Harry wasn't sure what it was that woke him up at first—until he heard it again. A piercing cry rent through the room and Harry sat up trying to figure out where it was coming from. He heard Mei splashing, "What was that?" she cried out groggily.
"I dunno. It sounds like someone is in pain," Harry said, lurching out of bed. He grabbed his staff, shook it out, and stumbled out into the center of the room where the tile was cold on his bare feet.
"Tony!" Harry shouted as the screams rang out again. "Are you okay? What's hurting you?"
He was at the foot of Tony's bed and could feel Tony thrashing around, his legs kicking out, tangled in the sheets.
"Someone turn on the lights!" Mei yelled.
He heard a thud and realized that Tony had half fallen onto the floor, still screaming, but his voice was now muffled. Harry collapsed his staff and stuck it in his pocket, then crouched on the floor and started crawling toward Tony's cries on the floor, sweeping with his arms the way he'd move his staff across the space until he found Tony. He was surprised by an overwhelming odor of liquor… like Aunt Marge's breath but way stronger… coming from Tony. He turned his face away and gulped air before turning back.
"Tony, Tony! What's going on?" Harry asked, feeling more frantic as Tony's screams got more intense.
Harry got his arms underneath Tony's shoulders and was trying to lift him back onto the bed but he was too heavy and he was still twisting and thrashing around. All Harry could do was cradle his head in one arm to try to keep him from banging the back of his head on the tile floor. Harry was running his free hand over Tony's torso, trying to find a wound. He was certain that he must have been stabbed to scream like he was.
"Hey, can anyone give me a hand here?" Harry shouted to his roommates—then groaned, not just from the effort of keeping Tony from hurting himself, but also from the realization that Aminah never woke up during the night, Gemma wouldn't know that something was going on unless Tony's thrashings really vibrated the floor, Mei would have to get out of her tank (and when had she ever done that willingly?), and Arig was still transformed—sleeping off his werewolfishness.
Tony's screams were scrambling his brain and it was all Harry could do to keep his head from knocking against the floor or the side of the bed. He didn't know what to do—or even how injured Tony was … but a noise was getting closer. Harry couldn't figure out what it was through the screams.
"Tony, knock it off!" Mei screeched. "Someone get Healer Jordan! Aminah! How are you sleeping through this racket!"
And then Mei was flopping onto the ground next to him.
"Mei, how did you get over here?" he said at the same time that she exclaimed, "Oh Merlin's bollocks, he reeks! Tony! What were you doing last night?"
"Is he still sleeping? He's not hurt?" Harry asked.
"He's going to be hurt after I get through with him!" Mei said and Harry was worried, until she took a deep breath and said, "Yeah, I think he's having a nightmare—but I dunno, he's maybe passed out. The bloody prat."
"If he's having a nightmare, then it's better not to wake him up. Can you help me get him back on the bed? I can't lift him," Harry asked.
"Gah!" Mei groaned as she heaved herself closer, her tail brushing against Harry's bare back.
"It's not like I can lift him either… he's freaking huge."
"Can't we use magic?" Harry asked. He got his staff out of his pocket and touched it to Tony's shoulder and tried, "Wingardium leviosa," but nothing happened.
"I think that only works on things, not people. Try, "Mobilicorpus," Mei said in a surprisingly even tone.
Harry touched his staff to Tony's shoulder and said the incantation and was surprised when Tony's body grew lighter in his arms and he and Mei were able to lift Tony back onto the bed where he levitated over it by a couple of inches until Mei grumbled at Harry to Finite the charm already. Tony dropped onto the bed with a slight thud that interrupted his screams for a second.
"He's in so much pain," Harry said, grabbing his own head in his hands. "What can we do? Why isn't it waking him up?"
Harry was trying to untangle the sheets around Tony's legs, but gave up as he was still kicking out. Maybe it is better if he can't kick us.
"I can't believe that Aminah is sleeping through this—Gemma, I get, but Aminah! How is she still asleep? You'd think with what happened to her, she would be a light sleeper."
Harry was now holding Tony's shoulders down so that he wouldn't launch himself out of bed again, which meant that he was leaning close to Tony's face, breathing in his noxious fumey breath and Tony's screams were splitting open Harry's head. He felt the bed lurch as Mei pulled herself up onto it to lie across Tony's legs. She let out a string of curses that made Harry wonder about how much time she spent following pirate vessels.
"You're both doing well," Healer Jordan said. Harry jumped. He hadn't heard her enter the room. Tony's screaming was completely disorienting him. "How long has Tony been like this?"
"I dunno—just about five-ten minutes," Mei grunted.
"Okay, I'm going to run some diag… Whoa! Stand back," Healer Jordan exclaimed as she yanked Harry off the bed and he stumbled to find his footing. There was a retching noise followed by a sickening splatter that splashed on Harry's bare feet. An acrid odor overtook the area. A second retching noise splattered into a metal bucket that Healer Jordan must have conjured. Then she was muttering the cleaning spell that Madam Pomfrey had used outside the floo at St. Mungo's that left a peppermint aroma in its wake. Harry gagged a bit when he realized that Healer Jordan had saved him from getting that full in the face. Relief washed over him as Tony had stopped screaming and was now just whimpering.
"I guess it is better out than in," Mei said as Tony heaved again. "Especially with what he's been drinking."
"Okay, I think he's done. I'm going to run the diagnostics now," Healer Jordan said.
She made little humming noises. "Okay, he's stable enough for me to move him to the hospital wing. I'm going to transfigure his bed into a gurney. You two can go back to bed. Thank you. You did well keeping him safe and summoning me. You can tell your roommates what you witnessed in the morning, but please be mindful of Tony's privacy. I'll let you know how he's doing tomorrow."
"But what's wrong with him?" Harry asked.
"I think he must be having phantom limb pains," Healer Jordan said.
"What? What are phantom limb pains?" Harry asked.
"His brain is confused—it keeps trying to send messages to his arms, but they aren't going through, so it thinks something is wrong—so it sends pain messages. It happens to a lot of amputees." Healer Jordan had sat on the bed next to Tony and Mei had flopped back down to the floor.
"Why are you rubbing his stumps?" Mei asked.
"It helps reduce the pain," Healer Jordan explained. "Mei, do you want some help getting into your chair?"
"No," Mei grunted sliding into her chair, and then he heard moving metal things and guessed that she was unlocking the wheels. Harry shook out his staff and followed the sound of her wheels back to their side of the room. He took a detour to the toilet before going back to bed. He scourgified his feet and pajamas even though he was pretty sure that Healer Jordan had already cleaned them with her spell.
It was a while before he was able to fall asleep again and he guessed that Mei was also struggling from the amount of water splashing against the wall between their sleeping areas. He felt as though he could still hear Tony's pain-filled cries echoing off the walls of the dormitory long after Healer Jordan had guided the gurney with a quietly moaning Tony out of the room.
oO0OooO0OooO0OooO0Oo
Harry was certain that he had just fallen asleep again when the morning bells rang and the lights started flashing in the room. He could hear Gemma's bed vibrating. He pulled the covers over his head trying to ignore it all. But it was too persistent. He was just about to extract his legs from the blankets and turn off the alarm, when he heard Aminah's staff. It was the first time she got up to turn off the alarm.
"Thanks, Aminah," he called out, his voice cracking with sleep.
"Yeah, no problem," she said, yawning.
"It's about time someone shut that blasted thing off," Mei grumbled.
Harry rolled over to his side and started feeling around on the desk by his bed, trying to find the schedule he'd left out the night before. He had to stretch farther out of his cocoon of warm blankets than he wanted to, but finally he found it. He summoned his anagnóstis from his staff and read the updated schedule while also feeling the braille with his left hand as his right hand guided the anagnóstis over the words. It was a little awkward to do this while still in bed, propped up on his elbows, but he was eager to find out what the day would be like, but not enough to get out of bed.
Harry Potter's schedule
Monday 5 July, 1993
7 am Breakfast
8 am Self-defense and balance with Ms. Midgeon in the O&M room
10 am Navigating with your staff with Mr. Burbage in the O&M room
12 pm Lunch
2 pm Braille with Madam Flamel in the Library
4 pm Practical life with Healer Besel in the Louis Braille room
6 pm Dinner
7 pm Meeting with Professor McGonagall and Healer Jordan in office
He groaned. What a long day. He was tempted to go back to sleep now that the alarm was off, but then he was afraid he'd sleep through breakfast and his stomach was tight with hunger.
From skipping dinner last night.
He extracted himself from his blankets and made his way slowly to the toilet thinking about Tony. He wondered if Healer Jordan was able to do anything for Tony's pain. He was also thinking about what Healer Jordan had said about filling Arig, Aminah, and Gemma in on what had happened last night with Tony but at the same time respecting his privacy. He wasn't exactly sure how they were supposed to do that.
oO0OooO0OooO0OooO0Oo
At breakfast, Gemma sat between Harry and Aminah. After they had gone through the buffet and Harry wolfed down his eggs and sausages, he quietly filled them in on the night with Mei's interjections.
"I visited Tony this morning," Mei said, surprising Harry—he hadn't heard her leave the dorm. "I guess he had a rough weekend. Healer Jordan has a potion that she's developed to help with the phantom limb pain. It's kind of cool. It makes your body think that your limbs still exist and then gradually shrinks them until they are the size of your residual limb, so that it stops searching for the missing pieces. It takes several doses to convince your body that they aren't there anymore, but in the end, the pain goes away. And she invented it."
"Wow, that is impressive," Aminah agreed. "I'm really sorry I slept through last night… I should have woken up to help you."
"How can you sleep through that is what I want to know!" Mei said, "Though I mean, there wasn't really anything we could do for him. I mean Harry and I figured out how to keep him from banging up his head more, but other than that, we couldn't do much. Healer Jordan came right away. I guess the wards let her know that a student in our dorm was distressed. At least you got some sleep. I'm going to be dragging today and Hǎi rén isn't going to give a pixie's blue nose hair."
"Um, I take sleeping potions, Mei," Aminah stated quietly.
"Oh, sorry. I guess that makes sense."
"How are those lessons going, Mei?" Harry asked as his knife and fork squeaked against his plate.
"Okay, I guess. I'm getting better at controlling my Jiāorén magic, though you wouldn't know it from talking to Hǎi rén," Mei grumped and then switched to a mocking voice, "You're not even trying—do you want to be stuck in the in-between your whole life? Put some effort into it…
"Do you think they'll kick Tony out?" Aminah asked, "Isn't underage drinking a violation of the code of conduct?"
"Yeah, Tony's worried about that, too," Mei said. "Though he should have thought that about that last night."
"Yeah, well. I'm sure he was just trying to find a way to dull the pain," Aminah said.
Harry pushed back his chair, shook out his staff and turned to Gemma, "I'm going to the owlery before self-defense. Want to come with me?"
She tapped his arm twice, "sure," and stood up, offering her arm.
oO0OooO0OooO0OooO0Oo
Though he was tired, Harry was feeling good about the day's classes. They had practiced casting protective spells in self defense. Gemma had even managed a nonverbal cushioning spell that Harry tripped on and then bounced off of like a trampoline. Gemma's glee at having produced the charm was contagious enough to override his embarrassment at having been bounced around like a bludger between the Weasley twins.
He felt like he had really made some progress with learning braille with Madam Flamel, though it was slow going and he was having a hard time telling apart ⠋, ⠙, ⠓ and ⠚ with his fingertips. Madam Flamel had assured him that it was a natural part of the process and that it would get easier as he worked on conditioning his fingers to be more sensitive.
Now he was waiting outside the Louis Braille room for his Practical Life lesson with Besel wondering what they'd be learning. He heard footsteps approaching and cast the Reveleo Memento to learn that it was Gemma and Peter. He waved in their direction. Gemma waved across his hand that was holding his staff and took his other hand to place lightly on top of Peter's. Harry waved across Peter's hand and Peter repeated the gesture and then added one that Harry didn't know.
"Gemma, what does this mean?" Harry asked, repeating the zig-zag line that Peter had signed.
Gemma poked her index finger into his sternum.
"It means 'you'?" Harry asked and she tapped his hand once, "no," and then repeated it.
"It means 'me'?" Harry was perplexed and she took his hand and turned it palm up to write, "H-A-R-R-Y" space "P-O-T-T-E-R" space "Y-O-U-R" space "N-A-M-E" space "S-I-G-N" and then she touched his scar, tracing the lightning bolt pattern it cut through his forehead. He felt his neck warm.
"Oh," he said, grimacing.
She wrote a question mark and then "W-R-O-N-G?".
"I hate my scar. I hate people being able to recognize me by my scar," he confessed. "Everyone thinks it is such a great thing, but for me, it is the only thing I have from the night my parents died and it is a daily reminder that Voldemort tried to kill me, too. Healer Jordan transfigured me so that people wouldn't recognize me when I went to Diagon Alley yesterday with Hermione and erased my scar and it was really nice to have a whole day without it." He could tell that Gemma was relaying all this to Peter since they were standing close together, touching each other. Both Gemma and Peter made the sorry sign on his hand and tapped three times, "I understand."
Peter and Gemma were signing between them and then Gemma grabbed Harry's hand and wrote "N-E-W" space "S-I-G-N" space "H" space "+" space "S-E-E-K-E-R" space "O-K-?" space and then she took his hand and moved it through the motion—sliding his right hand palm down across his left hand palm up and taking his index fingers up to his eyes and pulling them out and around in a parallel motion.
"Isn't it kind of… I dunno, sick? to use a sign for "seeing" for my name?" Harry asked.
Gemma made the laughing sign and Peter joined in, his laughter noises jarring. There was something morbidly contagious about it. Harry was surprised when laughter bubbled out of him was well.
"Merlin, you three are making a racket out here. What are you all laughing about?" Mei asked.
"Just the sign for my name that Gemma and Peter came up with," Harry said once he was able to draw a breath and he signed his name which made them all double over again.
"That is funny," Mei snorted. "So, what's mine?" And they started laughing again as Gemma made the sign for "M" and walking.
"Oh, there you all are! I thought I heard something," Besel said from the doorway. "Are you going to come in?"
"Oh, yes, coming!"
As they entered the space through the familiar naval tug of the Egress, Harry, still laughing, coughed when smoke from the room was drawn into his lungs. Harry squeezed his staff in the air to get a description of the room and learned that Aminah and Arig were already there.
"Hey, Arig! I thought you'd be out another day!" Harry exclaimed as he navigated closer.
"Blimey Harry, how'd you know I was here?" Arig said, his voice sounded tired—like it was an effort to form the words.
"Oh, my staff—I asked who was in the room when I came in. You do that, too, don't you Aminah?" Harry asked.
"Yeah. I hate not knowing."
"Well, I'm knackered, but sick of lying around. So I talked Healer Jordan into letting me come for this lesson at least," Arig explained. "I heard what happened to Tony last night. Amazing how you and Mei helped him. I'm sorry I wasn't there. Phantom pains are so awful. Poor bloke."
"Yeah, it was …" Harry didn't really have the words to describe the sound of Tony's pain and just trailed off.
"Yeah," Mei agreed, rolling up next to him.
Harry used the momentary silence to squeeze his staff again to hear the description of the room and he learned that they were in a very old cottage. The room was almost unbearably hot, the only relief came from a breeze that carried the distinctive odor of cut grass and manure coming from an open door across from them that also let in a blinding light in the otherwise dark space. Through that door, he could hear a sheep or goat (or maybe a few) baaing as well as the clucking of chickens. His aftí described a large walk-in style fireplace with a cauldron bubbling over the smoldering fire on the east wall. Near the fireplace was an old spinning wheel and an assortment of cauldrons and cooking utensils. The fireplace was framed by a large mantel that held a lot of old tools. There was an alcove in the corner that was filled with musty mattresses, pillows, and blankets. A rough-hewn table with benches on either side stood in the center of the room.
"Are you listening to something?" Arig asked.
"Er … Yeah. I was getting a description of the room," Harry explained holding up his staff.
"What is this place?" Mei said in disgust. "What are we doing here?"
Besel's chair stirred up dust as she moved across the room to the other side of the table.
"Let's get settled and I'll tell you. Gemma, thank you for interpreting for Peter. Could you all gather around the table in the center of the room? You may sit on the benches. And there is room at each end for Mei and me," Besel instructed. "So, this is the childhood home of Louis Braille in Coupvray, France—just outside of Paris. We're here for some practical life experiences. Today we're going to bake some bread in the stone oven outside in the yard as well as help out with some farm chores."
Mei groaned, "How is doing chores in a medieval French farmhouse anything close to Practical Life?"
"Well, we could always just clean the dormitories and prepare dinner for the Center, if you'd rather do something that is more applicable to your immediate life," Besel offered.
Harry was certain that she was absolutely serious and his shoulders slumped.
"But I thought it might be kinda fun to dabble in life in early nineteenth century France, though without the Napoleonic army tromping by—so this is just a simulation of the farm at that time, not a trip back in time," Besel continued brightly. "I'll give you a tour and tell you a bit about each job and we'll break into small groups to tackle each job. Any questions?"
"I don't think my chair will pass through that door," Mei said.
"True, luckily, we've got magic to help us over those barriers," Besel said. She must have done something with her wand because Mei and Arig both made agreeing noises and Gemma, sitting next to Harry, shook a bit. He drew a question mark on her hand, but she was signing with Peter on her other side. Harry figured that she had transfigured the door to widen or put in a ramp and let it go.
"Okay, let me give you the tour of the cottage and the farm and then we'll get started," Besel said. "We'll start where we are. This is the main room of the cottage—the kitchen, living room, and some of the sleeping quarters of the Braille family. There are other floors above us with more sleeping quarters, but we'll just look at the workshop and this room today. Aminah, Harry, and Peter—did you use your staff when we first arrived to get a description of this space?"
Harry and Aminah answered "yes," and Harry guessed that Peter did as well because Besel went on, "Good. So you know that there is a large walk-in fireplace to my left with a cauldron over the fire and a variety of tools for cooking, housework, and farm maintenance on the mantel. Behind me is the alcove with a convenient bed. Once some of the ingredients are gathered from the farm, we'll start making the bread in here in the oven that is next to the fireplace and is already being heated by the fire."
"Is that why it is so stinking hot in here?" Mei grumbled.
"Yes, of course this is a muggle farm, so they couldn't just cast a cooling charm or create a breeze as easily as we can," Besel explained. "I haven't cooled this room because we want the oven to be hot for our bread. And I wanted you to have an authentic experience. I think that you'll find that some of their adaptations are really very ingenious. Let me show you the workshop where Simon-René Braille was a saddler."
Besel's chair moved across the floor stirring up dust as she went. Harry wiped a trickle of sweat from his brow and felt another one travel down his spine as he waited until Gemma and Peter stood up. Then he swung his legs over the bench and stood up, shook out his staff and followed the group through the door to the workshop. It smelled of wood shavings and cured leather and was noticeably cooler than the kitchen.
"Hey, I can use some help here," Mei said from the doorway behind Harry.
"Excuse me, Harry, can you move to your left so that I can get by to assist Mei?" Besel asked. Harry shuffled out of her way, his elbow hitting something wood that was sticking out into the room. He felt it and found that it was a wooden workbench. He heard Besel mutter a spell and then Mei joined them in the room, the wheels of her chair brushing Harry's leg. Arig came in behind her—moving more slowly and heavily than his normal bouncing gait on his crutches. Besel's chair moved by Harry and she drew their attention to the workbench that ran along the whole wall. Harry's staff described a lot of small metal tools hanging above the bench.
"This is where three-year-old Louis Braille punctured his eye with one of the sharp awls used to make saddles. Because of the limited medicine available at the time, the infection from the injury spread to his other eye as well and it wasn't long before he was completely blind. His keen intelligence was recognized at an early age… " here Mei snorted derisively which Besel ignored and continued, "… and his father created a tactile version of the alphabet out of saddle tacks to help teach young Louis how to read. It was unusual back then for the family of a saddler to value literacy as they did. Here, I'm going to pass around the block of wood that has the beginning of the French alphabet on it that Louis first learned his letters on."
"Here, Harry," Arig said. "It's pretty cool."
Harry found the wood block that Arig was holding out for him and took it. He ran his fingers over the surface. The letters were spelled out with the round heads of tacks flush against the wood in neat rows. Each letter took a lot of space and there wasn't room for many letters. He traced the letters and imagined what it must have been like to learn to read like this.
He wasn't sure who he should pass it onto next. "Aminah, have you seen this yet?" Harry asked, he'd heard her staff near him.
"Oh, thanks," she said as he tapped the wood against his staff so that she could locate it.
"Later, when he was a student at the Royal Institute for Blind Youth in Paris, Louis was introduced to a system of night writing that Captain Charles Barbier had devised so that soldiers could pass messages in the dark. It was cumbersome, though, and never useful enough in the trenches, but Captain Barbier thought that people who are blind might be interested and brought it to the Institute. Louis Braille—who was only twelve at the time—took it and over the next three years refined it to the system of raised dots made within the six-cell system. It is now used throughout the world," Besel explained.
"Okay, let's head back out to the Farm. I'm going to transfigure your shoes to Wellington's as we go out to the farm," Besel said. "It's pretty muddy out there."
Mei was grumbling under her breath, "…nothing practical about mucking around in the mud on a simulated farm of a blind muggle in France in the 1800s… "
Harry thought she had a point, but he was also kind of intrigued.