Annabeth Chase and Things Are Getting Intense

Chapter Thirty Four

A/N: so... sorry for disappearing for like a week. But honestly a lot has happened so I think it's justified. 

First thing's first, my flight on Sunday got cancelled because the airport in Tel Aviv closed down for like two hours. Airlines are wimps. Like, a few rockets are flying through the air and they decide to cancel all flights to Israel? Unfair. 

So then I got a flight for next week and I spent like a day moping about it because I was missing the whole orientation week, and then I thought 'oh, I'll get so much writing done in that week' but that was a lie. 

Then on Monday my mom  told me we were going to Paris together the next day which was pretty cool and that she also got me an earlier flight that leaves Thursday, so we spent a day and a half in Paris (we saw the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame) and then my mom took a flight to Nice, Paris, and I got on a flight that goes to Israel but connects in Greece, which is where I am right now. 

So now I'm hanging out in a Greek airport (wearing my CHB shirt ofc) because my flight leaves in like four and a half hours. It's midnight here. My flight leaves at five. Also there are no working outlets to be found. Yay me. 

Anyway, I finished the chapter on my way here, so here it is. 

"Belonging to the snake," Annabeth muttered. "Of course!"

"Er... sorry?"

"It's Sanskrit," Annabeth explained to Harry. "Naga means snake. The suffix ini means belonging to. Put it together, Nagini, you get 'belonging to the snake'. Voldemort probably named his snake that on purpose, because he knew what he was going to do to it."

"You know Sanskrit?" Harry said incredulously.

"Of course I know Sanskrit. It's the first written language."

"But—" Harry turned to Dumbledore. "You can use animals as Horcruxes?"

"It is inadvisable to do so," Dumbledore said, "because to confide a part of your soul to something that can think and move for itself is obviously a very risky business. However, if my calculations are correct, Voldemort was still at least one Horcrux short of his goal of six when he entered your parents' house with the intention of killing you.

"He seems to have reserved the process of making Horcruxes for particularly significant deaths. You would certainly have been that. He believed that in killing you, he was destroying the danger the prophecy had outlined. He believed he was making himself invincible. I am sure that he was intending to make his final Horcrux with your death.

"As we know, he failed. After an interval of some years, however, he used Nagini to kill an old Muggle man, and it might then have occurred to him to turn her into his last Horcrux. She underlines the Slytherin connection, which in turn enhances Lord Voldemort's mystique; I think that he is perhaps as fond of her as he can be of anything; he certainly likes to keep her close, and he seems to have an unusual amount of control over her, even for a parselmouth."

"Okay," Annabeth said. "The ring and the diary are gone. That leaves the cup, the locket, the snake, and something of Gryffindor or Ravenclaw."

Dumbledore bowed his head. "An admirably succinct and accurate summary, yes."

"So... are you still looking for them, sir?" Harry asked. "Is that where you've been going when you were leaving the school?"

"Correct," Dumbledore said. "I have been looking for a very long time. I think... perhaps... I may be close to finding another one. There are hopeful signs."