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Chapter Fourteen

"And Potter…"

Harry grimaced as he entered the common room and heard that little snippet of conversation. Malfoy was whispering with Graham Montague, one of the older Slytherins on the Quidditch team, who wielded a lot of power over other Slytherins' opinions. And they were both glaring at him.

Harry decided that he would ignore it as long as he could. Malfoy was stupid enough to have let some of the lessons he'd learned last year fade. But Harry would still catch unpleasant attention if he attacked first.

Including from Snape. The man had given Harry the ring but still regularly glared at him in Potions, assigned him detentions for things like working with Ron too much, and questioned his intelligence.

Harry didn't understand much that Snape did, honestly.

Busy thinking about his Head of House, Harry didn't respond fast enough when Malfoy stood up in front of him. But Malfoy didn't aim directly at him. He pointed his wand at the floor in front of Harry's feet and yelled, "Serpensortia!"

Harry dodged, his hand already snatching out his wand. So many Slytherins were leaning forwards that it seemed like a lot of them had known about Malfoy's little plot. Harry grimaced and focused on the floor.

A black snake had appeared there, almost a meter long, tongue darting out. It looked at Harry and hissed threateningly.

"Someone has brought me here! Someone will die for this!"

Harry frowned. He could understand conjuring a venomous snake to scare your opponent, maybe, but what was the point of conjuring a magical talking snake that could be reasoned with? It would be easy to turn it to your side. "I didn't conjure you," he told the snake. "I can turn you in the direction of the one who did, though."

The snake focused on him in a different way, tongue darting so fast that it reminded Harry of someone blinking their eyes. "You speak!"

"Yeah." Maybe Malfoy had used this spell because people didn't try to reason with the snake. Harry had already seen how stupid some magical humans were with that, given how they responded to house-elves. "Like you. Do you want me to show you the one who brought you here?"

"Show it to me, Speaker."

People really are stupid if they don't try to talk to the snakes they conjured themselves, even if it's just to command them to attack.

Harry looked up, and found the audience who had been watching before still watching. But now they seemed frozen. Maybe Malfoy had conjured the snake as a test of whether Harry could handle it like a "real" Slytherin—that seemed likely—and Harry had failed by not acting like a berk.

Harry rolled his eyes and turned to look at Malfoy. "The pale one with the wand in his hand."

The snake turned around with a hungry hiss and began slithering towards Malfoy. Malfoy promptly yelped and scrambled backwards, then conjured a wavering shield. It broke in front of the snake's poking snout.

Harry smiled.

"Potter! Potter, call it off!"

"Why don't you just talk to it and do that yourself, Malfoy? You were the one who conjured it."

The attention sharpened. Harry shook his head. He didn't think he would ever understand the Slytherins, either. But as Ron had said, he was sort of a fake Slytherin.

"I can't speak to it like you do, Potter!"

"It's called opening your mouth and treating the snake like it's intelligent, Malfoy."

"It's called Parseltongue," Montague said abruptly. Harry glanced at him. Montague's face was a pale grey, and his hands were shaking. He avoided Harry's eyes to stare at the floor. "The language of serpents. No one can speak it except the descendants of Salazar Slytherin's line. The Heirs of Slytherin." He tried to say something, and ended up shaking his head and backing away a little from Harry.

What?

Harry stared at the snake. If he was speaking some secret magical language, that made sense of why the snake was impressed and why everyone else was treating him like he had taken a shit in the middle of the common room.

But he still didn't think it was all that special. Not if a half-blood orphan who had grown up in the Muggle world could do it.

"Call the snake off, Potter!"

Malfoy's voice was rising, and Harry realized abruptly that the snake was wriggling enthusiastically after his roommate. Harry sighed and raised his voice a little, so that even if the others couldn't understand Parseltongue, they would hopefully be able to tell something was different. "Could you please not attack him?"

The snake paused, then swung its head back towards him. The tongue was darting out rapidly to test the air again. "Why not? He is the one who brought me here. You said so, and I would smell deception."

Harry briefly wished he was a snake. It would be useful to smell lies. "Because if you bite him, then people will blame me, and I don't want to be blamed."

The snake considered that, then gave a discontented hiss that didn't seem to have any words in it and moved back towards Harry. Harry picked it up, and ignored the gasps around him. Honestly, people were just going to have to get over finding him so interesting.

"Will you give me something to eat?"

"I don't know what you eat."

"I want rats. There are fat rats nearby. I can smell them."

Harry blinked. He didn't know who would have rats in the Slytherin common room, given that most people had owls or cats, but then again, maybe one of the upper-years was keeping them for Transfiguration homework. He raised his voice and turned away from the snake to make sure that he was speaking in English. "He's hungry. He wants a rat. He says he can smell one."

Montague nodded frantically at someone standing behind Harry. Harry didn't turn around. He thought it might make him look weak, at this point.

A sixth-year whose last name Harry thought was Jugson came hurrying up a minute later with a hand extended and a ghastly pale face. The rat in his hand was immobilized, apparently, but still alive; Harry could see its whiskers trembling. Harry took the rat, wondered if he should thank the boy, and then decided, as Jugson all but tripped over himself backing away, that it might make things worse.

"Here."

The snake lunged without moving from its position coiled half around Harry's right arm and half around his right shoulder. Harry jumped; he had never imagined something could be that fast. The rat thrashed and squeaked as it died, and the snake haughtily directed Harry to put the rodent in the right position so the snake could swallow it.

Harry kept his eyes on the other Slytherins instead of watching how the snake got the rat down its throat. They were staring at him with what seemed to be sick fascination, although some of that might have been more focused on the snake.

There were three exceptions, though. At least three that Harry could see without turning around. The first was Malfoy, who was pale and shaking with fear.

And the others were Blaise and Theo, who stared at Harry with betrayal.

They thought I didn't have secrets. And here was this one.

But Harry looked back without more than slight boredom in his expression, and if Blaise and Theo followed him when he went up to the second-year boys' dormitory, that was their choice.

And so was the common room exploding into furious buzzing behind them.

"You didn't tell us you were a Parselmouth."

Theo seemed to have found something he wanted to have a conversation about. His arms were folded and his brow furrowed. Harry just shrugged at him as he sat down on his bed, ignoring the snake's irritated hiss.

It was kind of strange that the snake was still here. Harry had thought conjured things disappeared shortly after being conjured, but maybe not.

"I didn't know."

"How could you not know?" Blaise interrupted whatever Theo was going to say, and ignored the way that Theo was glaring at him, kind of the way that Harry was. Blaise waved a hand through the air and then collapsed on his bed, burying his face in his pillow for a moment. "Do you think every magical person could talk to snakes?"

"Why not?"

"Why not—"

"I grew up with Muggles," Harry interrupted to remind them. "And I only remember talking to one snake before. Even then, it didn't really talk back to me the way this one did. I thought that I'd partially imagined it." He sighed and touched the snake's back. It had coiled around his arm and gone to sleep. "So, no. I didn't know."

"You weren't deliberately keeping it from us?"

"I wasn't deliberately keeping it from you."

"People are going to ask us if we knew, and we'll look stupid if we say that we didn't."

"I'm pretty sure that the way you looked in the common room already showed you didn't. You should have practiced the cool, distant expressions if you wanted to pretend that."

Theo and Blaise gave each other another silent conversation through their eyes. Harry leaned back on his pillow and stared at the snake. He had no idea what kind it was, or if it was male or female.

Then again, that wasn't really his problem. The snake would probably either disappear soon if it was just made of pure magic, or Harry could set it free in the Forbidden Forest some time after it woke up.

"Do you know why Malfoy cast that spell at you in particular?" Blaise asked, and now his voice was heavy.

Harry turned his attention back to them. "I assume because he thinks the same thing Ron does. He just doesn't think it's a compliment."

"What?"

"Ron thinks I'm a fake Slytherin, because I don't really belong here."

Theo and Blaise stared hard at him. It felt like they were trying to have the silent conversation with him this time, but Harry really didn't speak that language. He snorted. "I thought Malfoy cast the spell to show that I would fail to handle a snake, which a real Slytherin ought to know how to do. Is that wrong?"

"No, it's right." Theo's voice was low and subdued. "I had no idea that you felt you didn't belong here."

"It's like some people tell me that every chance they get, and I end up believing them."

"You belong here more than a little shit like Malfoy does," Blaise said, and Harry blinked, trying to remember if he'd ever heard Blaise swear. "Parseltongue? Of course you do. I can't believe that you didn't know, but Malfoy didn't know, either. And now he looks extremely stupid for having come up with this particular challenge."

"So he'll try another one," Harry muttered. "Ugh."

"You really think he will?"

"Of course. He didn't learn last year, why would he learn this time?"

"You're a Parselmouth. The most well-known Parselmouth was Salazar Slytherin, but the last one was—the Dark Lord."

Harry grimaced and barely managed not to reach up and touch his scar. The last thing he wanted was another connection to that stupid bastard. "Okay. Fine. So you think Malfoy will be scared of me?"

"You're lounging there with a venomous snake wrapped around you and no sign of being afraid yourself," Theo said. "Of course he will."

"But I'm only not frightened because I can talk to it."

"It doesn't matter. Of course Malfoy will be frightened of your pet snake."

Harry rolled his eyes. "It's not my pet snake. If it's made of magic from the spell, I reckon it'll vanish in a few hours. Or days, maybe. And if it's real and Malfoy pulled it from somewhere, I'll set it free in the Forest."

"You won't keep it?"

"No. I'd get in trouble."

Theo and Blaise exchanged another glance.

Harry shook his head and reached over to put the snake on the pillow. Well, he tried. It tightened around his arm without waking up and shifted so that its triangular head rested on his shoulder.

"I think you might not be getting rid of it, mate."

It was still strange to hear Blaise calling him mate. Harry shrugged, ignoring the way that the snake's weight pulled on his shoulder. "Well, I'll have to. Maybe there are some Slytherins who get exceptions to the pet rule made for them, but Snape hates me enough that I won't be one of them."

Another shared glance. Harry was starting to reconsider whether he wanted someone to have silent conversations with after all. They could be bloody annoying.

The snake did not vanish in a few hours. It also didn't want to be released into the Forbidden Forest, even though Harry told it that the Forest was probably crawling with rats and mice and other delicious things to eat.

"Forests are cold. I will stay with the warm you."

"I can't keep you as a pet."

"What is a pet?"

Harry attempted to explain that, while Theo and Blaise sat on their beds and watched in obvious fascination. Crabbe and Goyle were lingering at lunch, their usual practice on a weekend, and Malfoy had left the dormitory the minute Harry started speaking Parseltongue. Harry still hadn't figured out why Malfoy seemed to have more of a problem with it than anyone, when he was the one who had cast the spell in the first place.

"I do not like the idea of being kept in a small place and touched whenever you want to touch me," the snake said.

"Good, then I'll take you to the Forest when—"

"I shall stay with you, but not in a small place, and you shall only touch me when I touch you. Then I am not a pet."

Harry closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead. The snake's "logic" wasn't making his head hurt as much as the garlic in Quirrell's classroom, or maybe the presence of the Dark Lord, had last year, but it was close. "No. You can't stay with me."

"Why not?"

"Because other people—humans—would get upset and afraid of you. They would think you were going to bite them."

"I would not bite them unless they attempted to harm me."

"But they would try, because they would be afraid."

"They should not."

"I think you have a pet snake, Harry," Theo said, with a sound in his voice that made Harry glare at him suspiciously. Only when he saw the way Theo's eyes were shining and his hand over his mouth did Harry realize it was suppressed laughter.

He didn't think he had ever heard Theo really laugh before.

Harry had lost track of his place in the argument with the snake, which made it announce in satisfaction, "I shall stay with you, and I will hide when I must, and I will bite when I must, and you will keep me warm, and you will feed me rats. You shall be my pet human."

"I can't keep you secret all the time, though!"

"You told me what a spell is. Cast them to hide me."

Harry paused. He had to admit that some of the illusion spells and the like that he'd been studying probably would work to do that. And he—

Well, he wouldn't have a secret friend, exactly, since all of Slytherin knew about the snake, and it might not last very long, since he thought someone would probably tell Snape or another professor soon. But he would have a friend who was just for him and he could have a variant of silent conversations with.

"I don't know if I can get rats all the time."

"You will find them."

Harry sighed. It was true that he could probably buy them from people, or go out on the grounds and catch them, or maybe even ask Hedwig to catch some extra. "You need a name."

"What is a name?"

"It means that I speak to you, and I'm talking to you, instead of someone else."

"I am the only snake here. Who else would you be talking to?"

"Well, there are snakes on the walls and the chairs and the like, because Slytherin's House emblem is a snake…"

"But they will not answer you. I will. I am the only snake who matters."

Harry sighed and lowered his head into his hands. Theo was laughing softly as he watched him, and Blaise shook his head before he picked up a book and apparently lost himself in it.

I suppose Theo is right, and I have a pet snake.