The next couple of weeks were almost ominously silent. There was no sign of Dobby, no further attacks, nothing. It at least gave them time to attempt to construct a list of possible ways for a cat to be petrified. The list was rather long, and included some dozen or so creatures as well as a large number of rather nasty spells.
The only relief came near the end of November, when a notice appeared in Gryffindor Tower, of a Dueling Club being started up. Harry was rather excited, since he knew that Severus, McGonagall, and Flitwick were all really good duelers, and he assumed one or more of them was in charge of the whole thing.
Fully three-fourths of the school showed up for the initial club meeting. Harry gave Ron and Neville a stunned look when Lockhart strutted onto the long, narrow stage and started playing to the crowd.
"Him! We're not going to learn a thing!" Ron snarled in disgust.
"Don't be too sure of that, mate." Harry said, his voice shaking as he fought down laughter, because just then, Lockhart was introducing his 'assistant', a severely-pissed-off looking Severus. "Professor Snape's going to kill him!" Pretty damn close to literally, if the look on Severus' face was anything to go by. "Oh man, look at Draco."
Apparently, the Slytherin boys were anticipating Lockhart's (hopefully humiliating) defeat as much as the Gryffindor boys were, as all of them were grinning hugely in anticipation as they watched their Head of House prowl towards Lockhart with the air of a hungry predator that had spotted an injured prey animal.
Ron chortled in glee. "Oh yeah, definitely. This is going to be fun!"
"I wouldn't give a tin knut for Lockhart's chances." Neville agreed.
All three boys waved at Severus, who nodded their direction, a faintly amused expression crossing his face for an instant, before a maliciously calculating look replaced it as he eyed Lockhart during their 'bow'. Harry was pretty sure that Severus hadn't, actually, bowed. Twitched, yes, bowed, no.
"Oh man, this is going to be good." Harry whispered. Ron and Neville just grinned hugely. Sure enough, Severus blasted Lockhart halfway into next week with a slightly over-energetic 'Expelliarmus'. "Whoops, accidentally overdid it there, I think." Harry somehow managed to get that out with a straight face, but he wasn't sure how, since both Ron and Neville were close to collapsing with the effort to contain their giggles. Most of the boys in the room were no better, while the girls all had horrified looks on their faces. Harry was pleased to see that Hermione was the first to recover, and one of the only ones to give Lockhart a suspicious look.
Lockhart picked himself up off the floor and tried to smooth out his badly wrinkled and rearranged robes while he nattered about ... well, not much of anything, so far as Harry could tell. Eventually, he shut up and had them break up into teams of two. Harry split off from the Gryffindors and approached Draco. Draco grinned when he spotted Harry.
"Looking to get whupped?" Draco asked, his tone playful rather than insulting.
"Draco ... you do remember who my guardian is, right? And that I just spent the summer with him, right?" Harry pointed out.
Draco blinked as he thought about that for a second, then grinned. "Right. Be gentle with me!" His tone was still playful as they squared off to duel.
They were one of the few pairs that were trying to go about it correctly. Most of the rest of the room had rather swiftly degenerated into chaos and the odd grudgematch. Harry was able to see Hermione ending up in a wrestling match with Millicent Bulstrode, just for starters. Ron and Blaise Zabini, though, seemed to be having a lot of fun trying to hex each other, if the amused grins on their faces were any indication.
The first, second and third years were actually relatively peaceful compared to the older kids, however. Oliver Wood and Marcus Flint seemed to be trying their utmost to kill each other, despite Lockhart's best attempts to get the lot of them to calm down and obey his directives.
Unfortunately for all involved, Severus was on the far side of the room from Wood and Flint, who'd settled at the back of the room behind the dueling platform. Draco and Harry had been slowly drifting in that direction, watching the escalating grudge match more than they dueled between themselves.
They were only about ten feet away from the duo when Flint roared "Serpensortia!" and a positively enormous snake shot out of his wand like a canon, landing with a thud about halfway between him and Wood.
//What happened? Where am I? What's going on? STAY AWAY FROM ME!//
The snake's head whipped around and it coiled up. The spreading hood allowed Harry to identify it as some breed of cobra, from the size, a king cobra. It lunged, hissing and spitting in fury, at first Wood, then Flint. A huge circle rapidly cleared itself around the snake.
//Stay away!// The words came again, loudly. //Strange place, strange smell. So many. Danger! BACK OFF!//
It wasn't until the snake lunged a second time, in concert with the last words Harry heard, that he realized it was the snake he was hearing.
//Wait! Calm down!// Harry called. //It's ok. No one's going to hurt you.//
//Where am I? How did I get here?// The snake demanded, whirling to face him. //Is this your doing, Speaker?//
//You're at a school, called Hogwarts. It's for people to learn magic. We're practicing dueling, and one of the students summoned you with some sort of spell. It wasn't me that did it. Just please calm down, ok? No one here wants to hurt you.//
Harry was so concentrated on the snake, and getting it to calm down, he was completely unaware that the entire room had gone dead silent as everyone watched him talking to the snake in fascination, horror, fear, or some combination of the three.
//I will do as you ask, Speaker. I have heard tales of Speakers, but there has not been one for many, many, many seasons.//
Harry let out a mental whoosh of relief as he slowly approached the snake. //Come over to me. I'm sure we can figure out either how to get you back where you came from, or find someplace new for you to live that you would like.//
The silence was broken when the snake, hood finally retracted, slithered straight for Harry. Half the room shrieked in fear. The snake, though, calmly spiraled up the arm Harry proffered and settled about Harry's neck and shoulders like a particularly bizarre and lethal necklace. It was only then that Harry became aware of just how silent the room had become. He glanced around, frowning in confusion at the awed, fascinated, and terrified looks on everyone's faces. That was odd.
//Please don't bite anyone, ok? Oh, and my name's Harry.// He told the snake.
//So long as none disturb me, they have nothing to fear from me.// The snake said, having calmed down markedly. //You are very warm, Speaker Harry.// Calm enough, evidently, to get drowsy, if its voice was anything to go by. //My name is Hissesh.//
((SEVERUS' POV))
Severus had been only too pleased to agree to 'help' Lockhart with his dueling demonstration, though he, Minerva, and Filius had had a bit of a debate as to who got the honor when the subject came up. Severus would admit to having been tempted to let Filius have him, but won the argument on the strength of the probability that there would be Gryffindors and Slytherins in the same room, and either himself or Minerva really needed to be there, as they knew the students in their Houses far better than Filius did, and could anticipate trouble. Most of the time.
It had been a pleasure knocking Lockhart on his ass, but after that the meeting descended into utter chaos. He was pleased to see that Harry seemed to be taking the dueling seriously, working with Draco. Unfortunately the same could not be said for the rest of the dunderheads, and Severus soon found himself exceedingly busy breaking up grudgematches and undoing nasty schoolyard jinxes and hexes. Because of that, he did not become aware of the vicious fight between Wood and Flint until a multi-voiced, resounding scream alerted him to trouble at the back of the room.
It took him but seconds to get there, and he was horrified to discover what looked like a fully grown king cobra on the floor, spitting and hissing madly and lunging at anyone that moved. Before he could move to dispel the creature, something happened that gave him goosebumps all over.
Harry started talking to the snake.
Oh, not that Severus had any idea what was being said, of course, but he'd heard parseltongue before. He had to forcefully dispel memories of Voldemort as he watched Harry chat the snake up. He nearly had a heart attack when the thing moved towards Harry ... there was no way that Severus could dispel the creature without endangering Harry at that point, but the thing just looped itself around Harry's neck and shoulders, bringing to mind Voldemort yet again, when he was dancing attendance on Nagini.
He was hardly the only one in the room so affected, if everyone else's faces were anything to go by. He pushed aside those ugly memories and glanced around.
"Club over. Everyone out!" He snapped.
And evidently, no one was in a mood to question him, as everyone scurried for the door, including Lockhart. Well, everyone except for Harry's friends and, to his surprise, Draco. They all stayed behind, staring alternately at him and Harry and his snake.
"Harry?" Severus asked.
Harry blinked up from his perusal of the snake draped about him, and looked at Severus. "Yessir?"
Severus fought down an accusative snarl. Harry was all but ignorant of the wider wizarding world ... he had no way of knowing that what he'd done was in any way odd. "You can speak to snakes."
Harry blinked a bit. "Well, yeah, I guess so." He said. "It's kind of neat."
Parseltongue ... one of the most feared abilities in the wizarding world, classed as 'kind of neat'. It was enough to give anyone palpitations. "I'm sure it is." Severus finally managed.
Harry, though, had picked up on the whole stunned silence and fear thing. "Ummm ... I'm guessing it's sort of unusual, though?"
"You could say that, mate!" Ron said, having finally rallied enough to speak. "There's been all two or three people who can talk to snakes in all of wizarding history. And every last one of them was a dark wizard."
"Mr. Weasley is slightly incorrect. There have been more than two or three persons who possess the ability of parseltongue, which is what speaking to snakes is called. And given that you yourself can speak it, I think it safe to say that not every wizard with the ability was an evil one." Severus bent a less-than-pleased look at Ron.
"Oh bugger." Harry said quietly. "Let me guess. Last guy to use it was Voldemort."
"Yeah, that would be the last one." Draco said faintly. "And it gets worse. The Chamber? Was, according to legend, made by Slytherin. Who was a parseltongue."
It took all of about five seconds for Harry to put the pieces together. "Crap. Which means that everyone's going to start thinking I'm the Heir."
"Yes." Draco sounded glum.
"Again, crap." Harry fought down the urge to smack his head on something.
//What is wrong, Speaker?//
//My being a Speaker.// Harry explained. //It is not a skill that is well-thought-of, apparently. And there's a rather nasty situation ... hey, wait!// Harry gave his head a shake and refocused on Severus.
"Ummm ... Severus ... if the Chamber was made by Slytherin ... "
Severus was far from stupid himself, and he put the pieces together fast. "Some sort of snake. The creature in the Chamber is some sort of snake." He finished. "Something long-lived, as well. That will narrow the search considerably." He eyed the cobra around Harry's neck. "It might also be a good idea to ... allow you to keep the snake, if it is willing. It might help matters. we can discuss it with the Headmaster."
"If nothing else, Hissesh might be able to get in contact with whatever snake's running around." Harry pointed out.
"That ... is definitely worth considering, Harry. We'd better go visit the Headmaster. The rest of you, head for your dorms, please." Severus said.
The others agreed and headed off. Severus herded Harry towards the Headmaster's office. This was going to get interesting, fast.
Author's Chapter Notes:
//Parseltongue//
Dueling and Discoveries