"You alright Harry?" Marissa smiled as Harry stepped out of the Gryffindor common room. He nodded with a smile as the two headed down to the Great Hall to join Draco for lunch. She'd made a habit of waiting outside his common room, escorting him from place to place like she was his bodyguard.

"So," Harry began as they sat at the Slytherin table, "are you planning on telling us what you're going to do with my amazing parseltongue skills?"

"That's the thing, you aren't that amazing," she said, her eyes focused on the table in front of her and not the words coming out of her mouth. Her eyes shot up as Draco nearly spat out his drink. "Oh, wait no, I didn't mean it like that," she corrected herself.

"Yeah," Harry rolled his eyes, "I can totally hear the truth in that."

"No, what I meant is, you've never actually trained your parseltongue, have you?"

"Trained it?"

"Exactly. It's still a magical skill, otherwise, you could probably find muggles who can speak to reptiles."

"Reptiles?" Draco joined in, "I thought it was just snakes."

"Not just snakes. The books are kind of vague about it. At first, it looked like reptiles only, but then it seemed to include amphibians and then literally anything that could remotely seem like a scaly creature."

"Such as?"

"Snakes, obviously, and turtles, lizards, toads, frogs, crocodiles and..." She continued to list off creatures, magical and otherwise as Harry and Draco continued to make their way through their breakfast only half listening.

"... and most importantly, dragons," Harry and Draco's heads shot up.

"He's able to talk to dragons?"

"Yes. So supposedly those animals can all communicate with each other on a basic level, sort of like when you've learnt a new language on a basic level, you can speak it, locals can understand you but it is kind of broken. There is an issue though."

"Which is?" Harry asked, though his nerves far outweighed it, there was a certain excitement to being able to use his parseltongue with a dragon. Then it set in; he realised, one mistake could easily offend the beast and end with the dragon keepers peeling burnt ashy pieces of Harry off the stands.

"You need to have parseltongue mastered to be able to talk to any of the creatures and that takes years of practice. A couple of weeks isn't long enough to master it."

"Well, we can still use this," Draco started, "first of all, you need to begin practising parseltongue more because talking to animals is a skill you should 100% perfect, what idiot would actually choose to keep that at a base level?" Draco said, unintentionally insulting Harry. Or maybe it was intentional, Harry couldn't completely tell with Malfoy anymore. At the very least, the snake had a point, it probably was a good skill to hone. Some Slytherin ambition would do him good.

"Also, we can still attempt something. You mentioned toads, right?" At Marissa's nod, Draco continued, "Then Harry needs to go and talk to Neville."

Neville was sat with Seamus, Dean and Ron in the Gryffindor common room and Harry was honestly nervous about going over to talk to him. Neville had continued extending the hand of friendship to Harry, and Harry had gladly taken it. It was Ron that was the problem. Ron had been Harry's first and best friend, he wasn't really angry with Ron and would be willing to hang out with him again the second he apologised, but right now, he was still pretty angry at Ron's lack of trust in him. Harry headed over to the table and asked Neville if he could come up to the dorm with him, ignoring the glares of the redheaded boy.

Once they were upstairs Harry broke down his plan for Neville who was more than happy to help out as long as he was there to make sure that Trevor didn't get hurt or lost. After a quick thanks and a walk downstairs, the boys were now in the Room of Requirement with Marissa and Draco, the room rather small, with a few chairs, and a table. Neville kept himself close by Harry, or as far from Malfoy as possible. Yes, the torment had been less this year, maybe it was because misbehaviour in front of the foreign students would result in harsher consequences, maybe it was because he was more distracted by the tournament; everyone had noticed that Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy were working together now along with the Slytherin girl, or maybe it was just because Draco had decided to leave him alone for now, whatever the reason, Neville was just happy to be left alone but that didn't mean that he was going to suddenly become friendly and comfortable for him. He was just here to support Harry.

"Right," Marissa began, "Just talk to the frog like you would to a snake."

A small correction of "He's a toad actually," was heard from Neville before complete silence as Harry began focusing on the toad.

After a few moments, he turned to them with a sigh, "I can't do it."

"You didn't even say anything!" Draco exclaimed, mildly frustrated.

"Yeah I know but, I could just tell I guess, it wouldn't work," he picked up Trevor and handed him over to Neville, "Thanks anyway mate."

"It's alright, I hope you figure out what you need for the tournament," Neville said before turning around and leaving the room.

The three remaining students flopped themselves onto the seats in frustration.

"I guess it was worth a shot," Harry said with a small smile.

"Was it?" Marissa said, "I mean, think about it properly, it's not like we actually knew whether speaking to a toad would mean being able to speak to a damn dragon, and it's not like you could bring Trevor in with you."

"Isn't it?" Draco suddenly shot up.

"What?"

"Well, is there a rule against bringing in anything other than your wand and the robes on your back?"

"Not that I'm aware of," Marissa said, now sat up and staring at Draco, "Why?"

"Serpensortia," Draco murmured.

"That's brilliant," Harry said suddenly catching on.

"No, wait, what? You've lost me. What are you doing?" Marissa looked between the two boys, somewhat frustrated at falling behind their trains of thought.

"If I'm thinking the same thing as him," Harry began with a smile, "I could summon a snake and get it to talk to the dragon, either as a distraction or bait, then I could attack the dragon with the Conjunctivitis Curse."

"Right, boys," Marissa said, looking at both of them incredulously, "in what way, is that entertainment. All that we would see is you shooting a small snake out of your wand, or bring one in or whatever, then talk to it, then it hisses, then you shoot the curse at it. Why not just shoot the curse at it?"

"Because," Draco began, "He's going to engorge the snake."

"What?" the other two immediately replied.

"Two problems with Harry's description. I remember what happened in Second Year, the snake did not listen to you if you were seriously telling it to leaven Fletchley alone. You need to summon that snake now and develop a relationship with it."

"Then abandon it in the middle of a stadium and destroy the bond we make over the next couple of weeks?" Harry said, looking slightly confused.

"God you're sentimental. No, because you need to engorge it. Who says the dragon would be able to hear you or the snake over a screaming audience of over 1000 students? So, you speak to the snake, engorge it, it does its job, the audience is fascinated by this incredible beast of a snake, you do what you need to and there, you win." In the silence that followed, "And then yes, if you must, you can shrink it down and keep it as a pet, you absolute weirdo," Draco rolled his eyes.

"Guys, this is insane. We've literally just decided that the best way to make it as entertaining as possible is to scare people even further by placing a dragon-sized snake in front of their faces and oh my god it might actually be stupid enough to work," Marissa suddenly realised.

"Yeah I guess so," Harry agreed, "people like theme-parks and horror, I suppose we like being scared." They laughed a little and Harry asked, "So when do we start?"

"Now obviously," Draco responded, matter-of-factly, "You need to develop this bond with the snake as soon as possible. So summon it."

"I have to do it?" Harry couldn't deny his nerves. It felt like the first task would start now. Though, he supposed, it started as soon as his name came out of that Goblet.

"Yeah, it might listen to you more or something," Draco said, a hint of uncertainty in his voice.

"Right, yeah, sure," Harry began muttering, working himself up. He already felt like he was in the ring with the beast he was soon to face, this would be the foundation for his task and if he messed up here, he'd mess up the entire competition.

"Serpentsortia!"

Harry was now preparing for bed. A foot-long grey ring-necked snake was wrapped around one of his bedposts. Her scales were a light grey, almost silver in the light, and band of yellow was wrapped at the base of her head. Though scary, she looked somewhat pretty. Harry was unsure if she was sleeping, her eyes were open and unmoving but she wasn't making a sound. Mary had named her Cleo and the snake had accepted the name. It had only been a few hours but Cleo had already selected her place wrapped on Harry's arm and seemed to trust him. Not many people had noticed her yet other than a few Slytherins at dinner who had noticed Harry feeding her. The two of them could easily communicate and Cleo seemed happy enough. Harry had made sure to visit Hedwig, to feed her and introduce her to Cleo. Hedwig hadn't exactly reacted badly, but she had certainly seemed slightly off-put by the snake.

Harry was about to remove his glasses and head sleep for the night when he suddenly noticed Ron walking over to his bed.

"Hey, Harry," Ron said, clearly uncomfortable and nervous.

"Yes."

"Neville let us know about the tournament. I didn't realise how dangerous it is. Course you didn't put your name in. I'm sorry, mate -"

"Forget it, Ron," Harry said with a smile.

"Seriously, Harry -"

"Yeah, I know, forget it."

Ron was about to ask something before squealing as Cleo adjusted herself on the post. "What the bloody hell is that?"

"Yeah, she's my plan for the first task," Harry said scratching his head, "It was Draco's idea."

"Right," Ron said, stepping back, "So you and Malfoy are good then?"

"Yeah, he's not all bad, I guess," Harry scratched the base of his neck. Why did this conversation feel so uncomfortable? "We're not friends but we aren't, you know,"

"At each other's throats?"

"Yeah, yeah I guess that's it."

"Sit with us, tomorrow at breakfast, Hermione missed having you at the table," Ron said, avoiding eye-contact.

"Yeah, maybe. I'll speak to the others tomorrow."

With that, it was like nothing had happened between the two of them, and Harry headed to bed with a grin on his face.

I hope you guys are enjoying the story so far, so feel free to comment on how you're feeling about the story so far! Thanks for reading!