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How many blind people "see" is by feeling things with their hands and that's exactly Ominis' case outside of using his wand--after all it can only do so much.
He had no friends prior to coming to Hogwarts, only his siblings who would rather avoid and a house elf who cared for him. Truly, he believed that the little house elf was the only thing in the world that actually cared about him.
So, when he first meets Sebastian and Anne, they become his best and only friends practically immediately. He'd make more friends eventually but Sebastian and Anne always had a special place in his heart.
His wand could only help him pick out their features so much. He heard them say Sebastian's face was covered in freckles; he didn't really know what those were but he imagined they'd be pretty. But after a while, he just really wanted to see what his best friends looked like.
One night, while he was sitting in his dorm with Sebastian, he couldn't sleep. He had a question on his mind and he was a little nervous to ask it. After all, he was an eleven-year-old boy who wasn't very socialized, and what if Sebastian thought the question was weird? But finally, he found the courage to ask.
"Sebastian, what do you look like?"
"Huh?" "What do you mean by that?"
"What do you look like?"
Sebastian eventually got the memo that Ominis was asking him to describe himself and it occurred to him that his best friend had never actually seen what he looked like. Ominis was actually blind and it dawned on Sebastian in that moment. He never saw Ominis as any different because of it, so perhaps that was why it seemed to be such a surprising thing to him at that moment.
Sebastian slid out of bed and hopped up on Ominis' bed, sitting cross-legged near the end of it. "Well, my hair is brown and so are my eyes, nothing special like yours or anything," Sebastian said as he began to describe himself. "Brown eyes are pretty I guess , but mine are just normal."
"Y-You think my eyes are special?" Ominis asked, having never heard anybody compliment his eyes like that. He had always been told that his eyes were a curse or some sort of bad thing because he couldn't see. To be told his eyes were special made some tears form behind his eyes.
"Well yeah! They look really cool. They're not like normal blue eyes--or even blue at all really ." Sebastian said, trying to find a way to describe Ominis' eyes. "There's not really a way to describe them to you, they're just-- special. "
Ominis went a little quiet after that, processing the words Sebastian had spoken. His best friend really thought his eyes were special. "Thank you," he said quietly, again forming another wave of silence between them.
Sebastian let them sit in silence for a bit before Ominis himself broke it. "Can I see you, please?" he asked, not knowing any different way to ask.
"How would you do that?" Sebastian asked curiously.
"With my hands," Ominis replied, swallowing a bit. "It's like how I read with my hands sometimes. I feel things with my hands and I sort of try to get an idea of what they might look like."
Sebastian tried to imagine what it'd be like in his head before scooting closer to Ominis on the bed. "Sure, that's pretty cool!" He said, wondering how Ominis would think he looked.
Ominis seemed a little surprised that Sebastian had agreed to this so quickly but he was happy nonetheless. Slowly and gently, he placed his hands on Sebastian's face and started to drag his thumbs over his skin. As he felt Sebastian's face against his fingers, he tried his hardest to imagine what he would look like.
His fingers trailed over Sebastian's jaw, cheeks, lips, nose, eyebrows, forehead--every inch of his face. Slowly but surely Ominis got a better idea of what he looked like.
And Sebastian just sat there quietly, not wanting to say anything that could possibly make things harder for Ominis. This whole thing was foreign and interesting to him , but he liked it. He wanted Ominis to know what he looked like.
When Ominis was done and pulled his hands back, he tried to remember everything about Sebastian's face to get a good look. Every curve or bump, how it felt, all to try and see what it'd look like.
"You.. you have a very beautiful face," He said quietly. This wasn't a compliment he often gave, simply because he couldn't physically see people and people hardly ever let him touch their faces. He believed his mother was quite beautiful but she was the only person he had ever given the compliment to before.
Sebastian was a little shocked as the words left Ominis' mouth. He had never been called beautiful before--everyone always called Anne beautiful and he was supposed to be "handsome" or something like that. But it wasn't a bad kind of shock. To be honest, it felt nice. This was Ominis' way of appreciating his appearance and it made his heart feel warm.
"Thanks," He said, not really sure what else to say. "You really think so?"
Ominis nodded his head. "Yeah, I really think so."
Eventually, Sebastian slipped back into his own bed. He wasn't expecting anything like this to happen, but he was glad it did. Now they both knew what each other looked like and Ominis just simply thought Sebastian was beautiful.
