It was a balmy summer day in 1990 and the sun was high in the open cloudless blue sky above Surrey. The Sun seemed to take an almost special interest in the particularly normal cookie cutter house of Number 4, Privet Drive, picking a tiny 10 year old to torment with its heat. Little Harry Potter was sitting under the scorching sun enjoying the breeze while taking a short break from tending the opulent garden of Number 4 and he really was appreciating the cool breeze. It was a wonderful chilly deliverance from the heat of Harry's almost sunburn, but it didn't last.
"Get back to work boy!" Petunias shrill voice rang out in the yard and Harry scurried to his feet and ran off to the most isolated corner of the front garden the farthest away from the front window, taking a hoe and shovel with him.
That was how Harry spent most of his summer Saturdays, hunched over Petunias flower garden, pruning, weeding, and inspecting flower, or at least pretending to. Currently, Harry was pretending to extract a particularly stubborn weed, but in reality he was just messing around with the shovel and playing in the dirt. When after 20 minutes Petunia didn't call for him, Harry gave up on faking and just flopped to the ground wishing he could be anywhere but Number 4 Privet Drive in Little Whingeing, Surrey.
"…ssscraggy runt of a child," Harry's head snapped up and he looked around wildly hoping the voice wasn't a new addition to Dudley's schoolyard gang.
"Who's there!" Harry called out in a loud whisper, looking accusingly at one of the bushes bordering the front yard of the house.
"So you can hear me young one… look near your right foot." Harry's eyes snapped to his legs and what he saw was a snake. A rather long and skinny green snake was sitting just near his foot with his head lifted up and his tongue flicking out. A first Harry was frozen in shock, but that only lasted for a few seconds, then he shoved himself into the corner between the hedges and the picket fence and proceeded to curl himself into a ball.
"Don't be sscared little boy, I'm not venomousss!" The snake sounded like it was talking again and at that moment Harry wanted the weird snake to go away and leave him alone.
Snakes cannot talk. I cannot hear snakes talking. I am not a freak, I cannot do freakish things. His mind went on like that in circles and loops for a few minutes until Harry finally got a hold on himself. He lifted his head up and just stared at the garden snake who was staring right back at him just as frankly.
"You're a snake. You're not supposed to talk. Snakes cannot talk," Harry said in a matter of fact way, keeping eye contact with the thing the whole time.
"Of course snakesss can talk, just not in English, sssilly boy," the snake almost laughed before slithering closer to Harry, "You're not speaking English either right now."
"Then what am I speaking? Gibberish!?" Harry quietly screeched before checking to see if Aunt Petunia or the neighbors were watching. If the neighbors saw his freakishness he wouldn't eat for the next week, at least.
"Parssseltongue, the language of the sssnakesss, spoken by all snakesss, parselmouths, and some particularly sssnake-like reptilesss," the snake said rather haughtily.
Well I guess that makes sense in a completely nonsensical way, I guess. A snake telling me I speak the snake language. Harry thought bemusedly, so completely lost in his thoughts of snakes and snake baby talk and if other animals had languages too, that he didn't notice when the skinny snake, well... snaked his way up his body until he could feel its cool scales on his forearm.
"What are you doing there?" Harry said softly to the snake, he amusingly realized that his voice sounded like hissing to his ears. In fact the situation seemed very funny all of a sudden, absolutely hilarious, practically preposterous, exceedingly humorous. Harry, boring ol' freakish Harry Potter, was talking to snakes. He ought to be put into a hospital for hysteria.
"I'm getting comfortable with you sssince you're going to be my new owner," said the snake sedately, slowly shifting to show a large part of himself to the sun, "Parselmouths are very rare you know – it'sss a genetic thing."
It was like a dam broke within Harry Potter at that moment, and he started laughing. Hysterically laughing, completely dumbstruck with the fact that any of this was actually happening. Too late he realized Aunt Petunia could probably hear him, but by then he didn't really care because he could talk to snakes and a snake was talking to him on the lawn of the perfectly normal, droll, and forgettable house of Number 4 Privet Drive.
"It'ss the magic in your blood, I jussst know it," the snake said, sounding as if he was almost asleep, "Everyone is going to be ssso jealousssss when I tell them..." And it quietly drifted off.
Harry just sat there eyeing it for a little while longer taking in the whole situation.
"I didn't even get to ask for its name," Harry said to himself, thinking over the rest of the conversation.
Wait, did it say magic?
"Boy! If I see you faffing around the yard one more time it's the cupboard for you!" Petunias voice rung hollowly in Harry ears as he realized that today was the most unbelievable day of his life.