Open Here's a Snake, There's a Snake

[Neal Severn]

The verdict of the sorting hat still echoed around the hall as Neal made her way to her new house table. So... it began again. The humiliation. The girl with a fear of snakes was herself a snake. Deeply unamusing, but even Neal could appreciate the irony. As she sat down, her gaze was pulled upwards again by the deep green and silver banners hanging from the ceiling. Great coiled serpents adorned the fabric, slithering slightly, or appearing to slither, as the banners swayed, and their dark beady eyes leered at her ever more intensely from their mocking heights.

"Not a snake person," she mumbled. Who would be? A madman, and noone else. Finally tearing her gaze away, she tapped the shoulder of the person sitting beside her apprehensively. "Hey - they don't have them down in the dungeons, do they? Not real snakes?"

 

[Cameron Roswell]

Cameron had been contemplating how much mashed potato he could move around on his plate to make it look like he'd eaten enough without wasting food when he felt a tap on his shoulder. He was getting better at students asking him questions since getting his prefect badge last but he still felt his haunches go up as he turned to the newly sorted first year next to him.

"What?" He responded, eyebrows furrowing. It was tempting to lie, the girl looked nervous, but the year had only just started and Cameron still had some good will left over from the holiday break. Besides, with white hair like hers Cameron wasn't confident she hadn't already had the life half scared out of her somewhere. "No, no 'real' snakes. Only the human kind," he said, nodding his head pointedly at the likes of Gwen Goodwin and June Davenport sitting further down the table, hoping the girl caught his drift. "Really, it's all pretty boring down there except for a few dark corners if you go wandering really far." Truthfully, growing up in New Zealand, Cameron had never even seen a real snake outside of the duelling chamber or pet shop in the Harbour, so the girl had nothing to worry about. At least on that front.

 

[Neal Severn]

Neal was a sharp girl. She had no trouble understanding that a 'human snake' wasn't a witch with scaly skin and a forked tongue (though it would be nice if the signs of duplicity were so obvious). She craned to see the girls further down the table, and took a mental photograph. Just her luck to be sorted into the most duplicitous house of all. And it had to be back luck, or coincidence, because you would never catch Neal being a snake. At least not the sort the prefect was referring to. She was a number of undesirable things no doubt but noone could ever say she was fake.

"Why? Whatcha find there, in the dark corners?" she asked, equal parts intrigued and nervous. Not the best question to be asking a few hours before bed on her first night in the castle. But her imagination could conjure worse things, and would, if he didn't tell her.

 

[Cameron Roswell]

Cameron scratched at his nose, shrugging dismissively. He wasn't good at answering these sorts of questions and the last thing he wanted to do here was the say the wrong thing and make some girl cry. He'd already seen one of the first years rush out of the hall tonight. "I dunno, just ya know. Stuff," he said evasively, not wanting to admit the last time he'd been that deep in the dungeons it'd been when he was a first year himself and they'd chickened out before getting too far. "We have a house ghost I bet is down there most of the time. He's not very uh. Social," Cameron said, cutting his eyes to the side. "And there's probably spiders or something. It's not like the castle's going to eat you but don't go wandering around, it's annoying having to come find you guys if you get lost," he added quickly.