August 16, 1988
England, Cokeworth, Spinner's End, Severus Snape's house
"And still, people created a whole pile of problems for themselves when they invented such a huge number of languages," I declared, swallowing the words 'in your world'.
Sensei proved to me that the thing about languages was absolutely true. He showed me books. Even the letters were radically different! He called them 'Latin', 'Cyrillic', and 'runes'. Every language had its own alphabet, its own words, its own spellings, and its own rules for spelling those words! Just horrifying. Snape-sensei said that even within Great Britain, which England was part of, there were a couple of languages and their own dialects.
"Muggles have a biblical legend about the Tower of Babel," my teacher told me with a snort. "It says that once, all peoples spoke a single language—or rather, in ancient times there was only one people. One day, humans decided to build an enormous tower reaching all the way to the heavens. Their pride angered God, and He gave each builder a different language so that people could no longer understand one another. Because of that, construction stopped, the people scattered across the world, separate nations appeared, and every nation had its own language."
"Mm..." Interesting. Was that God's name 'Pain', by any chance? Seemed rather brutal over a simple tower. "So God was afraid that people would reach the heavens, get to Him, and then He wouldn't be able to be God anymore?" I asked.
"Hmm..." Snape-sensei thought about it. "I think the story is supposed to mean something along the lines of man being unable to become equal to God."
Yeah, I knew a couple of people with 'divine power'. They had all ended badly.
"But if God stopped people from reaching Him and seeing what He really was, then something about that is suspicious," I declared. "Because otherwise, if people had reached Him and seen Him, they would have known for sure that God existed and would have bowed before His greatness and all that..."
"Hmm... Theological debates aren't really my field," Sensei smiled for half a second. "But there is a certain logic to what you're saying. Wizards aren't religious in the same way Muggles are, because most of them can do things Muggles attribute to various Gods and Messiahs."
"So theoretically, that God from the legends could have been some incredibly powerful wizard?" I clarified.
In principle, shinobi were similar to wizards in that respect. We relied on our own strength. Even the 'Will of Fire', which was considered something like a religion, was faith in the principles of the village, looking to the older generation, protecting and teaching the young. And the Shinobi Code, of course, with its own rules and laws. But it was certainly not blind faith in some man in the sky who would tell people how to live and what to do. That was why all the Countries and Hidden Villages, despite their disagreements and old grudges, had united very quickly when yet another 'divine arbiter of fate' appeared...
"Possibly," Snape-sensei shrugged. "We invoke the names of Merlin, Mordred, and Morgana, whose names and deeds were so great—or so terrible—that they are remembered even after thousands of years."
Yeah, someone like Rikudo-sennin. The greatest and most legendary shinobi, who, they said, was the ancestor of the Great Clans, including Sasuke's Uchiha clan. And Granny Tsunade's Senju clan. As well as the Uzumaki and Kaguya clans.
"All right, I'll show you the last book and go back to the laboratory," my teacher reminded me.
I nodded.
"I bought this book on rare potions during my trip to Japan." A pale tome floated down to us from the top shelf. "Magical records copied from some scrolls... Unfortunately, I couldn't make sense of them. Apparently the language changed over time or something, but the meaning of half the phrases eludes me."
"Wow!" I opened the book and couldn't hold back a loud gasp.
"Yes, those are hieroglyphs. They're considered one of the most difficult writing systems," Sensei interpreted my shock in his own way.
Meanwhile, I was staring at my native language with tears almost in my eyes!* And the book was written in High Speech.
So what did that mean? Was this world, with its enormous number of languages, some kind of crossroads between worlds? Maybe my world was a local satellite world altogether? How else could I explain the fact that the language of my world was... Japanese? Just one of seven thousand languages...
"Please read something from it," I asked Sensei. "I want to hear how it sounds."
"'Genzai made no jikan no kaishi kara sukuryoru kenkyu suiyaki,'" he read the title.
'The Scroll of Medicinal Potions from the Beginning of Time to the Present Day,' I instantly 'translated'. A bold title for a book that looked to be only about two hundred pages long. Either there weren't that many potions, or they were extremely versatile.
"Was it expensive?" I asked, gripping the book in a death hold.
"Around fifteen ryo," he answered, and I nearly flinched at hearing the name of a currency that sounded almost exactly like our own 'ryo'. "They have their own money. One ryo is approximately three Galleons, so in Galleons..."
"Forty-five," I finished for him. "Is that a lot?"
"The goblin bank offers an exchange rate of one Galleon to five Muggle pounds, if that makes more sense to you," Snape-sensei shrugged.
"Two hundred and twenty-five pounds," I calculated and whistled.
That was almost as much as the Dursleys spent on the entire family in a month...
I put the book in my native language on the table, thinking feverishly.
"Would you be very interested in finding out what's written in it, Sen... sir?" I asked cautiously.
"Yes, except there aren't many magical specialists in Old Japanese, even in Japan itself, let alone in England, which is on the other side of the world. I can understand half of it, but without the other half it comes down to trial and error. So I abandoned the translation."
"The book is very valuable, I realize that, but... It seemed to me that I understood what was written there," I whispered after making up my mind, drawing my head into my shoulders. "Is that normal for... wizards?"
"Hmm..." Sensei looked surprised. One eyebrow moved upward by a couple of millimeters. "That is... unusual. But not impossible. Some wizards had—and still have—hereditary gifts of their own. Even things like understanding the language of snakes: Parseltongue."
"Oh!" I remembered Harry mentioning that he could speak to snakes. "O-o-oh!.."
What if I could too? Or was that a gift belonging to Harry's soul? Still, if I had inherited the scrawny four-eyed body, why shouldn't I get such a cool ability along with it? I remembered Orochimaru's and Sasuke's summons being very impressive and dangerous. How many times had various slithering creatures swallowed me whole...
"What?" Snape-sensei narrowed his eyes.
"Ah... I... Once, I thought a little snake in Aunt Petunia's garden said something to me. But I figured I was imagining things," I lied with inspiration.
If he brought a snake, we could check. If yes, then yes. If no, then no.
"So you may also be a Parselmouth?" Sensei clarified.
"I wouldn't claim that, sir. After all, it only happened once, and I might simply have heard something from one of the neighboring gardens," I replied, blinking innocently with all my might.
"Serpensortia!" Sensei's wand appeared in his hand instantly, and a fairly large mottled viper seemed to pour out of it, resembling the snakes that lived in the Great Desert of the Land of Wind.
I had never been afraid of snakes, and thanks to certain evil geniuses and vivisectionists of all Konoha, I had even studied them 'from the inside'. Besides, Gaara's favorite food was baked snake... It tasted a bit like poultry.
"Should I talk to her?" I asked with interest.
"Be careful. Don't put your hands near her. But until I give a mental command, the snake shouldn't attack," he replied. "If necessary, I'll use the counter-spell."
I tried to tune myself to the snake. For some reason, my conversations with the toad sensei Fukasaku came to mind, along with my faithful friends Gamakichi and his foolish little brother Gamatatsu. In Myoboku, speaking Toad instead of slipping back into my native tongue required a certain effort, and for proper tuning it was preferable for the other side to speak first.
The snake remained silent and tried to crawl away. Then I heard a soft hiss with distinct notes of panic in it.
"Where am I? Wh-what is happening?"
"Hello," I said, drawing her attention. "We sort of summoned you here for a little while..."
"A Parselmouth after all!" Sensei exclaimed.
"A speaker?" The snake turned around in surprise. "Summoned?" She flicked her tongue in the air. "It's cold here."
"Agreed," I nodded. "This country is so-so. I'm suffering too."
I turned to Sensei and switched back to English.
"She says it's cold here and she wants to go home. Will you let her go?"
"Vipera Evanesca." He waved his wand, and the snake disappeared.
I hoped she had returned wherever she had been summoned from. Cool. Summoning worked here, but without blood or a contract. I wondered if that was why she was so small compared with Sasuke's and Orochimaru's snakes. Some kind of magical 'bandwidth'? And where had she come from? The snake herself probably couldn't have told me, but perhaps the spell selected some nearby specimen. And if Harry could talk to all snakes, that meant she was from this world... Or perhaps snakes from some neighboring satellite world had ended up here. Otherwise, where did their intelligence and their own language come from? Maybe that Tower of Babel from the myths had actually been some sort of teleportation device... We had ancient fuinjutsu teleporters standing around our world too, connecting one temple to another...
"Well then..." Sensei interrupted my thoughts. "It seems we've found how you can 'work off' this 'training' with me. You'll spend three hours a day translating... If you can manage it, of course."
And I saw his eyes gleaming very vividly with anticipation.
"Yes, sir. I'll try, sir."
Earning bonus points with a person like him was excellent. I hoped I could handle it.