All Aboard the Struggle Bus PV: Shae Winters

It was hard for her to conceptualize no one else thinking about the mouse as the living, breathing creature it was. Maybe she could start a club for the well-being for the transfiguration animals. Maybe they got spoiled when they weren't being transfigured? She listened to Shae carefully, it did make sense. They had to learn the magic one way or another. "My first incident of magic was helping start a fire, I didn't even think of it as a spell, I thought it just took an extra second to start. Yours must've been scary though if that was your first time. But maybe I can try that next time. Maybe I can think about it as a stuffed animal instead of a real animal. But I'll make sure to get it right, so then I don't have to worry about the mouse being hurt." She sighed in relief. "You have been a huge help honestly, sometimes it helps just to talk through the concerns and get a new perspective on what other people think about while casting it. I never expected this to be an issue coming in. But I appreciate you helping me out. Honestly, History of Magic is my favorite and I don't even learn spells in that really." She let out an exhausted laugh. "Maybe I should take a break from this subject. You wouldn't happen to need help in History of Magic would you? So I could repay the favor?"

Shae watched as Willow thought for a moment before saying anything. When Willow spoke, Shae nodded to what Willow said. "Well, I'm glad I helped." She smiled. "But how was a fire not scary?" She laughed a bit. "Honestly, I knew magic existed and when it happened, I was mostly worried about getting into trouble for doing magic I wasn't supposed to be doing. It took hours of consoling me for my dad to finally convince me I wasn't going to get into trouble." Shae laughed. "That was all I was scared of. The mouse wasn't yellow for long, just a few minutes, so I knew the mouse was okay, but I also knew it was me and it was all very confusing." She smiled.
"Nope, I'm actually doing pretty well in History of Magic right now," she said. "but to repay the favor maybe we can just do something else." She paused. "I'm not sure what else to do though." Laughing, she shrugged it off. "No need to repay the favor, honestly, I could tell you were struggling and I felt bad and came over here to see if I could help, but I didn't want to come off as a know it all, so I chickened out and just introduced myself."

Willow realized she hadn't explained her first magic story that well, "I didn't like start a fire or anything. I was trying to make a bonfire outside with my family, they want me to get good at starting a fire for survival skills. I was using a flint and stone, but the fire started without the flint and stone. I had tried doing it a couple of times, so I thought it was just a delayed reaction but I guess it wasn't." She shrugged, "Fires aren't that scary since my family does them almost every night."

She listened to Shae's story, wondering what it would be like growing up with magic existing. Sometimes she wished her families magic had an instant effect, it always took so long for what they did to come into effect. "That's so cool that you knew about magic growing up. Did you have different fairy tales? We had ones involving magic and wizards, but I'm sure yours are different." She paused, slowly starting to gather her things and pack up. "Honestly, I'm glad you did come over. You helped me a lot, whether or not you believe it." She smiled with relief. She reached up and let her hair down, signifying the end of study mode. She looked out of the library windows and realized it was closer to evening time. "It looks like it's close to dinner time. Why don't you tell me a little bit about yourself though? I completely steamrolled and didn't really get the change to ask about your life." She had a habit of doing that in conversations, and she felt bad every time. She told herself she'd have to do better but she didn't know how.

@Shae Winters

Shae nodded as she listened to Willow's story about the fire. "Yeah, I'm not scared of fire exactly, but if I had accidentally started it, I'd be a bit more nervous." She laughed a bit. "But yeah, we kind of have fairy tales. Tales of Beedle the Bard." Shae said, smiling. "That's out big one." She told Willow.
"I get the steamrolling. I can do that too." Shae chuckled and thought for a moment. "Honestly, there's not much to say about myself. I grew up in Ireland and my parents are wizards. I have a little sister." Shae shrugged. "My dad works for the Ministry. I never really asked him what he does exactly, but I do know that." She laughed a bit. "But, honestly, I'm glad I could help. If you have to get going, I understand." Shae told her, after she noticed the setting sun. She lost herself in her thoughts for a few moments while she stared out the window. Her hair, which was pulled back into a ponytail, gained blonde streaks while Shae thought. She shook her head and brought her attention back to the present and looked at Willow, not realizing her hair had changed. "So anyway," she started again.

Just hearing the name of the fairy tale sounded really cool, they kind of sounded like the Brother Grimm stories. "Maybe they have the book at the library. That'd be cute to read myself a bedtime story." She smiled, putting her head in one of her hands and looked out the window while Shae told her about her story. "I don't know much about how the Ministry works still, so I guess we're kind of on the same page with that." She turned back towards Shae, cleaning up the last bit of her messy work station. Just as she looked back up, she started to speak but stopped as she watched Shae's hair change. "Yeah, maybe I should head to dinner, I'll probably be--" She paused, mouth agape. "Is there a hair color changing spell? I would love to change my hair!" She realized that Shae didn't have her wand out at all, "Wait, is this a type of wandless magic?" She thought that wandless magic was an advanced form not every was able to do it in the first place. She flipped her notebook that was still out to an empty page, just in case she needed to take notes so she could practice the spell.

Shae shrugged. "I haven't read them in a while." She told Willow, her mind a bit distant. When Willow noticed her hair, Shae pulled the ponytail around to look at what color her hair was. "Dang it." She sighed. "No, it's not a spell." She closed her eyes and concentrated on changing it back to normal. She looked at Willow. "I'm something called a metamorphmagus." She checked her hair to make sure it was normal. "Which means that I can change my appearance at will. Well it will usually happen at will, but it tends to happen without me realizing it." Shae's eyes changed to a deep green color just long enough for Willow to see, then she changed it back. "Sorry, I try to keep it under control, but sometimes when I'm distracted or just in general have high emotions. So I tend to focus too much on keeping everything normal." She smiled shyly. "Honestly, it's weird sometimes. It's been happening since I was young and I'm just now starting to get a handle on controlling it. Now, I at least can change back on my own. I used to have to wait it out until it changed back on its own."

Willow had never heard of a metamorphmagus, she wrote the word down to her best of her ability on spelling. It sounded interesting, and wondered if she could ever become a metamorphmagus. "Is it something that you're born with? Or does it just kind of appear one day?" Suddenly, dinner time was the farthest thing from her mind. Her eyes went wide again as Shae's eyes turned green for a split second. "Don't apologize! Besides, what really is considered normal? Just because it's not someone's else's normal doesn't mean that it isn't your normal. We all have different states of some really weird 'normal'." She air quoted the last word. She wasn't normal in her hometown by their standards, but to her standards she was as normal as she could be. She briefly remembered the story about the guinea pig, "I think it's funny that what happened to the guinea pig for your first magic, is kind of the same thing as what's happened to you since you were a kid." She tapped her quill against her chin, still thinking about it. "That's really cute when you think about it." She set her quill back down and smiled at Shae, "Thank you for telling me about it though. I'm sure it's not always a fun thing to go through."

"It's something that you're born with. You either are or aren't a metamorphmagus. There's no becoming one." She bit her lip. "But my mom didn't notice my appearance changing until I was a toddler, so that's something I guess." Her face showed concentration as she thought for a moment. "It was my mother's grandmother who last had it in my family before me," she said. "It wasn't a topic spoken on very often, so my mom didn't know and freaked out." Shae laughed a bit.
Shae nodded at Willow's comparison of her ability and the guinea pig. "Well, people with my talent are supposed to be good at Transfiguration I guess, so maybe that's part of it. But I'm not sure if I actually will be good at it." Shae shrugged. "But, eventually, I'll be able to turn into another person entirely." She laughed. "That would be cool. It's honestly pretty cool when I change and it confuses people, but right now I mostly change my hair and eyes." She closed her eyes and her hair turned blonde and her eyes turned brown. "Now I don't look so much like me." Shae opened her eyes and dropped the appearance. "I like it, but sometimes people are mean about it. Especially when it's obvious my emotions are changing and it's just weird sometimes."

Willow didn't think her mind could be blown again, since finding out there was an actual wizard school with a letter delivered via owl. "You'll be able to turn into a complete different person? Imagine how good at hide and seek you'll be! They'll never know!" She wished she had some cool skill like that, she had never felt more ordinary than being at a school like this. "If anyone is ever mean to you about it, let me know. I can rough 'em up." She punched the air with a face of concentration, it wasn't intimidating at all. She laughed, "I'll probably just yell at them a bunch. I'm not much of a fighter."

While she had been bullied it was never physical, it was all verbally and by isolation. She was thankful that it never got physical, she didn't want to fight anyone in general. First off, she would definitely lose. But physical fighting never got anything done, it just made people more upset and angry than they were before. "If anything, if it matches your emotions it should be easier for your friends to see if you're upset and help you through it, rather than making fun of you for it." She thought it might be able to be used for good rather than putting someone down, but maybe others didn't think like that.