#parseltounge has double S's at the end of a word if it ends in an S

[the-kingofsnakes]

Chapter 1: The Abrupt Alliance

The letters followed them from his glass tank in the cupboard under the stairs, to the motel two towns over and finally to a rickety shack in the middle of a swamp that Uncle Vernon had somehow found. The letters outshined the fact that it was now his birthday. He wasn't surprised though since his birthday is forgotten every year. The only good thing about them leaving the house abruptly to escape the letters was that no one had thought to load his tank with them so he was free to roam around the room in his skin. It only took Dudley seconds to realize that the most integral piece of their lives was missing once Vernon had announced there were only two beds.

"That's fine. Harry can sleep in his tank like always." Dudley replied with his mouth full of sausage. 

Petunia had taken to cooking the others a meal of thick sausage and grits on the stove while Harry snuck in a few pieces of leftover broccoli he had stashed in his trouser pockets before they left. His teeth tingle when Dudley suddenly wafted his extra sausage in his face. Both completely aware that Harry wasn't allowed to eat it as they kept him on a strict vegetable scraps only diet. Which basically meant that whenever Petunia cooked vegetables with their meals, once every few weeks or so, Harry was allowed to eat a few handfuls of whatever they had after the plates had been sitting in the sink and doused in water for rinsing during which most of the scraps were washed down the drain.

His scales vibrated over his skin as he watched his family dig into the food once it was fully cooked. He ached to change into his snake form, knowing he was much faster in it than his human one, and steal a bit of meat from one of them. He hadn't had any since they first found out he could turn into a snake when he was seven. He wasn't even sure why he changed forms anymore as it was so long ago, only that ever since then his bed in his cupboard had been replaced with a table and a medium fish tank Uncle Vernon had found after the incident. 

According to his Aunt and Uncle he had bit Dudley's foot and had sent him straight to the hospital due to poisoning. The doctor had said that whatever bit him had been "highly venomous" and "not of this region" only to advise him to stay away from the snake he found if he came across it again and urged the adults to call the humane society so they can relocate the snake back to its natural habitat if they found it again. The bite mark from the wound suggested that the snake had been an eastern indigo snake.

It was only years later when Harry happened to be in the library at school that he had found out that the eastern indigo snake, while large in size, was actually non-venomous and typically ate small mammals and eggs. He was certain that his Aunt knew this as well since she was the one that implemented his vegetarian diet after his initial transformation.

Unfortunately, when he asked her why he could change into a snake she just sneered at him and told him it was a repulsive family trait that he got from his mother. Which made his Uncle pipe up that his father wasn't much better since he was a damn binder. He still wasn't sure how his father was a stationary item but had just chalked his Uncle's words up to him being too dumb to comprehend what the adult actually meant.

His bangs tickled the tops of his eyes, breaking him out of his reverie as he pushed them out of his face for what felt like the tenth time that night. His unruly red hair was a constant problem in his life and no matter how much gel Aunt Petunia tried to slather on it always somehow managed to look like the broken bristles of a witch's broom he had seen in comics in the school newspaper. His eyes weren't any better unfortunately. Instead of having normal colored eyes, his were yellow like an owl, with a ring of dark green around them. The Dursley's made him wear obnoxiously big circular glasses that didn't even have lenses in them and told people he wore colored contacts to cover up the abnormality. He rather liked his eyes though, as they were the only constant in either of his forms.

Though his scar, he thought, was the worst of all. It sat rather proudly on the left side of his forehead and looked like a burst of silvery white lightning that refused to conform to the rest of his chestnut skin tone. His hair refused to cover it no matter how long it got and seemed almost personally offended when Harry would try to force it to do so, sticking out even more with renewed static from his hands coursing through the strands and encouraged their defiance.

The sudden kick to his shins that Dudley gave him stirred him from his thoughts. Groaning in pain, he glared at his cousin.

"What?" Harry asked through clenched teeth in English. The language sounded foul on his tongue,  like week old moldy vegetables that he only ate because he didn't have anything else available. He much preferred to speak like the snakes that came into Aunt Petunia's garden but he also knew the others frowned upon it. They said it was unnatural and horrid but Harry thought the same thing about English so he supposed fair was fair.

"Mum said you get the corner of the floor and I get the other bed." Dudley smirked with a haughty reply.

Harry let out a small huff in response and wished he'd speak to him like he used to before he turned into Vernon's little soldier. Sure Dudley had been mean to him when his parents were around but that was because Vernon and Petunia were horrible people and could be quite scary to a small child. Before Harry turned into a snake and bit him for being a dunce though they used to use snake-speak with each other all the time and had been quite close when behind doors. 

He sighed in defeat and went to curl up on the floor as Petunia cleaned the dishes all the while, humming an annoying tune. He knew it was a nervous tick of hers from years of exposure to it and that it often meant bad things were about to happen to him. However, nothing did this time, and the other three residents of the creaky cabin lulled themselves to sleep eventually.

Once everyone else fell asleep Harry got two of the letters he had managed to snag from the air before they left to read their contents. He winced when he felt Dudley sit beside him and expected a blow to the head only for him to whisper hastily to get on with it. Both of them held their breath in anticipation as Harry handed one to his cousin and opened them at the same time. Bafflement was the only thing he felt as Harry read the contents of the letter in his hands:

Dear Mr. D. Dursley,

We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Please find enclosed a list of all necessary books and equipment.

Term begins on the 1st of September. We await your owl no later than 31st July.

Yours sincerely,

Minerva Mcgonagall 

Deputy Headmistress

"Dudley... this is about you. Why is it about you? You're not…" Like me, wrong, different, he wanted to say to his cousin but couldn't bring himself to utter the words.

"What the bloody hell are you talking about? This thing clearly says your name and not mine! I'm not like you. Stop making fun of me Harry!" Dudley whispered loudly.

"I'm not I swear! See, look."

Harry shoved his letter in Dudley's hands and his own letter was shoved none to gently at him. He wasn't sure if it was the force of the shove that Dudley gave him or the fact that he was so thin that made him almost go backwards. Split second panic rose in him as he started to fall over only for his wrist closest to his cousin to be pulled back gently which Harry assumed was a reflex for the other when it wasn't acknowledged. His cousin favored skimming his own letter instead and Harry saw the exact moment Dudley realized Vernon wouldn't show mercy due to their blood relation.

"He's gonna kill me." Dudley whispered out.

"So I'm… magic? You're magic? We're both magic?" Harry asked to confirm the mass confusion in his head.

"Apparently. It doesn't make sense though. I mean, I get you... but me? I haven't done anything magical in my life. I'm perfectly, boringly ordinary just like him." 

It was strange how one word, like him, could be filled with love one second then so much hate and fear it consumed your very core the next. Harry was thankful for it though because for the first time in their lives since the accident he felt like they were finally on the same page on how awful the elder Dursleys really were. Petunia was more passive but Vernon was known to favor his fists more than words and knew where to strike so as to not raise suspicion. 

"Well according to this you aren't. Maybe you blocked it out when you did something magical because you thought he wouldn't love you anymore?"

"He won't. He hates you. We both know he does. Mum though… I think she likes you, or wants to at least. Like maybe she's afraid to show it because she's afraid of him? I mean, it wouldn't be very far fetched considering how he treats you. Would it?"

Harry honestly wasn't sure how to respond to that. Especially since Aunt Petunia was the one who restricted his diet and kept him locked up most of the time. While Vernon doled out the more physical punishments to him and thought that keeping him locked up was a pointless endeavor. 

"Are you afraid of him?" 

"Currently? Terrified." 

Harry just nodded beside him since he wasn't sure if he should say anything else. Was there a truce between them now that they were similar or was Dudley going to deny it and still torture him? Deciding it was better to not ask, he took off his glasses, frames really as they had no lenses, and readied himself to curl up on the floor, debating whether or not to sleep in his scales when Dudley spoke up once more.

"You know you could…. Um… I mean the bed is big enough for the both of us I think. Only if you want that is?"

Harry blinked slowly in return and felt like the world had spun up around him only to jerk him back to the ground just as quick. His brain tried to play out all the scenarios that this could be a trick, after all they were in the middle of nowhere and practically no one knew he existed other than these Hogwarts people. They could leave him here the next morning and Dudley would act like Harry never even existed just like always. He wanted to say yes. If he were being honest with himself then he would even go so far as to say that he wanted them to be friends… eventually.

He debated on what to tell Dudley that wouldn't be overtly rude, as in: 'No, we can't both fit because you're a giant pig', since he's pretty sure the other boy was trying to extend some semblance of peace before the oncoming storm that was Vernon Dursley. So instead he just nodded, turned into his snake form and allowed Dudley to pick him up to set him on the bed gently. He honestly didn't know the other boy could be gentle, especially not when it came to him.

"Thanksss" Harry replied thoughtlessly once Dudley let go.

"You're welcome."

Harry knew that if he were in his skin then he'd be smiling at Dudley's automatic hiss, however small it was of a reply. At the moment though he was too tired to do anything else, including acknowledging his cousins' fumbling tongue, other than curl up under the other pillow so that he was encased in complete darkness and close his eyes as Dudley got dressed. He listened to the roughness of the clothes as they moved over Dudley's skin and could taste the scent of them on the air when he flicked his tongue out. 

"Hey Harry?" Dudley whispered as he pulled the covers over him once he got into bed.

Harry poked his black head out from under the pillow and glanced over at his cousin. He was certain that if snakes could look drowsy then he would look exhausted. The bruises on his ribs were burning from all the moving around he had to do in their hasty escape from the letters and he was fairly certain one of them was broken. His stomach growled in contempt once more as he waited on Dudley to speak. Even his scales somehow ached from exhaustion and he couldn't for the life of him remember the last time he had drank something. He knew if he looked in the mirror in his skin form that his eyes would have dark circles under them and his ribs would be sticking out under Dudley's hand-me-downs.

"What do you thinksss gonna happen tomorrow? They aren't going to leave usss out here are- are they?" His voice quivered with fear as the words were spoken.

"I'm not sure. Guess we'll see what happensss in the morning."

"Suppose you're right." Dudley hissed back in a defeated tone. He was sounding more and more like a scared child with each second that passed.

"Night Harry." He mumbled out against his pillow after a brief silence. The words came out thick with the general haze of sleep ringing in them. 

Harry didn't bother replying and decided instead to move out from under the pillow and curl up near Dudley's form as he fell into the sweet embrace of slumber. He didn't really like sleeping out in the open but he figured it showed that he had Dudley's back since he was faster than the other in case the adults tried anything during the night.