Lyra Avery
 | |
| Lyra Florentina Avery | |
|---|---|
| Biographical Information | |
| Born | 17 May 1979, 38 |
| City of Birth | Ripon, England |
| Current City | Heidelberg, Germany |
| Blood status | Pure-blood |
| Physical Information | |
| Gender | Female |
| Height | 5'06 |
| Hair Colour | Fiery orange-red |
| Eye Colour | Green with hazel limbal rings |
| Relationships | |
| Father | Lucian Avery |
| Mother | Cynthia Avery |
| Siblings | |
| Magical Characteristics | |
| Wand(s) | |
| |
| Boggart | Dying dragon she can't save |
| Patronus | Eagle |
| Special Abilities | Metamorphmagus |
| Education | |
| School | Hogwarts |
| House | Slytherin |
| Class of | 1997 |
| Occupation | |
| |
| Character Information | |
| Neon | |
One of Arcturus Hollingbury's best friends from Hogwarts, Lyra is a magizoologist who specialises in dragons but keeps her knowledge base wide with other animals as well. She is currently employed by the Black Forest Dragon Reserve in Germany, but serves as a government liaison between Germany and Britain on matters concerning the conservation and protection of all magical creatures.
Because of her work, she tends to shuttle back and forth between Britain and Germany. She rents an apartment somewhere in London for her brief stays, and has a proper apartment in Heidelberg, Germany.
Family
Lyra is from one of the families counted under the pureblood Sacred Twenty-Eight. She is more than aware of her family's involvement with Voldemort during the Second Wizarding War and tries to distance herself from the reputation as much as possible by defying everything Voldemort and his Death Eaters stood for. The unnamed Avery who was involved with the Death Eaters has been officially disowned by the family, though whether or not this is being reinforced is still up in the air. He is said to be Lyra's uncle and her father's brother.
Her father Lucian Avery largely spends his days shuttered away in the Avery family mansion, distant from his children in the wake of Voldemort's defeat for unknown reasons. He retired from his position of Senior Auror at the beginning of the Second Wizarding War and largely kept out of Death Eater business.
Her mother Cynthia Avery is largely disgusted at the actions the unnamed Avery brought upon the family, having never wanted to be associated with the Death Eaters or their actions. As such at the end of the Second Wizarding War she took Lyra with her to live in Germany to get away from the mess that ensued, leaving Lucian to deal with it himself.
Lyra has a brother she doesn't speak of. When pressed she will mention his name, Jonathan Avery, and will also address him by another name, Jonathan "Jon" Wednesday, before keeping silent about him otherwise. All that is known about him is that he is currently an Unspeakable working in the Department of Mysteries studying dreams in particular, and while he was not a Death Eater he funded and supported Death Eater activities and doctrine. He apparently believes himself more enlightened than the rest of his family and Voldemort, and sees the rest of his family as failures in keeping their blood purity superior.
Though she doesn't seem to like talking about her brother, she cares deeply for him and only wishes for him to stop being self-obsessed and delusional about blood purity.
Appearance/Distinguishing Features
Lyra used to have shoulder-length hair with a sideswept fringe, usually fiery orange-red with choppy ends. After an incident with Erklings in the Black Forest which left her scarred and damaged her hair, she cut it short into a loosely wavy bob that retains the sideswept fringe but now frames her squarish jaw much closer and makes her prominent nose a little bigger. Her hair is still fiery orange-red.
She stands about 5’06/168 cm and cuts a lanky figure, oft emphasised with suits that she drapes over her shoulders rather than wearing them properly. Whenever she speaks she waves her hands animatedly, her arched eyebrows giving her a mischievous cheeky look to her features. Her eyes are green with hazel limbal rings. If she has to wear lipstick she usually resorts to bright reds.
When not at work, she wears dragonskin jackets and graphic tees, spaghetti straps, and shirts tied at the midriff. Trousers include ripped jeans, all kinds of shorts and slim denim trousers. She favours fingerless gloves and likes to pair neutral colours with splashes of bright colours. Overall her image deliberately invokes a boyish punk look, which she is - a tomboy at heart.
She is a Metamorphmagus, but only changes her hair colour frequently. She doesn’t remember what her real hair colour is. She uses the ability itself to be able to mimic animal sounds and make herself friendlier to animals.
Lyra's family speaks with a Received Pronunciation (RP) accent. Lyra herself, in her quest to distance herself from her family, speaks with a Yorkshire accent to reflect her birthplace of Ripon. She can code-switch to a near-perfect German accent when she needs to communicate in German. If she uses a RP accent, more likely she's using it either to be formal or mocking.
Personality
Anyone who knew Lyra since her Hogwarts days would remember her as bouncy, excitable and cheerful. She would greet people with great gusto, speak extremely quickly and was overall a known extrovert with a lot of passion.
As of 2018 Lyra is more mellow and most of her bounciness is reserved for when she's talking about dragons, her one passion. She is still an extrovert, needing to go out at least once or twice a week to hang out with colleagues, but she doesn't act incredibly excitable or energetic any longer. Her eyes still spark with life and she is still passionate about her work in general, not just dragons.
What she is now is a laid-back, friendly woman with a lot of tolerance for the people she loves and enjoys the company of. She comes off as incredibly chill, her former speedy diction now slowed down enough for her Yorkshire accent to be understandable. She still speaks a little aggressively at times and has the Yorkshire stubbornness to her.
Despite her love for makeup, fashion and her appearance, she’s a proper tomboy. She expresses affection and familiarity with physical action (high fives, hair ruffling, slaps on the back, light punches to the shoulder), hardly bats an eyelid to casual swearword usage and her overall behaviour makes her come off as the lounging cool feline in any group. She may not be tall, but her presence can be described as ‘big’ and occasionally may make people feel smaller compared to her. She has a guilty pleasure relationship with brandy.
Her Patronus is an eagle. She hates being called Florentina or any name derived from it and will threaten to punch people if they insist on using it. Her mother only uses it when she needs Lyra's attention (or to stop her talking too much in a serious situation).
History
Childhood
Despite being born to the Avery family, she never supported Death Eaters or the Dark Arts. Instead she enjoyed learning magic of all sorts, expressing wonderment at the world at every twist and turn. She was into learning all kinds of magic, but if she could afford it she never used spells that would hurt someone unless in self defence. This compassion extended to animals. As a child she was kind to everyone and always wanted to include people in whatever she was doing, never wanting others to be alone. Her extroversion was at its peak as a child according to her mother and more than once did she accidentally lose a potential friend by being too forward.
Hogwarts
At Hogwarts she was sorted into Slytherin the moment the Hat touched her head. She very quickly became known as an oddball Slytherin, being open to students of other Houses, making friends with every person she could reach out to and trying everything out as much as she could. Eventually she mellowed out a little and toned down her bubbliness and energy when around people she was not too familiar with, but can be touchy-feely with her close friends.
By her third year she was in Magical Creatures and Astronomy Clubs as well as being a Chaser on the Slytherin Quidditch team.
Though Lyra was no overachiever, she excelled well in Care of Magical Creatures, Potions, Astronomy and Charms. She wanted to take Muggle Studies but her pureblood family refused to allow her to take the subject; she went into Study of Ancient Runes instead.
It was in Charms where she met Arcturus Hollingbury and they became fast friends over the subject. This helped both of them greatly in later years, as Arcturus would ask her for help on Care of Magical Creatures. She would later meet Sebastian Cheverell, who was enamoured with her skills on the Quidditch pitch, and Demarcus Bradley, a fellow Slytherin. All four became friends together and helped each other in school. Most would have expected her to be the voice of reason in a group of boys; in truth she was just as boisterous as they came and it was usually Arcturus who kept the group reined in.
Lord Voldemort’s rise to power saw her plunge into troubled times. Being an Avery she was expected to support Death Eaters and using the Dark Arts, if at least sympathise with the pureblood movement. Lyra never agreed with it, stating that she was friends with purebloods, halfbloods and Muggleborns alike, and supporting Voldemort would betray all of them. This led to her facing much ridicule from some of her less savoury Slytherin housemates, but her friends supported her decisions (except for Demarcus, who slowly distanced himself from her).
It was during the Battle of Hogwarts where she would go on to rescue Arcturus alongside Sebastian and save him from death by getting him to Madam Pomfrey. Lyra was also the only person who knew why Demarcus hurt Arcturus but kept the story from the latter until he demanded to know the truth. She is the only person Arcturus keeps in contact with who knows that he nearly died at the Battle of Hogwarts, and will take that secret to the grave with her. As a result, they remain close best friends, Arcturus seeing her as a sister and Lyra seeing him as a (younger) brother.
Unfortunately the pressure the Avery family faced from getting members of their family thrown into Azkaban for their crimes meant that Lyra was being lumped in with them whether she liked it or not. Shortly after the fall of Voldemort, she and her mother left for Germany where she picked up an internship with the German Ministry of Magic in the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures.
Early Adulthood
She discovered she had an affinity for magical animals, and thus began to work in this field. Her training took her into the Black Forest and helping to take care of European dragons, which was her first introduction and she very quickly fell in love with taking care of the magnificent beasts.
Because she had to travel extremely frequently, she could never give a firm address for Arcturus to send her letters. However, Sebastian Cheverell contacted her years later when she was in Austin, Texas, working as a wildlife researcher at a magical national park - he had become a successful Cursebreaker for one of American’s major wizarding banks and wanted to rekindle old contacts with her once again. It was during her meetings with him that he asked her out on a date, and on their first date derided Arcturus, mocking their old friend. When he asked her if she would continue dating him, she turned him down in disgust.
She continued to travel across Europe after her time in the United States, working with all sorts of magical creatures but constantly returning to the Black Forest Dragon Reserve. Her meeting with Sebastian found her wondering what had happened to Arcturus, and by chance the Reserve happened to need a magizoologist to be sent to England as a liaison. She applied for the position through the German Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, and in 2012 travelled to England for the first time in years.
2013-2017
After Lyra’s return to Britain she found her plate laden with work moreso from the rest of Europe than Britain itself, keeping her working in the Black Forest Dragon Reserve as its liaison. Most of her work revolved around the study of dragons, but she was also travelling to schools to educate students on her work as a magizoologist in general. While she was more of an expert on dragons this did not discount her knowledge on other magical creatures.
She found herself discussing more issues on environmentalism and the preservation of magical creatures, topics that she was not unfamiliar with, and due to her participation in moving animals to safer places refreshed her skills as a beast handler, using her Metamorphmagus ability to mimic the sounds of animals to appease and lure them.
However she was not always successful, or lucky. When Erklings kidnapped two children in 2016 she and a few other beast handlers entered the Black Forest to rescue the children and repel the Erklings. She mimicked their sounds and was rewarded with an ambush by one of their target Erklings, which struck her across the face and chest and had to be repelled off by her colleagues. Though she was not incapacitated the Erkling poison left thin scars after the healing. The children survived and were rescued despite the attack.
2017 saw her changing her hairstyle and becoming a liaison with China regarding a case about artefacts empowered with dragon’s blood and dark magic being smuggled into the country. The news that the dragon’s blood was from Europe was not a surprise, but she was more shocked to find that the majority of the blood was from Hungarian Horntails, who had particularly potent blood in terms of magical composition. Surface investigations of major Horntail reserves in Europe turned up possible poaching, but as the number of Horntails had not decreased the matter was considered closed. Lyra remained unconvinced.
Despite her mother’s wishes, Lyra is making more stops in Britain of late as part of her investigations. She is personally trying to avoid the rest of her family, rarely speaking about why openly to others.
She remains one of Arcturus’ best friends, dropping by to visit or have a coffee. She’s also a regular visitor to Level Four, usually Beast Division unless she has to consult with Being and Spirit Divisions since those are not usually her forte. As per normal for a magizoologist, even if she doesn’t normally work as a beast handler, she tends to make friends with the local healers on Reserves and plies them with their favourite snacks.
While she is still a chatterbox with exaggerated physical gestures being a staple of her body language, she appears to be more transparent to others when she’s upset rather than glossing over her feelings to put others over herself, and she is more likely to think before she speaks.
2018
Lyra continued her work on magical creature education on preservation and protection, and relocating magical creatures across Europe. With her work she draws ever closer to Britain despite her intentions to avoid her family other than her mother, and has had more time to reflect and mellow, leading to a more mature woman stepping into 2018.
Interests
Dragons
Lyra has always been in love with dragons ever since she was little. She describes her room in the Avery family mansion as filled with pictures and statues of dragons, and her bookshelves usually have stories that involve dragons. She finds them beautiful and fascinating, and will never pass up a chance to study them in their magnificence.
At the same time, Lyra is more than well aware that dragons are wild creatures with a greater magical capacity than wixes. She treats them respectfully, keeping their untameable nature in mind and always reminding others that dragons, beautiful as they are, can also be terrible when angered. Despite not being an outright beast handler she speaks with the experience and knowledge of one.
Magical Conservation
Her love of dragons does not exclude other animals. When not studying dragons, Lyra is involved in major efforts and concerns of environmentalism and sustainable conservation. She keeps everyone's best interests in mind - even the Muggles whom she hopes to protect from the magical creatures that could possibly wreck more havoc if unwittingly angered. She is most angered by wanton acts of destruction against animals as well as poaching. In the occasion she gets angry, she becomes far more aggressive and tends to add fire into her spells to make her point. Some have described her as a 'red dragon' in her wrath.
