Happy Easter, and a Cat's Birthday Fic
To those of you who celebrate, Happy Easter. To those of you who celebrated Passover earlier this week, I hope you had a good Seder.
I should not even TRY to do drabbles. I signed up for a drabble for the Cat's Birthday Drabblethon.
Do you know what I ended up with? 2,602 words. That's a huge jump from one hundred.
Anyway. Here's the story in its entirety, as I had to break it up into sections over at mctabby's journal. It doesn't have a title yet. Perhaps someone could suggest one.
Recipient: furiosity
Prompt: Regulus Black is not R.A.B, someone else is.
Word count: 2,601
Rating: Gen. Very very gen.
None of the members of the second Order of the Phoenix bothered to ask why Mundungus Fletcher stole from Twelve Grimmauld Place. They just wrote it off as irresponsible theft.
This annoyed Mundungus. "Irresponsible" was the last thing it was.
During the first war with Voldemort, Dung had heard whispers from other order members about Horcruxes. Dorcas Meadowes, their researcher, had been the first to learn about them--a warning that had gone unheeded until Voldemort murdered her. Marlene McKinnon had discovered that there was more than one Horcrux, and she and her family had paid with their lives. Edgar--no. He didn't want to think about Edgar, Imperiused into slaughtering his wife and children. Thank Merlin Edgar's brother and sisters had survived.
After the killings started, Dung talked things over with Edgar's sister. "Rab," as he'd called her, after her initials, had been all for destroying the Horcruxes; he'd been forced to admit, reluctantly, that he didn't know how.
That had only fazed Rab for a moment. "Well, then," she'd said firmly, "we'll just have to take them. That way we'll have them--and perhaps You-Know-Who shan't be able to use their magic."
He hadn't been too sure about the last bit. The Horcruxes existed already, after all. But he had no problem with the notion of stealing them. He was dreadful at fighting and killing, and always had been, but he was a near-genius at appropriating things that the enemy sorely wanted.
Mundungus couldn't think of a single thing that You-Know-Who would crave more than the immortality guaranteed by the Horcruxes's existence. This, he knew, would hurt.
Which, he reflected, might be a good thing. Wounded snakes tended to panic and lash out at those around them. As long as Rab and he--and the Order too, of course, he hastily added, can't forget the Order--weren't potential targets, this could be all to the good. A frightened and angry Dark Lord could be a vulnerable Dark Lord. And he might do some damage to his own people in the process.
"That," he told Rab, "sounds like an excellent idea."
Fortunately for them, Dorcas and Marlene had both written copious notes on Horcruxes. Dung appropriated them from the rubbish bin, congratulating himself as he did so and wondering why Dumbledore had ordered the notes thrown away.
The notes told Dung and Rab where to find three Horcruxes. One was Helga Hufflepuff's loving cup, owned by the McLaggen family and, at the moment, part of an exhibit of medieval art that was touring Canada. The second was a wand--eleven and a half inches, ash wood, phoenix feather core--that had once belonged to Rowena Ravenclaw. Unfortunately, the wand, along with its owner, Damocles Belby, was currently in Equatorial Africa where Belby was researching magical tropical plants in an attempt to create a cure for lycanthropy.
The third was a locket--allegedly Salazar Slytherin's locket, though Dung didn't see how that could be. Lockets started being manufactured in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, not in the tenth.
And the locket that was supposedly Slytherin's was in a cave in Blackpool.
Dung wanted to get the locket by himself. This had nothing to do with heroism; he simply knew from experience that when he had to steal something, he worked best alone. But Rab wouldn't hear of it.
"I'm coming along," she said firmly, with a steely glint in her eye that told Dung he'd be wise not to argue. "There's no way you're walking into this alone. What if you get hurt, or cursed? No. You need backup. Besides, what makes you think that I'm the sort of woman who stays home and sews a tapestry while the men are off slaying dragons?"
And after that, of course, there was nothing more to be said.
Rab, it turned out, was a good organizer. She was the one who realized that the cave in which the Horcrux lay might be a trap.
"A trap?" Dung asked. "But why? He's the only person who knows where it is…as far as he knows."
"Yes, but that won't matter," Rab said patiently. "He's got a sideways kind of mind. He'll figure that someone will be looking for the Horcruxes, because if the Horcruxes belonged to Dumbledore, he'd be looking for them. So he'll set traps for anyone who isn't him."
"Traps. Plural."
"Bound to be," said Rab with a shrug. "How else will he be able to prove to himself how clever he is?"
Of course, there was no way to know what sorts of traps You-Know-Who had left in the cave. Fire, water, earthquakes…all seemed far too probable. Rab added to the gloom by predicting that the Dark Lord might have created a dead zone for magic within the cave itself, trapping any wizard or witch and rendering him or her totally helpless. After considerable debate, Dung and Rab decided to bring a few things to help overcome his tricks--matches, candles and some dry wood wrapped in plastic in case they needed a fire; a portable pump in case they ran into some kind of--hopefully--minor flooding; and batteries and torches, in case magic failed and they were left, lost and alone, in the dark.
Rab also insisted that Dung steal a few bags of blood from the local Muggle hospital.
"But why?" Dung said, schooling his face to conceal the fact that he was already trying to figure out how to do this.
Rab gave a martyred sigh. "Because he's very, very unimaginative," she said. "He'll want a sacrifice, either to get in or to get out--probably both. And Dark magic's very keen on blood sacrifice, because Dark magic is all about death and undeath, and blood makes you alive. Blood IS life. I don't think he'd mind letting his enemies into the cave, as long as he knew they had to hurt themselves--or maybe bleed to death--doing so."
"If there is such a spell," Dung warned her, "it can probably tell the difference between a living person and bags of replacement blood."
"Then we'll cross that bridge when we come to it," said Rab firmly. "But if the spell does exist, we'll try getting around it first."
Dung was the one who thought of using a substitute locket. "To keep the spell working after we're gone," he said.
Rab laughed. "Like one of those alarms in Muggle museums. The kind that go off when there's a shift in the glass case's weight. Good idea." She turned grave. "But I want to leave a note for him in the substitute."
There was only one possible response to that.
"Are you MAD?"
"Don't worry," said Rab. "I won't tell him who I am. But I definitely want to leave him a message. For Dorcas. For Marlene. For Edgar." Her eyes were suspiciously bright. "Please."
Dung had never been able to refuse a weeping woman.
The note, once Rab had written it, was very short:
To the Dark Lord
I know I will be dead long before you read this but I want you to know that it was I who discovered your secret. I have stolen the real Horcrux and intend to destroy it as soon as I can.
I face death in the hope that when you meet your match you will be mortal once more.
R.A.B.
Dung didn't like the note. "You don't know that you'll be dead before he reads this. I hope you aren't. I hope we both aren't."
"It's called misdirection," Rab said. "I'm trying to encourage him to think the way he wants to think. And he'll want to believe that anyone who stole from him and defied him would HAVE to be dead. Because a person who stole from him--and even worse, outsmarted him--would deserve to be dead. And if he believes that the thief is dead, he won't bother looking as hard. You see?"
Dung squinted at the note. "Is that why you're saying that you've stole the real Horcrux, instead of saying that you've stolen one of them?"
Rab nodded. "I'm trying to lull him into a false sense of security. If he thinks that the thief is dead, and that the thief only believed there was one Horcrux…well, he won't increase security precautions as much then, will he? And it will be easier to get at the others."
Dung still wasn't sure. The note seemed to be relying on a lot of assumptions. He could only hope that she was right.
Finally, all the preparations were done and all of the Muggle devices packed. Itwas time to set off on their expedition. Rab rather spoiled the atmosphere by singing a silly song: "We're off to see the wizard, the wonderful wizard of Oz. We hear he is a whiz of a wiz, if ever a wizard was…"
Getting into the cave wasn't easy. They had to wait till dark, as Mundungus hadn't managed to filch James Potter's Invisibility Cloak. And trying to climb down slippery rocks so that they could swim through a cold ocean and enter a narrow fissure in a sheer cliff…well, Dung didn't know if either of them were going to make it. It wasn't as if they were young anymore. Bloody cheeky Dark Lords, putting bits of their souls in inconvenient locations. They had no earthly consideration.
Once they were inside the entrance to the cave, Dung searched for a concealed door. He found one with very little trouble. He smirked. Lord Wossname might be brilliant at Dark wizardry, but he was a rank amateur when it came to concealed passages.
The instant that he found the door, Rab fished a bag of blood out of her backpack, plucked his wand from his hand, punctured the bag with the wand, handed the wand back to him, and began smearing the blood on the rockface.
The rock melted away, leaving an enormous arch that seemed to lead into total blackness.
They entered cautiously, Dung muttering, "Lumos," as he did so, and Rab gripping a torch that shone so brightly that it made Dung's wand look as if it needed new batteries.
But once inside, they were stymied. A vast lake stretched in front of them, with a glowing island in the center. And there was neither bridge nor ferryboat. Nor did careful examination of the walls uncover any devices that might cause a boat to appear.
"Too bad we don't have something to cover this emergency," Dung grumbled.
"Oh, we do," said Rab. "At least, you do. I put it in your backpack."
"You put WHAT in my backpack?"
"An inflatable raft. Well," she added indignantly, "there are lots of underground rivers in Blackpool, especially in its caves. And I didn't want us to have to try swimming in those rivers unless we absolutely had to."
It took less than half no time to unpack and inflate the raft, and to travel across the lake without incident.
Neither mentioned the bodies floating just under the surface of the water.
Once they landed on the island--which was nothing more than a flat piece of stone with a phosphorescent birdbath on it--they faced another problem.
"The Horcrux has to be in the birdbath," Dung said, after he had examined the entire island. "But I can't touch it. And I can't charm the liquid away, or part it, or--anything." He paused for a moment. "I think we're supposed to drink it."
Rab gazed askance at the liquid. "Absolutely not. It looks radioactive."
"Believe me, I don't like the idea either."
The two stood there for several minutes. At last Rab said thoughtfully, "Conjure up a glass. I think I've got an idea."
Dung asked no questions. Swiftly he conjured a beer mug and dipped it in the fluid.
Deftly, Rab removed the water pump from her backpack, attached it to the mug and started pumping the fluid into the lake.
Filling the mug and then pumping it out took time. A lot of time. Far longer than they had expected, in fact. Dung suspected that was the spell's way of stating that it was not being used as intended. But, at last, the birdbath was empty. Dung plucked the golden locket from its basin; Rab handed him the replacement locket that contained the oh-so-polite "Fuck you, Voldemort" message.
The second that the false locket was put in the basin, the basin filled once more with glowing green liquid. Dung could have sworn that he heard a collective sigh, as if something great and powerful had been momentarily disturbed before rolling over and going back to sleep.
Rab was very pale. "Come on," she said, trembling. "Let's get out of here."
And get out they did. Their progress across the lake was slower than they would have liked, and they had to stop to deflate and repack the raft, as well as offering the archway yet another bag of blood. But they escaped.
Once free, they went to the house of Andromeda Tonks. There weren't many Slytherins who had friends in the Order and who hated Voldemort. Andromeda qualified on all counts. Plus, thanks to her marriage, she was beneath the notice of respectable purebloods. The Horcrux in her hands would be all but invisible.
It was a pity that Dung couldn't tell Dumbledore about this. The problem was Snape. Dumbledore trusted him; Dung didn't. He didn't dare say a word about the Horcrux to Dumbledore, for fear that it would get back to Snape, and through Snape, to Lord Thingamajig. It was stupid, having to keep secrets from the leader of an underground resistance organization, but he hadn't had any choice.
Though granted, he'd never expected the secret to remain concealed for this long.
He hadn't expected to have to steal the Horcrux a second time. He wouldn't have had to, if Andromeda Black Tonks hadn't died suddenly of dragon pox.
He hadn't seen Tonks wearing the locket after her mother's death. He knew that she had, though, because he knew every scrap of the inventory in Twelve Grimmauld Place as well as, or better than, Kreacher himself. Set a thief to catch a thief--wasn't that how the saying went?
Kreacher had been offended by the sight of Slytherin's locket around the neck of a halfblood. Dung knew that, for Kreacher had complained about that for days, claiming that Tonks had stolen a priceless Black family heirloom. How Kreacher had managed to steal the locket from Tonks was beyond Mundungus; he suspected that house-elf magic had had a lot to do with it.
He'd panicked when Dumbledore had casually mentioned that Sirius's will might not be valid. That a pureblood might be the only one who could inherit Twelve Grimmauld Place. That Bellatrix Lestrange--fanatical supporter of the Dark Lord--might be the heir.
He'd been trying to get the Horcrux back ever since he'd seen Kreacher hugging the blasted thing to his breast. Now he redoubled his efforts.
Stealing it was not the real problem. Getting it out of the house and away from all of those inquisitive eyes was. But he had done it. And no one had suspected a thing--not till the Horcrux was long gone.
And now, once again, the Horcrux was hidden in the house--actually, around the neck-- of a very resourceful person whom the Death Eaters would never deign to notice. Rab herself.
After all, who would expect a portion of the Dark Lord's soul to be in the possession of Rosalba Arabella Bones Figg?
I should not even TRY to do drabbles. I signed up for a drabble for the Cat's Birthday Drabblethon.
Do you know what I ended up with? 2,602 words. That's a huge jump from one hundred.
Anyway. Here's the story in its entirety, as I had to break it up into sections over at mctabby's journal. It doesn't have a title yet. Perhaps someone could suggest one.
Recipient: furiosity
Prompt: Regulus Black is not R.A.B, someone else is.
Word count: 2,601
Rating: Gen. Very very gen.
None of the members of the second Order of the Phoenix bothered to ask why Mundungus Fletcher stole from Twelve Grimmauld Place. They just wrote it off as irresponsible theft.
This annoyed Mundungus. "Irresponsible" was the last thing it was.
During the first war with Voldemort, Dung had heard whispers from other order members about Horcruxes. Dorcas Meadowes, their researcher, had been the first to learn about them--a warning that had gone unheeded until Voldemort murdered her. Marlene McKinnon had discovered that there was more than one Horcrux, and she and her family had paid with their lives. Edgar--no. He didn't want to think about Edgar, Imperiused into slaughtering his wife and children. Thank Merlin Edgar's brother and sisters had survived.
After the killings started, Dung talked things over with Edgar's sister. "Rab," as he'd called her, after her initials, had been all for destroying the Horcruxes; he'd been forced to admit, reluctantly, that he didn't know how.
That had only fazed Rab for a moment. "Well, then," she'd said firmly, "we'll just have to take them. That way we'll have them--and perhaps You-Know-Who shan't be able to use their magic."
He hadn't been too sure about the last bit. The Horcruxes existed already, after all. But he had no problem with the notion of stealing them. He was dreadful at fighting and killing, and always had been, but he was a near-genius at appropriating things that the enemy sorely wanted.
Mundungus couldn't think of a single thing that You-Know-Who would crave more than the immortality guaranteed by the Horcruxes's existence. This, he knew, would hurt.
Which, he reflected, might be a good thing. Wounded snakes tended to panic and lash out at those around them. As long as Rab and he--and the Order too, of course, he hastily added, can't forget the Order--weren't potential targets, this could be all to the good. A frightened and angry Dark Lord could be a vulnerable Dark Lord. And he might do some damage to his own people in the process.
"That," he told Rab, "sounds like an excellent idea."
Fortunately for them, Dorcas and Marlene had both written copious notes on Horcruxes. Dung appropriated them from the rubbish bin, congratulating himself as he did so and wondering why Dumbledore had ordered the notes thrown away.
The notes told Dung and Rab where to find three Horcruxes. One was Helga Hufflepuff's loving cup, owned by the McLaggen family and, at the moment, part of an exhibit of medieval art that was touring Canada. The second was a wand--eleven and a half inches, ash wood, phoenix feather core--that had once belonged to Rowena Ravenclaw. Unfortunately, the wand, along with its owner, Damocles Belby, was currently in Equatorial Africa where Belby was researching magical tropical plants in an attempt to create a cure for lycanthropy.
The third was a locket--allegedly Salazar Slytherin's locket, though Dung didn't see how that could be. Lockets started being manufactured in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, not in the tenth.
And the locket that was supposedly Slytherin's was in a cave in Blackpool.
Dung wanted to get the locket by himself. This had nothing to do with heroism; he simply knew from experience that when he had to steal something, he worked best alone. But Rab wouldn't hear of it.
"I'm coming along," she said firmly, with a steely glint in her eye that told Dung he'd be wise not to argue. "There's no way you're walking into this alone. What if you get hurt, or cursed? No. You need backup. Besides, what makes you think that I'm the sort of woman who stays home and sews a tapestry while the men are off slaying dragons?"
And after that, of course, there was nothing more to be said.
Rab, it turned out, was a good organizer. She was the one who realized that the cave in which the Horcrux lay might be a trap.
"A trap?" Dung asked. "But why? He's the only person who knows where it is…as far as he knows."
"Yes, but that won't matter," Rab said patiently. "He's got a sideways kind of mind. He'll figure that someone will be looking for the Horcruxes, because if the Horcruxes belonged to Dumbledore, he'd be looking for them. So he'll set traps for anyone who isn't him."
"Traps. Plural."
"Bound to be," said Rab with a shrug. "How else will he be able to prove to himself how clever he is?"
Of course, there was no way to know what sorts of traps You-Know-Who had left in the cave. Fire, water, earthquakes…all seemed far too probable. Rab added to the gloom by predicting that the Dark Lord might have created a dead zone for magic within the cave itself, trapping any wizard or witch and rendering him or her totally helpless. After considerable debate, Dung and Rab decided to bring a few things to help overcome his tricks--matches, candles and some dry wood wrapped in plastic in case they needed a fire; a portable pump in case they ran into some kind of--hopefully--minor flooding; and batteries and torches, in case magic failed and they were left, lost and alone, in the dark.
Rab also insisted that Dung steal a few bags of blood from the local Muggle hospital.
"But why?" Dung said, schooling his face to conceal the fact that he was already trying to figure out how to do this.
Rab gave a martyred sigh. "Because he's very, very unimaginative," she said. "He'll want a sacrifice, either to get in or to get out--probably both. And Dark magic's very keen on blood sacrifice, because Dark magic is all about death and undeath, and blood makes you alive. Blood IS life. I don't think he'd mind letting his enemies into the cave, as long as he knew they had to hurt themselves--or maybe bleed to death--doing so."
"If there is such a spell," Dung warned her, "it can probably tell the difference between a living person and bags of replacement blood."
"Then we'll cross that bridge when we come to it," said Rab firmly. "But if the spell does exist, we'll try getting around it first."
Dung was the one who thought of using a substitute locket. "To keep the spell working after we're gone," he said.
Rab laughed. "Like one of those alarms in Muggle museums. The kind that go off when there's a shift in the glass case's weight. Good idea." She turned grave. "But I want to leave a note for him in the substitute."
There was only one possible response to that.
"Are you MAD?"
"Don't worry," said Rab. "I won't tell him who I am. But I definitely want to leave him a message. For Dorcas. For Marlene. For Edgar." Her eyes were suspiciously bright. "Please."
Dung had never been able to refuse a weeping woman.
The note, once Rab had written it, was very short:
To the Dark Lord
I know I will be dead long before you read this but I want you to know that it was I who discovered your secret. I have stolen the real Horcrux and intend to destroy it as soon as I can.
I face death in the hope that when you meet your match you will be mortal once more.
R.A.B.
Dung didn't like the note. "You don't know that you'll be dead before he reads this. I hope you aren't. I hope we both aren't."
"It's called misdirection," Rab said. "I'm trying to encourage him to think the way he wants to think. And he'll want to believe that anyone who stole from him and defied him would HAVE to be dead. Because a person who stole from him--and even worse, outsmarted him--would deserve to be dead. And if he believes that the thief is dead, he won't bother looking as hard. You see?"
Dung squinted at the note. "Is that why you're saying that you've stole the real Horcrux, instead of saying that you've stolen one of them?"
Rab nodded. "I'm trying to lull him into a false sense of security. If he thinks that the thief is dead, and that the thief only believed there was one Horcrux…well, he won't increase security precautions as much then, will he? And it will be easier to get at the others."
Dung still wasn't sure. The note seemed to be relying on a lot of assumptions. He could only hope that she was right.
Finally, all the preparations were done and all of the Muggle devices packed. Itwas time to set off on their expedition. Rab rather spoiled the atmosphere by singing a silly song: "We're off to see the wizard, the wonderful wizard of Oz. We hear he is a whiz of a wiz, if ever a wizard was…"
Getting into the cave wasn't easy. They had to wait till dark, as Mundungus hadn't managed to filch James Potter's Invisibility Cloak. And trying to climb down slippery rocks so that they could swim through a cold ocean and enter a narrow fissure in a sheer cliff…well, Dung didn't know if either of them were going to make it. It wasn't as if they were young anymore. Bloody cheeky Dark Lords, putting bits of their souls in inconvenient locations. They had no earthly consideration.
Once they were inside the entrance to the cave, Dung searched for a concealed door. He found one with very little trouble. He smirked. Lord Wossname might be brilliant at Dark wizardry, but he was a rank amateur when it came to concealed passages.
The instant that he found the door, Rab fished a bag of blood out of her backpack, plucked his wand from his hand, punctured the bag with the wand, handed the wand back to him, and began smearing the blood on the rockface.
The rock melted away, leaving an enormous arch that seemed to lead into total blackness.
They entered cautiously, Dung muttering, "Lumos," as he did so, and Rab gripping a torch that shone so brightly that it made Dung's wand look as if it needed new batteries.
But once inside, they were stymied. A vast lake stretched in front of them, with a glowing island in the center. And there was neither bridge nor ferryboat. Nor did careful examination of the walls uncover any devices that might cause a boat to appear.
"Too bad we don't have something to cover this emergency," Dung grumbled.
"Oh, we do," said Rab. "At least, you do. I put it in your backpack."
"You put WHAT in my backpack?"
"An inflatable raft. Well," she added indignantly, "there are lots of underground rivers in Blackpool, especially in its caves. And I didn't want us to have to try swimming in those rivers unless we absolutely had to."
It took less than half no time to unpack and inflate the raft, and to travel across the lake without incident.
Neither mentioned the bodies floating just under the surface of the water.
Once they landed on the island--which was nothing more than a flat piece of stone with a phosphorescent birdbath on it--they faced another problem.
"The Horcrux has to be in the birdbath," Dung said, after he had examined the entire island. "But I can't touch it. And I can't charm the liquid away, or part it, or--anything." He paused for a moment. "I think we're supposed to drink it."
Rab gazed askance at the liquid. "Absolutely not. It looks radioactive."
"Believe me, I don't like the idea either."
The two stood there for several minutes. At last Rab said thoughtfully, "Conjure up a glass. I think I've got an idea."
Dung asked no questions. Swiftly he conjured a beer mug and dipped it in the fluid.
Deftly, Rab removed the water pump from her backpack, attached it to the mug and started pumping the fluid into the lake.
Filling the mug and then pumping it out took time. A lot of time. Far longer than they had expected, in fact. Dung suspected that was the spell's way of stating that it was not being used as intended. But, at last, the birdbath was empty. Dung plucked the golden locket from its basin; Rab handed him the replacement locket that contained the oh-so-polite "Fuck you, Voldemort" message.
The second that the false locket was put in the basin, the basin filled once more with glowing green liquid. Dung could have sworn that he heard a collective sigh, as if something great and powerful had been momentarily disturbed before rolling over and going back to sleep.
Rab was very pale. "Come on," she said, trembling. "Let's get out of here."
And get out they did. Their progress across the lake was slower than they would have liked, and they had to stop to deflate and repack the raft, as well as offering the archway yet another bag of blood. But they escaped.
Once free, they went to the house of Andromeda Tonks. There weren't many Slytherins who had friends in the Order and who hated Voldemort. Andromeda qualified on all counts. Plus, thanks to her marriage, she was beneath the notice of respectable purebloods. The Horcrux in her hands would be all but invisible.
It was a pity that Dung couldn't tell Dumbledore about this. The problem was Snape. Dumbledore trusted him; Dung didn't. He didn't dare say a word about the Horcrux to Dumbledore, for fear that it would get back to Snape, and through Snape, to Lord Thingamajig. It was stupid, having to keep secrets from the leader of an underground resistance organization, but he hadn't had any choice.
Though granted, he'd never expected the secret to remain concealed for this long.
He hadn't expected to have to steal the Horcrux a second time. He wouldn't have had to, if Andromeda Black Tonks hadn't died suddenly of dragon pox.
He hadn't seen Tonks wearing the locket after her mother's death. He knew that she had, though, because he knew every scrap of the inventory in Twelve Grimmauld Place as well as, or better than, Kreacher himself. Set a thief to catch a thief--wasn't that how the saying went?
Kreacher had been offended by the sight of Slytherin's locket around the neck of a halfblood. Dung knew that, for Kreacher had complained about that for days, claiming that Tonks had stolen a priceless Black family heirloom. How Kreacher had managed to steal the locket from Tonks was beyond Mundungus; he suspected that house-elf magic had had a lot to do with it.
He'd panicked when Dumbledore had casually mentioned that Sirius's will might not be valid. That a pureblood might be the only one who could inherit Twelve Grimmauld Place. That Bellatrix Lestrange--fanatical supporter of the Dark Lord--might be the heir.
He'd been trying to get the Horcrux back ever since he'd seen Kreacher hugging the blasted thing to his breast. Now he redoubled his efforts.
Stealing it was not the real problem. Getting it out of the house and away from all of those inquisitive eyes was. But he had done it. And no one had suspected a thing--not till the Horcrux was long gone.
And now, once again, the Horcrux was hidden in the house--actually, around the neck-- of a very resourceful person whom the Death Eaters would never deign to notice. Rab herself.
After all, who would expect a portion of the Dark Lord's soul to be in the possession of Rosalba Arabella Bones Figg?