Harry sank onto the picnic bench and pulled his t-shirt away from his sweating back to allow some of the breeze to help cool him down. The others in the group were also finding spots to rest and hydrate. He pulled off his hat and wiped his brow. He was tempted to dump the glass of water over his head, but sucked it down instead. He was thirsty. They had just spent a good half hour, probably more, walking around the park in the blazing hot sun at a pretty fast pace. He was feeling pretty good. Tired, but good. He had learned some handy tips with his staff in the process as well as really stretching his legs.
Godric, as he insisted that they call him, had taught them how to use the charms on their staves to recognize people and say their names as they approached. It even worked when they were at a distance, so you could go into a crowded restaurant or classroom and navigate right to the person you wanted to meet as long as you had added them into your staff's memory already. Harry really liked that feature. He didn't like not knowing who was in a room with him and spent a fair amount of time trying to figure out who was around him.
He also liked that it could do the same thing with a favorite area or table, too, or any object for that matter. They spent most of the time just walking and learning how to interpret the descriptions and directions of the staff and how to modify the settings for the situation. If you were in a familiar setting, you could set your staff to just give basic descriptions, but if you were in a new setting, you might want to get more information until you really understood the lay of the land.
Godric had them work with all levels of settings, even the setting that just vibrated in their hands, rather than giving verbal instructions. He said that setting was really handy if you had to listen to someone talking while you were walking so that you weren't distracted by the descriptions from your staff while you were trying to carry on a conversation.
Godric thought that Harry was getting along pretty well with his staff, though he had some minor corrections to his style. Harry grudgingly conceded that they did make it easier—so that his hand and wrist weren't so sore by the end of the day.
Adam and Martha had the hardest time, but Harry allowed them that—they hadn't had to navigate by staff before that moment when Godric handed them the blindfolds, so it was all new to them. Harry at least had a week or so under his belt (counting from when he'd been able to read the directions for how to use it). He wasn't sure how long Aminah and Fitz had been working with their staves, but they seemed pretty comfortable with everything they were learning so far, so he guessed they had had a bit more time to figure things out than he had.
They had passed the other group working in the O&M room while they were out and about in Old Ellerby village. Harry had heard Mei's voice, but didn't recognize the other voices. He quietly had added Mei to his staff's memory as they passed them, "Memento Mei Lee." He felt a little sneaky, but justified it—others after all, always knew when he was in a room with them.
Harry thought his staff might struggle with making a Memento of Adam, but it seemed that the charm wasn't just recording the visual aspects of the person, but something more, maybe their essence?
He was curious about the range of the staff, "Mr… . er, Godric, how far away, um, can the staff recognize someone?" He had squeezed the staff in the air three times in rapid succession to get a reading on the people around him and it had identified them all by name and described where they were in relation to him. It gave all this information really quickly and Harry found that the hardest part was understanding the staff, but he was starting to make sense of it. Godric had explained that it was possible to slow it down, but that most wixen preferred to learn how to interpret the faster setting because in the slower version by the time it was done describing everyone, they had moved on and the information wasn't as relevant anymore.
Harry knew that Godric was sitting on the bench to his left, three feet away from him.
"That's a good question, Harry," Godric said. "It kind of depends on what is between you and the person you're seeking. I've used it to locate lost students in crowded city streets and it was able to navigate me toward them from over five streets away—and they were moving as well. When we're in a big open space like this park and there is a huge distance between us, but not many obstacles, it is able to identify and navigate toward people who are even farther away than five city streets."
"Wow, it seems like it could be abused. Like someone could use it to target someone," Fitz said.
"Sure, that's true. Actually, Aurors use similar technology to track the movements of known or suspected Death Eaters, but there are also charms as well as curses that prevent people from Memento'ing you. It's really similar to the trace that the Ministry puts on all underage wixen, right?" Godric explained.
"What's that?" Harry asked.
"Oh, it's how the Ministry of Magic knows when underage wixen are performing magic outside of school, though it only works if they are not in a magic area, right?"
Harry remembered how the Ministry had sent the owl right after Dobby had performed magic in his Aunt's kitchen. Harry shook off a chill.
That seems really creepy. Kind of Big Brother-ish.
"Why can't they pinpoint who's doing the magic?" Harry asked—it still irked him that he was the one blamed for that incident.
"Oh, I'm pretty sure they can, they just tell us that it is too much bother to monitor all those wixen—they don't have the personnel to do it," Godric explained.
"What if you don't want someone to know where you are or what you're doing? Say you're shopping for their birthday present or something," Martha asked.
"You can cast a number of charms that cloak you from other people's charms, just like you can cast disillusioning charms or hide under an invisibility cloak, right?" Godric said.
"So, would the Memento charm not work on someone who was under an invisibility cloak?" Harry asked.
"I think it depends on the type of cloak. Some are more concealing than others," Godric said.
I'll have to try that out with Ron, Harry thought.
"What's the best one to use?" Fitz asked.
"Probably the masking spell, Abscondere," Godric offered. "It can be a bit tricky. You have to be intentional about who you are hiding from and why. You can also use it to hide objects, such as that birthday present, right Martha?"
"That's right!" Martha agreed.
"Does it just hide things visually or does it hide them from complete detection?" Harry asked, thinking about how Adam was invisible to sighted people, but not really to him. He was as visible to Harry as anyone else in the group, Harry thought as he listened to and felt Adam shifting on the other end of the bench. He was pretty quiet during this discussion of things unseen.
"Pretty completely, I believe," Godric answered.
"Doesn't the revealing charm override the masking spell?" Fitz asked.
"It can, that's for sure, nothing is permanent and it all depends on the power of the wixen who casts the spell," Godric said, standing up and shaking out his staff. "Okay, we've got more to do today and not much time, so let's get going."
Harry stood up and walked over to Fitz, "What's the incantation for the revealing charm?" Harry asked.
"Oh, it's Aparecium," Fitz answered and Harry tried to commit it to memory. He'd have to look all these charms up in his Charms book. He wished he had an easier way to write things down. He had heard Martha writing down notes while Godric was talking.
"Okay, you've done good work navigating with your magically enhanced staves, now we're going to work without the magical part of the staff. There are going to be times when you aren't going to have your staff for whatever reason and you'll feel better knowing that you can manage without it, even though it is a different experience. We'll spend a little bit of every day we work together building your skills so that you can get around no matter what tools you have access to (or not). We could always turn the talking feature of the staves off, but today I'm going to take your staves and give you muggle white canes for the visually impaired. We are going to start out small and just walk together as a group on the path that we came in on. I'm going to ask you to spread yourselves out so that there are about five yards between each of you so that you don't run into each other. The same principles apply with the canes as with the staff—you hold it the same way and move it in the same motion. You'll be listening for the cues it gives and the sounds it makes as the metal tip hits different surfaces."
Godric was walking around the path and he tapped the metal tip on different surfaces so that they could hear how they sounded.
It was more obvious than the wooden staff, the metal tip created more of a sound landscape of the area because it was louder. Harry could tell when Godric was near the wall around the picnic area. He stopped at a picnic table and picked up the canes that they were going to use and started handing them out.
"Go ahead and collapse your staff and put it in your pocket. The emergency mode will still function. I'll lead the way and then when we reach the entrance to the park we'll turn around and go back to the picnic area. Okay. Any questions?" Godric sounded animated—he was really enjoying this.
No one had any questions, so they lined up and waited for their turn, listening to the person ahead of them get ahead of them before setting out. Harry was reminded of his first excursions out into the yard at Privet Drive and smiled to himself remembering Nio hus cherio kisa's gentle guidance and companionship. He almost missed his cue to go, but Aminah behind him whispered to him, "Harry, I think it's your turn to go."
"Oh, right! Sorry!"
He stumbled a bit in his haste, then found a rhythm. He found it a little harder to walk in a straight line on the path, he kept meandering from side to side until he decided to use the grass on the edge as a marker and just stayed on the left of the path. He actually kind of liked the simplicity of having just the tapping noise without the constant chatter in his ear.
It was like a puzzle—each new sound was something to figure out. Except when he was pretty sure that he had stuck the tip of his cane into a fairly fresh pile of dog muck. He wondered when there had been a dog running through the park. He hadn't heard it. He could definitely smell it now and since the smell seemed to be preceding him he figured it was on the tip of the cane. He stopped to rub the tip of the cane in the grass and Aminah came up behind him.
"Oh, sorry, Aminah, I got dog . . uh… mess on my cane. I'm cleaning it off," he apologized for holding up her progress.
"Ew," she said."I can smell it."
"Yeah, it's bad," Harry agreed. "Okay, I think that's better. I'll keep going."
Now Harry had lost track of Fitz who was ahead of him. He wondered if he had stopped or if he was walking on the grass because he couldn't hear anyone ahead of him on the path. He could hear Aminah, but she was the last person to go.
"Harry, is that you?" Godric asked. His voice was off the path a bit.
"Yeah, and Aminah's right behind me," Harry said. "I had a bit of a run in with a pile of dog… "
"Crap?" Fitz supplied, laughing.
"Yeah," laughed Harry, "I tried to clean it off the cane. Sorry, Godric."
"Here, I'll scourgify it," Godric came over to Harry and found his arm that was holding the cane and tapped it with his wand, "scourgify!" and the lingering smell disappeared.
"That's better—thanks," Harry said.
"No problem. It's one of the hazards of being in the park," Godric conceded.
"Okay, here's Aminah! Well done, everyone!" he congratulated. "We'll head back to the picnic table. Keep your nose tuned for that pile of dog mess and try to avoid it! Aminah, do you want to lead the way this time?" Godric asked.
"Sure," she said as she headed back to the picnic area.
"Godric, I noticed that Lieutenant Holman had a metal tip on his cane, too. Can our staves be fitted with a metal tip? I kind of like it," Harry said.
"Sure, that's not too hard to do. We have a workshop at the center where you can make modifications to your tools. You can find it on the Center's map. It is just outside of the dining hall and is called the "Giovanni Gonneli workshop," in honor of the famous blind sculptor from Tuscany—another one of Madam Perenelle's friends," Godric explained.
"Harry, you're up," nudged Fitz who was waiting behind Harry.
"Oh, right. Sorry," he stumbled forward again, heat rising in his cheeks. He seemed to be the only one who was not paying attention.
oO0OooO0OooO0OooO0O
As Harry walked toward the library with Aminah, they debated the merits of learning how to navigate with the muggle cane.
"I kind of liked it," confessed Harry. "I mean, I like all the magical features of the staff, but the cane is really simple, too. It's nice not to have someone jabbering in your ear all the time."
"Yeah, I guess. I just feel safer knowing what's around me," Aminah said quietly.
"I like that, too," Harry admitted thinking about all the times Dudley tried to trip him at Privet Drive… and that was before he knew that Harry was blind. He wasn't looking forward to returning there in July.
31 suns, now.
"Hey, Aminah. I've been meaning to ask you. Do you go to Hogwarts?"
"Yeah. I've seen you there. I'll be a fifth year, so we didn't have any classes together, but I saw you a lot at the library with your friend who was here. I'm in Hufflepuff or I was. I don't know if I'm going back… "
"Oh, why wouldn't you go back?" Harry asked.
"My mom is talking about moving to the states and sending me to Ilivermorny," she said.
"Oi. That would be a big change."
"Yeah. I don't want to. I want to stay here," Aminah said. "It's all I've ever known."
Harry could relate. The trips they took in the Center so far were the farthest from the U.K. that he'd ever been—he wasn't sure if counted if all he had to do to travel was cross a threshold (or be pulled out to sea by a mermaid—a Jiāorén, he corrected silently).
"Why does she want to move?" Harry asked.
Aminah was quiet for a while as if she were weighing something heavy.
"It's okay, you don't have to tell me," Harry offered, realizing that he had maybe stepped over a line.
"It's just that she's worried… worried that my father will get to me again… " Aminah said with a bit of a hiccup.