Blindness

Chapter 23: A Tapestry of Bronze and Copper

"Here, Gryff."

Thestral's bright orange pattern pulsed with excitement as she pressed green parchment into his hand the next week.

"It's their store. What we talked about. You didn't hear about them from me."

Harry grinned at the Hit Wizard, pushing the scrap into his robe.

"Thanks."

He saw her loose pattern morph and change, growing taller and thinner, more thickly masculine.

Then she sighed.

"It doesn't have the same punch, when you can't see the effect. Nothing? Nothing at all?"

Harry ran his eyes over her, or should it be his?, soul. Thestral's unique light gleamed as bright as ever, a solid shade in a changing pattern of humanity.

He took an educated guess.

"You're male now?"

She groaned, her voice deeper when she spoke.

"I'm your twin, Merlin, how can you manage to get around on your own?"

There was both teasing and open curiosity in her tone. He shrugged.

"I see no difference between female and male people, besides what can be assumed from their general size and shapes. The tone of voice gives more away, with lower masculine registers and higher feminine ones." He paused. "You don't talk like me."

Thestral's pattern shifted again, reverting to the almost petite form she seemed to prefer for Hit Wizard training.

"Got to practice inflection and the like; accents, personality. Getting the same voice box doesn't make you sound the same automatically. "

"Polyjuice works the same, which is why auror's are taught observation techniques." Aethonan approached, her vibrant blue light a forceful beacon. "Speech patterns are the only definite way to recognize someone under polyjuice. That, and interrogation while waiting out the potion."

Harry nodded, filing away the information beside his own observations.

Metamorphmagus' seemed to manipulate the humanity alone of their patterns, while what little he had seen of Crouch Jr. told him that polyjuice was effective on a deeper level, to the point of assimilation and mimicking portions of a person's soul.

Perhaps it was because of the hair inside the potion. A type of genetic imprinting?

But if that was true, would that mean that a soul stamped part of its signature color on the body it inhabited, and if so, why did the body fade to white when the soul left it?

Why did blood carry the color of its body's soul, when the body seemed independent of the soul, capable of dying while the soul, nearly-immortal, faded away to resurrection?

"Hippogriff, stop daydreaming."

Aethonan said, very much unamused with his distraction.

He shook off the constant questions, faced his captain, and nodded.

It was time for another morning of practice.

-O-O-

"The Weasley's are a big, but poor, pureblood family."

Vaughn began musingly, bangladesh green reclining on the large couch in Grimmauld Place.

"Always have been, for as long as I'm aware. Not a lot of money to spare between them all. A couple tend to go into government every generation. The patriarch, Arthur Weasley, is the current Head of the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Department. One son works in the Minister's Office, trying to muscle in on a assistant position. Probably will succeed, seems driven enough. Another son, the eldest, works for Gringotts, and another on a dragon reservation in the Mediterranean. Rumor abounds that the youngest son just got refused a position in the Auror Academy."