Chapter Five: Snakeskin

A crumpled scrap of parchment bounced onto Harry's plate of scrambled eggs the next morning. His chin not lifting from his palm, he rolled his eyes upwards to spy Janus swooping high over the length of the Slytherin table before gliding to a turn at the end. He smiled feebly to himself. He hadn't seen her in nearly a week. She descended to a graceful clutch right upon his forearm, her intelligent gold eyes penetrating into his, wowing him for a beat.

"Hullo, my friend," Harry murmured, stroking her spine with his forefinger. He offered her a nibble off his toast, sorry to lack a treat more of her suitability.

"You brush the hairs aside a bit and look into her ear, you can see her eyeball."

Harry peered at the boy next to him. Blaise was already continuing on with his juice and bagel, but Harry considered the information, spoken from someone who had so very little so far. He gingerly pressed the soft puff of hairs along Janus' earlobe and tilted her head just so to angle ample sunlight down her canal. He was taken by a physical gush of enlightenment. As suggested, he could make out bluish-gray structure, and as a result understood farther depths to the superficial idea of beauty he had held to her but a minute prior. He released her ear and massaged her cheek with the pad of his thumb.

"Thanks," he told Blaise, who gave a stiff shrug in turn. He left Blaise to his devices, sensing he'd just gotten the bulk of the other's sharings for a while. It was treasured. Janus ruffled her wings in announcement of her will to part. Harry's hands slunk beneath the table then, unraveling the scrap, which he was hopeful had been from Ron until he spotted the scrawled signed name at the bottom.

Dear Harry,

Would you care to come down by my hut today in the afternoon? I heard you get time off from classes then. Have a cuppa tea with me around 3. I got biscuits too, and my hound Fang I'd like you to meet. Got some things we should talk over. Send a word back when you can.

-H ag ri d

Harry gulped, blinking crazily around his friends and the whole of the table. Nobody was looking, nobody seeming to notice. He stuffed the note into his pocket, exhaling half his soul out. He did wish to go and see the humble gamekeeper, but this would carry the cost of another afternoon's fibbed excuses. Draco would unquestionably balk at the scenario of tagging along with him for kept company in that hut, which Draco had several times and counting compared to abandoned countryside outhouses. Although Harry doubted the well-spoiled friend had been so unprivileged as to ever have to succumb to using one of those for real. And there was cleaning one, wherein Harry was quite experienced. Harry also wouldn't lay odds that Hagrid's home could rival the average interior chambers of a contaminated long-lost loo either. Upon meeting the giant, he gave him higher credit and trust than he imagined many kids like him would. Harry had a slight penchant with instinctual estimates when it came to socializing with almost any given person, his shortcomings revolving around himself and his meekness in the faces of confrontation and affiliation. His helpless urge to be accepted by the multitudes.

Indeed, Harry ran it over and reckoned he was available for mid-afternoon apart from the usual lounging with the crew in the common-room, Draco boasting on about some tale borrowed from his father, who to Harry sounded like one of the greatest bigheads of their times. Draco tended to mention the man in frequent intervals, rambling little further than eight to twelve sentences before citing 'Father' in one light or another. From what Harry could tell, he held a high Government position, thereby electing his charge of many, many people who were so hapless as to fall under his department. Father sacked people at the drop of a hat, whether for their workplace ineptitude or for some personal and trivial interference they made the mistake of doing by his attention. Harry had tired of hearing about him after a day.

While he was relieved to miss the opportunity to boast upon his own upbringing, he could have gone for a turn in conversation, onto matters that weren't so harsh and having to do with hurting somebody somehow. The night before once Harry's interrogation as to his rather late whereabouts drained, Draco jumped onto the bandwagon that plowed over the 'inferior race'. Harry ached to stuff his head beneath his pillow and squeeze with all his might while Draco raged on and on about his intense views on those witches and wizards born out of Muggle families. "Mudbloods," he kept spitting out, sitting cross-legged, cross-armed upon his duvet, a look of pure hatred on good display for the evening. "Filthy as diseased vermin, I tell you. Father has this down to a science. He's worked with enough of them to chalk up their potential, and he's too fair, I think, saying ninety-nine percent of the time they're just useless, as if there's one entire percent that deserves the honor of those Pure of us! I hope he's not going soft."

'What about your mum?' Harry was wondering, laying on his side, facing the murky depths of the lake floor their window encased, moping about his epic failure in striking a sweet chord with Ron. 'What does Mother do? Does she agree with Father on everything? Is she just like him?' He thought about his Aunt Petunia and her stark similarities to her precious husband Vernon. She believed him to be normal, thereby someone to emulate. A noble figure. It was rubbish, in Harry's firm opinion from age six up. Harry had been to the park and the zoo and carnivals often enough to observe fathers with their families, how they acted. Harry had felt their love, the naturalness in their important parental roles. That love wasn't carefree. It was meaningful and 'normal' for those fathers to pinch the bridges of their noses and groan in telling their bouncing sugar-rushed tots they were only allowed one chocolate drizzle cone, not four or five as his uncle readily nodded to for his portly cousin, who went on waddling well past their toddling stages. Harry reckoned it abnormal parenting to spoil rotten their child's every whim and leaning so that they never learn restraint and satisfaction. Harry had been able to satisfy his smallest favors because of his neglect, his widespread deprivations, his diminished birthright. Frankly, it all kept his head on tight, even if he grew on weak knees. And despite those weak knees, Harry closed his eyes that night and caught his due sleep, conceding that Ron was a lost cause, someone to be wished well.

Harry had by now come to the sense that he's simply changed universes to find irony in a budding union with Dudley's reverse doppelganger. There were the easy traits, both being blond-haired and clear-eyed, and then there was the overwhelming smugness they both oozed of. Their false beliefs in self-superiority over the rest of humanity. Harry squeezed his eyes closed in frustration there in the Great Hall as breakfast was wrapping up, but he reopened them and blinked across the table at Draco, who was getting rises out of Crabbe and Goyle as he launched lone raisins off his spoon with nicely aimed flings over to the Gryffindors. He damned himself a hint. He perceived a long year ahead of him.

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It was a marginally bigger task today slipping away from the crowd at quarter to three, as Draco had invited the lot of them to a gambling session with Theodore Nott's dormitory. Besides Draco's mouth and respective claim to notoriety, Harry was to be the star of the show since people hadn't stopped spreading word of him five days in. The feeble excuse that Harry had left the best of his terminology notes down at the greenhouse knitted the fine brows on Draco, and the bonus word of his interest in roaming the school grounds was viable for argument. Draco said he and the others would accompany him out there following their scheme-pulling on the opposing Slytherin first years, to which Harry blurted out, to his later embarrassment, that he needed alone time outdoors in order to 'meditate'. Draco blew him half a raspberry for that bit, but it got Harry off the hook.

Harry had skipped visiting the owlery that day to use Janus, opting to just show up downhill at Hagrid's door. As Harry trotted the wide, haphazard stone steps embedded in the steeper sections of earth aligning the hut and the forbidden forest beyond, a flock of crows flapped in an abrupt spew from around a hillock ten yards off in the distance, calling out ugly high-pitched squawks to throw Harry's balance a couple degrees. He regathered his footing on the last few steps, squinting down at the shabby yet quaint wooden hut with a smoking chimney. Within more direct proximity of the hut, the lopsided, semi-dirt-stained square windows identifiable from the front glowed a warm dim orange, and stepping onto the stoop, Harry could smell a faint lingering smokiness, the wind stirring ash in the unperturbed firepit. A comically huge pair of black galoshes, dried mud splashing the heels, and a crossbow were set against the outer wall. Harry knocked three times, rousing the blaring, thick bark of a dog Harry knew would be burly.

"Yep, yep, on me way, just a sec here…" Harry could hear Hagrid greet through the door. "Fang, Fang, down boy, get down, heel." The door creaked wide open, Hagrid's blotchy face scrunched in a hearty smile. "How's it going, Harry?"

"Oh, good, I guess," Harry replied, staring for a moment at the pink embellished apron tied at a slight dip around the half-giant's waist. Its faded, moth-eaten sunflowers were stained with tomato smears and the entirety of the color spectrum, and Harry betted if he drew too near the old garment, it would smell tangy and stale. Fang's barking had slowed, so Harry dared his eyes onto the handsome dark boarhound sitting at Hagrid's feet. A trail of drool shimmered from the tip of his loose tongue.

"Well come on in, then, won't ya? I got some licorice tea hot 'n' ready and a plate of fresh pum'kin scones." He turned heavily and plodded inside. Harry stepped forward and closed the door, taking in the features the single-room house possessed. Hams and pheasants were twirling slowly, strung from the ceiling, and a copper kettle was simmering over the licking flames of his fireplace. His bed was off against a corner under another grimy square window, his blanket consisting of sloppily sewn padded quilt patches. Hagrid showed him to the round slab of wood supported by a sturdy branch underneath, a doable man-made substitute for a traditional dining table. Harry peered at the pile of golden-brown encrusted scones before him, not very hungry.

"Help yerself," Hagrid hummed, pulling on padded oven mitts as he went to fetch the boiling kettle.

"Thank you, Hagrid," Harry said, poking his fingertip into the surface of one scone while his back was turned. Harry could have done without cracking half his teeth out of his gums, so he resigned to clasping his hands in his lap.

Hagrid lumbered over with the kettle in hand. "How's yer first week been?"

"Interesting. I got to learn...begin to learn, quite a deal." Harry nodded, slumping into his seat as he reflected upon those past five days, those rich and surreal and conflicting hours away from his unsavory residence in Little Whinging.

"Ah, great ter hear, Harry," Hagrid beamed, pouring steaming water into one cracked mug. "What's yer favorite class?"

"Well, I like all of them, they're all different and exciting and new from one another. So aside from the paperwork sometimes, probably Transfigurations and Charms, but Professor McGonagall doesn't seem very warm with me." Harry stiffened then, grasping the edges of his chair, chastising his blunt haste. True as it were that the overall sternly lady had acted in a more chilled, curt manner around him for some unclear reason, much in the vein of Snape but not as severe, Harry could do better than go and whine about any of his teachers. His opportunity to give himself to this astonishing world was one he had no authority to criticize in the slightest. He held his breath.

"Aye, yeah, she's got a formal way about her, don' she? But she's a good teacher, take me word. Perseverance is the word. She's got that gift in her that has brought hundreds and hundreds over her decades here the great careers they got now as adults. I'm sure she'll warm up to ya soon, Harry."

"Right." Harry twiddled his thumbs out of sight as Hagrid scooted the piping mug under his chin.

"Ye takin' Severus Snape's Potions class too, hmm? Bloke's got a reputation himself, but ya can't deny his intelligence, his uh, craft."

"Yes, I'm in his class. Um, he kind of attacked me."

A broad brow quirked up Hagrid's forehead. "Attacked, ya say?"

"Well, I don't mean he beat me or shook me, anything like that. He just got awful interested in me, especially the first day in there. He wouldn't stop asking me what I couldn't possibly know yet, and I'm sure he knew that. It was as if he just wanted to put me to shame on purpose. I didn't do anything to ask for the treatment he gave me. He...he hates me." Harry's shoulders were tensing, stiffening towards his ears. He flushed. He must have sounded like quite the nitpicker.

That black brow didn't ease itself. "Oh, Harry, he don' hate ya. Why would he? Snape's known for bein' one of the more no-nonsense staff members. Myself, I met him when he was yer age while he was doin' his schoolin' here at Hogwarts. He was a serious, quiet boy then too. Had some other boys pickin' on him, chasing him round the grounds, pulling pranks and tricks on him. Hehe, in fact, one of the little trouble-makers was yer...uh, never mind that." Hagrid's eyes skirted sideways and he coughed. "Anyhow, he don' mean anybody any real harm no matter how it seems like it. Just got a unique sorta method, s'all. He gives ya too hard a time, ya come by here when ya can, I'll comfort ya how I can."

Harry nodded. "Thanks." His eyes wandered to a snippet of newspaper, its headline 'GRINGOTTS BREAK-IN LATEST' alerting him. Without permission, Harry was compelled to grab and read the report. In their brief bonding in the train, Harry recalled Ron mentioning someone robbing a vault at Gringotts, but the precise date had escaped him. "Say, Hagrid, this says that break-in happened on my birthday, but they didn't steal anything...you think they were after that package you got out?"

"Er, hard ter say…" Hagrid's tone was as evasive as could be, discouraging Harry into postponing the matter. Hagrid huffed, undoing his apron and draping it on a hook behind him. He smiled down at Harry. "My mother's. She was a...say, tall lady herself. Loved ter cook when I was growin' up, but she died young too. So this here bib, hehe, don' fit me like a glove exactly, but it does the trick, salutes her memory." He took a seat across Harry. "Anyhow, over the week I been worrying 'bout yer well-bein'. I take it ya can guess why from what ya might've heard about...well, Slytherin House."

Harry's eyes flew wide, his lips next. "Hagrid, does me being a Slytherin make me a bad person?"

Hagrid shook his head roughly. "No, no, no, Harry, that in itself def'nitely don' make ya bad. It's the history I'm referrin' to. Ya need to remember the good in ya, Harry, because it is there. I've dealt with enough bad youngins to sort out the real, deep-rooted nasties, the ones who grow up to be cruel, always bullying. It's somethin' ya can kinda predict, ya see. That sort of behavior, it goes down to personality, almost to soul." The chapped lips amid the coarse black beard thinned to a close vanish, his dark, shining eyes leveling hard on Harry's with utmost concern. "The tick I met ya again since ya were one, I din' see any of that, ya better believe. Just innocence t'rough and t'rough, and wonder. Just wholesome wonder. And you're sharp too, that's where the snakeskin comes in, I reckon. You gotta remember the House traits, after all, don' just go seeing the people with ya, how they're'll actin'. A lot of 'em are gonna act strange, Harry, and I feel it's gonna upset ya time to time. A lot of them are gonna treat others poorly, some of 'em even rotten. Yer gonna see this. It's up to ya to stand tall and stick with yer own gut, what ya feel 'nd believe in yerself. That's what matters. Don' let nobody fool ya, try to tell ya that soul ya got for yerself ain't nothing, 'cause they don' know a t'ing. In the meantime, I'm gonna be lookin' after ya good and well, see that ya don' trip. It's okay to need help too, Harry. You're gonna get confused time to time. I don' mean to be loud on stereotypes, but those Slytherins, it's the plain, cold truth, I'm afraid, it's their pureblood upbringings that did 'em in that way. It goes back centuries, y'know. I've been seeing that son of Malfoy's talkin' yer ear off in the Great Hall, I just want ya to let his words out the other ear sometimes, be the judge about the gibberish. Trust yer gut, it's a strong one."

Harry blinked in endearing wow. "...Alright," he murmured, processing the chunk of unexpected wisdom. He hugged himself, looking down. "Hagrid, yesterday I asked Ron Weasley to meet me in the library. I wanted to talk to him...befriend him. I must have actually believed myself that I'm decent too, for going to a risk like that. He didn't want much to do with me, and I'm feeling awful about it. I don't know what to do. I feel...I feel trapped in a way."

Hagrid's eyes crinkled, stroking Harry with pity. "I'm sorry to hear that, Harry, it's just another t'ing with the rep. Not yer fault, but...too many people ain't gonna see it at first." His hand reached for him. "Gimme yer hand."

Harry did. Hagrid enclosed it within his. "Keep yer eyes open in there. Don' give up. There's a friend waiting for ya. Cross my heart."

Harry nodded, though remained unconvinced.

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When Harry entered his dormitory at 4:35, Draco and the rest had apparently struck a lucky score in their gambling, heaps of candy and coins scattered over Harry's made bed, wrappers littered around his nightstand.

"Hey," Draco said, plunking his stash of galleons into a handbag. "Had to cut the meeting short. They ran out of loot."

"Malfoy had the lot of them damn duped," Crabbe announced, chocolate splotching the corners of his mouth and puffy chin.

"What can I say, I'm a rather knowledged fellow," Draco said with a casual ego-caressing that Harry was becoming so used to. Draco glimpsed at Harry's bed which had substituted a table. "Thought we'd borrow your bed while you were out, but go ahead with what you like there. Money's been spoken for, but there's some frogs and taffy leftover."

"Oh, thanks," Harry said, looking plainly over the scrap winnings, disinterested.

"We were talking about how secretive you are," Goyle spoke up, empty wrappers crinkling in his fingers. "Always going off someplace just yourself."

"Oi, Goyle, we talked about that," Draco scolded. "Potter hasn't had this much exposure to magical people before. He was stuck for over ten years in that swamp that calls itself the Muggle World. It'll take time and dedication reversing all that brainwashing the plain breeds stuffed him with. The important thing is that he gets serious round here himself, is prepared to take on the way of the wizard. Proper living."

While Draco might have intended for the small smirk he directed at Harry to be encouraging, Harry interpreted an underlying threat, forcing a swift smirk back.