Hidden Identity

Chapter 14: Bathilda Bagshot

Bpov

Bathilda was no longer lingering behind me. In fact she was no longer even in the room. And the thing is... I hadn't heard her leave.

"H-Harry w-where did sh-she g-go?" I stuttered nervously.

"Where did who go? He asked me. Obviously he hadn't been paying as much attention as I had. Or.... Any attention.

"Bathilda stupid, who else" I snapped at him giving him a look that said 'You're an idiot'

"Oh. Um I don't know I wasn't paying much attention" He said scratching the back of his head and circling the room quickly to see if he could see her.

"You don't say" I said to him as I went to switch on the light for the room. But once I had I instantly wished I hadn't. This room had to be the worst I had seen by far. The wallpaper had been ripped and was now hardly hanging on by its seems, the walls and ceilings were both rotting, the carpet was full of mysterious stains (all of which may of been... blood) and the furniture was smashed and thrown around the room.

What had happened in this room that had made it like this?

"Eww, gross!" I squealed jumping back in disgust but instantly stopped once I heard a quite yet clear whispering voice echo on the surrounding walls.

Again I jumped back in fright. In shock. Slowly making my way closer to Harry.

"Did you hear that?" Harry asked alerted and I gave a small nod and a yelp that answered his question.

The thing that scared me the most wasn't that there was someone talking, it was that even though the words had been spoken so I was able to understand them, they didn't seem to be completely human.

But what did that mean?

"What the hell was that?" My heart pounded against my chest.

"Again... I'm not sure"

Then suddenly out of the corner of my eye I was sure that I spotted something slithering its way over to the smashed remains of wooden chair that lay broken on the other side to where we were standing. It looked somewhat like a snake. I rubbed my eyes thinking that when I looked back it would be gone. But yet again I was wrong, as when I looked again it was still there.

So I had been right about the non-human talk. It was Parseltongue and that's why we could hear it. And that's also why it didn't sound right.

"Harry!" I yelled as loud as I could in the state of terror that I was in at the moment. Which to be honest wasn't very loud.

"What is it? Harry asked snapping his head around to face me.

"Snake!" I screamed and pointed over to where I had just seen it, over at the smashed up chair, only now it was nowhere to be seen.

"Where? I don't see anything" He said searching the area where I was pointing.

"It was there, it was right there, I swear!" I gasped as I began to hyperventilate.

"Bells, Bella!" Harry said grabbing onto my arms to calm me down, "Don't worry okay we'll get through this"

I nodded viciously and grabbed onto his hand. Slowly, we searched around the room for any signs for the snake. But there was nothing. I mean how hard can it be to lose a 8ft snake.

Then for a short moment I saw something. At first I thought I was imagining it and for those short seconds my spirit lifted. Maybe there wasn't actually snake. However when the snake did not go I knew that it was real.

That's when I heard it. A low hissing sound, almost.... Snake like.

It was coming from behind me so trying not to draw to much attention to myself I turned my head around slowly 180 degrees.