Prisoners of Azkaban: Editors’ Notes

VI. The mystery of Amrita Agan

The mystery of Amrita Agan is the unwritten story behind the diary entries of Severus and Hermione Snape. (To fully grasp the complex and tragic story of her life, the reader is urged to consult her autobiography, A Milkmaid’s Tale.) But in order to gain an understanding of Amrita Agan’s involvement in the release of Severus and Hermione Snape, it is first necessary to understand what she is.

That Amrita Agan is not what she seems to be, a beautiful, regal Indian witch, both Severus and Hermione Snape realised instinctively. But in August 2009 no one—not the Minister of Magic nor the heads of the Order of the Phoenix—knew what she was, although a few—among them Lucius Malfoy, as well as Padma and Parvati Patil—were aware of who she had been before she moved to Hogsmeade.

Amrita Agan is a naga.

She belongs to a rare group of magical Asian snakes that can take human form.

Naga are extremely strong and their poison is deadly. It is, therefore, not surprising that there are accounts of human wizards and witches enslaving naga in order to use them as weapons in their feuds from long before our time.

In human form they still show many characteristics of a snake: Especially their movements, and the shape and colour of their eyes, betray their fundamentally inhuman nature.

Legends tell of the naga’s access to what is called “amrita”, the elixir of immortality. Those accounts vary. Some stories report the snakes stealing the ambrosia, others describe them saving, or creating it. Reality is more prosaic: the legendary life-giving substance known as “amrita” is nothing more and nothing less than a naga’s milk.

A naga’s powers are manifold: apart from the by now well-documented properties of their milk (Milk of Inhuman Kindness by Honey Silk), they can bring rain and bestow fertility—a fact illustrated by Hermione Snape’s entry for 19 August, as well as by the birth of her first child, Adriana Amrita Snape, the following year.

For the sake of her life-giving milk, Voldemort trapped Amrita Agan in her snake-form and enslaved her with a Parseltongue version of Imperius, which is infinitely more powerful than the ordinary version of this spell. He called her “Nagini”—”female naga”—and kept her at his side as pet, cattle, and weapon in one, forcing her to commit and suffer unspeakable atrocities over the years.

Apart from Voldemort (and possibly Peter Pettigrew, who was charged with “milking” Amrita) only Harry Potter ever knew what and who Nagini was.

And he discovered her secret only in the final moments of his life.

Unfortunately, his memories, which must have contained this information, dissolved on the floor of the Shrieking Shack. We are thus left with only Amrita Agan’s report for this part of the story, a fact which has given rise to uncounted conspiracy theories, from claims that Amrita was Voldemort’s willing lover to the idea that Voldemort turned into Nagini when he died.

The truthfulness of Amrita Agan’s story, however, has been validated beyond any doubt by the famous Parselmouth and certified Indian snake-charmer Abhay Sandilya.

According to Amrita Agan, Harry Potter realised she was only Voldemort’s slave when he lay helplessly cursed on the floor of the Shrieking Shack. His final thoughts were of forgiveness, of love for Draco Malfoy and his friends, and a promise.

He promised Amrita that he and his friends, first and foremost Severus and Hermione Snape, would set her free. Harry Potter knew he was about to die. Uncertain how long it would take the curse of Hermione’s devising to unfold and aware of what Voldemort’s apparent victory must mean, Harry asked Amrita for help.

His request was simple.

Should any of his friends survive Voldemort’s death, Amrita was supposed to aid and assist them in any way she could.

To understand what happened next—after Voldemort died due to an anaphylactic shock induced by Amrita’s milk—it is important to be aware of the longevity of naga. Amrita Agan was very young when Voldemort ensnared her—only a little over three hundred years old. But naga easily live 2,000 years or beyond. Therefore, it is no surprise that the local Muggle populace have long revered them as divine and immortal beings for centuries.

Thus the eleven years that passed between Harry Potter’s promise and Voldemort’s death appeared to be just a short span of time to her.

As soon as Voldemort was dead, she took human form—something that Voldemort had denied her throughout her captivity.

She invented a name for herself, a combination of the substance she was enslaved for and a simplistic anagram of her true nature, turning “naga” into “agan”.

Then she set out to find ways to fulfil her promise and help Harry Potter’s friends.

First she killed Bellatrix Lestrange—for the simple reason that she remembered seeing Bellatrix kill Hermione Snape’s half-kneazle. Next she revealed herself to the new Minister for Magic, Lucius Malfoy, and forced him to release Severus and Hermione Snape from prison.

Lucius Malfoy, however, only knew that Nagini was now Amrita Agan and that she wished Severus and Hermione Snape released from Azkaban. He had no idea why. Having more than enough on his mind at that time, he simply passed the matter on to the Department for Magical Law Enforcement and the Office for Parole and Probations.

It is there that the (ultimately correct) theory was developed that Severus and Hermione Snape knew something about Voldemort’s death. The conditions for their probation were drafted so they would betray their secrets and fail to meet the requirements for their rehabilitation. At this point in time—while Lucius Malfoy had already implemented first revisions and reversals of some of Voldemort’s policies—there was no widespread reprobation of Voldemort’s regime, nor a broad movement towards an abolition of his laws. Therefore the investigation of the circumstances of Voldemort’s and Bellatrix Lestrange’s deaths were still a priority for the Department of Magical Law Enforcement.

But the Department for Magical Law Enforcement did not know about the existence of Amrita Agan.

After murdering Bellatrix and engineering Hermione Snape’s and Severus Snape’s release, Amrita Agan moved to Hogsmeade and began to search for others who had supported Harry Potter in the Final Battle and who might aid her goal of helping Severus and Hermione Snape.

While in Hogsmeade, she ran afoul of Padma Patil—one of the heads of the Order of the Phoenix, and mongoose Animagus. Together with her sister, Auror Parvati Patil, who shared her sister’s Animagus form, Padma Patil quickly connected the dots and realised that Agan must be none other than Nagini. However, in spite of their Indian background, neither of them suspected Nagini’s true nature. Instead they assumed that they were dealing with a human witch whose Animagus was a giant snake.

The Patils’ suspicions along with Agan’s inability to understand the customs and culture of human witches and wizards in Britain made it much more difficult for her to keep her promise to Harry Potter and help Severus and Hermione Snape.

Nevertheless, she did her best. She would have sold them a house adjoining her own, she healed Hermione Snape’s inflamed hand, and she helped her discover Minerva McGonagall’s whereabouts. Faithfully, she consumed Severus’ soups every day he worked at the Three Broomsticks, even though the taste of anything but fish caused her nausea and severe stomach pains. She ascertained that Draco Malfoy would not be in any danger were he to return to his father and ask him to vouch for Severus Snape. She healed the damage Hermione Snape’s body had sustained in Azkaban, ensuring that she would eventually bear five healthy children.

And last but not least, she recognised the power of the core of Severus and Hermione Snape’s new wands.

Hermione Snape describes how they acquired their new wands in the entry of 6 August 2009:

“This morning, Draco took us to a wandmaker on the Orkney Islands, on Eynhallow. Master Manannan Lear uses driftwood. His cores are magical flotsam and jetsam, and apparently his mother’s hair. At least that’s what he said when he thrust two wands at us. “Them’s for ye. Mither’s hair. Ye need it.” Obviously he doesn’t subscribe to Ollivander’s philosophy of wands choosing their wizards. Severus’ wand is ash, mine is elm.”

As explained in the annotations for Hermione’s entry for 6 August 2009, the core of the new wands was made from the hair of one of the great sea-serpents of the Atlantic Ocean. One of the wands’ special properties was that Severus and Hermione Snape were able to reveal the true nature of snake-creatures, from simple garden snakes to Animagi, from naga to basilisks. They did so for the first time when they visited Amrita Agan on 1 September 2009 and finally uncovered her secret.