Lucy Potter: Harry's little sister

Chapter 18: Distractions needed!

Lucy's POV:

The snake started to move towards Harry, like Malfoy had intended to, I guess. Snape went to go and do something, while Lockart, the complete coward backed away slowly.

"Stand back Potter," Snape hissed, eyes on the snake. "I'll take care of it."

But Harry didn't stand back: in fact, he slowly stepped towards the snake.

The snake averted its attention to another student: a Hufflepuf I didn't know. Harry hissed something at the snake.

And it might sound weird, but I understood him. He was telling the snake to back off.

"Holy..." I heard Vanessa whisper, staring at Harry. Everyone was staring.

The snake was in fact starting to back off, but because Snape removed it with magic just then, it might've looked, to anyone else, like he told the snake to attack the boy.

"Are you insane?!" The boy, a scared look in his eyes and I kind of felt sorry for him. Everyone was staring at Harry, while he just looked, what confused?

Lucky Ron was there to pull him out of the Great Hall, followed by Hermione. I decided to follow them as well. I needed answers.

"Is that..."

"Yes that's her..."

"Why didn't you tell me you were a Parselmouth?!" Ron asked Harry accusingly. Or maybe just angry?

"A what?" I asked, joining them. "What's that?"

"A parselmouth is someone who can speak parseltongue," Hermione informed. "That's snake language."

"Yeah, I know I can," Harry said, still as clue- less as me.

"He once set a boa constrictor free in a zoo when Dudley was being stupid," I told the other two. "It was pretty hillarious, to be honest."

"You set a boa constrictor free in a zoo?!" Ron repeated dumbfounded.

"Yeah," Harry confirmed irritably. "Listen, I don't know what's so wrong about me being able to talk to snakes!"

"I mean he was just telling the snake to leave that guy alone," I agreed with him.

"That's what you said?" Ron asked and Hermione looked at the redhead redicu- lously.

"Look, so what? I bet lots of people here can talk to snakes!"

"Actually, they can't," Hermione said care- fully. "It's a really rare gift. This is bad..."

"Why?!" Harry asked again, now sounding kind of angry and that's what I felt too now.

"Harry, Salazar Slytherin was a parsel- mouth," she continued. "That's why the symbol of Slytherin is a snake."

"So?"

"So..." I started to realise. "Now people might start thinking we're related to him."

"What? Of course not!"

"How would you know for sure?" Ron asked doubtfully. And he was right.

The truth hurt, but it was true: we didn't know. We'd never known anything about our father's side of the family.

"But... we can't be..." Harry himself seemed uncertain.

*~*

Vanessa's POV:

News at a boarding school like Hogwarts spread like wild fire.

Especially when your last name was Potter.