Stepping back into the hallway outside the dining hall, Harry was pleasantly surprised by the aroma of steak and kidney pudding. His stomach rumbled in response.
"Potter!" Mei's gravely voice greeted him and he heard her wheels moving across the floor.
"Hi, Mei. Were you okay in that storm?"
"Oh, yeah. I had to dump all those stupid necklaces—they were so heavy! And then I just swam back here and I've been waiting for you all for at least an hour. Why'd it take you so long to come back? I thought you'd come back right away."
"We stayed in a shelter until the storm died down—then Healer Jordan created an Egress so we could come back here… I guess she couldn't do it while the storm was going… she said it was too risky with all the electricity in the air."
"Yeah, I dumped them. And no, I don't care that they thought I was some sort of deity," Mei said.
"What?" Harry asked.
"Oh, Gemma's just going off about how I was disrespecting the natives by dumping the 'offerings'," Mei groused.
Gemma stomped her foot in frustration and Harry reached out for her. Her hands were in motion and she whacked him with her wrist.
"Oh, ow," Harry said stepping back.
"Gemma, they aren't even real! They are some old muggle's memory from 1827, for Merlin's sake! Get over it!" Mei shouted.
Gemma's feet stomped again and Harry could hear Gemma's hands slapping against her body as she signed.
"I AM NOT MAMI WATA!" Mei shrieked as she sped away leaving Harry standing by Gemma.
The conversations in the hallway had all stopped. Harry felt his cheeks get hot at the thought of everyone staring at them.
Maybe they are watching Mei storm out of here and don't even notice me and Gemma.
He could almost feel the heat coming off of Gemma. He waited a second before reaching out tentatively again. Gemma was still signing—to herself, apparently, and her whole body was trembling. She pushed Harry's hand away, shutting him out.
"What did I do?" he hissed.
She took his hand and he resisted the urge to pull it out of her grasp—to shut her out in turn.
She was still shaking violently as she wrote in his palm, "ITMAKESMESOMAD!"
He had to really focus to figure out what she was saying, even though he knew that she was really mad.
"What was it? Was it more than the necklaces?" Harry asked.
He felt like he was missing something.
"K-I-D-S" space "A-D-O-R-E-D" space "H-E-R" space "W-O-R-S-H-I-P-P-E-D" space "S-H-E" space "T-O-S-S-E-D" space "I-T" space "A-W-A-Y" space "L-I-K-E" space "T-R-A-S-H," Gemma's trembling grew less as she wrote and he felt a tear drop onto his palm.
He didn't really understand why Gemma was so upset, but he didn't like her crying. He awkwardly grasped her hand in an attempt to comfort her. He was holding his staff in his other hand, and tried to lean it against his shoulder while he reached for her shoulder to pat it, but started to fall, so he caught it instead.
"Hey, what's going on?" Aminah had come over.
"Gemma's really upset by something that Mei did on the island."
"What did she do?" Aminah asked.
"She dumped the necklaces from the children," Harry said.
"Oh," and Harry could hear her cringing in her short response.
Aminah brushed his arm as she moved to Gemma, and drew her into a hug. Gemma let go of Harry's hand to hug Aminah and he could hear Gemma sniffling.
Harry stood by, twisting his staff in his hands.
It sounded like they had stepped back, so he asked, "Do you want to go to lunch now? It sounds like folks are going into the dining hall."
"Sure, let's go in," Aminah said, then turning toward Gemma asked, "Are you ready, Gemma?"
She must have said yes because Harry heard her start walking toward the dining hall, Aminah's staff tapping rhythmically beside her. Harry followed them with his staff.
Gemma guided them to a table that was on the other side of the dining hall from where they had sat for the other meals.
"Yes, please join us," said Adam to Gemma's signed request.
"Thanks," Aminah responded. Harry stood behind them for a second, wondering which seat was open, then he remembered he could navigate to an empty seat if he asked his staff and he found one to the left of Gemma. He paused for a second remembering how he had been so frustrated about not knowing if there was a toilet or not in the shelter…
I could have asked my staff to navigate to the toilet. How did I forget that?
"Hi, I'm Harry," Harry said to the person sitting next to him as he sat down.
"Hi, Harry, I'm Martha," a woman answered whose voice reminded him of Molly Weasley.
"Do you know Gemma and Aminah?" Harry asked.
"Well, I've seen them around today, but I haven't met them yet," Martha explained.
"Gemma, this is Martha," Harry turned toward Gemma and ran his hand along the table's edge seeking out her hand, but didn't find it.
"She's writing on Amy's hand," Martha said.
"Aminah. Her name is Aminah," Harry corrected.
"Oh, yes, that's right. Aminah. Sorry, I'm horrible with names," Martha apologized.
"Harry, What did you think of Lieutenant Holman? Quite the character, wasn't he?!" exclaimed Fitz from the other side of Martha.
"Hi, Fitz. Yeah, I liked him," Harry confirmed.
"Did you hear him talking about hiking Mount Vesuvius while it was erupting? How the lava burnt his walking stick?" Fitz asked.
"No, I missed that. Wow. Lava, really?" Harry asked.
"It's just amazing that he did that when he couldn't see. I can't believe his companions didn't stop him," Martha said, in disbelief.
"They did stop him," Fitz said, "They made him stop when it got dark. He could have kept going, but they wanted to turn back because they couldn't see. So he went along with them."
"Well, it wasn't very responsible of them to let him do it at all," responded Martha.
"Why? He was a grown man. And he was fine, wasn't he?" Fitz sounded put out.
Harry could see his point, but he really wasn't in the mood for another argument. He really just wanted to eat lunch and go back to his room. He tuned out the rest of the conversation as Adam joined in.
Harry wondered where Mei was sitting and if she had recovered from the encounter. He wasn't sure he could make it through lunch, he was so tired from the day.
"Harry, can Gemma and I borrow that pencil thing of yours that reads aloud?" Aminah asked.
"Sure," Harry said as he fished his staff out of his pocket and summoned the anagnóstis and the pad of paper and pencil. "Here you go," he said as he slid them on the table toward Gemma. She took them and squeezed his arm.
That made him feel better—like a bit of forgiveness for whatever transgression he had committed. He heard Gemma writing furiously on the pad and hoped that she was able to get what she needed from Aminah.
"How do they call the tables?" Harry wondered.
"The lilies turn colors on the table, vibrate, and whistle," Aminah explained.
"Oh. How have I missed that?" Harry wondered.
"Maybe you weren't touching the table when they were vibrating? It is kind of subtle. And I don't always hear the whistle when a lot of people are talking. You kind of have to know what to listen for. It was in the literature," Aminah said.
"They should vibrate Gemma's bed in the morning," Harry said.
"Yeah. Who do we ask to set that up?" Aminah asked.
"Probably Godric or Healer Jordan," Harry said.
He laughed at himself for not hearing it before. Even the vibration made noise—with all the rattling cutlery and china. The whistling was also hard to miss. He realized that before when he'd heard it, he thought someone was shaking the table and it just happened when there was a tea kettle going off in the kitchen. "I guess it is time for lunch!"
oO0OooO0OooO0OooO0Oo
As he walked back to the dormitory after lunch, Harry realized that he really hadn't tasted anything. He could barely remember it, except that his belly felt uncomfortably distended from all the steak and kidney pudding that he'd consumed. It must have been good, he mused.
He felt a bit apprehensive about the day ahead—what with Gemma (of all people) mad at Mei. He hoped that it wouldn't be too awkward. They had some time before they'd meet their instructors that afternoon.
He entered the room and felt the tension as soon as he crossed the threshold. He asked his staff to guide him to his bed, and it started giving him directions to leave the room.
Merlin's beard! Am I in the right room?! He froze in a bit of a panic.
"You alright, mate?" Tony asked, emerging from the toilet, the sound of flushing following him.
"Oh, yeah. I just thought I was in the wrong room for a sec," Harry said.
"You're in the right place," Tony said.
"Okay, thanks," Harry said as he went toward his side of the room, trying to remember the layout. He wondered where his staff was going to lead him, if he was in the right room. Back to Privet Drive?
He held the staff off the ground and squeezed it twice rapidly to get a description of the room and figured out where his area was and starting walking toward it. The staff told him that there were three other people in the room and he figured it was Tony, Gemma, and Aminah by their locations. In Mei's space, it described the tank and her wheelchair beside it.
He figured she was out in the South Seas getting hydrated.
He sat down at his desk to try reading the leaflets—figuring that maybe some of the information that he missed was in some of them—he summoned the leaflets and anagnóstis out of his staff. He tried reading, but found he was too exhausted to pay attention to what was being said. He put everything back in his staff and toed off his shoes to lie in bed for a bit.