Harry and Draco had acquired a snake. Which, on the surface of things, meant life was going well. (After they had wrestled a baleful-eyed Blackie away, at least).
He was a handsome snake, black as night, with scales that shimmered just a bit, like onyx or obsidian.
"Hello..." Harry hissed at the snake.
"Hello, there, split-tail." the snake hissed back.
Draco, for a wonder, didn't look upset, or surprised, or aggravated. He just looked blandly interested. It was a look Harry wasn't used to, not when he was using parseltongue.
"How would you like to twine with my clutchmate here?" Harry said, wanting to wince at the word-translation.
"It doesn't look pretty, and it looks entirely too big for me." the snake said, "I think it might crush me." Except that crush in Snake apparently meant break his backbone, which was an entirely different thing in Human.
"Do you think you could scare him off?" Harry asked, trying to twist his mind into pretzels in order to talk Snake in anything remotely resembling a coherent manner.
"sss... he's a bit big for that... no bite of mine would hurt him."
"Yes, but he doesnt' know that."
The snake seemed to perk up at that, "Shall I try it?"
Harry said to Draco, "If he hisses at you, look scared."
"Yess..." Harry hissed to the snake.
The snake curled up into the image of a snake about to strike, and hissed, "Boo!"
Both Harry and Draco fell over at that, though for obviously different reasons.
"That was excellent" Harry said.
"It was? But you fell over too, split-tail."
"I thought snakes just hissed..." Harry said with a low chuckle. "But you said boo! I love it!"
"Split-tails are so strange, too straight to think properly." the snake hissed back.
"Would you mind if I share those words with my pale companion here?" Harry said, blinking to hear the word friend translated so. It was like he knew parseltongue by heart, but on reflection, he understood it in English, which was why he kept mentally translating what he was saying, and it kept sounding so odd.
"Inch ahead slowly," the snake said. Harry tried to translate "go ahead" to Snake, and got the same words, so it wasn't as cautious as the Snake had made it sound.
"He says that split-tails are so strange, too straight to think properly." Harry said to Draco with a smile.
Draco smiled back, a look of pure joy on his face - along with eyes that were fully focused and concentrating. This was Draco Malfoy 'in his element' - negotiating with a snake. "Can you tell him something for me?"
Harry looked him over, and nodded, "I suppose."
Draco lowered his voice, and nearly hissed at the snake, "Where I'm from, they train us in how to twist our minds like pretzels... or like snakes."
[a/n: Okay, so I was going to do something completely different here. Leave a review? Would you have rather had a cantankerous snake?]