It's been a thunder spell from the druid both times.
I gave her owl stats but flavored her as a very small dragon who has a fondness for polyhedral gems. Yep, she's a dice dragon.
I guess that makes my familiar my self-insert character.
In this campaign and another one where a different pc had a familiar, the DMs incentivized not killing them off by limiting the places you could find material components. I'm stocking up next time.