HORCRUX, THE STONES & SALAZAR SLYTHERIN'S LOCKET

Salazar Slytherin's Locket

Today, The Stones and The Grandma have searched Slytherin's Locket, another Horcrux. They want to find and destroy them to help Hogwarts to return to normality. The first Horcrux, T. M. Riddle's Diary, was destroyed by Harry Potter and he has explained the family how he could do it.

Slytherin's Locket was a piece of jewellery originally owned by Salazar Slytherin that became an heirloom of his family.

It was a locket of heavy gold with a serpentine S in glittering green stone inlay on the front. After descending down from Slytherin, it came into the possession of the Gaunt family, and Marvolo Gaunt treasured this heirloom of this pure-blood heritage along with his ring heirloom.

After Marvolo and his son Morfin Gaunt were sent to Azkaban, the locket was stolen by Marvolo's daughter Merope Gaunt, who sold it to Caractacus Burke for ten Galleons, a price far below what the priceless artefact was truly worth.

The locket was bought from Borgin and Burkes shop by a wealthy witch with an affinity for rare or valuable items named Hepzibah Smith. In the mid-20th century, Smith showed it to a young Tom Riddle, who was an employee of Borgin and Burkes at the time. Riddle was interested in the locket, and two days later, Hepzibah was found dead and her house-elf, Hokey, made a full confession.

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Using the murder of a Muggle tramp, Riddle turned the locket into his third Horcrux and hid it in a seaside cave where he had hurt two children when he was in the orphanage. It was taken from the cave, however, by a defected Death Eater named Regulus Black with the attempt of having his house-elf, Kreacher, destroy it, but the elf was unable to destroy the locket.

It was stolen by Mundungus Fletcher from 12 Grimmauld Place, the home of the House of Black. During Harry Potter, Ronald Weasley, and Hermione Granger's attempts to find and destroy Lord Voldemort's Horcruxes, they decided to track down the locket first after retrieving the fake one placed by Regulus from the cave.

They learned from Mundungus that it was taken from him by a Ministry bureaucrat named Dolores Umbridge, and thus the trio infiltrated the Ministry, found Umbridge, and retrieved the locket. Ron and Harry retrieved Godric Gryffindor's Sword from the bottom of a frozen pool and was able to destroy the Horcrux.

Dolores Umbridge wears Salazar Slytherin's Locket

The locket was a creation of Salazar Slytherin, the celebrated Founder of Slytherin House at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

When Slytherin created the locket, he enchanted it so that only a Parselmouth, like himself, could open it. When Slytherin left Hogwarts, he took the locket with him. After Slytherin's death, the locket was passed down his family line, and eventually came to Marvolo Gaunt, who lived outside the village of Little Hangleton. The locket was one of two remaining Gaunt family heirlooms, the other being a ring inherited down the line of the Peverell family. 

Contradictory to his obsession with the two heirlooms, Marvolo permitted his daughter, Merope, whom he horribly mistreated, to wear the locket around her neck.

After Marvolo and Morfin were imprisoned in Azkaban for assaulting both a Muggle and Ministry of Magic officials, Merope escaped the horrors of her childhood home and fled to London with Tom Riddle Snr Albus Dumbledore theorised that she had used a Love Potion to capture his affections.

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After they had eloped, Merope became pregnant with Riddle's child. During her pregnancy, Merope apparently stopped giving Riddle love potions out of the hope that he would freely choose to stay with her or that he would at least stay for his child. However, after coming to his senses, Riddle fled from Merope, returning to Little Hangleton.

Desperate for money, Merope sold her only valuable possession, the locket, to Caractacus Burke for only ten galleons, either not realising that the locket was a priceless artefact or not caring. Not long afterwards, on New Year's Eve 1926, she came to a Muggle orphanage and gave birth to her son, Tom Marvolo Riddle, naming him after her father and husband. Merope Gaunt died shortly thereafter, leaving her son in the care of the orphanage.

Many years later Tom Riddle graduated from Hogwarts, spurned a wide variety of prestigious offers and took a job at Borgin and Burkes, because of the potential to work with Dark artefacts. In the course of his work, Riddle visited the elderly witch Hepzibah Smith on many occasions and charmed her with flowers and compliments.

Ron Weasley destroys Salazar Slytherin's Locket

After many visits Smith showed Riddle her most prized possessions: Helga Hufflepuff's Cup, an artefacts that she had inherited from her prestigious ancestor and the locket.

She told the young man that she hoped he would appreciate the unique history the objects' possessed. Hepzibah stated that both objects had considerable powers which she had not fully tested, and detailed the locket's historical value. Smith admitted she had paid a heavy price to Caractacus Burke to obtain the locket, and that Burke had previously bought it from a ragged-looking woman, Merope Gaunt, having paid her a mere pittance for it.

By this time, Riddle knew of his family lineage and knew the ragged-looking woman Smith referred to was his own mother. Riddle returned the cup without incident, but when the time came to replace the locket, Riddle briefly hesitated and a look of intense hunger washed across his face, before he let the locket slip through his fingers.

According to Dumbledore, Riddle saw the locket as rightfully his due to its past connections, and is one of the reasons why he would covet it more.

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Two days later Smith was found dead and her elderly house-elf, Hokey, admitted to accidentally poisoning her mistress' cocoa, mistaking a little known, highly lethal poison for sugar. It was later believed by Albus Dumbledore, however, that Riddle had murdered Smith himself and embedded a false memory in the house-elf to escape detection, not unlike his murder of the Riddles in Little Hangleton a few years earlier.

As Smith had quite a collection and many hiding places, it was assumed that the priceless artefacts were simply hidden in her house. Later, Smith's family discovered the cup and the locket were both missing, but by then Riddle had already quit his job and disappeared, not to be seen or heard from again for a decade.

Riddle murdered a Muggle tramp and used that murder to make the locket into a Horcrux. This was a marked departure from his other Horcrux murders, as he tended to choose deaths significant to him in the creation of Horcruxes.

Many years later, the locket was hidden by Riddle, now styling himself Lord Voldemort, in a seaside cave he had visited as a child. It was in this cave that he committed an act so horrifying that he shocked fellow orphans Dennis Bishop and Amy Benson into muteness.

Ron Weasley & Slytherin's Locket

In addition to the natural barriers, Lord Voldemort hid the locket in this cave with several magical enchantments to guard it.

First, the cave could not be Apparated into or Disapparated out from; second, an unmarked door that could only be opened with the payment of blood wiped upon the cave walls; third, an Inferi-infested lake; fourth, an invisible rowboat that would transport only one wizard at a time safely across the lake; fifth, a stone basin filled with a green potion that could not be parted, vanished, transfigured, or otherwise made to change its properties.

The only way to remove the potion from the basin, thereby exposing the locket at the bottom, was to drink it. The potion caused unbearable pain to the drinker and forced them to relive their worst memories and face their worst fears, as though in a nightmare.

If the drinker had any strength left, in their desperate thirst they would be forced to drink water from the lake, as any water magicked on the island would disappear. The drinker would therefore be unable to imbibe anything but the lake's water, which would awaken the army of Inferi.

Before becoming a Horcrux, the locket was described by Hepzibah Smith as having all kinds of powers, though she failed to elaborate, and the only way to open the locket was to speak to it in Parseltongue.

After it was turned into a Horcrux, the locket had many additional powers. Most noticeably, the soul shard within seemed to willingly exert a negative influence on those in its proximity. When worn by Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, and Ron Weasley in late 1997, it made them all irritable, suspicious, and unable to summon enough happiness to use a Patronus.

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However, someone as malicious as Dolores Umbridge would have an affinity rather than an aversion to it, and not be hindered by it. The locket also had magic in place to protect itself; when Ron attempted to destroy it, it created a vision to show him his worst fears and deepest insecurities.

At times, it also burned very hot, such as when Harry wore it in proximity to Nagini, another Horcrux, and when he tried to pick it up while its continued existence was being threatened. It even attempted to strangle Harry to prevent him from retrieving Gryffindor's sword, knowing that he would use it to destroy the locket.

It seems the glass of the locket allowed the piece of Tom Riddle to have a visible, although immaterial presence; when the locket's doors were open, Riddle's eye could be seen watching from inside.

On a similar note, the locket may also have had the potential to possess individuals, in a manner similar to another Horcrux (Tom Riddle's Diary), as Harry saw a trace of scarlet in Ron's eyes at one point during the locket's attempt to prevent him from destroying it.

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She slid back the fine filigree clasp and flipped open the box.

There upon the smooth crimson velvet lay a heavy golden locket.

 Hepzibah Smith showing Tom Riddle the locket for the first time