Chapter 12: Family
Hiding behind the shadows of the great pyramids, the demon watched intently as his master began sharing his water with the strangers he calls his comrade. He felt his master called for him, so he shape shifted into a human took a seat next to his master. His master smiled at his presence and offered him a bowl and smiled.
"Drink my son."
The demon obeyed, feeling the stranger's envious stares. Behind the bowl, he smiled happy to know that in his master's eyes, he is more than just a servant. He is family.
Harry slammed the foyer door closed, mumbling under his breath about ways he would love to kill his butler for playing him the fool. Can't the man see that he's busy here? He has about two tones of basilisk meat and organ to fabricate and put away, but the genie just wastes his time bringing him random people in. Grumbling, he picked up a large scabbard and began hacking at a piece of Basilisk meat.
"Been busy have ya wee lordie?" Harry jumped back in surprised, slamming himself onto the basilisk cold slimy flesh. He was ready to turn around and cursed out whoever made him jump like that, but he saw a familiar bodacious body with flaming red hair, so instead he coughed and composed himself.
"Oh hello there miss Prince." Harry said, hoping that the Hextechnologist didn't notice the slight tremble in his voice. She might've saved him from deadly love potions, but after she knocked him out and left him hanging on the celling, Harry is a tiny bit afraid of Blanchet prince.
"Eyyoo!" The young lady laughed heartily and rummaged her pocket for a cigarette. "Yer wishin deamon gave me a portkey so ah can pick up mah eggs!"
Harry laughed nervously and mentioned her to sit on a bench, taking away the collection of dirty swords he used to dissect the basilisk to make room for her. The witch whistled and clapped, complementing his intricate pulleys in her thick Scottish accent. Harry nodded back, wasting no time to get away from her and get the eggs.
She definitely scares him. Despite having a reasonably cute face and an amazingly beautiful red hair, that woman is not at all feminine. She wore dirty cotton shirts with an overly tight corset, along with dragon hide boots that chinks when she walks. Add that with her perpetually lit cigarette, and everything about Blanchett Prince just intimidates the living hell out of him.
"Bin hunting hae ye?" She called out loudly, making him jump up in alarm.
"Yes, we shot down quite a big game a few days ago." Harry said, feeling a tiny bit proud at her compliment. Carefully, he walked around and set down the ornate chest full of Basilisk eggs in front of her, flicking the lock open letting the witch check her wares.
"Welp, ye'r daein' a damn fine jab cuttin' fur an ametur 'ere." Blanchett cackled, slamming her dragon hide boots up onto the bench and leaning in close with a mechanical lens to observe the eggs closely. At first it was all 'Ohhs' and 'Ahhs' but her smile turned into an unsavory frown.
"Wee lord." She said in a dangerously quiet voice.
"Uh, yes?" Harry answered, taking a step back just in case.
"When I said ah wanted basilisk eggs, I mean ah wanted ones where they're nae hatched yit."
"Oh…" He looked at her, blinking stupidly at her with his blank and confused face. "I'm sorry, but you'll have to repeat that for me. The eggs?"
"The eggs laddie! E're hatchin!"
Harry froze in fear. He might not understand the rest of the sentence, but he could make out the word 'hatching'. With lighting quick reflexes, he slammed the chest back close and quickly lock it.
"Holy mother of- STEVENS!"
"I'm really sorry about our little fiasco Ms Prince. I assure you we mean nothing malicious towards you. We didn't know that the eggs were hatching ourselves." Stevens bowed again to the Hextechnologist.
"Ha!" The Hextech witch laughed and opened a mechanical fan which began fanning itself. "Am Sure that your wee lord didn't mean to kill me. He doesn't look like he 'as the balls to do it."
"Excuse me?! I understood that!" Harry said, turning his attention from the chest full of basilisk. He could hear the faint whispers and hisses from inside the chest, and their growing restlessness is making him nervous. "Is there a chance that you would accept tiny poisonous basilisk babies as payment miss Prince?"
The witch laughed and answered him in an accent too thick to describe. As Steven escorted the witch to a portkey that will take her back to her shop, Harry sighed and turned towards the chest full of thirteen small snakes, eyes cold and dead with determination. It has to be done. He have to kill them right away.
Briskly, he got up and carried the chest into the back kitchen, a place littered with unpolished tableware and dusty pots. Amongst the organized mess, Harry saw the flicker of the blazing hearth. It was the fire magical pit that swallows anything to use to fuel the House's pressure and oxygen system. The fire glowed brightly at his presence in response, waving it's intense flames in greeting of the master of the house.
"I'm sorry about this." Harry whispered, feeding the hearth a log of fire in apology. The entity swallowed up the log happily, unaware of what's to come. With conviction, Harry raised the chest full of snakes high above his head and-
"I don't think that's a wise decision sir." Stevens' warm voice calmly intervened, his hands grabbing his wrist from behind to stop him from smashing the chest full of snakes down.
"Give me one reason not to kills these snakes." Harry said, his voice trembling.
"Well for one she wouldn't like it." Stevens mentioned to the live entity that keeps the manor equalized and habitable. "And also, you would be killing of rare magical creatures that other people would kill to get their hands on!"
"Yes well, these rare magical creatures and I had a bad history in the past." Harry gave a rueful smile, remembering that horrible day on his second year. Stevens frowns and pulled a chair for his distraught master, taking the chest full of snakes away from him. Clearly Harry had some kind of phobia against snakes, which was terrible since his master has indicated that he's been gifted in parseltounge.
"I think I might have a solution to this problem sir." Stevens eyes glinted as he smiled.
"You know sir," Stevens sat down. "Master Bushwick first thought of breeding basilisk so they could serve as the Manor's guardian." Steven chirped happily, dicing some chicken breast with a level of intense enthusiasm. "He even had a whole waterway built from the manor's dungeon right to the lake so the snakes could defend the manor from both the inside and the outside."
"Mhm. Well how did that go?" Harry asked apprehensively.
"It went very well!"
"Really?" Harry sat up, becoming interested. "Then why did they stop then? If it worked so well we should have a giant Basilisk guardian swimming outside the manor."
"Yes! Well, that is until Master Bushwick's niece was nearly eaten by one. That's when he abandoned the idea and began breeding them for potion ingredients."
"How lovely. What better way to validate his decision by doing the exact same thing that he did." Harry drawled sarcastically.
"Ah, that's where you're wrong sir." Stevens laughed, haphazardly throwing the knife into the sink.
"…How so?" Harry looked at his butler with a worried look.
"Yes well, firstly you speak parseltounge. Now don't try to deny it, I know snake talk when I hear one! Anyways, parseltounge will aid you in taming these beasts!
"Secondly, you will be raising these snakes in a pact. By socializing the alpha, you can rear the whole pact so they can recognize your scent, therefore refraining from attacking anyone who lives in close proximity, ie, your future family and servants.
"Finally, having thirteen basilisk is a great social status that will benefit your future descendant in climbing the pureblood social ladder!" Stevens chirped happily, pushing the tiny diced little chicken flesh into a small tuperware.
"… Stevens…" Harry sighed at his butler's ludicrous plan. "You just suggested that I domesticate 13 undomesticable basilisk pups so I can have a cool guardian to pass on to the next generation."
"Firstly, 'undomesticable' is not a word, therefore the concept does not exist, and secondly, yes! A full grown basilisk would be convenient for social status and also in scenarios your descendant will want to attempt at global domination, a pursuit that I will wholeheartedly put my devote attention to once you are dead."
"…thanks."
"It's all part of the job sir. Now, I've rummaged Master's Bushwick's old notes on Basilisk early rearing and I think you will find his findings enlightening. For example, did you know that basilisk pups do not possess the infamous death glare?"
Harry just stared at his genie as he continues to ramble on and on about basilisk rearing techniques as if he thinks Harry would actually cared. Bored of the conversation already, the boy shifted his gaze towards the chest of faint hissing. The unrecognizable jumble of sounds has formed into thought bubbles. He could sensed things like 'hungry' and 'cold' between the hisses. It wasn't long before all that he could hear was the snakes' insistent hisses.
The fact that those snakes are uncomfortable is making him physically uncomfortable. As if another entity was moving his body, Harry did the first thing that popped into his mind; he snapped the chest open and threw the snakes out onto the wooded table.
Immediately, Steven stopped talking about Master Bushwick's mumbo jumbo and began shuffling out of the kitchen, shooting angry glares towards his master behind the safety of a marble pillar. Harry tiredly shrugged and began throwing pieces of chicken onto the table.
"… I cant help it, they kept hissing for food." He said flippantly, pulling come candles closer to the snakes so the heat could radiate to the small poor reptiles. Steven mumbled incoherently about laundry and disappeared from sight.
Harry leaned back on his chair and sighed. "I guess I should look after them." He mentioned out loud, worn out from his 100 ft basilisk dissection to care about small tiny snake hatchlings.
Harry spent the next hour with his elbows on the table, entranced by the squirming little reptiles as they unhinged their jaws to swallow small pieces of meat. The hatchlings so small it's hard to believe that they could grow to be massive behemoths that they are. Their skin is scaleless, but they glinted in the light like a piece of plastic. Harry was tempted to touch them to confirm, but decided that it would be a bad idea to reach towards a mass of poisonous snake babies.
As minutes passed, their vocabulary and thoughts grew in a staggering pace. Their thoughts move from mere primal urges to actual curiosity. They noticed each other and one by one slither their long thin bodies over each other to spread their scent. Some of them even began calling each other "Long Brother" "Thick brother" "Small brother". The intelligence of these snakes that are only days old really surprised him.
One of the snakes noticed his hand on the table and began making it's way up his arm. The other snake follow suit, licking the air with their forked tongue as they explore Harry's arm. Harry let them satiate their curiosity, staying perfectly still until the last of the snakes are back on the table.
"Mother?"
"Mother?"
"Mother?"
"No." Harry hissed back instinctively. "Not mother."
The snakes hissed in commotion, surprised that the branch that they were climbing are talking back to him.
"Father?"
"Father?"
"Father?"
"No." Harry hissed again. "Not father."
The snakes began to hiss again in confusion, raising their heads and swaying it left and right.
"Food?"
"To big for food."
"Smell like mother."
"Not mother."
"Must be father."
"Not father."
"Food?"
"Not food."
Harry chuckled at the cute conversation. 'They must've smelt their dead mother on me.' He thought morbidly, reaching out with a finger to play with one of the snakes, smiling when one of them curled up to meet his fingertips.
"Friend." Harry tried to explain, but the snakes just repeated those words over and over again in confusion.
"Friend?"
"Friend?"
"Don't know."
"Friend… food?"
"Not food too big."
"Friend not food?"
"Friend smells like mother."
"Friend is mother?"
"Mother?"
"Mother?"
"Merlin be with me." Harry sighed in frustration. Hearing his normal human voice, the snakes all hissed in surprised.
"Not snake!"
"Not snake!"
"Friend not snake!"
"Friend… food?"
"Not food too big."
"Friend not food?"
"Friend not food."
"Not snake…"
"But not food…"
"What is friend?"
"Friend is…" Out of words to explain, Harry sighed and struggled to find the right words. "Friend is family? "
The snakes stopped hissing for a second and looked at him dead in his eyes with their tiny yellow silts.
"Nest mate!"
"Friend is nest mate!"
"Warm nest mate!"
"Big nest mate!"
"Friend protects hatchlings!"
"Nest mate protect!"
"Big friend!"
Harry laughed at the newfound enthusiasm that the snakes have for him. Satisfied with their cooperation, Harry gave them more chicken as he began to think.
"Sir. Are you still alive? If you are and you're currently dying, please don't wish for me to " Stevens called out from the pantry where he has locked himself in.
"Shh. I'm thinking." Harry shushed. At first he thought that maybe the chest would be appropriate for the snakes, but they will grow bigger eventually, so it's better to relocate them to a bigger room immediately. He began making mental plans of constructing a small habit, but for now, these hatchling will do fine sleeping on his bed.
"Come." He hissed to the crowd of snakes. "I will take you to my nest." The hatchlings all hissed in approval and began slithering onto his hands.
One snake was left on the table, unmoving and cold. Unlike it's dark green brothers, this snake complexion is rather pale and anemic. Carefully Harry leaned down to the solitary snake, hissing gently at him to come up and join his brothers. The only response from the snake was a flicker of tongue. The curious snakes in his hand slithered down and began flicking their tongue at it.
"Female cold."
"Female small."
"Female weak."
"Female food."
"No!" Harry hissed in alarmed, scooping the small anemic gray snake into his other hand and holding it close to his chest. He shooed the twelve remaining snake back into their chest, throwing piece of meat into it before locking the chest again, much to the protest of the brood.
"I'll be back." Harry hissed urgently, but the hatchling was too busy chowing down on food to notice him.
"Stevens! We've got an emergency here!"
After a frantic search through Master Bushwick's snake journal, the found that unlike male hatchlings who thrives in cool temperature, females need to bask in sunlight immediately after hatching. So there they are, standing on the edge of the Manor field, facing the green abyss that is the Black Lake, ready to swim up to the surface for the first time so they could save this weak little basilisk.
It would've been easier to just teleport up, but apparently Stevens needed an exact mental coordinate in order to do so. They decided that the fastest way was to let Harry swim up with the snake. That way there is a higher chance of survival and Harry could just summon the demon after he decided on a good spot to aspartate.
Even with that plan all sorted out, Harry is still quiet nervous. His only experience of swimming in the lake was rather unpleasant. While Stevens found no signs of creatures around the manor, Harry was still uneasy, especially with the contracption that Stevens just handed to him. He frowned at a half-mask that Steven procured for him, still apprehensive that the century old device would allow him to breathe underwater.
"Are you sure this would work?" Harry asked for the hundredth time today.
"Well it did a couple hundred years ago, I don't see how it won't work today sir." Stevens shrugged, tired of reassuring his master over and over again.
Harry sighed looked at the small anemic snake curled up in a glass flask. "Hang in there silly hatchling, we'll get you decent sunlight soon." He hissed, comforting the small snake.
"Here hold Cassandra while I put this contraption on."
"You named it already?"
"It's a her. And yes. Odds are this little snake wont make it, so it's only proper that I give her a name to remember her by. Now hold her while I try and not to drown." Harry shoved the flask to his hesitant genie. "Hurry up. "
Stevens took the flask and help it up by it's neck tentatively, cringing at the stirring grey little snake.
"How are you afraid of small snakes when you've just killed a massive behemoth a few days ago?" Harry shook his head in tiredly.
"Big snakes are different. They're dragon-like and awesome to behold. Small snakes…" He shivered, "-they make my skin crawl sir. Just imagine them crawling into your earholes and eating your brain and then laying their small evil egss- ohhhhh." Stevens shivered and held the flask away from himself.
Harry stared at the genie, confused how an all-powerful demon could be so cowardly and stupid at the same time. Deciding that it's a question best answered in another time, Harry clipped on his mask, feeling it meld and mold into the crevices of his face. After a few seconds, he could feel some fresh cool air blowing into his mouth.
"When you see me flail uncontrollably, that means I'm drowning." Harry gave the genie a thumbs up, laughing nervously at his own joke.
"Would you like me to save you then?" Steven asked with an extra snark in his voice.
Harry gave his demon the finger and stepped out of the edge of the magical bubble, relaxing his body as he let the cool water of the lake swallows him up completely. After a giving himself a few moments to adjust to the change, he reached back into the bubble and asked for Cassandra. Gripping the bottle tightly, he took a sharp turn and began swimming towards the surface.
If he wasn't so pressed for time Harry would've love to stayed underwater longer and explore the lake's depth. It felt so nice to be moving free underwater, unrestrained by nothing but the clothes on his back. He could easily let himself drown in the quiet of the lake and sleep, but he has a job to do. Remembering the dying basilisk in the bottle, Harry put more power into his kicks and accelerated, finally breaking through the surface of the water and reaching the surface.
Noticing that there is a nearby island just to the west, Harry quickly swam up to it and pulled himself onto the lonely mound of earth, wasting no time to climb it's steep rocky terrain to reach the highest point of the isle. As if by chance, he found a spot where the sun perfectly hit the ground. Swiftly, he uncorked the bottle, praying to god that he could still save Cassandra the Basilisk.
After a few second of silence, the snake began to stir. At first she flicked her tongue out, tasting the air. Then, she began to uncurl her tiny body. Miraculously, her grayish complexion began to fade, revealing a coat of brilliant white skin under translucent glittering scales. She was beautiful.
"Yesss… soak it up little hatchling." Harry hissed fondly, petting the tiny reptile with his finger. The snake stayed silent, but she showed her affection by wrapping her tiny tail around his finger. Harry laughed and petted her again. "Beautiful Cassandra." He smiled at the name, happy that he wouldn't have to bury the snake with that lovely name.
"Yes, that name is indeed beautiful." A foreign voice called out from the bushes. Alarmed, Harry held the snake close to his chest and unsheathed his carving knife with his other hand. A soft found of hooves fell onto the ground, and a centaur emerged from the shadows.
"We meet again Harry Potter."
A/N:
Whew, I wanted to include the next part in this chapter, but i'm afraid it's going to be too long and cumbersome. I try to keep every chapter under 4,000 words so I dont bore you all to death XD Besides, this seems like a good place to stop. Hope ya'll enjoyed Blanchett's appearance! I always have soo much fun trying to alphabetize her exaggerated Scottish accent.
Thank you for all the guest who pointed out the errors from last chapter! I tried my best to quickly fix it, and I'll be sure to read it again to correct it. I finally found out how to stop my word processor from autocorrecting Stevens into Steven! Yay! Hopefully there will be less blunders like these in the future!
As always, thank you for the follows, favs, and reviews for last chapter! I really appreciate it :)
See you next chapter!