destructive enchantments, hoping to activate it and apologise to his long-dead family, places the ring on his hand. He is mortally injured by the ring's curses. The injury leaves his right hand permanently disfigured and would have killed him quickly if not for the intervention of Snape who slowed the curse to Dumbledore's withered right hand and arm. But Snape's efforts could not stop the curses from eventually killing him, and Dumbledore's planned death by Snape deceives Voldemort and his followers. The damaged ring is kept for a time on a table in the Headmaster's office. Salazar Slytherin's locket Tom Riddle created his fourth Horcrux using his own ancestor Salazar Slytherin's locket, which had once belonged to Riddle's mother, Merope Gaunt. The spell was cast after Riddle murdered a Muggle tramp. The locket is introduced briefly in the sixth chapter of Order of the Phoenix, described only as "a heavy locket that not one of them could open" It is destroyed by Ron Weasley in the nineteenth chapter of Deathly Hallows. Slytherin's locket was passed down through the generations and eventually ended up in the possession of Merope Gaunt. After being abandoned by her Muggle husband Tom Riddle Sr., Merope sold the locket to Caractacus Burke, shopkeeper of Borgin & Burkes, for 10 Galleons, a small fraction of the locket's true value. The locket was eventually sold to Hepzibah Smith. Riddle stole the locket, along with Helga Hufflepuff's cup, after murdering Hepzibah Smith. Once the locket became a Horcrux, Voldemort hid it in a magically protected seaside cave. Dumbledore and Harry Potter pursued the locket in The Half-Blood Prince only to find a fake one at the bottom of the basin. Disillusioned Death Eater Regulus Black had learned about the Horcrux and its hiding place from his house elf Kreacher, whom he had originally volunteered to accompany Voldemort to hide the Horcrux. In an effort to bring about Voldemort's eventual downfall, he and Kreacher navigated the magical protection and stole the locket, replacing it with the false one to fool Voldemort. While Black died in the effort, killed by the surrounding Inferi, Kreacher took the locket back to their home at Number 12, Grimmauld Place. Unable to destroy it as Regulus had ordered, Kreacher continued to protect the locket for years. While the Order of the Phoenix was using the house as its headquarters, the locket was stolen by Mundungus