Python – hdf5 / h5py ImportError: libhdf5.so.7

I'm working on a project involving network messaging queues (msgpack, zmq, …) on a RHEL 6.3 (x86_64) system. I was installing the most recent packages of glib, gevent, pygobject, pygtk, and such in order to get pylab / matplotlib to work (which hasn't been successful either).

After giving up I went back to my code and somehow I had managed to wreck my hdf5 / h5py installation – h5py can't find libhdf5.so.7 on import. I immediately reinstalled hdf5-1.8.9 in /usr/local/hdf5 on RHEL 6.3 (x86_64) as follows:

./configure --prefix=/usr/local/hdf5
make
make check
sudo make install
make check install

which seemed to work just fine. Then I went to reinstall h5py (in python 2.7.3):

python2.7 setup.py build --hdf5=/usr/local/hdf5/
python2.7 setup.py test   # optional
# sudo python2.7 setup.py install

which fails to import the _errors file in the tests, like so:

======================================================================
ERROR: _hl.tests.test_attrs_data (unittest.loader.ModuleImportFailure)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
ImportError: Failed to import test module: _hl.tests.test_attrs_data
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/unittest/loader.py", line 252, in _find_tests
    module = self._get_module_from_name(name)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/unittest/loader.py", line 230, in _get_module_from_name
    __import__(name)
  File "/home/cronburg/Downloads/h5py-2.0.1/build/lib.linux-x86_64-2.7/h5py/_hl/tests/test_attrs_data.py", line 5, in <module>
    import h5py
  File "/home/cronburg/Downloads/h5py-2.0.1/build/lib.linux-x86_64-2.7/h5py/__init__.py", line 1, in <module>
    from h5py import _errors
ImportError: libhdf5.so.7: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory


----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ran 12 tests in 0.001s

FAILED (errors=12)

h5py was working fine before I went to install the aforementioned packages / tarballs, and I don't remember touching anything that even remotely looked like hdf5. Any ideas?

EDIT:
Trying to locate the file only shows it in the location i untarred it:

cronburg@rhel:~/Downloads/h5py-2.0.1$ locate libhdf5.so.7
/home/cronburg/tmp/hdf5-1.8.9/hdf5/lib/libhdf5.so.7
/home/cronburg/tmp/hdf5-1.8.9/hdf5/lib/libhdf5.so.7.0.3
/home/cronburg/tmp/hdf5-1.8.9/src/.libs/libhdf5.so.7
/home/cronburg/tmp/hdf5-1.8.9/src/.libs/libhdf5.so.7.0.3