Gemma waved goodbye across Harry's back and he turned and waved to her. Then he headed across the library to the room that Besel had shown him earlier. He hoped that Madam Flamel wasn't going to quiz him too much on the book she'd lent him and he wondered if he was supposed to read the whole thing.
He paused at the entry to the classroom, listening to get an idea for who was in the space before he entered.
"Hello?" said Aminah.
"Hi, Aminah," Harry said.
"You're really good at recognizing people's voices, you know that Harry?" Aminah said.
"Oh? I don't know. I mean, I guessed you were in this class. And how do you know I didn't just do the Reveleo Memento spell?" Harry said.
"Did you?" Aminah asked.
"No, I just guessed and your voice is kind of distinctive… it reminds me of caramel," Harry said.
"Oh, well, that's nice, I guess," Aminah said laughing.
Harry moved into the space and found an empty chair next to Aminah.
"Is it okay if I sit here?" he asked.
"Sure, I don't think we have assigned seats," Aminah answered.
He pulled out the chair and sat down and did the Reveleo memento just out of curiosity. It was just the two of them in the room.
"I'm supposed to meet Madam Flamel here early so that she can catch me up on what I missed yesterday," Harry explained.
"Oh, I just got here, but she wasn't here when I arrived. I came early so that I could practice. I think it is going to take me a really long time to learn how to read braille," Aminah said.
"Yeah, me, too," Harry sighed.
He got out the Louis Braille book and continued to read it, pausing occasionally to listen for Madam Flamel.
Finally he heard someone approaching, but as they got closer he decided that it wasn't Madam Flamel as the tapping was more like a staff than a cane.
"Hi Aminah and Harry," Fitz greeted. "Harry, you missed this lesson yesterday."
"Uh, yep," said Harry.
Harry heard Madam Flamel's distinctive gait approaching the door.
"Oh, well, this is excellent. I love the punctuality of the British wixen," she exclaimed. "Le métier de Morgan! Harry, I'm so sorry! I forgot that I had asked you to arrive early!"
"It's okay. I just used the time to read the book you lent me," Harry said, holding it up.
"Well, that's very good of you. Again, I apologize," she said.
After a moment, she started Wingardium leviosa'ing items off shelves behind them and they floated over their heads to the table, all with different tiny bells sounds so that it sounded as if a forest of fairies had been suddenly awoken from sleep, rose into the air, and then descended upon them. Finally, it was quiet and everyone seemed to be holding their breath.
Harry held his hands tightly in his lap. He was so tempted to reach out and see what had descended in front of them.
"Don't be shy, go ahead. Take a look," Madam Flamel encouraged.
He heard his classmates reaching out so he did, too.
He jumped in surprise as his hands came in contact with something spiny. It didn't hurt him, but it was a lot more prickly than he imagined. He had no idea what it was. He had pulled back his hand and reached out again more tentatively.
"Go ahead and explore what you find in front of you, but don't reveal what you find. When you think you've identified it, pass it to the person on your left," Madam Flamel instructed.
Harry heard Aminah passing something across the table to him that rattled.
He couldn't figure out what he was holding… it was like a bristle brush but with thick spines and it had no handle. Spiny sticks stuck out in all directions. It smelled briny. He turned it over in his hands. Finally, he decided it must be a dried sea creature like a sea anemone.
He pushed it across the table to Fitz, then reached carefully to find what Aminah had pushed to him.
It wasn't prickly, but covered in small balls connected together.
Beads.
He put his hand around it to pull it toward himself and the beads shifted and clinked. The threads connecting the beads reminded him of the cord that had held the beaded necklaces for Mami Wata, though it was a little finer and smoother. The beads were covering a hollow rounded object that was shaped like a lopsided vase, round at the bottom where it was covered with the beads and then tapering to a neck that was smooth. He guessed that this was something from nature, the surface had slight imperfections.
A gourd?
When he picked it up by the neck, he couldn't resist the urge to shake it and the beads against the gourd made a pleasant sound, like sand shifting. It smelled like dried pasta he decided.
Is that even a smell?
He wanted to keep exploring this one, the beads weren't all uniform and he found that there were knots on the cord that were keeping beads in place, but Aminah had pushed something else in his direction. He reluctantly pushed the gourd across the table to Fitz.
The thing that Aminah had pushed to him this time was flat and it was held in a wooden frame. It was heavy as he reached for it to bring it closer. He expected glass on the surface, but was surprised when his hands grazed over something rough like a stone.
He pulled it closer and found that the flat surface of this framed object had a textured pattern on it that radiated out from the center like petals. He was so entranced as he carefully traced the ridged patterns that his nose nearly touched the surface. It smelled dusty and he rubbed his fingers together and they were covered with a gritty dust. He explored it to all the edges and formed an image of a flower that was opening gradually with intricate leaves and petals that reached out to the edges. He was also reluctant to give this one up, but Aminah had pushed another object toward him, so he moved the framed painting across to Fitz.
The next item was composed of halves. The bottom half was like a little metal tart tin. The top half was soft and firm—patched together fabric filled with something like wool, but weighted at the bottom. A needle, no, a pin, was stuck in the center. Harry pulled on it and it slipped out and then stuck it back in and discovered that under the wool there must be sand—he could feel the pin grind against the grains. That explained the weightiness of the tiny object. It smelled musty and old—like something you'd find in Mrs. Figg's house. The fabric was covered with evenly placed stitches at angles to each other that were so tightly sewn that they were like seeds baked into bread.
"I imagine you are all wondering why I've asked you to look at these objects when you thought you'd be learning braille," Madam Flamel said.
There were murmurs of agreement.
"In order to learn braille, you need to first learn how to feel with your fingertips and so we will spend a portion of every lesson sensitizing our sense of touch," Madam Flamel explained. "Just as the human brain had to adapt to the concept of reading visual symbols with the eye and converting those symbols into language, so it does with reading by touch. You are, of course, descendants of people who have evolved to read. You can no longer read using your eyes, so you will learn how to read by touch. If you were born blind and learned braille from infancy, it would be as easy as it was when you learned how to sight read the first time. This time around it might be a little more challenging and yet you are up to the challenge.
We discussed yesterday why the Center believes that learning braille is useful for wixen—did either of you who were here yesterday have any thoughts about our discussion that you would like to share now that you've had some time to ponder it?" Madam Flamel invited.
"Um, may I ask a question?" Harry interrupted.
"Certainly, what is it?" Madam Flamel answered.
"The first thing that I held—was it a sea anemone?" Harry asked.
"Close! It was a sea urchin. Okay, any thoughts?"
"Yes, Madam Flamel," Aminah said quietly. "I was thinking that if I'm not able to learn how to do magic now that I'm blind, I may have to live as a muggle and would have to rely on braille for a job or just to get around."
Fitz erupted as this, assuring Aminah that she'd be able to learn magic and Madam Flamel gently shushed him.
"Aminah, being flexible is a virtue and it will serve you well. Many years this Center has been in operation and truly there are very few wixen with injuries such as yours who have not been able to perform magic when they leave or very soon shortly after. Always there are fears of being cut off from our wixen life… after such a loss, it is natural. What we've found, though, was that it was fear that stoppered the flow of magic and once the fear was faced, the magic flowed again."
"Well, if we're not using braille to live as muggles, why do we need to learn it?" Fitz asked.
"Maybe some of your peers have thoughts?" Madam Flamel asked.
"Well, I have to go between the muggle and wixen world, so I'll need it for when I can't use my magical tools in front of muggles," Harry offered.
"And it might be nice just to be able to read for one's self without having to use a tool or magic to read a book or write a message to a friend," Aminah said.
"Yes, these are reasons that other wixen from this program have stated for why they were thankful that they had an opportunity to learn braille. 'Braille brings the world to their fingertips' they have often told us. Well, perhaps you will discover other reasons as we do this work. Let's get started on learning braille, shall we?" Madam Flamel whisked the items away again in a shower of tinkling bells and brought out other things from the shelves so that for a moment they were again surrounded on all sides by the cacophony of a thousand little bells.
"I have found that the best way to learn to read braille is to learn how to write braille. Some people disagree with me—especially when it comes to learning with the slate and stylus—because some people find it more challenging. But in my experience (and it is considerable) it is like learning how to make yarn on a handspindle, rather than a spinning wheel. With the simpler tools, you get right to the mechanics of the process. Yes, they are a little harder to manipulate, but it's all new to you so it is going to be challenging no matter what. Might as well just jump in and learn. So, please explore what I've set in front of you."
Harry reached out and found a piece of metal that had a bumpy back and front with many holes. He set it down and found a small Y-shaped tool (is it made from bone?) with a blunt metal pin fitted into the base. A little more exploring yielded a thick piece of parchment. He went back to the sheet of metal and discovered that one side had hinges, and then figured out how to open it. He figured that the paper went inside the hinged device and slid it in, tried to line it up at the top of the paper, and then closed it. It made a satisfying noise as it closed as if it had punctured the paper. The paper was stuck now and didn't slide around. Then he started poking around with the Y-tool and making holes.
He stopped, though, as he realized he seemed to be the only one making puncturing noises.
"Please continue, Harry. It's okay," Madam Flamel encouraged. "Don't be shy, try it out."
He forged ahead and finding the holes in the upper left-hand corner started puncturing the paper. He found that there were grooves on each of the holes that guided the tool in a rhythmic way around the whole. He turned it over and felt the back again—it wasn't just bumpy, there were raised dots on the back in groups of six, lined up in rows. He turned it over again and found that he could make six punctures in each hole. He went to the next one and filled it up, too. And the next, and then he experimented with just puncturing some of the spaces with holes and leaving some of them open. He opened the metal thing and pulled out the paper and ran his fingers over, then quickly turned it over because of course, the dots were on the other side. He found the dots where he'd filled in all six holes right away—they stood out, but the others were harder to discern. He kept running his fingers over them, trying to remember the patterns he had punched.
He was putting the paper back in when Madam Flamel said, "Okay, now that you've had a chance to explore making the braille dots, I want to tell you a little about them."
Harry laid down the Y-shaped tool and turned his face toward Madam Flamel. He heard Aminah and Fitz do the same.
"The braille system is really very brilliant. Six cells to make six dots that can be read with the tip of a single finger at one touch. The first systems devised for the blind to read were cumbersome and large and impractical to reproduce—so reading was an onerous task and only available to the wealthy.
As I told you yesterday, Louis Braille started figuring out this system when he was only twelve-years-old and he had completed a full usable alphabet by the age of fifteen. It is not the first time that the course of humanity was changed by an adolescent, nor will it be the last," Madam Flamel expounded fervently.
Harry fully expected trumpets to start sounding and an angel or two to drop down from the ceiling with that statement. He smiled to himself and then felt his throat tighten.
I know I'll never achieve anything like that by the time I'm fifteen. At the rate I'm going, I'll be lucky to still be alive.
"Okay, enough about changing the world. Let's get to work. Feel your slate. Count how many windows each row has. You can feel it with your fingers and also with the stylus. What do you notice about the windows?" Madam Flamel asked.
Harry counted six rows with nineteen windows. There were three raised dots on the smooth metal between rows one and two and a ridge that ran down the center between rows two and three. That pattern was repeated in the following rows. Harry supposed it was to help him know where he was on the slate as he progressed.
"They aren't smooth—there are indentations," Aminah observed.
"Yes, that's right. How many notches on the sides of the windows?" Madam Flamel asked.
"There are six, three on each side," said Fitz.
"Correct," Madam Flamel commented, "There are six dots—two columns of three. Okay, this bit can be a little hard to wrap your head around. With the hinge on the left side and the windows facing us, we are essentially working on the back of the stylus. When we make the dots, we press from the back and they appear on the front of the paper. So, from this side we read the cells starting on the right side and going down the cell from top to bottom, we have dots 1, 2, and 3. On the left-hand side, from the top to the bottom, you have dots number 4, 5, and 6. The letter "a" as well as the number 1 are made using dot number 1. When you read the "a", you will turn your paper over, and the "a" will appear on the top left-hand side of the paper in dot number 1, now on the left-hand side of the cell in the top corner."
Harry was following Madam Flamel's instructions, and he made a few "a's" starting in the upper right-hand corner of the slate. He took his paper out and felt the dots. It made a dotted line. He couldn't tell where they were in the cell once he'd taken the paper out of the slate.
"What? Do you mean we have to learn how to write backward?" Fitz exclaimed.
"No, it's not backward, you just have to work from the back of the paper so that you can feel the texture of the dot on the other side of the paper," Madam Flamel insisted.
"Oh, like knitting," Aminah said. "When you make a purl stitch on the front of your work, it looks like a knit stitch on the back."
"Exactly. That's an excellent analogy, Aminah. It is the same stitch, it is simply a matter of perspective."
"So it is backward?" Fitz said.
"Well, no. It is not backward. We who teach braille find that calling it backward gives a negative meaning to the process and that can inhibit how students approach the work. We are writing in the manner necessary so that it can be read from left to right," Madam Flamel insisted.
"There is nothing wrong-footed or backward about this process, it is simply the way it is written so that it can be understood. Go ahead and make a number of 'a's' in the first row of your slate. Make sure to apply an even pressure with your stylus."
Harry moved the slate into position again and started making another series of 'a's'.
"So, what if you make a series of dots in the wrong dot, say in dot 1 instead of 2," Fitz said, "theoretically?"
"Well, do you mean dot number 4? That would just be a mistake. And it's okay. You're going to make them and it will be okay," Madam Flamel replied.
"Once you've made several 'a's take out the paper and feel it, get comfortable with the feeling of the raised dots under your fingertips," she said.
"The next letter of the alphabet is 'b' and in braille, we read "b" and the number 2 in dots 1 and 2. Go ahead and make a series of 'b's'."
"How do you know if you're reading a "b" or a number 2, then?" asked Harry.
"That's a great question. There is a number symbol that will precede all the numerals," Madam Flamel answered.
"Oh, is that the funny little backward L?" Harry asked. "I noticed that on my schedule."
"Yeah, but don't call it backward," Fitz said under his breath.
Harry snorted.
They continued working this way through half of the alphabet until they had filled sheets of paper with repeated dots of each of the letters. Harry's hand was getting sore from holding the stylus and his fingertips felt raw from rubbing over the dots and trying to discern one from the other. He had to really concentrate to make sure he was in the right window on the correct row. It was easy to skip a window or move down to the next row—so he found he needed to use his left hand to guide his right hand with the stylus to the next window.
"Okay, we're about out of time. You can take the slate and stylus with you as well as extra paper. Here is a card that has the full braille alphabet—you can probably figure out the rest of the alphabet based on what you've learned so far, but if not, you can use a reader to listen to it and then learn how to recognize the letters with your fingers. One last thing, what you're learning right now is called grade 1 braille where all the words will be spelled out. Later we'll cover grade 2 braille where you will learn nearly 200 contractions of braille words that will make reading braille faster."
"Madam Flamel, I would like to get a reader like Harry has—where can I get one?" Aminah asked.
"Oh, what kind of reader does Harry have?" asked Fitz.
"Harry's reader is a one of a kind. But I'm looking into getting it duplicated. It would be good for other students to have access to something so fine," Madam Flamel responded. "Harry, would you like to show your reader to Fitz?"
"Sure," Harry said. He summoned it out of his staff and held it out to Madam Flamel.
"Here, Fitz," Madam Flamel said.
Harry heard Fitz sliding the reader across his paper.
"Oh, that is a nice reader," Fitz said.
"What is different about it?" Harry asked.
"Well, it speaks in the voice of the writer of the words," Fitz said. "Where did you get this?"
"Professor Dumbledore gave it to me, he said it had been Homer's," Harry said. He felt conflicted knowing that Aminah or Godric should have received the anagnóstis before him.
"I've talked to Figora in the workshop and she's looking into it. Actually, Harry, she would like you to bring the anagnóstis by tonight so that she can take a look at it. She's pretty sure it was goblin made," Madam Flamel explained. "Here you go."
"Okay," Harry answered and put his anagnóstis back in his staff. He remembered that his next class was a meeting with Besel in Healer Jordan's office. He wondered how that would go.