Of all of the Horcruxes that must be found and destroyed in The Deathly Hallows, the locket is presented as the most sinister and dangerous, and it is the one that Rowling spends the most time exploring in the novel. The search for the locket and its destruction take up the book’s first half. The locket rests close to the heart, and as Harry, Ron, and Hermione learn, the locket represents the dark secrets and basest instincts that may lie dormant in a person’s heart.

Rowling describes the locket as “large as a chicken’s egg” with “an ornate letter S, inlaid with many small green stones” (275). It is gaudy, heavy, and once belonged to Salazar Slytherin himself. The locket symbolizes Voldemort’s connection to the Slytherin bloodline and the deep evil that lurks in the Slytherin family history. Once it is turned into a Horcrux, the locket takes on a personality, and as Ron states, “it made [him] think stuff—stuff [he] was thinking anyway, but it made everything worse” (374). The locket sees into the hearts of those who wear it, and in Ron’s case, the locket sees his insecurities and fears. Rowling says that carrying the locket is torture for Harry, Ron, and Hermione and that it means “twelve hours of increased fear and anxiety” (291).