Chapter Five:
“Y-you’re, you’re getting a snake?” Ron stutters out, voice shaky. He stumbles after Harry into the back of the shop. The female with the chewing gum had ecstatically pulled Harry around the desk and into the back room, voice going a mile a minute about how snakes were great pets and how it was unfair that no one longer wanted them because of you-know-who. The room is small, the windows are all covered with grime, so much actually, that you can’t see out of them. Candles are lit around the room, emitting a soft golden glow.
“Well,” the female pauses, lowering her line of sight to the only reptile habitat they have. It’s a large, glass tank filled with a handful of snakes that are all lounging around themselves, curling this way and that way and huddling around heated rocks. “This is all that we have.”
Harry gazes at the snakes, grinning wide. “Hello,” he says, crouching down so he can look at them better, “would anyone like to leave with me?” He asks.
Behind him, both Ron and the Hogwarts graduate make the same sound, an awkward mix between a gasp and a choke.
Harry ignores them in favour of watching how all the snakes immediately raise their little heads and start hissing.“Pick me! Pick me!” They yell.
A black snake with a green underbelly pushes itself against the glass, “Speaker! Pick me!” It hisses, it’s voice is sort of muffled against the side of the tank. “The others are stupid,” it says.
Huffing out a laugh, Harry can’t help but think the snake funny. “Oh really?” He muses. “How so?”
“The only one stupid here is you.” A red snake slithers slowly down a heated rock. It’s underbelly is yellow. “Excuse my brother,” she says, bumping her little head against the black and green snakes, “he tends to forget his manners.”
“Right, right.” The black snake nods his head up and down. “So sorry for all these, uh,” he pauses as if to look for words, “what’s that word again?”
The red and yellow snake gives something akin to sigh. “Heathens?”
“Yes! Heathens. So sorry for all these heathens in the back. They’re not right for you, speaker. I’m venomous and will kill your enemies if you wish. You should choose me.”
Harry hums, low and thoughtful. He watches as the red snake suddenly whips out its tail and hits the other snake against the back of its head in reprimand.
“I meant us,” the black snake hurries to add. “You should chose us.”
In the end Harry leaves the Magical Menagerie with two snakes. Weirdly enough, free of charge. Each one wraps itself around one of Harry’s wrists, their bodies are thin, about the width and length of a pencil. The girl with the gum had stared at him like he had put the stars and the moon into the sky himself. Harry shrugs it off and instead eyes Ron out of the corner of his eyes. He looks a little… green around the edges.
“Are you alright?” He asks, stopping at the side of the cobbled road. “You don’t look too well.”
“It’s just,” Ron’s bottom lip quivers, he avoids looking Harry in the eyes when he rushes out a quiet, “you’re a parselmouth.”
Furrowing his brows, Harry does his best to look confused. He reminds himself that he has to pretend to not know anything about the magical world. “Parsel-what?”
This time it’s Ron’s turn to look confused. “Harry,” he starts off hesitantly, “what language do you think you were speaking to the snakes?”
“Well english, obviously.” Harry answers.
“Uh, well, you weren’t. You were speaking parseltongue. It’s the language of snakes. I’ve heard that only descendants of Salazar Slytherin can speak it.”
“Oh.”
With a purse of his lips, Harry starts walking again. “Who’s this Salazar Slytherin guy anyways?” He questions. Ron falls into step beside him, confusion clear on his freckled face. “He was one of the founding members of Hogwarts. There’s four of them all together. The other three are Godric Gryffindor, Rowena Ravenclaw and Helga Hufflepuff.”
They walk in silence for a few seconds. Until, “How come you didn’t know about it? The parseltongue, I mean. And about the founding members of Hogwarts?”
“Uh,” Harry lamely fumbles. He scratches the back of his still pink hair in a sheepish manner. “I’ve only found out about the magical world recently.”
“Oh, man.” Ron shakes his head. There’s a deep frown across his lips.“We better get to Flourish and Blotts then. You really need to see what they’ve written about you.”
Harry spends the rest of the day flipping through hordes of biographies. He goes through several at once and makes his disgust about them clear. They’re all filled with lies, so many lies. There are lines and lines about how Harry has lived the perfect life. How he’s had servants at his beck and call. How he’s been fed like a King. How he’s had a loving family.
Oh, they were loving alright.
“Master, what’s wrong?” The black and green snake peaks its head out from Harry’s sleeve and travels up his arm.
“You smell frustrated.” The red and yellow snake also peaks its head out and travels up Harry’s sleeve. “Is there something we can help with?”
“I’m okay,” Harry breathes out in English. He flickers his gaze to a worried Ron who’s stood at the end of the bookshelf, biting his nails and muttering quietly to himself. “But I’m not sure if he is.”
Black and green slithers out his tongue to taste the air. “Woah,” he says. “That’s a lot of worry for someone so small.”
“Ron?” Harry calls. “You okay there?”
Ron immediately matches his gaze with Harry’s and makes his way towards him. “I’m… okay,” the ginger haired male twists his fingers into the bottom of his jumper. “It’s just that I’ve built this image of you inside my head.” He lowers his voice. “I mean, you’re Harry Potter. The boy-who-lived. You’re famous! And I’ve finally gotten to meet you and you’re nothing like the books said you would be.” He pauses to take a deep breath. “You’re hair’s pink and you can talk to snakes and you don’t know anything about the wizarding world. It’s scary, but it’s you. And somehow that’s better than what I expected.”
Harry swells with emotion. He’s so, so happy. His chest feels tight and his eyes feel sort of wet, but he blinks away his unshed tears and gives a blinding smile. “Thanks Ron. That means a lot to me.” He murmurs.
Flushing, Ron mumbles out words Harry can’t quit make out.
“Let me nuzzle him!” Black and green hisses from Harry’s shoulder. “Please, please, please, please, please—“
Ron’s gaze lands onto the hissing snake, his eyes widen as he quickly takes several steps back. He must have momentarily forgotten about Harry’s new companions.
“No, no, no, no. Don’t be afraid of me, I just want to nuzzle you as a thanks—“
“He just wants to thank you,” Harry explains. “And… nuzzle you?” He trails off unsurely.
“N-nuzzle me?” Ron squeaks out.
“Yeah,” Harry softens his grin into a smile and slowly raises Black and Green towards Ron. The orangette stands still, shoulders tense and expression grim. Black and Green bumps it’s head into Ron’s cheek and then nuzzles against it, hissing softly.
Ron’s blush returns tenfold, likely in embarrassment. His shoulders relax. He even tentatively raises a hand and careful pets the snakes little head. “He’s not so bad,” Ron mutters. “Kinda cute.”
Black and green preens at the compliment when Harry translates for him.
“Ugh,” Red and yellow voices from Harry’s other shoulder. With a laugh, Harry pets her and tells her how pretty her scales are. She hides underneath his sleeve again and doesn’t come back out.
Harry idly wonders if she’s embarrassed too.
1329 words//unedited.
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black and green: OOooooOOOO
F R I E N D OOOOO NUZZLE
red and orange: look at this fucking idiot i am disowning u rn
harry: :D