Basilisk Eyes

Chapter 134: Ratlines and gaskets

By the time Harry and the Lieutenant admitted that it was time for Harry to return to the Center, the sun was streaming through the windows again and the motion of the ship was a gentle rolling. Harry wasn't sure about how to keep track of the time in the memory. He hadn't thought to ask Besel.

Can't I just choose to go back to the time I want to arrive?

"So, the pitching ship didn't upend your belly!" the Lieutenant observed.

"Uh, no. I guess not. Maybe it is all the time I've spent on a broom?"

"I imagine that is it. What I wouldn't give to try riding a broom."

"We could, you know. I have Gemma's broom in my staff along with mine," Harry sat up and reached for his staff.

"What a kind offer! Another time. We'll have to plan it when the others aren't about. They are suspicious enough as it is—what with you and your ilk coming and going while we're in the open sea. Healers Jordan and Geller have to cast enough spells on them as it is. I don't want their brains to be addled. I've heard that can happen. And I certainly don't want them to burn me as a witch! Or wizard, for that matter. But do, let's set that up. Perhaps at night? Might we be able to convince your Professor McGonagall to come with us and show her what folly it is to prevent you from playing your Quid-ditch game?"

"Okay, I'll ask Healer Geller to help me. And I'll think about Professor McGonagall. We'd have to do that carefully, I think. When I played Quidditch with my friends the other night, I didn't think about who might be watching. I didn't think it through very well. I didn't think about the consequences at all."

"Ah, well. Now you have the benefit of hindsight, as it were."

"Right."

"So tell me, where does this term 'okay' originate? Is it a Yankee term? It seems very odd to me. And yet all of you utter it."

Harry shrugged, "I guess so? I think we get it through movies and the telly."

"Guessing again? What are movies and the telly?"

"Oh, well, those things probably came after your time. They are moving pictures with sound..." Harry was quiet for a moment thinking of all the movies and the telly he'd been denied as a kid living with the Dursleys that he had planned on watching when he was on his own.

Then he shook his head. This summer he hated the sound of the telly—it no longer held the same appeal. And right now he was on a Galleon in the middle of the ocean off the coast of Africa! This was way better than watching some pirate movie.

"Moving pictures? I confess this is hard for me to imagine. I had a book when I was a child, we could flip the pages and watch the bunny my sister drew hop across the page. Is it like that?"

"Yes, like that, but with photographs."

"Ah, I've heard of photo-graphs. They say it is an exact likeness—such as one sees when looking in a looking-glass, but I'm afraid I don't recall much of what people look like anymore... let alone myself."

"Oh, do you think I'll forget what people look like, too?" Harry felt a shiver run across his back.

"Ay. It is natural and that's what I've heard from others like us, but don't fret about it. And of course, for everyone it is different. Some people cling to the visual memories and exercise their mind and some choose to forget. And others still have enough vision to keep making new memories, even if they are shadows or fragments of what they saw before. You will not forget them, you will have memories of the people close to your heart... not visual, but perhaps more important memories of the sound of their voice, their warm touch, their kind words."