The Unseen side of Light Magic
Ever since she was little and manifested her Light Magic the other people in her Village treated her like she was invisible. Maria had gotten used to it. Her father leaving certainly didn't help. After her father didn't come back and her mother explained why, she has lost control of her magic. Now it wasn't anything drastic like a flash of Light that blinded her mother or a burst of lasers that shredded their house. Maria had simply wished to disappear and so she did, from sight at least. Her mother panicked until she noticed that Maria was still holding her hand. It had taken an hour to face back into visibility. With practice Maria learned to control this aspect of her light magic, or she thought she had.
Maria hadn't had friends since before she healed the girl with light magic and her efforts to make friends back in her hometown during school didn't yield any results. More than anything she found herself wishing that someone, anyone, would look at her and see Maria, instead of a Rare and powerful Light Mage. Her mother was even starting to turn away from her. Weirdly, she'd only look her in the eyes when she was transparent or invisible, which was becoming less common since she had the desire to be seen, which manifested in little sparkles that people didn't seem to notice were actually a visible manifestation of her light magic, and a Very bright Flash Spell.
When she had gotten the invitation to the Academy she was overjoyed. She'd finally be like everyone else! She would be seen! She'd finally make friends! She was positively glowing, up until the Carriage arrived to take her to her new life.
Maria had miscalculated. She had underestimated the Pride of Nobles. She had underestimated the rarity of Light Magic. How was she to know that she was the most powerful Light Mage in the country when she was the only mage in her Village? She had underestimated the other students' envy. She made it onto the student Council because her good grades got her nominated. Some petty Nobles took offense to the fact that she didn't know her place.Teasing escalated to bullying pretty quickly. And she still wasn't being seen.
Before long, Maria had her first Student council meeting. She has finally met people who saw her as a person instead of a Light Mage. Maybe she could be friends with them? She had been quite surprised that they'd rally together to let a friend of theirs attend the Student Council room. Maria's first thought when she met Lady Katarina Claes was, admittedly, admiration of her beauty. Her second thought was that everyone in the student council seemed to be in love with her. Her third thought was a rather unjustified envy that she'd be taking up the majority of her potential friends' attention. Maria got to know Lady Claes and Understood that she she was a sweet and charming girl who had a natural gravity around her. She came to understand that it really couldn't be helped that the student council, with the exception of Lord Sirius and herself, were in love with her. She had even helped her and the rest of the student council grow closer, but she didn't want to push it by intruding on their Love Stories.
As the Bullying escalated to the point where she had to occasionally turn invisible to get some peace Maria came to understand that her Falling in love with Lady Claes was inevitable. Fate seemed to pull them together. When she had been taking the muffins she had made to the Student Council Room and had been surrounded by a group of jealous noble ladies who had knocked her Muffins to the ground, she had been charmed by the dashing figure of Lady Claes as she scared off her tormentors, by her cuteness when she'd eaten her muffins even as they'd fallen mostly on the ground, and the honesty with which she'd praised her baking. She had developed a slight crush on Lady Claes from that point on. Oddly, she started getting along better with everyone else in the Student Council and a few girls in her class because of her crush on Lady Claes. It was the starting point from which she discovered even more common ground and she had Lady Claes to thank for that.
As she was basking in her happiness and new friendships she was Sharply reminded that her bullies could escalate Even further. She was in the courtyard, eating lunch, when she was once again surrounded. Maria was paralyzed with fear when she one of her tormentors threatened to burn her face with Fire magic. She noticed that there were little black wisps coming out of that girl but she couldn't give those much thought to those until later. As the fire mage started to step closer to her, she tripped over a mound of Earth Magic and Katarina-sama came and fully stole Maria's heart.
She was so flustered and embarrassed that she didn't even notice that she was fading in and out of visibility. Surprisingly, Neither did Katarina-sama. It wasn't until they were having lunch together with the Ladies of the Student Council that it was called to attention by Lady Mary. Katarina-sama seemed to just notice, which baffled her. It was later explained to her that Katarina-sama, while her external Earth magic wasn't extraordinary, her internal Earth Magic was. Katarina-samahad the incredible ability to see things through her Earth Magic, and it was something that she did subconsciously. Katarina-sama didn't know that this was an incredibly advanced technique because it was such a natural thing to her. That did explain why she didn't notice she was invisible.
A lot of things had happened during Maris's first school year. She had made true friends who were all quirky in some way. She had fallen in love with a sweet yet incredibly dense girl. Her relationship with her mother had started to improve. She had discovered the existence dark magic. She had noticed that she'd turn invisible when she was too flustered and needed to improve her magic control. All in All, it had been a good year. Maria hoped next year would be just as good, if a little more peaceful.