t was stolen (by Mundungus Fletcher) from 12 Grimmauld Place, the home of the House of Black. During Harry Potter, Ronald Weasley, and Hermione Granger's attempts to find and destroy Voldemort's Horcruxes, they decided to track down the locket first after retrieving the fake one placed by Regulus from the cave. They learned from Mundungus that it was taken from him by a Ministry bureaucrat named Dolores Umbridge, and thus the trio infiltrated the Ministry, found Umbridge, and retrieved the locket. Ron retrieved Godric Gryffindor's Sword from the bottom of a frozen pool (after Harry was almost killed by the Horcrux while attempting to bring the sword up) and was able to destroy the Horcrux with it (the sword was imbued with Basilisk venom, one of the few substances capable of destroying Horcruxes) in the winter of 1997.