The Talking Snake
Nearly ten years had passed since the Potters had lost one of their closest friends, Peter Pettigrew, but Godric's Hollow had hardly changed at all. The sun rose on the same wild, overgrown and untended garden and shone on the door to the Potter's house; it crept into their living-room, which was almost exactly the same as it had been that fateful morning.
The only sign of change was in the photographs that covered the mantelpiece. In place of pictures of a small, pale baby with a mop of black hair were photos with a small, pale young boy with knobbly knees, bright green eyes behind large black glasses and, of course, a mop of black hair, surrounded by four other black headed children.
At that moment, Harry Potter was still asleep, but not for long. His brothers were awake and it was their loud voices which made the first noises of the day.
"Up! Get up! It's Tom's birthday!"
Harry woke with a start. His youngest brother thundered down the landing and then the stairs, no doubt headed for the kitchen to meet up with the other three Potter children. Harry rolled out of bed, swinging his feet under him. He fumbled awkwardly for his glasses, than grabbed some clothes, changed and headed after his brother.
As he entered the kitchen, he was taken aback by the staggering amount of presents stacked literally to the ceiling on the table. His parents had always spoilt their children, particularly Tom, who was everything James Potter could want in a son. Tom was funny, mischievous and had 20/20 vision, as opposed to Harry, whose sense of humour was far drier, who obeyed the rules and whose vision was so bad he was near blind without his glasses.
The other three Potter children, Richard, Matthew and Peter, were all quite similar to Tom, and the four got along quite well. It wasn't like they excluded Harry deliberately; he had just never felt as though he fit in with them. Harry had never really felt bitter about his father's preference for Tom over him; it wasn't like it was a conscious action. Right now, though, it was hard to ignore.
Harry was distracted from the mountain of presents by the entrance of his mother, her lips pulled upwards in a pleasant smile. Lily Potter was not the most beautiful woman, though she was pretty enough to be of interest. Really, she was somewhat of a normal (at least as normal as a witch could be) housewife. Secretly, Harry thought she blamed him, his brothers and his father for stopping what could've have been a remarkable career in the Department for Experimental Charms; though this was a thought Harry would never dare give voice.
She walked past him, lightly ruffling his hair, placed a kiss on Tom's cheek, and then started breakfast. Harry moved forward, and took a seat at the foot of the table, which had been magically lengthened since that morning ten years prior to accommodate the larger family. He cleared a section of the table right in front of him, and then entered a lively discussion with the middle child of the family, Richard, over the planned visit to the Muggle zoo for Tom's birthday.
James arrived soon after Lily, and so the present opening began. Tom received, before Harry stopped trying to remember, a broom-handling set, Chocolate Frogs, Bertie Botts Beans, a collection of books by some Gilderoy Lockhart fellow, a flying model aeroplane and a magical telescope, and that only scraped the surface of the huge pile. Breakfast had been served about the same time Tom un-wrapped a pack of invisible ink revealers, but was interrupted by the arrival of some owl post.
"Bad news, Lily," James said, after quickly glancing through the letter. "Sirius can't make it again this year. Says he's too busy at the Ministry." Lily nodded.
"We can't really expect him to drag himself away from Auror business, James." She said, before turning to Tom. "Sorry honey, but we'll make do without Sirius today, alright?" Tom pouted but nodded, and finished off his presents.
At half past eleven, the Potter family herded into their beat up "whopper" of a car, as James had called it. Harry privately thought of it as a heap of junk, but his father had fallen in love with the piece of Muggle mechanics, and insisted on using it whenever they visited the Muggle world. Forty-five minutes later, and the family arrived, the four younger children pouring out of the backseat and gawping at the Muggles, before running to the zoo entrance. Harry, Lily and James followed at a more sedate pace.
It was a very sunny Saturday and the zoo was packed with Muggles. James bought each of the children large chocolate ice-creams at the entrance, before they began to walk around. Harry decided that it was the best way to spend a Saturday morning, and had as much fun as possible. The Potters ate at the zoo restaurant, where Harry overheard a fat child whining about the size of his knickerbocker glory, and then headed off to the reptile house.
It was at the reptile house that things started to get a bit weird. Harry had been peering at the zoo's sleeping resident Boa Constrictor, when it had woken up and looked at him with its black eyes. It tongue slid out, once, twice, than the head reared up so that Harry was eye to eye with the snake.
"Sssalutationssss amigo."
Harry was shocked. Had the snake really just talked to him? He was about to answer when he was elbowed out of the way by the fat boy from the restaurant, causing him to fall hard on the concrete floor.
Lily rushed over to him, and then proceeded to tell the fat boy off.
"How dare you! You can't just push people over without apologising!" Lily was about to enter a tirade when another voice butted in.
"What right do you have to talk like that to my son?" The voice was high and shrill, and sounded to Harry as though it could cut glass. Lily whirled around, no doubt to give the son's mother a piece of her mind, but when she had done so, no sound emerged. Curious Harry looked over his shoulder.
Standing there was a thin, blonde woman with an incredible quantity of neck, a stunned and horrified expression plastered onto her face. Looking up, Harry saw a similar look on his mother's.
"You!" whispered the two women, slightly off-beat. They stared at each other for a moment, before the blonde woman grabbed her son's hand and pulled him to her.
"Come here Dudley. It's time to go." The fat boy looked as though he were about to complain, but the arrival of a large, moustached man put a stop to it.
"What's wrong Pet-" The man stopped halfway through his sentence, staring at Lily in horror. Harry would've found the man's expression, like a gaping mouthed, moustached fish, humorous were the situation not so bewildering. "Stay away from us, freak!" He snarled at Lily, before taking off, wife and son in tow.
James appeared suddenly, a bright smile on his and the younger Potter children's faces. Seeing Lily's stony expression, his smile fell.
"What's wrong?" He asked, clearly confused.
"Petunia." That single word seemed to have a devastating effect on James. His brow furrowed, he looked around, then grabbed Lily's hand and started walking out of the reptile house, calling for the boys to follow.
The family piled back into the car quickly, James seemed to have a sense of urgency about him suddenly. At one point on the way home, Tom started to complain but was cut off by James abruptly, shocking Tom quite a lot. With all that had happened, Harry spent little time thinking about the snake.
Well. If anyone is reading this, can you tell me if it's worth continuing? TM