Serpents gateway
“Human Language/speech”
“Parseltongue/Spells”
(Start of chapter):
The day of his Departure arrived sooner than Hardym could've ever expected, the Dursleys had taken to ignoring him and he was perfectly fine with that, especially with the ever growing list of strange things happening around his room. While a bit of magic happened in his room before, now it escalated. Snakes -which he had learned early on in his life he could talk to- started appearing in his room more and more often while other animals -birds, insects and even Dudley's pet turtle- kept their distance from his room as much as possible. One time he snuck up on a beetle and caught it before it could escape and to his surprise the bug -which looked to have only hatched a few days prior- had been mummified within his hands.
Now -September 1st- the young boy stood on the magical platform 9 ¾ , watching the red steam engine that arrived only a few minutes ago. Hardym had been lucky that -despite him arriving at the early hour of 9 O’clock- a magical family -they had introduced themselves as the Bins’- was there and friendly enough to tell him how to get on the platform, something that Hagrid hadn’t done.
The hours flew by and slowly the train began to fill up more and more with students of many ages, the older ones coming earlier than the rest. It took quite some time before he was disturbed though, his compartment was quite far back on the train. Knocking against the door -unnecessarily he might add because the door wasn’t closed- was a short girl with dark purple hair,”Can I sit here?” There was an obvious asian accent in her voice, Korean if he had to guess though he wasn’t very familiar with different asian accents. He only knew one person, a half korean that worked in the local library, who had a remotely asian accent. “Sure, my name is Hardym and you are?”
“I’m terribly sorry, I am Sue Li”, she sat down and after eying Hardym for a few seconds she added,”I’m a half-blood”
Seeing his raised eyebrow, she explained,”W- well you look like a black so I thought you wanted to know”
‘A black?’, he thought, the house black looked similar to the potters from what he could gather and his hair wasn’t a birds nest like tradition in the Potter line so one could make the assumption, he concluded,”I do not hold the black name”
“oh”
Sue pulled out a little white stone,”If you want I can check your blood status. This stone is enchanted to glow a different color depending on who is holding it”, touching it with her finger, it began glowing silver,”See, silver is for half-bloods, bronze for muggleborn and gold for pure-blood. It is a family heirloom and only works when it is near the heir or lord of the main branch of the Li family”
“Sure”, he told the girl, who was being a bit too energetic for his taste,”Wouldn’t hurt to confirm” And just as he suspected, the stone glowed gold. It had been a gut feeling but something told him that despite his mother being muggleborn, he was a pure-blood. How that worked escaped him but he wasn’t going to complain, Pure-bloods had a lot more privileges than others and the fact that he shared no blood with those animals called the dursleys -at least in the eye of magic- brought him great pleasure.
Satisfied with the results, Hardym went back to reading the book in his hands -’Magical customs and traditions’ by Lirette Bins- and left Sue to do whatever she wanted to do. As unlucky as Hardym was, the silence he loved so much didn’t last long, a red haired boy who was dressed in robes so worn out that they were gray instead of black, barged into the compartment as if he owned it. “I’m Ron, Ron Weasley, and you are?”He completely ignored Sue, treating her as if she was air.
“Someone who is busy reading, if you want to converse, then perhaps Sue Li here might be a better choice”
“Me talking with a girl? Not happening mate, girls are way too dumb to understand us and weak too! As if a girl could ever do magic as good as a guy, I think they should just-”
Before the boy could continue any further, his hair was set on fire and he frantically began screaming, it took him more than 10 minutes to put out. ”Now I would advise you to keep your mouth shut and exit this compartment or you might be bald and naked by the time we arrive'', Hardym’s glare was cold and his words carried a weight that made the Weasley boy wet his pants before running away.
“I must apologize for that thing calling itself a wizard. Be assured that I do not share his believes”
Sue stared at him in wonder, a fact which he decided to ignore in favor of reading the next paragraph within his book. It was about the different greetings expected from and to pure-bloods, not the most interesting subject that the book talked about but something Hardym had to learn for his future interactions with Lords and Ladies such as the head of the Malfoy or Bones family, useful connections to have indeed.
Hardym began to wonder if he had somehow angered Fortuna when his beloved silence was broken yet again, this time by a brown haired girl with front teeth, twice the normal size,”Have any of you seen a toad, a boy named nevil lost his'', her gaze fell upon the book in Hardym’s hands and she quickly changed the subject,”Why would you be reading such trash? All of these customs are unnecessary and completely useless, writing with quills for example, who came up with that? It is so impractical and old fashioned, I think the Wizarding World should just show themselves to the normal people, they could learn so much from the muggles but nooooo! They have that stupid secrecy law, I think we should blast those Pure-bloods that made that law so hard that they will-”
The muggleborn -because what else could she be?- kept droning on and on about how Muggles were so much more advanced and Hardym was getting ever so much closer to sending a hex right between her eyebrows. How could she suggest Wizardkind to reveal themselves? Muggles were disgusting creatures that had just barely enough understanding in them to not be considered animals. There were thousands of examples throughout history, from the Witch hunts -which were more burning anyone that the nobles didn’t like than anything else since real witches or wizards would just cast a flame-freezing charm- to the slaves of early America and the world wars.
How could she speak of the muggles like saints when they did things like that, or rather do, this cruelty was not just in the past, Hardym learned of their cruelty first hand. This girl just saw the muggle side of things, completely ignoring what happened to the wizards. Of course wizards and witches could solve many problems for the muggles but what would the muggles do in return? Hunt them down. This girl was one eyed, blind to the truth.
“-and with spells such as the duplication charm they could solve the food shortages in poor countries, all we would have to do is bring down those shitty Pure-bloods holding back progress, then we could finally-”, Sue Li had been trying to stop the brown haired girl for quite some time, she was worried for the girls safety, Hardym had already demonstrated that he could easily set something aflame without as much as a hand gesture and with how pissed he looked right now and how much the girl kept insulting pure-bloods, Sue could practically smell the pain that this muggle born was sure to receive soon.
It was to no avail, as much as she tried, the girl just kept going and Sue knew that Hardym had snapped, she felt the heavy, unnatural heat she had before when the Weasley boy insulted her but this time it wasn’t just a short burst, it was a raging inferno. The girl didn’t seem to notice as she continued onwards, didn’t try to run away from the compartment, a decision she soon came to regret.
The wooden frame of the door vanished, in its place 4 snakes, two big brown ones and two smaller ones that were colorful and certainly poisonous. A hissing escaped Hardym’s mouth and the bigger snakes got to restraining the girl, her gaze now filled with fear. Sue could do nothing but stare in wonder and terror at Hardym who was apparently a parselmouth, she felt shivers of excitement and dread with every hiss that escaped the dark haired boy.
“Now little muggleborn, I must say you are a bold one, Walking into this room like you own it and spouting those treacherous words against wizard kind as if you stood on top of the world. Undoubtedly you will find yourself in the lion's cave, brave, naive and with no common sense, just like all the rest that go there nowadays. A shame that is”, The green-eyed parselmouth walked closer to her, his voice deadly calm, like the peace before the inevitable storm,”Such a noble house, such a powerful name. And what has this name become? A synonym to stupidity. Where once those of Gryffindors name were considered great warriors that could fight armies all by themselves, now they are nothing more than the rejects that have nothing but muscle. You and your blinded kin are the reason for the falling grace of such a legacy. Now I see my calling, I will clean the name of Gryffindor from filth like you”
“Let her go”
“Now go, run off to your oh so sacred Muggle parents, It would be a gift to all of Wizard kind if you just rot away in the Muggle world with your so beloved barbarians”, The snakes that were holding her just moments before were now resting on the door, slowly turning back into its frame. She ran, just as he had told her to, she couldn’t even ponder up the courage to scream.
“Now that that is dealt with, I need to… take… a … a nap-”, just like that the green-eyed wizard fell unconscious, the exhaustion of using that much magic catching up with him. Darkness took over his mind.