Chapter Text
Harry had faced cursed artifacts before. He’d been hexed, jinxed, and once even half-swallowed by a magically enlarged octopus in the Knockturn Alley sewers. But this? This was new.
One moment, he was chasing down a smuggler of dark relics in the bowels of the Department of Mysteries, dodging hexes that left streaks of red and gold in the air. The next, a blackened amulet on the floor pulsed like a heartbeat and cracked open with a sound like splintering bone.
The world twisted.
He woke on cold stone.
At first, Harry thought the lingering dizziness was the after-effect of the magic, but then he realised the floor was huge. The scent of the air stabbed at his senses, sharp and layered: dust, faint traces of blood, something warm and alive somewhere nearby.
And… he wasn’t breathing right. Or at all.
Harry looked down.
No hands. No feet. Scales. A long, gleaming, emerald-and-gold coil where his body should have been.
His heart, if snakes even had a heartbeat the same way, thudded fast. He shifted, the movement sinuous and alien, his belly scraping against the stone with a sound that made him shudder.
“Wh-what the hell??” he hissed.
Except it wasn’t English.
It was… Parseltongue.
I am speaking Parseltongue, Harry realised with a lurch of his new body. Not because he was translating, because his mouth (or whatever snakes had) wouldn’t shape human words anymore.
Somewhere beyond the stone walls, footsteps echoed. And as Harry slithered instinctively into the shadows, his mind tripped over the bigger problem, Wherever he was now… it wasn’t the Ministry. And judging by the flickering torchlight and the damp, moss-slick stones, it wasn’t his own time either.
Harry hesitated in the gloom, his mind still screaming that this wasn’t real. But the roughness of the stone beneath his belly felt too sharp, too true, to be a hallucination.
He tried to move forward.
It was… awful. There was no balance the way humans had. No legs to plant, no knees to push off with, only this strange rippling motion that started somewhere in the middle of him and flowed outward. He overdid it, sending himself swerving straight into a rock with a dull thunk.
“Brilliant,” he hissed under his breath, the words curling out in Parseltongue whether he liked it or not.
Still, he kept going, dragging himself forward, each movement an uneasy mixture of instinct and guesswork. He found that if he pushed one side of his body against the stones and then the other, he could pull himself into a sort of winding rhythm. The sensation was both unsettling and weirdly… satisfying.
As he climbed over a pile of jagged rocks, his belly scales caught on the edges with a faint scraping noise. It wasn’t exactly painful, but it made him flinch every time, the vibration running the length of his body.
The air was rich with scents he’d never noticed before, cold water somewhere ahead, the faint musk of rodents, the earthy dampness of moss. His tongue flicked out without his permission, tasting the air, and his brain jolted at the rush of information that came back.
Harry froze at the top of the rocks, heart hammering.
He could smell things with his mouth.
This was going to take some getting used to.
At the top of the rock pile, Harry froze.
There, just a few feet ahead was a mouse. Tiny, brown, and twitching its whiskers nervously as it sniffed along a crack in the stone.
Harry hadn’t seen it first. He’d known it was there. The scent, sharp and warm and full of life, had hit him the moment his tongue flicked out. And with it came something worse: an ache low in his body, a deep, alien urge to strike.
His muscles coiled without him thinking. He could feel the moment to lunge, the perfect angle to sink fangs in, to still that quick little heartbeat.
“No,” he hissed sharply, shaking his head. The mouse darted back in alarm, its tiny claws scrabbling against the stone as it vanished into a gap.
Harry slumped, well, as much as a snake could slump.
Merlin, what was wrong with him? That hadn’t been thought, it had been… hunger. Not the human kind. Something older. Something that didn’t care that it was a helpless little creature just trying to live.
He felt the echo of the strike-that-never-happened buzzing in his muscles, and it made him sick.
Even if he could have done it, he doubted he could’ve swallowed the thing whole. Just the thought made his stomach, wherever it was now, lurch in revulsion.
Harry let out a slow, frustrated breath through his tongue. If he was going to survive like this, he was going to need a plan… one that didn’t involve eating mice. The cold night air hit him as he emerged from the mouth of the cave. Moonlight spilled across the land in pale silver, and Harry’s breath caught, if snakes could catch their breath.
Hogwarts.
The castle stood in the distance, tall and regal, its towers pricking the sky. The Black Lake shimmered under the moon, and the Forbidden Forest loomed dark and watchful.
Harry almost laughed in relief. If he could get to minerva, maybe, this could be fixed.
He slithered forward, gaining speed, finding that the winding movement was becoming smoother, almost natural. Over grass, across a narrow dirt path, and up toward the massive steps of the castle.
He was halfway up when a shadow fell over him.
“Hello there,” a voice said, warm and polite, but with something faintly amused curled in the edges.
Harry looked up.
A boy stood above him, maybe sixteen or fifteen . Dark hair perfectly neat, school robes immaculate, eyes gleaming with an intelligence that was far too sharp.
Harry’s stomach, his instincts twisted into something darker.
Tom Riddle.
Before his brain could catch up, his body acted. He coiled, muscles tightening, and lunged for the boy’s hand with bared fangs.
The strike was fast, almost perfect, but Tom pulled back just in time, his expression shifting from mild curiosity to something cold and calculating.
“My, my,” he said softly, crouching down to look Harry in the eye. “A little snake with a temper. And… you understand me, don’t you?”
Harry froze. He’d just made this so much worse.
Tom’s hand shot out, quicker than Harry expected, and scooped him up from the steps. His grip was firm but careful, fingers cool against Harry’s scales.
“Well,” Tom murmured, tilting his head as he studied him. “You’re no common adder. Your colouring is… remarkable.” His eyes narrowed slightly. “And there’s something… familiar about you.”
Harry’s coils tightened, every muscle screaming at him to get away. This wasn’t just some clever schoolboy, this was Voldemort. Younger, yes. Not yet the monster he’d become. But the darkness was there, pulsing under his skin like poison.
Tom’s gaze lingered on Harry’s face as though trying to see past the eyes, to pry secrets out of him. Harry felt the brush of curiosity turn sharper, hungry.
Footsteps sounded from somewhere down the corridor beyond the doors.
Tom’s grip tightened just slightly. “Stay quiet, little one.”
Harry didn’t think. He struck.
His fangs sank into the soft flesh of Tom’s hand. Tom’s sharp hiss of pain was almost satisfying—until his fingers convulsed in surprise, loosening just enough for Harry to wriggle free.
He hit the stone steps with a thud and didn’t look back. His body moved in pure, desperate rhythm—over the steps, across the grass, toward the shadow of the castle walls.
Behind him, Tom’s voice followed, low and venomous.
“I will find you again.”
Harry didn’t doubt it for a second.