Apprenticeship - Snake Species
As it happens, all the snakes are real species! The snake facts are also mostly real, except for their sociability and trainability, which I have attributed to magic exposure.
When I was developing Apprenticeship, I did some reading about snakes and was extremely amused to discover that a) we think most snakes are mostly deaf, and b) snakes don't have the capacity for vocalisations other than hisses. They are, from the entire animal kingdom, one of the least suitable species groups for a magical language. Which led me to develop my pet theory that parseltongue isn't actually perceived by snakes through sound - it travels using magical vibrations, and human parselmouths find it easiest to perceive those as sounds.
As for out-takes....
At the end of chapter 5, there's this bit: "Sri Naganoor....said I’d be welcome back here as a student or an assistant to the teachers, suggested I take a few years to think about it, and said if I ever want to pursue a mastery with snakes (as opposed to one of the linked fields) then I needed to make this complicated potion first. It’s a really weird potion, and I can’t wait to see what Hermione says about it. It’s not dark, but it’s obviously powerful."
I probably won't ever write the story about this potion and the adventures it leads to, and of course I wasn't sensible enough to write down my ideas when I came up with them, but here's what I remember:
- The many instances in world mythology of giant snakes associated with water reflect the existence of an actual magical creature
- The reason why the Great Serpents aren't conclusively detectable is that one of their magical properties is to become intangible
- They are capable of magically manipulating their eggs so that what hatches is different to themselves - thus, they are the ancestors of dragons, and various other magical snake-like creatures
- They are very, very long-lived, and very, very magical, and very, very intelligent
- There is a secret parselmouth cult/religion thing devoted to...not exactly worshipping, but revering and honouring the Great Serpents
- The home of this group is on a particular magical island, the location of which isn't important because the potion mentioned above creates a portkey-like-thing that takes you there the first time you go
- There are a small number of priest-ish people who live on the island, but also parselmouths who are learning can come live there for a while. They can also nope out of the whole thing if they want to
- The potion mentioned above has components that require patience, respect, and communication with snakes - blood, venom, skin and shell freely given from the same snake. I came up with some weird brewing process, and then the final thing had to be transfigured into silver, and a certain incantation said at a certain point of the lunar cycle
- Anyway, Harry was going to do the potion at some point, and go to the island, and learn about the Great Serpents, and then at some point he'd get to meet Jormungandr (a.k.a. the Mother of Dragons)
- And Jormungandr had this special thing where she could 'taste' someone's past if they swam through her mouth when she was intangible, so Harry did that, and it was gonna be this big moment of not knowing what someone would think of you
- So Jormungandr 'tastes' Harry's life and declares that he's like a pearl - layers wrapped around suffering until there is smoothness and beauty - and so everyone on the island is calling him 'Pearl' in parseltongue (because you don't IGNORE what the Mother of Dragons says someone is)
- And the punchline of this story is that at some point after Harry comes home, he's at the Weasleys and Arthur calls out "Pearl?" to Molly, and Harry automatically responds, and he NEVER LIVES IT DOWN
So that's the incredible departure from practicality and real-life consequences that I'll probably never write but had some cool world-building and a good punchline