He was near ready to pass out at four in the morning when the egg shivered beneath the toad. Harry blinked, suddenly feeling wide awake, as the snakes around him chanted more frantically than before.
"Sing!" Whispered the ground snake urgently. "Sing now! It must know your voice, lest it may turn on you!"
That obviously wouldn't have been a good thing, so Harry began to whisper-sing the phrase in earnest. The previously dead chicken egg, impossibly, began to shiver again and twitched beneath the toad and his fingers.
They kept up the song for five more minutes when the egg cracked from the inside. The snakes went silent and Harry watched, barely daring to breath, as a small, emerald snout jabbed out of the egg. It was followed by a long, lithe body, covered in brilliant green scales. Deep amber eyes surveyed the dark cupboard, almost luminous in their intensity.
Harry moved to take the toad off of the broken egg and the amber eyes snapped towards him. He felt a shiver run down his spine as the eyes met his own—as if his body was warning him that it was unsafe. The infant snake hissed, too young to speak its language, but Harry interpreted the hiss as displeasure.
"The toad," said the grass snake. "It must eat the toad. That is its first meal."
He felt a little bad for the toad, but Harry offered the amphibian to the newly-hatched serpent. The snake eyed it greedily, then lashed out. It didn't bite Harry, but he was surprised by the ferocity such a small and young creature possessed.
Devouring the toad took just a few minutes, and then the snake flicked its tongue out and assessed its surroundings once again. Harry hissed to it in the serpent's language that they would not harm it, that they were friends, but again the snake seemed too young to truly understand. But it did interpret his meaning and relaxed, curling up under the sheets in the corner.
Harry sighed, a little relieved that the snake had chosen to trust him. The ground snake who had brought the knowledge of how to hatch the creature watched the place where it slept, unblinking as always.
"We will bring it more meals so it may grow. It will be hungry for the first few days—you must be patient. Only after then will its powers come forth and provide you the protection you need."
"Powers?"
"Yes," said the grass snake gravely. "It is a magical serpent. It may steal the life of all living things that meet its gaze. The venom in its maw would dispatch most creatures in minutes. And it will grow large, large beyond any of us, for we are mere worms compared to the might it will claim."
Harry frowned. "So if I look into its eyes when it gets older, I could die?"
"Not you. You are its hatcher and a speaker of snake-tongue. As such, you carry our blessings and are protected from its powers. But if you were to meet another that you did not hatch, it may be able to kill you, for you would be alien to it."
He nodded slowly, letting that sink in. He didn't plan on hatching another anytime soon—from the sound of things, just this one hatchling would probably be enough to do…whatever it was the snakes had in mind. He wasn't sure if he really wanted to kill the Dursleys, but he definitely wanted them to stop abusing him.
It was a waiting game, now.
Five days passed with rising tensions in the Dursely household. Vernon was, for some reason, growing more and more agitated with Harry's presence as they neared his eleventh birthday. It wasn't like they ever celebrated it in the first place, but things were getting worse than normal.
The mysterious serpent Harry had hatched with the help of the other snakes remained hidden during this time, but it was ravenous. The other snakes brought it food almost constantly and it grew at an astounding rate. Within those five days, it became the biggest snake in the cupboard—not that that was saying much since it was barely three feet long, but Harry was stunned by how quickly it grew. In addition, it seemed to be getting smarter at an equally rapid pace. The serpent's eyes had taken on an intelligent gleam and it listened to Harry very closely whenever he was talking to it.
On Dudley's birthday, the day the family went to the Zoo, it all came to a head.
They were in the Reptile House, checking out the various species of lizards and snakes, as well as the various amphibians kept in the building. Harry was trailing behind Dudley and his Aunt, (Vernon had gone to grab something to eat) looking at the snakes behind the glass. He didn't speak to them here—if any of the Dursleys caught him speaking to snakes, Vernon would almost certainly break some of his bones.
But still, he couldn't help but wince at the way Dudley beat against the glass, demanding that one of the larger snakes—a rock python—move from its lazy coils. When the boy sneered at the snake and stalked off to antagonize another poor reptile, Harry walked over to the glass and looked at the python. It certainly looked rather irritated, but it was hard to tell sometimes.
"I'm sorry," Harry muttered lowly. "He's not a nice person. None of my relatives are."
The python's eyes, although unblinking, sparkled in recognition of its language and slowly raised its head to look at Harry more closely. "You speak my tongue?"
"Just enough to get by," Harry cracked a slight smile.
"You're a rare human," the python's tongue flicked out curiously. "Even amongst the strange ones who come sometimes with magic at their call, I have never met one who can speak with me."
"I don't know about them," Harry admitted, although he was desperately curious to know if there were really other people who could use magic—if that was, indeed, what he could do. "Everyone I know just thinks I'm a freak. Well, everyone except snakes like you."
"Mum, look!"
Harry was suddenly thrown to the floor as Dudley smacked into him, eyeing the rock python with barely restrained excitement. "The stupid slug moved! That's right, keep moving you great ugly—hey!"
Annoyed by the interruption, the python lowered its head and ceased mobility once more. Dudley glared at the reptile, then snapped his eyes towards Harry. "You!"
He grabbed Harry before the stunned boy could react and yanked him to his feet, then pinned him against the glass. "Make it move again! It moved when you were here!"
"It's not like I can talk to it!" Harry snapped.
Dudley growled. "I don't care, make it move!"
As Dudley pulled Harry forward and then attempted to shove him back against the glass again, both boys found a surprise—there was no glass to hit.
They went tumbling into the pool of water within the enclosure and came up sputtering, eyes wide in surprise. Dudley locked onto Harry with terrified rage.
"YOU DID THIS, FREAK!"