“... so eet ees lucky ‘e is marrying me

“... so eet ees lucky ‘e is marrying me,” said Fleur happily, plumping up Bill's pillows, “because ze British overcook their meat, I ‘ave always said this.”

“I suppose I'm just going to have to accept that he really is going to marry her,” sighed Ginny later that evening, as she, Harry, Ron and Hermione sat beside the

open window of the Gryffindor common room, looking out over the twilit grounds.

“She's not that bad,” said Harry. “Ugly, though,” he added hastily, as Ginny raised her eyebrows, and she let out a reluctant giggle.

“Well, I suppose if Mum can stand it, I can.”

“Anyone else we know died?” Ron asked Hermione, who was perusing the Evening Prophet.

Hermione winced at the forced toughness in his voice.

“No,” she said reprovingly, folding up the newspaper. “They're still looking for Snape, but no sign ...”

“Of course there isn't,” said Harry, who became angry every time this subject cropped up. “They won't find Snape till they find Voldemort, and seeing as they've

never managed to do that in all this time ...”

“I'm going to go to bed,” yawned Ginny. “I haven't been sleeping that well since ... well ... I could do with some sleep.”

She kissed Harry (Ron looked away pointedly), waved at the other two and departed for the girls’ dormitories. The moment the door had closed behind her, Hermione

leaned forwards towards Harry with a most Hermione-ish look on her face.

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

“R.A.B.?” said Harry, sitting up straight.

He did not feel the way he had so often felt before, excited, curious, burning to get to the bottom of a 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 ... 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 as belonging to some

obscure 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 are a couple of reasonably well-known wizards with those initials—Rosalind

Antigone Bungs ... Rupert “Axebanger” Brookstanton ... but they don't seem to fit at all. Judging by that note, the person who stole the Horcrux knew Voldemort, and I

can't find a shred of evidence that Bungs or Axebanger ever had anything to do with him ... no, actually, it's about ... well, Snape.”