A Thought about the Secret Keeper Switch

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 117065



> > Pippin:
> >  but maybe  Sirius and James were expecting Voldemort to 
come after Sirius  another way. I think they expected that the 
spy  in the Order would  try to trick Sirius into giving him the
secret. Sirius would  pretend  to fall for it, and when Voldemort 
attacked  the wrong place, it  would prove who the spy was. 
Thoughts?<

Magda:
> The thing that gets me about the great SK-switcheroo is that 
even ifPeter hadn't been a traitor, it wouldn't have worked.  
<snip>
> Can we really see Peter holding up under torture?  Voldemort 
might torture him just to find out Siruis' whereabouts but can't 
you see Peter spilling everything including the Secret?
> 

Pippin:

That's why I believe James and Sirius were thinking solely in 
terms of espionage. Voldemort  *wasn't* grabbing known friends 
of Dumbledore off the street and torturing them to find out who 
the other members of the Order were.  He wouldn't have needed 
a spy for that.

I don't think it even occurred to James or Sirius that Voldemort, 
who favors cunning ruses and using others as his tools, would 
resort to brute force -- even after Peter is revealed as the true 
Secret-Keeper, Sirius discounts his plea that Voldemort bullied 
him into spying and giving the secret away.

My belief is that James and Sirius expected Voldemort  to
use his spy to find out who the secret keeper was, and then use 
the spy, as someone the secret keeper trusted, to obtain the 
secret for him.

Naturally if you expected Voldemort to use brute force to extract 
the secret, you would pick Dumbledore as the Secret-Keeper. 
But suppose the person James and  Sirius suspected as the 
spy was someone whom Dumbledore would never think to 
doubt.  Would they not fear that if Dumbledore were the 
Secret-Keeper,  this person might hoodwink Dumbledore into 
giving the Potters away? 

 Suppose that the Mad-eye Moody switch had not been 
discovered at the end of GoF...in that case Fake!Moody could 
have taken the paper with the secret of Grimmauld Place written 
on it  to Voldemort, revealed the secret,  and then shown the 
paper to Harry, without Dumbledore ever realizing the secret had 
been breached.

Pippin