Harry Metamorphmagus Potter (Harry Potter)
Harry noticed pretty early in life that how he looked was..really fluid, compared to other people.
He didn't know the words at first - and many didn't look at him long enough to care, but Harry noticed. Harry always notices.
Harry knows that as a baby he had a much duller eye color - well, actually most may say the emerald was quite bright, but Harry thought comparatively that they didn't seem nearly as bright as his eyes were now. He thinks that most people don't have eyes that are accurately described with terms like 'toxic green eyes,' 'acidic green eyes,' and his least favourite and the most common - 'freaky green eyes.'
There was a phase when he was younger when his hair was a deep brown color, and he had a more sea green eye color. His hair still fluctuated sometimes - usually he had a dark black pit nesting itself on his head, but sometimes he had a rich brown color with red undertones instead. Luckily for him - so far the changes were written off as him getting older. Thousands of normal people have eye colors that change with age - sometimes it was just darker as you grew. And if Harry's hair was brown one day and black the next?
Well, it must have been a trick of the light.
Harry might've wrote it off himself too - if it weren't for the phase he had as a child. For a while he believed the reason his aunt and uncle didn't like him was because he didn't look like them - didn't seem like part of the family in any way. He got the silly notion in his head that as long as he looked like them, they'd in turn like him.
He sat on the sink and stared into the bathroom mirror, looking for similarities in their faces, almost willing them into existence- he had blinked one moment, and the next a strange boy he had never seen before was staring back at him through the mirror. He had a ghastly complexion, and looked rather tall - his hair was a wispy blonde color and his eyes was a greyed blue. The odd boy in the mirror seemed terrified.
And just as he came, he was gone again - and Harry was back in his place in the mirror. He would've thought he had imagined it, if not for the fact his brown hair had a golden undertone it never carried before - and his eyes were a pleasant mix of blue and green.
Finding out that wizards existed gave him a sense of anxiety and anticipation - would he be able to change more drastically at this 'hogwarts' school? Have long sweeping silver hair with pastel blue eyes one day and short pink fluffy hair with snake-like yellow eyes the next? He was cautiously optimistic. In the same vein however, he was worried that maybe - maybe changing your face wasn't normal. Maybe changing there is something worthy of execution. He doesn't quite know, and that was a terrifying idea.
Luckily for him - he shortly found out that despite being the center of attention in most scenarios, few actually paid any attention to Harry Potter's actual face as long as he kept the scar.
(Despite his joy on the matter - it felt strangely like disappointment. He briefly wondered why.)
Despite that though - almost every person he met told him the same thing.
"James' hair, Lily's eyes."
At first he was worried he had to stay the same - black hair and acidic green eyes forever. Though he quickly realized that it didn't really matter what color his hair or eyes was - they always would say it, without fail.
("You've got your mothers eyes, you know."
Funny, Harry sarcastically mused in his own mind, The last person said the same thing - except then they had been a forest green. And before that, a sage. And before that, lime. At some point - I begin to question the sincerity of that. )
Even Ron and Hermione - all they had to say was that from behind, he was a little hard to pick out in crowds sometimes. No mention of his hair color, his eyes - despite how long he spent time with them, they never remarked upon it. Not even once.
He still didn't have a word for 'it' - he would ask Hermione, but she'd wonder why. She'd be curious, and maybe even investigate - they were all like that, on some level. Harry didn't want to have to be investigated - didn't want to make her have to figure out he had been hiding things from her.
Then, after the disaster that was fourth year - he met one Nymphadora Tonks, and finally knew what to call himself.
Metamorphmagus.
Now he had a word - and he found that he..probably should tell someone. This isn't something he should be hiding right? It's normal - rare, but not execution worthy ; Tonks being alive was proof of that.
But he couldn't find a good time really - the war was kicking off, tensions were high, and it felt like in every room he was in the atmosphere was rigging itself to explode the second he even considered speaking. He thought he may have found a good time in the horcrux hunt - but he found another obstacle in the fact of how exactly does one explain to their friends of six years that, oh yeah I have this secret rare magical ability that allows me to shapeshift. But don't worry - I didn't try and hide it from you guys or anything, you just tended to totally ignore the fact my hair would turn into a silky black texture that reached my shoulders mid-conversation sometimes.
Because that would surely go over well.
And then Snape was dead and then Harry was dead for a short while but he came back after and Voldemort was gone and-
He wasn't sure how to break the news to Ginny, when she asked him out, that he wasn't quite sure he could find himself with a girl that didn't even notice the fact he would randomly grow several inches over night before shrinking into being shorter then even her the next day. Couldn't find himself with a girl whose mother would look at Harry - ginger haired, freckled, blue eye-d - and just assume he was another one of her kids she forgot about again and send him on his way with some food and vague instruction not to bother Harry when he showed up.
Needless to say it was very awkward when under pressure all he could come up with was "I uh- I don't like people. At all. No girls, no boys. Kissing is kind of gross honestly - very wet, very slimy, very uncomfortable. Romance was never my thing."
Ron said Ginny was inconsolable for weeks after that - he actually felt quite bad about that one, but upon reflection he did realize the statement was..actually quite true. It's hard to find yourself connecting to people when they can't even give you a basic description of what you usually look like.
He still did not know how to communicate this to Ron - seeing as he too was one of the people that could not describe him when prompted - so he kind of just stared blankly instead. Ron dropped the matter quite fast.
After the war he found himself to be quite the recluse - Ron and Hermione were still trying to iron out the details of their relationship, and Harry was left to his devices as they sorted out how the whole dating thing was meant to work. Harry was just thankful he was allowed to experiment more with how he looked while he stayed in grimmauld place - in hogwarts it felt wrong if he ever changed too many things at once, alone in the house he felt..well, cheesy as sentiment it was - free.
He still had no idea how he was meant to explain the metamorphmagus thing though - if he even wanted to, at this point. Harry decided, rather put up with trying to figure how to break such an obvious fact to his friends, that it was a future Harry issue. Present Harry was tired, and felt his bones and skin and hair shift until he was identical to that of a cat - a neat trick inspired by McGonagall in first year - and went to find a nice sunny spot to nap in.
Human Harry could figure out all of that messy communication business later - all Cat Harry had to worry about was if the sun was out in the moment.
Like he said, quite freeing.