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It was in the year in between when Edward gave up magic and his death that something odd happened to me.

Every time I would do magic, a small spiritual creature, an construct, would show up. At first I ignored them, thinking they were a natural pehnomenon attracted by my casting, but then I noticed that my mood was different when they were around.
I became selfish, nasty, and egotistical. It is likely that I would never have noticed if it weren't for Henry.

I loved Henry dearly, like a brother, but he was not over blessed with anything but luck, good nature, and looks. While he had enough magical talent to make spells work, it was barely enough. He didn't notice them at all, and at the time, I felt that this was just another sign of how superiour I was to him, birth aside.

But when I caught myself ripping into him for 'lording his wealth' over me, I realized that there was something wrong. I stopped in mid rant, which caused him to stare, and tried to figure out why I was so cross- not just at Henry, though he had set it off, (by kindly offering to pay for a few items for me) but at everyone around me. My brain told me that I was better than everyone around me, and that they were jealous and that I deserved everything they had, and my heart was tripping over itself trying to figure out where it was coming from.

The I noticed one of the spirit constructs twirling about my head feeding off of something. I grabbed hold of it (fortunately we were in an unpopulated place, or I would have been taken for mad) and took it apart, to discover that it was the source of my unusual behavior, making me quicker to anger, and envy, and feeding off of the emotions that produced. A quick spell destroyed it, and all of its fellows including the one that was attracted by the destruction of the others.

I apologized and explained things to Henry, who gamely told me he thought I'd been having him on as some kind of roast, and had been trying to get the joke when I had seized something he couldn't see. We both more or less laughed it off, and I spent weeks mending the hurts that I'd caused under their influence.

I never let any of them linger about after that.