Lydia Walsh | First Year | Hufflepuff

Full Name: Lydia Walsh
House: Hufflepuff
Age: 11
School Year: first (2025-2026)
Species: metamorphagus
History/Background Story:

Physical description
Fairly active, normal, 11 year old. Lydia is a metamorphagus, so appearance shift, but typically eyes are brown, hair is red, freckles across face; medium height for age, somewhat stronger than most 11 year old girls. Hair color tends to change when she's stressed. Constant scrapes and bruises from climbing trees & generally being outside with minor disregard or understanding for her health/well being.

Mental description
Cheerful & sunny disposition, excited to learn more about the world. Curious and kind. Doesn't like doing things unless they make sense to her, so will sometimes disregard rules assuming they don't apply in specific situations. Very physically active, and reliant on physical activity as an extension of mental state; moods are often reflected in physical capability.

Backstory
Lydia grew up in Dundee, with her father, mother & two older brothers. Her mum and dad are married; her mum is a witch, who works with getting squibs placed in decent situations, and her dad works as a biomedical engineer. Lydia and her siblings always used to giggle about this -- imagine, spending all that time studying science, only to discover later that magic exists. Science must have huge knowledge gaps in it. But their marriage seems to work, and Lydia and her siblings have been relatively happy.

Having two siblings meant that Lydia has never been lonely. She had always had a playmate readily available, even if they were being stupid and wanted to avoid her; it turns out that spying on your boring playmate who is doing their homework is still a relatively viable game. All the Walsh's were fairly active -- Lydia's brothers had been playing football for a long time, but she'd always preferred the freedom of just running around, climbing trees, doing handstands, swimming, and racing geese in the park.

Things changed a bit when Lydia was six -- her oldest brother, Sebastian, was confirmed to be magical, and shipped off to boarding school. Lydia & her middle brother Ian, were brokenhearted, and spent a lot of time imagining what they would do when they too, could go to magic school. But Ian never showed any magical talent whatsoever; he kept thinking he would, but nothing ever happened. Ever. Ian said he didn't mind, and threw himself into maths & robotics, but Lydia always felt there was something just a little bit untrue about that declaration, and especially with the fervor which with Ian threw himself into muggle subjects. But Ian has always been there for her, so she's never mentioned that, and their relationship appears unchanged and is currently stable.

Lydia's scared their relationship will fade once she's at Hogwarts, and scared to be away from home, but extremely excited to meet new people and explore Hogwarts, and figures she can send *lots* of letters back home. (and perhaps mobile phones will even work at Hogwarts. She's unsure, her family hasn't kept the most up to date with how modern technology and magic fare together; typically at home, they tend towards a more muggle style of living)

First Instance of Magic
There have been various instances of metamorphmagic back from when Lydia was a toddler (mostly in the form of hair colour changing), but her first instance of non-metamorphmagic was when she was five, and at a friend's birthday party. As per usual, Lydia was enthusiastically playing, this time on a trampoline; she got so caught up in the excitement of the trampoline that she bounced off it, heading straight for the hard pavement underneath and a certain broken arm at least. Fortunately, her magic kicked in at that point, and she safely bounced off the hard ground. Lydia, of course, didn't even really register the potentially extremely dangerous event, nor the oddness of her bouncing off the ground, and went right back to playing on the trampoline.