"So have you sent Dumbledore that letter yet?" Annabelle asks from the stove.

"Better question. How's breakfast coming? I'm starving." I respond.

I feel Annabelle's glare at the back of my head and instead focus on the article about which Quafliump teams would make it to nationals.

"You ain't going to keep dodging my questions forever Sepi. You gotta get that letter out in the next three days." Annabelle lectures.

I'm pretty sure I am supposed to be her boss.

"I can't send the letter yet. I haven't even asked Lee if he wants to go there." I say while not bringing up that Annabelle and I have narrowed it down as the best option for him; unless he wanted to either learn a new language, or learn spell work that didn't use wands or staves.

"It's been three days. When exactly were you planning on having this conversation?" Annabelle asked as she flipped a pancake on the stove.

She was right. I am avoiding the subject. My mind had already accepted that Hogwarts is the best choice for him and his schooling. It is also a great boon to my research in multiple ways. However my heart, long set against the school, rebels against it, over all making for a witch that just can't be bothered to address the subject.

"I dunno. Later. Today probably." I respond.

"Mhm." Anabelle says in a tone similar to when a chocolate covered Lee claimed he hadn't had any sweets all day. "What time today?"

"Ya know. Later." I reply again as I pretend to be even more engrossed in what was in the newspaper in front of me. As if Quafliump scores were utterly captivating.

My feigned interest in the sports section did little as the paper was snatched from me and a smiling pancake was placed in front of me.

"Today is going to be a beautiful day!" The pancake said in a cheery falsetto.

"Stop avoidin' this Sepi!" She growls.

"Turn that frown upside down!" The pancake says cheerfully.

"I'll get to it. I just need a good time."

There was a moment of silence between us.

"I'm part of a delicious-!" Annabelle cuts the pancake off with a squirt of syrup into it's blueberry eyes.

"Lee!" She yells.

"Yeah?" The young voice calls back form the TV room.

"Ambrose Academy has bad guys in charge this year. Wanna go to Hogwarts?" She yells as she ignores my glare.

"The one British place?" Lee askes, ignoring the dangerous information in a way that only children could.

"Yep." Annabelle responds, not backing away from my glare.

"Are they a well known school? Will passing there mean something to the right people?" Lee asks.

Damn munchkin. What's he doing asking questions like that at his age?

"Yeah. It's world famous."

There was a moment of silence, which probably had more to do with the fact I heard the music of a power star being used than any sort of consideration on Lee's part. A little ditty then plays announcing Mario reached the end of a level.

"Yeah. That's fine. So long as you two will still be there." He yells back casually.

"Thanks Lee! Come get your pancakes!" She calls before giving me a triumphant smile.

"Start eating fast before I get soggy~!" The pancake sings.

"Do I need to write the letter too?" She asks.

I grumble and drag my knife across the pancake, cutting off it's mouth and gratefully shutting it up.

"No." I shove a fourth of the pancake in my mouth then continue with a full mouth, "But ha'm gonna get hem hish wan' today firs."

"Honestly Sepi. Do you want to raise Lee with no table manners?"

Lee comes running into the room and almost knocks his chair over as he leaps into it.

"Did you say we were getting my wand today!? When, when?" He asks excitedly.

"Happy Breakfast little boy!" His pancake sings at him.

"Hi pancake." He acknowledges before turning hopeful eyes back at me.

I take a gulp of milk before swallowing. Those eyes are deadly. They make the word "no" forbidden in it's area of effect. I glance down to get away from them. Instead I look at at my plate to see a blueberry face smiling happily at me. Well, smiling minus three quarters of it's mouth.

The pancake's apparent glee at being eaten was uncomfortable enough to have me look up at the still watery puppy dog eyes.

I apparently only hold the illusion of power in my own home.

"Yeah. We'll go after breakfast, before the rush." I concede.

"Yes!" Lee yells.

"Hooray!" His pancake cheers with him.

Lee then begins to consume his breakfast far faster than is healthy. Unlike me, he saves the pancakes mouth for last, the high pitched voice cheering on the boy's progress.

"Five bucks says his wand has a dragon theme." Annabelle says as she sits with her own breakfast. One that doesn't talk to her. She finds that off-putting for some odd reason.

Breakfast passes quickly and I bid Lee to run off and get dressed. I also head to my room and make myself presentable for the outside world. My teenage years proved that, unfortunately, even the most insular purebloods still know the difference between a bathrobe and an actual wizards robe.

That or it was the bunny slippers.

Still, I quickly change into the Septima special; a button up shirt with a collar with the sleeves rolled up and a pair of stonewashed blue jeans. My pixie cut needed only a muttered spell and a small sprits of hairspray. A quick smack in the face with Marigold's Makeup Masher and I am good to go.

Lee awaits me in the hall. The kid is growing up fast. He is still a bit short for his age bracket, but the 12-year old had managed to put on two inches in the last six months. Which makes him a 4'8" example of concentrated sweetness.

"You're taking forever Aunt Sepi! Let's go!"

Or an example of concentrated pain in the ass. One of the two.

"Yeah, yeah. Keep your overalls on Mogwai." I reply. "We're going. Head to the floo."

"Whoo!" Lee yells before running off.

"No running in the house!" I yell with the tone all guardians of children knew. When one must observes the forms of ancient customs but knows they will to be no effect.

There was a reason the floors all had cushioning charms on them.

I set a sedate pace for the fire place as Lee runs back with the jar of floo powder, rather than wait for me to reach him.

"Well if you don't wanna go, you can just say so. No need to put on this entirely fake front of excitement." I state drolly.

"Ah, come on Aunt Sepi! There's no way you weren't just as excited getting your wand!"

I am entirely sure I had much less enthusiasm when I went to get my wand. Meta knowledge on what horrors awaited people in the wizarding world lead to very mixed feelings on my first outing to get my wand.

Then again, Lee knew that all too well too.

"You have no proof, so your hypothesis is thrown out due to a lack of evidence." I respond simply.

Lee, in a show if intelligence that I can probably learn from, shut his mouth so that we wouldn't delay our trip any further.

I snort and take a pinch of the floo powder. "Dragon's Breath Hall." I state concisely before stepping into the fireplace.

The floo was an interesting sensation to me. I've heard over many years that different people have very different reactions to it. Some feel the sensation as speed, others heat, even other as an icy sensation.

For me, it was an odd sensation of the three. I feel fast and fiery wind slamming into my front, while an icy cold crawled up my legs and back. It lasts only for a flash. An instant so short I could only have defined it so well due to the frequency at which I feel it. Then I step out into the toasty air of Dragon's Breath Hall.

The wizard community in California was an odd one in comparison to most of the world. Most magical communities in the world erred to congregating at old structures. Places that you could enter and feel the weight of tradition and history. Depending on how often magic has been cast at the location, that weight can be very literal. However, the California community flocked to the new. The fancy. The ostentatious.

Dragon's Breath Hall was all of that and more. The ceiling had more in common with a cathedral than a bar, stretching at least 50 feet up into the air. The struts of the ceiling were made of the interlocking skeletons of four separate dragons. The four skeletons looking the world like Atlas holding up the world, only instead they were holding up a chandelier studded ceiling while their heads all gazed at the middle of the room, their boney jaws roaring open as small spots of light poured forth from their mouths like their fires did in life. The fist sized balls of light swirled where they met in the middle before flittering off to dance among the chandeliers until their magic faded away and the light died.

It was flashy. It was needlessly expensive. And it was so fucking cool.

The opulence didn't end there though. Dragon's Breath Hall is more like a shopping mall than anything else. It has a massive long hall divided into two stories with more than fifty shops dotted along either length of the hall per story. In the very middle of the hall, directly under the meeting of the dragon's breath, sat an unnatural pond that holds water as smooth as a mirror.

Said pool perfectly reflected the ceiling. Only instead of artificial lights and skeletons, the reflections showed dragon's fire and four perfectly healthy dragons with bright eyes locked into the middle of the room. Meeting the eyes of the reflections never failed to make me feel like a rabbit being eyed by hungry owl.

The sound of the floo roars again and I give me a half turn to see Lee stepping through. His eyes lock on the dancing lights above us for a moment, not paying much more attention than a the average person would acknowledge a lightbulb, before he starts looking for Wavestrum's.

Getting a feeling of awe and wonder from a child raised in a wizard's house is hard. Granted, he's no stranger to Dragon's Breath Hall.

"Alright, come on kiddo. Let's get you a wand."

We take a short stroll past Zeta's Zoo of Magnificent Mammals, Frigg's Cauldron, and Delilah's Delicacies before arriving at our destination. Wavestrum's Wand Emporium, the best place to find a wand on the west coast. I step into the shop and immediately feel the tingle of magic in the air. Wand making was very magic intensive business, and any shop used to make them will always have a charge in the air that had magic just begging to be used.

Which is also why a wand shop is the best place to test wands too.

"William? You in?" I call.

"Septima? I'll be out in a bit." Says a voice that managed to crack like a teenager in the grips of puberty, then the owner of the store stepped out from the back room. William is an older man in his late 60's. His salt and pepper hair was clearly losing its fight against baldness, to the point that the man should really just shave it off. His skin an ambiguous caramel that came people's that live in sunny areas, though I know that his mother came from Guam and his father from Italy, and his whole front was currently covered in a fine green dust. "It's good to see you again! How is Aloysius treating you?"

"The wand has been a good and loyal companion." I reply with a smile. Wavestrum's had a long history of naming their wands. I didn't know a single person who bought a wand here and hasn't had William ask after the wand by name every time they see the old man. He never forgets a wand.

"And you are...Charles, right?" He asks Lee.

People were a very different matter though.

"Um...no. My name is Lee." He says as if he were the adult talking to a child. "We've met four times before."

"What do you have going on back there William?" I interrupt before that could go further. I locked eyes to the dull green powder all over the man. "Working with more World Tortoise Shell?"

"Oh no." William said with a wave of his hand. "Outside your wand I've only managed to match three other people with one of those. A stubborn material for sure. Nope, I'm working with Green Kirin horn today."

I shake my head, as the man casually mentions working with a material that costs more than most houses. That is the difference between Wavestum's Wands and most other places. He doesn't just use wood for the wand casing, but something from magical creatures, in addition to the core inside. It also makes his wands ten times more expensive than most other places too. Even then his profit margin was small. But I personally knew his stuff was always dependable.

And he gives a lifetime guarantee on wands. Which usually just meant he re-forges the wand from the same materials free of charge.

"No. Lee is here to get a wand." I say while placing a hand on the kiddo's shoulders.

"Ah! That age already. My my my." William shakes his head and walks over to a display case to start pulling out wands. "Headed to Ambrose Academy already?"

I open my mouth to confirm. No need to spread my travel plans around.

"No. I'm going to-" Lee began, but then he caught my wince. That or he just realized that discretion had great value. "Somewhere else." He finishes.

"Not Ambrose Academy? Shame shame shame." William shakes his head before glancing to me. "I assume you don't intend to buy a blonde?"

A blonde was slang for a "blank wand". The cheapest wands William makes; a core of boggart hair with a casing of coyote bones. A combo that always adapted to it's wielder and guaranteed a wand that would work for whoever wields it. It helped families with slim wallets spend money on other things. Like Abrose Academy's hefty tuition.

"Nope. I'm good for whatever wand he's matched with." I state as I grab Lee's hand to stop him from touching one of the available wands. "Don't touch until he hands it to you."

Lee scowls. "I wasn't going to touch it."

"Mhm. You were just helpfully going to nudge it from the edge of the counter."

"Exactly!" He says, nodding his head.

"Here you are young man. Kitsune hair and mandrake wood." William brought the wand towards Lee before pausing. "Point the wand only at the ceiling and definitely not at the wand case."

I shoot William a look, which he ignores.

"Also don't point it at us." I state.

"Oh. Yes yes yes. That too."

Priorities. William has them.

Lee takes hold of the wand, only for the wand to grow a ten inch long fox head that began screaming in a high pitch wail. I grab my ears in an attempt to block out the noise. William snatches the wand out of Lee's hand.

"Well that ones a failure." The man pauses. "Wait wait wait. Did you enjoy that?" He asks Lee.

Lee adopts a look of shocked insult. "No!"

"Right. Just making sure. Mandrake was a bad match." Will grabs another and places it in Lee's waiting, and much less excited, hands. "Try this. Minitour Horn and Gruffle Snot."

The wand sat inert in his hands.

"My my my. Interesting reaction." The wand is quickly removed and another is placed. "Coatle fang and Ent Sap."

This one immediately shot a blob of sticky green goo into the ceiling. The ceiling immediately rippled like a bowl of jello before the substance disappeared. As it will with most spells that hit it. One of my finer bits of work. Wavestrum's was my first big job. William had grown tired of his walls and ceiling needing constant repairs and I reached out to help.

The results spoke for themselves.

My focus drifts away from Lee as I look at the shop. It has changed a lot from when I first came in many years ago. Years ago it was a struggling store, first beginning it's business. William started with trying to make cheap and affordable wands for everyone. His business failed until he started selling the novel high end wands. The high society snobs ate up that their tools were made of not wood, but the very fiber of magical creatures.

The money that William got from their sales let him finish making the blank wands. A ground breaking achievement. But the needlessly expensive wands are what allowed him to turn the shop full of second hand furniture and mildew smells to a shop with spacious area, brightly lit display cases, floors of plush carpet, and walls and counters of Unnaturally White Elm.

"Wow!" Lee exclaims, making my gaze drift back to him. At some point the boy had managed to become covered in soot. However the boy had a small figure made of ethereal grey running up his arm. The figure looked reminiscent of a dog in it's build, but with a massive mane of and the face of a predatory cat. The creature came to Lee's shoulder where it stopped, stood perfectly still, then slowly faded away.

"Well, I believe we have our winner." William states happily.

Lee turns his gaze to white wand in his hand. The wand looks like twelve inches of ivory at a glance, the base of the wand thicker than most and the tip having a very slight upward bend to it.

"What is this?" I ask.

"Imperial Dragon's claw with a Foo Dog's tail as the core." William stated happily. "I never thought I'd get to sell this thing."

Of fucking course it was. And those two pieces had to be ludicrously expensive too, considering the rarity of Imperial Dragons and how stingy the owners of Foo Dogs typically were.

"How much is this? We looking at soul shattering or life of servitude." I ask in resignation.

"Oh not that bad. I'm giving you this at cost." William says before turning to Lee and giving a serious look. "I'm going to need you to take really good care of Bobert."

"Bobert?" Lee asked with a lemon face.

"And how much is cost for Bobert?" I ask.

"Hey hey hey. I name all the wands that come through here. I can't help it if they aren't all winners." He says as he gestures around at the dozens of wands currently on display.

"Oh." Lee pauses. "Can I at least change it's name?"

"Sure Lee. Now, how much is Bobert?" I ask again, more insistently.

William's expression cracked like glass. "I...suppose you can rename it. If you would be okay with the wand renaming you."

"Sure. That's no big deal."

I place a hand on William's shoulder and firmly turn him towards me. "How much is Bobert!?"

He tells me. The price is somewhere between ouch and boing.

"Wow." I breathe and loosen my grip. I turn to look at Lee clutching his wand to his chest like it were a new born child. "You're lucky you're cute kid." I mutter.

I reach into my expanded wallet and pay for fucking Bobert.