The One Where Harry gets Snarky with a Snake
“I - I didn’t realize you spoke English...” Harry was absolutely in shock. The world was tilting on its axis - no it was tilting on an entirely new axis the likes of which it hadn’t turned on since the discovery of fire.
Harry glanced over his shoulder. Surely the whole zoo must have felt the world shifting like that - but they hadn’t. Dudley and Piers had moved on to terrorise some other poor animal, there were teenagers making sweet fully clothed love to each other on a bench, and his aunt and uncle were looking at the map by the entrance trying to figure out where they would go next.
“ I don’t speak English, you speak Parsel.”
The snake was mocking him.
“ I suppose that makes about as much sense as you speaking English.”
Harry was mocking the snake. Though, in all honesty, Harry could now plainly hear the strange hiss in his own voice.
“ Are you this sarcastic with your snake, or am I special?” It snarked.
“What the hell do you mean my snake?” Why on earth would Harry have his own snake?
“ Every Speaker has a snake.” The snake was now giving him a look like he was the second coming of Dudley.
“ Well I don’t have one, so I guess you’re wrong about that.”
“I’m never wrong, not unless the universe is bending over backwards to spite me. If you have no snake that just means you have not found a snake worthy of being yours.” Who would have thought that snakes would be such giant narcissists?
“ How would I even-”
“I shall be your snake.” The snake interrupted.
“Of course. ‘Hello yes Mr. Zookeeper, sir. Do you think you might get this snake out of its cage for me? Oh, you can’t? Well, I have it on good authority that I happen to be the owner- on whose authority you ask? Why, the snake’s of course!’ I don’t think that will go over all that well.” Harry snarked.
“You’ll just have to get me out.” The snake said, like it was the most obvious thing in the universe.
“And how would I do that?”
“Magic.”
“Wow, and here I thought your sarcasm could go no further.”
“I’m entirely serious. You have magic I can smell it.” Man, if that snake didn’t have a dead ass stare.
“If I have magic then my cousin is the tooth fairy.”
“How exactly, pray tell, do you think you’re talking to a snake if not for magic?”
That was a good point actually.
“ Some form of psychosis I’d presume.” Harry mused.
“ Too true, too true. Let us not discard that idea entirely, on the off chance that I’m wrong. Of course it’s a long shot, my being wrong, that is, as I’ve never been wrong before. Don’t really see the point in starting now either.” At this point the real question is where Harry can learn to look at someone like that. It’s really rather impressive.
“ Fine then, since you’re the expert, why don’t you tell me how exactly you expect me to use magic to get you out of this cage.” Harry crossed his arms over his chest
“ Magic.”
“Right yeah, I got that. But how do I do it?” Harry asked, frustrated.
“ Just like you have every other time you’ve done magic!” The snake was also frustrated.
“ I’ve never done magic before!” Harry nearly yelled.
He looked quickly to make sure he hadn’t caught anyone’s attention. The teenagers were still attempting to swallow each other’s tonsils, his cousin was harassing a different snake, and his aunt and uncle were looking down their noses at something in a glass case over by the door. Perfect.
“ You obviously have, or else I wouldn’t have been able to smell your magic! ”
“ I ha-” Oh, but he had, hadn’t he?
Harry looked back on his life, on all the freaky or unexplainable shit that had happened in his life. His hair growing back overnight, the sweater, the school roof, the dreams of the flying motorbike. It was all magic.
There was a pop from directly in front of him, and by the time he’d managed to look up and see the missing grass there was already a snake wrapped firmly around his upper arm, just above where his shirt might ride up if he were to have raised his hands.
Harry looked quickly behind himself again, to make sure no one had seen. His aunt seemed to be rather fed up with looking at such cold blooded things and could be seen attempting to make Dudley and Piers move on to other exhibits.
“ See all you had to do was break me out.” The snake said smugly.
"What's the tooth-to-currency exchange rate? I lose teeth quite frequently and would like to know how mu-"
"Alright I get it. You were right."
"I always am."
"What's your name? I can't just keep calling you 'the snake' in my head. Are you a boy or a girl?"
"I am a girl and I have no name. Snakes do not name their young, so you can name me if you would like."
"Well shit. That's a lot more responsibility than I was expecting to have to deal with today..." Harry trailed off.
He looked at the snake for a moment, trying to see if she had any defining traits he could name her after. In the process, he was swept up in gazing at the rhythmic swaying of the snake. It reminded him of the willow tree in Mrs. Number Seven's backyard.
"What about Willow?" Harry asked.
"I suppose that will suffice. You could have chosen a better plant, though."
“That’s not at all true, but whatever. Stay hidden. If my relatives see you they might try and kill you or something.” Harry muttered crossly.
There was no reply, but Harry just took that as a sign that the snake - Willow - would stay hidden and moved to stand closer to his relatives.
Harry lay in his dark cupboard much later, wishing he had a watch. He didn’t know what time it was and he couldn’t be sure the Dursleys’ were asleep yet. Until they were, he couldn’t risk sneaking to the kitchen for some food, and then to the backyard to let Willow hunt for a bit.
He’d lived with the Dursleys almost ten years, ten miserable years, as long as he could remember, ever since he’d been a baby and his parents had died in that car crash. He couldn’t remember being in the car when his parents had died. Sometimes, when he strained his memory during long hours in his cupboard, he came up with a strange vision: a blinding flash of green light and a burning pain on his forehead. This, he supposed, was the crash, though he couldn’t imagine where all the green light came from. He couldn’t remember his parents at all. His aunt and uncle never spoke about them, and of course he was forbidden to ask questions. There were no photographs of them in the house.
When he had been younger, Harry had dreamed and dreamed of some unknown relation coming to take him away, but it had never happened; the Dursleys were his only family. Yet sometimes he thought (or maybe hoped) that strangers in the street seemed to know him. Very strange strangers they were, too. A tiny man in a violet top hat had bowed to him once while out shopping with Aunt Petunia and Dudley. After asking Harry furiously if he knew the man, Aunt Petunia had rushed them out of the shop without buying anything. A wild-looking old woman dressed all in green had waved merrily at him once on a bus. A bald man in a very long purple coat had actually shaken his hand in the street the other day and then walked away without a word. The weirdest thing about all these people was the way they seemed to vanish the second Harry tried to get a closer look.
At school, Harry had no one. Everybody knew that Dudley’s gang hated that odd Harry Potter in his baggy old clothes and broken glasses, and nobody liked to disagree with Dudley’s gang.