"We circle 'round, we circle 'round,
The boundaries of the earth..."

Nagendra[1] didn't know where the song came from. It was ancient. That much, he knew. But he couldn't remember ever hearing it sung. It was in the Old Tongue, the tongue of his people, a language that neither wizard nor giant could speak, but which wrapped around his very being like a comforting nest.

He sang it quietly to himself as he slithered through the hall of the seventh-floor corridor, just beyond the portrait of a fat woman in pink who could not conceal the mixed flavors of many students living in the space behind her. After the last incident, Nagendra had learned to stick to the side halls and shadows when he couldn't make into the pipes, and he felt most secure sliding slowly along the seam between wall and floor here in the empty hallway.

On the wind, he tasted a human presence. Female. Young. And un-threatening. He'd learned, in the past few days, that the humans were quick to write off his hissing as wind through the drafty castle halls, and few of them ever looked to their feet enough to see him slither by, if he was careful. So he continued along his way, singing softly in his hissing tones:

"We circle 'round, we circle 'round,
The boundaries of the sky.
Though not with wings we're born, you'll see,
Our people still do fly."

1.	Current Size: 7.5 ft (2.28 m) long | Current Weight: 21.5 lbs (9.75 kg)

For no readily identifiable reason, that tune had managed to creep back into Mairead's head.  Given the confused look on the second year sitting next to her, Mairead had been staring blankly at her History of Magic essay, humming the tune to herself for several minutes before her fellow Gryffindor had finally nudged her back into being. 

Mairead blinked and focused on the lad, scowling slightly.  "I can't help it!" Mairead offered preemptively in her own defense.  The tune had started creeping into her consciousness sometime over the last couple weeks though she couldn't for the life of her identify where she'd heard it.  It certainly wasn't Irish or Scottish - or even old English.  Which pretty much ruled out having learned it from home.  But, Mairead didn't have a radio.  Or even one of the wizarding types of radios. 

Essays were hard enough to focus on under the most ideal of circumstances.  Once this mystery tune had settled into Mairead's mind, any hope of getting this essay done had vanished.  With a frustrated grumble, Mairead pushed her chair back, scraping the chair across the floor. 

"I'm gonna go take a walk," Mairead declared, tugging her flute case from her bag and plucking the three sections of rosewood from the inside frame.  Leaving the empty case on the top of her bag, Mairead slid the flute pieces together and lined up the holes as she slipped out of the portrait hole. 

The tune resonated in the girl's head and there was no telling whether the tune was originating inside her head or outside.  But, it didn't matter.  Mairead lifted the flute to her lips and began playing it, following the simple melody at first but adding a few stylistic trills and turns as her fingers grew more familiar with the pattern.  Her feet followed a slow, lazy path down a side corridor until she reached an arched window at the end and settled on the sill. 

Most professional charmers of snakes will tell you that it is the motion of the pipe, not the music, which tames the savage beast. And this is true. Even among magical beasts, snakes do not hear as humans do. Human songs hold no appeal for them. But for one who plays the songs of snakes, it is a different matter entirely.

The music wrapped around Nagendra like the warm waters of a summer stream. He drifted towards it, out of the shadows, thick coils shifting with every crack of the old stone. The music came from a window. From a girl. A human. Small. Not as small as Giant-Mama's tiny sister, but still small. Nagendra slithered closer to her, head nudging her foot as he sang along.

“The boundaries o’ the earth are long,
The circle ‘round them wide…”

One-who-plays-the-songs tasted of dust ground beneath human heels. She was of the Wandering Peoples, then? But not of the warm plains he visited in dreams, no, her earth tasted cold, moist, and rich. And, unless he imagined it, there was also…yes, there! Beneath the moisture, faint but real, the taste of Two-Headed Cousins. Nagendra slithered closer, up the wall, into the still. It could not hold them both. Half of his body dangled lazily to the floor.

“Still we circle ‘round, we circle ‘round,
The boundaries…”

He stood, muscles tense around a long spine, lifting his head see the face of One-who-played-the-songs. One black horn grazed the window. His eyes hung half-open, half-asleep. Nagendra tasted the air and said, with a satisfied sigh, “You play beautifully.”

On the second run through the melody, the tune in Mairead's head was accompanied by words.  Recognizable lyrics that, like the tune, lacked the level of familiarity she associated with songs she'd learned from home.  But, even though she still couldn't place it, she knew the song.  Mairead felt the small nudge against her foot but ignored it, assuming it was someone's cat that had managed to slip out into the corridors. 

Halfway through the second musical phrase, Mairead became aware of serpent attempting to crawl onto the sill with her.  It managed to half-succeed - some of it draped off the sill and dangled down to the floor.  It looked vaguely uncomfortable though Mairead could only speculate what was comfortable or uncomfortable to an animal that was rope-shaped.  Mairead leaned over and gently drew the rest of the creature's body onto the sill and into her lap so it could fit without looking like a discarded pair of stockings.

The song's last airy note hung gently in the air as its tone slowly dissipating while the Gryffindor stared down at the creature.  "That's yer tune?" Mairead asked only after a few moment's hesitation. 

Perhaps she should have been more surprised by the snake's less than reptilian head adornments.  Or that she'd been providing accompaniment for a snake's tune.  But, this wasn't the first strange serpent she'd come across nor was this the first snake she'd held a conversation with.  Macha wasn't the singing type - at least as far as Mairead knew - but the juvenile runespoor had been Mairead's introduction to talking serpents.  And, she'd come across dozens more while visiting Russia.  Talking, two- or three-headed snakes were strange but were they really any stranger than winged, eagle-headed horses?  Or talking, singing hats?

Mairead had long since accepted talking snakes as one of those wizarding world idiosyncrasies. 

Mairead scowled and pointed an accusatory finger at the serpent.  "That song's been stuck in me head for weeks-" or, perhaps, only a couple days.  "I'd been trying to figure out where it came from.  It's a bit repetitive, ye know?  It make ye look kind o' stupid when ye go around repeatin' 'circle boundaries, circle boundaries' all the time.'  Don't ye know anything more interesting to sing?"

"That's yer tune?"

Nagendra nodded. He licked the air lazily, enjoying the aftertaste of the Three-Headed Cousin who came before. The castle, for all its warmth and wonders, carried few reptilian scents. In the pipes, he'd found traces of a Tyrant, long and thankfully dead; the rest of the grounds held only common lizards. Even if the Cousin was no longer the girl's companion, his lingering presence in her scent provided welcome relief.

The accusations of repetitiveness earned a lazy and somewhat befuddled blink. At barely more than a fortnight old,  Nagendra was not entirely sure what a 'week' was.

"There are other ssongs. Many otherss. But I likess that one."

He drifted closer, getting a better look at her face. She sat mostly still, which made it harder to see. Human faces were the oddest thing. Their their mouths were so tiny, their noses so oddly positioned, and those odd things on the side that helped their ears -- fascinating. But it was her eyes that caught him for the moment. Until now, he'd only ever seen Giant-Mama's eyes. One-who-plays-the-songs carried the same brightness in hers. What on earth could it be?

"There issstill much to learn," he mused, half to himself and half to One-who-plays the songs. More of his body came to recline in her lap. "There are many ssongs. Which otherss do you play? And how? That horn...sso ssstrange."

"What'er ye doin'?"  Mairead's eyes narrowed, suspiciously, when the snake-thing leaned in closer.  The possibility the snake might bite her hadn't crossed her mind but ... well ... didn't it know getting in one's face wasn't considered friendly?  Among humans, at least.

Perhaps not.  Truthfully, Mairead didn't know much about what was normal for serpents.  Before hearing Macha's call for help from that Ministry runespoor trap last year, Mairead had never crossed paths with a snake.  She'd never been outside of Ireland before coming to Hogwarts and, despite several attempts, she and Jarlath[1] had never managed to successfully sneak into the Dublin zoo.  Aside from Mairead's brief visit to Russia, Macha was the only snake Mairead knew. 

Maybe, getting in someone's face was normal to snakes. 

"Well, I'm not very good at learnin'."  It was a simple statement, void of any discernible emotion.  "Ye can ask any of me teachers.  So, I don't think I'm the best one to be learnin' from.  Ye should try over with the Ravenclaws.  They're smart." 

Music, though - that was something Mairead knew about.  At least, some types of music.  "Aye.  There are lots of songs.  Ones less 'over and over' than that one.  Me mum and da and everyone else sing all the time at home.  I know a whole bunch but I can't sing and play at the same time.  Only got enough breath for one." 

She held up her flute for the snake to see.  "It's simple."  Even though, of course, it'd never be able to play.  Flutes required fingers.  Fingers required hands.  "Ye blow through that hole and put fingers over the other holes to change the notes.  And hope ye don't pass out if the tune's a fast one.  And, it's a flute - not a horn.  Horn's somethin' different." 

1.	Jarlath Reid - Mairead's best friend and betrothed from home

Nagendra regarded the girl seriously as she mentioned, in an off-hand sort of way, that she 'wasn't much for learning.' Such nonsense. "You learn," he said with utter confidence. "Thiss is a house of knowledge. You cannot not learn. No creature could linger here without learning ssomething. It is the nature of minds."

He regarded the odd instrument curiously. A floot, she called it. He still thought that it resembled another creature's horn, one he'd seen in a book belonging to giant-mother, but looking closer he realized that this one was made of wood. How very strange. 

"I think you are good at learning, if you know the ssongss. Your ssongss, my ssongss. All are good to learn." He settled, coils of muscle and scales folding one over the other until he'd nestled safely in the small human's lap. "Perhapss they are ssimilar? I sshould like to hear more, ssomeday..."

He might have asked her to play now, but there were other questions on his mind. This, he'd come to realize, now that the songs had calmed, was an excellent opportunity. Unlike other humans, One-who-plays-the-songs spoke in his tongue and did not seem afraid. He could ask questions, the questions he'd not been able to get giant-mother to understand.

"You live in the casstle, yess? In the Housse of Red. Do you play ssongs insside?" The only music that got played in the place where giant-mother lived came from the large structure in the common room, the radio. Nagendra sometimes listened to what the odd creature sang, but it rarely satisfied. "Why iss it that you live there and not in the Housse of Green? Or Gold? Or Blue?"