Candidates for the Darkling Dawn Fauna Frenzy

Student Gender: male Iokua Anaru
Background: Half-Blooded (mother), lower-middle class
Personality: Unique
Cultural Background: Islander (Asian), atypical (eyes peach) and is pretty/handsome

Attending: Small Local School
Favorite Subject: Muggle Studies
Worst Subject: Entertainment and Communication
Professional Goal: Muggle Protector
Year/Age: 4th year, age 14

Wand:
Length: long, 14.5 inch
Wood: Willow (fertility)
Core: Roc beak powder (binding power)
Favored Spell: colloportus - to close and seal a door

Familiar: none

Unique: Animagus - forced themself to learn to transform into Weasel

Quidditch: performs as a practice Referee

Student Gender: female Bahtyia Noor
Background: Half-Blooded (one parent and a sibling), lower-middle class
Personality: Bold
Cultural Background: Middle Eastern, atypical (eyes goldenrod) and slightly feral in appearance

Attending: Small Local School
Favorite Subject: Entertainment and Communication
Worst Subject: Runes
Professional Goal: Wizarding Wireless Network Reporter
Year/Age: 5th year, age 16

Wand:
Length: shortish, 8.5 inch
Wood: Mahagony (transfiguration)
Core: Werewolf fur (shapeshifting)
Favored Spell: flying magic - spells that allow the caster to swoop through the air!

Familiar: none

Unique: Animagus - forced themself to learn to transform into Quail

Quidditch: doesn't care for sports

Student Gender: male Vahan Nagib
Background: Pure Blooded, newer family, middle class
Personality: Elitist, Unique
Cultural Background: Middle Eastern, typical and is pretty/handsome

Attending: Small Local School
Favorite Subject: Special skill - Legilimency
Worst Subject: Potions
Professional Goal: Inquisitor
Year/Age: 5th year, age 15

Wand:
Length: average length 11.5 inch
Wood: Poplar (rebirth)
Core: Phoenix tears (healing affinity)
Favored Spell: emotional manipulation and pressure attacks

Familiar: all animals (non-magical) respond to them

Unique: Animagus - easily transforms into Gorilla shape

Quidditch: plays Chaser position, plays adequately

Student Gender: male Zvonko Spiridon
Background: Half-Blooded (father), very wealthy
Personality: Gluttonous
Cultural Background: Eastern European, typical and is kind of unattractive

Attending: Small Local School
Favorite Subject: Entertainment and Communication
Worst Subject: Scroll Scribing
Professional Goal: Auror
Year/Age: 4th year, age 14

Wand:
Length: long, 15 inch
Wood: Manzanita (exotic)
Core: Pegasus tail hair (defensive spells)
Favored Spell: finite - a charm that causes all nearby magic to stop

Familiar: none

Unique: Animagus - easily transforms into Wolf shape

Quidditch: performs as a practice Referee

They'd almost always been a foursome - it was always Vahan at the helm, with Bahtyia beside him, Zvonko and Iokua happily making a mess to clean up later. To say that any of the four were remarkably responsible or mature would be a flat-out misconception. They wanted responsibility - later.

They wanted some fun, right now. Even the somewhat Iokua, whom no one would expect would be around the more boisterous trio, always had something up his sleeve. He adored Muggle life, having come from a beautiful island where technology was rare at best, and magic was growing far more common. They had two signs of real Muggle community in their area: one TV station, and one wireless internet provider. The fact that most homes in the area didn't actually have electrical power was of little consequence. Iokua figured that the internet provider actually was a front for some kind of online money scam anyway. Their island kingdom was barely a dot on the map anywhere even close, but it was independent, and could be said to have all its own laws and rules.

Witches and warlocks had come through - there was never a time when someone wasn't arriving via a portkey or a very chilly magic carpet ride. Not very long before, a mainland school had been established which he was invited to, House Domina. Before then, it was just 'ask Grandmother!' or 'find uncle Anakapop!' for his education. So Iokua eagerly took up the task of heading to the northern England countryside. He froze - it was so cold, just as wet as he knew it would be but he was used to warm rain! And not all this fog or snow!

But he adjusted. And was easily taken on by the existing trio - making their Pack one stronger.

Vahan and Bahtyia had come from the same small middle-eastern village. Fortunately for them, plenty of other people there had magical abilities, and the place had been passed over by both the Crusades and the more recent ethnic cleansing which surely would have had the whole place burnt to the ground. They intended to keep it that way. Sending the pair to House Domina three years before was difficult for their parents, but certainly wound up doing well by the kids. Bahtyia had to convince her parents that much harder - her brother had already been killed by simply saying the wrong thing at the wrong time on a vacation to a nearby -istan. They clung to her, but finally realized that she would be both far better off in an area which openly accepted witches, and she'd become experienced enough to defend herself once she came home.

Zvonko... Everyone was half convinced he was a werewolf anyway. Someone must have bitten his family, because his one long eyebrow and extremely pointed canine teeth simply put most folks on edge.

However, no evidence of that exists. He did have to be subjected to a rigorous bunch of testing, but it was determined that he simply was an incredibly good Animagus, having started at an early age, and even if someone else in his distant family had been a were-creature, that was no reason to bar him from coming into the country. He couldn't pass on anything terrible if he bit someone.

He did bite, occasionally, but he's managed to get that more under control lately...

***

A quail, long-tailed weasel, wolf, and of all things a gorilla trundled through the halls. Mostly people got out of the way for the gorilla. Few people had actually ever seen one, there was a zoo but it was more than four hundred miles away and no one felt much like comparing. Vahan was exceptional at his transformation ability, as was Zvonko's. It was when the bird and little weasel tried to get back into their human shapes that they required a little help.

Professor Lucas Kalkin the dragonmage waved his hand, and they reverted to their normal shapes abruptly - along with the rest of the class, whose task it had been to remain in their animagus shapes for the whole day before. They had been excused from other classes, and some twelve students at the small (but growing) school romped in the grass, flew above the grounds, climbed the trees or roosted in the belfry. Lucas seemed fairly impressed at the group of students.

"Some of you need to work up a bit more background on your chosen form, and some need a lot of help getting in and out of it. I think you," he indicated the Pack, "should pair off with each other and help out to get them up to speed," he indicated three younger students, one of whom had remained in a gecko form sitting almost petrified on the instructor's desk. When the spell was broken, he sat up and scurried back to his desk, hiding practically below it. "Take the form, break it down again," he recommended.

A passing grade meant that they could enjoy a little rest in his class, the end of the term was coming up and it would mainly be 'guess the animal name' from then on. So they helped out the kids, and each other, until mostly they'd gotten it down.

Now, they had to concentrate on their other courses. Because they weren't in the same year, they did split up for the rest of their classes, Zvonko and Iokua, Bahtyia and Vahan together. Bahtyia groaned, "I hate runes, I hate them with such a passion! They read backwards!"

"You read them backwards," Vahan chuckled. "It's those potions I cannot get right. Cooking is woman's work!"

"Tell that to the gnome!" Bahtyia chuckled, as their instructor for that class was in fact a man.

Elsewhere, at the Farbers' class, Zvonko and Iokua got to learn a little more about the different locations where magic was strongest. Dotted around the globe were hotspots, connected of course by the ley lines of power.

"Why do ley lines always seem to wind up pointing to a volcano or a hill?" Asked Zvonko, "and ... why is it people always seem to live on volcanos, anyway?"

That made the class chuckle of course, he soaked up the laughs. Ben Farber nodded, quieted the room and explained that there were plenty of natural forces at work everywhere, pressure and changes in the ground itself could cause not only earthquakes and volcanos, but magical stress fractures and ley lines to form or vanish. "Good question on the second part, wish I knew..."

***

Nearly everyone came out for the dragon-quidditch matches, some lonely student or other sat in the library or up in their dorm where it was quiet. By now, the teams were well adapted to the game, though it had to have newer rules invented, and a much bigger grounds to play upon. The old quidditch pitch was used still, by regular broom riders, many of whom were also dragon-quid players. Today the emphasis was on the furry team - they had bigger dragons, but the skins team had faster ones. It wound up being Skins winning but only by points, they certainly wasted no energy chasing after the flitter who served as the Snitch in the game. They dedicated everything to moving toward the goals, and sure did a lot of scoring.

It was obviously the goal for a lot of the students that they eventually become a dragon-rider, not everyone was well suited to it, but at the very least everyone understood one very important thing: these were not Earthly dragons, they were from elsewhere and when, and so to compare these with the brutish and often terrifying earth-dragons (aside from Lucas's mate's tribe, who were none the less terrifying if they were not brutish in the slightest) was to be looking at apples and computer chips. They were that different.

"I think I'd like to find a dragon that's small, and likes the ground a bit," Bahtyia said.

"But you fly!" Said Iokua, "what's the point of having a grounded dragon if you fly?"

"What's the point of gaining extra wings, when I can fly?" She countered. It was a good thing they were discussing things this way too - for within short order that week, they had an Animagus and Transformation final involving 'why they chose their Animagus form' and, they were brought to Zora for final dragon-worthiness. The final came first and they grilled each other about it until they had their speeches down pretty well.

The class was rowdy, but that was hardly the point. Students were encouraged to get as wordy or as short with their explanations as they liked, but they did have to come up to the front of the class to do so.

"I like my peacock shape," said one girl, "because it's beautiful and very pretty!"

"Pretty loud, if you ask me," said a boy. The class chuckled, but then the girl came back.

"Coming from the Siamese cat who yowls when he's stuck on the roof," she chided, and the whole class erupted in laughter.

"I saw a quail at my home village," said Bahtyia quietly, "they aren't very common, and even if they were, they'd be very hard to spot. I don't mind being the center of attention when I'm trying to talk gossip," she caused some cheering - she'd already gotten an award for public speaking and in her Communication class had taken high honors. "But when I'm not trying, when I just want to investigate something, I can change into a small enough bird that not too many people notice, some mistake for a pigeon, and I can blend in. I can take all the notes I need to, in my mind, and then write them down for talking later..."

Next up was Iokua. "Even though some people think that the weasel is a pest," he was instantly interrupted by several voices (including his friends in the Pack) who proclaimed him a pest, "they serve a very important role - they control the rodent population. Imagine a whole field of wheat, being devoured from below by voles and hare? Well it's the weasels who take out most of those little things, not birds and not coyotes or wolves. No one needs a bunch of pesticides if you've got a good family of weasel around. Now... they do like to frolic a bit..." He forced himself to change, and did a very bizarre flipping-into-the-air dance, and then with more effort he changed back into human form, "that's to confuse the prey - works like a charm!"

The class applauded and Lucas granted him extra points for having transformed quickly during the speech. That was something he had to watch for, struggling one way or the other could lead to a dangerous encounter. If he shifted too quickly he might hurt himself magically, if he went too slow he might get eaten or killed by something or someone who thought he was in fact a pest.

Zvonko was up in a bit, he prowled up to the front of the class in his wolf shape, and as he often did, kept his canine ears. "Wolves are awesome. You ever watch a wolf?" One of the winged wolves living here cleared her throat, and everyone laughed, "no, a real wolf, without wings? They rely on each other, they take down prey that's much bigger than just one could ever handle. And they do so control the rodent population, they survive in the winter sometimes on nothing but mice!" He changed quickly and then pounced onto the ground, arched neck and extended paws in the traditional 'mousehunt' posture. Changing back, this time to fully human form, he completed by saying, "there is no wolf who would want to be alone. I like my Pack just fine." He strode back to his desk, shared with Vahan, who stood.

The room went quiet again, when he transformed into his gorilla shape. It was magnificient, he knew it and they knew it. He hadn't grown into a Silverback of course, that would come as he aged a bit. (Then again, he hadn't really tried: at least one girl had a male color scheme on her bird-shape, he knew it was possible for people to choose the other gender, why not a little age in the process?) He then sat with his back against the stone podium of the class, and spoke. "Everyone knows gorillas are rare, they may even go extinct soon." It drew a collective gasp - no one could do that, maybe parrot shapers, or the like, but ... this? "It is hard to speak, this way - but what if all gorillas could do it? What if they could all learn sign-language?" He shifted back into human form, tall and strong looking. "They would say stop killing us, they would say please give us our land back. Some day, I might have to go down to the last places they live, and scare the pants off some rotten poacher. They'd never come back, but then... Everyone would want to see the talking gorilla. Sometimes I hope and I pray they can find a place, where no one goes. Sometimes I wish they could all be saved."

The class went quiet again, it was all true. There was something wrong about this amazing creature vanishing literally before their eyes. But... Perhaps they'd get a voice.

The rest of the class had their turns, and soon enough the day was over.

***

"I heard about you lot from Lucas," Zora said, sitting on the edge of her desk with her hands propping her up, and her heels kicking indelicately into the front of it. "And I've been hearing other things, from the dragons... There's something for you, something special. Something rather specific in fact."

They perked up with that. It turned out there was a frenzy of sorts that had been set up among dragons who showed some kind of 'animal' in their appearance. From butterflies to weird two-headed xeno-dragons, there were a mixture of things out there available.

"It's possible you won't all find a dragon, or might find more than one, but I think you'd do us justice if you'd go. Sineus and her dragon, along with myself and my gold will take you there. So... Get packed! You'll be back ... before grades go out, if you catch my meaning?"

They didn't, really. But Iokua got it into his head to root around for the information. While everyone was packing some clothes and whatever else they needed, he was in the library looking at the more recent additions to the records. Dragon records, to be specific. Right next to the tomes on the Red Bellied Burner and the other earth-dragons, was a book collecting at least the Domina Dragons in one volume. It listed among other things, how their abilities could be used.

When they got sorted up into the dragon field, Iokua leaned over and whispered to Vahan, "we're going to be traveling through time, there and back."

"Really? Cool!" Said the dark-skinned boy. Bahtyia looked a little skittish about that but it was way too late for any worry. And of course, Zvonko had a sandwich packed halfway into his mouth as he ran up with his bags.

"We'll be headed to a place called Darkling Dawn," Zora said, encouraging her dragoness to pick up Vahan and Zvonko, the larger of the boys. "You'll be introduced to the people running it, and I expect you to behave. You're emisaries from our school, so do well! I know you can, just act normal, you're going to be okay."

Iokua and Bahtyia mounted up the peacock-colorshifter that Sineus rode, and very shortly they took off. Now, all of them had ridden either a broom or a carpet before, and Iokua had been on a dragon's back because one of the students wanted to take a picture of them in flight, his own dragon simply really enjoyed being ridden. So they found a person to sit - and he loved it. And naturally, Bahtyia knew flight inside and out, it was one of her best subjects.

But the feeling of having a massive creature, all muscle and bone, real and live and warm below them... It brought Bahtyia to tears, and caused Zvonko to hollar and howl.

They arrived - it was cold, bitter and weird cold between worlds. Vahan swore he heard voices coming to him, in the darkness of the Nexus. But they came through fine, and circled overhead until they were cleared to land somewhere appropriate.

And sure enough - there were dragons. More than they'd ever seen! And in so many different shapes and colors! "Now, remember, you're here from House Domina, act like it."

"Rowdy gypsies and lesbian vampires, on the way!" Zvonko cheered, as they unloaded.

Odd thing was... Zora only laughed and flew up to her own temporary quarters while they would be here... she didn't exactly tell him no.

*Next!*