Harry and his friends find the real locket.  For a long time they search for a weapon to destroy the Horcrux within, and Ron gets discouraged and threatens to leave Harry and Hermione to carry on by themselves.  But having lived with Ron since babyhood, Harry knows that Ron doesn't usually get discouraged.  He attributes Ron's foul mood to the locket he is wearing around his neck and instructs Ron to hold it in his hand instead.  Ron's mood improves and he apologizes for having even mentioned the possibility of his leaving his friends in the lurch.  With the help of Snape's Patronus, Harry finds your sword at the bottom of a lake.  They destroy the Horcrux, and then continue the search for the rest of them.  They find and destroy two more Horcruxes, leaving only two more - Voldemort's snake Nagini and Harry himself.

  Meanwhile Voldemort discovers that the basin in the cave is empty.  He checks all his other Horcruxes and discovers that they are all gone except for Nagini - he doesn't know that Harry too is a Horcrux - and then he assembles his forces for a final assault upon Hogwarts.  His side gains the upper hand, but the prize he really wants has so far eluded him: Harry's death. Snape decides that the time has come to deliver your message to Harry and he offers to bring Harry to Voldemort, but Voldemort has other plans.  He orders Nagini to bite Snape, thinking that since he conquered Snape, who conquered you by killing you, the wand will now serve him.  Believing that he now has what he needs to defeat Harry, he declares a one-hour truce and calls upon Harry to surrender to him to avoid any further bloodshed. 

  Harry finds the dying Snape, takes the memories oozing out every hole in Snape's head, carries them to your Pensieve and learns, among other things, that he must die, either by letting Voldemort kill him or by killing himself after dispatching Voldemort.  Having lived with Ron since babyhood, he feels that Ron knows him well enough to give him the right advice; so he asks Ron what to do.  Ron replies that before choosing either way of dying, Harry ought to let Hermione try to exorcise the Horcrux from his scar.  Harry agrees, Hermione casts a spell on Harry's scar, and Harry, who has been reading Voldemort's mind all this time, suddenly finds that he is no longer able to do so.  Hermione's spell has effectively destroyed the Horcrux; so Harry doesn't have to die.  Hermione, apparently, found out something about Horcruxes that even you never knew until now: if a Horcrux enters an object accidentally rather than having been put there by Dark Magic and protected, it can be destroyed by a spell that doesn’t destroy that object.

  Turn to Chapter 49.