Annabeth Chase and Things Are Getting Intense

Chapter Eighteen

The ring was one. The locket, maybe another. But there were more. Voldemort liked to keep things neat and forward, Annabeth had deduced. He'd named his snake Nagini; 'naga' was the old Sanskrit word for snake, and the suffix 'ini' meant either 'belonging to' or 'related to'. Which meant he'd basically named his snake 'snake'. 'Belonging to the snake', if you translated it directly.

Hmmmm. Annabeth wondered if that meant anything.

Anyway, the fact that the name of his snake was so straightforward and related to an ancient dialect insinuated that the way he did other things were like that, too. In a mix of ancient mythologies that came to Annabeth's mind, sacred numbers were three, five, seven, and twelve. Annabeth decided to factor in Numerology, too: eleven, twenty two, and thirty three.

Absolutely not. No way Voldemort had more than ten. Annabeth didn't think a soul could take so much strain before it shattered completely. Which left three, five, and seven.

Three seemed like too little for someone as greedy as Voldemort. Which meant that Voldemort had either put parts of his soul in five different objects or seven. Di immortales.

Annabeth—and probably Harry, too—were going to have to find those objects, and they were going to have to destroy them. Otherwise Voldemort was effectively immortal. Because nothing could ever be easy, right?

***

When Annabeth returned to her dorm room a little while later, she found Vera sitting criss-cross on her bed, bouncing one of her knees. Pansy and Millicent were asleep, and Annabeth didn't see Freddie, but she did hear the shower running.

"Hey," Annabeth said, keeping calm. She wasn't going to make a big deal out of this. She wasn't going to ask. Vera would tell her when she was ready. Annabeth wasn't going to push her friend to do something she didn't want to do, no matter how much Annabeth ached to know what was bothering her.

"Hi," Vera said absentmindedly. "Just waiting for Freddie to get out of the shower."

But there was no small pile of clothing near Vera (unless you counted the ones on the floor, which Annabeth didn't). No towels, either. Which meant she wanted to talk to Freddie, not shower. Which meant they might be hearing what was bothering Vera so much.

The sound of the running water pittered out after a few seconds, but Freddie didn't emerge from the bathroom for another six minutes. When they did, it was with a fluffy green robe wrapped around them and their hair up in a white towel.

They stopped when they saw Vera, then rushed to sit next to her. "Everything okay?"

Vera shrugged. "Yeah, just figured I can't stay away from you two freaking vultures forever. I guess it's about time I tell you what's been going on."

"Okay." Annabeth moved to sit on Vera's other side. "So what's been going on?"

"Well, uh, you probably noticed I've been avoiding you."

"Wait, what?" Annabeth put a hand on her heart, feigning surprise. "I thought you were with us the whole day."

"Ha, ha. Shut up."

"She's shutting up," Freddie said.

"I'll shut up if I want to shut up," Annabeth retorted. After that, she shut up.

"Okay, well, blah, blah, blah, me and Daisy—"

"Daisy and I," Annabeth corrected, raising a finger.

Vera snorted and shoved Annabeth, who let herself fall off the bed and onto the floor. Yes, she was delaying hearing whatever was bothering Vera. But she'd also succeeded in getting her friend into a better mood.