harry.exe has stopped working ━ hp x tmr | lv

5.

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.”