The animal itself did already seem a bit strange and out of place, but it all started being really weird as the snake began talking.
"So this is Harry Potter..."
Harry stared, baffled, before he remembered that it had to be Parseltongue. Of course, snakes didn't randomly plop out of perfectly muggle hedges and started speaking English! And if he concentrated a bit, he even heard a slight difference.
As he stared, the snake seemed to come to a conclusion and turned back to the hedge, but a hurriedly hissed "Wait!" from Harry stopped it. "How do you know my name?" he asked curiously, since it wasn't exactly common knowledge among snakes.
Said snake only stared at him, before slowly lifting its head to look him in the eye. "You are a speaker?"
"Um... yes?"
"Mother did not tell me that. 'Protect Harry Potter' she said. 'The skinny human with black hair and a scar' she said."
Now Harry was frowning. He didn't know any snakes as the only reptiles he had ever spoken to had been the boa constrictor in the zoo three years ago which didn't know his name, a summoned snake that had been destroyed and the Basilisk in the Chamber of Secrets which he had killed afterwards. So who was 'Mother'?
He asked the little snake, but it just shook its head.
"Mother said I may not tell anyone of her identity. Not even a speaker, I am sorry. But she seemed very worried about you."
He pondered that for a moment. He did not know said mother, so he should probably be suspicious, but that little snake did seem worried about him and he could not detect any dishonesty. He wondered briefly if animals were able to lie at all, but then dismissed it.
It didn't matter, at least he had someone who seemed to worry for him. His friends seemed too busy with not telling him anything and Hedwig might have been worried, but he couldn't understand her.
And Sirius... He didn't want to burden his godfather with even more problems, being on the run probably led to more than enough things he had to consider.
So in the end, he extended his hand to the snake. "Wanna come inside with me? I can't imagine that you like the heat..."
He didn't know why exactly he had offered. Probably because even a snake was better company than no one.
But in the end, this decision would change his life forever, even if he didn't know that yet, as he took the snake and snuck back to his room...
After that quite unusual meeting the following days and weeks were even stranger. Sure, still no helpful letters from his friends - though Hermione seemed to have understood that he didn't like being purposefully left out of the loop and had started writing about other stuff - and no news about Voldemort anywhere.
But at least he was beginning to form some sort of friendship with the little snake. Since there wasn't much to do these days he spent a lot of time upstairs inside of his room, where he began to simply talk with his new found companion, so that they could get to know each other.
The snake was a female one and though she couldn't tell him her species she knew that she was quite poisonous and that her mother was a really big snake. She also knew that she had no name - since snakes normally didn't need one - so Harry spent quite a bit of his time reading to find something suitable. And for once he was glad that there was a bookshelf with a few unused muggle books in his room, which had originally been Dudley's room for broken toys.
n the end they decided on 'Shiva', a name he had found in an old book about different religions. He had no idea why the hell the Dursleys had something like this but at least he knew why it stood here, unused, instead of in the living room, where his relatives tended to place everything of value to impress their visitors.
Anyway, since he had a surprising amount of free-time, Shiva convinced him to do some reading and start his schoolwork early. Normally he tended to forget about it during the summer, having to rush through everything the last few days before school started again, but the snake was quite insistent that he could work now as he was bored anyway.
She seemed to have an unusual amount of knowledge about human stuff too, like which of his schoolbooks he should consult if he didn't understand something. It was really quite easy to forget that she was just a snake.
What surprised him even more was the fact that, after a few hours of moaning about it, he found his schoolwork actually not very hard at all and kind of interesting, if he took his time instead of hurrying through it like he had done all the years before.
Since Ron had been his first friend he had always tried to be like him, he had been his role model. But now, without the redhead to distract him with games or talks of Quidditch, he found the wonders of magic so much more appealing! Sure, he was only able to do theoretical work, since he was still underage, but before, he had seen schoolwork as a burden. Right now it seemed more like a chance. Not only helped it ceasing his boredom and took his mind off of Voldemort and whatever he was doing right now, he also began to understand some of the theory behind his classes, like Charms or Transfiguration. When once he had struggled with the spellwork itself, memorising the theory only for the exams and forgetting about it soon afterwards, he now understood what McGonagall and Flitwick had tried to teach them. It was quite strange, but at the same time he felt like he had finally accomplished something on his own. No one had been telling him that he had to learn that - well, except for Shiva, maybe, but she was mostly suggesting things, not ordering him around - or talked about it being great until Harry himself had believed it.