Note in the Locket: R.A.B?

[choki]

R.A.B might not be a name
it could mean rags and bones...I dunno...it would rather fit the person who already said he/she would long be dead before Voldemort gets back to his Horcrux

[Mistress Siana]

I for one am quite positive it's a Black. Regulus is of course the most likely solution, especially if you bear in mind that an uncle of Sirius's was named Alphard. So his brother could very well be named Regulus Alphard Black. Sounds good, eh? Then again, there is another person that's been forgotten so far: Andromeda, the third Black sister.
R. Andromeda Black.

[Phoenix in the Ashes]

That is clever, after there can't have been too much variation in names in that family, so it'd make sense as well.
What exactly does it say about Alphard?

[EFish91]

i havent read through this whole topic so i do not know if someone has noticed this.... but.....
In the OoP....at Grimauld Palace, on the bottom of Pg.116, they went through some stuff they found, and one of the things was a "hevay locket, which no one could open." Obviously, this is the horcrux, and if not already stolen, Harry has inherited it!

[Scarlet Lioness]

WOW!!! Good theory, you could be right I think I need to read the whole series again...

[Phoenix in the Ashes]

Harry's bound to visit Grimmauld Place after or before he goes to the Dursley's in book seven. Maybe there he'll find it, if indeed your theory is right, which it appears it is.

[Snow_Crystal]

Doesn't it seem like that awful stuff Dumbledore goes through after drinking the potion might apply to RAB, a reformed Death Eater? All that "I'm sorry" and "Don't hurt them" and stuff like that? Is it possible that DD had to relive the pain of what RAB had gone through with LV?

To me it seemed like kind of a Lord Voldemort trick. He could drink the potion and be fine; he wouldn't care if he saw people being hurt or whatever it was Dumbledore saw. On the other hand, any respectable wizard (i.e., LV's enemies) who drank the potion would be severly affected, Dumbledore especially. He also probably figured that if anyone found the horcruxes it would be Dumbledore, so he set up the potion that was sure to affect him in the worst possible way.

But Voldy didn't put that potion in, did he? It was RAB, or do you think the bowl automatically refilled when RAB left the false locket?

Froggs I think you're right on this. RAB replaced the potion with poison thinking that LV would be the next person to be in that Cave.

It would be a good trick as dibble2 points out, but only if LV put in poisonous potion to trick someone attempting to find his actual horcrux and didn't leave a locket or a note. The fact that there was a note in the locket signed from RAB therefore disproves this theory for me. LV wouldn't bother putting anything in the bottom also he felt that his safety measures at the entrance of the cave, the dead bodies, etc were good enough deterrants for the average wizard - Doh!

It would be a good trick as dibble2 points out, but only if LV put in poisonous potion to trick someone attempting to find his actual horcrux and didn't leave a locket or a note.

I'm not sure what you mean by this Snowy, please clarify....

Hi Dibble2, you asked me to clarify so here goes. You pointed out that you thought the potion in the cave was an LV trick.

It would be a good trick if LV thought the cave was too obvious a place for him to hide a horcrux. If I were to agree with your theory I would then say, perhaps LV set up lots of traps to stop anyone even attempting to find his real horcruxes...

I personally don't think it is a trick simply because of the note that was left and this is absolutely key. If LV wanted to set a trap why would he bother to put in a fake with a note? He wouldn't.

Potion is potion and as I gather from the books their basic functions are the same regardless of who drinks them. E.g. the love potion - the potion is put together with a set of ingredients and the recipient falls in love although how they fall in love is different.

We don't know what the potion in the cave was but it made DD react badly either reliving memories, tortures, other peoples deaths etc. I would therefore assume that the basic function of this potion was the recipient would go through the same type of things. (Does this make sense?)

The potion DD drank was probably not the potion that LV put in. LV could have put in a potion that would be good for him (regenerative for example) if he needed to use that horcrux. LV was overly confident that no-one had his level of skill and that he was completely infallible and that no-one would be able to get to his horcruxes etc but I think this was his failing that JKR is trying to highlight. His work is sloppy and because he failed to recognise the possibility that one of his DE's might betray him he failed to see that one of them might attempt a horcrux theft.

When RAB found it, he would have had to drink the potion that LV had put in. (I don't think RAB would have changed the bewitchment on this that forced the finder to drink as otherwise LV would not take the bait.) I can't imagine LV putting in a poisonous potion for himself and that's exactly what DD wrongly assumed. (DD showed his weakness here because he naively thought he was the only one other than Harry to know about the cave as a potential horcrux location) When RAB drained the potion and took the locket, he decided not to stop there, he wanted to trick LV. He therefore placed a fake locket in it and then put some other potion in that would probably have a bad effect on LV. For all we know this might have simply been water from the lake that had been bewitched to have the same colour as the previous potion.

Oh I dunno! If this doesn't make any sense still sorry I don't really know how to explain it any other way.

[annachie]

Snowy et al.
iirc, DD drank something like 10 cups of the potion to expose the locket, but started feeling the effects after just 1. If someone had switched the potions over then Voldy would realise immediatly that the potion had been changed if he tried to regain the locket, wether he drank it himself or had someone else drink it. After all we assume that Voldy placed it there.
Which leads to it being the potion that Voldy intended. Know the effects are to live/relieve horrible torment of other people. This probably wouldn't bother Voldy in the slightest but would bother anybody "good" who attempted to take the horcrux. Voldy's mistake would then be in thinking that only a "good" person would hunt it up.
But, perhaps it wasn't Voldy who set up the cave. What if it was R.A.B. was sent to set it up? What if R.A.B switches lockets whilst setting things up and was then killed by Voldy to hide the location of the horcrux before he could destroy it? Then no-one has to have drunk the potion before hand.

[Snow_Crystal]

Annachie

Inspired!!! Like it! Never thought of that. And we have no idea whether LV got his Death Eaters to hide his horcruxes in the places he's told them to hide them.

I am a firm believer that RAB is Regulas, I know some think it might be someone else or maybe even more than one person but yeah RAB could have set it up.

Do you think LV would have trusted him to find the right cave or whether RAB would have the knowledge to set it up the way it was set up? I guess he could have been instructed but do you think LV would have trusted RAB to do something so important?

I have no idea what to think of all this potion lark now, half the time I'm just thinking out new concepts on here!!!

[sirius_lives_forever]

well i read in an article that it states in the 5th book that there was a "heavy golden locket". well no one really knows exactly how long each horcrux has been in place for, so maybe regulus took it a long time ago...

[annachie]

Do you think LV would have trusted him to find the right cave or whether RAB would have the knowledge to set it up the way it was set up? I guess he could have been instructed but do you think LV would have trusted RAB to do something so important?

Well we just don't know, but LV could have given Black the younger specific instructions then planned to have him killed as someone who knew too much. Remember that info on the early life of LV was aparently hard to come by, so LV might have been taking pains to hide such info. At leasst according to the DD lessons it was hard to find.

[Snow_Crystal]

Well we just don't know, but LV could have given Black the younger specific instructions then planned to have him killed as someone who knew too much.

I'm not so sure about that part. In GOF, LV tells his DE's that they all knew the lengths he went to towards immortality. I think all the DE's knew what he'd done but don't think they all knew where they were. I like your idea that LV might have given his DE's the responsibility of hiding them for him (and maybe that's why the enchantments in the cave were so crude) or maybe they went with him but I don't think RAB died because he knew too much**. I think he's more likely to have died because he got found out about something, or tried to back out as Sirius said in OOTP.

** On the subject of DE's knowing too much, I was reading bits of HBP again last night and I think Bella slipped up a bit because she said (in Snape's house), LV had trusted her with his most precious... but then she stopped. This is why I'm liking your idea about the DE's hiding the horcruxes for him.

Remember that info on the early life of LV was aparently hard to come by, so LV might have been taking pains to hide such info. At leasst according to the DD lessons it was hard to find.

I think LV was happy to gloat to his DE's about how powerful he is/was and that has made him overly-confident and arrogant. He doesn't want to disclose anything to anyone about his early years because he didn't want anyone to know he was a half-blood. This came as a shock to Bellatrix in OOTP. If they knew he was a half-blood, they might see that as a weakness and therefore his captive audience could desert him. It is important to LV that his powers are recognised as powerful without his followers he would be nothing and this is what he fears most.

DD said that the early memories were hard to come by but this is because DD is not exactly in the same circle of friends as LV. DD really only kept an eye on Tom after the CoS was opened remember - he was 15 already by then.

PS - Can anyone joining this feed for the first time please have a read if only a skim read through before posting, otherwise we'll keep going round in circles. I'm really sorry. It's just really frustrating when you see posts on things that others have already discussed at length.

[Tanuki]

However, one thing no one has pointed out as far as I can remember is Dumbledore pointing out that Voldermort neither wants nor has any close friends of confidants. I don't think he's told his death eaters much of anything of importance, but he lets them believe he has. For someone who needs no one, I don't think he would let anyone touch pieces of his soul... as for the traps in the cave. Could it be that he made these traps early on in his career, when he hadn't quite mastered some things. Also, knowing the memory in the goblet (and i do believe it to be a memory) and what we know about a moment that happened when Voldermort was younge (when he went to the sea with the other orphans), do you think he killed a man or something in front of two orphans and used that even to set certain things in motion?

[Snow_Crystal]

Hmm, Tanuki, You've given me another idea linking in with what annachie was saying.

LV instructs RAB to hide his horcrux
He either gives RAB instruction on what enchantments to put on the cave or lets RAB do this himself
RAB has been given potion by LV to put in the cave.
RAB does this but instead of putting the locket in he puts in the fake and pockets the horcrux to destroy later.

I don't know if LV was young in his career when he was hiding these horcruxes but from my maths working out timeline I think by the time he was recruiting DE's he was about 45 years old. Also wasn't he working at Burgin and Burkes when he first acquired the locket? I reckon he would have been on the hunt for ages for his trinkets and would have created them all at the same time.

We know that LV told his DE's about the steps he took toward immortality because he says that in GoF. I think that's pretty significant because it shows he likes to gloat.

[Froggs]

I don't see LV trusting his Horcruxes with anyone. I think, just a guess, that the DE's knew about the possibility of LV using a horcrux, but they think there is only one. It is implied in the letter written by RAB that at least he thought that he was destroying the only one. I also had believed, up unitl now (thanks a lot Snowy!) that RAB had destroyed the horcrux after LV met his fate with the baby HP, but there is nothing written that says that, so it is equally possible that the horcrux was taken before LV met up with HP....right