Janet Flannel Roll Banana Karen Encyclopedia Page

Janet asked her parents to tell her about her grandma, whose name was Sumaira B Karen. Sumaira had fled from her family in India with her children in 1946 and immigrated to England. Years later, Janet learned from a directory of known Pakistani Pureblood families that Sumaira was a squib born to the parselmouth Karan family. Sumaira was raised around parseltongue, but she could never fully grasp it the way her family could and felt alienated as a result. Upon learning that she had eloped with a muggle and diluted their pure as snow bloodline twice, she was disowned. She was forced to flee after an attempt on her life by her own father. When she immigrated, Her name, Sumaira Begum Karan, was misspelt as Sumaira Banana Karen in the documents, which worked in Sumaira’s favour and hid her from unfriendly eyes.

In an attempt to connect with what alienated her from her family, Grandma spent her retirement collecting books on parseltongue, as well as compiling soundbites of distinct snake hisses. She applied the muggle science of linguistics to it, eventually creating a construction of the language that was accurate enough to get through some botched conversations along the lines of:

Darius: Master, can I have a biscuit?
Grandma: Your mother wasn’t a biscuit, silly.

However, Grandma ultimately whittled away her time failing to truly learn to speak parseltongue, even through extensive reading and listening to Darius’s incredible monologues. Grandma could only interpret snake noises and mimic what she'd heard growing up around her family, who only spoke in parseltongue to each other much like the Gaunts did.

This is similar to how Ron imitated Harry's parseltongue to open the chamber in deathly hallows. If squibs could canonically speak to and understand cats, well, it wouldn’t seem too far off to assume that perhaps squibs could comprehend other animals, or perhaps even have the comprehend language ability.

By the time her grandma died, she’d managed to stuff three locked cabinets full of scripts and tomes on parseltongue, and her own notes and research. Janet’s family, who were muggles with no knowledge of the magical world, had no clue what they could be other than the concerning ramblings of a dementia patient.

Despite never mentioning it in life, grandma had an inkling that Janet was magical from the ease at which she communicated with the snake, and so Janet inherited these tomes and notes as stated in the will soon after her grandmother died.

It turns out that Darius Banana Roll, the mighty pueblan milk snake, has the magical signature of an Emerald Gazer! When this is discovered, Darius is unsurprised as he has always been aware of his greatness. Of course, he would have the ancestry and full magical capability of a great emerald gazer! whyever anyone would doubt this is beyond Darius's comprehension. Grandmother even picked him up from the pet shop for this exact reason, although she was unaware of the specifics. When she showed up at home with a snake and gave everyone a heart attack, she explained that she felt as if there was a mysterious higher power guiding her hand, and when she lay her eye him, she felt a great spark as if she was connecting with her soulmate. The full extent of how close Darius and grandma is not known. Historians will say they were friends.

Darius Banana Roll is a 2 foot long with black, banana-yellow and red stripes on his light slender body. Darius is a year older than Janet. Although Pueblan milk snakes live an average of 20 years, Darius’s lifespan is likely to have more longevity due to his magical emerald gazer ancestry. Although Darius isn’t currently venomous or very big, he will likely develop venom and grow larger than the average pueblan milk snake when he is older due to his emerald gazer genetics. His mother was a pueblan milk snake, and his dad was an emerald gazer. He is a half-blood snake.

Darius would like to add that he named himself, as any self respecting snake ought to do, and that he is mightiest of all snakes because he possesses the much coveted magical ability to talk to humans, known as Hisssapien, which he named himself as he is the only known snake authority on the matter at this time.

Following the purchase of a roomy trunk, Janet turned it into a living space for Darius from his deconstructed enclosure, with a thermostat-controlled guarded UVB lamp providing 30-degree heat on one side, real grass floor, small pond, bark, damp moss, twigs, heated rocks and branchy hideaways. Janet eventually improves this by enchanting daylight, weather, and certain seasons into the trunk. She also moves his favourite print out of a San Francisco Garter Snake, which he hopes to marry one day.

Darius's favourites are colour: green, book: Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes, song: titanic on the recorder, animal: panda, scent: fear

Janet had years of practice speaking parseltongue from an early age with her pet snake Darius, who was bought not long before she was born and looked after by her grandma after she retired. Darius is Janet’s closest friend, and Janet often snuck him into school in her boot.

It was from reading one of the more introductory texts on parseltongue that she inherited from grandma that she learned she could only speak to Darius the way that she could because she had a rare talent from birth. Janet always had an easy as pie time understanding and talking to the snake, although she had previously assumed that this was due to the very early age at which her grandmother started making ‘mimicked’ snake noises at her. It definitely explained why it felt as if she was teaching grandma at times, for example:

Darius(in what he percieves to be a human tongue): mAstErrr, cAnne I hAvE a cOwwe?
grandma(in what she percieves to be snake tongue): yOuR mOtHeR wAsN't A cOw, sssIlLy.
Janet(in English): UGH! No grandma *rolls eyes* he asked if he could have a cow!
grandma(in what she percieves to be snake tongue): YoU cAn’T hAvE a CoW, sssIlLy

Janet sympathised with Darius greatly in moments like these. She always thought grandmother's 'parseltongue', if you could call it that, sounded strange and much less comprehendible than Darius's, but she could never put her finger on why before.

What really bugged Janet though was all the hogwash about bloodlines that made up 80 percent of every tome and script in the collection. By the time she was done skimming through all of it she’d pretty much got the point that this rare super special natural born ability could only be passed down through bloodlines.

Darius, who believed himself capable of the incredible magical ability of understanding humans, thought this inborn talent malarky was incredibly silly, and that the only reason she could talk to him was because he was talking to her. Janet had no reason to doubt his reasoning after reading up a bit more on the wizarding world, and she agreed with him that wizards did tend to put themselves in the middle of things and refuse to budge. She explained to Darius that maybe wizards were like this because they were scared into hiding since the witch burnings and trusted no other species but themselves out of misplaced fear and insecurity about persecution. Darius agreed that they should be scared.

When Miss Hydrangea was demonstrating magic to Janet's parents, she turned Darius into a spoon and Janet forgot to ask her to turn him back. Janet buried the spoon at her grandma’s grave with a promise to return and transfigure him back.