꧁ʙᴏʀɴ ᴛᴏ ᴛʜᴇ ᴘᴜʀᴘʟᴇ꧂

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"So?" Said Ron in a very low voice, as though he thought the furniture might be listening in, "Did you find the one? Did you get it? A — a Horcrux?"

Harry shook his head. All that had taken place around that black lake seemed like an old nightmare now; had it really happened any only hours ago?

"You didn't get it?" Said Ron, looking crestfallen, "It wasn't there?"

"No" said Harry, "Someone had already taken it and left a fake in its place"

"Already taken—"

Wordlessly, Harry pulled the fake locket from his pocket, opened it and passed it to Ron. The full story could wait. . .it did not matter tonight. . .nothing mattered except the end, the end of their pointless adventure, the end of Dumbledore's life. . .

"R.R.B and R.A.B" whispered Ron, "But who are they?"

"Dunno" said Harry, lying back on his bed fully clothed and staring blankly upward. He felt no curiosity at all about R.R.B and R.A.B, he doubted he that he would ever feel curious again.

"Harry, I found something out this morning, in the library. . ."

"R.R.B or R.A.B?" Said Harry, sitting up straight.

He did not feel the way he had so often before, excited, curious, burning to get to the bottom of the mystery; he simply knew that the task of discovering the truth about the real Horcrux had to be completed before he could move a little further along the dark and winding path stretching ahead of him, the path that he and Dumbledore had set out upon together, and which he now knew he would have to journey alone. There might still be as many as four horcruxes out there somewhere and each would need to be found and eliminated before there was even a possibility that Voldemort could be killed. He kept reciting their names to himself, as though by listing them, he could bring them within reach:

The locket. . .the cup. . .the snake. . .something of Gryffindor's or Ravenclaw's. . .

This mantra seemed to pulse through Harry's mind as he fell asleep at night, and his dreams were thick with cups, lockets and mysterious objects that he could not quite reach, though Dumbledore helpfully offered Harry a rope ladder that turned to snakes the moment he began to climb. . .

He had shown Hermione the note inside the locket the morning after Dumbledore's death, and although she had not immediately recognised the initials belongs to some obscure witch or wizard about whom she had been reading, she had since been rushing off to the library a little more often than was strictly necessary for somebody who had no homework to do.

"No" she said sadly, "I've been trying, Harry, but I haven't found anything. . .there a couple of reasonably well known witches and wizards with those initials— Rosalind Robin Bungs . . . Rupert Axebanger Brookstanton. . .but they don't seem to fit at all. Judging by that note, the people who stole the real Horcrux knew Voldemort, and I can't find a shred of evidence that Bungs or Axebanger ever had anything to do with him. . ."

"Shall we go down to the kitchen?" Hermione suggested after a little pause, "Find something for breakfast?"

He agreed, but grudgingly, and followed her out on to the landing and past the second door that led off it. There were deep scratch marks in the paintwork below a small sign that he had not noticed in the dark. He paused at the top of the stairs to read it. It was a pompous, little sign, neatly lettered by hand, the sort of thing that Percy Weasley might have stuck on his bedroom door: