The Importance of Bellatrix

J.K. Rowling has just given us another clue to Book 7.  In a recent interview with Helena Bonham Carter, she let on that Rowling revealed to her that Bellatrix will be very important in the last book.

Bellatrix Lestrange had been mentioned in a couple of the middle books of the series, but she became important in Order of the Phoenix, when she broke out of Azkaban and participated in the Battle at the Ministry in the Department of Mysteries.  We know that Neville especially has it out for her, since she was one of the Death Eaters who tortured his parents into madness.  Will the two of them be part of the climactic battle in Book 7?

Bellatrix also considers herself one of Voldemort’s most loyal followers and might have had a lot of inside information  into the Death Eaters and Voldemort’s use of horcruxes.  Being a cousin of Sirius and Regulus Black’s, did she know anything about the locket?

And, what I consider to be most important, why did she torture the Longbottoms after Voldemort had already disappear?  What did she believe she had to gain?

 

R.A.B.

One of the greatest mysteries that came at the tail end of the sixth book is a note found in the locket Harry and Dumbledore rescued, believing it to be a Horcrux. The original locket, what would have been the Horcrux, had been replaced and the following message was left in the new locket:

 

 

The most common conclusion people have drawn is that R.A.B. was Regulus Black, brother to Sirius. In fact, there are no other people mentioned in all six of the Harry Potter books who have those initials, so it seems to be the most reasonable assumption. In an interview with J.K. Rowling shortly after the publication of Half-Blood Prince, Rowling herself hints that R.A.B. most likely stood for Regulus Black. The following link will take you to a transcription of the interview: http://www.mugglenet.com/jkrinterview2.shtml.

What Sirius told us about his brother is that Regulus was a Death Eater, and when he attempted to disassociate himself, he was killed on Voldemort’s orders (but he was not important enough to be murdered by Voldemort himself.) In Book 5, Order of the Phoenix, Chapter 6 a locket was discovered in the Black home while the Weasleys, Harry, and Hermione were cleaning. They were unable to open the locket, and Sirius put the locket in a pile of goods to be thrown away. Could this have been a clue?

What I feel is the bigger mystery, is how R.A.B. discovered the truth about Voldemort’s Horcruxes and came to destroy at least this particular one. We know from Harry and Dumbledore’s experience that two people were needed on the excursion – one to drink the potion (like Dumbledore did) and the other to not allow the drinker to stop (Harry’s role). Assuming R.A.B. left the scene exactly as he found it when he took the locket to destroy, someone else would have had to be in the boat with him.

 

Who could this second person be? One possibility I have come across is that Kreacher, the Black’s House Elf, was R.A.B.’s companion. Kreacher now belongs to Harry, so we could be learning a lot more about this house elf in the final book.

 

Does anyone have any thoughts or comments on R.A.B.’s identity, or the Kreacher theory? What other theories on this subject have you heard?