—Shade—
by rayningnight
IV.
"I know you aren't my father."
"I thought we've already established that."
Harry's happy that he's able to understand words like 'established' now. He's only nine, and he feels special, knowing how to write and say words like establish and établir and constituendum—
"Yeah but, well, I have proof — 'cause, well, y'see, I have these… dreams," his carefree tone takes a nosedive.
The man doesn't say anything, so Harry continues, carefully and cautiously. He's not sure how to word it, but he trusts the man more than anything and anyone in the world.
And he has to say something to explain the mess of his coverlet, and fallen toy soldiers scattered around the cupboard that the man didn't deign interest in when he appeared a quarter-hour ago, and has been carefully tiptoeing around and placing back onto shelves as Harry continues his assignments.
If he can't trust this man, the silent guardian who's been watching him in the shadows for nearly two years while his own blood relatives —notnotnotfamily— stuff their son with sweets and affection…
"I see a man — wizard?— who pushes a redheaded woman through the door and near me, before there's this evil laughter and then the woman's suddenly begging for my life and she's hit with green light with some abracadabra spell and—"
"It's not abracadabra."
Harry's never told anyone, not anyone, about his dreams ever before. He's suspected for a while that his nightmares aren't simple figments of his imagination (they're too real, too vivid, too terrifying for him to just make up) and he wants to ask the man if—
"How do you know that?" he asks instead.
The man stays quiet, and after a while, Harry frowns and gives up. He wants to know. He does. But… there's something that makes him want to take a step back. "Ignorance is bliss," Thomas Gray once said, and Harry agrees wholeheartedly. Gnawing his lower lip, he continues with the conjugation assignment and he loses himself into connecting stems that it's almost out of the blue when the man says,
"It's Avada Kedavra."
Harry shivers involuntarily, but the feeling of terror and dread at the simple name of the spell won't leave. It echoes in his mind, exotic and dangerous, and it's scaryfreakynotright. Avada Kedavra sounds like a wolf in sheep's clothing, a monster hiding under a child's bed, masking behind childish fantasies and words like "open sesame" that mean things so much more sinister, more frightening—
He accepts the warm embrace of the man as he breaks into tremors, his pencil long since dropped and rolling away, only able to relax into the scent of burnt ozone and fresh rainfall by the seventh second mark.
The cruel laughter in his mind slowly dissipates with the sound of thunder outside.
V.
"But, look, look! It's done!"
He looks over Harry's chicken-scratch work to the left and the slapdash arrangement to the right and raises an eyebrow. Harry pouts.
"But I'm bored." Somehow he stretched the last word into five syllables. (It's a talent.) "Why can't I learn the other stuff? The fun stuff?"
The eyebrow is still raised and the face unimpressed.
Whinging at the Dursleys used to leave red, black, or blue marks on him but, strangely, whinging at the man is worse, as it turns out. There's no disappointment in that green gaze, just an unamused sheen, but Harry has this sense that there could be, and that makes him feel …bad… about himself. After a minute of glowering, because Harry needs to convey the utter pointlessness of these assignments, Harry's turns back to his still-drying assignment and those stupid forks and knives. But something seems to occur to the man, because in a whirl of parchment, the man suddenly produces a handful of small rectangular pieces out of thin air.
The first card has a figure of ink black on off-white, the head resembling that of an egg with a serpentine body.
Oh.
Darn it. Another quiz.
"Umm," Harry winces, berating himself for the 'in-art-i-cu-late' monosyllable as his mind bends over backwards to try and just remember—
Light bulb. Fist to palm. "Ah! It's the Hydra, symbolizing the number nine!"
The man lowers his parchment and nods curtly, not smiling yet still giving off a proud aura. Harry basks in the unspoken praise in his belly-flopped position on his bed as the man shuffles through the parchment 'flashcards' and, flipping a blank one over, he taps the middle of the parchment piece. An inky mist spreads out from the centre and—
It's a realistic picture this time: a spidery beast with thick, reddish-brown hair.
"A Quintaped, obviously symbolizing the number five," Harry gestures the five furry legs with his free hand while a grin presses his chin into the palm of his propped arm. The man lifts an amused brow and is just opening his mouth—
Consecutive harsh knocks on his cupboard door interrupt them.
"Up! Get up! Now!"
—and the man's gone, parchment on the cot and silverware on the shelf vanished into shadows with him.
VI.
"Did you all just come together and decide on a universal language?" asks Harry, fascination dancing in his eyes.
The boa constrictor blinks at him, and Harry is quivering with excitement. This is so wicked! Harry's sure glad he was shipped off with Dudley to the zoo, even with that really, really awkward silence in the car. Piers Polkiss had sat in the middle seat, and he'd left a good inch or two of distance between them, squishing into Dudley's fat side. Sometimes Harry can't tell if Piers hates him and therefore ignores him, or if he actually can't see him—
Wait …isn't there some sort of Muggle repellent charm…?
Harry huffs and glances down at his Shadow. His secret.
Was that your doing?
'Hatchling… you speak the language of snakes?' hisses the mottled-brown snake, startling Harry out of his thoughts.
He blinks twice before crowing in delight, 'You speak it too!' Harry would have clapped his hands in glee if he was the type to do so. 'All the garter snakes in the garden are still kids like me, or maybe younger, and none of them could speak but they could listen! They all understood what I was saying, I mean. I've been trying to teach them how to pro-noun-ce stuff, and I think maybe their mama died or something and so they could learn to listen to Parseltongue, but couldn't actually speak it yet — y'know developing tongues and stuff…'
The boa constrictor reared, as if he could feel Harry's excitement and anticipation and sheer joy — oh, wait, is he Impelling?
Calling back his emotional overflow and raising his shields, Harry finds his centre… and then breaks out into a grin again.
'But, well, since your breed is from Brazil — it says so here on the sign, in the human language English,' Harry adds in explanation as he saw much confusion from the boa's eyes and body language, 'and well, since Shadow won't explain — I'm sure he knows, since he knows everything — well, I thought maybe I could ask you why all snakes could speak the same language when they still had to teach their young, and yet they all live on a different continents and—'
'Amigo… I speak English Parseltongue,' the boa pauses, letting that information sink in, 'and Magic has given snakes the ability to communicate and filter in human language around us, especially when we are young hatchlings. But when I was still in an egg, I …absorb is the best term to use I suppose… so yes, I absorbed some Portuguese Parseltongue from my mother's whisperings.' It's tongue flickered out, 'Eu falo muito pouco Português.'
'Oh…' Harry blinks. Then he frowns, staring at the ground in consternation.
"Well that sucks. No wonder that Chinese Ratsnake in the Reptile House was looking at me like some loon… wait. But then how does a Wadjet speak English P—"
"You shouldn't hold a conversation with snakes in public, kit. Security cameras would catch you without me."
At the sound of the even tenor, Harry whirls and beams, and throws himself into wide arms already prepared for his happy attack.
A low chuckle. "And to answer your question, Wadjets may be Egyptian, but they're born with magic in their veins, like Runespoors and Basilisks and the rest. And unlike the average snake, they are also always colonizing in Wild Areas rooted in magic and untainted by Muggle industrialization." The man pauses, pushing him away slightly so Harry's able to crane his head up to meet the man's mirroring eyes. "Why do you think so many Dark wizards actually worked with Light wizards in the first days of the Ministry for the invisibility shields and phase wards to protect Wild Lands?"
"To, uh, protect them from Muggle nosiness I guess. All the magical islands, forests, marshes and lakes and stuff must be hidden from the Muggle scientists …right?"
"Yes, but Muggle scientists weren't so advanced back then." Then there's that dreadful oh-so-familiar smirk, and Harry scowls.
With a finger-flick at his lightning bolt scar, he fades into Harry's shadow. "Think. And when you have come to an answer, I'll tell you if you're right or wrong."
Harry stand there in silence, glaring at his Shadow, and he thinks he hears Dudley wailing in the Bird House down the hall. …Looks like they'll be going home soon.
'…You are a very interesting human hatchling,' there's a flicker of thin tongue, tasting, scenting, 'but your companion is even more interesting.'
Harry turns to the curious boa, rubbing his forehead from the finger-flick. The petulant scowl remains.
'You don't know the half of it.'
Notes:
This is unofficially a drabble series now. I'll be cross-posting it onto AO3, so either wait here for "long" chapters (always will have "three" drabble write-ups), or go over there for the pieces updated one after another. Although, as all you readers should know by now, my updates are really erratic. Like, either really short waits or really long waits depending on my muse and what life throws at me.