Privet Drive Parselmouth
Disclaimer: I do not own any characters or themes associated with Harry Potter.
Piers Polkiss was a normal boy living a normal life in the normal neighborhood of Little Whinging. He was the son of two normal parents and had many normal friends.
One of these friends was named Dudley Dursley. Dudley was a lot of fun to be around. They'd get together and play video games or go Harry Hunting. For Dudley's eleventh birthday, his parents agreed to take him and a friend to the zoo. Piers had been sucking up to the large blonde boy all summer so that he would be able to go. Unfortunately, Dudley's abnormal cousin, Harry, had to come along to ruin what otherwise would have been a perfectly normal day.
Piers and Dudley's favorite section was the reptile exhibit. The zoo had a boa constrictor that could have crushed Mr. Dursley's car into an unrecognizable pile of scrap medal. The snake was boring, though, and was asleep when they went to see it.
Dudley and Piers went to look at cooler, conscious reptiles, but out of the corner of his eye, Piers noticed Harry by the boa's tank. Piers was always one for blackmail and decided to listen in so that he'd hear anything embarrassing the other boy might say. He poked Dudley and pointed to Harry, then put a finger over his mouth, telling Dudley to shut up and listen.
Harry began apologizing to the boa for their behavior, and Dudley's eyes lit up. "Dad's going to get him for this," he whispered to Piers. Piers, while he agreed that apologizing to a snake was a bit peculiar, he didn't see what was so exceedingly strange. It wasn't as if the scrawny freak was actually attempting to hold a conversation.
Imagine Piers's surprise when he heard the snake respond! Dudley rushed over to the tank, knocking his cousin out of the way while calling for his father, to see the boa in action. Piers followed close behind and quickly wished they didn't because the two boys fell right into the tank. The reptile slithered to them- Piers's life flashed before his eyes as the powerful boa came in contact with his leg- and over in a mad attempt for freedom.
Piers and Dudley told Mr. and Mrs. Dursley exactly what happened to them, right down to the snake attempting to strangle them as they wrestled it with their bare hands. He just took a moment to say, "Harry was talking to it, weren't you, Harry?"
The next day, Dudley told him about the unnatural freak's punishment while they were chasing down six-year-old Mark Evans. "What I don't get," Dudley panted (he wasn't in good shape), "is why you said that he was talking when he would have gotten in so much more trouble if you had told Mum and Dad about how he was hissing."