"You don't know that. You have amnesia." Alec hadn't known what weapons he was able to use until he tried and Magnus was still learning what spells he could perform. Both of them knew they had skills but not the extent of those abilities.

"If you looked at hieroglyphics long enough, could you draw them?" After seeing Clary's sketches, he knew that she could recreate the symbols. "Knowing what something looks like isn't tied to understanding meaning. You could have seen them on something and you're repeating the patterns. Or it really is something important to you like they are for me."