Shadows || A Severus Snape Fanfiction

Chapter 2 - Parselmouth

One Year Earlier...

Entering the Great Hall for the first lesson of the club, little second year Asha was buzzing with excitement to finally try duelling. She weaved her way to the front of the crowd, only to have her smile replaced by a scowl as she saw it was Lockhart who was going to be 'teaching' them. He seemed to have compensated for his evident lack of wizarding abilities with a revolting passion for himself. About ten minutes into the lesson, Asha's scowl was replaced by a satisfied smirk, having watched Snape send that poor excuse for a wizard flying to the other side of the room.

Asha partnered up with Maive Cosgrove, the only one of her friends she'd convinced to come along to the club. Asha easily disarmed Maive three times in a row before letting her have a free shot. Asha noticed other kids were now jinxing each other, which looked very tempting but she decided Maive probably wouldn't take it too well.

To Asha's amusement, the 'duelling' quickly got out of hand and Lockhart decided to give the most ridiculously poor attempt at demonstrating a blocking spell. He actually dropped his wand! She noticed Snape seemed to be enjoying Lockhart's display of ludicrously poor duelling skills as much as everyone else was.

Still smirking, Snape called Draco Malfoy and Harry Potter up to the stage and that's when things got strange. Malfoy managed to conjure a snake, which Asha thought was a pretty shit duelling strategy, although she supposed she didn't actually know how to get rid of it. As the snake was slithering towards Justin Finch-Fletchly, Harry yelled at it to leave Justin alone. To Asha's (and apparently everyone else's) surprise, the snake went limp. At the time, Asha put this down to the failure of Malfoy's novice magic.

The lesson seemed to end far too quickly and Asha left the hall dreaming up duelling tactics and noting the spells she wanted to work on. However, very quickly she became aware of the ominous muttering that was emanating from the mass of students. She heard a Ravenclaw girl nervously say "Potter's a Parselmouth!" and a Slytherin boy whisper "I can't believe he was trying to get that snake to off a Mudblood in front of the whole fucking year!" A sense of unease washed over Asha and nestled itself in the pit of her stomach.

That evening as she sat in the Great Hall, her mind was racing. Harry was a Parselmouth? What even was that? People keep saying he spoke in 'Parseltongue'... But she understood him... Or did she just imagine it? There was no way she was going to tell anyone about this. Asha wasn't one to confide in people. In fact, that might be the understatement of the century. She was very careful and purposeful about what she portrayed to the rest of the world. To her teachers, Asha was bright, hardworking and respectful. To her friends, she was bubbly, compassionate and, overall, a normal Hufflepuff girl. Inside, however, things were much darker. She was shrewd, calculating and swirling with thick emotions that constantly needed reigning in and locking down.

The next morning Asha woke early and made her way to the library before breakfast. It was a place she knew well. She found people tended to underestimate what you could learn from books. She had taught herself a whole array of interesting spells just from following guides in textbooks. She had even started trying to learn non-verbal magic from an old tome she found at the back of Flitwick's charms classroom.

It took her a surprisingly long time to find the book she was looking for. It was called A Complete Guide to Parseltongue, first published in 1913. She was about to check-out the book and had taken a step in the direction of Madam Pince when she changed her mind. She didn't want it written in the school records that she had suddenly sparked an interest in Parseltongue - Asha had an ominous feeling about the whole thing. Instead, she quietly enchanted her school bag with a simple shielding spell that theoretically should stop the charms around the library from detecting the removal of the unregistered book. She stuffed A Complete Guide to Parseltongue inside the bag and strolled out of the library.

Asha refrained from looking through the book until later that night when the common room had emptied. She turned to the section on Parselmouths and immediately saw something that made her chest swell with nervous anticipation: Parselmouth is a trait that is inherited, not a skill that is learned. If it was a rare genetic trait, it might be the clue she needed to figure out who her parents were. Further down the page, another sentence caught her eye: 'Most experts agree that the only remaining lineage of Parselmouths is that of Salazar Slytherin, the other known bloodlines having died out over twelve centuries ago.' Asha frowned. But wasn't Voldemort the last surviving heir of Slytherin? Hadn't she heard that somewhere? And if she and Harry were both Parselmouths, did that mean they were related? Surely that wasn't possible...

Asha wasn't going to be able to sleep until she had answers. She needed to find information on the Slytherin lineage - surely the trusty library had something about that. She slipped out of the common room and crept along the gloomy stone corridors by the light of her illuminated wand, her sock-clad feet making no sound at all. Once she made it to the library she began sifting through the shelves. After what felt like hours of scouring texts on the history of Hogwarts and books such as 'The Greatest Wizards of All Time', she had found nothing of use. To her immense frustration, none of the books went into great enough detail on Salazar Slytherin's descendants.

Just as she was flicking through a book called 'Little Know Facts About the Hogwarts Founders', she heard the horrifying sound of the library door swinging open and closed. Instantly her heart rate doubled and she desperately thought Knox! (At this point she didn't have much experience with non-verbal magic). Mercifully the light from her wand extinguished and she crouched behind a desk, listening hard. The patter of soft footsteps drew closer, coming down the main aisle. Asha, now very conscious of the sound of her breathing, stood up and slowly crept to the back end of the shelves, concealing herself behind a stacks of books. No longer able to hear footsteps, she poked her head around the shelf to see the back of a tall, dark figure bent over a book, silhouetted by a soft glow from his wand. He hadn't noticed her. Making totally sure the figure wasn't about to turn around, Asha waited a few seconds before tiptoeing her way down the back wall of the library in the direction of the exit. Her fingers were inches away from the door when -

"Did you really believe you were being that conspicuous?" came a deep voice.

Shit. The looming figure of Professor Snape emerged from the darkness, the light from his wand growing in intensity as he pointed it in her face.

"Explain yourself," he demanded.

"I -", Asha thought quickly, remembering she was still clutching the book, "-I only just remembered I have an essay due tomorrow that I haven't started" she lied easily, "I thought Madam Pince wouldn't mind if I borrowed this book." She held up Little Known Facts About the Hogwarts Founders. "I was going to bring it back tomorrow and check it out properly I swear!" It was easier than Asha would've liked to admit to feign the fear in her voice. Snape glared down his hooked nose at her with a look of disdain.

"It's not the book that's the issue, stupid girl. It's the fact you are wondering about the castle well after curfew," he snapped. "Name?"

"Asha Winters" she replied in her meekest voice.

"House?"

For a moment, Asha considered saying 'Gryffindor' but quickly realised that was an unnecessary risk.

"Hufflepuff," she admitted.

"Why, am I not surprised" Snape muttered icily. "Ten points from Hufflepuff. Now get back to your dormitory. Immediately."