Well, it's not before Phoenix Comic Con, but it's out. PHXCC was so much fun, I met so many new friends, 5 actors (in case you're curious: Billie Piper, Mark Pelligrino, James Marsters, Emma Caulfield and Eve Myles), AND finally got my lightsaber to participate in Saber Walk! Agh, it was hard returning to the real world. But I hope you enjoy this chapter, despite my post-con depression :)

~o~

Chap 10

The Parselmouth

After I discovered the Minister of Magic's grudge towards me and my parents, I remained in a bad temper for quite a while—for nearly a month in fact. The only people I could stand to be around (or more accurately, stand to be around me) were Harry, Ron and Hermione because they were my best friends and by default chose to have to put up with me, and Fred and George, because they were the only ones who were able to cheer me up. I made sure to shoot an evil eye at the Aurors placed around the school whenever I could, even though I knew it technically wasn't any of their faults. They were just following orders. But still, I couldn't help but be bitter about it!

Though my anger hadn't faded, my mood had overall started to lighten with the holidays right around the corner, and with the Polyjuice potion almost finished. A new Dueling Club had been announced, which seemed well fitting considering there was a giant monster lounging somewhere in the castle waiting to kill the next Muggleborn it saw. Most of my fellow Gryffindors had decided to go; I did too only after a long debate with myself about whether it would get more negative attention from Fudge. But I decided that I didn't care, and also that he could eat slugs.

"Good turnout," I commented to Harry, twirling my wand between my fingers. A majority of the school seemed to think the Dueling Club was a good idea as well, as kids of all ages and every house had shown up. Harry and I linked arms, pushing our way to the front, with Hermione and Ron trailing behind us.

"I wonder who'll be teaching us?" said Hermione, standing on her tiptoes to get a better look at the centered stage. My best friend and I both shrugged.

"As long as it's not—"

Harry ended on a groan, and I knew exactly who had appeared. Lockhart. I rolled my eyes, seeing that my second to least favorite teacher was now accompanied by my least favorite—Snape.

"Great, we might as well just go back to the dormitory now," I moaned, to which Harry and Ron both nodded in agreement. Nevertheless, we stayed put.

Lockhart strutted to the center of the stage and called, "Gather round! Gather round! Can everyone see me? Can you all hear me? Excellent. In light of the dark events of recent weeks, Professor Dumbledore has granted me permission to start this little Dueling Club, to train you all up in case you ever need to defend yourselves as I myself have done on countless occasions—for full details, see my published works."

I fake gagged.

"Please allow me to introduce my assistant, Professor Snape," he continued with a wide smile. Hermione elbowed me hard in the ribs before I could gag again. "He has sportingly agreed to help me with a short demonstration, as he says he knows a tiny bit about dueling himself. Now I don't want any of you youngsters to worry. You'll still have your Potions Master when I'm through with him, never fear!"

"Wouldn't it be good if they finished each other off?" Ron mumbled to Harry and I. I smirked, thoroughly enjoying the irritated look on the potions master's face.

The two teachers faced each other and bowed, and raised their wands in front of them. Lockhart rambled on about the way they were holding the wands, while Snape looked ready to kill. I'd almost be happy if he did murder the incompetent defense teacher. Once Lockhart shut up, they aimed their wands, and…

"Expelliarmus!" Snape cried, sending Lockhart shooting backwards with a flash of bright red light, and crashing into the wall behind him. The Slytherins cheered. I hated to give Snape any credit for anything, but I couldn't help but laugh. Harry and Ron joined in.

"Do you think he's alright?" Hermione squeaked worriedly, her hands over her mouth.

"Who cares?" Harry, Ron and I replied in unison.

Unfortunately, Lockhart managed to get up, though rather unsteadily. It was satisfying, considering I thought it as payback for zapping Harry's bones out of his arm last month. Lockhart fixed his hair and straightened his deep plum robes before regaining his signature annoying—though now very flustered—smile.

"Ah, yes! Yes, that was a Disarming Charm, as you see," he stuttered. "I've lost my wand—ah, thank you Miss Brown. An excellent idea to show them that, Professor Snape, but if you don't mind my saying so, it was very obvious what you were about to do. If I had wanted to stop you, it would have been only too easy..."

With a murderous glare, Snape interrupted, "Perhaps it would be prudent to first teach the students to block unfriendly spells, Professor."

"An excellent suggestion, Professor Snape!" Lockhart exclaimed, and proceeded to split the crowd of students into pairs, along with Snape. Ron and I got rather lucky. He was paired with Seamus, and I with Neville. Harry and Hermione weren't as lucky. Snape put Harry with Draco Malfoy and Hermione with Millicent Bulstrode.

"Now!" Lockhart called once we were happily (and not so happily) split up into our pairs. "How about we get a volunteer pair up here to demonstrate. Black, Longbottom?"

"A bad idea Professor Lockhart," Snape said curtly. "Longbottom causes devastation with the simplest of spells. We'll be sending what's left of Black to up to the hospital wing in a matchbox. As for Black, she's a danger to herself and anyone that gets in her way. The whole room could end up cursed."

I huffed, crossing my arms angrily. Beside me, Neville frowned, looking to the floor almost guiltily. I was reminded of how much I hated Snape.

Harry and Malfoy ended up being the volunteer pair, as per Snape's suggestion. I think he just wanted to see if Malfoy hurt Harry. But really, what could he do? I wasn't worried. I watched my best friend and my enemy face each other and bow as they were instructed to. They raised their wands and waited for the count.

But as expected, Malfoy didn't listen. On two, he had already shouted out a spell that sent Harry tumbling backwards. I gasped, getting ready to bolt to Harry's side. But he stumbled to his feet and retaliated. "Rictusempra!"

The two of them were ignoring Lockhart's protests. Malfoy fell to his knees, wheezing. But with a glare, he pointed his wand and shouted, "Serpensortia!"

And suddenly with that spell, everything changed.

A long black snake flew out of Malfoy's wand and plopped to the floor in front of Harry, who froze in fear. It lifted its head, preparing to attack. The crowd of students instantly backed away from the stage, falling tense and silent. It seemed as if the snake was a reminder to everyone of what had been going on at Hogwarts, and that there was most certainly something to fear by just being in the castle.

"Don't move Potter, I'll get rid of it," Snape said, sounding as if he would be much happier if it would bite Harry instead.

"Allow me!" Lockhart cried, causing me to roll my eyes. Of course, whatever spell he was trying to do, he didn't do it right. The snake flew into the air with a loud bang, and landed harshly back onto the stage again with a loud thud. This time, it furiously turned towards Justin Finch-Fletchley—the Muggleborn boy from Hufflepuff that was in our Herbology class—and hissed. It most definitely was about to strike.

And that's when Harry stepped in.

Instead of words, a long stream of smooth hisses came out of his mouth. My eyes widened in shock as I watched the snake turn to Harry, now as docile as a household pet. And Harry smiled at it. My blood ran cold. I didn't know exactly what he'd done, but I instantly knew it was not good.

"I didn't know Harry could do that," Neville muttered to me. He sounded fearful. I crossed my arms.

"Yeah, neither did I."

"What do you think you're playing at?" Justin yelled, breaking the silence in the room. Harry looked puzzled as the Hufflepuff boy stormed out of the hall. For the first time, he glanced around the room at the faces surrounding him. Several students were eyeing him with distrust, and others with pure terror. Snape, who vanished the snake in a puff of smoke, was ogling Harry with a cold, calculated look that I didn't like at all. I wanted to defend him somehow, but even I felt a little shock of betrayal. Had he known he could do—well, whatever that was?

I felt Ron tug on my sleeve urgently. "We have to go," he said to Hermione and I. He grabbed Harry as well and led us quickly out of the hall and straight to the empty Gryffindor Common Room. I didn't meet Harry's eyes the whole way, though he was eyeing us with confusion.

When we reached the Common Room, Ron finally turned to Harry. "You're a Parselmouth! Why didn't you tell us?"

I'd certainly never heard of Parselmouth, and judging by the bewildered look on Harry's face, neither had he. "I'm a what?" he questioned.

"You can talk to snakes," Hermione clarified.

"I know," Harry said. I raised my eyebrows angrily. He knew and he didn't tell me. "I mean, I've only done it once before. I accidently set a boa constrictor on my cousin at the zoo—"

"I new I wasn't crazy!" I cried. "I could have sworn I saw you talking to it, but I just assumed I was hallucinating, or you were crazy or, or—how could you not tell me?!"

"I didn't think it was anything special," Harry said urgently, meeting my eyes. "I figured loads of people here can do it."

"No," Ron responded, suddenly very serious. "No they can't. It's not a very common gift, Harry. This is bad."

"But what's bad about it? You heard me! If I hadn't told that snake to leave Justin alone—"

"We didn't hear you say anything!" I cried. "It just sounded more like…" I made a variety of hissing noises to prove my point. Harry blinked, finally starting to realize what he'd done.

"You were speaking Snake language," Ron continued. "It was creepy, no wonder Justin panicked—you could have been saying anything—it sort of sounded like you were egging it on or something."

Harry gaped at him. "I spoke a different language?" The three of us nodded. "But I didn't realize… how can I speak a different language without knowing I can speak it?"

I gulped, feeling somewhat guilty. "So you really didn't know?"

"Of course I didn't," he assured me. He looked at Ron, still confused. "But why does it matter how I did it? I still stopped it from attacking Justin."

Students had started to file in. Each glanced at us suspiciously, as if they expected Harry to "attack" them next. I suspect it didn't make him (or the rest of us, for that matter) look any better that we'd raced out of the hall and were now huddled together in front of the fire, as if we were plotting the school's demise. Glaring at the other students, I pushed my friends to a quieter corner, to make sure we weren't heard.

Hermione was the one who answered Harry. "It matters," she whispered, "because there is a reason the Slytherin symbol is a snake. It matters because being able to talk to snakes was what Salazar Slytherin was famous for. He was a Parselmouth too."

My heart dropped. They were right, that was bad.

"And now they have more of a reason to blame Harry for the Chamber of Secrets," I said in a hushed, fearful tone. I knew there was no way Harry was capable of doing such a thing… but I understood how bad it looked now.

"Exactly," Ron agreed. "They're going to think you're Slytherin's great-great-great-great grandson or something."

"But I'm not!" Harry cried loudly, causing a few remaining older students in the Common Room to glance over at us. Hermione frowned.

"He lived a thousand years ago," she said in a grave tone. "For all we know, you could be."

~o~

That night, I couldn't sleep. I knew that the primary suspect for the "heir of Slytherin" title had switched from me to Harry, but that didn't make me feel any better. In fact, it made me feel worse. While I wasn't pleased with the blame being on me, I could handle it. But now the blame was on my best friend—my brother. And that, I didn't like one bit. But I couldn't just convince people that he wasn't responsible, because who the hell would take my word for it? The whole thing made me uneasy, and sick to my stomach. I actually just wanted the year to end.

I got out of bed quietly, and headed to the lavatory to make sure I wasn't truly going to puke. Luckily, I didn't. I knew I sure as hell wasn't going to be able to sleep, so I decided to go down to the Common Room instead to lounge in my favorite armchair. The spot held a certain comfort to me that I couldn't explain.

When I hopped off the last step into the Common Room, I noticed that it wasn't empty. There was a figure on the couch in front of the roaring fire. I recognized him immediately, with his black hair sticking up in the back as it normally did. The spot he was sitting in was closest to my armchair. I plopped down in it, sending a gentle smile at Harry, which I hoped was comforting. He tried to smile back, but it came out as a sort of grimace. I wasn't going to try to pretend like I knew how he was feeling. Yes, the blame had been on me up until today, but I didn't just figure out I had some sort of ancient dark ability that made it pretty much impossible to claim complete innocence—even though he was innocent.

"I know this is bad," I started in a comforting tone. "In fact, it's worse than bad, it's awful."

"Thanks," Harry grumbled.

"But," I continued pointedly. "It's going to blow over soon. Other than the hiss hiss language thing, nobody has any reason to accuse you of this. So what, you can talk to snakes? That's not your fault. I would love to be able to talk to animals…"

"No offence Lydia, but this isn't really helping."

"I know. I don't really know how to help to be honest. The Polyjuice potion is almost done though, and maybe we can get a confession out of Malfoy. And if that doesn't work, well I dunno, but…" I paused. "I think it's going to be okay." But I didn't know that. And I knew Harry didn't believe it either. In a way, I guess was trying to reassure myself.

There was a long silence between us before Harry muttered, "Maybe it'd be best if you didn't hang around me."

I raised my eyebrows. "What the hell are you on about?"

"I just mean… They're already suspicious of you, the Minister of Magic himself is sort of out to get you. And now with this, this thing I have. Maybe it would be safer for you if you stayed away from me. Maybe everyone would stop thinking it was you. I dunno."

I gaped at him for a moment. "Harry, are you kidding me?" I suddenly cried. I winced at my accidentally loud voice, and paused for a moment to make sure no one was coming to check out the cause of the noise. When I heard no one, I continued in a much quieter tone, "Come on. Who's Black without Potter? Nothing. We stick together, okay? Just like we have our literal whole lives. No matter what."

Harry smiled, and nodded. "Just don't blame me if you end up in trouble."

"I'm always in trouble, what's new."

We laughed together, and feeling much more reassured and at ease, we fell asleep side-by-side right there in the Common Room.

~o~

It's short I know. I was going to make it longer, but I had to go to work. Plus, the next chapter's going to be fairly long I think with the Polyjuice potion and all.