One of the closing questions JK Rowling left us with in her last book is: Who is the mysterious R.A.B. who left a note in the fake horcrux locket that Harry and Dumbledore retrieved from the Zombie-filled cave? It seems the mysterious R.A.B. had retrieved the horcrux before Harry and his headmaster, but whether it is destroyed is another question.
The most likely candidate for R.A.B. is Harry’s godfather’s brother, Regulus Black. Black was a Death Eater, before he was killed by his own ranks at quite a young age. None of the books has ever told us why he was killed.
Rowling said in an interview she would not introduce a major new character in the last book, thus it is likely R.A.B. has already been introduced in previous books.
As for the fake horcrux locket, the question around Black’s death would be: Where would he have hidden it? When Harry, Hermione and Ron clean out the Black house in Order of the Phoenix, they come across a mysterious locket. Could this be the horcrux?
And in Half-Blood Prince Mundungus Fletcher burgles the Black house, maybe inadvertently taking the horcrux with him. Fletcher is now in the wizard prison, Azkaban, leaving the question of whether he stole the locket and sold it to someone, or whether it is under the confiscated items at Azkaban. The plot as it is laid out seems very Rowlingish …
Then there is the question of whether Dolores Umbridge will become the new minister of magic.
With the minister of magic in imminent danger and likely to be one of the casualties of book seven, we have to ask who will follow the lion-like Rufus Scrimgeour as the new minister of magic. Rowling hinted in an interview that readers had not seen the last of the ghastly, but delightful, character of Umbridge. ”She is too much fun not to include,” Rowling was quoted as saying.
Thus our Dolores, with her anal need for order and astute politics, seems a likely successor to Scrimgeour if he were to be assassinated. She seems to have recovered from the ”troubles” she experienced in Order of the Phoenix and was once again at her post in Half-Blood Prince.
Rowling would be delightfully evil to give Dolores this coveted position.