"I'm a Parselmouth," Salazar answered, speaking the words more confidently than he ever had before. "It's a very rare ability that runs in my family. We can speak to snakes, like yourself."
"What a gift!" cried the snake. "What a wonderful, wonderfu...
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"I THINK SHE'LL TAKE ME AWAY FROM HERE."
Salazar Slytherin, now nearly nine, sat at the bank of the same pond he had run to over a year ago. His black hair reached almost to the middle of his shoulder blades, tied into a messy braid by his sister that morning. He sat with his knees bent and his feet flat on the grass, his hands busy fiddling with a long piece of wild grass he had plucked only minutes ago. Two knots were already tied in the blade, and he was working on a third.
"Does she still not know?"
He turned to look at Burl, the grass snake he had met that day, and his best and only friend. The green snake, small for its kind, sat coiled beside him, only his head at attention, his eyes fixed loyally on Salazar.
Salazar met his eyes, swallowed, then looked away as if ashamed. The blade of grass in his hands broke as he attempted to tighten the third knot. He threw it to the side and sighed. "No," he answered Burl softly. "I think she thinks I've lost the ability entirely."
"Can you lose it?" Burl asked, suddenly worried. Burl, an outcast among his kind, needed Salazar just as much as Salazar needed him.
Salazar gave him a reassuring smile. "I don't think so. And even if I could, I don't think I would. I get too much practice just talking with you."
Burl looked a little bashful as Salazar chuckled, though he shook it off quickly. Yes, he was very much a talker - in fact, that was one of the reasons his own community didn't like him much - but Salazar accepted him, and he knew it. Seeing the troubled look on his friend's face, however, he asked his next question cautiously. "What would happen if she ever found out?"
Salazar looked out across that pond. That very thought had been troubling him for some time now. "She'd try to start my training again, I'd imagine."
"Your training?"
Salazar did little more than nod. For several moments, Burl sat in anxious anticipation, both wanting to know more and afraid to know. The young grass snake had heard whispers of Venetta Slytherin before, but they were only things of legend, as no one in his community had ever actually seen the woman. All solid information he knew of her was what he had heard from Salazar, but the boy hardly spoke of his mother.
As Salazar sat with his companion, he could only seem to think of his sister. Vipa had been ten years his senior, and though she had been seventeen at the time of her death, every time Salazar pictured her, he saw her only slightly older than he was now. He could not remember the sound of her voice or what her face had looked like in reality - all he had of her was a portrait their mother had commissioned of her when she was eleven, now locked away.
He wondered how much of what he knew of her was true. He had no way of knowing if Trang had been lying or not when she had told him how his sister was like his mother, because Trang was really the only one that had talked to him about Vipa. His parents weren't too keen on telling him much of anything, nor was his other sister. To him, Vipa wasn't really even real.
"I don't know what it is," Salazar finally answered, "but if it is anything like the first experience I had with my mother's snake, I want nothing to do with it."
Burl looked back to his friend. His mother's snake was something that interested Burl most of all. Salazar had described her to him not long into their friendship, and she was unlike any snake Burl had ever seen or heard of. "Is she a magical snake?" Burl asked.
"Trang? No. My mother came across her in her travels."
"Her travels?"
Salazar's face darkened. His mother's travels were the most ominous things about her, and Salazar wasn't alone in thinking that. Her worldliness may have been what had initially drawn his father to her, but Muggles and Wizardkind alike all over Britain feared her for her mysterious travels. She would disappear for years on end, travel to the far reaches of the world, places that no one even knew existed, and would return even more mysterious than she left. She would go in search of different kinds of magic, looking for the very source of it, and each time she would return, she would have more and more strange magic. His father told him once that it was on one of her travels that Venetta acquired the ability to speak to snakes, and even as young as he was, Salazar was not surprised. His mother was known for pushing the boundaries of magic.
He knew this was why he did not know his sister. When Vipa had turned eleven, she had accompanied their mother on one of her travels, and though their mother returned three years later, Vipa never did. As the story goes, she continued traveling around the world until her death at seventeen.
"I think she'll take me away from here," Salazar whispered.
Burl had to lean in to hear his friend, but he did hear him. He was trying to think of something to say when the two were interrupted.
"Salazar?"
As this was spoken in a language Burl did not understand, he quickly slithered away into the brush, leaving Salazar alone, pale-faced, looking up at his sister.
"Elva," said Salazar, quickly getting to his feet. He could feel his heart beating rapidly.
Elva Slytherin, though only three years older than him, towered over her brother. She was the only Slytherin child that did not take after their mother with her abilities, and fittingly, she was also the only one that did not greatly resemble her. Though her hair had the same wild curls as Vipa, it was much lighter in color, almost a golden brown instead of black. Her eyes, as well, were different - the soft blue of their father's instead of the light green of their mother's, a color that Salazar had always been envious of. She stood before him now with rigid shoulders, her blue eyes wide.
"I - I thought you couldn't?" she stuttered. The witch looked upon her brother as if he was already lost to her.
"Elva, I - "
"You can, can't you? You can speak Parseltongue."
Salazar's lip began to quiver at the accusatory tone she was taking with him. It was as if the ability alone made him evil. "I don't want it!" he cried.
Sympathy suddenly flooded her face, and Elva quickly made her way down the bank to her brother. "Oh Sal," she said, throwing her arms around her brother as soon as she reached him.
"I don't want to end up like her, Elva," he whimpered. "I don't want to end up like Vipa."
"You won't," his sister assured. "You won't, Salazar. I'll make sure of it."
