[Songs of the Stormy Season]: Tread Among Serpents, PG, gen, 3/3

[lomonaaeren]

Draco frowned as he stood in the line of first-years heading towards the castle, looking around. Somehow he had missed Potter on the train. How could he have, when he knew what Potter looked like and people would probably have rejected him left and right? He should have been easy to find and share a compartment with.

But finally, he was there.

Walking with Nott and a tall dark-skinned boy Draco didn’t know, but who looked like a Zabini.

Draco narrowed his eyes and sped up a little. He managed to get into a boat with the rest of them to go across the lake. Potter looked at him curiously.

He had his snake coiled around his arm.

Draco swallowed and nodded. “Hello, Potter. I’m Draco Malfoy.” He held out his hand to shake, ignoring the way that Nott was looking at him. Nott couldn’t prevent Draco from making friends with Potter.

“Er, hello.” Potter appeared to be a little startled, but he shook Draco’s hand cordially enough.

Draco leaned back with a long sigh and studied Potter in curiosity. He had the snake coiled around his upper arm, and he wore ordinary black student school robes. Altogether, he was so ordinary that it made Draco want to curl his lip.

But appearances could be deceiving, he knew that very well. And no one would ever have thought this boy had Parseltongue.

But he did.

“I’ve wanted to meet you for a long time,” Draco said, doing his best to keep his voice calm and not show how fast his heart was beating. “I didn’t know you grew up in the Muggle world until I saw that article in the paper.”

Nott coughed something into his hand that sounded like “books.” Draco flushed and glared at him. Until this moment, he’d managed to forget that he’d had the misfortune to be at a party with Nott when they were younger, where he’d chattered about how much he loved the Harry Potter Adventures series.

“Thanks?”

“You don’t know who my father is, I suppose?”

“I think I saw a reference to the Malfoys in a few books,” Potter said. It was a diplomatic answer, Draco supposed, given that he probably thought Draco’s father really had meant all those horrible things he’d done under the Imperius Curse.

Draco smiled at him. “Well, we’ve been magical purebloods for a long time, and we can help you understand anything you have questions about, now that you’ve rejoined our world. I know my father would be delighted to help.”

“Thanks.” Potter sounded firmer this time.

“Do you know what House you’ll be in?”

“I thought we didn’t get to decide, and were Sorted by some magical means.”

“Well, yes, but you should—still know, shouldn’t you?” Draco found it baffling that Potter wouldn’t at least have a preferred House, or one that he knew he would go to even if he might secretly prefer a different one.

Then he remembered Potter had grown up in the Muggle world, just as Nott cleared his throat to probably say the same thing. Draco flushed and muttered, “Well, what House do you think is likely?”

“I don’t know. They seem like they could all be equally likely.”

At least Zabini and Nott stared at Potter the way Draco did for that odd remark. Potter ignored them and turned around, then gasped.

Draco didn’t want to, but he gasped, too. The sight of the castle looming above the dark water, against the star-filled sky, was something his parents had never told him about. For the first time, Draco felt like he knew what true beauty was.

Outside Mother, of course. Draco shook his head and freed himself from the spell. It wouldn’t do to get too sentimental about the castle and forget where his loyalty truly lay, with his family.

*

“Look, there’s Potter!”

Ron turned his head reluctantly when he heard Ernie Macmillan say that. Macmillan was a wanker, but he wasn’t likely to be mistaken.

Yeah, there was Potter. And although he was smaller than Ron had thought he would be, even after seeing the newspaper photographs, and looking around with wide, uncertain eyes, he did still have a snake on his arm, and he was walking with a bunch of future snakes, too.

Malfoy, of all people.

Ron turned his head deliberately away. He had given up fantasies of being Potter’s best friend now, of going to Gryffindor with him. He would just have to be a hero on his own.

He didn’t flinch and jump when the ghosts swept through the room, although Potter squeaked. Then he turned around and, apparently in answer to something the snake on his arm had said, spoke in Parseltongue.

Ron wanted to put his fingers in his ears so he wouldn’t have to hear the creepy hissing, but that wasn’t the sort of thing a hero or an adult would do. He settled for frowning at Potter and shaking his head.

Some of the others weren’t so quiet.

“Don’t you know that the last wizard to speak like that killed your parents?”

“Why are you so Dark and evil already?”

“Why didn’t you go to a different school? Durmstrang welcomes Dark wizards!”

Ron lost the battle with his curiosity and leaned around the tall boy in front of him to see how Potter was taking it. His face was pale, but he just looked back at them evenly, and then turned and faced the front of the line as Professor McGonagall started herding them along.

Ron knew she was the Head of Gryffindor, and he watched how she looked at Potter. With curiosity and pity, he thought.

Pity?

Ron shrugged. Not everyone would have the same reaction to Potter. What mattered was that some people would be ready to battle Death Eaters and You-Know-Who if he ever came back, since Potter wouldn’t be doing it.

Then the doors into the Great Hall opened, and Ron straightened his shoulders. Time to face his future, get into Gryffindor, and make his parents proud.

*

Harry swallowed as he stepped into the Great Hall, and not because of all the people staring at him. He’d never been in such a large room. So big that at first he thought it was open to the sky, but then he remembered what Nott and Zabini had said about the spell on the ceiling that made it look like the sky.

There was a huge dazzle of light, huge tables, a huge number of students and professors, all staring at him.

Harry almost hunched his shoulders, but Salash said, “You smell afraid.”

Harry couldn’t just cower, not when he hadn’t done it in front of the Dursleys, and not when he wanted to make the world see that good people could speak Parseltongue, too. He swallowed and stood up straight.

He didn’t speak to Salash, though. He thought she wouldn’t even be able to hear him through the voice of the singing hat.

A Sorting Hat? Well, okay.

Harry watched as kid after kid went up there and was Sorted. Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw, Gryffindor and Slytherin. He didn’t really know which one suited him best. Malfoy had seemed to think that Harry should, but—

He didn’t.

The people in front of him were draining away frighteningly fast. Harry bit his lip and watched as Malfoy and Nott went to Slytherin. Those were the only people he knew who had been Sorted so far, and he didn’t know if that meant he should want to go to Slytherin, to be with them, or wait for Zabini, who had been friendlier.

But Zabini was in the alphabet after him, so Harry wouldn’t get to see where he was Sorted before it was his turn.

Zabini had talked about Slytherin, too, though.

Can one House really be full of Dark wizards? I don’t think so. But it is one that might welcome a Parselmouth.

“Potter, Harry!”

Salash hissed comfortingly as Harry walked towards the stool where the Hat waited. He thought he could feel the eyes on him like a physical weight, but he had dealt with that at Privet Drive, too. He just kept walking.

When he picked up the Hat and set it on his head, his hand was shaking.

“Ah, Mr. Potter. An interesting mind you have here.”

Harry hadn’t realized the Hat would talk directly to them. It sounded like the voice was in his head. He gripped the sides of the stool and thought, “Er, hello.”

“Yes, yes, hello. Oh, interesting ambitions—a desire for friendship—cleverness that could be nurtured—tell me, Mr. Potter, did you come with a preference?”

Harry supposed that Malfoy had been right after all in saying that preference would be important. He leaned back a little on the stool and tried to ignore the impatient whispering from his audience. “I was thinking maybe Slytherin. I know that Parselmouths are welcome there. And the only people I know so far were Sorted there.”

“You could do well there,” the Hat said thoughtfully. “I just wondered, since you don’t seem to be a particularly ambitious person—”

“I want to make people think better about Parselmouths and snakes. Is that a good enough ambition?”

The Hat laughed softly in his head. “Of course. That would be a very fitting goal, in fact, given that Salazar and Voldemort tainted Slytherin in the past. Best of luck in SLYTHERIN!”

There were lots of gasps as Harry took the Hat off and stood up. He did his best to ignore it as he walked over to the Slytherin table. Nott and Malfoy were applauding him, at least, and a few of the other students started doing it, too.

And Salash was happy, tightening around his arm and saying, “There are the people who admired me. We should be happy to be among them.”

Harry thought that was true. He put his chin and smiled a little as he sat down between Nott and Malfoy, and smiled harder and clapped when Zabini was Sorted into Slytherin, too. That was the last of the Sorting, and the professor who had brought them in took the Hat away.

While still gaping at Harry. Lots of people were doing that, in fact, from professors at the head table to a pair of red-haired twins at the Gryffindor table who were whispering and pointing.

Well. Harry would just have to keep going and put up with it. He had put up with a lot of things in his years at Privet Drive. He could do it here, too.

And some people were smiling at him and acting like his Parseltongue and magic were okay. So Hogwarts was already loads better than the Dursleys’.

*

Minerva stepped through the back door that led to the professors’ table after she’d placed the Sorting Hat in Albus’s office, and noticed Pomona giving her a slightly guilty look. She sighed. “What is it?”

“Well, I did make a small amount of money from a bet I made that Potter would be placed in Slytherin with his talent, not in Gryffindor…”

Minerva shook her head briskly. “Where the boy is Housed doesn’t say the most about him. His general character and actions will.”

“Qu-Quite right, Minerva.” Unexpectedly, that was Quirinus speaking, as he blinked and bobbed his turbaned head. “N-no one c-can say where a st-student’s talents will l-lead him, and l-lots of p-people have been sur-surprised by their ch-children Sorting into d-different Houses. But we should g-give Mr. P-Potter a ch-chance to earn our app-approval.”

Minerva blinked at him in turn, then shrugged and sat down next to him. “I can’t pretend that I’m not surprised. But I shall do my best to teach him fairly.”

She kept her gaze away from Severus. He was probably feeling too volatile at the moment to take any advice in good part. And she had always known that he would exert some unfairness in his teaching of James Potter’s son.

She did intend to step in if it went past a certain point, though. Harry might not be one of hers, but she owed his parents that much.

*

Severus was eating and drinking with precise motions. He would reveal too much of what he was thinking to others if he did not control himself.

Namely, that he thought Potter’s Sorting just revealed how active the soul of the Dark Lord inside him must be.

Of course, Severus could not explain that to anyone yet. He had no proof. The Parseltongue was a clue that many people, even Albus, who was no fool, were reading differently.

But he had to remember it. He had to keep in mind that he might have to kill the boy in the future, whether or not the Vow destroyed him for it.

At least the boy’s Sorting into his House, terrible and ironic as it was, would allow Severus to keep an eye on him more easily.

*

The Dark Lord Voldemort laughed to himself, in silence, in darkness, as he watched the Boy-Who-Lived talking with the other Slytherins. This was beyond any eventuality he had imagined, even when the articles had come out about the boy speaking the sacred tongue of Salazar and his serpents. Then, all the Lord Voldemort had known was hot anger.

But here.

But here.

In silence, in darkness, in the stained and cracked mirror of his host’s mind, Lord Voldemort darted his tongue back and forth and coiled on himself. He would think. He would observe. He would watch and see whether the boy was a rival of any kind, and what he knew about the magic that had saved his life and severed Lord Voldemort from his flesh.

Whether the boy was a rival, or…

A tool to be used.

*

Albus sighed a little as he sipped his water. He had hoped that Harry would not be Sorted into Slytherin, not because there was anything wrong with the House itself, but because the boy would doubtless be primed to believe the words of those who told him that his Parseltongue was a sign that he was special. And those who would do it did not have innocent flattery in mind.

Still, Albus could not condemn the boy for the Hat’s decision. He must simply reach out carefully, maintain his balance and not give Harry any reason to dislike him.

And watch.

*

“I am comfortable here.”

Harry smiled and lay back on the big, soft bed in the Slytherin dormitory. Salash had been dancing happily, if silently, on his arm ever since she saw the carved snakes that covered the common room. They’d had to be quiet because the prefects had been telling them the rules with drones and glares, but now they were by themselves and they could talk.

“Yes. But I do wonder at the way some of them are looking at me.”

“What do you mean?”

“As if I’m a toy they want to play with.”

“I could bite them.”

“You’re not venomous, though.”

“But I could make them regret it.”

Harry had to muffle his laughter in his sleeve. Then he flopped on his back and grinned at the canopy.

He wasn’t blind. He knew there were people circling around him who would use him if they could. He had seen the way that Malfoy and Nott stared at him as if they wanted to pick him apart. Even Zabini, although he was friendlier, was a lot more interested in Salash than he was in being Harry’s real friend.

But it didn’t matter. Harry was going to make people see that Parseltongue wasn’t evil, and if he had to drag half of Slytherin House with him because they thought it was evil and that was a good thing?

That was what he would do.

He thought, as he drifted off to sleep, that the Hat would have called it a worthy ambition.

The End.