Basilisk Eyes

Chapter 69: Madam Flamel

"Oh, right!" he said as he held the anagnóstis over the paper.

"Hey, I'm going to head to bed. 'Night Harry and Gemma," Aminah said.

"Yeah, me, too," said Tony.

Harry and Gemma said goodnight to their roommates and Harry started reading what Gemma had written about her afternoon classes of balance and nonverbal spellcasting.

"The balance class is like an exercise class to help me strengthen my core because my balance was affected by the damage to my inner ear. I can compensate with visual stability training (basically orienting myself by looking at things), working on my posture, and doing stretching exercises. I think you'll be doing some of that, too, because balance is also connected to vision, so I imagine you'll need to do some of the same exercises—not the visual stability ones, though. It was pretty fun, actually. It felt good.

The nonverbal spellcasting is going to take a lot of work. I barely made any progress with that one. I didn't really know very many spells before I got sick. Shannon did better because she's a fully trained witch and she was able to do some before she lost her hearing. She can also still speak."

Harry lifted up the anagnóstis and turned his head to Gemma, reaching out for her arm, not sure if she was looking his way. She tapped his arm twice to let him know that she was paying attention.

"What happens when you sign to cast a spell? Does that work?" Harry asked.

Gemma grabbed the notebook again and started writing. After a moment, she pushed the notebook back to him and helped guide the anagnóstis to the spot where she added her answer.

"I guess some deaf or mute wixen have had been able to cast some spells with signs, but they can take longer to cast because of fingerspelling so they might get cursed first in a duel, but if it is just household spells, then it can work. Some really creative deaf wixen have created new spells with a combination of nonverbal and signs that I guess are handy. I'm going to be learning some of those. Also, I'm going to learn American Sign Language (ASL), too, because I guess they use just one hand to fingerspell and so you can use your wand and fingerspell at the same time."

"Oh, that's cool. That's a lot to learn," Harry said.

He was thinking about the braille class he missed that afternoon—though at least that didn't seem as vitally connected to his ability to cast magic as Gemma's class. It seemed like braille was going to be more useful for when he was in the muggle world since the magical world had things like his anagnóstis and staff and aftí that allowed him to read and get around and he could still cast spells.

Can I though? All the spells I've been using are through my staff. What about with my wand? Will I be able to use it again? he wondered.

He didn't think he could cast defensive spells with his staff, but he really didn't know.

I'll have to ask Godric tomorrow.

"Hey, Gemma, when do we learn about our schedule for tomorrow? Is it the same as for today?" he asked.

She took the notebook again and wrote, "I guess it changes a lot, so they do it day by day, though there are some things that stay the same like BSL and braille since they take a long time to learn. They'll update the schedule in the morning."

"Why was everyone gathered outside of the library this afternoon?" Harry had been wanting to ask for a while.

Harry heard the pencil scratching on the paper again and wondered if she needed the pencil sharpener. He summoned it out of his staff while he waited, guessing that they'd need it soon.