Slytherin's Horcrux (was:Hogwarts Houses Unite! (was:Re: The Power of Harry ...)

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 163698

> Jen: 
> 
> You were talking about all this in terms of the Horcrux hunt--maybe 
> what will happen is when it comes to the actual locating of a 
Horcrux 
> for each house, one person will represent that part of the quest, 
> like soliciting Zacharias Smith specifically during the seach for 
the 
> Hufflepuff cup?  I'm not sure if that would work since Harry and Co. 
> know where the Slytherin locket is, not Draco.  The prospect *does* 
> makes the Horcrux hunt sound more exciting, however it works out.

Magpie:
I hesitate to call this a prediction, but it's something I wondered 
after HBP regarding the locket. As you said, our guys know where the 
Slytherin Horcrux is--or more accurately, they've got the information 
they need to know where it is if we assume that locket in OotP was it. 
I think it is, and I think RAB is Regulus and that he's dead.

However, what popped into my head after HBP--and obviously I've no 
proof of this whatsoever--but I was thinking about that whole scene 
with Kreacher where Dumbledore has Harry test to see if he was able to 
inherit Kreacher, or whether the Blacks had charmed things so that 
they could only be inherited by Blacks. That scene had uses within 
OotP, but I started thinking that there was no real reason to 
introduce the idea of a charm like that--one where the family only 
allows something to a relative. It wasn't absolutely necessary to get 
Kreacher into the Dursleys house and Dumbledore could have just had 
demonstrate to Harry that he was Kreacher's true owner by having him 
give him an order. (In fact that might have spoken better of Harry if 
he resisted being an Elf-owner on principle.)

I thought it might be possible that the reason no one could open the 
locket wasn't only due to its being a Horcrux but instead had 
something to do with Regulus charming the locket to only recognize a 
Black--perhaps a Pureblood Black. Regulus had subscribed to the 
Pureblood ideology and the idea that Black made you royalty, so it 
wouldn't be impossible for him to use it somehow even after he'd 
rejected Voldemort. Or perhaps it could have been someone else. (We 
don't know what all Regulus might have been trying to do with the 
locket himself. Perhaps in his last hours he thought of Sirius and 
hoped he could destroy it while Voldemort himself would be unable to 
open it.)

Anyway, as I said I can't prove it so it's really just a fanfic idea 
possibility, but it did seem one way that the Order could actually 
need Draco and so have to work with him--Tonks being discounted for 
being the daughter of a Muggleborn or not on the Tapestry. The Blacks 
as a family are an important issue, and they I think need to be healed 
in a similar way that Hogwarts does. It would make a nice symbolism 
with the locket's protection causing a problem (and since the 
protection is kind of blood-prejudice related or family-related that 
relates back to a lot of the other themes). Both Draco and the House 
of Black have been associated with Slytherin. We get hints that the 
very objects in the House of Black are actively fighting the Order--
while the Order is literally waging war on the House and trying to 
destroy it. The main thing in canon that makes me wonder if it could 
actually happen is the introduction of the related idea with Kreacher 
(that Black property might be charmed to only recognize relatives) 
that turns out to not come to anything in that context. It makes it 
seem like it might be one of those clever ways JKR introduces 
something without it seeming like it's going to important later.

-m