Sirius/Peter Secret-Keeper Workings

[cindysphynx]

No: HPFGUIDX 33729

Hikaru wrote:

>When the spell is cast, Sirius no longer
> remembers that Peter is the secret-keeper until Peter tells LV. 
>When he
> tells the evil lord, Sirius remembers that Peter was James and 
Lily's
> secret-keeper, and automatically knows that something was up- which
> would explain why Sirius went after Peter, because he knew that 
Peter
> had given the secret up. He finds Peter gone and the rest is 
history...

Although I am thoroughly delighted to find another person who does 
not think Sirius is a coward, Sirius' account of the events on the 
night the Potters died causes trouble for this very creative idea:

"The night they died, I'd arranged to check on Peter, make sure he 
was still safe, but when I arrived at his hiding place, he'd gone.  
Yet there was no sign of a struggle.  It didn't feel right.  I was 
scared.  I set out for your parents' house straight away.  And when I 
saw their house, destroyed, and their bodies . . .I realized what 
Peter must've done."
 
That sounds like Sirius planned to check on Peter well before Peter 
revealed the secret, so Peter's role as secretkeeper wasn't a secret 
from Sirius.  It also sounds like Sirius didn't automatically know 
what happened.  It wasn't until he went to the Potter's house and saw 
what happened that he knew for sure.

Thinking out loud, I guess there might be two separate issues:  (1)
what prevents a third party (Sirius) from being tortured to reveal 
that Pettigrew was secretkeeper, and (2) was the Potters' location 
only a secret from Voldemort and DEs or was it secret from everyone 
except Pettigrew, and if so, what caused Sirius and Dumbledore to 
find the Potters' bodies?  

On the first question, I'd say nothing at all prevents a third party 
from mentioning to Voldemort that Pettigrew was secretkeeper.  The 
fact that Sirius and the Potters kept the change in secretkeeper very 
quiet suggests that it was important to minimize the number of people 
in a position to identify the secretkeeper and to hide or protect 
those who did know.

On the second question (how did Dumbledore and Sirus know that the 
Potters had been killed and where they were), how about this?  Once 
Peter is the secretkeeper, he is the only one on the planet who knows 
how to find the Potters.  Once the charm is broken, everyone (Sirius 
and Dumbledore) suddenly knows the Potters' location.  Either of two 
things can break the Fidelius Charm -- the death of the Potters or 
the death of Pettigrew.  There might be other ways to break the charm 
(like having the Potters themselves lift the charm), but that's not 
important for our purposes.

Revelation of the secret alone does *not* disrupt the charm so that 
people like Sirius know the Potters' location.  That way, Pettigrew 
could reveal the secret to someone like Dumbledore without 
automatically putting the Potters in peril by inadvertently breaking 
the charm.  Pettigrew could also tell Voldemort, and the two of them 
have time to go to the Potters' house before others (or the Potters) 
know that the secret has been revealed and the Potters are in danger.

So here's how the events unfold under this theory.  On Halloween, 
Sirius has made plans to check on Peter (as Sirius knows Peter is the 
secretkeeper but does not know where the Potters are).  As he arrives 
there or while he is on the way, all of a sudden, Sirius gets a 
feeling that he can pinpoint the Potters' location, which means the 
charm has been broken.  But Sirius doesn't know if it has been broken 
because Peter died or Lily and James died.  He panics, and finds no 
Peter at the hideout and no Peter's corpse. He races to the Potters' 
house, and finds out the hard way that the Potters are dead, which is 
why the charm was broken.

Why would Sirius go to Pettigrew's place first?  If he thinks the 
charm has been broken by someone's death, why not race to the 
Potters' first?  Well, if Peter's death has broken the charm, the 
Potters are alive and also know the charm has been broken, so they 
would flee their home before Voldemort arrived.  So there's no point 
going to the Potters' house first because they are either gone or 
dead.  

I like this theory because it makes Sirius out to be really brave, 
which is always my goal. :-)  Volunteering to be either the 
secretkeeper or a decoy is really dangerous.  Voldemort can break the 
charm most quickly by killing the secretkeeper, so he wouldn't even 
bother with torture.  He would just kill Sirius on sight, so Sirius 
was not being at all cowardly by serving as a decoy.

Does that work?

Cindy