Lockets

[Barry Arrowsmith]

A locket in 12 G.P.
A locket in the House of Gaunt, sold to Hepzibah Smith via Borgin and  
Burkes and eventually 'liberated' by Tom.
A locket in the bird-bath in the Cave.
A locket that Harry picks up from beside DD.

A surfeit of lockets.
Just how many are we dealing with here?

Descriptions are scant with some verging on the non-existent, but  
every little helps.

1. That at GP has no useful details attached, merely that it was  
heavy and couldn't be opened.

2. The Gaunt Slytherin heirloom is heavy, golden, on a golden chain  
and carried Slytherin's mark of an ornate serpentine 'S'.

3. The Cave locket is golden too, with a chain, though no marks are  
described.

4. And the one Harry picks up was neither as large as the locket he  
remembered seeing in the Pensieve, nor were there any markings upon  
it. And Harry opens it with no trouble at all.

How many lockets are there?  One, two, three or four?

Not four, I think. Mostly because I'm gullible enough to believe that  
3. & 4. are the same item. It'd be too much for DD to have another  
locket about his person - though that wouldn't be beyond the bounds  
of authorial naughtiness that Aggie Christie, much admired by Jo, was  
capable of.

It looks as if there are at least two, perhaps three, lockets.
For sure there's Slytherin's with the serpentine 'S' which is larger  
than the non-marked one Harry finds beside DD. There's been a switch,  
a ringer replacing the real one, this we're told.

Then there's the 12 GP job - is it the Slytherin heirloom or not?  
Difficult to say - no adjective such as  'golden', no description of  
it having a Slytherin mark. But it can't be opened, which sort of  
negates it being the 3/4 model. Could be red herring or clue,  
depending on which scenario you fancy.

What  doesn't help is the absence of a time-line. When did Voldy put  
his soul fragment into the locket? Most probably during the First  
Voldy War if his graveyard boasting about having got closer to  
immortality than anyone else is anything to go by. When was the  
locket placed in the Cave? Roughly the same time?  All this would  
encourage the theory that RAB is Reggy -  he stole the genuine item,  
substituted the duff one before coming to a sticky end.

The stumbling block  here is how a neo-DE, someone very junior in the  
ranks, finds out that Voldy is soul-splitting, finds out what item  
contains a Voldy soul-fragment, gets said item in his sweaty paws,  
lays his hands on a not very convincing substitute and switches, a  
switch that is never detected by people who should be able to tell  
the difference. See, there's the other Hearseclick, the Diary. Voldy  
gives it to Malfoy for safe-keeping - but even Malfoy, deep in the  
confidences of Voldy as he is, doesn't know what its secret is. So  
how would Reggy know what the locket contains?

There's an awful lot of loose ends floating around.

Then there's the whole Cave set-up.
What's it for?
The Diary wasn't surrounded by no-touch spells, nor presumably was  
the ring with the black stone, nor (if the theorisers are correct) is  
the Tom Riddle Cup in the Trophy Room. Only when their contents are  
accessed do the spells appear. Why should the locket be different?

Two possibilities that make some sort of  sense  - it wasn't Voldy  
that surrounded it with all that protection -  it was whoever stole  
the original. A way of hiding the fact that the true Hersnix had gone  
and hopefully causing great aggravation to Voldy if he ever wanted a  
piece of his soul back -  as evidenced by the fact that the message  
in the locket was addressed to him.

This nifty bit of spellwork tends to militate against Reggy - he was  
younger than Sirius, no more than very early 20s at most. Would he  
have the power, the knowledge, the experience to set it all up? Maybe  
- if he had help. Dear old dad, perhaps? He's a fan of Dark Magic.

The alternative is that Voldy set up all that protection, and when  
some little gofer drops the locket in the bird-bath it somehow causes  
the spells to activate. But why? Why would Voldy hide this particular  
artifact behind a screen of Dark Magic? Is it special? And would the  
spells activate for a fake?

In any event, would Voldy trust a beginner-DE (if it was Reggie) to  
perform this important errand unsupervised? That doesn't sound like  
Voldy, he'd use someone he trusted. (See below for a canon hint that  
this was what he intended but his 'trusted' hench-wizards - Bella and  
Lucius -may have cocked it up somehow.)

Two other things to think about -  one locket-related, the other -  
who knows?

The note in the locket states that RAB *intends* to destroy the  
Horcrocks - that doesn't guarantee that RAB succeeded in doing so -  
that bit of Voldy may still have to be dealt with - an unexpected  
surprise for Harry in book 7? Maybe it's still at 12 GP. Maybe Reggie  
(if he is RAB) never had the time nor the skill to open the locket  
and kill the soul-fragment. Such a pity we don't know if the GP  
locket is golden with a serpentine 'S'. That'd make it neat and tidy,  
wouldn't it?

Secondly - a truncated sentence from Bella in Spinner's End - yes,  
another little clue(?) from that intriguing chapter:
"The Dark Lord has, in the past, entrusted me with his most precious  
- if Lucius hadn't - "

Which 'precious' is this? The Diary, which we know Lucius had? But we  
are led to believe that Voldy personally gave that to Malfoy for safe- 
keeping. How was Bella involved?

But if it's another 'precious'.... and if the 'hadn't' refers to a  
mis-judgement by Lucius....
Which 'precious' is Bella referring to? A golden locket?

Kneasy