Parseltongue

"Harry, about the voice you heard last time, I have a guess."

After the others drank their potions, Edmund spoke to Harry.

Harry immediately became interested. A week had passed since he heard the voice in Lockhart's office, and it had not happened again. He had almost convinced himself it had been his imagination.

Now Edmund said he had a theory, and Harry very much wanted to hear it.

"I think it might have been the voice of an animal," Edmund said, pretending to analyze the matter. "Some wizards can understand the speech of certain magical creatures."

"So today, we will test whether my guess is right."

Harry did not know how Edmund planned to test it, so he nodded. The others watched curiously as well.

Edmund drew his wand and tapped the chair behind Harry. The chair quickly became a mouse, squeaking at him.

"Can you understand it?"

Harry shook his head blankly.

Edmund changed the chair into a bat, then a beetle, then a toad, then several other creatures. Every attempt failed.

Once the groundwork was laid, Edmund stopped pretending. He transfigured the chair into a python.

Two screams rang out. Hermione and Cho both jumped back, frightened by the snake, and kept their distance.

The python flicked its tongue. Its vertical pupils fixed on Harry as it hissed.

Harry panicked. He now suspected Edmund was simply playing a prank on him. If Edmund had some complaint, Harry would gladly change. There was no need to scare him with such a huge snake.

Seeing Harry frozen in fear, Edmund decided to push harder. He guided the python to slither toward Harry. The front half of its body rose from the floor.

"Do not come any closer!"

Harry shouted in terror. But the sound that came from his mouth was not human. It was a chilling hiss, cold and cruel enough to make the others' skin crawl. The python obediently stopped and moved no closer.

Harry let out a breath. He thought Edmund had controlled it and did not realize his own words had given the order.

Then he noticed everyone else staring at him in shock.

"Harry," Fred said, astonished, "you are a Parselmouth? You never told us."

"I'm a what?"

"A Parselmouth," George said. "You can talk to snakes. Salazar Slytherin was a Parselmouth."

Harry was completely confused. Then he remembered the trip to the zoo when he was small, and the boa constrictor that told him it had never been to Brazil.

Edmund interrupted his memory.

"Then the hissing you heard that day was probably from a snake, Harry."

Edmund had heard Harry speak to the snake just now. Perhaps because of his bloodline, he could understand what Harry had said.

One sentence was not enough. He needed more vocabulary if he wanted to communicate with the basilisk later.

He looked at Harry with a friendly smile. Edmund seemed approachable, but Harry shivered anyway, as if something terrible was about to happen.

"Harry, I am very interested in Parseltongue. Could you teach me?"

"But I do not know how to teach it," Harry said awkwardly. "I only did it by instinct."

"That is fine. I have a few special methods."

Edmund did not mind at all. He looked delighted.

"Ah! Edmund! Help!"

The twins and the two girls stared in shock as Harry cried out in the middle of the room. Edmund's transfigured python had wrapped tightly around him from shoulders to ankles.

"Harry, do not speak to me," Edmund said patiently. "Speak to the snake. Say different words. Do not keep repeating the same sentence."

This was Edmund's special method: bind Harry in the python's coils and force him to communicate with it continuously.

Trapped in the snake's coils, Harry obeyed Edmund's demands. Through tears and sniffles, he began producing scattered words and trying to communicate.

The sight of Harry sniffling miserably unsettled the others. One by one, they made a private decision never to provoke Edmund too badly.

Fred and George were especially certain. Just moments ago, they had still been thinking about how to successfully prank Edmund.

Now they decided to forget it. Some people could not be provoked.

For an entire hour, Harry remained on the edge of collapse. In the end, Edmund finally released him after realizing Harry had started repeating the same few phrases and had no new words left.

"Edmund, have mercy."

Harry walked to Edmund with a face full of misery. His clothes were covered in slime, and there was a faint foul smell clinging to him.

Holding his nose, Edmund cast a Cleaning Charm and restored Harry's clothes, removing the stench. Then he spoke with great seriousness.

"All of this is for the greater good, Harry. You must be prepared to dedicate yourself to magic."

Harry looked at him resentfully.

This was a dedication to magic, yes. But why was he the one dedicating himself to Edmund's magic?

He kept that thought to himself. After experiencing Edmund's methods, Harry was certain that if Edmund remembered his complaint later, he would regret it.

Edmund knew Harry would not agree to continue today. In any case, he had already collected a decent amount of Parseltongue vocabulary and needed time to digest it.

For the rest of the session, Edmund resumed normal teaching. To compensate Harry, he also taught him Levicorpus.

That improved Harry's mood a little.

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