A/N: Inspired by the Dolittle books. Have fun!
Once upon a time, not so many years ago—when the internet was still in its infancy and children roamed unattended outside—there was a young orphan boy called Harry James Potter. At the time when his story started, Harry was not more than five years old, and he knew little of life. He would also not be called Harry James Potter for long but no one knew it yet, least of all him.
What he did know was he lived in Little Whinging, Surrey, Number 4, Privet drive. With him lived his Aunt Petunia, and Uncle Vernon, neither of whom liked him very much, and his cousin, Dudley Dursley, who was half a year older than him and liked him even less. In fact, all the neighbours, young and old, and all the teachers and the students in his school, didn't like him either. That this was through no fault of his own, no one knew, least of all Harry, for his family badmouthed him behind his back, and told everyone to watch out for him, that he was a sneak and a liar, and might grow up to become the worst sort.
Hang on, before you get too sad for little Harry, he wasn't universally unloved. Animals and insects seemed to like him. (Except for Vernon's sister, Aunt Marge's bulldog, Ripper, who was a rude sort and believed in the gossip.) Dogs who weren't called Ripper would run up to him and wag their tails, Mrs Figg's cats kneaded his lap, spiders would gather in the little cupboard under the stairs that was his bedroom, and crows brought him little trinkets in exchange for old breadcrumbs.
Harry was very fond of animals and had he lived in his own home it might have been packed to the brim with mice in the cellar and hedgehogs on the chairs and parrots and every kind of animal that he passed by. As it was the house was not his and his aunt screamed at the sight of Scrits the squirrel in the linen closet having babies on the towels, and screamed blue murder when she found Nip the mouse in the cereal box, scavenging food for the winter months.
Whenever Aunt Petunia found yet another animal that had followed him home, she would call the exterminator and lock him in his bedroom for a day or two. In time, Harry and his animal friends learned it was better to find hiding places outside, and luckily they had a big garden that his aunt liked to have him weed that worked well for that. So the mouse got a bed made out of washcloth under the rhododendrons, and the squirrel had her babies in a birdhouse, made from papier-mâché in school.
His aunt knew he was keeping more wild animals as pets and but since she couldn't find them she only kept a wary eye on him. And his cousin was sent every now and then to interrogate him and check his room for stowaways. His uncle threatened to throttle him if he had to pay for one more exterminator to come.
This all came to a head over the span his first summer holiday when he found SSLL, the little green garter snake with the black checkerboard pattern on its back, and realised they could communicate. Astonishingly Harry could understand every sibilant SsSs, and was able to SsSs back being understood in turn. SSLL called him a natural. Harry and SSLL became fast friends and it was easy to bring him into the house, for he was small enough to curl up in his trouser pocket.
SSLL had phenomenal hearing despite not having eardrums, and would keep a lookout for his cousin and his gang who liked nothing better than to bully Harry when they were bored. He helped Harry to find hiding spots for Dab-Dab, the duck, that appeared in their garden one morning and refused to leave, and the baby-pig, Gub-Gub, that had fallen off the butcher's truck. He would slither out under the locked cupboard door and fetch a slice of bread for Harry from the kitchen when his aunt forgot to feed him, and they would spend day and night talking, learning everything about each other. Of course, SSLL already knew a lot about Harry, having watched him from the shade of the vegetable patch; he had heard the stories and gossip too but he was the type that made up his own mind about a person and thought Harry was one of those rare kind boys that you found if you were born under a lucky vegetable patch.
Harry learned that garter snakes ate slugs and snails and earthworms and that they were immune to the toxic skin secretions of toads. It was quite interesting, and one day when his aunt wasn't paying attention to him, he passed by the library to get a book to learn more. He only had space for hiding one book, and he and SSLL walked around until they found the perfect book. A Compendium of Useful Information for the Practical Man/Animals/Wild Animals, by B Wiki. It had every animal under the sun—or so Harry and SSLL believed then—in it, and had everything about where they lived, what they ate, and even how to care for them when they were sick. Surprisingly, with all that it still wasn't too large or too heavy for a five year old to carry, and he imagined he could 'borrow' his aunt's dictionary that she used for crossword puzzles to figure out the harder words.
The two of them immediately started reading as soon as they got home, Harry translating the English words to SsSs. SSLL could understand English fine but unlike Harry he hadn't gone to school and letters danced funny in front of his snake-eyes. At first they read in the garden, behind the oak tree, and after dinner they read in bed with a small flashlight. They started at A, for Aardvark, and they managed all the way to the African Clawed Frog, before they became too tired to keep their eyes open, and they fell asleep on the open page, both dreaming of its long claws. Which was lucky, for in the morning they met one.
"Out!" Aunt Petunia said as soon as they had breakfast, swiping at him with the broom, nearly toppling the mountain of Tupperware containers she had stacked on the floor, ready for her party. "I don't want to see you before dinner! I have a Tupperware party and don't you dare show your nasty little face!"
"Yes, Aunt!" Harry scooted out the back door and only when he was outside did he realise he wouldn't be able to retrieve the compendium from under his pillow. They had planned to read more!
"No matter," SSLL hissed. "I believe we will be busszy today."
"How so?" Harry asked, and he once again felt glad he had a friend to while away his time with.
"Ssscrits is calling for help," SSLL explained, and Harry hurried over to the oak where he could now hear her screeching from within the birdhouse he had hung.
And indeed she did need help. She and her babies were too scared to come out, for a very confused albino African Clawed Frog was sitting on their yellow roof.
"She's ssscared it will eat her young," SSLL translated and Harry quickly scooped the flat frog off the papier-mâché roof and onto the grass. He expected the frog to hop away but it stayed sitting, looking dazed, its eyes glazed over.
"What now?" Harry asked but SSLL didn't have any idea. The white frog was too dazed to explain himself and in the end Harry sat down in front of him and tried to remember what they had read. "He could be hungry," Harry said, remembering the times he went hungry and how it felt like he couldn't move or think. "But we can't give him Scirt's children," he declared and sent SSLL off to find some earthworms.
SSLL came back with two grubby, pink earthworms that wriggled in his jaw. He ate one, and the other Harry put in front of the frog. It gobbled it up by grabbing it with his claws and pushing it into his mouth. Harry imagined he looked mildly better after that but SSLL said he was still not all together in the head. Harry looked at him and saw his skin was very dry, and he remembered that African Clawed Frogs lived on the muddy bottoms of lakes and rivers. But there wasn't any close by and he knew it was supposed to live in Africa but that was too far away also.
"We can make a lake," SSLL suggested and that gave Harry a bright idea.
With SSLL keeping watch for his aunt, he snuck into the kitchen to 'borrow' the largest Tupperware container. It was a large, deep rectangle. Large enough for him to sit in, had he so wished, and it took a bit of effort to carry it out. Then he had to dig a hole for it which he did behind the Ramanus Roses with the small gardening shovel. Luckily he had lots of practice in digging, and the ground was soft and most of it mulch, so it didn't take more than an hour. When the hole was large enough he put the container inside and filled it with half of the dug up sand. (The rest he threw over the potatoes.) By this time Dab-Dab and Gub-Gub had come over to see what the fuss was about, and SSLL translated the conversations.
"I can just eat him," Dab-Dab offered. "It will save you the trouble."
"No eating," Harry said, pausing to wipe sweat off his brow, leaving a streak of mud behind. "He's a friend."
"That's too bad." Dab-Dab sighed and wandered off to search for grubs. Harry gave Gub-Gub his breakfast, which was scraps saved for the little pig from last night's dinner that he had kept in his pocket, before returning to his task.
Then it was only a matter of filling the deep container with water, for which luckily they had a garden hose, and Harry did so, watering the plants while he was at it. He put the frog inside. It sank to the bottom. Worried, Harry and SSLL peered into the muddy water but it was too brown to see.
Dab-Dab came over to stick her head in. She blew bubbles, and when she came up for air, she said the frog's name was Rib and he would be fine. "He said to thank you. He had been pining for Africa and had been too miserable to eat."
"What's he doing here?" Harry asked. They were very far from Africa.
"Some pet shop bought him from albino-animal smugglers," Dab-Dab said and SSLL translated, and then she lost interest in the conversation and climbed into the little boy-made lake to paddle around.
Harry rolled the garden hose back up and waved to his aunt that was making shooing motions at him in the kitchen window.
"Ssshall we go for a walk?" SSLL asked from his pocket. "We can take Gub-Gub with usss—he'sss getting quite fat."
"Okay." Harry didn't mind what they did and a walk sounded good. It was a sunny day, he was feeling quite content, having helped another soul, he had made another friend, and they had the whole summer ahead of them. "Let's go."