After the long train journey to Hogwarts they had finally arrived at the magnificent castle. Neither Harry nor Dudley paid any attention to the Sorting and so both were shocked and annoyed to see Colin Creevey join the Slytherin table. After feasting and talking the students went to their House common rooms and to bed. School had begun.
Later that night saw Harry sitting with his snake, after some debating they settled upon the name Rigor. Rigor was a species of snake not seen in the muggle world, a Ruby cobra. These snakes were incredibly intelligent, with an exterior that even the strongest of spells would have trouble breaching, they could travel around silently and carried enough venom to kill a small army. But most importantly to Harry, the snake was adorable. Rigor's personality wasn't fully developed due to his young age and so Harry found himself asking him all sorts of questions and answering the snake's in return. After some time spent asking and answering each other, Harry discovered that Rigor could taste and smell magic, even having preferences for types of magic and an ability to recall the sensation of any type of magic. Which would be useful, Harry imagined. When Harry finally went to sleep it was with Rigor curled up on his chest.
Harry was currently sitting in DADA and in under five minutes he had decided that he didn't dislike Lockhart, he hated him. He was single-handedly the most pompous and full of himself wizard that Harry had ever met, always assuming that everybody loved him. An hour into a pop quiz on Lockhart and what he liked, a completely pointless exercise, and Harry had had enough. He raised his hand and Lockhart immediately gave him permission to speak.
"Professor, it asks here 'what is Gilderoy Lockhart's greatest ambition?' However there isn't enough space to write 'become competent enough at magic that people will believe these asinine works of fiction are all true' should I just put 'continue lying for money' or…?" He trailed off and the whole room was snickering at his comment. Professor Lockhart looked mortified for a moment before laughing nervously.
"Ha-Ha, that was a good joke, Mr Potter, you really had me going for a moment." And with that the dashing smile returned to his face, not quite reaching his eyes.
"Oh sorry, Professor, there's been a misunderstanding. What I'm saying is that we have already had one very incompetent Defence Professor, we don't need another. So forgive me if I do literally anything else besides your lesson plans when I'm in here in future." At that, Harry gave his brightest smile, as if he had just pulled off a prank and convinced someone that they were in fact in on the joke when they were the target.
Or in other words, the James Potter smile was seen in Hogwarts for the first time in years, a smile that Lockhart remembered from his last three years at Hogwarts, having seen the Marauders around frequently. He didn't say another word for the whole class and Harry set to doing other work.
Two weeks after their first Defence lesson things hadn't changed. Lockhart was still just as incompetent and Harry engaged in numerous arguments with said Professor, even pointing out that some of the spells he was teaching them were useless.
It was after a lesson on Pixies, in which Neville got hurt, that Harry had finally had enough. He had made the decision to just skip the lesson entirely and study in the Library. He had checked out some of the third and fourth year material and was working towards complete independence from the very low standards of Hogwarts Defence Professors. He knew all of the first and second year spells by now and had successfully cast every one of them. He was sitting writing notes in a bound leather journal that his Aunt Petunia had given him for Christmas, when suddenly he was joined at his table by a particularly irritating first year.
"Hiya Harry, I saw you sat here working and so I thought I'd come over and ask for help. It really is rather difficult to get your head around all the different parts of magic, isn't it?" Colin said in a rush of speech.
"So you saw me working and decided to interrupt me, after already insulting me on the train and harassing me every day, you thought you'd intrude even further? You can't even handle the most basic of magic and yet you fancy yourself a wizard on my level? Just stop embarrassing yourself as it's just sad to watch at this point." Harry remained quiet, but his fury was evident in his tone. His words made Colin start tearing up as he responded.
"I'm sorry Harry, I never wanted to upset you, it's just you're my hero and it's so lonely being a Muggleborn in Slytherin. I begged and begged to be in Slytherin with you."
"That's not an excuse, Colin. Look at Dudley, he's a Muggle-born and he's doing fine. Your problem is your attitude," Harry finished, his tone indicating that the conversation was over. Colin ran off crying and Harry felt good, powerful even. Before he came back to himself fully and wondered where that had come from. He gathered his books and left the Library, heading for an abandoned classroom, to calm down.
Once he found one, on the fourth floor, he cast some cleaning charms to remove dust and sat down. He began taking deep breaths to calm himself, but found it wasn't working, so he set to the next best thing. He stood up and drew out his wand, casting a Patronus and basked in the feeling of his mind returning to him. He felt as if he was two people in his mind sometimes, there was the rational side to him and there was this animalistic primal rage side of him, which would be normal if that rage didn't speak to him. However right now, in this moment, he was one person. He was Harry Potter. He stroked the doe before letting her go and heading to his next lesson.
Dudley was bored. He was sitting in Defence Against the Dark Arts and they were covering how many fashion designers Professor Lockhart had turned down before starting his own. The story was laughably false, as evidenced by the Professor stating the number to be eighty one and ninety six, but the story was boring. His thoughts were on Harry, and how he had just stopped attending DADA, when Dudley came to the realisation that his time would be better spent outside of Professor Lockhart's classroom. As the bell rang and they all left Dudley was getting ready to head to potions with Theo and Draco, as well as Crabbe and Goyle who had started tagging around, but didn't really say much, his bag split open and everything spilled out. When Dudley looked around he saw nobody with their wand out and nobody he had an issue with, except for Blaise who was ahead of them and in a weird area in terms of their animosity. He told his friends to carry on without him as he sorted his things out.
After fixing things, thanks to the Reparo charm, and lamenting the loss of some of his homework due to ink bottles smashing, Dudley set off to Potions, all-the-while thinking about the need to learn from a competent person. He arrived in the Potions classroom less than a minute before Professor Snape walked in and locked the door. He sat by Harry and the lesson began.
"Today students, you are to brew a calming potion. Anyone who is unsuccessful, or does not finish in time, will have to write a twelve inch essay on what went wrong. This potion is usually reserved for older students, but maybe one or two of you could possibly get close. You may begin."
He wasn't kidding, this potion was leagues further ahead than any they had made before, which made Dudley incredibly nervous. Harry on the other hand looked perfectly calm and immediately went to grab the ingredients, Lavender petals, Crocodile Heart, and Peppermint amongst others, and set to work.
Dudley was tasked with chopping the Lavender and Peppermint, while Harry Properly dissected the heart and set the water in the cauldron to boil. Once it was up to temperature, Harry added the first ingredient and they were off.
After a gruelling ninety minutes of brewing, Professor Snape finally told them they were out of time. The students all bottled their potions and went one by one to give them to the Professor. Out of their group Dudley was the one to deliver their sample, while Harry bottled up the rest to take away, before all of the cauldrons were emptied by the Professor. For the last twenty minutes they mainly sat there in silence, until around five minutes before the end when Snape finally decreed that
"Only one group actually managed to brew the potion successfully, while one or two of you came close, only that group is exempt from the homework. That group is Mr Potter and Mr Dursley."
Dudley was thrilled, they had managed a perfect potion. He looked over to Harry to see him looking smugly at Snape before the bell rang and they left for lunch.
None of their following Potions lessons were quite so intense as the one they had two weeks ago. The subject that had increased in difficulty was Transfiguration. From the first year turning matches into needles and buttons into beetles, to this year turning animals into water goblets,and beginning to learn how to turn a single hair into a sword or a feather into a sofa.
They were walking away from the lesson when a scream was heard from down the hallway. Their whole class was pushing and shoving to try and get there first. As they rounded the corner they saw Argus Filch and his cat, Mrs Norris, lying unmoving on the floor. He saw Ron's sister crying and running away, he remembered Ron telling him how much she loves all animals.
While Harry was lost in thought he heard Professor Dumbledore shout to be let through. As the old man got near a look of shock appeared on his face.
"They are not dead, however the level of Dark Magic required to do such a thing is beyond anything we teach here."
He crouched next to the bodies and started waving his wand in complex patterns. Professors Snape and McGonagall sent the students away.
Everyone was on high alert and the noise was becoming overwhelming and so Harry, Dudley, Theo, and Draco all started walking up towards the second floor to talk about what they just saw when out of nowhere Harry heard a very loud voice shouting.
"KILL… I WANT… TO KILL. PIERCE… TEAR… BLEED… KILL… KILL" the voice went on and Harry was looking around to find the source of the voice, while asking.
"Do you guys hear that? That voice?"
"Harry, mate, there is no voice, it's just the pipes hissing. "Dudley replied, sounding concerned for his friend.
"No Dudley, listen. There's someone shouting about death and killing." Harry was frustrated that nobody could hear it as well. He looked at Draco and Theo and they were both looking at him funnily. When he asked them about it they said they would tell him in the abandoned classroom.
Once they were inside the classroom, Harry demanded answers.
"Before I begin, let me preface this with the fact that neither me nor Theo could hear anything, hissing or voices, but I may know what it is. You're a Parslemouth, either that or you're going crazy. Can you speak to snakes?" Draco asked him, looking thoughtful.
"Urm yeah, I thought it was normal here. Dudley saw me talking to Rigor in the shop when I first got him."
"No Harry, I heard him hiss and then you went over. After that there was just too much noise where we were to hear anything. From my perspective you walked over to it and it moved a bit then you bought it," Dudley explained.
"You're a Parselmouth Harry, you can speak Parseltongue, the language of snakes. That's a very rare ability in Britain, said to be a sign of being descended from Slytherin himself."
Harry froze at that, remembering that he was able to access the Slytherin vault. He relayed this to his friends and Theo immediately shot out.
"Then that confirms it. You're the Heir of Slytherin."