were usually met with gentle jibing and retorts that even Snape could appreciate. Day before yesterday? Lenore clenched her fists, snarled, and a tiny raquetball-sized hunk of lightning struck one of the blubber-boys (that was what Leny called them - having never cared to learn their names) and sent him to the infirmary for a check - and his hair stood on end for the whole rest of the day. It was as though Leny couldn't control her emotions - or the energy they created.

She'd been sent back up to the dorm and told to remain there for the remainder of the day.

"What is it?" Zora asked, watching the girl still.

Lenore paced, and said nothing. Her stormcloud almost broke outside.

"It's ... everyone will be going home for summer. School's out in two weeks." Lenore said, flatly. She clutched her arms with hard-nailed fingers. "Everyone gets to go -- somewhere."

Zora was wary of the young girl, concerned for her.

"Except me. I don't have anywhere to go. Notice that I haven't had any letters from home. Care packages. Nothing. Not even a letter demanding me to come home. It isn't like they don't know where I've gone. Of course they know." Lenore spun, "they kept me from coming for so long, and now - now I -"

Lenore broke down into quiet tears, and the cloud outside their window burst into rain - sharp, hard rain. It was punctuated by bright small bolts of lightning. Zora hoped it didn't hit anything that might burn.

Zora put her hand on her student's shoulder, "you'll stay here. With me. It's no problem. There are some others in the school who do it too. It's not just Winter break when people have families they'd rather not go home to. And the expense, for some. Travel isn't cheap."

"Tell me about it," Lenore sniffled. She pressed into Zora's shoulder and sobbed.

So while most of the student body of Hogwarts left for their summer homesteads, some getting jobs, some relaxing at wilderness camps, others suffering their families endless annoying abuses... Lenore and a handful of other students remained behind.

It wasn't all that bad - in fact, most of the professors who remained to do their research needed helpers. There was always something to do, and many things to learn. While she wouldn't be benefitting from group activities, Lenore got one on one training from a variety of instructors. Her favored Potions course (yes, naturally - spooky, but so cool to make her Goth friends back 'home' cringe in agonized and angsty jealousy) yeilded a passing grade - she wouldn't have to go back through that portion of the course next school year. She'd be able to take third year Potions, and her work in Verbal spells was exceptional enough to propel her into third year as well.

However the one portion of her schooling that was suffering was that which required a wand. She still didn't have one. While Zora was required to work on a particular course syllabus, one of the other professors offered to take the group of remaining students off to Diagon Alley to shop for necessary items. Their next year might be very different - they'd be farther advanced than the others in their class, and may be looked upon with suspicion.

Lenore went, but held her hands close to her neck the whole time, hemming and hawing at her robe.

"What is the matter, child?" Asked the portly professor, her big floppy witch hat barely containing her spray of greying hair. "If you're not enjoying yourself you didn't have to come along."

"It's not that..." Lenore said, watching the other students as they gathered up new books and one bought himself a new broom. ("When one breaks," he said, "you just have to move on and get a new one"... Of course, this was said with big bold tears in his nut-brown eyes - he'd really gotten attached.) "I just ... don't have any money. I can't even afford new clothes. It's a good thing Zora has such weird taste in clothes, huh?"

She fiddled with the colorful hem of her summer dress, worn under the dark robes. It was a Zora-bought (and Zora-realized-she's-way-too-tall-to-wear-this-in-public-when-she-got-it-home) production.

Lenore wasn't used to hand-me-downs. As an only child, and with her parents being rather well off (apparently) with decent jobs, she had never been left to want much. So this getting of goods from someone else was a little unnerving to her. It was nice to have something else to change into than just the same three shirts and such, though.

The professor tsked her tongue and trundled over to one of the shop windows. There inside was row upon row of books. Across the street, a wand seller. It was there that she dragged Lenore. Her plump hand's grip was stunningly stronger than Lenore expected it to be - but she went along with it suddenly smiling.

The man who made the wands was... somewhat eccentric. But he was kind, and understood the situation when the professor quickly explained it. He showed Lenore a wand from a box.

She held it, it was heavier than it looked. Dark wood, perhaps almost black. It was almost the same thickness end to end, and frankly Lenore didn't really like it.

She tossed her wrist with it, and nothing much happened. The wandmaker chose another, and then another. Finally, it was a reddish thing inside a box that was lined with cloth. It just jumped at Lenore. That was hers - just if by sight alone. She held it, it had a dark and slightly serrated tooth at the handle end, and she asked what it was.

"Hmn," the man said, holding his chin, "it's a cherrywood, eleven inches, and that my dear girl is a dragon tooth."

"Ooh, cool," Lenore said, appraising the wand closely. She then looked at the box which it'd been stored in, and waved the wand. Without a word, it flew from the table and across the room - following every movement of the wand.

"That would be the one," the shopkeeper said, happily. Lenore was never certain if the professor bought the wand for her, or if it was on some kind of School account. It didn't matter - she was told not to worry about it. Lenore didn't worry - but neither did she ever forget it.