The Locket Horcrux - When Was It Swapped?

[Mike]

No: HPFGUIDX 165733

A theory that I've long held to, which I know has been stated in many 
forms before, is that the locket Horcrux never made it to the cave in 
the first place. Pippin just posted another of these iterations on 
the "Green Liquid" thread. I'll add on to her post and you can read 
it in it's entirety here:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/165700

> Pippin:
> This makes it even clearer to me that RAB didn't steal the locket
> from the basin at all. He stole it beforehand. That eliminates a
> whole raft of problems.  <snip>

Mike:
Yay, Pippin <Mike applauds> I've been of a like mind as you on this 
for a long time. And although I'd agreed, I couldn't put my finger on 
the tipping point. But you did :) Why replace the locket in the basin 
indeed. As you said; 1) there's no point, it's not going to fool LV 
and I can't see Reggie being that bent as to have a driving need to 
taunt Voldemort. and 2) there *is* a need to substitute a fake one if 
he swapped it out on cousin Bella before she made her deposit. Yep, 
this cinches it for me too.

Reggie is a wet behind the ears DE. I don't imagine he's much farther 
along the path to magical wisdom than Harry is right now. Could Harry 
have retreived that locket from the basin on his own, or even with 
help from a loyal Kreacher? I seriously doubt Reggie was capable of 
it either. And how did Reggie know it was a locket that was at the 
bottom of the basin? In fact, what makes anyone believe someone of 
Reggie's caliber could have found out about LV's Horcruxes, where the 
cave is, where the blood door is and how to open it, how to find LV's 
boat, and how to defeat the green liquid? 

Carol made a suggestion that Bella borrowed Kreacher (which I don't 
think Wolfburga would allow and can't understand why Bella would ask. 
Doesn't Bella have a house elf in her family, or better yet, wouldn't 
she borrow Dobby from her sister before she goes beggaring to her 
aunt?). My question would be: what does Bella need Kreacher for? 
Surely Bella put in/transformed the green stuff in the basin. Or, if 
LV had already caused the green stuff to happen, surely LV didn't 
send her on the mission without telling her how to bypass it. So what 
would be the purpose of bringing Kreacher? And would LV or Bella want 
more folks to know this closely guarded secret?

But if Reggie learned about the Horcrux from Bella's bragging at his 
house, before she made the deposit, that changes everything. Then, 
Reggie would be capable of transforming one of his mother's lockets 
into looking like the Slytherin Locket well enough to fool Bella. And 
I doubt that she was ever going to open it to find that note. 
Besides, he could easily have charmed it shut without having to put a 
curse on it. 

Makes Harry and Dumbledore's whole cave adventure one giant red 
herring, imo. I've already posted my problems with the logic in the 
cave scene, so I won't repeat myself here. Suffice it to say, I found 
the whole adventure pointless outside of the need as a plot device 
for JKR.


> Pippin:
> RAB wouldn't have had to count on his transfiguration being 
> good enough to fool Voldemort himself,  but it just might 
> have been, at least for the brief amount of time needed for an 
> unsuspecting Voldemort to recover the supposed horcrux from 
> Bella and hide it in the cave. Of course if Bella is the one who
> did the hiding, so much the better, and Voldemort never saw
> the fake at all.

Mike:
I like the second version :D As I said on another post, it makes 
sense to me that Bella was the one that deposited the (fake) locket 
into the basin. Also, as I've postulated before, I can easily see 
Bella showing up at her Aunt Wolfburga's house and bragging about 
what an honour that the Dark Lord bestowed upon her, making her 
responsible for hiding one of his Horc... oops, I'm not suppose to 
tell you that.

I can also see all of this happening *after* the Blacks have come to 
the revelation that Voldemort is not who or what he says he is. 
Sirius told us it did happen, just not when. "They got cold feet when 
they saw what he was prepared to do to get power, though. But I bet 
my parents thought Regelus was a right little hero for joining up at 
first." (Ootp p.112, US ed.) Since it was Sirius' "parents", plural, 
and his father died in the same year as Reggie, this revelation must 
have come pretty close to the time of Reggie swapping the lockets. 
That would mean that although they might have put up a good front for 
their neice Bella (knowing her loyalties), they would secretly be in 
opposition to Voldemort around this time.

This sets up perfectly for the whole family to be in on the switch. 
That said, I'm confident that Reggie could have done it by himself, 
and maybe didn't want to get his parents involved. 

A second likely scenario is that Reggie's dad has already died (at 
the hands of DEs or LV himself?) and that was the catalyst for Reggie 
to make his move on Voldemort. Then, as luck would have it, Bella 
shows up at his house with the locket and Reggie sees a perfect 
oppurtunity to make his *statement* move. He has to move fast though, 
Bella isn't going to wait for him to go shopping for a locket.


> Pippin continued:
> No, the fake locket only makes sense to me if the substitution was 
> done earlier, while the locket was still in the possession of 
> Bellatrix. Of course we do have to account for the locket being 
> disenchanted by the time Harry found it. But the spell may have 
> worn off over the years <snip>

Mike:
Not all magic is permanent. Heck, Crouch Jr even said the effects of 
his Imperious will wear off soon. (Yeah, I know he removed the 
Imperious, but something was still causing Ron to skip after class). 
Plus, look at all the battle scenes, with Stupefys and Petrificus 
Totalia [sp?] that don't last forever. So both the appearance of the 
locket and whatever was holding it shut could easily have worn off 
over the years, revealing what Harry sees as not the same locket he 
saw in the Pensieve scene. But as long as Bella was fooled up until 
the time she dropped the locket into the basin, it all makes sense.

What about that note? It was written as a taunt and it also seems 
that Reggie expected LV to read it. And why did Reggie expect to be 
dead by the time Voldemort read the note? I have wild theory about 
this, but it might make the Horcrux problem not as overburdening as 
it seems to be at this point of the story.

If Reggie was made "dead" by DD and Snape, he could now be hidden by 
a Fidelius. But what I like better is that the Metamorphmagus gene 
runs in the Black family. And Tonks isn't the only one. We've all 
been wondering why JKR introduced us to the concept without taking it 
somewhere. Maybe Reggie is where. Maybe Reggie is out there right 
now, disguised as someone else, and doing Dumbledore's bidding. If 
Reggie has taken up the Horcrux hunt from a long time ago, maybe 
Harry doesn't have that many to find and destroy after all.

As to why Dumbledore didn't tell Harry all this? I'll answer that 
with another question: why didn't Dumbledore tell Harry the real 
reason he trusts Snape? Dumbledore feels he must protect his people 
that have put their lives in his hands. That's on top of his penchant 
for playing his hand close to the vest. So just like he's keeping 
Snape's secrets, he's keeping Reggie's secrets. With the distinct 
possibility that these two's secrets are intertwined. And, if LV is 
under the impression that Snape killed Reggie, that's two people who 
could be killed if this secret ever got out.

Of course this beggars the question, why did DD take Harry to the 
cave if he already knew there was no Horcrux there? I've already 
stated my belief that the cave was a contrivance by JKR. But laying 
that aside, how does Dumbledore tune Harry into R.A.B. without giving 
away the whole thing to the detriment of both Reggie and Snape? By 
introducing a clue that is sure to take Harry a while to figure out 
and hopefully Harry will have received more guidance by then. 

There may be a couple of real simple answers to the cave trip. Reggie 
never told Dumbledore that he got that Horcrux out, and there is 
sparse to no communication between them now. Or, Dumbledore knew that 
the locket was at 12 GP, but it went missing back during OotP. So he 
takes Harry to recover the fake locket, knowing that Harry will now 
take up the hunt for the real one. And Dumbledore knows that Reggie 
can't return to 12 GP, but Harry can, he owns the place now.

I know it's not foolproof theory, but it does cut JKR's on-page 
workload way down. And it keeps DH from becoming a wall to wall 
Horcrux hunt, not something anybody would want.

Mike, waiting for the lumberjacks to chop this one down :)