Specialties - Lumiere has only just begun her magical education. She is by default a member of House Domina, since she has been accepted by the instructors, however she has not been Sorted by an "official" School. She would like to see the big schools, but knows that her father couldn't visit her - even if she were accepted. She plans on working with healing, potions, and perhaps transformative spells, remembering her mother's wings and how they have been healed over the years.

Lumiere paced around in her father's rooms, while he was gone. Though she knew he'd be back, she worried for him. His mind was in good shape, but his soul was in parts. Iris had returned from the Ring of Fire with a beautiful dragon who was as strong a mount and friend as she could ever imagine. And of course, Avengaea would be a good place for her father to pair up with a dragon.

But... Lumiere wondered now, where she was to go. There were dozens of places that would take her, some with a population that wouldn't even blink when she arrived. But some others clearly had trouble dealing with her as a winged person.

Half dragon - she was wondering herself, what did that mean now?

The modern world outside the magic schools and the hidden places? What was it like? Lucas had spent time there hiding from his nemesis, but hadn't spoken much about it. And that was many years before.

Svedok had found a dramatic black dragon companion, they were being boys off somewhere. Would Lumiere pair up with a female and have just as much fun, drifting around the stars and causing males to flirt, or would she find a male, perhaps breed with him?

To put herself off of those thoughts, things that while her father certainly wanted to help her through, and Zora of course was off the scale for 'helpful hints to get a boyfriend' Lumiere knew that humans were pretty much off limits and dragons? Well, she wasn't going to think about them just at this moment. She needed a distraction.

Lumiere sighed. She hadn't even really found a good wand to use yet, and that was something she really wished she could do. Perhaps... Today would be a good day to do that? Find herself a wand?

She left the study and put on a robe which wasn't as revealing as her typical fare, one which was snug around her body but let her wings show, curved above her tail so that her privates wouldn't be exposed to all, yet let the tail itself move freely. Down the stone corridors of House Domina she went, followed by a pair of curious ghosts.

"Zora?" She asked of the House's namesake. The witch looked up from her big book, smiled - anything to get out of work was great for Zora after all. "I want to ask you something."

"Go right ahead," Zora said.

"I'd like to go to town and get a wand," Lumiere said, quietly. Zora watched the normally bold girl turn sheepish, the way her father would. It was as charming as it was honest.

"What, in London?" Zora asked. "We can use a portkey. You won't have to fly." The witch got up and found some things she wanted to bring along, and with a somewhat astonished Lumiere in tow, they went to the kitchen hallway where one of their portkeys was stored.

"I ... don't have human money," the half-dragon started to say, but Zora waved her hand and smiled.

"We will see what you'll need. Olivander's is generous with me. And everything you might have heard about the place is true. It's amazing." Zora said. She'd changed the color of her hair to a bright green, which matched her dress today. She waved her hand, and Lumiere took her place next to the woman. They held hands, and stepped onto the serving platter that was enchanted to take them to Diagon Alley.

***

The burst of light they gave off as they entered the busy street was hardly noticed. It wasn't a school prep day, there were few children on the street today but the adults were in force, and there were many eyes trained upon Lumiere.

More of them however, looked to Zora and then turned away before making any judgement or remark."It pays to be me," Zora said with a smug grin.

"You're well known here aren't you?" Lumiere asked.

"I am, well enough." They walked down the cobbled street until they reached the famous Olivander's. The room wasn't busy - in fact both Lumiere and Zora wondered if there was anyone inside at all. But then the man himself, with the steely-moon-blue eyes and the shock of white hair came from one of the tall stacks. Surrounded as they were by low hanging objects and fragile windows, Lumiere made pains to remain small - her wings tucking down low over her shoulders and wrapping slightly around her waist at the tips.

"What an unusual surprise," he said, his voice hesitant but clear. "We rarely get anyone of your ... unique background here."

Lumiere blushed, looking down, and Zora nudged her. "We're here to find her a wand, if that's possible," Zora said brightly.

"Well you would hardly do better than here," he replied just as bright. He went back to collect boxes, and Zora gazed at Lumiere.

"Don't be shy," she said. "I hardly think you need to be shy."

"I don't even know how to act among people," Lumiere replied. "I suppose that I'm less ready for this than I thought I was."

"The school certainly can't prepare you for it," Zora said. "There are hardly that many people at House Domina."

The aged wizard who ran the shop came out with a small stack of boxes. "I was compelled by these," he said, "try them out if you like."

Lumiere grasped one box and opened it, within there was a shortish dark wand. She held it in her right hand as the wizard announced, "oak, eight and three-quarter inches, unicorn mane hair core."

Nothing happened. With a flicker of her eyebrow, Lumiere set it down and tried the next, which was apparently a "cherry wood with hippogryph feather core, ten inches." Again, not a spark.

"It's all right, I know someone who tried more than forty before he found the right wand," said the wizard in a comforting manner.

"Then I will keep trying..." Lumiere said. She eventually went through another three before one felt right in her hand. Ash, with manticore blood core, eleven and one half inches. The room came to life with a shine, as though the wand was happy to be in her hands and not just resting in a box collecting dust.

"This is the one," Lumiere said, and with a smile she was allowed to keep it in her posession. Zora slid the man a small pile of coins, and they made small talk while Lumiere waved the wand about expertly. Things floated, but didn't break, she turned a hidden mouse bright orange, as it tried to slink across the floor.

The man looked at the mouse, and found a box quickly to capture it. "I have been trying to find this little one for ages," he said as it scooted away.

"We'll leave you to that," Zora said, and escorted Lumiere out. "Now, I doubt that you'll be needing an owl," she laughed. "And our collection of books is more than adequate for Domina work." Zora looked around the street, gazing at each shop in turn trying to find an excuse to remain and shop. She loved to shop - that was obvious.

"What about a cauldron?" Zora asked. "Did you wand a cauldron? They're getting new ones at the shop - look there." She pointed out a sign that showed indeed a new shipment had arrived. If anything, just to please Zora and thank her for the offer to buy her anything at all, Lumiere nodded and they went looking there too.

Eventually, with a pair of boxes filled with assorted goods and items, clothing, herbs and potion ingredients, Lumiere and Zora went home to House Domina. Not everything was for Lumiere, just the potion goods, the cauldron and her wand really - plus a hat that Zora insisted would look 'great at a festival' - the rest were for the House itself or for Zora's closet.

If there was one thing that Zora liked doing more than shopping, however, was giving things away to others. Lumiere went back to her quarters and organized her new things... And then looked over her wand again. It was hers - every time she held it it made her feel better. She'd noticed the look on the old man's face as he said what it was composed of though - ash and manticore blood? What a gory pair! Ash was a wood of death, and manticores, well, though she'd never met one up close, her father had before, and she knew them to be quite deadly in addition to quick-tongued. Admirable traits, though - Lumiere was ready for anything with this wand.

She was a dragon, however, so such things should be stock in trade. Lumiere knew a number of charms and hexes that she suddenly wanted to try out. Everyone was outside in the garden, learning about planting SpringPeas, the kind that yeilded a bouncing-potion ingredient. When they had finished up their lesson, Lumiere grabbed NaTalia and Bhaktar, in order to try things out with them.

Obliging her, since she suddenly seemed less mature than she'd ever and was giddy like a child, the trio ran through a number of dueling-style spells before they almost broke a window and were asked kindly by the local ghost to cut it out.

***

"Why haven't you gone off to find a partner yet?" Asked Zora one day. It had been a month or more, and Lumiere had been throwing herself into her magical studies, now that she had proper equipment.

The large-winged young dragoness sat down on one of the bench chairs in the dining hall, and sighed. "I don't know really. I ... wanted to be here when father came back. You know, from ..."

"From his crusade," Zora finished for her. He and Iris had been gone a while, looking for the last pieces of his broken soul. Somewhere in Hell. "That's a nice thought and all, but you know you'd be able to find your way right back. Or so we've been brought to believe."

"It's what the other off-earth dragons tell me." Lumiere thought about them, the big colorful Ryslen dragons, the sacred and spiritual Ring of Fire ones... "but I ..."

"Even your younger brother has found himself swept up in dragon activities," Zora said.

"Is that supposed to make this easier or harder? I wanted to learn human magic." Lumiere said flatly.

"Well you're doing that. And there's nothing stopping you from continuing. Except that half the time we turn around, someone else is off bonding a dragon nowadays. The back hills are going to be needing a good dragon castle, soon."

It was clear that Zora was going to be off in her own little world with that thought dominating her mind. There was a strong need for a place for the dragons they were bringing home, to live. Without being seen by everyone as they flew over the town nearby and all. Lumiere slunk out of the dining hall and back to her family's wing of the castle.

There she sulked around, for almost an hour. She'd been enjoying her classes so much more now that she could really throw magic around like the others. Her memory was trapping all the spell words she could hear, though she did have some trouble pronouncing the occasional word. But then again, who didn't?

Probably one of those transfer students, arrogant little things. Lumiere found that the art of distracting herself was leading her down a path she didn't really want to be on. She did need to decide - would she go and find a dragon? Or would she wait for Lucas to return?

The answer eluded her for another few days at least. Days she made herself work as hard as ever to learn a new potion and one charm that she hadn't mastered. Far from her earlier days, before she was taking official classes, Lumiere almost refused to check up on the dragon's gossip about where to go and what kinds of bonds they would offer a person. Almost as though she truly enjoyed doing it for everyone but herself.

Finally, Lumiere saw a familiar pair of dragons come soaring down to the House's courtyard. The quidditch practice ceased and everyone made for the riders - her father Lucas and his paladin Iris. Though everyone's cheers made both of them outwardly happy, it was clear to Lumiere that they had not won back that piece of Lucas' soul that was kept away from him. Not today.

However exhausted they were, though, Lucas greeted his son and daughter with a bold smile. He was far more sturdy now, in mind anyway, and felt as though he missed people. Long ago, apparently, he could hardly stand to be among others for fear they would turn on him.

Lumiere wondered what that must be like, but then looked around her. She hadn't been among humans long enough to truly experience 'rejection'. Merely a kind of superstitious shunning that her draconic side relished. On that side of her, she would always feel superior to humanity. They were weak, short lived, annoyingly ignorant. Maybe now, now that her father had found his place again... Lumiere would find hers.

***

"You mean to tell me you've not practiced it at all in this time?" Lucas asked, somewhat sternly. "Lumiere, I gave you that spell book so you would-"

"I will learn it when I must," Lumiere said, flatly. She'd added that dragon-sound that meant 'this is all the truth I have for you'. He shook his head, but accepted that his daughter had not yet learned to 'retract' her wings and tail and look more fully human.

She admitted to him that it was her dragon side, her mother's true blood side, that made her this way. Able to arrogantly say something and stick to it. Even if it was something she should have been doing. Like practicing self-transformations and thropomancy.

They walked down the hall to their family quarters, and on the way Iris drifted past. She held Lucas back, muttering something - perhaps another apology as she was brimming with them these last few days - and then kissed him on the cheek. He returned that with a little kiss on her forehead, whispered a thanks, and let her go her way.

It was a few long footsteps later that Lumiere asked, "so.... are you and her ... you know?" The tilt to her head and the gleam in Lumiere's eyes completed any missing words from that statement. Lucas glanced unconsciously back at the hall where Iris was long gone.

"No we, ... no," he stammered a bit, "not - yet, anyway..." A little grin grew on his thin lips.

"She's like way too young for you, father," Lumiere said and slipped into her room before he could say anything more to dig that hole deeper. Inside her room, Lumiere cast an impervious-sound barrier and then laughed her head off...

The next morning was Sunday, everyone wandered around busily not doing anything of importance. Lumiere spotted Iris and her Spirit dragon in the field, and flew over to talk to her.

After a few moments of 'did you come close? did he fight? did you have to fight too?' Lumiere asked quite unabashedly, "are you in love with my father?"

Though Iris turned a brilliant shade of crimson, her dragon lifted her beautiful white-colored head and gave off a crooning sound, and then layed her head onto her forepaws with what looked like a grin.

"It's a ... complicated situation," Iris said.

"You're way too young for him," Lumiere pointed out. "You're like, younger than I am."

Iris fiddled with the large blue-glass rod which served as her wand. "I suppose he is much older than anyone but your own mother, really, so it doesn't much matter to me." Looking away, Iris added, "after a fashion, I suppose I do love him. Quite a lot really. Just... not like 'that'."

Iris glanced at her dragon who was apparently speaking into her mind, then looked back at Lumiere who had an oddly familiar expression mildly moving over her features.

"... Why, what has he been telling you? Because if he's been saying we're-"

Lumiere burst into laughter again, and Iris slumped her shoulders, sitting down beside her dragon. "You and he both have that - that sense of what loosely passes for 'humor' in your family. Ha. Ha."

A bit less formal, then, and with more of a grin and pleasant mood, Lumiere finally asked Iris if she had a place in mind that maybe she could bond a dragon.

"I think perhaps that the Ring of Fire, where Mistylia is from, would be suited to you. Your needs. There is a very large, very .... odd clutch there. It's hatched in part already. Some of the eggs," Iris explained, "just were not ready to hatch yet. I would love to take you there."

"Why does everyone assume I need some 'odd' clutch?" Lumiere commented, not too harshly but in honesty too, "I mean, can't I just find a nice normal place? For a normal dragon?"

"A normal dragon," Mistylia explained as they walked to the dragon dens on the hill nearby, "would be overwhelmed by you. You are powerful, being what you are. No Pernese dragon or other simple world dragon - an unmagical one I mean - would work with you."

"I'm ... guessing that this is a compliment?" Lumiere said. Iris nodded and smiled as they then turned back to the castle.

"She said it aloud, to you. That means it's not just a private thought she's had. It's the truth. So come with us! It'll be nice to see that place again, and I'd love to stay to watch you pair up."

Lumiere sensed something else, in Iris' tone. "You want to spend some time away from my father, and sort things out in your head, don't you?"

Iris rolled her eyes, "am I that transparent, or is it just in your blood?"

Lumiere wisely chose not to answer that question...

Sentry-level Kirintor. His name is T'ren'Katarn (Lumiere's bond) (I know absolutely nothing about them)

Possible parentage Casandrias'Noctirni and Diamadsama