The bird-lizard creature shrieked an awakening call, and Sineaus jolted out of her sleep with an angry gasp.

"What in the world was that for?" She threw her pillow at the cockatrice, which ducked and called loudly again. "HHhhhrrrr!" Sineus then regretted having thrown the pillow of course, now that she could have used it to cover her ears.

"Blasted beast..." Finally she got out of bed, and realized that she was supposed to be going to the professors meeting today. That was why Pez had given his alarm. "Oh you're so cute," she scratched his neck, watching his plumage rise and fall with her fingers. "Thank you. My best interests at heart..."

She dressed casually, this was several weeks before the school term would start after all. No formalities existed in House Domina either - if Zora ever adopted a real schedule everyone would probably want to have her taken to St. Mungo's since she'd have lost her mind.

With a vague spring in her step and her adorably cute cockatrice perched on her shoulder singing a little tune, Sineus entered the narrow hall where the meetings occurred. She wasn't the first there, and wasn't the last, which was okay by her. Why bother being too obviously late, or so early no one likes you?

Zora sat at the big chair at the head of the long rustic carved table, and the other seats began filling up as the professors who had arrived to the House dragged themselves in. Some were clearly not morning people. Others seemed to relish the day, while even more of them seemed as though they were ready for bed at the end of a long day.

When the room was as filled as it would get, with about a score of instructors and assorted ghosts or things flitting about the room, Zora stood and gave a little light show to start the discussion.

"We're here today because our class roster is much bigger than it had been last year," she said. "I've been talking with the other major Schools and they're starting to catch on that they can rid themselves of 'trouble students' by sending them here..."

"Good thing, bad thing," said Dakota, "we get some really good students that way."

"And," Lucas said, "we get some ... that are less than good."

"That's why I want to talk to you all," Zora said. "We need to produce some kind of... instruction manual? Guidebook? Something that will give the other schools some idea of who would be best to come here."

"We need," Sineus spoke clearly, "something that will decide for them, not something to let them just dump lousy students on us."

"To be fair," Zora said nodding, "we haven't really had any bad disasters since that boy Fielding was here."

"He was bad enough," Dakota moaned. "He stole half the stones from my workroom, you know."

"You got them back," Zora said.

"Not the point," Sineus said, "why would the other schools feel it necessary to send us any student who might stand a chance at learning from them? These days, we can hardly expect any from Hogwarts any more - they're a bit... busy."

General consensus was that with Voldemort coming and going at random these days (sometimes he was dead. Others he was alive. Everyone wished he'd make up his mind.) Hogwarts needed everyone it could get, good or bad at magic.

But from other locations?

"What about..." Sineus started to say, thinking and looking at the table as though it wasn't there. "show me the map I want," she said to the table, and it magically produced a shimmering hovering layout of the world. "What about other parts of the world?"

"We have a bunch coming," Dakota said. "But you mean, more?"

"Yes, those are special requests and kids that we found on our own," Zora said. "I agree, Sin, but how?"

"Well," she looked around the big table at all the professors, "don't we have enough power here to get ourselves a search engine?"

***

So it was named. The project that consumed the House for the next week, involving everyone who worked at the school and then some, became something out a strange fever dream.

The engine was named appropriately - it looked like one. Dakota spent a few days - or maybe a month, she kept flipping back and forth through time - physically building a device that would house the spells and powers. It had legs, in fact it looked as though she'd modeled it after Sineus' cockatrice or a bipedal dragon. She set a stone into it, and looked to Sineus to say something.

"on" was what she chose, and it hummed into life. Lucas built some advanced spell system that allowed it to travel without being seen, heard or sensed. Zora was responsible for the spells looking for new students. She researched carefully - along with a couple of her students who had been called in for such things - and decided the parameters which would be searched for.

Vasuli Mikar put in a complicated network of runic numbers that danced around, jogging distances and probabilities. If one student was found among a thousand, they would be happy. This process would make it a little easier to locate that one. Trudy Shout added a bit of undead juice - effectively where the ghosts congregate, they were more likely to be near a student or power source.

Lastly, Iris added a spell along with an item which would 'tag' their student and come to show them who it'd found. This along with Sineus' word of power - on - and it would chug along roadways, up and down hillsides, even under water and over deserts, endlessly searching for new students.

"go" she added, and the machine trundled away.

"Well that was an interesting way to spend summer break," said one of Zora's girls, laughing.

"How will it find anyone this late in the summer?" Asked another.

"It will..." Everyone looked at Dakota, "it'll go back and forth like I do, you guys should know that I found a way to reproduce the Time ring..."

Zora squealed, laughed, and then everyone finally took a well-earned break. If it was a week before the school year started, no one could tell. They found themselves a fine beach to play on, and then they'd get serious about work later.

***

"Don't you miss us more than this?" Asked Sineus' friend Ralof. He worked at the inn where she'd done some of her earliest adventuring. He spoke through a mirror she'd send him, and she had her side of it hanging on her room's wall. "Teaching, it hardly seems to suit you. You were all about the action!"

"If you think that teaching isn't an adventure filled with action," Sineus laughed, "you've got to see it to believe it."

The older man waved his hand, laughing. "Oh I know, I know... But you always looked for new spells and books."

"But you know where that led," she muttered.

He did know. He'd been there, with her and several others on her first fledgling adventures. When she had arrived to his world, it was half-dead and only faintly conscious. She'd thrown herself through time, space and dimensions to get there, somehow.

That was always the rub with Sineus. How? How'd she do it? It was instinctual for her to know magical words and phrases. She felt the energy flowing around her without needing training. She drew people to her side with her charm and energy, she'd healed herself of all wounds within days while resting in the comfort of Ralof's Inn.

A sturdy adventurer in his younger life, Ralof could offer many suggestions or items, but it was his company and his inn that allowed Sineus to flourish. Their friends, one a dashing swordsman Drof, and his squire Maxan - fresh off the farm. Maxan's girlfriend and group cheerleader. Their comedy relief, bard and lockpick Plino, and ... The mount...

Sineus rescued it from sure death, picking it up magically and keeping it from completely slipping through the universe.

Because where she'd wound up was flat - there was enough dirt to grow plants, and to create dungeons and caverns... But farther than that?

If you dug far enough you'd literally fall down through the place. To the endless black void... Somehow this basilisk had been born with half of its egg above the 'ground' and the other half slipped through it. He never quite came out from the ground, so it always looked like he had stubby little nubs of legs, eight of them. He propelled himself perfectly well - with his feet dangling out the other side of the world...

Sineus and Ralof laughed and reminisced, and then Sineus added that she had to get some rest. For the next day they were expecting more students than ever!

***

Sineus' dreams were filled with her old adventures. Enjoyable ones, like when they found the crystal caverns that multiplied everyone's vision and made them dizzy with laughter. And the less sociable encounters - like Lord Zarrul and his glass chamber. But then he still had scars from where she cut herself to escape, and she never heard from him again.

Finding Pez, and trying to explain to her friends why she called the cockatricce that. His head did not in fact open up at the neck, but sometimes with his feather frills cocked all the way up, it almost did. Plus he was always eating things, not spitting them out... Except that one time...

But her first encounter with Zarrul left her with the deepest feelings and memories. Those, her dreaming dwelled upon.

He liked glass. Really. Mirrors or clear, didn't matter to him. His whole keep was made of it. Stained glass, leaded bay windows, the works. Spires of solid silica, twisted silver hallways.

Quite impressive, to look at anyway. He led her through battles the whole way. Because he was quite good at his magic. He knew many spells, but he had one book that he'd never touched. It was so powerful that he had to wait and learn a little more control, before even opening the first pages.

The book lay, Sineus' dreams recalled, in the center of the longest hall, below the courtyard. Spun glass trees with blown glass birds sitting upon them above, and magic pouring through every surface. Huge 20 foot tall panes of mirrors lined the whole room, and a slick heavy grey-green colored glass was on the floor. Perhaps the only things that weren't made from glass were the few doors - or actually their hinges. In the middle of the room sat a stout pedistal, and on it the book.

They met from across the room, he at the south entrance and she at the north. Both of them had been bruised a bit from prior sparring above and in the courtyard. But Sineus' magic had led her directly to the book, and she meant to have it.

Or at least, to read it.

Zarrul swept his hands up, and pieces of glass shattered off the walls where they reached. Flinging them at Sineus across the room, they bounced off a shield that she'd erected long before. They hit with force, she was aware of his power.

She was just ignoring it.

As the glass shards fell tinkling to the ground harmlessly, she asked, "Am I, er, meant to be impressed?"

With a sneer, the long-nosed man said, "all right, offworld bitch, let's see what you can do!"

Gently smiling, Sineus' green eyes glittered as though alit with fire. "Fine." She said.

She did not even have to speak the word. The room was so fragile with glass and mirror that when she even thought about speaking the word of power, as it swept through the room it engulfed every flat surface and caused a storm of broken glass to fill the air. The sound - the sheer noise of billions of edges sharply cutting each other, grinding, was enough to deafen Zarrul. But it was when she let them all drop to the floor that he noticed how many of those shards had cut into his skin and clothing.

Not hers. She was untouched.

"It's what I call 'overkill'. What do you call it?" Sineus chuckled. Her friends above ground probably knew she'd done something - the coutyard was devistated as well, all the little fragile immitation trees and their inhabitants fell to the ground into uncountable glittering shards.

Zarrul had nothing to say. He watched in silence and anger as she stepped down the glass-strewn steps, and across the room to the book's table. It too had been unharmed in the process. Perhaps that was his magic, but more likely not.

Sineus had been in the habit of not wearing shoes, in her early years of adventuring. Showing off, perhaps. Her feet crunched along, clearly the glass broke her skin - but no blood shed from the holes.

"That does not hurt you, does it?" Asked Zarrul, perhaps intrigued, but more likely worried.

"No," Sineus said quietly as she reached the book. Distracted, she said, "I feel the glass breaking my skin. But it doesn't harm me."

She calmly put her hands on the powerful tome before her, opening the pages and looking with magical vision at the words and phrases there. With a slight frown and furrow to her pale brown eyebrows, she sighed.

Right about that time, was when Lord Zarrul noticed that his feet were bleeding. He hadn't felt it - because she took the pain. But the wounds? They were transferred to him!

"Gah!" He exclaimed, hopping about. His boots were ruined, from the inside out! "You incorrigable witch!"

"Don't ever call me that," Sineus warned, just as quietly as she'd spoken before. But she did nothing more - Zarrul was already bleeding and battered, and had lost most of his precious castle in the process of keeping her from this book. And now she had it.

And it was meaningless. Useless.

But Zarrul knew when he was beaten - for the moment. He executed a flight spell, and hovered himself over to her. Over the glass everywhere... "I hope you're satisfied. You've beaten me to this tome, it's yours. Enjoy it."

"Actually," Sineus said, flipping to the end of the book and back, "I'm not satisfied."

"... What?" Zarrul asked, incredulous. "What do you mean?"

"I don't need it," Sineus said, holding the book close to herself, but at the same time, hoping that it might change inside. "You can have it."

There had been a moment of such pure anger that Sineus actually saw red - Zarrul's anger. Still holding it close, Sineus said, "I had hoped to get some new information from this book. It's said to have some exotic and rare spells in it. Really hard to master."

"That ... That is why I kept it hidden! Even I was not ready to read it!" He sputtered.

"But it isn't really new to me. I know how to do these things," she held the book out at him, "and probably more quickly or effectively. Spells like those just get in the way of the magic."

Zarrul's anger turned to pure fury, but he contained it. Obviously a good habit for someone who literally built his houses out of glass... "You mean," he breathed, "that we have spent the better part of this whole day fighting one another, and destroying my castle, for nothing?"

Sineus frowned, and shrugged. "Not exactly for nothing, it's your book, you can read it if you wish. You're more than good enough." She placed the thick tome into his hands, wary of the shredded skin and wounds.

So frustrated was he that Sineus simply floated away out of his castle, as he ground himself into a tizzy over it all below.

***

The school year started with a bang - literally the kids thundered into the hall! It was like nothing Sineus had ever seen, really. Especially at this House!

But the rooms were enchanted - some of them by her - to grow or shrink when they needed to accomodate other numbers of people. The halls twisted around themselves, they even grew a tower or two, in addition to a basement and dungeon area beyond that which had been there.

And the best part was that it all looked and felt just like the rest of the House! Sineus would be instructing words of power, and pronounciation of words that were required for passing OWLS and NEWTS. She was quite good at it. Though she had to keep writing down things, because otherwise she would never know quite where to start her lessons! It was as if she just knew the right words. Magic flowed through her like...

Well, like blood through veins, like it belonged there.

Sineus was proud of that. Very very proud of it.

***

"Do you think she'll do?" Someone said, beyond sight of the word witch (who'd gotten used to being called 'witch' once she learned it was not a derrogatory term here on this Earth).

I think so. Let's go.

Lucas was the first aware of them, of course, because he had dragons everywhere to inform him. "Dragon," he said to Zora, who called a meeting.

The rider and dragon who showed up were from Nidus Avengaea. Loosely connected in theory to Avengaea itself, where Lucas had paired with his beautiful Audeo. Chansua was one of their search riders, on her blue Geperna dragon Chuah'kyil . He greeted them happily, but they didn't want to see him as much as ...

"That's the one," Chansua said, and the blue tossed his head in agreement.

"Sineus, they want you to come with them," Lucas nudged her. Pez squawked loudly in her ear with excitement. If she didn't show it, he sure did.

"For... a dragon bond?" Sineus said, eyes wide and blinking. That was ... new.

"Sure," Zora said, "take my linguist while she's just started teaching..."

"We will have her back shortly," Chansua promised. She knew magic worked that way, right?

"Then... Let me ... I don't know, pack?" Sineus said. Speechless for the first time in nearly two decades. She did pack, she did ready herself. Was this going to make everything new again? The endless searching she'd been doing for so long, for something that would be different from what she already held in her head - at an end? Or at a new beginning?

Next!