The Parselmouth

Headmaster Phineas Black was having a most unsatisfactory morning.

The ceiling of the Great Hall was leaking again, and a demon had taken up residence in the second floor lavatories. To make matters worse, some enterprising jokester had charmed the potions classroom into a quicksand bog that had nearly swallowed a dozen first-years. And to top it all off, two of the new teachers had been reading about some pesky muggles called Marx and Engels and were threatening to form a union.

Headmaster Black rubbed the bridge of his nose and took a swallow of coffee laced with firewhisky. One thing at a time, he told himself, and reached for the estimate that the contractors had provided for repairing the ceiling.

"Excuse me, Professor?"

Black looked up to see a tousled brown head peering round the door, and suppressed a groan. "Scamander. What have you done this time?"

The boy blinked at him. "What, sir?"

"I mean," Black said through gritted teeth, "what have you done to get yourself sent to my office? If it's a repeat of the flobberworm incident – "

The boy ducked his head and scuffed his feet on the floor. "I'm not being punished," he mumbled. "I-I've come to talk to you."

Black looked at him in surprise. The Scamander boy generally tended to view the staff with the wariness that most people reserved for nundus and lethifolds, so if something had brought him to the Headmaster's office, it must be serious indeed.

"Very well, Mr. Scamander. Take a seat."

Scamander edged into the room and perched on the very edge of his chair. He glanced nervously at the Headmaster, the portraits, and the bookshelves lining the walls, before his gaze finally settled on the wolf skull that Headmaster Black used as a paper weight.

Black began to grow impatient. "Out with it, boy!" he snapped. "I don't have all day!"

The boy flinched and seemed to shrink in on himself. Then he took a deep breath, apparently gathering his nerve.

"I think…" he hesitated, and swallowed hard. "I think someone's trapped, sir."

"Trapped?" Black stared at him in alarm. "What do you mean? Has some idiot shut himself in the vanishing cabinet again?"

Scamander shook his head. "He's in the basement, sir, I could hear him through the walls. I think – I think he might be stuck in the pipes."

Black sighed. "Don't be absurd, boy. The pipes are not nearly large enough to fit a person."

"Oh, but he's not a person, sir," Scamander said at once. "He's a snake."

"A what?"

"A snake, sir. I think there's a snake trapped in the pipes and I don't know how to get him out."

Headmaster Black stared at the boy for a moment, took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and then opened them again.

"Mr. Scamander," he said levelly, "is this your idea of a joke?"

"A joke?" Scamander looked up in indignation. "Sir, I wouldn't joke about this!"

Black glowered at the boy, building up to a towering rage. Insolent little whelp, wasting my time with this nonsense. He opened his mouth, about to unleash the tirade of the century, when Scamander spoke again.

"Sir, please!" he said urgently. "We've got to get him out. He told me he hasn't eaten in ages, we've got to feed him – "

Headmaster Black sputtered to a halt, completely taken aback. "He – told you? Mr. Scamander, do you mean to say that you are a parselmouth?"

Scamander shook his head. "No, but I've got a conversational primer and I've been teaching myself. Lucy and Izzie say I've got a terrible accent though."

"And these are…other Parselmouths? Students?"

"No, they're grass snakes, sir. Anyway, Izzie got loose in the basement one evening, and I was walking about and calling to her, only a different snake answered instead. He kept saying he was hungry, and that he hadn't anything to eat."

Black opened his mouth, hesitated, and then closet it again.

"Anyway, I asked how I could get him out, and he said something about the egg of the great snake and a secret nest."

Black stared. "Eggs? It's laying eggs in there?"

"No, sir, I think the egg is supposed to come from somewhere else. He's waiting for it, he can't eat until it gets there – "

"Mr. Scamander," Black interrupted, "while this is a fascinating insight into the thought processes of reptiles, I fail to see why this cannot be handled by the caretaker – "

"No, that's not all, sir! He said the Great Snake made the nest out of stones. And when I asked who the Great Snake was, he said he was warm and walked on legs!" Scamander looked at him expectantly.

"Scamander, I'm asking you again – "

"Don't you see, sir? The great snake isn't a snake, it's a wizard!" The boy was on his feet, a fevered look in his eyes. "Snakes are cold-blooded, so a wizard would feel warm to them. Snakes don't make nests out of stone – but wizards build stone buildings. And the egg – that's only a rough translation, it could also be a son or a child." Scamander looked at him desperately. "Sir, someone trapped that snake in there on purpose and made him wait all by himself for years and years!"

Headmaster Black opened his mouth to deliver a scathing retort, then hesitated. Could it be true? Some great beast lurking deep in the bowels of the castle, waiting…there had been those rumours, after all, when he was a boy – but no, that was absurd. This was Hogwarts, for Merlin's sake – the very idea was ludicrous! The boy's imaginings must be catching.

"That's enough!" he snapped, getting up from his seat and glaring down at the boy. "Mr. Scamander, you have come into my office uninvited, led me to believe that a student was in danger, wasted my time on a ridiculous story about eggs and nests, and come up with a fairytale that even a Muggle would find ridiculous. Have you quite finished?"

Scamander stared at him, wide-eyed. "But – but sir, we can't just leave him – "

"No, I do not!" the Headmaster shouted. "I am the Headmaster of this school! My job is to keep you hooligans from killing each other and bringing the castle down on our heads, and ensure that you get some semblance of an education. It is not to attend to the welfare of every rat and mouse and lizard that scuttles into this building. And if I hear another word about this snake of yours, I shall send an exterminator to deal with him! Do I make myself clear?"

Scamander took a step back, his face pale. Then he turned and hurried from the room.

Black watched him go, and felt a twinge of remorse. Perhaps he had been too hard on the boy…but then he remembered the stack of paperwork waiting for him and shook his head grimly.

He sat down and took a swig of firewhisky straight from the bottle.

"Children," he muttered. "The nonsense they come up with."