My cousins often send me videos on Harry Potter theory, because they know I love the story, and most of the time I shake my head and laugh. However, every now and again they send me one that has me reaching for my books to verify the facts. Up until now, I haven’t added my own thoughts to these theories, but there is one idea that I find interesting and I would like to put in my two cents. For those of you who have been imprisoned in Azkaban for the past several years, this is your warning. This article contains spoilers from Harry Potter Books 1-7 and the movie franchise Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. I will try to be thorough in my theory, but in the words of Albus Dumbledore, “we shall be leaving the firm foundation of fact and journeying together through the murky marshes of memory into thickets of wildest guesswork.” (Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince) If there is something that I have forgotten, or if you want to put in your two cents, please feel free to make a comment below.
So, let me get down to business. Last night, my cousin sent me a YouTube video that was published three years ago by Harry Potter Theory called The Story of Nagini (+ How She Met Voldemort) that attempted to decode the history behind Nagini, the snake, becoming one of Lord Voldemort’s Horcruxes. For those of you who ignored my warning and don’t know who Nagini is, I will try to clarify.
Nagini is first introduced in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (GoF) as a large snake that is always at the Dark Lord’s side. She does everything that Voldemort orders her to do, from biting Arthur Weasley in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (OotP), to disguising herself as the famous historian Bathilda Bagshot when Harry visits Godric’s Hollow in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (DH). It is revealed in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (HBP) that she contains one piece of Voldemort’s soul, otherwise known as a Horcrux.
We meet her again in Fantastic Beasts: the Crimes of Grindelwald, where we learn she is a Maledictus, a human who is cursed to change into an animal; in this case, a snake. As a Maledictus, she eventually loses her ability to change back into a human. At the beginning of the film, she is seen locked in a cage by the owner of a traveling sideshow, who forces her to perform for his audience by changing into her snake form.
One of the points brought up by Harry Potter Theory is that Nagini was in fact a nice woman, only interested in running away from the freak show with Credence Barebone. When looked at more closely, however, we really don’t know much about Nagini the woman. Her introduction by Skender, the traveling show manager,
“Once trapped in the jungles of Indonesia, she is the carrier of a blood curse. Such Underbeings are destined, through the course of their lives, to turn permanently into beasts.”
Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald
is less than reliable as a source of information. Most circus acts were given a story to perform, choosing exhibition over the truth. This is seen throughout the history of the sideshow, starting with P.T. Barnum. If J.K. Rowling is known for anything, it is her knack for detail. However, she also rarely gives false information about her characters, so it is left up to the audience to decide what to believe.
What this introduction does give us is an idea of how the wizarding world views her as a Maledictus. Much like the Centaurs and other creatures living in the Dark Forest near Hogwarts, she is perceived as less than human.
Since there is little backstory to latch on to, it is time to look at her actions. Credence Barebone comes to her and tells her he’s found a person who can help him find his real family and they need to leave immediately. When it comes time to escape, she lashes out at the owner of the sideshow, Skender, biting him while in her snake form in front of the entire sideshow audience.
We know from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (OoP) that her venom is extremely dangerous. She bites Arthur Weasley more than once down in the Department of Mysteries and the doctors and nurses of St. Mungo’s Hospital are at a loss to find an antidote, even resorting to Muggle medicine to try and stop Arthur from bleeding out.
However, her biting Skender could be seen as a defense mechanism, one she uses only in her direst need. Having been a prisoner in more ways than one, its understandable that she would see the need to build up her safety measures. So, her being a nice person is still up for debate.
After escaping, Nagini follows Credence throughout Paris to help him find his mother. From their relationship, we do see a side of Nagini that speaks of someone searching for companionship and love. Perhaps in him, she sees a kindred spirit, someone who was also held prisoner and seen as a freak. Credence was, after all, raised by a woman who saw magic as evil and was a self-proclaimed witch hunter. Is there another reason why Nagini would choose to stay with Credence, rarely questioning him?
It’s not until the pair lands on opposite sides of Grindelwald’s Fiendfyre (a dark curse that transforms fire into such creatures as serpents, dragons, or birds of prey) that they show a divide in their loyalty to one another. Credence, obsessed with finding out his identity, follows Grindelwald to his underground rally. Nagini comes with him reluctantly and when she realizes they are surrounded by purebloods, she tries to get Credence to leave with her. He refuses, reminding her that Grindelwald claims to know who he is. Her next statement is very telling.
“He knows what you were born, not who you are.”
Fantastic Beasts: the Crimes of Grindelwald
This, along with her first reaction to being among pureblood witches and wizards, implies that she sees herself as impure in the eyes of the crowd, but also shows an understanding that both she and Credence are worth more than their bloodlines and curses. This understanding would seem to uphold the claim that Nagini was in fact one of the good guys.
Following this exchange, the couple are separated. Credence joins Grindelwald to learn the truth of his birth and Nagini, now free to go her own way without Credence at her side, finds herself joining Newt Scamander and his gang as they return to Hogwarts.
According to Harry Potter Theory, Nagini first meets Voldemort after he fails to acquire the Sorcerer’s Stone and he flees to the forests of Albania. This meeting results in Nagini, who is now permanently in her snake form, finding someone who she can talk to and knows what she is. This theory assumes that Nagini, lonely, needs Voldemort in her life because she hasn’t talked to another human in many years.
However, there are a couple holes in this theory, the least of which is the assumption that Nagini hadn’t met Voldemort years earlier, before he became the Dark Lord. So first allow me to establish the timeline.
We learn in CoS that the chamber of secrets had been opened fifty years earlier by Tom Riddle, a boy who was in his seventh year at Hogwarts at the time and already creating havoc as a dark wizard, though all of this was done in secret. If we do a little math, we find out that Tom opened the chamber of secrets in 1943, two years before Dumbledore’s defeat of Grindelwald, and six years after the events of Fantastic Beasts: the Secrets of Dumbledore take place.
Now, it’s not certain where Nagini is at this point, but she has visited Hogwarts as early as 1927, after she was separated from Credence Barebone. It’s very possible that she could have stayed in and around the castle up until an eleven-year-old Tom Riddle became a student in 1936. Hogwarts is certainly a place where misfits have been welcome for a long time. Even if she didn’t live in the castle, the Dark Forest could easily have been her home for several years.
She also could have lost her humanity in these years. Either way, it’s probable that she came into contact with Tom Riddle between 1936 and 1943. This timeline makes more sense to me, rather than a random meeting in a forest in Albania forty years later.
So, why would this person who has only shown an interest in being free suddenly shackle herself to one of the wizarding world’s most notorious dark wizards? Well, one thing that Harry Potter Theory seems to forget is that Voldemort was in fact a dark wizard.
By all accounts, Tom Riddle was a model student at Hogwarts. He was charming. His grades were some of the highest the school had ever seen. He was a prefect, Head Boy and given recognition for special services to the school. Of course, in CoS it is revealed that those services were a smoke screen to hide the truth – that he opened the chamber of secrets and blamed everything on Hagrid, who was expelled and had his wand snapped as a result of the lie. Upon graduating from Hogwarts, his teachers, including Professor Slughorn, offered to send letters of recommendation to the Ministry of Magic where they expected him to have a shining career, but he wasn’t interested in politics. In fact, the only one who saw the truth of what Tom was becoming was Dumbledore.
After he left school, the truth started to leak out. Tom Riddle changed his name to Lord Voldemort and later, when his name became synonymous with the darkest magic, his Death Eaters called him the Dark Lord. Twelve to fifteen years after graduation, he returns to Hogwarts and asks Dumbledore to give him the position of Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, which Dumbledore refuses him. For the next forty years, no teacher was able to remain in the position for more than one school year. Clearly, Tom knows how to hold a grudge.
From HBP, we know that Voldemort had acquired at least five Horcruxes up to now: his diary, the Peverell ring, Hufflepuff’s cup, Slytherin’s locket, and Ravenclaw’s diadem. Dumbledore suspects that Voldemort is looking for the sword of Gryffindor, as he tells Harry in HBP during one of their private lessons.
It’s also in these lessons that Harry learns that Voldemort askes Professor Slughorn if it were possible to split the soul seven times, meaning that he intended to make seven Horcruxes. The fact that Slughorn answered the question haunted the professor so badly that he tried to change his memory to one more palatable – one in which he had told his favorite student off.
The question then remains, when did Nagini join the number of Horcruxes? According to Dumbledore in HBP, Nagini could have become a Horcrux when Voldemort killed Frank Bryce, though another contender could be Bertha Jorkin, a witch who stumbled across Wormtail on her vacation and was then tortured and killed by Voldemort, becoming the catalyst for Harry becoming a champion in GoF.
That would make it seem as if Nagini joined him in the Albanian forest shortly after he escaped Hogwarts in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (SS). Since we have no evidence that she was with him from the time that he graduated – or at least, she wasn’t under his leash during this time period – it’s hard to determine exactly when his ownership of her began.
Going back in time, we know that Tom Riddle wasn’t a stranger to torture even as a boy. When Dumbledore finds him in the orphanage, he was being punished for hurting some of his classmates. This behavior would have already been ingrained in him, and would only have grown over time. He could have easily learned how to use the three Unforgiveable Curses by finding a book in the restricted section of the library, before Dumbledore decided to lock them away in the Room of Requirement.
One of the first things we learn about his followers is that some of them claimed to be under the influence of Imperio when they committed their crimes. Some Death Eaters, like Lucius Malfoy, lied to the Ministry of Magic about their involvement, but what if Nagini was under the Imperius Curse the whole time she was with Voldemort? Instead of a lonely former human latching on to the only source of affection she could find, we would have instead someone who is under Voldemort’s control. In HBP, Dumbledore even says that Voldemort has an unusual amount of control over Nagini. This implies that she is also being influenced by the Imperius Curse and may have been for longer than is comfortable to admit.
Another possibility, which would be truly the work of speculation, is that Nagini was charmed by Voldemort. If she met Tom before he graduated, before she lost her humanity, he would have had decades to convince her that his way was best. We already know that she was distrustful of wizards. She was always afraid of being captured and killed by purebloods. And Tom, despite his disdain for his muggle father, was still a half-blood. So, maybe, just like she saw in Credence, she believes that Tom is misunderstood. Maybe he fed on this delusion, harnessed it for his own purpose, and warped her mind using Legilimency, until she stopped thinking for herself and only saw his vision of the world.
So, looking at all of the evidence I’ve gathered here, is it too far beyond belief that a once seemingly good-natured woman under a curse could have been manipulated or even forced to become the right hand to one of the wizarding world’s most infamous dark wizards?
What do you think?
Book Gnome 