Basilisk Eyes

Chapter 26: 33 suns

Harry left the first-floor bathroom when he decided that the telly in the kitchen had been on long enough to have sucked in Dudley and before (he hoped) the Dursleys had a need to use the bathroom that he was currently locked in. His shoes and socks were still not dry and he needed to throw away the gunk from the drains in the bin in the garage.

Walking around barefoot felt good—he liked the feel of the carpet between his toes, the smooth (very clean) wood floors and now the cool concrete of the garage.

He had completed the Saturday chores that his Aunt had ordered him to do, but that didn't mean she wouldn't come up with more if she saw that he was unoccupied.

He wanted to return to the garden to spend more time with Nio hus cherio kisa before he had to leave.

Ron, Hermione, Ginny, and, well, everyone would be on the Hogwarts Express right now, heading back to London. He could almost hear the train whistle in his head and feel the swaying of the cars as it zipped along the tracks. And the smell of the candy trolly as it made its way along the corridor. The apple he'd eaten in the bathroom seemed like a long time ago. He wished he had more food stockpiled in his staff.

Damn! I should have thought of that yesterday! He berated himself as his stomach rumbled in protest.

He used the staff to locate the bin and tossed out the gunk. Though he was tempted, he didn't restore the staff to its normal size because he didn't want Dudley to see him using it.

Though he's probably not sticking his head out the curtains like Aunt Petunia. He's probably still glued to the telly.

It would have been a lot easier to use the staff as a cane to find the doorstep where he sat down and put on his damp socks and shoes. His toes squished in his shoes uncomfortably and their damp odor kept wafting up to his nose.

He went out into the garden and tried to come up with some chore that he could do to stay outside... something that wouldn't send Aunt Petunia through the roof.

Though that wouldn't be so bad either...

He walked along the fence that was bordered with roses and lavender. He steered clear of the roses, though he liked their scent; he had had too many close encounters with their thorns to want to cozy up to them. He picked a lavender leaf and crushed it between his fingers to breath in its pungent fragrance. It helped get the lingering wet shoe smell out of his nose.

Harry knelt on the earth when he heard a rustling in the grass and walked on his hands and knees for a bit. He found a spot to lay down, nose to nose with Nio who was as happy to see him as he was to see the little snake. As the snake twinned through his fingers and wisped his tongue against Harry's nose, greeting him amicably, Harry felt as though he were seeing the snake, though with his other senses rather than just strictly his vision. He imagined that he was a greenish-brown color, but it occurred to him he didn't actually know.

"What color are your scales, Nio?" Harry asked.

"Oh, they are like the leaves when they are growing in the spring, and decaying in the fall so that I can hide among them easily." Nio explained. "They aren't as brilliant as your eyes, which are like the ash leaves in the middle of summer when the sun shines through them."

The snake had poked his head under Harry's glasses to look closely at his eyes which tickled and made Harry blink. He had opened them in the shade. He sighed as he wished he could just stay outside with Nio.

oO0OooO0OooO0OooO0Oo

Dudley was so engrossed with his telly and eating mounds of potato chips (the constant crunching that accompanied the jingles from the adverts was wearing on Harry's nerves) that Dudley hadn't seemed to notice that there was something different about Harry. And Harry wasn't about to enlighten his cousin.