[HPforGrownups] Fidelius swap was Re: The Sorting Hat

[Kathryn Cawte]

No: HPFGUIDX 87467


>
> Kneasy:
> Back to my old game of trying to get the Siriophiles to see the light.
>
> Recall that in this hypothetical case Voldy and his hench-whatsits
> would have been concentrating on Sirius, probably to the exclusion
> of everything else. Top priority stuff. Recall that at this time the DEs
> were about at full strength and were getting a lot of co-operation
> in the WW, be it willing or unwilling. Voldy was in his pomp; he
> seemed to be winning. Moody and a few other Aurors were able to
> catch or kill a few, but the real  harvest didn't happen until after
> Godrics Hollow.
>
> Sirius is  entrusted with the duties of Secret Keeper. Only he can
> tell people how to contact the Potters. He then passes this duty
> over to Peter. Who knows? Sirius, Peter and presumably James.
> If anyone from the Order wants to contact the Potters who will
> they look for? Sirius. So  far as anyone is aware he is still the link
> man. He vanishes into hiding. What then? Concern throughout
> the Order. What has happened to Sirius?

K

But Sirius wasn't going to go into hiding as far as we know. He certainly
*didn't* go into hiding. Peter was the one who would go into hiding with
Sirius' plan whereas Sirius would stay out of hiding and trying to keep out
of the way of the Death Eaters. Presumably he could spend a lot of time at
wherever the OoP headquarters were so the order would know where he was
anyway - and if he was going to go into hiding, then presumably the Order
would know that, there wouldn't be any reason for him to not tell them he
was going to hide. He might not tell them *where* he was going to hide but I
doubt he'd just vanish without a word to anyone.

I don't understand why you dislike Sirius so much - please explain why you
keep going to such convoluted lengths to claim he's stupid (which he doesn't
seem to be) or cowardly or selfish or any of the other adjectives you keep
applying to him. i do agree that post-Azkaban he acted erratically, but
that's hardly surprising. And once he was back at Grimmauld Place he seems
to exhibit most of the symptoms of clinical depression, along with some
confusion concerning Harry - which again is understandable. He's never
really had the time to adjust to James' death and now he is trying to
replace his best friend with Harry. Having said that of course if people had
listened to him and actually filled Harry in on what was happening OoP would
have turned out very differently.

And as for all this effort to blame everything on Sirius - what are James,
Lily and Peter in all this - uninvolved bystanders? Peter admittedly isn't
going to say anything about this plan - regardless of whether he thinks it's
clever or not because it all hinges on making him Secret Keeper which as a
spy he obviously thinks is a great plan. But James and Lily are both
responsible, reasonably intelligent adults, so even if the plan was stupid
(which JKR obviously didn't think or she wouldn't have had someone we're
supposed to like and think of as a hero come up with it), which no one in
the know seems to have thought it was (at no point when told about what
really happened does *any* character comment on it not being a great plan)
it's not Sirius' responsibility. He didn't impose this plan on James - James
and Lily obviously agreed with it or it wouldn't have happened. While he
says it was his idea he didn't force them at gunpoint to change Secret
Keepers. In fact this is one of the things Sirius really needed to accept to
alleviate his overwhelming guilt - the fact that he was not responsible for
James and Lily's deaths any more than they were. Had Peter not been a spy
then conceivably everything would have been fine - unfortunately they all
decided to trust the wrong person.

What I want to know is how long they were in hiding before Peter ratted (pun
intended) them out? The prophesy was made, I thought, before Harry's birth,
yet he is 15 months old when the Potters are killed. Does this mean they
waited until then to go into hiding? And if so why? Why wasn't Voldemort a
danger to them until then? And were the Longbottoms in hiding? They
certainly weren't by the time the Lestranges came for them - but they could
have come out of hiding after Voldemort's fall.

K