At breakfast the next morning, Harry was sitting next to Aminah as he worked on eating his tomatoes and toast—he was finally getting the hang of managing the slippery beasts! He had a niggling question.
"Aminah, how did you know that it was your father who tried to get into the school?" Harry asked.
"Healer Jordan told me—we have an agreement. They've warded the Center against him specifically as well as his magic—so anyone who is Imperius'd by him wouldn't be able to get in either. He made an attempt and it activated the wards. I'm sorry you were shut out of the Center. That must have been scary," she said.
"I guess—Gemma was more scared than I was. I hope she's doing okay," Harry said, a bit distracted as he kept an ear out for her arrival at breakfast.
"So, she slept in the hospital wing last night? After you took her back to Healer Jordan?" Aminah asked.
"Yeah, she was pretty shook up. I didn't really realize how badly until we were all talking about it last night at Mei's tank and she got so trembly. It kind of scared me. Sorry that I just took off," Harry said.
"It's okay. It's good you were looking out for her. She's been so kind to me—even though she's so much younger—a first year—and not even, she didn't even get her first year. When I was her age I was terrified of the older students. And then throw in there that she can't even talk to us very easily… I would have not even tried… " she paused and took in a deep breath. "Your anagnóstis thing is so cool. I got a reader this weekend when I went to Diagon Alley with my mum and it's really handy and all, but it doesn't do half the things your anagnóstis does. Weren't you going to take it to … er what's her name in the workshop?"
"Oh, yeah, Figora. I did, actually. Hey, that's funny. I never thought about how I got it back. It just showed up in my staff again. Wow. I was really out of it," Harry muttered.
"There's been a lot going on… " Aminah said.
"Yeah, that's for sure," Harry agreed. "I'll ask Figora what she thought about making copies."
"Cool. I know Fitz was also interested. Even Godric, for that matter," Aminah said.
Harry wanted to ask Aminah more about why her father was trying to get to her, but didn't know how to bring it up. He figured he'd just have to wait for her to want to tell the story.
Harry rolled the scroll he'd received that morning from Neville between his fingers in his pocket. He needed to visit the owlery and send his response. Neville had a lot of questions, which he had tried his best to answer. He was going to come to visit him tomorrow and Harry was glad to have something to look forward to for the weekend. It made him think about how, in some ways, he was lucky to have been blinded by the Basilisk. If he hadn't, he'd be stuck at Privet Drive all summer, cut off from his friends at Hogwarts and having to sneak meals and do the chores well enough that no one noticed he was there. As hard as it was to not be able to see, it was at least better than that.
He shook his head in disbelief at himself.
If Ron could hear me, "Lucky to have been blinded…"
"Mei, any sign of Gemma?" Harry asked.
"Nope, she's still not here, Potter," Mei responded.
"You know. Everyone else calls me Harry. You could, too," Harry said. "We're roommates after all."
"Yeah, you're right, Harry," Mei conceded.
"Okay, well, I'm going to check in on her before class starts," Harry said as he pushed his chair back and stood up, shaking out his staff.
Listening to the satisfying sound of his silver tip bouncing off the walls of the corridor, Harry was also thinking about how much safer he felt at the Center than he did at either Hogwarts or Privet Drive—even with the breach and getting locked out. Last night he had fallen asleep wondering why he didn't remember the Alohomora charm when they were faced with the locked door. They hadn't even tried it.
I wasn't that worried about being locked out. I knew it was going to be okay.
He knew now that Alohomora wouldn't have even gotten him in, but why didn't he even try it?
Because I wasn't scared. I should have been scared. Gemma was scared.
He knocked on Healer Jordan's office door and was greeted by her.
"Hi, Healer Jordan. I was hoping to see Gemma," Harry explained.
"Yes, she was hoping you'd come by. She wasn't up to taking breakfast in the dining hall, but she's doing much better this morning. I'm so glad you thought to bring her back last night," Healer Jordan said. "I'll take you to her."
Harry took Healer Jordan's offered arm and followed her back to the familiar camp beds. It seemed they'd all be taking turns in the makeshift beds.
Will they transform the camp bed into a tank for Mei when she needs it?
Healer Jordan placed his hand on the back of a chair at the table where Gemma was eating her breakfast. Harry summoned the notebook, pencil, and anagnóstis from his staff and set them down on the table so they could talk. Gemma jumped up and gave him a hug, waving a greeting across his back as she embraced him. He squeezed her small frame and waved across her back in response.
"Hiya, Gemma. How are you feeling today?" Harry asked when she let him go and could see the papers fluttering by his lips. He felt for the back of his chair again and sat down and held up the notebook to see if she wanted to use it to respond. She took it from his hands and he waited while the pencil scratched against the paper.
"I'm feeling better. I slept last night—no dreams or anything. Can you get the pencil sharpener out—this pencil is getting dull. How about you? Weren't you scared?" Gemma's voice was chipper and it made Harry smile as he listened to her.
"Good. I'm glad you slept. I did, too. I wasn't really afraid… until that reporter witch was following us and Besel seemed so worried. I should have been more alarmed, I guess. I just thought we got locked out accidentally. I didn't think that someone was trying to break into the Center," Harry said as he summoned the sharpener out of his staff and handed it to Gemma along with the notebook.
She got up and went to a bin (he presumed) where he could hear her sharpening the pencil. She wrote again and handed him the notebook.
"I think the scariest thing was hearing that Aminah's father got so close to finding her. After what he did to her… and trying to get her again. Do you know if they've sent him to prison? He should be locked up," Gemma's voice sounded tremulous.
"What did he do to her? Sorry. I guess I shouldn't ask. She's said that she's not ready to tell me yet," Harry said, sitting on his hands and lowering his chin to his sternum. He was feeling lucky again. At least what the Dursleys do to me isn't really abuse. It isn't right, but it could be worse.
Gemma put a finger on his chin, surprising him into lifting his face toward her.
"Sorry," he signed and sat up straighter.
She grabbed the notebook from in front of him.
"What are you sorry about? You look really sad," she wrote quickly.
"I was just thinking about Aminah being hurt by her own father. That's all I know. I dunno—just the thought makes me sad," he shrugged.
It seemed like she'd finished eating.
She tapped three times on his arm, "I understand."
"I need to send a note with Hedwig. Are you going to go to classes today? Do you want to go to the owlery with me?" he asked.
"Yes," she tapped and he heard her standing up.
He managed a small smile. He liked the normal-ness of a trip to visit Hedwig with Gemma. A new normal.
oO0OooO0OooO0OooO0Oo
Even though Harry left Self-defense feeling a bit sore and drained, he had the warm feeling in the back of his throat that he got after a good Quidditch match. They had been practicing casting shield charms and while he'd been knocked off his feet more than a few times, he'd been able to cast the shield charm with both his staff and his wand by visualizing a bubble of protection surrounding him.
"Remember to think of it as a transparent, invisible protection, Harry," Ms. Midgeon had advised.
"Oh, drat. Is mine rainbow colored?" Harry asked, feeling his ears get hot.
"Yes, like an oil slick," she chuckled. "It's okay—just try again. Though you never know when a rainbow protection charm will come in handy. I'd keep that one up your sleeve."
It took a while, but he finally was able to cast an invisible shield charm. He could hear it when it was in place or rather the absence of the noises that it cut off as well as feel the zing of magic that made the hair on his arms and back of his neck stand on end.
"Hey, you did it! Harry! It's invisible!" Arig shouted.
Tony, Aminah, Fitz, and Arig were in the class with him (Gemma, Peter, Adam, and Shannon were working with another instructor on casting it nonverbally) and they all left feeling a little more confident in their abilities. Harry was surprised that Adam needed to work on his shield charm nonverbally, but Adam quietly explained before they'd split the class that the tremors that made him invisible also made his wand work unstable—that's why he was at the training. Arig's challenge was balance and managing crutches and his wand. Tony could cast the charm without problem, but he was working on finessing the placement. It took him a while to place the protection in a way that didn't leave him exposed.
Aminah's were opaque—like pavement according to Tony. By the end of class, she, too, was able to cast an invisible shield around herself, to a resounding cheer.
Fitz was able to sustain a strong and invisible shield charm pretty early on in the class. He admitted that it was one he'd been working on at home—not only for himself, but for his husband and their children. He told Ms. Midgeon that her instruction made the difference and he was finally able to cast it easily.
Even though the room was padded and there were cushioning charms, Harry still ended up getting bruised on other people's elbows and knees when he fell against them or they fell against him. It was a very lively and bouncy class.
Ms. Midgeon had also taught them some basic healing charms at the end and in the dressing room while he was changing, Harry felt his body for bruises and then touched his wand against the bruises that he could reach and said, "Episkey" and felt the area of the bruise warm then cool.
Out in the corridor, Harry was running his fingers over a tender spot he hadn't healed yet when Adam and Fitz approached him.
"Are you okay, Harry?" Adam asked. "Looks like you got a bit banged up today."
"Naw, I'm all right. I just found a bruise I missed when I was healing myself after class. I never expected that I'd be learning so many healing charms here, though!"
"Yeah, it kinda comes with the territory," Fitz laughed as they walked out the door and into a corridor that was filled with the heady aroma of baking bread.
oO0OooO0OooO0OooO0Oo
Since Harry had received Neville's request to visit Harry at the Center before he'd heard from Ron about the weekend (Errol the owl had arrived after dinner on Friday night sounding as if he might expire right then and there), he had to send a quick note to Ron explaining that he had plans on Saturday, but could maybe come for a visit on Sunday if someone was willing to come to pick him up (he was very insistent that he wasn't going to floo there).
Hermione had written that while she and her parents were busy this weekend, she was hoping to come to visit during the week to use the library during the day while Harry was in classes and eat dinner with him and hang out with him for a bit in the evening. She had said that Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday would work and he just had to pick the day. He wrote back that he thought that Wednesday might be a good way to make the week go by more quickly.
Friday night, Harry and Gemma were sitting up in the window seat by her area of the Montmorency room passing the notebook between themselves as they worked on their respective school work—Harry on his braille (he was puzzling through an uncontracted version of Fox in Socks) and Gemma on signs related to herbology.
"In your mind-healing sessions with Healer Geller, do you go into memories?" Harry asked Gemma.
When she had tapped "yes," on his arm, he went on to ask, "when you pull up a memory from before you got sick, can you hear and speak?"
She tapped "yes," and then "no," and her pencil starting scratching across the spiral-bound notebook as she elaborated.
Harry had his left hand at the beginning of the row of raised dots while he ran the fingers of his right hand over the first word in the sentence over and over again: ⠅⠝⠕⠭ .
"K-N-O-X?" Harry muttered to himself. "What does that mean?" He used his anagnóstis to check the sentence, worried that he had mistaken the word, but it read 'Knox on fox in socks in box' in the voice that reminded him of old reruns on T.V.—something American—like the Dad from Leave it to Beaver. He remembered reading this book when he was learning how to read (the first time)—it had been one of Dudley's, but he couldn't remember what Knox meant.
Gemma tapped his hand with the notebook and he took it to read what she'd written.
"I said 'yes' and 'no' because I can hear what everyone is saying in the memory and that is amazing—not just the voices—but all the sounds—the birds in the trees, the planes going overhead, the music—but I can't hear Besel when she travels with me and the 'now' version of myself doesn't have a voice, but my memory-self speaks so easily. It actually makes it harder… to see and hear what I lost so vividly; to have the contrast right there. The old me and the new scarred me. I'm more aware of how I feel left out and cut off from everyone. So much more alone," Gemma said.
Harry found it hard to swallow as he read it. It was so much like what he'd experienced. He put down the notebook and twisted so that he could (albeit a bit awkwardly) put his arm around Gemma's shoulders and pull her close. She hugged him back—and patted him on his back, telling him that it was okay.
They settled back into their work companionably and he started thinking about how he had tried to hug the 10-year-old version of himself in the memory. Would that he could have actually comforted him—protected him. He had never really realized how much he thirsted for touch before he came to the Center.
He had noticed at Hogwarts how Hermione was a hugger and how Ron and sometimes Dean, Seamus and others would wrestle him or throw an arm around him as they joked or ran around the castle… it had taken him a while to get used to it; at first he would flinch when they did that, expecting a blow instead of a hug. He did get used to it though, and now that he couldn't see, touching was so much more important than it had been before.
Gemma and Peter's waves across his hands or his back were as welcoming or more so than waves or smiles he'd received from his friends at Hogwarts. It reminded him of the first meal he had at Hogwarts—when the table exploded with plates of food and he could eat whatever he wanted.
Seeing himself shrinking away from any human contact in the Pensieve because they only kind of touching he could expect from the Dursleys was hurtful—pushing him away or tormenting him—it made him really sad. He remembered the photo from the album that Hermione had found in his vault of his parents holding him. He wanted to look at it again.
He summoned the album and the digitus from his staff. Gemma wrote a question mark on the back of his hand.
"It's a photo album of my parents and me," he said.
He opened up the album and turned past the pages he had already looked at with Hermione. Gemma looked over his shoulder as he was turning the pages and sometimes slowed his hand so that she could look more closely. He was pretty sure he was on a page he hadn't looked at yet—the shapes of the photos were organized differently. He ran the digitus over the first image, then carefully started feeling it. Gemma was pressed against his side and her fingers ghosted over his as she reached out to feel the image, too.
His brows were drawn together as he tried to figure out what was going on in it. As he ran his fingers over the objects, they enlarged so that the detail was more apparent. He could feel a lot of furniture—bookcases (the titles of the books jumped out in big braille labels as his fingers ran over them), soft throws over the back of a shabby sofa that a cat had mauled on the arms, teacups on side tables, a fireplace with lots of pictures on the mantel, and then he found the people in the photo. They were sleeping on the floor near the fire (Harry could feel the magic of protective wards over the fire)—there were children's books scattered around them—the images from the covers of the books jumping up to make shapes under his fingertips—a cow jumping over a moon.
It was a lanky man with a mess of hair that stuck out in all directions and glasses askew on his face with a warm toddler wearing footy pajamas sprawled across his chest that was rising, falling, and rumbling with unheard snores. The man had a hand on the baby's back, protective even as he slept. Harry even felt a tendril of drool that had escaped the baby's mouth and was puddling on his father's neck. He wiped his hand on his trousers. Underneath the caption read, "James and Harry."
Gemma directed his fingers to one of the books and a strange creature wearing socks with tufted ears and a pointy nose strode across the cover and then he realized that the braille was the same he'd been struggling with moments before, "Oh, wow—Fox in Socks! My dad was reading it to me." Goose pimples rose on his arms.