Speculation on the Potters

[jodel at aol.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 44614

Another possibility;

Suppose that the fidelius charm works a little differently from how we have 
all assumed.

The way it usually seems to be interpreted, it will hide you from all but 
your secret keeper. Once the charm has been performed, no one can find you. 
But you hide yourself physically, anyway.

This doesn't sound like a viable solution over any kind of a long run. A fine 
temporary measure to take until an emergency situation is brought to an end, 
but what if the situation is open-ended? (As was the situation that the 
Potters found themselves in.)

WERE James and Lily expected to disapear from the WW and just stay gone, with 
it assumed that they had managed to excape Voldemort, but would probably 
never be seen again unless the war ended?

Or does hiding yourself under the Fidelius charm free you to take up another 
identity since no one will ever be able to recognize you as the person the 
charm is hiding?

And what happens to you if your secret keeper dies? 

Can you ever get your own identity back? Will you ever be able to convince 
anyone that you are *you*? 

Or are you stuck?

Now, I am prepared, for the sake of simplicity to believe that James Potter 
had indeed lost his parents. I am also prepared to believe, in the absence of 
solid information to the contrary that he might have been an only child. But 
he may have had at least a few other relatives. What if some of them had 
already hidden themselves under the Fidelius charm? And then lost their 
secret keeper? 

Where are they? (Who knows?) Can they come forward themselves? (Well, maybe 
not.) Can you still say that this is Harry's family? (Well, yes.) Are they 
family which for any practical purposes actually exist insofar as Harry's 
welfare is concerned? (Not really.)

Well, this is far from certain, yes. But not an impossibility. Leaving the 
Dursleys as "all the family Harry has left".

Although, frankly, I very much doubt that Rowling is going to pull this card, 
or any other like it out of her sleeve...

-JOdell