Chapter Five of 'The Parselmouth Promise'- Parselmouth Problems
Chapter Four.
Chapter One.
Title: The Parselmouth Promise (5/25)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Draco, past Harry/Ginny and Draco/Astoria, other canon pairings mentioned
Content Notes: Angst, divorce, Parseltongue, brief violence, ritual magic, not epilogue-compliant
Rating: R
Summary: Voldemort’s influence lingers after his death in the form of Parseltongue passed on to the children of everyone with a Dark Mark-or, in Harry’s case, someone who once hosted a Horcrux. As Harry struggles to be a good single father to his son, James, he inevitably runs up against Draco Malfoy, who’s not only a Parselmouth now but attempting to create a whole ritual and school system to benefit himself, his friends, and his son, Scorpius. No matter how much some people don’t like that.
Author’s Notes: This is probably going to be a medium-length fic of around 10-20 chapters. Note that it’s fairly angsty.
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Five-Parselmouth Problems
“Hello, Potter.”
Oh, great. Pansy Parkinson had fallen into step beside him as he walked through Diagon Alley to go to the shops. Harry bit back the urge to curse, and nodded distantly to her. “Parkinson. How are you?”
“Well enough.” She eyed him sharply, and then the basket that hovered behind him. “Did you know that you could conjure a sturdier basket that would be attached to you with a snake?”
“I didn’t know that. Thank you for telling me. This basket serves me well enough.”
Harry thought she might leave once she understood that she wouldn’t get anything but clipped responses out of him, but instead, her smile tilted towards amused. “I just wanted you to know. Especially since your basket can be stolen, hovering behind you like that, and you wouldn’t know until long after it was gone. Whereas the snake basket won’t be stolen because-”
“Everyone would be too afraid to touch it?”
Harry had snapped harder than he meant to, but Parkinson only laughed as if he’d said something witty. “Exactly.” She eyed him for a second, and then the shutters seemed to fall open behind her eyes. “Listen, Potter, you’re a Parselmouth, like the rest of us. I’m only trying to help you.”
“Harry Potter?”
Harry tensed his shoulders and turned to face the blustery voice. This was one reason he never went to the shops with James, who was safely at school for the morning. Parkinson halted beside him, but didn’t move away.
Well, fine. That would just mean she had a front-row seat to laugh from. She only taught at the school one day a week, so Harry didn’t have to worry too much about her negative opinion of him affecting James.
The blond man who was staring at him looked vaguely familiar, but then, as Hermione would say, that was down to inbreeding in the British wizarding population. He shook his head and stepped backwards hastily, and then pointed one finger at Harry.
“I don’t want you to go after my family, Dark wizard.”
“I won’t,” Harry began, but the man just bellowed on.
“I want you to know that I’m a normal human being, not like you, with the Parseltongue and the filthy Muggle home you hailed from and all the rest of it!”
Parkinson caught her breath beside him. Harry knew it was the prelude to laughter, but he just fixed his eyes on the ground and shrugged, then turned and brushed past Parkinson as he aimed at the next shop. He was a good judge of these encounters by now, and he knew the man was a talker, but wouldn’t try to follow or hex him.
“You’re an idiot.”
Harry winced a little, but nodded. “I know.”
“Not you. Him!” The blond wizard leaned back as Parkinson pointed at him, as if he believed that she would launch lightning out of her finger. Given the average wizard’s notions of defense, Harry supposed that he couldn’t really blame the git.
“What? How dare you-”
“And that just proves that you’re more of an idiot, that you use that kind of cliched dialogue.” Parkinson stalked a step forwards, and abruptly her krait was visible around her throat. It had probably been under a specialized Disillusionment Charm before, Harry thought, and noticed the way the man paled when he saw the snake. “Isabella, I think we should teach him a lesson.”
“Yes, we should,” the krait agreed, and raised her head to focus on the man, hissing loudly. They were drawing a crowd, and Harry glared at Parkinson, wondering what in the world she was thinking. This would hardly help better the reputation of Parselmouths, the way Malfoy was always harping about them needing to do.
“I-if you c-curse me, th-then you’ll be in trouble-”
“Oh, really? When it’s simply a curse to increase your virtue?” Parkinson smiled at him and twitched her fingers, a cue that the snake apparently picked up. Isabella wove her neck into a complicated knot, which Harry realized, abruptly, resembled a rune. Parkinson touched it with her left hand and flung her right hand at Harry’s interrogator.
Harry tried to leap forwards, but he was standing too far away, and behind Parkinson besides. The curse hit the man, and he shut his eyes and shouted, then started patting himself all over, as if he thought he was going to find another limb or head.
“Oh, please,” Parkinson said, her voice heavy with contempt. “As if I would tax my dear Isabella by using a Transfiguration on you.”
Are Parselmouths not good at Transfiguration? Harry made a mental note to himself. It might mean James would need some extra training before he went to Hogwarts. He wondered if he should ask Minerva McGonagall about that. Harry couldn’t say that he had that expertise in Transfiguration, either.
“Wh-what did you do, then?” The man had his courage back, from the way he glared at Parkinson with folded arms.
“I ensured that whenever you go around spreading ugly rumors and lies you don’t even believe in yourself, that you’ll be subject to a phantom snakebite,” Parkinson said, and laughed at the expression on the man’s face. Harry wished he could. The coldness surging through him prevented it. “Don’t worry, it won’t poison you. It’ll simply hurt, until you retract the lie.”
“I do believe that Potter is a Dark Lord rising!”
The next instant, the man let out a loud yelp and slapped his hand to his side, over his ribs. Parkinson nodded in what looked like peaceful amusement, her mouth curving. “That’s what it would feel like to have Isabella nip you. Now apologize.”
“No!”
This time, the yelp was more like a scream, and the man tried to keep a hand clapped over his ribs while bending down to grab his foot. Harry, his face burning, grabbed Parkinson’s arm. “Stop,” he hissed into her ear. “Take it off.”
“Why should I? He disgraces not just you but all Parselmouths with that kind of bollocks.”
People who had gathered around to watch the scene gasped at her words, and a few people herded their children away. Harry closed his eyes as sharp misery hit him like a blade. Their eyes… “Please, Parkinson.”
Parkinson said nothing, but her hand fell on his arm, and she steered him away. Behind them, the man gave a low moan.
“You didn’t remove it.”
“Of course not. That’s the least he deserves for what he said about you.”
Harry dragged his hand across his face and decided to put it in terms that Parkinson could understand, since obviously speaking about the harm to innocents wouldn’t move her. “Has it occurred to you that I still have to do my shopping here? People are going to hate me even more now, and gossip about me, and-”
“Potter.”
Harry glanced up and found Parkinson facing him, heedless of the gaping observers still passing them. Her hands had taken both of his, and she was staring into his face with a direct, human stare he hadn’t known she was capable of. He tried, embarrassed, to take his hands away, but she held on to them. Isabella had disappeared behind what was probably another Disillusionment Charm.
“They say those things about you anyway,” Parkinson said. “That man approached you when you hadn’t said a word to him, hadn’t even bumped into him. Don’t you deserve some peace from that? Doesn’t James deserve some peace from that?”
Harry eyed her. “You’re using my son against me.”
“Yes,” Parkinson agreed without a trace of shame. “He’s a nice boy. I like him. And he can’t grow up in the kind of isolated bubble you think you can preserve around you. He’s going to hear things like that. Unless you act to stop it.”
Harry thought of how to phrase it, turning it around in his head, and finally said, “They have a right to say it.”
“They do not,” Parkinson snapped. “Why would they?”
“Because I do lose my temper,” Harry said. “And I am a Parselmouth. And they associate that with Voldemort.”
Parkinson flinched a little, but didn’t back away at the name. “So what? They should associate it with other people more by now. They ought to see Parseltongue as the trait of a savior, considering what you did for Britain.”
Harry arched an eyebrow, remembering a frantic young woman who had advocated for throwing him to Voldemort. “Fancy you saying that, Parkinson.”
Parkinson shook her head a little. “The difference between me and them is that I can admit I fucked up,” she said, and ignored the glare she got from a witch walking by with two young children. “And that I’m fighting to make a world that’s different from what we grew up with, not just settling back and trusting that it’ll change on its own.”
“What you think I’m doing, I suppose.”
“No, Potter,” Parkinson said, and her hands tightened once more before she let him go. “What they’re doing.”
Harry had to turn his head and stare in the other direction, at one of the small courtyards with food stalls where he went to buy vegetables. He shuddered and shook his head and finally murmured, “Well. Anyway. I need to be getting on.”
“I came here because someone wanted to meet you.”
Harry turned back, wary. If Parkinson had children, he hadn’t met them yet. Then again, why should he have? He was only a Parselmouth who had once been an enemy, and who hadn’t yet agreed to become part of the ritual circle or the school or the whole system they had going on. It was the best place for James, he would definitely agree on that, but it would never be the right place for him.
Parkinson seemed to be fumbling in her bag. Harry watched, his heart rate accelerating, ready to leap away if this turned out to be some kind of ambush. It was, but not the kind he’d thought.
“Here we are!” Parkinson finally said in a bright tone, and held out what looked like a clump of yellow yarn.
Then it unfolded into the Gryffindor snake that Harry had seen in James’s room. She shot her tongue towards him, and wriggled her whole body like a puppy begging for a treat. “Speaker! My speaker!”
“She came searching for me because she could trace that you’d recently been in magical contact with me,” Parkinson said calmly, her hand still extended. “Not one snake in a hundred could do that, Potter. She belongs with you, and you with her.”
Harry looked her, rather than the snake, in the eye. “No.”
“Why not?”
“He is stubborn.”
“My Parseltongue has caused enough damage,” Harry said, and then regretted it when he saw how Parkinson recoiled. He shut his eyes and tried out the breathing exercises he’d looked up for himself after he learned that going to Mind-Healers was futile. He breathed a few times to the count of ten, and then said, “I don’t want to pursue the magic the way that you and Malfoy and the rest do.”
“There are things a Parselmouth can do other than ritual magic,” Parkinson said quietly. “But I would have thought that you’d want to defend the reputation of the people that your son is growing up among, if not your own.”
“I can help you,” the Gryffindor snake announced. “My name is Sela. Since you were so rude as not to ask before.”
It was a variation of the Parseltongue word for “light.” Harry looked at her again and saw her neck stretched yearningly towards him.
Snakes could yearn for the companionship of humans. He was sure of that, after seeing Malfoy’s circle. What was wrong was that she was yearning for his, when he couldn’t offer her anything.
Harry shook his head. “I’m glad that you seem to be benevolent,” he said. “But I don’t want to bond with a snake.”
“You have no idea what you’re rejecting,” Parkinson said, her eyes hard. “Not just the ability to participate in ritual circles like the one we did the other day-”
“I participated without one.”
“Or the ability to cast spells like the one I used on that idiot-”
“I find that I can use the right spells when I need them.”
“But the ability to bond with your son.”
Harry paused. Parkinson gave him a superior look that he tried to ignore. Sela continued reaching for him, twining along Parkinson’s arm to the furthest reach of her hand and leaning out. Harry tried to ignore the imploring way she looked at him. Snakes didn’t really get expressions on their faces like humans did. He had to ignore the temptation to say that they did, because it would only serve to blind him to reality in the end.
The reality being that he was already scarred and scarring and old. Bonding more closely with his son sounded tempting, but how did he know that he wouldn’t hurt James, too?
“You are very stubborn,” Sela announced. “That is all right. I am more stubborn.”
Harry just shook his head and looked at Parkinson. “I appreciate you bringing her here, but I won’t bond with her.”
He thought Parkinson would drop her arm and leave in disgust. He was good at making people do that. But Parkinson only marched closer, so that Sela’s head was only a few centimeters from Harry’s elbow. She still couldn’t cross the distance, though. Or, presumably, they wanted him to do a bit of symbolic reaching-out.
“I’ll tell you something else that not even Draco knows,” Parkinson said. “I was in that ritual circle, and I know that you shouldn’t have been able to pick up the current of power like you did. Not when Draco started it.”
“It hurt, but I managed-”
“It means that you and Draco have magic much closer to each other than most Parselmouths do. I don’t think he’s realized it yet. He’s probably still thinking about other things than the ritual, like the daily business of the school. Just like some Parselmouths Match with snakes and others bond with them, some Parselmouths Match with each other. We’re seeing that now that we’re asking Parselmouths in countries where they were never so scorned.”
Harry closed his eyes wearily. He wondered what Parkinson would say if he told her about what he’d said to Ginny. Would she still be so happy then to try and get him on the side of the snakes?
No, probably not. But Harry was cowardly enough that he didn’t want to repeat it. It was going to be hard enough to explain it to James when he was old enough to understand it.
“You smell like pain.”
Harry’s eyes flew open. He hated it when someone revealed that he was vulnerable like that. And luckily enough, the people on the street couldn’t understand Sela, but Parkinson certainly could.
“That’s the way I usually smell,” he told her shortly, and glanced around. Yes, he was still getting sharp looks. No one had decided to drift over and stare pointedly at him for being a Dark wizard out in public yet, but that was almost certainly coming soon.
“Give me the damn snake,” he told Parkinson.
Sela was already unwinding from Parkinson’s arm and climbing Harry’s. He resolutely ignored the slightly tickling feeling of her scales. “You smell like much pain,” she hissed softly into his ear as she coiled around his neck. “But I will work with you until you can smell like something else.”
Harry controlled the urge to laugh hysterically by clutching his basket. The handle creaked, but it didn’t break. And if it had, then he could have cast a Reparo on it.
Unlike everything else. The snake was offering to take the place of his Mind-Healer? That was so broken that Harry didn’t know what to say.
“Harry?”
“Potter?” Parkinson asked at the same time, eyes narrowed in the way she seemed to have of pretending she didn’t care. “Are you going to be all right?”
Harry opened his eyes and nodded. He had to be. Parkinson was right about something: he would grow more distant from James if he neglected his Parseltongue.
And that was the way he had to think of it, he thought, carefully reorienting himself, managing to skip over the bright-hot pain of losing James’s mother. The Parseltongue was something he was doing for his son. James would feel more comfortable because Harry also had a snake. This was like retiring from the Aurors or committing, as carefully as he could, to staying away from the Burrow when he knew Ginny was going to be there.
Just another thing he had to do because of what had happened in the past, if he wanted to raise a good son.
“You smell like hurt.”
Harry ignored that, nodded to Parkinson, said, “Thank you for bringing her to me, Miss Parkinson,” and then cast a Disillusionment Charm on Sela. It was going to be harder to forget about her than it was to hide her, especially with her tail tightening as Harry walked down the street away from Parkinson and Isabella. But that didn’t matter.
What did, except pushing forwards and loving his son?
Chapter Six.