Rarely Salazar-S-Slytherin's Locket

> He looked at the serpentine *S*, inlaid with glittering, green stones: It was easy to visualise it as a minuscule snake... concentrating on the letter *S*, imagining a serpent, while the contents of the locket rattled like a trapped cockroach. It would have been easy to pity it, except that the cut around Harry's neck still burned... The golden doors of the locket swung wide with a little click. Behind both of the glass windows within blinked a living eye, dark and handsome as Tom Riddle's eyes had been before he turned them scarlet and slit-pupiled.
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> Description of the locket before it was destroyed, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

**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***.Template:Horcrux

### Locket's destruction

 File:The Sword of Gryffindor.jpg
After weeks and a highly dangerous visit to Godric's Hollow, Harry and Hermione were encamped in the Forest of Dean. While on guard duty for the night Harry followed a bright white light into the forest. With this guidance from Severus Snape's Patronus Harry was able to find the Sword of Gryffindor at the bottom of a frozen pond. After a a couple of failed attempts to retreive the sword Harry realised what he had to do. Stripping down, Harry waded into the freezing pool to retrieve the sword.
He described the sensation of being submerged in the icy water as incredibly painful. Rather than allow him to acquire the sword, the locket around his neck tried to kill him both by strangling him. The locket then kept him under the water, nearly drowning him. Harry thought he was going to die and imagined the arms closing around him were the arms of death. In reality, Ron returned and rescued Harry from drowning, ripped the locket from his neck, and retrieved the sword in the process.

After a brief reconciliation, Harry decided that Ron must be the one to destroy the locket, since he recovered the sword. Harry spoke the word "*open*" in Parseltongue, causing the locket to spring open. Inside the locket's picture windows were two eyes that resembled Tom Riddle's eyes, before his soul-severing caused his eyes to turn red. The locket then began to mentally torture Ron mocking his greatest fears. Apparitions then came out of the locket, and Ron was transfixed by visions of Hermione and Harry, who cruelly mocked him, calling him stupid, cowardly, presumptious, inferior to the "Chosen One", and that his mother would have preferred to have had Harry as her son instead of Ron.

 File:DestroyedLocket.jpg
The real Harry was yelling at him, Ron was able to break through the cruel images and smashed the locket with Gryffindor's sword, shattering both glass windows inside the locket and destroying the Horcrux. Afterwards, Harry admitted that he only loved Hermione Granger as a sister and believed that she felt the same way. Harry then picked up the locket (still largely intact save for its shattered windows and broken chain) and stored it away.

## Powers

> Out of the locket's two windows, out of the eyes, there bloomed, like two grotesque bubbles, the heads of Harry and Hermione, weirdly distorted. Ron yelled in shock and backed away as the figures blossomed out of the locket, first chests, then waists, then legs, until they stood in the locket, side by side like trees with a common root, swaying over Ron and the real Harry, who had snatched his fingers away from the locket as it burned, suddenly, white-hot.
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> The locket defending itself from Harry Potter and Ron Weasley, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

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.
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. However, this may just because of his jealousy.

## See also

* Sorting Hat
* Sword of Gryffindor
* Hufflepuff's Cup
* Ravenclaw's Diadem

## Behind the scenes

> Dumbledore scooped the locket from the bottom of the stone basin and stowed it inside his robes.
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> Dumbledore and Harry retrieve the locket from the cave, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

* Harry and Hermione are seen trying to destroy the locket by using spells like the Reductor Curse, Incendio, and Blasting Curse.
* The locket was the only of Lord Voldemort's Horcruxes that was not destroyed in or anywhere near Hogwarts. The diary and the cup were both destroyed in the Chamber of Secrets.

## Notes and references

1. ↑ From the story: Slytherin's Locket
2. ↑ *Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets* (film)