The early morning air felt cool and damp. A faint scent of rain lingered and the forest, blanketed by a drab shade of gray, was drained of its natural greenish hue. In the distance, the shrill cry of a crow rang out. Casting its lustrous black frame into the sky, the bird streaked across a radiant, thin line where the sun valiantly tried to bypass the gloominess of the day. Circling the clearing a few times, the bird settled itself upon a nearby branch.
Harry’s feet stood firmly upon moist ground and a trace of mist hovered just above them where daylight burned away the nightly dew. Gripping his wand firmly at his side, Harry’s frustration showed with the whitening of his knuckles along the back of his hand.
Ron remained bent over on the ground, inhaling heavily, his nostrils and chest heaving. Harry watched him wince and yearned for the pain to dissipate. Momentarily forgetting about her own bindings, Hermione stooped over to help. She struggled in vain to reach Ron and was promptly rewarded for her efforts by a sharp jab between the ribs with the tip of Gregory Goyle’s wand. Hermione sneered indignantly at him. She then returned her fretful gaze toward Ron.
“Now, where were we?” Voldemort continued on and he sauntered away from Ginny as though they had only been slightly interrupted.
Ginny expelled the deep breath that she was holding. Her petit frame deflated into Malfoy's arms, and quickly regaining her composure, she shrugged him off.
“Ah, yes…next would have been my grandfather’s ring. One of my more sentimental objects,” the Dark Lord mused knowing full well the irony in his words. “A fine piece, if I do say so myself. But then I don’t suppose that I can hold you accountable for the loss of that particular Horcrux, now can I Harry? No, that blame lies solely with Dumbledore.”
Harry felt a lump settle in his throat at the mere mention of Dumbledore’s name. He could still recall the blackened, burned hand that the Headmaster sustained after he destroyed Marvolo Gaunt’s ring. Remembering the story of how Dumbledore had stumbled upon it in the wreckage of the Gaunt home, Harry called to mind how the Headmaster utilized his exceptional skill to break the powerful enchantments protecting it.
Suddenly, Harry’s mind flashed to the white tomb where Dumbledore’s body lay on the school grounds and the lump in his throat gave way to the sound of his heart now pulsating in his ears ” a sure sign that his blood pressure was on the rise.
How dare Voldemort even speak his name, loathed Harry.
“But lucky for us,” the Dark Lord persisted, his words sharpened, “he got exactly what he deserved in the end!”
“Crucio!” Harry bellowed, pointing his wand directly at Lord Voldemort, without concern for the consequences of his actions. He wanted Voldemort to know what it meant to feel real pain.
But as the jet of red light blasted from the tip of his wand toward the Dark Lord, Harry felt his body jerk violently backwards. His eyes suddenly shifted and his feet left the ground. Harry’s mind tried to register what was happening and quickly caught on; thrown harshly up against a tree, the back of his head made contact with the trunk and slammed brutally against it. His own curse ran askew, just shy of Voldemort’s shoulder.
Harry hit the ground with a dull thud and tried desperately to catch his breath, his head throbbing.
“Now look what I’ve done,” the Dark Lord responded with ill sincerity. “I’ve offended you.”
Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle sniggered. They made eye contact with one another and turned their sights back onto Harry, who staggered to his feet. With determination blazing in his eyes, Harry quickly brandished his wand.
“Impedimenta!” Harry roared defiantly.
A second jet of red light issued forth from his wand. It sailed at the Dark Lord. Voldemort raised his hand outward and deflected the curse with a confident snap of the wrist. The wand in his other hand quickly responded with a curse of its own. Pointing it toward a deadened tree limb hanging high above the young wizard's head, Voldemort severed the piece from its trunk. It plummeted towards Harry.
“Immobulus!” Harry commanded. He drew his wand upward at the thick, heavy limb whose jetting branches and leaves had long since died off.
Harry hit the bough head on with his spell and his confidence quickly turned to confusion. The limb continued to fall towards him. He could feel the rush of wind just above his head, parting his black, unruly hair as the limb plunged downward with alarming speed. Why hadn’t the spell worked? He wondered, knowing that there was no time to find the answer and even less to cast another spell. Panic settled in the center of Harry’s chest and reason escaped him. Diving out of the way with the reflexes born of a true Quidditch player, Harry’s body hit the ground and the smell of dirt filled his nostrils.
“Harry, watch out!” Ginny cried. Hermione’s wide eyes and garbled words conveyed the same.
Glimpsing Ginny, Harry spied Draco Malfoy. He stood with his wand extended out towards the limb, and gripping Ginny in the crux of his free arm, firmly clasped his hand over her mouth. Harry quickly rolled over and cast his sights upward. He watched the wood divert from its natural course and swing over him. Continuing its descent and pursuing Harry like the rogue bludger he had once encountered on the Quidditch Pitch, the limb plunged towards him. Harry tossed himself onto his stomach and threw his arms over his head to soften the blow. With his eyes shut tight, Harry braced himself for the impact that he believed now to be inevitable and then suddenly…there was nothing: no rush of wind, no crushing blow, not even the slightest bump on the head.
Harry opened his eyes, cautiously lowered his arms and looked up. The limb dangled just a few inches from his head. Harry exhaled, and rolling out from under the limb, got to his feet. He eyed Malfoy - who was now clutching Ginny with his opposite arm and nursing a badly wounded finger from where she had bitten him, interrupting his spell. Harry glanced at Ginny. He extended a simple look of thanks that was promptly returned with a rather smug smile from her freckled face.
“That was a close one, wasn’t it Harry?” responded Voldemort. “You really should be more careful.”
“So should you,” Harry replied under his breath and he felt the heat of anger rise up the back of his neck. Forcefully, he cast the limb at the Dark Lord without hesitation.
The barren piece of timber flew at Voldemort like a battering ram storming a castle. It nearly struck his chalk white skull. Quickly disappearing beneath a tornado of robe, the Dark Lord spun out of the way.
“Serpensortia!” he bellowed and sent the wood beam hurtling back towards Harry.
The limb soared across the clearing; pieces of its thick, coarse bark shedded to reveal the scaly, black body of a snake emerging from beneath it. The snake dropped to the ground and its tapered body whipped back and forth before Harry.
“Engorgio!” shouted the Dark Lord and instantly the snake swelled to three times its normal size.
It towered over Harry and bolted towards him with the speed of a wild cat. Coiling itself around his body, the snake pinned Harry's arms firmly to his sides. Its lifeless eyes looked down upon the young wizard, fangs bared and poised to strike. Harry felt the snake's elongated body slowly tighten around him. He wrenched, trying desperately to loosen the serpent’s grip. Harry twisted and turned, but to no avail. Struggling to catch his breath, he heard the bone crushing sound of his spine compress beneath the snake’s body. It was squeezing the very life out of him, thought Harry.
Sweat poured down his distorted face and looking up, Harry saw the blurred outline of the hovering serpent. Completely unaware of his own lightheadedness and thinking that his glasses must have slid off of his face, Harry tried to focus on the snake drifting in and out of view. It hissed at him and swayed hypnotically back and forth, causing Harry to feel slightly nauseous. From behind, he heard the faint sound of Ginny’s voice urging him on and her words mingled with another sound ” an all too familiar one, thought Harry. It was the whispery voice of Lord Voldemort and he was speaking Parseltongue.
Harry felt the snake tighten its grip. He drew in one last breath, and forcefully expelled his shallow, weak voice out into the air. Harry told the snake to let him go. The serpent narrowed its beady eyes, and tilting its head towards Harry as if it were listening, slowly loosened its grip. Harry took in his first deep breath and the high-pitched shriek of Lord Voldemort's voice resonated again. He commanded the snake to squeeze Harry even harder this time. The snake abided and began to apply pressure, only to halt when Harry spoke to it again. Confused and unsure on how to proceed, the serpent looked at Voldemort and then at Harry, its grip loosening as the two wizards continued to hurl orders at it.
Harry felt the blood rush back through his extremities. Able to flex the hand now holding his wand, he subtly pointed it towards the body of the snake.
“Reducio!” yelled Harry.
The snake immediately shrank to its normal size, fell away from his body and hit the ground. Wielding his wand and casting a second spell, Harry glimpsed the snake coil up before him and dissolve into kindling.
“Impressive,” Voldemort replied, sounding anything but.
“Well, let’s not forget that I do have some experience when it comes to snakes,” answered Harry. “After all, I managed to destroy Nagini.”
“Yes, dear, sweet Nagini,” reflected Lord Voldemort. “That was, perhaps the hardest loss to take. Some, would have advised against using an animal to contain something as precious as a portion of my soul, with their ability to exert, a certain level of control over themselves. But it was different with Nagini.”
A faint smile crossed over the Dark Lord’s face, the same endearing smile that one might wear while reminiscing about an old friend. Harry knew that had he not seen it for himself, he would have never believed it; Voldemort looked as though he had actually cared about the snake.
“See, Nagini was quite happy to do my bidding in exchange for the freedom it gave her…” explained the Dark Lord. “She was born into captivity, something that gave me an enormous amount of control over her, simply because she never knew any other way to live.”
Harry’s thoughts drifted again to Dumbledore.
“I think he is perhaps as fond of her as he can be of anything,” the Headmaster had once said of Voldemort’s relationship with the snake. “And he seems to have an unusual amount of control over her, even for a Parselmouth.”
“Ours was a chance meeting,” Voldemort continued on. “Quite by accident, I assure you. She had escaped from a local zoo.”
Harry, who up and until that point had been far more concerned with catching his breath, suddenly took notice of what was being said.
“Yes,” Voldemort confirmed, and he looked Harry in the eye. “A zoo. Not too far, in fact, Harry, from where your aunt and uncle live.”
Harry went cold inside and his mind flashed back to that day in the zoo with his cousin, Dudley.
It had been Dudley’s birthday and Harry had scored the chance to tag along for the celebration. No sooner had they entered the reptile house than his spoiled-rotten cousin had set to task annoying a rather large Boa Constrictor asleep in its habitat behind the glass, demanding that someone make it move if only for the sheer purpose of entertaining Dudley. The snake had opened its small, round eyes and winked at Harry, after the rest of his family had shuffled off, bored with the creature. They were enjoying a delightful conversation with one another until Dudley had caught sight of the snake moving, plowed into Harry, punched him in the ribs, and knocked him to the floor. Suddenly, the glass barrier had vanished and the snake ” taking full advantage of the situation ” quickly uncoiled itself. It slithered its way onto the cold cement floor, past Harry and out the door.
Harry always just assumed that the zookeeper had managed to recapture the snake. Never in his wildest dreams had he imagined this.
“Funny, wouldn’t you say, Harry?” the Dark Lord observed somewhat stingingly. “How sometimes the things we do, that may seem so inconsequential at the time…come back to haunt us later?”
Heaviness lingered in Harry’s chest and the full impact of Lord Voldemort’s words washed over him; he knew that he was feeling the weight of his actions.
He set Nagini free. He sat by and watched the snake escape. And, he was ultimately responsible for it finding its way to Voldemort.
“Nagini, as it turns out, came into my life at the very moment that I needed her most,” recalled the Dark Lord. “And, for that Harry, I thank you.”
Ashamed and sickened by the results of his actions, Harry looked away. Yes, it was true that he had only been a boy at the time, a boy who until that point, hadn’t even known about his powers. But somehow, this rationalization did very little to comfort him now.
“However, as you said, you are also the one ultimately responsible for destroying Nagini,” Voldemort added, quickly getting back to the matter at hand. “And for that, you must pay.”
Anticipating the Dark Lord’s moves, Harry quickly raised his wand and prepared to do battle. Only this time, he watched as Voldemort’s curse careened to his own far left striking the target that it had been intended for all along -- Hermione.
She whimpered just slightly, incapable of anything else really, as the curse struck her hard in the chest. Harry watched her crumple and fall to the ground beside Ron. At first she didn’t move and Harry, fearing the very worse, started towards her. A wall of flames burst out in front of him. They blocked Harry's path.
The tips of the flames danced at eye level in front of Harry as he made out the crude, snake-like face of the Dark Lord staring back at him just on the other side with a look so definitive it chilled Harry to the bone. Oh yes, Voldemort was going to kill Harry, but only after Harry watched all of his friends die first.
Decisively, the Dark Lord waved his hand and the flames disappeared. In its wake, Harry heard Hermione’s delicate cry. She lay folded in a heap on the ground before him. He thought that he had never heard anything so heartbreaking in all his life, as he watched Ron move slightly closer to comfort her as best he could.
Footnote:
“I think he is perhaps as fond of her as he can be of anything…”**Page 506, Half-Blood Prince
“And he seems to have an unusual amount of control over her, even for a Parselmouth.”**Page 507, Half-Blood Prince