Alright, another one! I think you guys are enjoying this. I hope you guys are enjoying this. I have seen a couple of you attempt to guess who Marissa's father is. Yes he is important but I don't really know where he'll be revealed. I will mention, none of you have correctly guessed who he is. Happy guessing!
"You alright Harry?" Marissa smiled as Harry stepped out of the Gryffindor common room. He nodded with a smile as the two headed down to the Great Hall to join Draco for lunch.
"So," Harry began as they sat at the Slytherin table, "are you planning on telling us what you're going to do with my amazing parseltongue skills?"
"That's the thing, you aren't that amazing," she said, her eyes focused on the table in front of her and not the words coming out of her mouth. Her eyes shot up as Draco nearly spat out his drink. "Oh, wait no, I didn't mean it like that," she corrected herself.
"Yeah," Harry rolled his eyes, "I can totally hear the truth in that."
"No, what I meant is, you've never actually trained your parseltongue, have you?"
"Trained it?"
"Exactly. It's still a magical skill, otherwise you could probably find muggles who can speak to reptiles."
"Reptiles?" Draco joined in, "I thought it was just snakes."
"Not just snakes. The books are kind of vague about it. At first it looked like reptiles only, but then it seemed to include amphibians and then literally anything that could remotely seem like a scaly creature."
"Such as?"
"Snakes, obviously, and turtles, lizards, toads, frogs, crocodiles and..." She continued to list off creatures, magical and otherwise as Harry and Draco continued to make their way through their breakfast only half listening.
"... and most importantly, dragons," Harry and Draco's heads shot up.
"He's able to talk to dragons?"
"Yes. So supposedly those animals can all communicate with each other on a basic level, sort of like when you've learnt a new language on a basic level, you can speak it, locals can understand you but it is kind of broken. There is an issue though."
"Which is?" Harry asked, rather excited to be able to use his parseltongue with a dragon. Then it set in, he wanted to attempt to talk to a dragon, fear rose in his chest again as he realised, one mistake could easily offend the beast and end with the dragon keepers peeling burnt ashy pieces of Harry off the stands.
"You need to have parseltongue mastered to be able to talk to any of the creatures and that takes years of practise. A couple of weeks isn't long enough to master it."
"Well, we can still use this," Draco started, "first of all, you need to begin practising parseltongue more because talking to animals is a skill you should 100% perfect," he said turned towards Harry, "also, we can still attempt something. You mentioned toads, right?" At Marissa's nod he continued, "Then Harry needs to go and talk to Neville."
Neville was sat with Seamus, Dean and Ron in the Gryffindor common room and Harry was honestly nervous about going over to talk to him. Neville hadn't shown him any ill will about the tournament, and had been pretty nice to Harry. It was Ron that was the problem. Ron had been Harry's first and best friend, he wasn't really angry with Ron, and would be willing to hang out with him the second he apologised, but right now, he was still pretty angry at Ron's lack of trust in him. Harry headed over to the table and asked Neville if he could come up to the dorm with him, ignoring the glares of the other boys.
Once they were upstairs Harry broke down his plan for Neville who was more than happy to help out as long as he was there to make sure that Trevor didn't get hurt or lost. After a quick thanks and a walk downstairs, the boys were now in the Room of Requirement with Marissa and Draco, the room rather small, with a few chairs, and a table. Neville kept himself close by Harry, or as far from Malfoy as possible. Yes, the torment had been less this year, maybe it was because misbehaviour in front of the foreign students would result in harsher consequences, maybe it was because he was more distracted by the tournament as everyone had noticed that Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy were working together now along with the Slytherin girl, or maybe it was just because Draco had decided to leave him alone for now, whatever the reason, Neville was just happy to be left alone but that didn't mean that he was going to suddenly become friendly and comfortable for him. He was just here to support Harry.
"Right," Marissa began, "Just talk to the frog like you would to a snake."
A small correction of "He's a toad actually," was heard from Neville before complete silence as Harry began focusing on the toad.
After a few moments he turned to them with a sigh, "I can't do it."
"You didn't even say anything!" Draco exclaimed, mildly frustrated.
"Yeah I know but, I could just tell I guess, it wouldn't work," he picked up Trevor and handed him over to Neville, "Thanks anyway mate."
"It's alright, I hope you figure out what you need for the tournament," Neville said before turning around and leaving the room.
The three remaining students flopped themselves onto the seats in frustration.
"I guess it was worth a shot," Harry said with a small smile.
"Was it?" Marissa said, "I mean, think about it properly, its not like we actually knew whether speaking to a toad would mean being able to speak to a damn dragon, and it's not like you could bring Trevor in with you."
"Isn't it?" Draco suddenly shot up.
"What?"
"Well, is there a rule against bringing in anything other than your wand and the robes on your back?"
"Not that I'm aware of," Marissa said, now sat up and staring at Draco, "Why?"
"Serpensortia," Draco murmured.
"That's brilliant," Harry said suddenly catching on.
"No, wait, what? You've lost me. What are you doing?"
"If I'm thinking the same thing as him," Harry began with a smile, "I could summon a snake and get it to talk to the dragon, either as a distraction or bait, then I could attack the dragon with the Conjunctivitis Curse."
"Right, boys," Marissa said, looking at both of them incredulously, "in what way, is that entertainment. All that we would see is you shoot a small snake out of your wand, or bring one in or whatever, then talk to it, then it hisses, then you shoot the curse at it. Why not just shoot the curse at it?"
"Because," Draco began, "He's going to engorge the snake."
"What?" the other two immediately replied.
"Two problems with Harry's description. I remember what happened in Second Year, the snake did not listen to you if you were seriously telling it to leaven Fletchley alone. You need to summon that snake now and develop a relationship with it."
"Then abandon it in the middle of a stadium and destroy the bond we make over the next couple of weeks?" Harry said, looking slightly confused.
"No, because you need to engorge it. Who says the dragon would be able to hear you or the snake over a screaming audience of over 1000 students? So, you speak to the snake, engorge it, it does its job, the audience is fascinated by this incredible beast of a snake, you do what you need to and there, you win."
"Guys this is insane. We've literally just decided that the best way to make it as entertaining as possible is to scare people even further by placing a dragon-sized snake in front of their faces and oh my god it might actually be stupid enough to work," Marissa suddenly realised.
"Yeah I guess so," Harry agreed, "it's probably why horror and thriller movies do well, we like being scared." They laughed and Harry asked, "So when do we start?"
"Now obviously," Draco responded, "You need to develop this bond with the snake as soon as possible. So summon it,"
"I have to do it?"
"Yeah, it might listen to you more or something," Draco said, a hint of uncertainty in his voice.
"Right, yeah, sure," Harry began muttering, working himself up. He already felt like he was in the ring with the beast he was soon to face, this would be the foundation for his task and if he messed up here, he'd mess up the entire competition.
"Serpentsortia!"
Harry was now preparing for bed. A foot-long grey-banded king snake was wrapped around one of his bed posts. Harry was unsure if she was sleeping, her eyes were open and unmoving but she wasn't making a sound. Mary had named her Cleo and the snake had accepted the name. It had only been a few hours but Cleo had already selected her place wrapped on Harry's arm and seemed to trust him. Not many people had noticed her yet other than a few Slytherins at dinner who had noticed Harry feeding her. The two of them could easily communicate and Cleo seemed happy enough. Harry had made sure to visit Hedwig, to feed her and introduce her to Cleo. Hedwig hadn't exactly reacted badly, but she had certainly seemed slightly off-put by the snake.
Harry was about to remove his glasses and head sleep for the night, when he suddenly noticed Ron walking over to his bed.
"Hey, Harry," Ron said, clearly uncomfortable and nervous.
"Yes."
"Neville let us know about the tournament. I didn't realise how dangerous it is. Course you didn't put your name in. I'm sorry, mate -"
"Forget it, Ron," Harry said with a smile.
"Seriously, Harry -"
"Yeah, I know, forget it."
Ron was about to ask something before squealing as Cleo adjusted herself on the post. "What the bloody hell is that?"
"Yeah, she's my plan for the first task," Harry said scratching his head, "It was Draco's idea."
"Right," Ron said, stepping back, "So you and Draco are good then?"
"Yeah, he's not all bad, we're not friends but we aren't, you know,"
"At each others throats?"
"Yeah, yeah I guess that's it."
"Sit with us, tomorrow at breakfast, Hermione missed having you at the table," Ron said, avoiding eye-contact.
"Yeah, maybe. I'll speak to the others tomorrow."
With that, it was like nothing had happened between the two of them, and Harry headed to bed with a grin on his face.
Was that good? I don't know. I wrote it while in a hospital bed and hooked up to some weird medicine that has definitely knocked my brain out of sorts so feel free to let me know what mistakes I've made that need sorting out, and any suggestions you guys have. I hope you're all enjoying the story so far!