okay but imagine a snake gets into grimmauld place somehow, and sirius is so confused when everyone calls for, not an adult, but harry. sirius is especially confused by fred and george, who are calling for "the heir of slytherin" for some reason. and then sirius is even MORE confused when harry comes in and starts speaking parseltongue to the snake, and then picks it up as it hisses back, even sirius is like 90% sure it's a venomous species, which is confirmed by the horrified look on remus's face when he walks in.
harry looks up and sees their faces and is like, "oh, it's fine, he's just looking for a place to cool off. hey, we don't have any mice around here do we? he's a little hungry."
all the kids are going back to what they were doing like this is somehow normal.
"you're a parselmouth?" sirius asks.
harry looks confused when he responds, "skeeter literally reported it in the prophet a few months ago."
"I ASSUMED SHE WAS LYING?"
fred and george are now calling harry variations of "heir of slytherin," including "lord of slytherin," "mightiest lord of all snakes," etc, until finally sirius has to ask about that too, and that's how she learns that her godson defeated a basilisk at the age of 12. this is both utterly terrifying and extremely impressive to sirius, who then has a parenting crisis because she doesn't want to encourage harry to go out and fight giant snakes but she's also so fucking proud of him.
harry, meanwhile, is now trying to convince hedwig to catch a mouse for the snake, a suggestion she is clearly offended by, and fred and george are conjuring magnificent green carpets in front of harry's feet as if he's royalty. and so now ginny is trying to use the carpets to trip people, and when she successfully trips ron they get into a shouting match, which means pig is flying around their heads screeching.
sirius is pretty sure it's the loudest grimmauld place has ever been, and he can't help but think back to their summers at the potter mansion, and when they catch a fond look in remus's eye as he backs out of the room, sirius knows he's thinking the same thing.












