After learning about Hufflepuff's Cup, Dumbledore left Hogwarts.
Without a doubt, he intended to find Bellatrix and open the Lestrange family's vault.
For a legendary wizard proficient in memory magic, there were plenty of ways to make Bellatrix obey his every command, even if Dumbledore deeply disliked using the Unforgivable Curses.
Dumbledore did not ask for the locket. He and Vaughn had reached another unspoken understanding, and neither mentioned destroying the Horcruxes.
Voldemort had already returned and realized that everything that had happened before had been a deliberate trap, so there was no longer any risk of alerting him.
But destroying the Horcruxes now would accomplish nothing. They could not kill Harry, and they currently had no way to extract Voldemort's soul fragment from him.
Doing so would only make Voldemort more cautious. Even if he did not go into hiding, he might create more Horcruxes.
Vaughn did not know how many pieces Voldemort could split his soul into, but no matter how powerful a person's soul was, it could not be divided indefinitely.
Otherwise, couldn't Voldemort simply make hundreds or thousands of Horcruxes and become virtually immortal?
In the original story, Voldemort had only made seven Horcruxes, but Vaughn did not know whether that was his limit. If he could make an eighth, that additional, unknown Horcrux would make things much more troublesome.
Vaughn went straight to the Great Hall. He needed to deal with the house-elves' strike. If this continued, the young witches and wizards at Hogwarts would probably go hungry. Beneath the Great Hall lay the Kitchen, a basement room with walls covered in oil paintings of food.
The Kitchen was in chaos. All the house-elves were there, but they had divided into two clearly separate groups.
Some of the house-elves sat together, making a tremendous racket.