A Snakey Mess PV Finished

Lavatories should have never be used except for what they were designed for. Rule number one if you don't want to get into trouble, or find yourself in a place and moment of time you really wouldn't wish to be.

The library was exceptionally full as it was the beginning of the year and the freshmen occupied it, or just occasionally entered to get a grasp of its epicness. Almost the same was valid for any other place at Hogwarts and especially the Common Room. So the choice fell on the lavatories. It was one of the cleanest areas at Hogwarts, particularly because it was for girls.

Meenauh didn't know how much time passed, but what really distracted her from reading was silence. It was almost never silent there and suddenly all the noises and voices died as if a troll was on the loose somewhere and everyone was alerted and ran away to hide at the Great Hall, or something. She shivered. She wouldn't want to find herself face-to-face with a troll while getting out of a toilet cabin. Moreover, she wouldn't want to be eaten alive. At least not at this age. She shivered again and packed her book into her pouch.

The sound of the cabin's door opening and closing came in unison with some hissing behind her back.

"Okay, not a troll, a snake. A basilisk? Should I turn and look? And what if a basilisk? Then turn and don't look. And what's the point in turning if you don't look? Okay, calm down, think of a spell," she breathed abnormally and her thoughts built a queue before she could realise the meaning of them. But then she heard the noise of...

"Walls turning? Sinks? What?" she thought puzzled and turned without hesitation.

Right before here, at the other side of the lavatory, she saw a girl standing in front of the sinks, which were being transformed into a sort of entrance. She opened her mouth but nothing came out of it. The most surprising thing was that not only she knew, okay — guessed, why the sinks were turning, but also who was the girl. The mysterious girl Meenauh felt to hide some secret deep inside her.

"You've really got to be joking!" she exclaimed making slow steps towards Euphrasia.

All was going to plan. After a moment or so, the loud creaking began, and the sinks began to unfold into a deep tunnel, a bit of green seemed to flash in with the stone. Whether it was colored there, or just mold, Millie didn't really know, and she didn't want to figure it out, either.

While everything was going to plan, she heard someone say something. Instantly, Millie jumped back and turned around. Her eyes seemed to widen a tenfold when she saw her fellow Gryffindor, Meenauh. Instantly, she pulled her wand out of her pocket and hesitantly pointed it at Meenauh.

Millie didn't know what she was doing. Nobody had followed her to the bathrooms, and if fate had aligned properly, Millie could just hide in the bathrooms until Meenauh left. But it seemed that that wouldn't happen. She would now have to battle to keep her secret from getting exposed.

There was too much bigotry against her kind, when it was something as simple as speaking to snakes. Maybe opening the Chamber of secrets was scary, too, but it was just talking to serpents! And besides, what was so scary about that? Nothing that Millie knew of.

"I-I can explain," She replied slowly.

As she was approaching Euphrasia, the latter suddenly jumped away from the place she was standing, drew her wand and pointed it at Meenauh.

"Wow, wow, wow, calm down, sweetheart," she said, halting in place, raising both hands into the air and involuntarily backing off.

Her friend was definitely caught by surprise. But what was she thinking when she decided to open the goddamn chamber in the middle of the day? In response, Euphrasia slowly tried to say she could explain the whole thing.

"Can you?!" Meenauh asked pouring artificial horror into the depth of her eyes. But then she calmed it not to mess around with her shocked friend, put her arms down and smiled, trying to approach  Euphrasia again, ignoring the wand still being pointed at her.

"I mean, I heard the hissing and then the walls and sinks turning and then you standing here clearly waiting for the passage to open. Do you really think you need to explain it to me?" she almost giggled at how obvious the situation was and how ridiculous it seemed in almost in the middle of the day, "But what I would like to talk to you, of course, how long have you known you're a parselmouth and, jeez, what is down there?!" she actually had nearly 56 questions to ask her about the basilisks, snakes' consciousness, ancient magic and lots of other things, but at that moment it seemed Euphrasia needed to calm down and get over the shock of her secret disclosure, "By the way, I think you should close that thing before someone else entered the lavatory," she pointed at the door with an inclination of her head, pulling out her wand.

"Colloportus!" she said calmly, watching the doors shutting firmly and locking themselves up, "This may save you some time."

Oh god, oh goodie, oh great. Questions, something she hated even more than being caught. But Meenauh was Meenauh, and she always had questions that Millie could never answer.

When Meenauh walked back, Millie lowered her wand, but keeping it in her hands. She wasn't going to stow it away just yet, she was going to have to be careful. If her entire future was resting upon her own shoulders, and the choices she made today, nothing was going to go well.

But she couldn't make noise. No, just sputtered nonsense as she tried to make sense of the situation. Not that that was going well, though. "Yeah I'm a Parselmouth. I-" She gave an involuntary pause, and shudder. "I've known for like six months."

It wasn't the exact truth. She had known she could talk to snakes for  a long time. She just didn't know it was technically a dark art and a whole bunch of people hated it. Golly gee great! The questions were like a gun on rapid fire. Tiring, and something she didn't want to deal with.

"There's nothing much down there," She said, looking over to the entrance. "Some snakes, sure, but its just an empty chamber with a huge opening or something."

Her head seemed to spin like a wheel, lost in thoughts and then brutally removed from it. God, this day was progressively getting worst, and Millie hated it.

"Six months?! Wow. You're a tiny quiet little secret, Euphrasia. I felt you're on the most mysterious beings here since the day we met, to be honest. So, you say, you could... you could ask a snake to catch that niffler back then?" she gave it a spontaneous laugh, full of uncontrollable emotions, covered her face with her palms, rubbed it and looked at Euphrasia again.

New information started to settle down in Meenauh as the new questions started to arise in her head and she had to restrain herself.

"'Nothing much' and 'some snakes' in the same sentence are a key! Do you speak to them? Gosh, I will shut up. There would probably be some other opportunity to discuss that, right?" she stopped, looking at still shocked Euphrasia with who knows what running through her snakish brain at that moment.

The passage was still open and Euphrasia stood right in front of it seemingly petrified, with her wand still clutched in her hand. Meenauh frowned and turned serious:

"Are you going to close that? I wouldn't want you to expose this to other folks. I don't know whether you're aware... of course, you're aware... six months," she muttered the last bits to herself, "If you're aware that not everyone understands the gift you own and most probably will frown upon it."

She didn't want to bring more troubles in, but based on the condition Meenauh watched her at that moment, she never ever told anyone. Meenauh never saw her, Euphrasia The Calmest of All, in the state of utter shock.

"No, the snakes don't really obey me, so to speak. I'm sure in the future they will." She replied. This was in fact, true. The snakes listened and spoke to her sometimes, but they didn't really believe in letting humans control them. If Millie worked hard enough, she was sure it would become a reality.

After Meenauh suggested she shut the Chamber, Millie waddled over and stood directly in front of the opening. She leaned in closely. "Close," She hissed to it. Then she took a few steps backwards, waiting for the sinks to fold into themselves once more. Then, the chamber would be sealed and it would seem that nothing went awry.

"Of course I knew it would be frowned upon, with what happened with Lord Voldemort being a Parseltongue. But that doesn't mean everyone with the ability is linked to it." She added. It was quite worrying for her. If anything bad happened, and her secret got out, it was sure to damage everything in her future.

It was terrible to think that if she slipped up again, and someone else found out about her secret, and told everyone, she would lose everything. People would be terrified of her. It was like being a werewolf, and losing it all before you gained it.

"Mhm," she mindfully murmured as Euphrasia explained her current relationship with snake kind, "Do you know that basilisks live for like very long? Centuries long. Now imagine if some wizard shared his ancient knowledge with a basilisk and then you befriended that basilisk? The capabilities are unbelievable!"

That sounded a bit dark, to be completely honest. But if she could take a bit of darkness for herself, then Euphrasia wouldn't have to deal with that alone. She felt that was what friendship was about. And then there was hissing again and the sinks started to fold back in.

Meenauh saddened a bit as Euphrasia confirmed her acknowledge of how others may look at her rare ability. After a short pause, she replied:

"Of course it doesn't mean anything. The ability is so rare, though, and no one knows how one is awarded. I wish I could study genetics more and try to understand how magic is written into our DNA. Anyway, it doesn't make you a bad person, or dark witch, or anything. It just means you're more powerful than others."

She wanted to comfort Euphrasia so that she could relax a bit.

"Is there any other entrance? Because I don't think this is like the best entrance, considering the area is used quite often by other students."

Of course there was another entrance. And if there was another entrance, then it must've been easy to find and locate, right? Well, no. Millie curiously looked out of the halls, as Meenauh had said, many people visited the girls bathroom on a daily basis. The majority of time it was for gossip.

"One," She said, looking back to Meenauh. "Under the Great Lake." She laughed lightly and began picking at her fingernails. It was a bad habit she had, but there was nothing she could do about it.

"But uh, I think 'powerful' is a pretty big term. I'm not powerful at all, I'm just..." She froze, thinking of a word to describe herself. "I'm just me, y'know?"

There was no doubt in her mind of her ability, but there was no way that being able to talk to snakes would consider her "powerful" in the slightest. If people made snakes do their bidding, then there's no way she would be powerful. Just lazy. And the only lazy cat Millie knew, was her own kitty.

Finally, she sighed, and her shoulders slumped. Leaning against the sink, she looked up to the ceiling of the girls bathroom. This was going to be a rough day, but it was almost over. Maybe something good would come from it. But honestly, Millie didn't think so.

Meenauh's smile wore completely off her face as Euphrasia answered and started to pick at her fingernails. Her poor dear friend wasn't absolutely ready for anyone else to know her secret, in the first place. And especially not to find out the way Meenauh did.

"Okay, mhm, okay. Under the lake. Sure. Sounds ok," Meenauh kept nodding at almost every word with a tone of fake acceptance of the mentioned fact, "Should be easier to get in, right?" and she laughed to accompany Euphrasia in the light laugh of hers. Laughing was good. You can't laugh when you're in shock, right?

Euphrasia didn't accept the term 'powerful' in the way Meenauh actually meant it.

"Well, I didn't mean that it automatically granted you some super-wizard power. I just meant that you one in god-knows-how-many thousandth possess a rare gift," she corrected herself and continued, "And what, my darling, you meant by 'just' you? I believe you have much more in you than you can comprehend at the moment. I still feel there's some undiscovered power inside you, which I noticed since the first day we met. And I don't know whether being a Parselmouth adds up to it or not."

Throught the whole dialogue, Meenauh kept glancing at the closed door, ready to halt if anyone would try to unlock the door and crash into their private conversation. Probably, getting to a safer place would be a good idea, but Meenauh felt that suggestion was kind of inappropriate at that moment, so she kept it to herself for now.