The victory party in the common room after the game was a very eventful one for Harry. After being congratulated repeatedly by what seemed like every Slytherin at Hogwarts, Harry went to relax by the fire and drank some Butterbeer. Pansy found him immediately and sat with him, complimenting his flying and generally putting him in a very good mood.
He should have known something was going on at that point. Pansy never gushed at him over Quidditch. She had tried to push him off a tower first year when she found out he'd joined.
Blaise appeared suddenly at his right, dragging a sullen Draco along with him. Harry's good mood evaporated, and he greeted them.
"Hi Blaise…Malfoy."
"Harry, we are ending this now." When he wanted to, Blaise could be more stubborn than Harry, which was the only thing that stopped Harry protesting that there was nothing to end. "Draco, tell him what you told me."
Draco looked at a spot behind Harry's head and was silent. Blaise growled and sneered at him.
"Tell him, or I will."
Harry was surprised at Blaise's vehemence, and maybe Draco was too, because he finally started talking.
"Remember how my father made Vince and Greg follow us around all the time?" he asked. Harry nodded, wondering where Draco was going with this. Draco started to clam up again, but Blaise glared venomously at him and he continued. "He also told me, after he met you, that I should…explain a few things to you."
Harry stared at him.
"He said that since you were a Slytherin, you had it half right, but I had already told him you were friends with Hermione, who he knew is a muggleborn, so he told me I needed to make you see that she's…the wrong sort…"
Harry glared and opened his mouth, but Draco cut him off hurriedly, meeting his eyes now.
"I don't think she's the wrong sort at all, Harry! I don't really have a problem with muggleborns, especially not after knowing her, and I never had a problem with you. But my father wanted me to make you think that you should, have a problem with her, I mean, and I just didn't want to…"
Draco trailed off, but Harry thought he had an idea of what he meant. He had seen at Diagon Alley that Draco looked up to his father, and he'd seen with Vince and Greg that Draco didn't want to go against his father's wishes and disappoint him. But still.
"If you were just supposed to convince me, why were you talking to the other Slytherins like that?" Harry challenged him. "I wasn't even around. You certainly wouldn't have convinced me by talking like that, anyway."
Draco looked uncomfortable. "I had given up on you by that point. I never really thought I could convince you in the first place. The people I was talking to are connected with people who would let it get back to Father that I was speaking against…muggleborns and things like that, and he'd think I was doing what he'd told me."
Harry considered this. It was actually a decent idea. Harry had spoiled it by overhearing, true, but it was still a good idea.
"But you won't say that sort of thing anymore, will you?" Harry asked. "Your father is going to have to find out you don't agree with him eventually, Draco."
Draco winced. "I know, and I won't. I promise. I mean it this time, too."
Draco waited for Harry to say something. Blaise glared at Harry when he didn't respond, but Harry ignored him. He thought he might have heard…
"…So hungry, for so long…"
"Harry, he apologised! Don't be a -"
"Shut up, Blaise!" Harry said, standing. "Do you hear that?" Harry had just heard the voice again, very faintly. It was travelling upward.
Blaise looked worried. "Is it the voice again?"
Draco and Pansy looked alarmed and confused.
"What voice?" Draco asked, only to be hushed immediately by Harry.
"It said it's hungry." He stepped closer to the wall, which was the direction he'd heard it from, but it was gone.
"What's hungry?" Pansy asked, confused.
"Last time Harry heard the voice was when Mrs. Norris was petrified," Blaise informed Draco and Pansy, who both looked very alarmed.
"I didn't hear anything," Draco said uncertainly.
Harry pressed his ear to the wall, trying to block out the noise of the party going on behind him.
"I've never heard it either," Blaise said. Harry was struck with a sudden idea, and looked up at the portrait.
"Did you hear that voice?" he asked it. Pansy gasped behind him, and Draco gave a shout. Harry had time to reflect that Blaise hadn't told Pansy either, when he'd only meant to keep Draco in the dark about his parseltongue abilities.
"I did," the snake responded, flicking it's tail.
"It was a snake, then?" Harry hissed excitedly. A crowd was starting to gather, having been attracted by Draco's shout, and it was beginning to circulate that Harry was talking to the portrait.
"It was," the snake agreed.
"Do you know where it is?"
"In the pipes," the snake informed him casually. "I wouldn't go looking for him, though. He isn't one for conversation. He's hunting at the moment, and you look would look quite tasty to him."
The colour drained from Harry's face. There was a man-eating snake on the loose in the school.
"How big is he? Do you know where he's headed?"
"From his voice, he sounds about as long as the room you are in." Harry paled even further. The room was quite long, thirty feet at least. "He's headed up. I don't know where exactly. He just says he wants to rip and kill. He must be very hungry."
"Thank you," Harry said weakly. He walked over to a chair and sank into it slowly. All of the Slytherins had crowded around them now, discussing Harry's conversation excitedly.
"Harry?" Blaise asked in concern. "What did he say?"
Everyone hushed, wanting to hear what a conversation with a snake sounded like.
"He said the voice is a man-eating snake as big as this room," Harry repeated helplessly. "He says it's hunting, and that it's in the pipes right now."
The uproar was tremendous.
Sure enough, the next day found Oliver Wood petrified.
The story going around school was that he'd been found in the Trophy Room. His team mates claimed they'd left him in the Quidditch locker rooms, depressed over their loss. He must have gone up to the Trophy Room to look at the Cup that they wouldn't be winning this year and been attacked there.
Everyone was panicking, especially the Slytherins. It was one thing, the Heir of Slytherin attacking a cat, but it was quite another to find that a giant snake was hunting in the school. A hungry snake was not going to differentiate between muggleborn and pureblood. Oliver Wood was halfblood, which was a case in point. Everyone had been expecting only muggleborns to be attacked.
It didn't take long before the giant snake rumour spread through the school, along with Harry's affinity for snakes. Suspicion immediately settled on him like a dust cloud, which wasn't fair, because as Draco said, he was the one who'd told everyone about the snake. If it had been Harry's doing, he could have kept it quiet.
Most Slytherins did take this view, along with Harry's Gryffindor friends, and even Filch (who told him comfortingly one day over tea that he knew how Harry had liked playing with Mrs. Norris and didn't suspect him at all, and how the real culprit would be caught and Filch would hang him from the ceiling by his toenails), but the rest of the school was much less understanding of a Slytherin Parselmouth, and now Harry was being avoided in the corridors and Hufflepuffs were staring uneasily at him and declaring their purebloodedness loudly in his presence. It was all very annoying. Harry was surprised the teachers hadn't called him in to talk to him yet, but as Blaise said, they probably just considered it all nasty rumours.
"So, Harry, I think we should go somewhere else."
Harry raised an eyebrow. Anthony, willingly leaving the library?
"Don't give me that look," he said, packing his things up into his bag. "I want to give you your Christmas present before I leave for the holiday."
It was less than a week before the winter holidays. Anthony stood and beckoned him to follow, and Harry did, shrugging. They went into an empty classroom and Harry closed the door behind them as Anthony rummaged around in his bag and set a box on the teacher's desk.
"Happy Christmas," he said, watching Harry as he lifted the lid. Harry stared at the contents of the box for a moment, then at Anthony.
"It's a snake," he said in confusion. Anthony nodded and lifted it out of the box. It was a snake, and it looked as though Anthony had found it in one of the greenhouses. "Thanks," Harry said uncertainly.
"You can use it to teach me Parseltongue," Anthony explained, holding the snake out for Harry to take. "Blaise Zabini told me you have to look at a snake in order to speak it, which won't do us any good at all if you're to teach me without one."
"I'm going to teach you Parseltongue?" Harry asked, amused. Now that he understood why Anthony had gotten him the snake, he wasn't so bewildered. He had no problem with teaching Anthony Parseltongue. He was surprised that he knew something that Anthony wanted to know and didn't, actually.
"Of course," Anthony said, giving him a winsome smile. Harry grinned at the obvious attempt to sway him. Anthony was no Slytherin.
"Alright, sure," Harry agreed easily. "How are we going to go about doing this?"
"I've learned magical languages before," Anthony said thoughtfully. "But this one is so rare. All the languages are different, each has it's own way of learning. I suppose we'll find out. But I thought we could start with my mimicking you, and you could tell me if I got it right."
Harry let the snake glide around his fingers and thought about this. It made as much sense as any other way. "When do we start?" he asked. Anthony smiled again and stepped over to the door.
"Now is as good a time as any," Anthony informed him, holding the door open for him and following him out. "And if I know how this method works out, over the holidays, I could see about coming up with all the details, like books and conjugations and -"
"Books?" Harry interrupted. "Conjugations?"
"Of course, Harry," Anthony said, glancing at him as though questioning his intelligence. "Most languages have books written, if not about them, then in that language. And just about all languages have conjugations."
"I just speak it," Harry said uncertainly. "I certainly don't know about anything about conjugations or writing it."
Anthony paused. "I suppose there might not be any books, come to think of it. It is a rare language. But don't worry about the conjugations. I'll show you how to teach me. Say 'to speak'."
"To speak," Harry hissed. Anthony listened closely and when Harry was finished, attempted to imitate it.
"Close," Harry laughed. Anthony nodded, satisfied.
"Now, to conjugate," Anthony explained, "You'll tell me how to say 'I speak', 'he speaks', 'she speaks', 'they speak', 'we speak', and so on. There will probably be a pattern. Do you understand?"
Harry nodded.
"Good. Say 'to speak' again."
"To speak,"
"To speak," Anthony imitated. A passing Hufflepuff stared at them with wide eyes as they hissed at each other.
"Perfect," Harry congratulated him. The snake had perked it's head up from the very first hiss, and had been watching them curiously the whole time.
"What are you doing?"
"I'm teaching him parseltongue," Harry explained.
The snake regarded them with interest. Anthony was watching it in much the same way.
"To speak my language, he must learn to hiss properly," the snake lectured, and Anthony, who had caught only the first part, was delighted.
"It said 'to speak', didn't it?" he asked Harry, who nodded with a smile. "What else did it say?"
Harry repeated what the snake had said, and Anthony frowned. "How do I hiss properly?" he asked, more of the snake than Harry, but Harry answered anyway.
"It's like you have a human accent," Harry explained. "It's understandable, but you have to really let the hiss last. I think you need to…" he paused, trying to figure out what was different with Anthony's hiss. "Try to let your tongue flicker, if you can. And your mouth shouldn't be too dry."
"What are you telling him?" the snake asked him.
"I'm explaining how to hiss," Harry told it. The snake looked satisfied and they watched Anthony try to perfect hissing some more.
"I would like to help you teach him," the snake informed Harry after a moment. "I can say the words and he can guess what they mean. We will give him a treat if he is correct."
Harry laughed, and told Anthony what the snake said.
Anthony nodded. "That's an idea. We could have him repeating the words I'm to learn, and you could explain to me what I'm doing wrong."
"Do you want the treat too?" Harry asked, and Anthony actually laughed.
"Tell him I'm not a domesticated animal," he instructed.
Harry relayed this fact along with Anthony's version of it's idea to the snake, who agreed and said, "Not yet, but we will train him."
And so began Anthony's study of Parseltongue.
The night before the last day of classes, Draco found a bulletin on the notice board about a Duelling Club.
"We might as well go," Blaise agreed, and since neither Harry nor Pansy had any argument, that night found them milling about the Great Hall with the rest of the interested students.
"Who do you think will be teaching us?" Pansy asked.
"As long as it's not Lockhart," Harry grumbled. Over the past few months, Lockhart had begun pulling Harry aside for 'talks'. The first of these talks involved actually scolding Harry for avoiding a photo-op with him in Diagon Alley, and they only got worse as time went on. Lockhart seemed convinced, with no help from Harry, that Harry was just as interested in being famous as he was. He had taken to dragging Harry through the halls with him, chattering inanely, and even took all of Harry's detentions.
Harry responded to this by becoming a model student and hiding behind Crabbe and Goyle when he saw his professor approaching. Draco, at least, had been pleased that his bodyguards had come in handy. Unfortunately, Harry couldn't prevent association with Lockhart during classes, and had thus been forced into more re-enactments of Lockhart's adventures than he cared to remember. As a result, Harry had quickly lost any figment of tolerance he had ever had for Lockhart.
"Oh no," Blaise said suddenly. Harry refused to look at the stage in case he made eye contact.
"It is Lockhart, isn't it?" he asked unnecessarily.
"Snape's there too, if that makes you feel any better," Draco said consolingly. Harry didn't know that it did. Snape ignored him, for the most part, and Harry had no clue if he would have any help from his Head of House in this situation.
"I think we should stand over here," Harry said, leading them as far away from the stage as possible. Blaise, Pansy and Draco followed, but only because they were liable to get caught in the crossfire as well. They found Harry's Lockhart troubles amusing, most of the time.
"Gather round, gather round! Can everyone see me? Can you all hear me? Excellent!"
"I don't think we're going to learn very much about duelling," Blaise whispered. Harry agreed.
"I'm fine with just watching him in class," Pansy agreed. "If I'm going to be spending my own time on this, I want to actually get something out of it."
"..My assistant, Professor Snape. He tells me he knows a tiny little bit about duelling himself and has sportingly agreed to help me with a short demonstration before we begin."
Draco smirked. "Can we move a bit closer, Harry? This ought to be good."
Harry warred for a moment with his desire to stay as far as possible from Lockhart, and his desire to see Lockhart cursed into a babbling pile of goo. The way Snape's lip was curling decided it.
"Alright, we'll get a little bit closer. As long as he can't see us."
Lockhart explained the duelling technique, counted to three, and was promptly blasted off his feet and slammed into the wall.
Harry and the rest of the Slytherins cheered.
The next morning, Harry, Draco, Pansy and Blaise were still laughing over Lockhart's flight across the Great Hall. It had been the highlight of the entire night. The rest had mostly involved Harry dodging through the crowd as Lockhart tried rather obviously to find him after spotting him during the first catastrophic attempt at letting the students duel each other. Harry had become a house favourite after the Quidditch victory and subsequent revelation about his Parseltongue ability, and the other Slytherins had taken pleasure in hiding Harry and pointing Lockhart in the wrong direction.
Despite the amusement value, though, the four of them had decided not to participate in any more Duelling Club meetings. It was agreed that it had been rather pointless. The only thing any of them had learned was Expelliarmus, and that had been from Snape, who was apparently only there for the first night.
They had Charms first thing that day although, as Draco grumbled, if they'd had Herbology they could have had a free period, as the greenhouses had been snowed in. What happened halfway through class made up for it, however.
"ATTACK! ATTACK! ANOTHER ATTACK! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES! NO MORTAL OR GHOST IS SAFE! ATTAAAACK!"
A/N: Parseltongue is a learnable language! Just look at Ron in Deathly Hallows. Harry didn't say 'open' around him too many times, but he was able to pick it up and remember it well enough. And if Ron can do it…well, Anthony certainly can. And would certainly want to. And if he's learned other languages, he should be able to pick this up easily enough. I'll explain in further detail why this is not complete crap later on in the story. For now, calm down people, it's just fanfiction. :)