RAB case is broken - all Aurors please read!

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 153261

Tonks wrote:
> We have all been thinking that R.A.B. is Regulus Black and have come 
> up with a variety of theories as to how and when he switched the 
> lockets.  We, I regret to say, after hours and hours of work, have 
> been wrong.  It was not Regulus Black. Let me give the evidence:
> 
> (HBP -Page 609 U.S. edition)
> "The locket that they had managed to steal so many hours before had 
> fallen out of Dumbledore's pocket. It had opened, perhaps do to the 
> force with which it hit the ground.  And although he could not feel 
> more shock or horror or sadness than he already felt, Harry knew, as 
> he picked it up, that there was something wrong

> 
> He turned the locket over in his hands.  This was neither as large 
> as the locket that he REMEMBERED SEEING in the Pensive, nor were 
> there any marking upon it, no sign of the ornate S that was supposed 
> to be Slytherin's mark. "
><snip>
> If you read carefully, or better yet listen on tape or CD, you will 
> see that Harry says that it is not the locket that he saw in the 
> cave. We have all been thinking that he was mistaken. But indeed it 
> is *not* the same locket that he and DD got from the cave.  <snip>

Carol responds:
The "locket that he remembered seeing in the Pensieve" is not a
reference to the locket that Harry saw in the Pensievelike bowl in the
cave (the one that Dumbledore snatched up and put in his pocket) but
to the locket he saw in *Dumbledore's* Pensieve, briefly and perhaps
not clearly when Marvolo nearly choked Merope by pulling on the chain
to show the locket to Bob Ogden, and again, perfectly clearly and long
enough to remember what it looked like when Hepzibah Smith showed it
to Tom Riddle. That locket *des* have markings on it, Slytherin's
mark, IIRC. Otherwise, Merope could hardly have proven to Caractacus
Burke that it was a Slytherin heirloom. I can find the actual quotes
and page numbers if you need them.

Carol, 99 percent sure that the locket described in these two Pensieve
excursions is the unopenable locket that Harry saw at 12 Grimmauld Place