Saturday, June 9, 2007

The Locket and the Mysterious RAB

RAB is the name of one of the founders of Borgin and Burkes, Mr. Burke. He snuck onto the Hogwarts grounds following the murder of Dumbledore, and using either the general confusion or an invisibility cloak (as the owner of a shop he would have invisibility cloaks available to him) as a shield against being seen. He went through the corridor created by the closets--which was never closed--and escaped in the same way.

He went to Dumbledore's body and took the Horcrux, replacing it with the fake locket.

Plausability factor is high. It is more likely that one wizard was able to come through the closets than to steal the locket from the cave. Also, the cave did not bear the signs of having been broken into before Harry and Dumbledore went there. Most importantly, the potion was still there, and it was not self-filling.

RAB said in his note that he would be dead before the note was read. This is because destroying a horcrux is very damaging to the person who destroys it. Remember that Dumbledore was nearly killed, and permanently damaged, by destroying a horcrux at the beginning.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

But how did he know that Dumbledore would be going after a horcrux that evening and that it would be the locket specifically and not one of the others? Also, the note doesn't make a lot of sense in that context, though I suppose it could be a convoluted attempt at misdirection (which would hardly be necessary if he were going to die soon). Finally, why would Burke sacrifice his own life to destroy the horcrux rather than simply let Harry do it? Surely he must know, if he knows so much about Voldemort and what is going on at Hogwarts, that Harry destroyed the diary without even a hint of resistance.

Actually, that brings up another interesting point: why wasn't Harry injured when he destroyed the diary? I can think of four possibilities:

1) He was but the injury was not immediately noticeable and was healed when Fawkes' tears healed him from the Basilisk's venom. This seems unlikely both as to the injury not being immediately noticeable and because Dumbledore was not able to recover from his injury despite having access to Phoenix tears.

2) Lily's legacy protects Harry from the negative effects of tampering with horcruxes.

3) Harry was able to destroy one of Voldemort's horcruxes since he himself is a horcrux and it stands to reason that Voldemort would be able to safely do anything he wishes with his own horcruxes. If this were true, there would be a certain parallelism between this and Voldemort's becoming immune to Harry's touch by using Harry's blood in his return.

4) Destroying horcruxes is not damaging at all. Dumbledore's injury came from an external curse put on the ring which isn't present on all of Voldemort's horcruxes.

elizabeth said...

R.A.B is not burke it is REGULUS A BLACK!!duh!!!