harry and parseltongue

[Erin Ridgeway]

No: HPFGUIDX 31805

Mahoney said:
I just wonder if Harry always understands snakes, or if he only
understands them, say, when they speak directly to him.

<snip>

The explanation that popped into my head for this is that every
time Harry has used/understood Parseltongue, he hasn't exactly meant to, or 
been aware of it. He seems to have spoken it to the boa constricter in 
PS/SS, but he didn't realize that's what he was doing until later. During 
the duel in CoS, he *thinks* he's speaking English to the snake, he has to 
be told later that all that the onlookers heard was spitting and hissing. 
Maybe he hasn't learned to harness the gift quite yet, and only 
speaks/understands it when he's not overthinking it.

Perhaps hearing Voldemort/Tom Riddle talking to a snake is like
hearing two fluent speakers of a foreign language converse; I speak a
smattering of Spanish, but if I tried to understand a conversation between 
two native speakers, my brain would explode. Of course, if this theory 
worked completely, Harry should've been able to understand their
conversations, since in each case he certainly isn't thinking very hard 
about what they're saying, he's more interested in staying alive. So maybe 
I'm wrong. It was a nice theory while it lasted, though :)

Erin

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