Nagini, the Horcrux That Breathed: Origin and Death of the Snake

The sixth Horcrux wasn't in any vault. It hunted. It bit. And once it waited for Harry hidden inside the body of a dead old woman. Everyone remembers her as "Voldemort's snake." She was much more than a pet: she was a piece of him.

The Only One Voldemort Wanted Close

The other Horcruxes were objects kept in caves, vaults and forgotten rooms. Nagini went everywhere with him. Dumbledore notices it in Half-Blood Prince (ch. 23): Voldemort controls her in a way he does with nobody else, and that makes him suspect the snake holds part of his soul.

Dumbledore even proposes when he made her a Horcrux: with the murder of Frank Bryce, the Muggle gardener at the Riddle house, at the beginning of Goblet of Fire. If he's right, Voldemort made his last deliberate Horcrux without a body of his own, still weak, with what little he had left.

What She Did in the Books

Nagini appears in the first chapter of Goblet of Fire, at the Riddle house. There we find out something disgusting: Wormtail milked her venom to feed Voldemort's rudimentary body. She kept him alive before he regained his form.

In Order of the Phoenix (ch. 21) she attacks Mr. Weasley at the Ministry. Harry sees it in dreams, from inside the snake, and what saves Arthur is that Harry tells someone in time. In Deathly Hallows (ch. 1) she eats Professor Charity Burbage in front of all the Death Eaters. And in ch. 32, Voldemort uses her to kill Snape.

The Godric's Hollow Trap

It's the most unsettling scene in the saga, in Deathly Hallows (ch. 17). Harry and Hermione visit Godric's Hollow on Christmas Eve and find Bathilda Bagshot, the old historian and friend of Dumbledore. She doesn't speak. She only gestures for Harry to follow her upstairs, alone.

It smells wrong. There's dust on everything. Bathilda speaks to Harry in Parseltongue, and he doesn't realize it's Parseltongue. Then the old woman's neck opens up and the snake comes out.

Bathilda had been dead for a while. Voldemort had put Nagini inside her body to wait for Harry in the one place he would have to go sooner or later: his parents' grave.

Her Origin, With a Warning

The seven books never say where Nagini came from. The movie Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (2018) gave her a past: a Maledictus, a woman with a blood curse that gradually turns her into a snake, until one day she can't turn back.

That's canon from the later movies, not from the Harry Potter books. Some fans accept it and some hate it. We're telling you here only so you can tell one thing from the other.

The End

In the Battle of Hogwarts, Voldemort already knows his Horcruxes are being hunted. He puts Nagini in an enchanted sphere that floats beside him (ch. 32). When he lets her out, he doesn't leave her side again.

After the forest, with everyone believing Harry dead, Voldemort humiliates Neville by putting the burning Sorting Hat on his head. Neville pulls it off, takes Gryffindor's sword out of it and cuts off Nagini's head in a single blow (Deathly Hallows, ch. 36).

Neville, the Other Chosen One

It wasn't random that Neville was the one. Dumbledore explains to Harry in Order of the Phoenix (ch. 37) that the prophecy could have been about him: he was born at the end of July, like Harry, and his parents had also defied Voldemort three times. Voldemort chose Harry. But Neville ended up cutting off the last piece of soul left outside Voldemort's body.

Book vs. Movie

• The Maledictus past exists only in Fantastic Beasts.
• The Bathilda scene in the movie is fairly faithful and remains one of the most disturbing in the saga.
• Nagini's end. In the movie there's a whole chase of Ron, Hermione and the snake through the castle before Neville's blow. In the book it doesn't exist.

What Almost Nobody Notices

A Horcrux has to be something nobody looks for and nobody can easily destroy. A living snake is the opposite: she can get sick, be attacked, be seen. By choosing Nagini, Voldemort broke his own rule. He did it because he wanted her close. It's the closest thing to affection we ever see in him, and it was a mistake.

Where It Fits in the Series

Only one remains, and Voldemort never looked for it because he never knew it existed. He created it by accident, one Halloween night, in a house in Godric's Hollow. Continue with Harry Potter, the Seventh Horcrux: How He Was Made and Lived. The previous part is Ravenclaw's Diadem and the Room of Requirement: Horcrux 5.

Would you be the hero nobody expected? Take the house quiz.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who killed Nagini?

Neville Longbottom, with Gryffindor's sword, which he pulled out of the Sorting Hat, during the Battle of Hogwarts.

Was Nagini a woman in the books?

No. In the books she's only a snake. Her past as a cursed woman comes from the movie The Crimes of Grindelwald.

How did we find out Nagini was a Horcrux?

Dumbledore suspected it in Half-Blood Prince, and Harry confirmed it in Deathly Hallows when he saw in Voldemort's mind how much he protected her.

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