Harry Potter and the Re-Discovery of Magic

8: Nagini Learns to Open Doors

A/N Hope everyone is doing well, sorry I've been completely inactive the past few weeks!

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Harry woke up to the sun shining straight onto his face, and rolling over Harry was ready to fall back to sleep, when a sudden thought hit him. If the sun had shone onto his face, that meant he had slept through the entire night without a single nightmare, and wasn't that odd.

Harry cracked his eyes open a little, squinting into the bright light, wondering why Aunt Petunia wasn't banging on his door, and as he reached for his glasses on his bedside table, spending a moment fumbling blindly with his left arm, confused as to why his table had moved so far away before the memories of the previous day flooded into his head, and as the world swam into view he came face to face with a pair of yellow eyes and immediately screamed while trying to leap out of bed, onto to get tangled in the sheets and promptly fall onto the carpeted floor.

"Silly human" came a voice from above the bed, and Harry scrambled up from the floor to see a twelve-foot snake curled up next to the pillow he was previously sleeping.

"Hmm... wouldn't make a very good snack. Too many bones, like those little elves." It hissed, surveying Harry up and down.

"Please don't eat me" Harry quickly said, hoping it had come out in parseltongue, because he had a lot of trouble differentiating the two.

This caused the snake to perk up, it's head tilting to the side. "A speaker?"

Harry nodded his head, unsure if the snake understood human gestures. Apparently, it did since the snake stretched out along the bed, turning its head towards him.

"Little Master, come pat Nagini's scales"

Nagini, who spoke in third person, wriggled around on the bed, before glaring at him, and Harry quickly hurried to sit back on the bed before hesitantly running a hand over the top of her triangular head. She let out a small hiss, that sounded a bit like a sigh to Harry as she turned and stared at Harry for a few seconds before she slithered her way around his upper body, Harry going completely taut as he tried not to tremble, he didn't think his snake patting skills were so bad that she'd strangle him, but instead her head coming to comfortably rest on his shoulder and he cautiously climbed out of bed.

At that moment Leila popped in and squeaked at the sight of the snake wrapped around Harry.

"Master Dark Lord requests your presence for breakfast. Would you like me to take Miss Snakey?" Leila looked absolutely terrified at the sight of Nagini so Harry just shook his head in response.

"Don't worry I'll take her with me." Harry smiled at the elf and allowed her to lead the way.

The unlikely trio made their way to the dining hall which Harry thought was a bit extravagant for breakfast, but who was he to complain. It was a large stone room that had multiple large windows that stretched all the way up to the extended ceiling and let the morning sunlight pour into the room.

"I see you've met Nagini" Tom said, his face hidden from the Daily Prophet the he held.

"She came to visit me up this morning" Harry said, letting the snake unfurl from around him and slither onto the table, and Harry briefly wondered whether that was bad table manners, but then again, as the Dark Lord's snake she could practically do anything she wanted.

"That's where you went last night?" Tom sighed, and pinched the bridge of his nose, a look of what Harry could only describe as pure exasperation.