Chapter Text
Like most things in Harry's adult life, it started with a bleeding heart and escalated quickly out of control.
One day, he found a corn snake abandoned by the bins at the end of his street; the next, he's trying to keep hold of a moody 14-foot reticulated python while Draco Malfoy strokes it with a look of nervous fascination, and he thinks he might actually burst a blood vessel with the effort it's taking not to make a dick joke in front of twenty children.
Sunshine the python – named for her vivid yellow colouring, not her sunny disposition – tears her eyes away from Malfoy to look at Harry. Stop shaking, she hisses grumpily.
He hadn't realised his hands were shaking, but they are. He shifts her considerable weight higher in his arms so that he can clench them into fists. Malfoy makes Harry about as nervous as Sunshine seems to be making Malfoy.
They see each other semi-regularly nowadays, since Neville started dating Pansy Parkinson and their two friend groups slowly converged, but always among large groups of people, always the two of them shooting each other wary glances across large rooms, carefully not getting too close without several other people in between them as a buffer. Harry suspects Malfoy has different reasons for the avoidance than he does.
Malfoy is exactly Harry's type, a fact for which the cause and effect is very much a chicken-and-egg situation. It had only taken a few months after realising he was bisexual for Harry to look back at his childhood rivalry and think, oh.
When Pansy had suggested, that uniquely Slytherin smile on her face, that Harry should bring some of the animals from his accidental reptile rescue in for the kids at Draco's work – like he’d needed the reminder that Malfoy had become a respected paediatric healer on top of his unfairly good looks – he'd known it was probably a risky idea. But she'd picked her setup well, because what kind of arsehole says no to sick kids?
They're watching him now with wide eyes, children of various ages and degrees of illness, staring at the snake in Harry's arms, transfixed.
"Is it slimy?" A small girl asks, her nose crinkling around the large purple boils covering most of her face.
Harry opens his mouth to respond, but Malfoy gets there first. "Not slimy," he says kindly, angling his body so that the kids can see the backs of his fingers, his knuckles dragging lightly down Sunshine's back. "She's smooth. Sort of silky." His grey eyes flick up to meet Harry's, and he braces himself for the shiver that always runs down his spine when they make eye contact. "Can they touch her?" he asks, quietly so the children don't hear, in case the answer is no.
He looks at Sunshine, her pink tongue fluttering idly as she watches them. Can the children touch you? he asks.
She lifts her great head, a better approximation of an eyeroll than he'd ever expected snakes to be capable of. If they must.
Keep your head on this side, Harry cautions.
I will not eat the small ones, Harry, Sunshine says, but she slides across his shoulders to keep her head away from the children anyway, seeming to understand that the request was more for their comfort than their safety.
It had been a delightful surprise to discover that snakes not only had individual personalities, but that some of them understood humour, and were observant enough about human behaviour that they were actually pretty good conversationalists. He’d discovered fairly quickly that different types of snakes had different levels of intelligence, but even the corn snake he’d found first was capable of telling Harry what he needed, and now that he’s fully recovered from the ordeal of being left in a plastic tub behind a wheelie bin has even started taking an interest in the world beyond his next meal.
Sunshine bumps her face gently against Harry’s neck as he walks her around the kids, letting them gently stroke her back and making occasional waspish comments about their hands being too rough or too sticky that are carefully not accompanied by requests to stop.
“Why are you making that noise?” the girl with the boils asks as Harry tells the python to stop complaining.
He opens his mouth to answer, but once again Malfoy is already answering. “He’s talking to the snake,” he says patiently. “Harry can speak snake language.”
“Cool!” pronounce several of the children, but Harry’s far too busy processing Malfoy calling him Harry. His rational brain is desperately trying to argue that he couldn’t exactly call him Potter in front of the children, but did that really mean he had to make it sound so fond?
“Can you teach us?” the girl asks.
Harry hesitates. It’s a good question. “I’m… actually not sure,” he tells her. “I didn’t learn how to speak it. It’s an ability I was born with, like being a wizard.” It’s oversimplifying, of course, but he’s not about to explain the whole Horcrux thing to a bunch of children in varying states of lucidity. “A friend of mine learned how to copy a few words, so I suppose it must be possible to learn how to speak it, but I don’t know if you’d be able to understand it.”
He looks up at Malfoy. He’s not sure how long the hospital had set aside for him, and he’s brought several other animals with him, but he’s enjoying this more than he thought he would. “We could do an experiment to find out?” he suggests.
Malfoy’s fond smile is worth more than the excited chattering from his gaggle of children. “That could be fun,” he agrees.
“Okay,” Harry says eagerly. “I’ll try to teach you all how to say hello in snake language. You guys can say hello to Sunshine and we’ll see if she understands. Then she can say hello back and we’ll see if it sounds the same. Sound good?”
The children all agree that it does, so Harry Summons a chair. Get off me, he tells Sunshine as he sits. You’re heavy.
Weakling, she retorts, taking her sweet time to unwrap herself from his shoulders and curl up on the floor next to the chair, head peeking upwards from the pile of her body like a periscope.
Harry slowly coaches the children through the word hello in Parseltongue, trying not to look at the earnest expression on Malfoy’s face as he joins in.
He looks at Sunshine when they’ve all parroted it back to him. Make sense? he asks her.
She flicks her tongue at him. Barely.
“Okay, she understood that!” he paraphrases. “Now we’ll see if you can understand her.” Say hello back, he directs at her.
Another slow, fluttery tongue flick. Hello, back, she says, her voice slow and deliberate.
Harry rolls his eyes. “All right, well, she said two words there, but one of them was hello. Did it sound the same?”
The children make confused, noncommittal noises. Harry raises an eyebrow at Malfoy. “I… maybe?” he answers. “It was similar, but if I hadn’t known exactly what sounds I was listening for I don’t think I would have recognised it.”
It’s interesting; Harry’s wondered about it, idly, a few times since Ron managed to open the Chamber of Secrets. If Parseltongue can be mimicked the way Ron had, can it be learned, and if it can, why don’t more people speak it? It can’t just be about the stigma around bloody Slytherin. Someone, at some point in history, must have told the right kind of person that if they just learned a new language, snakes were pretty good at chatting shit. Sure, your average wild snake probably didn’t have much to chat about, other than their burrow or their last meal, but surely for some line of research somewhere that would have been worth a few years of study.
They try one more time, with similar results, and Harry’s definitely interested in further study, but he suspects the children will get bored of shouting hello at a snake if he drags it on any further so he tells them he’ll look into it and let Healer Malfoy know if there’s any update.
“Healer Draco,” the smallest boy corrects him.
Harry looks at Malfoy, more amused than surprised, but for some reason Malfoy looks a little embarrassed, like Harry’s discovered something he’d been trying to hide. He gives Harry a nonchalant little shrug, a slight challenging sort of edge to it like he’s saying okay, so sometimes I’m a little bit human, what are you going to do about it?
He knows what he’d like to do about it, but there’s children present, and despite the new side of Healer Draco Harry’s seeing today he’s still never given any indication he’d be receptive to that kind of thing.
“Are you guys ready to see another animal, then?” Harry asks when he’s recovered just a little bit of composure.
Malfoy steps closer while Harry picks Sunshine back up, close enough that Harry gets a whiff of spice from his cologne, undercut by the smoky tang of the Lapsang Souchong tea he’d been drinking when Harry arrived. “Could I… hold her?” he asks under his breath.
Harry blinks at him, surprised. Malfoy worries the pink swell of his lower lip between his teeth. “I just… my last experience with a big snake was… well, you know.”
Nagini hangs in the air between them, unsaid.
Harry finds Sunshine’s head in the pile of coils in his arms. Can Malfoy hold you? he asks. He’s a bit nervous because he used to know a big snake who did some horrible things for a horrible human. Maybe you can help him.
If he promises he will not drop me, Sunshine hisses, sounding bored but already moving towards Malfoy, her tongue fluttering inquisitively.
Malfoy holds out his arms and Harry can see them shaking. Easy, he tells Sunshine, holding her steady as they slowly approach. He holds Malfoy’s eyes until he takes a deep breath and nods. Then Harry reaches out and takes hold of his forearms.
He’s prepared for it this time, for the little shudder when they touch, the pulling sensation like a hook in his navel. Sunshine isn’t, though, so she withdraws slightly with a little hiss of, be still. Malfoy swallows.
She goes slowly, careful to keep her head a respectable distance from Malfoy’s even when she’s draping herself over his shoulders, leaning the majority of her weight on their clasped arms. She wraps her tail loosely around his waist, anchoring herself, and lifts her head to face him. Is he all right? she asks.
Harry smiles. “She’s asking if you’re all right,” he relays. Malfoy looks up at him in surprise; Harry shrugs, trying not to jostle the part of his arms she’s resting on. “I told her you were nervous.”
Malfoy cocks his head to one side as he looks down at the great snake, the ghost of a smile creeping over his face. “I’m all right,” he says, addressing Sunshine directly, Harry translating as he speaks. “It helps to know you’re concerned.”
I was frightened of humans before I knew Harry, Sunshine tells him. Harry can’t help but lift his eyebrows as he translates; she’s never talked about this with him. He’d known she was afraid of him at the beginning, when she would retreat to the cave in the back of her enclosure whenever he came into the room and never respond to him when he spent hours sat in front of it, talking Parseltongue about everything and nothing until she finally started talking back. If he had not been patient with me, I would not have this life.
Harry wouldn’t have done much different, if she’d never got used to him. He probably would have stopped trying to talk to her, but she’d still live in the same enclosure, be fed the same meals, and he’s sure she knows it. The knowledge that this life she’s grateful for is mostly his friendship brings a lump to Harry’s throat.
Love you too, he tells her.
Shut up, she responds without taking her eyes off Malfoy.
They stand like that for a few minutes, Harry holding Malfoy’s arms and translating increasingly casual conversation between them, involving the children as much as he can. Malfoy is surprisingly open with them about his nerves, so Harry follows his lead, leaning into the lesson for them that it’s okay to be scared, to put themselves into scary situations until they feel a little bit less scary. It makes his heart ache a little, thinking of how Malfoy learned those lessons himself, of how incredible it is that after all of that he is so kind and patient that the children he cares for clearly idolise him.
Eventually, Malfoy is comfortable enough to take his arms away from Harry’s, to hold her on his own; after another minute or so he gets up the courage to stroke the underside of her chin. “Thank you,” he tells them both.
Harry takes Sunshine back, his heart thumping in his chest. He knows what he’s about to say is such a bad idea, but he can feel it bubbling out of him anyway. “You know you’re always welcome at my place,” he says, quietly enough that the words are just for Malfoy. “If you want to keep up the exposure therapy. Hold some different snakes, you know.”
A curious, frozen sort of expression crosses Malfoy’s face at the offer, and he’s silent for so long that Harry starts to think he’s said something wrong. Maybe Malfoy was just being civil to him because of the kids, maybe he does still hate–
“All right,” Malfoy says, breaking into a soft smile. Harry feels his cheeks flush.
What is happening to you, Sunshine asks, flicking her tongue feather-light against Harry’s hot cheek.
He shrugs her away from his face. Nothing. Now get back in the carrier and when we get home I’ll give you a rabbit, Harry promises.
Sunshine eyes him stubbornly. Two rabbits, she counters.
Harry snorts. You’re not having two rabbits, he tells her. You wouldn’t be able to move for a week.
I wouldn’t have to move for a week.
Just get in the tub, Harry pleads. It’s not like it’s unpleasant in there, with the multiple layers of enlargements and temperature charms he’d added. They both know she’ll be asleep in less than five minutes.
He looks up from her answering hiss – more an aggrieved sigh than actual language – to find Malfoy watching him, his grey eyes dancing with amusement. “Are you arguing with a snake, Potter?”
Harry huffs. “Well, she won’t–” he forces himself to stop, certain that revealing he’s being held hostage by a sentient yellow sausage will make the gleeful look on Malfoy’s face even worse. “I’m not arguing,” he insists. I’m not arguing, he repeats in Parseltongue. Get in the tub.
Sunshine flicks her tongue slowly. Better be a big rabbit, she grumbles. But she gets in the tub.
“All right,” Harry says, as casually as he can manage when Malfoy’s still looking at him with a laugh behind his eyes. “You guys want to see a dragon?”
It’s maybe a cruel way to introduce Blackbeard the elderly bearded dragon; the children’s eyes light up at the question and then drift into confusion and disappointment when Harry lifts him out of the carrier, comfortably fitting in his hands with no wings or fire to speak of.
Harry laughs. “This is Blackbeard,” he introduces, holding him high enough that he can give a slightly judgmental look down his nose at the waiting children. “He’s a bearded dragon, which as you might have noticed is a type of lizard, not a true dragon. They wouldn’t let me bring a real dragon into the hospital, I think because it wouldn’t fit through the doors.”
He gets a few tentative giggles for that. “I’m kidding,” he clarifies for them. “I don’t have any dragons. You need special training to work with them. I have met some dragons before, though – I even rode one, once.”
Malfoy scoffs. “You did not ride a dragon,” he insists. “I’ll concede that you flew with one in fourth year, but you were definitely riding a broom. Stop filling my patients’ heads with nonsense.”
Harry flashes him a grin. “Actually not the dragon I meant,” he says. “We rescued one from Gringotts in ’97. Right after we escaped from the Manor. They covered it up. It’s a long story.”
Malfoy stares at him for a long time. “You are utterly ridiculous,” he says faintly after a while, shaking his head. “You’re the most ridiculous man I’ve ever met.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“That’s not how it was meant,” Malfoy retorts, but he’s smiling.
Blackbeard shifts restlessly in Harry’s hands, as though to remind them that he’s supposed to be the centre of attention here.
The kids have a great time rolling blueberries across the floor and watching Blackbeard scramble after them, his scaly feet struggling for purchase on the smooth stone floor and making them laugh. They listen with rapt attention as he explains that lizards don’t speak Parseltongue, so he has to look at body language to understand what Blackbeard is thinking, and they laugh at his joke that 90% of the time he’s thinking about food so he’s not that different from humans. They look appropriately disappointed but understanding when he explains that he’s called Blackbeard not because he’s secretly a pirate but because bearded dragons go jet black under their chins when they get stressed, but he can’t show them without making the lizard uncomfortable, so they’ll just have to take his word for it.
Harry loses track of time somewhere in between letting Blackbeard lick the children’s hands to decide if they’re safe – after Draco casts multiple cleaning and sanitising charms on each child – and running a series of experiments with Daisy the crested gecko to see what surfaces her sticky feet will adhere to and let her climb, and Malfoy has to tap him on the shoulder gently to remind him.
“Harry,” he says, his voice soft enough to make Harry’s stomach wobble. “This has been incredible, but the children need to eat now. Some of them have potions to take.”
“Right,” Harry says hastily, feeling his cheeks heat. Has he been enjoying this too much? The children’s wide-eyed wonder at the creatures he takes for granted has been more than he was expecting, and he could easily spend as much time again with them talking about the same animals. “Sorry, of course. I’ll pack up and get out of your hair.”
Malfoy frowns, like he disagrees somehow with Harry’s answer, but he nods abruptly. “All right, Ward Four, it’s time for dinner,” he barks, suddenly sounding authoritative and businesslike, but his grey eyes are still fond as he looks at the children. “Harry has to take his animals home now.”
There’s a collective chorus of disappointed noises as Harry Summons Daisy – gently – from where she’s managed to get halfway up one of the walls and releases her back into the transport box. Malfoy holds up his hands placatingly with a little smile. “What do we say to Harry, so that he knows we enjoyed him visiting today and we hope he’ll come back another time?”
Most of the children mumble some variation of thank you, Harry, but one of the younger boys says thank you to Daisy instead and he doesn’t catch who but someone says I love you, Harry. He beams. Who knew working with children would be this rewarding? No wonder Malfoy is so much softer and calmer these days.
Malfoy walks him to the ward’s reception desk, another Healer taking over with the children, chivvying a swarm of food trays in front of her.
“How are you getting them home?” he asks as they reach the desk, gesturing at the little trolley of transport boxes.
Harry shrugs. “Taxi,” he says. “Apparating can’t be pleasant for them and I’m always scared I’ll lose one in the Floo.”
Malfoy nods. “Mobile phones do work in here, if you want to call one and wait here.”
“Thanks,” Harry says. He suddenly doesn’t want to leave, to let go of this version of Malfoy who calls him Harry and is so beloved by his ward of sick children. “I meant what I said before,” he says quickly, before Malfoy can try to leave. “You’re welcome to visit any time.”
Malfoy gives him an appraising look. He swallows. “I’m free now,” he says, the words coming out in a bit of a rush like he had to force himself to say them. Harry glances back at the ward behind them and a faint flush appears on his pale cheekbones. “My shift ended an hour ago,” he admits. “The children were having so much fun, and I was enjoying watching them. It’s easy to lose track of time playing with them.”
Harry nods. “Yeah, I noticed.” He does a quick mental scan of the condition he’d left things in. But he did a big cleanup yesterday, so it can’t be too embarrassing. And he was just thinking that he wasn’t ready to leave Malfoy. “Okay,” he says with a bright smile. “Are you okay with a taxi? I know a lot of wizards don’t like cars. You can Apparate and I’ll meet you there if you’d prefer.”
“I’m fine with Muggle transportation, Potter,” Malfoy says archly, and Harry notes with disappointment the return to Potter now they’re not around the children. “But I do have to hand over to Healer MacDougal and get changed before I can leave, so how about I meet you there?”
It’s a bit of a relief, if he’s honest, that he’ll have the cab ride home to collect himself and maybe do a quick scan of the path from the front door to the reptile rooms for anything that betrays how much of a slob he is when left to his own devices.
When the cab pulls up outside Grimmauld Place, however, Malfoy is leant against the low wall outside number ten, dressed in a Muggle pea-coat that shows off his narrow waist, the brisk London wind drawing a flush to his cheeks and nose. Harry stays in the cab for a moment just to look at him where Malfoy can’t see him staring. He’s gorgeous, broader and softer than he had been at school, but his grey eyes are still alight with the same mirth he’d always directed at Harry.
“Twelve quid,” the cab driver prompts expectantly, shaking Harry out of an entirely inappropriate reverie. He tries to pull himself together as he pays, but he’s not as successful as he’d like.
If Malfoy notices that Harry is also flushed when he gets out of the taxi and retrieves the stack of transport boxes from the boot, he doesn’t comment.
They make it two steps into the reptile room before something large and heavy barrels into Harry’s legs, knocking him backwards into Malfoy with a loud oof. Malfoy catches him, somehow, his delicate hands wrapping around Harry’s torso in a way that makes him dizzy and propping him back on his feet. “Are you all right?” he asks, followed immediately by a slightly panicky, “what was that thing?”
Harry drops to one knee to intercept that thing as it collects itself for another run at them. “This is Henry,” he introduces fondly, reaching out to scratch under his chin. “He’s a Fire Crab.”
Henry makes a low, mooing sort of sound, closing his big eyes and leaning heavily against Harry in contentment at the chin scratches. Malfoy eyes him dubiously. Harry can’t blame him; Henry looks rather like a giant, lumpy tortoise, his shell full of pockmarks that once contained brilliant jewels, his stubby little tail twitching in excitement like a dog. “Where did you get a Fire Crab? Don’t you need a licence?”
“I have a licence,” Harry confirms, amused. “Luna rescued him from poachers last year on a research trip in Italy. They’d pried all the jewels out of his shell and then left him to die. She took him to my vet. Turns out there aren’t many people in Britain set up to house a Fire Crab safely, so I applied for the licence and brought him here when he was discharged.”
He eases himself to sitting on the floor in order to reach that spot on the underside of Henry’s shell that makes his leg kick, watching Malfoy’s face clear from panic to amusement as he relaxes enough to lean against the doorframe. “Is it safe in here for him?” he asks, managing to sound curious instead of nervous. “Aren’t they called Fire Crabs for a reason?”
“They only emit fire when they’re threatened,” Harry reassures him. “I used to keep him in an enclosure like the others, but he gets separation anxiety, used to set fire to all his plants and stuff every time I left the room. Now he mostly has free rein of the house when I’m home, and I just shut him in here when I leave. Being able to see the others seems to keep him happy. The house is covered in fire suppression charms just in case, but he hasn’t burnt anything since I stopped closing the door to his enclosure.”
Malfoy bends down to stroke a gentle finger down the back of Henry’s shell, flinching a little when he spins around to headbutt him affectionately but recovering quickly. “Here,” Harry says, grabbing Malfoy’s hand to direct it to the best scratching spots and then abruptly letting go, too conscious of the heat that shoots through him at the contact. Malfoy gives him an odd look.
“I bet Hagrid loves it here,” he says after a moment, the only sound in the room the low humming sort of noise Henry’s making at being scratched.
It’s surprising that Malfoy thinks of it, more surprising that he looks fond at the thought. Hagrid does love it here, though; he comes over for tea every Friday, says hello to every animal individually and invariably spends several hours laid on the floor with Henry asleep on his chest. “You know the Blast-Ended Skrewts were cross-bred from Fire Crabs,” he tells Malfoy, who shudders reflexively.
“You check Hagrid’s pockets when he leaves here, right?” he asks, clearly only half joking.
Harry laughs. “Henry had the snip before I brought him home,” he reassures him. “It’s a condition of the licence.”
He lets them linger for another moment, petting Henry until he’s practically comatose. Then he eases them up. “We should put everyone back in their enclosures,” he says, feeling a twinge of guilt at the pile of transport boxes in the doorway. “Then I promised Sunshine I’d feed her. Then I can introduce you around.”
Malfoy’s lips twitch at the idea of being introduced around Harry’s snakes like guests at a party. “All right,” he says, smiling as Henry follows Harry so closely he almost trips over him.
Everyone goes smoothly back into their enclosures – set into the walls with liberal expansion charms so that each animal has their own little pocket universe – except Sunshine, who pokes her head out of the transport box and immediately fixes her eyes on Harry.
Rabbit, she hisses insistently.
Harry laughs. In a minute, he tells her. Did you want to sit in the box while I warmed it up?
Her pupils constrict critically. Fine, she says.
“Arguing again, Potter?” Malfoy asks as Sunshine heaves her enormous body into the enclosure, taking a drink from the pond of water and curling up on a rock under the little ball of light Harry charmed to mimic the sun, eyeing him like she’s worried he won’t follow through.
“Negotiating,” he corrects with a little smile.
It’s not the day he usually feeds his snakes, so it’s just the rabbit that he retrieves from the freezer and casts defrosting and warming charms on, deliberately doing them in front of Sunshine’s enclosure so she can see he’s working on it. “You don’t have to watch,” he tells Malfoy, noticing the faintly nauseated look on his face as he looks at the rabbit and remembering with a sickening jolt that Malfoy had seen Nagini eat people, probably more than once, and watching Sunshine eat a rabbit probably isn’t a good idea for his first visit. “You want to feed Henry while I do this? He’s a herbivore, there’s a giant box of plants for him in the back room.”
Malfoy smiles, his shoulders slumping in relief. “Sure. Come on, Henry.”
Harry can’t hold back a grin as Henry lumbers happily after Malfoy back towards the room with the freezer, almost tripping him when he realises where they’re going and tries to rush ahead.
He feeds the rabbit to Sunshine, levitating it into the enclosure rather than offering it by hand because even though she’s intelligent enough to hold a conversation her feeding response is pure instinct, another reason he hadn’t wanted Malfoy to see it. While she works on swallowing, he goes to wash his hands and finds Malfoy sitting on the floor beside Henry, happily munching at the handfuls of lettuce and prickly pear Malfoy had decanted from the box to the giant bowl on the floor with Henry painted on the side that Teddy had made at school.
“I never really paid attention in Care of Magical Creatures,” Malfoy admits as Harry sits down next to him. “Too busy trying to get Hagrid sacked. Mostly because it upset you, not even because of anything he did.”
Harry barks out a little laugh despite himself; he’d suspected as much, that Malfoy’s hatred of Hagrid had less to do with him being half-human, a poor teacher, or having been injured by Buckbeak in their first lesson, and more to do with the fact that it made Harry so angry he’d had to be physically restrained from hurting Malfoy a few times. Malfoy smiles back hesitantly.
“Hagrid is here most Fridays, if you ever wanted to clear the air,” Harry tells him. “I don’t think he’s holding much of a grudge, though. Everyone sees how much you’ve changed since school.”
He can feel Malfoy’s eyes searching across his face, but he’s not brave enough to look back, so he watches Henry pushing lettuce out of the way to get at the prickly pear instead until he looks away. “Thank you, Potter,” he says quietly.
“Sure,” Harry replies. “You ready to meet some more snakes?”
They start at the opposite end of the room to Sunshine, Harry glimpsing a foot still protruding from her mouth when they emerge and keeping Malfoy facing the other way. “This is the one that started the whole thing,” he says when they reach the first enclosure. “The corn snake I found that someone had dumped behind a bin.”
Malfoy shakes his head. “I still can’t believe people just dump animals like that,” he says, sounding genuinely upset.
“Yeah,” Harry agrees. “Farrah says it happens more often with reptiles – that’s my vet, they see Muggles and Wixen. Even Crups and Kneazles get abandoned occasionally, but Farrah says geckos and small snakes are most common. That’s why they were so happy when I set up this room, but even I can’t take them all. Farrah keeps trying to find homes for some of them while I look after them.”
He has to lift a ceramic cave to find what he’s looking for, making a triumphant noise as he lifts the grey snake out of the enclosure. “This is Cornelius,” he says, unable to keep the grin off his face. “Get it? Because he’s a corn–”
“I understand, Potter.” Malfoy interrupts, rolling his eyes, but the twitching corner of his mouth betrays him.
Cornelius wraps himself around Harry’s wrist, eyeing Malfoy suspiciously. This is Malfoy, Harry introduces. He’s a friend.
Friend, Corny repeats, flicking his tongue inquisitively in his direction. I smell?
“Can he smell you? He still has some trust issues,” Harry explains, grinning when Malfoy instantly extends a hand towards the snake, still moving slowly and a little cautiously.
Corny’s tongue flutters over the back of Malfoy’s hand. Okay, friend, he agrees.
Malfoy lifts his other hand and lets Corny slither from Harry’s arm to his, nosing around curiously. “He’s cute,” he says, stroking his side gently with a thumb.
“He’s a sweetheart,” Harry tells him. “Not anywhere near as clever as Sunshine, but a lot less irritable.”
Malfoy laughs, dropping his hands when Corny moves back to Harry. It’s a beautiful sound, bright and clear with genuine mirth, and it somehow catches Harry by surprise. He looks up at him, and Malfoy’s already looking back at him, and is Harry imagining those grey eyes flickering minutely down towards his lips?
Food, Harry dimly registers hearing from the vicinity of his hand, distracted by the wild, deluded thought that Malfoy might be about to kiss him.
Not food! he says hurriedly, trying to move his hand out of the way, but he’s too late. “Ouch!” he hisses – in English – as Corny’s tiny teeth embed themselves in an almost experimental sort of way into the meat of his thumb.
Malfoy jumps a little, looking terrified. “It’s okay,” Harry reassures him, holding up the hand with snake attached to show him there’s no way he can do any damage. That’s my hand you’re biting, arsehole, he says good-naturedly.
Corny disengages immediately. Oh, he says, giving the hand an apologetic sort of tongue flick. Sorry. Thought it was food.
You think everything’s food, Harry scolds, showing Malfoy the tiny, inconsequential pinpricks he left behind before healing them with a wave of his wand.
Yeah, Corny agrees, not sounding the least bit contrite. Is there food?
Harry laughs it off, but Malfoy still looks a little nervous, so he puts Corny back in his enclosure and goes for the snake he knows is least likely to bite or make any kind of sudden movement.
“This is Circe,” Harry introduces. “She’s a ball python. So named because they curl into a ball to sleep or when they’re scared.” She barely stirs, an excellent demonstration of the ball, sitting in his hands like a large rock with her head buried somewhere in the middle of the pile, so Harry holds her out and Malfoy, his hands still shaking a little, takes her. Wake up, sleepy, he tells her softly.
Awake, drifts back from the lump in Malfoy’s hands. What’s happening?
Want you to meet a friend, Harry tells her.
She shifts, the brown and black coils rising and falling until a pink tongue flutters out from somewhere in the centre. Friend? she asks, sounding hopeful.
Harry grins. “You want a cup of tea?” he asks Malfoy.
Circe is properly awake by the time the tea has steeped, and Malfoy has mostly stopped shaking, his hands wrapped around his teacup while Circe noses around his arms and chest. Smells good, she pronounces after a few minutes. Familiar.
Harry isn’t sure what about Malfoy could smell familiar to a snake, but Circe did have a loving owner before she came to Harry, an elderly witch whose family hadn’t wanted to take over Circe’s care when she passed away. Maybe something in Malfoy’s cologne is similar to hers, or something about their magic feels the same. He relays this information to Malfoy.
“Really?” he asks, looking down at her with a pleased expression. She sticks her face into Malfoy’s sleeve, nudging into the soft underside of his wrist. He freezes uncomfortably. “What’s she doing?” he asks, his voice wavering.
“She’s just exploring,” Harry tells him reassuringly, but he asks her anyway, not sure his explanation alone made Malfoy feel any better.
Warm, she replies from the depths of Malfoy’s sleeve. Safe.
Something in Harry’s chest twinges. “She trusts you, which is pretty much the ultimate compliment for a snake,” he relays. “The inside of your sleeve is warm, dark, and safe. You want me to tell her not to?”
“No, she’s all right,” Malfoy says softly, looking almost awestruck by this information. Circe withdraws from his sleeve, apparently realising she won’t fit more than a few inches of herself in there, and begins winding herself up his chest instead. He lifts a hand to support her, flinching minutely when her face bumps against his neck but taking a deep breath, clearly choosing to trust her. She curls loosely around his neck, buries her head in the collar of his shirt, and settles into contented stillness.
Harry can’t really blame her; Malfoy’s collar is open just enough for the tips of his collarbone to peek through them, the hollow in between them soft and enticing. Harry would sleep with his face buried in there too if he could.
Malfoy takes a sip of his tea, one hand still stroking idly at Circe’s tail. “Do you have any other magical reptiles?” he asks.
Harry tells him about the Runespoor he looked after for a few months, a three-headed serpent whose heads had got so annoyed with each other that two of them had bitten off the third, killing all three; about the Moke lizard he’d been asked to take in only for it to shrink so small it had escaped the vet’s holding enclosure and they’d never found it. It’s surprisingly enjoyable chatting to Malfoy, all teasing humour and pointed observation, and he slightly regrets the time they’ve spent dancing around each other, being cautious instead of just talking to each other.
After about an hour, Circe slides all the way inside Malfoy’s shirt in search of more warmth. “We should probably put her back to bed,” Harry says, letting his eyes linger on the lump in Malfoy’s shirt that he’s supporting with both hands. “It’s a bit cold for her out here.”
Malfoy looks disappointed, and when Harry tells Circe what they’re doing she immediately insists that she’s fine, actually, not cold or sleepy at all, and refuses to come out of his shirt.
It’s nice in here, she says sleepily.
Harry sighs. You know what, I bet it is, he agrees. And it’s silly for him to be jealous of a snake, really. But you can’t stay there forever. Draco will come back to visit soon. It’s a bluff, but he’s hopeful. It’s sweet, how quickly Malfoy seems to have bonded with Circe.
When they’ve finally convinced her to get back in her enclosure and curl up under the light, Malfoy tugs his shirt straight, his cheeks pink. “I should get home,” he says. “I’ve imposed on you and your reptilian horde enough for one day.”
Harry wants to disagree, but a glance at the clock tells him it’s much later than he’d thought and Malfoy’s probably just being too polite to tell him he’s had enough. “Sure,” he says. “I’ll see you out.”
“The kids had fun today, Potter,” Malfoy says, lingering at the front door. “Thank you for doing that. I’ll be hearing about snake language for weeks.”
Harry grins, leaning against the doorframe in what he hopes is a casual sort of way. “I had fun too,” he says, hoping that when Draco said the kids had fun today that’s really what he meant. “I’ve been thinking about whether someone could learn Parseltongue for a while, it was interesting to experiment. Because Dumbledore thought that I could only speak it because of the Horcrux, you know, because a part of him was in me, but then I could still speak it after the Horcrux was gone, so maybe I learned it somehow, from speaking it. And then Ron could mimic it well enough to open the Chamber of Secrets–“
“What?” Malfoy splutters.
“Yeah, during the Battle of Hogwarts. Apparently I spoke it in my sleep enough that he could copy a few words. Basilisk venom destroys Horcruxes, so while I was looking for Ravenclaw’s diadem, Ron and Hermione went to get some teeth from the dead one in the Chamber. But I feel like if Parseltongue could be learned, then surely more people would have tried to learn it just to research snakes, right?”
Malfoy blinks, reeling a little at the admittedly large amount of information Harry’s just given him. “Well, famously it’s been limited to descendants of Slytherin, hasn’t it,” he says reasonably, recovering quickly. “They didn’t exactly like to share knowledge. Perhaps they perpetuated the idea that it couldn’t be taught to keep it in the family. I’m certain they would have liked the idea that only they could speak to their family mascot.”
Harry remembers the memories he’d seen of Marvolo and Morfin Gaunt, crouched in their disintegrating cottage, clinging to their family heirlooms long after everything that mattered had turned to dust. “Yeah, maybe.”
They both linger another moment, not wanting to close the door on whatever’s happened today. “I’d quite like to properly research it,” Harry says. “Like, actually try to teach someone Parseltongue. If you’d be in any way interested in being my guinea pig. Try having a chat with Circe.”
Malfoy’s lips twitch, whether in amusement at the ridiculous idea or fondness for his new best friend Harry isn’t sure. “Perhaps,” he says.
“You could tell the kids about it,” Harry pushes, aware that he’s one step away from begging. “I think that girl would be really interested – Linda, was it?”
Malfoy’s pale face blanches. “Lisa?” He gestures to his face, recalling the purple pustules that had covered hers. “I… if you’re planning research that will take longer than a few months to complete… I’m afraid she won’t see you complete it.”
Harry’s gut clenches painfully. Malfoy’s job must suck sometimes. “Sorry,” he says quietly.
“It’s definitely the worst part of my job,” Malfoy says, picking at something nonexistent on the sleeve of his coat. “It doesn’t happen often. Lisa’s the only terminal patient on the ward at the moment. But I like that I can get to know them, even if it’s not for long. That someone can.”
For a wild moment Harry considers hugging him, but it’s unlikely to be well received and he doesn’t want to ruin the tentative friendship they seem to be forming by pushing it too far. He’s not sure what to say without making him uncomfortable, either, so he just gives a weak smile and hopes it says some of it for him. Malfoy smiles back.
“She would like Circe, though,” he concedes after a moment. “Tell you what, Potter: I’ll be your Parseltongue guinea pig, if you bring Circe to visit Lisa.”
Harry grins. “Deal,” he says quickly, holding out a hand for Malfoy to shake. His stomach flops pathetically when he takes it. “Owl me with a good time for both?”
Malfoy’s answering smile is bright. “I’ll owl you,” he agrees, and Harry’s definitely not imagining the way his eyes dart to his lips for a moment before he lets go of his hand and walks away.
The warm, hopeful feeling follows him for the rest of the evening.