Methods of Inheritance
It only took me like two weeks to have enough free time to post the second part of this, but HERE. And here’s Part the First.
Here are the signs that every child learns in the fifth grade.
One. Exhaustion, coupled with crippling insomnia. (Fact: Harry should have seen the circles under her best friend’s eyes, and the loll of her head as she fought to focus in class.)
Two. A gleam in the eye, a silver sheen to throw back light when struck at the right angle. (Fact: the darker the eye, the more obscure the glint. Harry knows this, but cannot help but blame herself for missing it.)
Three. Carelessness trending toward ruthlessness, toward anyone not considered a personal possession. (Fact: the boy who had upset Harry had not deserved the cracked ribs, nor the shattered nose. He certainly had not deserved the cold gaze and mocking laugh that fell on him as he lay bleeding in the dirt.)
Four. A sudden disinterest in sleeping altogether, and a total vanishing of the need. (Fact: Harry had thought this enviable, in her more bitterly whimsical moments of high school.)
Five. A crippling fear of iron, and blackened burns on contact. (Fact: Harry has not considered herself clever since she was fifteen, because it was only the sight of her best friend cringing back from a wrought iron fence that made the connection between her strange behavior and the lectures they had heard about children stolen and replaced with something else.)
Six. Total disintegration of the mortal glamour. (Fact: Marys had been so lovely, standing in the sunlight, all sharp ears and sharper eyes, that Harry had almost wept. She still hates herself a little, that the tears in her eyes were not of grief.)
