Brownie had always been a free spirit; her days were spent doing whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted. Since befriending Harry Potter, her days had become much more interesting. She never used to understand human speech, but she was now at the point that if she had the ability to do anything but hiss, she could hold a conversation in English. Other human languages were still beyond her, but she would like to understand more someday.

Though her beautiful colouring helped her camouflage herself on her woodland adventures, practising stealth with Harry had somehow allowed her to slip by unseen in situations where her scales would previously have stood out starkly. Harry insisted that he had not told the neighbours to ignore her when she slithered across their driveways, but it sure seemed that way sometimes.

Brownie's most recent adventure took place on a slightly wet Saturday. The neighbours didn't much like going out when everything was wet and grey, so Brownie didn't often get any excitement outdoors on these days. On this particular day, she decided to visit Mr Jones at Number Nine. She had seen his cool science laboratory in the attic before, and her friend Petunia seemed rather interested in that. Brownie was confused by that at first because Petunia did not seem like a person who liked science, but if Mr Jones was a mad scientist, that would certainly be interesting. The mad people on EastEnders were always the most interesting.

She made her way to Number Nine, and instead of slithering right the way up the drainpipe, went through the little metal snake flap in the front door. Harry had said that the snake flaps were actually called letter slots, but had agreed that the soft bristles inside were obviously made to clean your scales when you go indoors.

Brownie had previously made sure that Mr Jones didn't have any pets, so she didn't have to worry about getting bothered by strange creatures. She didn't like visiting Mrs Figg, because Mrs Figg had strange cats that always knew when she was near, even if she was just peeking into the window from a tree. Harry helped test how far their senses reach once, and even when looking through a pair of binoculars while standing at the end of the street, the strange cats knew when Brownie was looking at them. Harry thought this was weird but didn't know enough about cats to know whether it was very weird or just regular weird. At any rate, Harry wasn't that interested in cats and thought Mrs Figg was boring, so Brownie didn't see the need to visit her.

Mr Jones' house smelled funny, which was something Brownie had noticed in the attic on her last visit. This visit, Mr Jones was asleep in front of the telly, which was playing the nap program. Vernon always watched the nap program on Saturdays as well. Harry said it was actually called golf, but had granted that since it made Vernon nap, it was a nap program.

Brownie slithered into the kitchen but decided not to spend too long there, as Mr Jones had a very messy kitchen. She avoided all the spills and sticky things, climbed onto the countertop, and found some of the metal circles that Harry liked, so she swallowed them. There was nothing very interesting in the kitchen, so she slithered off the counter and made her way to the stairs.

Upstairs, the smell was much stronger. In the bedroom, Brownie swallowed some more of the metal circles that were under the bed. Harry kept important things on the windowsill, but Mr Jones did not have anything on the windowsill. Mr Jones seemed to keep his important things on his bedside table, but they were too big to swallow, and she didn't know what Harry would want a gun for anyway. She saw guns on telly sometime, but they were very loud and not very good for stealth.

The indoors way to the attic was a ladder that dropped from the ceiling. Luckily, Mr Jones had left the ladder down, so it was easy to get up there. All the cool science things were still there, and it smelled very bad in the attic. There were desks with all sorts of different things on them. Some desks had glasses and pipes and funny containers on them, while others had bags of things, and another had stacks of the colourful paper that Petunia and Vernon liked. Swallowing paper was not a good idea, she had found out before, because it got wet and was difficult to bring back up.

Brownie climbed the desk with the bags of things, and saw that some had powders, but some had nice rocks. Harry collected nice rocks, so Brownie swallowed one of the bags. It had a bit of powder on the outside which tasted very bad, so she only swallowed the one bag. She saw a measuring scale like Petunia had in the kitchen, so she pressed the button and weighed herself. Brownie then realised she didn't know numbers and made note to ask Harry to teach her.

She stretched across the gap between desks and ended up on one with pipes and glasses. Some of them looked bendy like a snake. She liked those pipes, so she posed herself to match their shapes. After a few different poses, she slithered to the next desk. This one had stacks of the colourful paper. One of the stacks was inside a plastic bag, so Brownie thought about swallowing it. She had already swallowed the circles and the bag with the rock, so decided against the paper. She accidentally slid through a bit more of the awful smelling powder, then decided there was nothing else of interest in the attic.

The attic window was open just a tad, so she squeezed through and plopped onto the roof. By that point, it had been a few minutes since she swallowed the bag with the rock, and she was starting to a feel a bit funny. Brownie made her way back to Harry's house, keeping her eye out for cats and birds. She felt like she had just been on a good hunt, but also like something was hunting her.

When Brownie got to Harry's room, she immediately regurgitated the circles and bag, and began telling Harry about her adventure. She started to feel better after a few minutes and thought it must have been the smelly powder that made her feel funny. She told Harry not to open the bag, so Harry put it on his windowsill, unopened. It still looked cool.

Brownie asked Harry to teach her numbers, so he brought out his schoolbooks and showed her what the numbers meant. She had forgotten what she weighed, so Harry brought her downstairs and put her in the kitchen measuring scale. She looked at the numbers and saw that she weighed 210 grams. She didn't understand that, so Harry explained grams and kilograms. He said that his British wildlife book said she would grow to an average weight of 240 grams.

Brownie made Harry weigh all sorts of things, and learned that she was heavier than an apple, an egg, letters, and the little metal circles, but was not as heavy as a dinner plate. She asked why Harry liked those little metal circles, and he explained that the circles were pound coins, that the colourful papers she saw were pound notes, and that humans use them to buy things. The concept of money and buying things was funny to Brownie, but when Harry explained that he could buy things for her from the reptile store, she decided she would bring back a bag of paper money next time.

On Saturday afternoons, Petunia made herself a cup of tea and made a cup of plain warm water that she placed on the windowsill for Brownie to curl around. They then watched soaps that Petunia had recorded on the VCR, and Harry helped them talk about it afterwards. Harry was not very interested in soaps, but he liked that Petunia and Brownie were friends, so he suffered through it for them. By now, Harry had become very well versed in the plots of EastEnders and Coronation Street.

Brownie sometimes chatted with Bob, but he was spending more and more time wrapped around Harry's neck or wrist and was only outdoors when Harry was. Brownie loved Harry but did not want to spend so much time indoors.

Charybdis was an indoor snake now, so Brownie did not speak with her much. She did admire how fast Charybdis was growing and the way her scales now shimmered. She thought Harry must have been doing something to help out. Perhaps something that he could buy her from the reptile store…

Vernon tended to ignore Brownie, which she was quite alright with, because they had nothing in common, and he was a bit loud sometimes.

Dudley didn't seem to pay much attention to her either, but sometimes he would ask her to get his nerf bullets down if he got them stuck in a tree. Dudley knew that Brownie understood what he was saying, even if she could not speak back, but he always made sure to duck behind a bush or tree before asking her something. Brownie enjoyed the challenge, and happily got his nerf bullets down.

She thought about it and realised that Dudley would probably like a real gun.