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Hermione glanced around.

“Did you make all this mess, or was some of it done when you got here?”

“Someone had searched before me,” said Harry.

“I thought so. Every room I looked into on the way up had been disturbed. What
were they after, do you think?”

“Information on the Order, if it was Snape.”

“But you’d think he’d already have all he needed. I mean was in the Order, wasn’t
he?”

“Well then,” said Harry, keen to discuss his theory, “what about information on
Dumbledore? The second page of the letter, for instance. You know this Bathilda my
mum mentions, you know who she is?”

“Who?”

“Bathilda Bagshot, the author of –“

“A History of Magic,” said Hermione, looking interested. “So your parents knew
her? She was an incredible magic historian.”

“And she’s still alive,” said Harry, “and she lives in Godric’s Hollow. Ron’s
Auntie Muriel was talking about her at the wedding. She knew Dumbledore’s family too.
Be pretty interesting to talk to, wouldn’t she?” There was a little too much understanding
in the smile Hermione gave him for Harry’s liking. He took back the letter and the
photograph and tucked them inside the pouch around his neck, so as not to have to look at
her and give himself away. “I understand why you’d love to talk to her about your mum
and dad, and Dumbledore too,” said Hermione. “But that wouldn’t really help us in our
search for the Horcruxes, would it?” Harry did not answer, and she rushed on, “Harry, I
know you really want to go to Godric’s Hollow, but I’m scared. I’m scared at how easily
those Death Eaters found us yesterday. It just makes me feel more than ever that we
ought to avoid the place where your parents are buried, I’m sure they’d be expecting you
to visit it.”

“It’s not just that,” Harry said, still avoiding looking at her, “Muriel said stuff
about Dumbledore at the wedding. I want to know the truth…”

 He told Hermione everything that Muriel had told him. When he had finished,
Hermione said, “Of course, I can see why that’s upset you, Harry –“

 “I’m not upset,” he lied, “I’d just like to know whether or not it’s true or –“

 “Harry do you really think you’ll get the truth from a malicious old woman like
Muriel, or from Rita Skeeter? How can you believe them? You knew Dumbledore!”

 “I thought I did,” he muttered.

 “But you know how much truth there was in everything Rita wrote about you!
Doge is right, how can you let these people tarnish your memories of Dumbledore?”

 He looked away, trying not to betray the resentment he felt. There it was again:
Choose what to believe. He wanted the truth. Why was everybody so determined that he
should not get it?

 “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 onto 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 passed 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.

Do Not Enter

Without the Express Permission of

Regulus Arcturus Black

Excitement trickled through Harry, but he was not immediately sure why. He read the
sign again. Hermione was already a flight of stairs below him.

 “Hermione,” he said, and he was surprised that his voice was so calm. “Come
back up here.”

 “What’s the matter?”

 “R.A.B. I think I’ve found him.”

 There was a gasp, and then Hermione ran back up the stairs.

 “In your mum’s letter? But I didn’t see –“

 Harry shook his head, pointing at Regulus’s sign. She read it, then clutched
Harry’s arm so tightly that he winced.

 “Sirius’s brother?” she whispered.

 “He was a Death Eater,” said Harry. “Sirius told me about him, he joined up when
he was really young and then got cold feet and tried to leave – so they killed him.”

 “That fits!” gasped Hermione. “If he was a Death Eater he had access to
Voldemort, and if he became disenchanted, then he would have wanted to bring
Voldemort down!”

 She released Harry, leaned over the banister, and screamed, “Ron! RON! Get up
here, quick!”

 Ron appeared, panting, a minute later, his wand ready in his hand.

 “What’s up? If it’s massive spiders again I want breakfast before I –“

 He frowned at the sign on Regulus’s door, in which Hermione was silently
pointing.

 “What? That was Sirius’s brother, wasn’t it? Regulus Arcturus … Regulus …
R.A.B.! The locket – you don’t reckon -- ?”

 “Let’s find out,” said Harry. He pushed the door: It was locked. Hermione pointed
her wand at the handle and said, “Alohamora.” There was a click, and the door swung
open.

 They moved over the threshold together, gazing around. Regulus’s bedroom was
slightly smaller than Sirius’s, though it had the same sense of former grandeur. Whereas
Sirius had sought to advertise his diffidence from the rest of the family, Regulus had
striven to emphasize the opposite. The Slytherin colors of emerald and silver were
everywhere, draping the bed, the walls, and the windows. The Black family crest was
painstakingly painted over the bed, along with its motto, TOUJOURS PUR. Beneath this
was a collection of yellow newspaper cuttings, all stuck together to make a ragged
collage. Hermione crossed the room to examine them.

 “They’re all about Voldemort,” she said. “Regulus seems to have been a fan for a
few years before he joined the Death Eaters …”

 A little puff of dust rose from the bedcovers as she sat down to read the clippings.
Harry, meanwhile, had noticed another photograph: a Hogwarts Quidditch team was
smiling and waving out of the frame. He moved closer and saw the snakes emblazoned
on their chests: Slytherins. Regulus was instantly recognizable as the boy sitting in the
middle of the front row: He had the same dark hair and slightly haughty look of his
brother, though he was smaller, slighter, and rather less handsome than Sirius had been.

 “He played Seeker,” said Harry.

“What?” said Hermione vaguely; she was still immersed in Voldemort’s press
clippings.

 “He’s sitting in the middle of the front row, that’s where the Seeker … Never
mind,” said Harry, realizing that nobody was listening. Ron was on his hands and knees,
searching under the wardrobe. Harry looked around the room for likely hiding places and
approached the desk. Yet again, somebody had searched before them. The drawers’
contents had been turned over recently, the dust disturbed, but there was nothing of value
there: old quills, out-of-date textbooks that bore evidence of being roughly handled, a
recently smashed ink bottle, its sticky residue covering the contents of the drawer.

 “There’s an easier way,” said Hermione, as Harry wiped his inky fingers on his
jeans. She raised her wand and said, “Accio Locket!”

 Nothing happened. Ron, who had been searching the folds of the faded curtains,
looked disappointed.

 “Is that it, then? It’s not here?”

 “Oh, it could still be here, but under counter-enchantments,” said Hermione.
“Charms to prevent it from being summoned magically, you know.”

 “Like Voldemort put on the stone basin in the cave,” said Harry, remembering
how he had been unable to Summon the fake locket.

 “How are we supposed to find it then?” asked Ron.

 “We search manually,” said Hermione.

 “That’s a good idea,” said Ron, rolling his eyes, and he resumed his examination
of the curtains.

 They combed every inch of the room for more than an hour, but were forced,
finally, to conclude that the locket was not there.

 The sun had risen now; its light dazzled them even through the grimy landing
windows.

 “It could be somewhere else in the house, though,” said Hermione in a rallying
tone as they walked back downstairs. As Harry and Ron had become more discouraged,
she seemed to have become more determined. “Whether he’d manage to destroy it or not,
he’d want to keep it hidden from Voldemort, wouldn’t he? Remember all those awful
things we had to get rid of when we were here last time? That clock that shot bolts at
everyone and those old robes that tried to strangle Ron; Regulus might have put them
there to protect the locket’s hiding place, even though we didn’t realize it at … at … “

 Harry and Ron looked at her. She was standing with one foot in midair, with the
dumbstruck look of one who had just been Obliviated: her eyes had even drifted out of
focus.

 “… at the time,” she finished in a whisper.

 “Something wrong?” asked Ron.

 “There was a locket.”

 “What?” said Harry and Ron together.

 “In the cabinet in the drawing room. Nobody could open it. And we … we … “

 Harry felt as though a brick had slid down through his chest into his stomach. He
remembered. He had even handled the thing as they passed it around, each trying in turn
to pry it open. It had been tossed into a sack of rubbish, along with the snuffbox of
Wartcap powder and the music box that had made everyone sleepy …”

 “Kreacher nicked loads of things back from us,” said Harry. It was the only
chance, the only slender hope left to them, and he was going to cling to it until forced to
let go. “He had a whole stash of stuff in his cupboard in the kitchen. C’mon.”

 He ran down the stairs taking two steps at a time, the other two thundering along
in his wake. They made so much noise that they woke the portrait of Sirius’s mother as
they passed through the hall.

 “Filth! Mudbloods! Scum!” she screamed after them as they dashed down into the
basement kitchen and slammed the door behind them. Harry ran the length of the room,
skidded to a halt at the door of Kreacher’s cupboard, and wrenched it open. There was the
nest of dirty old blankets in which the house-elf had once slept, but they were not longer
glittering with the trinkets Kreacher had salvaged. The only thing there was an old copy
of Nature’s Nobility: A Wizarding Genealogy. Refusing to believe his eyes, Harry
snatched up the blankets and shook them. A dead mouse fell out and rolled dismally
across the floor. Ron groaned as he threw himself into a kitchen chair; Hermione closed
her eyes.

 “It’s not over yet,” said Harry, and he raised his voice and called, “Kreacher!”

 There was a loud crack and the house elf that Harry had so reluctantly inherited
from Sirius appeared out of nowhere in front of the cold and empty fireplace: tiny, half
human-sized, his pale skin hanging off him in folds, white hair sprouting copiously from
his batlike ears. He was still wearing the filthy rag in which they had first met him, and
the contemptuous look he bent upon Harry showed that his attitude to his change of
ownership had altered no more than his outfit.

 “Master,” croaked Kreacher in his bullfrog’s voice, and he bowed low; muttering
to his knees, “back in my Mistress’s old house with the blood-traitor Weasley and the
Mudblood –“

 “I forbid you to call anyone ‘blood traitor’ or ‘Mudblood,’” growled Harry. He
would have found Kreacher, with his snoutlike nose and bloodshot eyes, a distinctively
unlovable object even if the elf had not betrayed Sirius to Voldemort.