"Nah, mommy, I'm fine really....!" Bumby protested, even as he tripped over his own two feet to get to the tree again. Rhonda giggled softly at his antics, of course, but let him go ahead and search through the presents....
"Mommy! R-H-O-N-D-A? As in Ron-dah?" Rhonda giggled again, and affirmed the little boy's re-discovery of phonetics... "I think I found your present, mommy... And... it's moving, mommy!" Bumby gasped out suddenly.
"Moving...?" Rhonda repeated, blankly, as Jacky held the lumpy-looking parcel aloft, and she reached out for the gift gingerly, worried about what might be causing those lumps to wiggle so....!
And then, as she held the package in her own two hands, she realised just what it really was! "Sal...?" she gasped out, barely above a whisper, but still - Jacky's young ears were good enough to catch her word...
"What's a "Sal", Mommy?"
"OH, it's... Well - I think it's my old pet snake...!"
"You kept a snake as a pet, Mommy? EWWW!" But if Rhonda didn't know better, she'd think that Bumby's tone was a little bit sarcastic on the "EW" at least - for, for a moment, he sounded absolutely delighted by the idea of such a "gross" pet....
"Indeed, I did, sweetie," she grimaced slightly, grinning at her son, as she gingerly tore away the wrapping to confirm what she was thinking: it was indeed, Sal! "Sal!" she cried happily, even if she knew that there was no way that her ear-less garter snake could actually hear her...
"Anyway's Ernest, sweet, and Jacky, of course - I want you to meet Sal, my pet snake from my school days...!" She grinned down at the snake, who was gently twirling around and round her bare arm, making her pale ivory skin appear even more delicate. "He's named - albeit somewhat sarcastically, I'll admit - for Salazar Slytherin, the "Great" man who originally headed up my House at school...!" She scoffed lightly, as she thought of what Salazar himself would think of this place - with a witch married to a bloody Muggle and demonstrating her magic left and right, around all manners of Muggle...