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Aurais had no idea what Lucian meant about the chicken nugget bloke being purple– but it was clearly a joke. Luci pressed onwards, joking that everything was a lie and the cake was a lie and rainbow boys and mermaid tea– ”Not the cake!” he wailed dramatically through sign, falling exaggeratedly before popping the piece in his hand into his mouth. ”If it’s a lie, don’t wake me up. Let me stay in this dream with rainbow friends and silly jokes.”. His hand hovered briefly in pause. Luci shrugged and stuck his tongue out playfully though, and Auraid let the dream topic go before they ended up on a tangent.

Whatever purple meant, it seemed to be something Luci liked– he had the softest pink to his cheeks and if it was anyone else Aurais might have interpreted it as a shy blush–except his hair did the whole lavender wave again. Aurais glanced up to see the last remnants of it–not long enough to capture on his camera, but notable either way.

They continued with the quiz/ game. Lucian explained he went red whenever he got a fever, which Aurais jotted down immediately after snapping a picture. He nodded as his friend explained. ”I think that makes sense. It’s like transfiguration. Just remembering how something changes is helpful making it change again. Which…makes sense. Meta abilities are considered transfiguration, right?”

Luci expressed a bit of trepidation when they brought up fur and feathers. It took Aurais a moment, but the moment Lucian brought up boggarts last year, everything snapped into place: Luci’s boggart had been a terrifying glob of a creature. Aurais had partially wanted to take a picture, and was part just startled that his cool-headed friend had something so demonically horrifying haunting him. But now it made sense– it wasn’t the monster itself, straight out of a horror film–that scared Luci. It was the prospect of turning into that himself…and not being able to turn back. A few feathers on their own might be cute, but a few feathers here, a scale there, a color here and a color there and soon Lucian Valentine was less boy with color-changing abilities and more monster with no tether back…to the real world. Back where the most outlandish things were cake and rainbow friends and mermaid-water-tea.

So, Aurais was quite surprised when Luci replied that he’d try it anyways. Aurais watched, and nodded, sending a firm, ”Ok.” towards him.

Soon, a row of gray feathers poked out, sporting across his arm. It wasn’t exactly a wing, but it was damn close. Aurais applauded gently, and after a moment, the feathers vanished, falling away like an illusion melting off of him”Neat,” he commented before realizing he hadn’t gotten a picture of it. Ah, that was probably for the best. Luci probably didn’t want reminders of that. Practice for later, maybe, but they’d get to that when they got to that.

Instead, Luci brought up turning into other people. He could do that all day, could he? ”Other people…Have you tried impersonating like…Aedan? Be Aedan. Talk to Tam as Aeda–aw I sound like Fina now. Nah don't do that. Alright. Scratch being friends. Have you tried being Professor Valdez? Just. Get to one of his classes super early and just teach DADA”

“Now, now Aedan, there’s nothing wrong with liking Tam more than any of us, you just don’t have to be so obvious about it,” Aurais signed through the shaking of his laugh. He tried snapping a picture but was pretty sure it was cut off or blurry with how much he was shaking. ”Oh definitely half the school ships them. But Tam and Aedan don’t seem to be there yet so I’m trying not to tease them. Fina says they’re just putting off the inevitable, but maybe they just want to take things slow, yeah?”

He scooted back to get a better picture of Lucian-as-Aedan with his arms crossed. "Ah, hold that pose,” he commented with one hand, snapping a better picture to compare with one of Aedan’s later.

Lucian considered the next request and again his features shifted. Luci’s whole body grew from Aedan-height to Valdez-height. When he cleared his throat, it was like the very vocal cords had changed. Lucian made a gesture and Aurais could almost hear Professor Valdez’s book snap shut to signal the start of lecture. Luci spoke, and for a moment Aurais could have sworn that this was an actual lecture they had in Defense before.

But it wasn’t Valdez, and even if he couldn’t point them out immediately, Aurais could feel something not quite there about the impersonation. He did his best to be serious–his face didn’t give him away, but he was shaking with silent laughter again. ”Yes Professor Valdez sir,” Aurais signed, head down in mock-seriousness before looking up and snapping the picture.

”Do you shift your voice too? Or is that just normal voice mimicry?” he asked curiously when Luci seemed to have finished the impression. His meta friend replied that he couldn’t alter his voice–and didn’t think that any of the metas could, speculating that maybe that was why his mum would make her own original disguises instead of impersonating others. Aurais nodded, jotting that down. He couldn’t speak normally to begin with, so he wasn’t sure how hard it was to change voices, but it seemed to change by person and range. He imagined it was like different octaves on different instruments. They could play the same note but there would still be a different timbre between a piano and violin. Except it was more like…different pianos. Some people seemed to have different ranges too– Fina’s voice jumped up an octave when she was talking to adults at the big parties she and their parents enjoyed, and another octave yet when she was mad, but it was still Fina. Astyth’s voice was usually bright and clear, but occasionally she’d open her beak and other voices would come through. Luci-as-Valdez sounded like a completely different person entirely, although his voice had sounded less Valdez and more like hoarse Luci at the end.

Luci brought him back from his musing and Aurais readied his camera with a mock ”Yes sir,”. Nothing could have prepared him for Professor Ernesto “No Laughing Matter” Valdez to squeal ”Whee~” and cartwheel across the Hogsmeade lawn.

For a moment, he wish he had recorded the sound as well, but he’d have to settle for the perfect animated picture of Professor Valdez’s cartwheel-flop. That probably couldn’t go in the Flintzine, but it was definitely going on the highlights reel.

Luci flopped on the ground by his legs, features melting back into himself in both sight and sound.

When the boys had stopped laughing, Aurais looked back through his notes.. “Alright! Final quiz question. Meta stuff has got to make genderbending a breeze, right? Can you be a girl?”