Smuggler

Smuggler

by spinner

"Sylvia. Sylvia! Stop your screaming! This is no cause to fall to pieces."

"Save me! Save me! I'm being smuggled! SMUGGLER!"

Harry rubbed his eyes and shifted forward in a line of travelers that zigzagged back and forth on itself in the smelly, brightly-lit, carpeted concourse. The wizarding world's half of Heathrow Airport wasn't running any faster than the Muggle half of the place was today. All Potter wanted to do was get through customs, pick up his checked trunk, get home, and relax. He was utterly exhausted. What was supposed to be a morning arrival through the International Floo had been backed up well into the late afternoon due to the usual reasons—bureaucratic red-tape concerning incomplete travel vouchers, the sincerely-competent if a tad overzealous security forces, and the exasperating nitwits who insisted that they should have special dispensation from the two bag maximum limit on luggage. And now, if things weren't bad enough, Harry was hearing voices.

"I'm suffocating! I'll expire, exsssspire, if I don't get released soon!"

"Someone shut her up."

"I'd strangle her if I could reach her."

"Save me! Save me!"

"Sylvia! Calm down! It's going to be all right."

Harry was hearing several different voices. He paused on his left foot and turned one corner of the zigzag line, glancing around. He couldn't see where the voices were coming from. There wasn't a group of people who matched what these voices sounded like. Draco Malfoy was standing behind him, looking immaculate as always. God, Harry hated traveling with Malfoy, because he was entirely too clean and tidy, while Potter felt like he'd been swimming in muck and sewage and stank to a distance of ten feet. Malfoy fanned himself out of boredom, giving Harry a nonchalant glance. Draco wasn't hearing these voices, clearly. The man in front of Harry had a leather duffel held loosely in his grip. He swung it casually up on his opposite shoulder when Harry ventured too close, and the voices started again.

"Stop swinging us! I'll be sick!"

"Sylvia. I'm going to suffocate you if you don't shush."

"Save me! Save me! Someone!"

Harry blinked, stared at the back of the man's head, and narrowed his eyes.

"There's no point in screaming. No one can hear you."

"You're embarrassing the rest of us."

"Save me!"

Harry leaned forward ever-so-slightly, pretending to be peering around the young man before him in order to reach the arrival/departure signs. Draco studied Harry, but did not seem alarmed. Harry hissed softly, and spoke to Draco.

"Pssst. We're six hours and forty-five minutes behind. Can you believe that?"

"Yes," Malfoy answered calmly.

"Psssst," Harry hissed as if annoyed and backed away.

"Sssssssssssssssssshhhhhhhhhhhhhh!"

"Don't you shush me! I don't care if you ARE a queen."

"Ssssshhh. I heard someone. I heard someone!"

"We're on the concourse still. People standing around everywhere."

"Silence. I think I heard a Parselmouth."

Harry definitely heard the hissing this time. The young man in front of Harry stiffened nervously when his entire bag shifted on his arm. Several someones inside the bag began screaming for help and moving around in order to attract attention.

"SMUGGLED! WE'RE BEING SMUGGLED! SIBLING! SIBLING! SAVE US! HE'S A SMUGGLER!"

Draco saw Harry pull back from the man with the leather bag, and reach inside his own cloak. The man must have sensed that Harry was becoming suspicious. He ducked under the stretched-out ropes and hurried across the cordoned-off areas. The panicked hissing and screaming went with him.

"Save us! Save us!"

"SMUGGLER!"

"Stop! Stop!"

Several voices chimed in the chorus. The young man slipped into the nearest restroom with Potter in pursuit. Harry was leaping over the ropes like a track star over a series of hurdles. Draco watched him, rolled his grey eyes, and followed by unhooking the ropes, stepping through, and carefully hooking them back into place. Malfoy had spent enough time around Harry in the last few years to know that if the high-strung Pride of Gryffindor was chasing someone through an International Floo customs line, it wasn't for no reason. He followed not out of concern for Potter, but because someone had to keep Potter from making a spectacle of himself, after all.

Potter burst into the restroom, wand drawn. The metal, gray and green room was empty except for one stall, where the horrid sound of gurgling and struggling was taking place. Harry burst through the metal stall door, and without thinking, snatched the leather bag away from the young man who had it tipped over the flushing toilet.

"CECIL! He's flushed Cecil!"

"I'm sssssssssslipping!"

Harry slammed the tip of his wand to the Adam's apple of the young man, and put the bag carefully on the ground behind himself. Draco finally entered the restroom.

"Lock the door!" Harry ordered. The leather bag was literally erupting with reptiles: striped ones, hooded ones, coral banded ones, green and yellow banded ones. An emerald green boa raced across the cold tiles and shuddered with fright under the dark countertop. Black and silver snakes hurried one direction as yellow and black diamond patterned ones slithered in another. Draco, ever the composed soul, leapt like a cat up onto the countertop and drew his wand. Small burlap bags were coming undone inside the leather bag, and more reptiles emerged. Harry couldn't help but notice that for the most part, they were very young snakes, and that made him even more angry than he had been before.

"This isn't what it looks like," the young man offered meekly. Harry grabbed him by the throat and threw him out of the stall into Draco's waiting grip. The smuggler hastily crawled up onto the counter with Malfoy, dodging the coils and scales that rolled around the floor.

"CECIL! CECIL!"

One dark brown and cream striped snake was clinging to the porcelain u-bend, screaming down into the rushing water, clearly distraught. Harry knelt down, hissing to her to be calm, and stuck his hand into the cold water in the toilet clear up to his shoulder. He hoped the scent of bleach and cleanser wasn't his imagination.

"You'd better not be poisonous," Harry whispered to the upset snake as she licked at his nose. He angled his arm and hand around as Draco lashed up the smuggler with a binding spell. Yes, Harry thought wryly, if there was one thing Draco was good at, it was binding spells.

"Please save him, kind ssssssir!"

"I can't feel anyone there," Harry replied to her. The water was calming down, rising in the bowl.

The dark brown and cream snake curled around Harry's arm and slithered down into the u-bend herself. Seconds later, two snakes crawled back up Harry's soaking wet arm and coiled up around him, coughing and sneezing, panting in exhaustion.

"Cecil?" Harry asked the panting snake on his left shoulder. The second snake hissed, sneezed, and hissed again.

"Yes?"

"Sweetheart," the first snake whispered, gliding across Harry's shoulders and flicking her tongue at the second snake.

"Sylvia. Stop. I won't perish."

"Is anyone else down there?" Harry asked, worried someone might choose this commode and get the snap of fangs on the buttocks for their troubles.

"The coast is clear," Cecil whispered.

"Must you always go around rescuing things?" Draco asked Harry from his relatively-safe perch on the countertop. The smuggler made the mistake of putting one foot downward, and several snaked lunged for him. He raised himself back up rather quickly.

"Okay. Stop that. There's no need to be nasty," Harry whispered and hissed. All the reptiles came to a stop and swiveled around to face him in wonder.

"You're a Parselmouth," the young smuggler whispered, covering his chin with one hand, his eyes wide with horror. "Oh my word! You're Harry Potter!"

Draco mouthed the words and rolled his eyes in disgust.

"Sibling," Sylvia hissed, flicking her tongue on Harry's cheek.

"Fabulous. She's in love with you too. It's all well and good, this rescue business, Potter, but now what do we do with them?" Draco asked Harry, who was tickling Sylvia under the chin.

"What's going on in there!?" someone outside the door asked, pounding loudly. Every snake in the room cringed and hit the floor, trying to look low and small. "Open this door!"

"If you want to get out of here alive, and not wind up in the zoo or worse, down the flushie, everyone back in the bag for a minute," Harry urged, picking up the handles and opening it wide.

"But it's crowded and stuffy in there," Sylvia complained. "I'm claustrophobic!"

"I'm sorry," Harry hissed. "Everyone inside, and I promise I'll get you out of here quickly and safely. I have a place in mind…..a library….lots of mice. All the mice you can eat. Books to read too, if you're into that sort of thing."

There was a good amount of swearing and disgruntled whispering, but by the time Draco obliviated the smuggler then got off the counter and unlocked the door, everyone wearing scales was back in the black leather bag. Harry hoisted it up into his own arms and carried it level. He could hear Sylvia hissing and freaking out again inside her pouch.

Mordred and Severus were waiting outside the airport when Draco and Harry emerged minutes later. It's amazing how fast a line can move when a wizard with a powerful charisma spell blankets the area with blissful good cheer and well-being. No harm in spreading a little good cheer, was there? Harry was kicking himself for not thinking about it before. Harry was confident someone would eventually find the obliviated, unconscious smuggler in the bathroom stall. It wouldn't take too long.

"Dad!? What took so long!? We've been waiting forever!" Mordred wailed loudly and then flung himself around Harry's waist as Potter lifted a flat leather bag high above him.

"Customs," Harry shrugged, laughing nervously. "We should go. Fast."

"How long until the spell dissipates?" Draco asked. "I'm so cheerful, I may kill myself."

"Soon. Quick. Don't whine. Get in the car," Harry hurried him along.

"Help Harry with his luggage and get in the car," Severus murmured to the ten-year-old clinging to Potter. He wished again that it wasn't so blatantly obvious that Mordred preferred Harry above all other people on the planet. Harry bent down to kiss the top of Mordred's head and hissed at the bag. The bag hissed back, and Severus stared hard at Harry. Mordred dragged Harry's rolling luggage to the back of the car and stuffed it haphazardly into the opened trunk. He came back around to get Draco's luggage as well.

"I'll sit in the front seat," Draco insisted, following Severus into the Ministry car that had been waiting since early morning for Potter and Malfoy to arrive back from their trip. The familiar driver nodded to Harry and held the back door for him.

"Want me to toss that bag in the trunk too, Mr. Potter?"

"No, Robbie, thanks, no," Harry smiled nervously, clutching the leather bag.

"So what did you bring me? What did you bring me?" Mordred demanded eagerly, hugging Harry again and climbing across his lap and into the far side of the back seat. He put a knee into the middle of the black leather bag, and Harry pulled it out of reach.

"Sorry, sorry, sorry," Harry hissed to the bag. Severus watched him curiously from the front seat. Snape recognized the sound of Parseltongue even if Mordred didn't.

"Everyone strapped in safely?" Robbie the driver asked, climbing in himself. Harry edged the black bag back down into the seat between himself and Mordred, and whispered hisses at the bag.

"Everyone stay calm."

"I'm suffocating, exssspiring!"

"Sylvia, stay calm."

"What was that?" Robbie asked when the bag hissed and squirmed.

"Everyone stay calm," Harry repeated in English. Hissing from the bag made Mordred sit up straight against the far side of the car. The driver glanced accusingly over one shoulder at Harry, and down at the bag.

"You aren't a ophidiophobic, are you, Robbie?" Harry asked, scared.

"No, I suppose not, so long as they mind their manners and stay off the foot brake. No one venomous gets in the front seat either. Thank your lucky stars Simon took the day off. He'd be clinging to the ceiling, screaming like a little girl by this point."

"Did you hear that? Everyone stay back here and off the pedals up front. Leave the driving to the expert. No biting or spitting venom either," Harry hissed as he unzipped the bag. Thirty small heads of differing colors and shapes peeked out at various angles. Mordred's eyes flashed round and large as dinner plates. Severus glared at Harry, and Draco barked up a small snort.

"You are so in trouble," Draco laughed at Harry.

"Mr. Potter," Severus chided softly.

"Severus, I can explain," Harry whispered back. Draco was smirking to himself.

"I don't doubt you believe you can," Severus growled.

"Ohmygodyou'rethebest," Mordred stumbled over words, beaming at Harry, face full of wonder and excitement. A dark brown and cream snake came racing up out of the bag and wrapped herself around Mordred's neck and shoulders, panting for breath. Several other reptiles poured out of the bag too, and they sat around the sunny, warm backseat or on Harry if they could reach. Some sat on Mordred too. A hooded cobra crept up into the back window and flared at a passing car that startled her.

"Stop that," Harry warned. The cobra slinked down low again, but remained in the bright sunshine.

"We're going to get arrested if they don't behave," Robbie chided.

"Everyone keep their heads down. Don't attract attention," Harry hissed to the lot of them. "Sylvia, no choking. That's my son you're wrapped around."

"I'm not a constricting snake usually. Sorry," the dark brown and cream striped snake said, flicking her tongue at the boy and lessening her grip on him.

"Tickle her chin. She likes that," Harry urged Mordred.

"That's a regina septemvittata, my dear," Severus warned the boy. "Try not to upset her."

"You're the best," Mordred beamed at Harry again. Draco rolled his eyes at Harry, and Severus gave him a piercing stare.

"You are so in trouble," Malfoy repeated to Potter, discouraging the yellow and black snake that was struggling to winding its way up the back of the seat towards him. He pushed it unceremoniously back down the seat, and watched it coil up around Harry's ankle and pout.

"Had a good time at the convention, did you?" Robbie asked, calmly merging into busier traffic on the freeway.

"Mm hmm," Harry nodded.

"An adder. An Emerald boa. An Egyptian cobra. Two asp vipers. At least two Queen snakes. A banded krait? Four black mambas? You couldn't get him a sneak-o-scope or a build-your-own-volcano box?"

"Sorry," Harry whispered to Severus. "They're very small black mambas. I'm sure they'll be no trouble. I'll explain when we get home."

"Yes, yes you will," Severus repeated. He glanced down in the front seat, and gave an unflappable frown even while Draco was practically climbing into Robbie's lap. "Madam, out of my lap, or you're going into a potion pot."

"All reptiles in the back seat," Harry scolded gently.

"Spoil sport," the emerald green snake hissed, vanishing under the seat again.

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Author Notes:

Queen snake graphic nicked from Wikipedia. Many thanks to Eva for help with sibilant 's' words and snake conversations. This story was inssssspired by an MSNBC article from May 24, 2007 that my roommate sent me about a man smuggling snakes through Cairo's airport in his carry-on luggage. He had 700 live snakes, including two poisonous cobras. J