“He said in his note he was going to destroy it, didn’t he?”
Harry dragged his rucksack toward him and pulled out the fake Horcrux in which R.A.B.’s note was still folded.
“‘I have stolen the real Horcrux and intend to destroy it as soon as I can.’” Harry read out.
“Well, what if he did finish it off?” said Ron.
“Or she.” Interposed Hermione.
“Whichever,” said Ron. “it’d be one less for us to do!”
“Yes, but we’re still going to have to try and trace the real locket, aren’t we?” said Hermione, “to find out whether or not it’s destroyed.”
“And once we get hold of it, how do you destroy a Horcrux?” asked Ron.
“Well,” said Hermione, “I’ve been researching that.”
“How?” asked Harry. “I didn’t think there were any books on Horcruxes in the library?”
“There weren’t,” said Hermione, who had turned pink. “Dumbledore removed them all, but he C he didn’t destroy them.”
Ron sat up straight, wide-eyed.
“How in the name of Merlin’s pants have you managed to get your hands on those Horcrux books?”
“It C it wasn’t stealing!” said Hermione, looking from Harry to Ron with a kind of desperation. “They were still library books, even if Dumbledore had taken them off the shelves. Anyway, if he really didn’t want anyone to get at them, I’m sure he would have made it much harder to C”
“Get to the point!” said Ron.
“Well . . . it was easy,” said Hermione in a small voice. “I just did a Summoning Charm. You know C Accio. And C they zoomed out of Dumbledore’s study window right into the girls’ dormitory.”
“But when did you do this?” Harry asked, regarding Hermione with a mixture of admiration and incredulity.
“Just after his C Dumbledore’s C funeral,” said Hermione in an even smaller voice. “Right after we agreed we’d leave school and go and look for the Horcruxes. When I went back upstairs to get my things it C it just occurred to me that the more we knew about them, the better it would be . . . and I was alone in there . . . so I tried . . . and it worked. They flew straight in through the open window and I C I packed them.”
She swallowed and then said imploringly, “I can’t believe Dumbledore would have been angry, it’s not as though we’re going to use the information to make a Horcrux, is it?”
“Can you hear us complaining?” said Ron. “Where are these books anyway?”