FicWad

On the third day of Christmas, my best friend gave to me...

Three Snake Heads

A scream echoed from the Common Room, and for a moment Hermione idly wondered if perhaps one of her fellow Gryffindors had gotten up early and was torturing their resident Slytherins.

Then she awoke fully, grabbed her wand and nearly tripped down the stairs in her haste to reach the source of the noise.

She soon found herself joining her housemates as witness to the strangest scene that Gryffindor Tower had seen in at least...well, two days. After a moment she reconsidered, and decided that it was, in fact, stranger than what had been dubbed (in the privacy of her own mind) The Palm Tree Incident.

Blaise Zabini and Theodore Nott, known to be fairly cool-headed and refined Slytherins, were standing on a table in the middle of the room, arms wrapped around each other in terror and screaming loudly.

Hermione joined her fellow Gryffindors in gaping at them.

Eventually, Harry somehow managed to regain his composure (and ability to speak) and stepped forward, wand in hand. "Blaise? Theo? What's wrong?"

Both boys immediately fell silent, staring at Harry with wide, hopeful eyes. "Harry, save us!"

Harry blinked. "What do you think I am, a saviour?"

At that, everyone stared at him.

"What?"

Blaise shook his head violently and disengaged himself from Theodore as both attempted to appear unruffled. "Never mind. Harry, there's, um...something we need you to do."

Theodore rolled his eyes and smacked Blaise around the back of the head while running his other hand through his own hair, trying to smooth it. "There's a Runespoor on the floor. Fix it."

"The Runespoor is broken?" Harry questioned. Ron, standing beside him, followed Theodore's example of informing his friend that he was being a moron. Harry cleared his throat and scratched his head sheepishly. "Sorry, it's too early for me to be sensible. How can I be of assistance?"

Blaise pointed at the floor where the three-headed snake, barely two feet long, was peering from the boys on the table to the group of Gryffindors at the bottom of the stairs and back again.

Harry took a few more steps forward, pausing when the snake's right head swung in his direction and hissed menacingly.

"That's the poisonous one, Harry," Hermione murmured, a worried frown crossing her face.

He turned and rolled his eyes at her. "I know that, 'Mione." Facing the snake again he began speaking. "Do you understand English, by any chance?"

Hermione seriously considered throwing her copy of Hogwarts; A History at his head.

Surprisingly, though, the right head nodded and hissed at him for several minutes. The left one joined in after a few seconds. Harry's eyes went very wide more than once, he paled a few times, and gave a nod or three. Finally, he turned away from the snake and addressed his friends, lips twitching despite his obvious effort to remain sober. "Okay. Ron, Hermione, Colin, Ginny, Seamus, Dean, Neville, Parvati, Lavender, Theodore and Blaise? This is Henry. His brother on the far left is Bob, and in the middle is their...sister, Desdemona, who prefers to be called Desmond."

Theodore, who had dropped to sit on the table and was now swinging his legs, gave a sigh. "That's all very nice, Harry, but what are they doing in your Common Room?"

"Specifically, what were they doing slithering up my leg?" Blaise clarified tensely.

Harry shifted from one foot to the other and glanced back at the snake heads before he continued. "Apparently, they lived in a palm tree in Greenhouse One that has mysteriously vanished. They tracked it to here, and they want to move back in. I offered to find them somewhere else till Christmas was over, but..."

Hermione sighed and walked further into the room, perching herself beside Theodore on the table. "Harry, a bright orange snake with three heads is really going to mess up the festiveness of your palm tree."

He shrugged. "What else can I do?"

She just looked down at the snake and waved her hand in the general direction of the tree. "Have at it then. Just don't bite anyone."

All three heads hissed in what looked to be (and Harry confirmed really was) agreement before the Runespoor slithered quickly up into the palm tree and settled on one of the green coconuts.

The students all just watched, until eventually the silence was broken by an irritated sounding hiss.

Harry frowned in the direction of the orange and black right head. "Henry, just because my friends are somewhat bemused by you and your siblings is no reason for you to deem them mentally deficient."

Hermione twitched and thought that it really was just as well that Harry was the only one who could understand Henry. Otherwise, the snarky right head of the Runespoor probably wouldn't live a very long life - not if he kept insulting people like that.

Henry was hissing in a way that couldn't be mistaken for anything but snide laughter.