After lunch, they go to the reptile house. It's cool and dark in there, with lit windows all along the walls. Behind the glass, all sorts of lizards and snakes are crawling and slithering over bits of wood and stone. Dudley and Piers wanted to see huge, poisonous cobras and thick, man-crushing pythons. Dudley quickly finds the largest snake in the place. It could wrap its body twice around Uncle Vernon’s car and crush it into a trash can—but at the moment it doesn't look in the mood. In fact, it's fast asleep.

She walks to the tank of one of the poisonous snakes, a small one. "I wonder if you like living here." She muses absently.

The snake raises its head to look at her then very deliberately inclines its head to either side, its oddly expressive face saying something like "Eh, it's not terrible."

Sarah stares. "Did you just answer me?" She asks quietly but incredulously.

The snake pokes out its tongue at her in something her brain parses as snickering then nods, once.

Sarah blinks and then sighs. "Well then, apparently I can talk to snakes, or at least one snake."

Another snicker.

"Can you understand when most people talk or just me?"

"Jussst you," it hisses.

She blinks again. "So I can understand you as well as speak in a way you can understand. Well at least this seems more reproducible than the other weird things that happen around me."

Snakish shrug. "Had not ssspoken to anyone before."

"Yeah, that's not too surprising. I don't know anyone else that's teleported accidentally."

Another snakish shrug. "Do humansss not do that?"

"I've never heard of anyone else doing it."

Single nod.

"What do you eat?"

"Sssmall thingsss. Birdssss. Lizardssss. Micccce. Other ssssnakes."

"I probably couldn't keep you as a pet. I don't think things would be warm enough for you or I'd have enough food for you. I kinda want to anyway but I shouldn't."

"Can hunt. Sssun is good enough. Prefer underground."

"Maybe it could work then, there is still the problem of you being stuck in that tank though. Would you want to be my pet?"

Single nod. "Tank iss boring. Would like to leave. You sssay you 'teleport.'"

"Maybe now that one of my powers is working another one will also get easier. If this works you should coil around one of my legs or something." She concentrates. The snake should be out of the tank.

Nope.

"Ssshame."

"Yeah. Sorry." She realizes that she's forgotten about the Dursleys while talking to the snake. Where are they?

Piers is running right towards her—or towards the snake—and crying, "DUDLEY! MR. DURSLEY! COME AND LOOK AT THIS SNAKE! YOU WON’T BELIEVE WHAT IT'S DOING!—out of the way, useless," he tells Sarah and pushes her away.