RAB revisited

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 161794

Abergoat wrote: 
> 
> Ah, but there is the nice little hint (clue?) that Herbert Burke
> married a Black and had two sons and a daughter. Caractacus Burke
may be one of those sons. So the other son or daughter might be our
RAB and would have access to Kreacher (Sirius tells us Kreacher SHOULD
> obey Tonks but doesn't perhaps because her mother was removed from
the tapestry. If RAB died in the cave, Kreacher may have taken the
locket back home.

Carol:
Or Regulus may have taken it home himself, intending to destroy it
later if he could, and discovered that he couldn't open it. He didn't
have time to do much else. Why complicate matters by having an RAB for
whom we haven't been given a clue in the books themselves, and what's
the point of repeatedly introducing Regulus if he isn't RAB? As for
dying in the cave, he could easily have ordered Kreacher to drink the
potion, which explains Kreacher's mental state (still capable of
fanatical loyalty and plotting but muttering to himself under the
apparent delusion that he can't be heard).

Abergoat: 
> The beauty of a Burke is they would have access to the story of
Merope and might know to look at the Orphanage. They also may have
been a 'boss' of Tom Riddle and hence the use of the R.A.B. which
denotes equality of not superiority - as in 'I don't need to tell you
my name, you know who I am'. I cannot see a Death Eater ever being
known to Voldemort as R.A.B., they seem to be called by their last names. 

Carol responds:
Karkaroff and Snape are on first-name terms, as are Snape and Lucius
Malfoy (as evidenced by Snape referring to Malfoy as Lucius in
Spinner's End). Voldemort himself addresses Lucius Malfoy as "Lucius,
my slippery friend" and Bellatrix, IIRC, as Bella. It seems that some
DEs are closer to Voldemort than others, and he addresses some but not
all by their first names. (Note that in the case of Rodolphus and
Rabastan Lestrange, it would be necessary to do so to distinguish them
as Malfoy does in the DoM.) But I'm quite sure that LV knows not only
the first names of all his DEs but everything about them from their
middle initials and birthdates to their marital status and the names
and ages of their children. 

Abergoat:
<snip>
> Perhaps you are right and RAB is Regulus, but I think there are
other possibilities.

Carol:
Maybe, but the number of storylines that require a resolution is so
large already that I think JKR will opt for simplicity, a known
character who has been introduced in two different books as opposed to
an unknown whose link to the Blacks exists only in the fragment of the
Black family tree published in the Lexicon. Sirius's brother has been
placed in the books for a reason, and the transliterations of RAB in
the translated versions of HBP suggests strongly that he's RAB. 

Carol, hoping for a link between Snape and RAB/Regulus in Book 7