Voldie's Wand and other details

[amiabledorsai]

No: HPFGUIDX 140407

Amiable Dorsai (yesterday):

Some time later, Dumbledore receives the message, and has a
problem--Voldemort has somehow cracked the Fidelius Charm.

Lolita: 
The problem, as I see it, is not in LV cracking the Fidelius (I'll
deal with it in a moment). No, the problem is the following:

Just how did DUMBLEDORE know where to send Hagrid when the place was
hidden by Fidelius Charm? Pettigrew outed the Secret to LV, not to him.

Amiable Dorsai:
Most likely, Peter wrote a note, probably with disguised handwriting,
telling him.


Lolita:
(*Mind you, this is a whole new can of worms. 12 GP was protected by
Fidelius. Fair enough. But when Kreacher showed up at Narcissa's door,
how come that she didn't figure out that the HQ of the Order must be
at 12 GP? It doesn't matter that the house is unplottable, or that
it's fidelioused. Narcissa grew up there. 

Amiable Dorsai:
No she didn't, she's Sirius' cousin, not his sister.  

But she probably did know where her aunt and uncle's house was.  I
think the Fidelius must, like the Obliviate Charm, modify people's
memories.



Lolita:
This is how the Fidelius charm is supposed to work. Only those that
the Secret Keeper himself has let in on the secret can find the place.
NO ONE else. No matter what. We have yet to see what happens
to 12 GP now that DD is dead.

Amiable Dorsai:
Or, apparently, the rightful owner.  Interesting limitation.

Lolita:
But, as we saw, no one had ANY problems whatsoever in finding the
place (DD knew where to send Hagrid, Hagrid found the place easily,
and the same goes for Sirius). Just what are we supposed to swallow
here?

Unless the Secret gets outed with the death of the CASTER of the
Fidelius charm (I would bet on Lily, wasn't her wand supposed to be
good for Charms?).

Amiable Dorsai:
Certainly a possibility, but again, Peter could easily have informed
Dumbledore and Hagrid by means of disguised handwriting, and he would
certainly have simply told Sirius.  Sirius might even have been there
for the initial casting, which, I agree, was most likely performed by
Lily.

Amiable Dorsai:
At this point, he probably can't wrap his mind around the idea of
Sirius Black  betraying James Potter, so he must conclude that LV has
figured out another way to bust a Fidelius--that means the Longbottoms
are in
danger.

Lolita:
Personally, I don't think DD had any problems with believing this. For
one thing, we heard from Snape that the whole Werewolf episode
happened because he was *told* - by Sirius - to enter the passage
under the Whomping Willow. 

Amiable Dorsai:
I'm sure Dumbledore didn't think Sirius was a saint, I'm suggesting
Dumbledore simply thought that there was no way he was going to betray
James Potter.  This assessment tuned out to be correct.

Lolita:
All this aside, DD knew that LV was a Legilimens - and an extremely
powerful one, to boot. Sirius (and for that matter, even Pettigrew)
didn't have to TELL LV the secret at all. Locking eyes with him would
have been enough. DD KNEW this. And yet, he let the Potters take
Sirius for their Secret Keeper. He didn't try to dissuade them, by
telling them that, if LV managed to capture Sirius, and even if Sirius
flatly refused to tell him the secret, LV would read it with ease just
by looking Sirius - who is no Occlumens, and who, at this time of his
life, probably doesn't even know what either Legilemcy or
Occlumency are - in the eye. Add this to the list of DD's mistakes.

Amiable Dorsai:
Maybe the secret can be found by Legilimency, maybe not.  We have no
canon either way.  Either way, it wasn't Dumbledore's mistake, it was,
James's, Lily's, and Sirius's.

I'm not sure that it was a bad idea, though.  Had Peter stayed
faithful, it might have worked.

Why would James and Lily, even knowing that the secret could be
spilled by Legilimency, decide not to use Dumbledore as their Secret
Keeper?  I assume they knew at least the first half of the Prophecy:
Dumbledore would probably have to tell them that much to get them to
go into hiding.  So they knew that Dumbledore was *not* the one with
the "power to defeat the Dark Lord".

So Dumbledore could fall.  If as you and many others have surmised,
the Fidelius ends when its caster dies, they would then be exposed.  

Sirius describes the idea of using Peter as a "double bluff", with out
explaining what he means, precisely, but I assume the idea is this: 
Voldemort will assume that Dumbledore is the Potter's SK, so he'll go
after Dumbledore.  If he somehow manages to defeat Dumbledore, and the
Potters still can't be found, he'll target Sirius--either because he's
the next logical choice, or because LV manages to force the identity
of the SK out of a defeated Dumbledore.  

Sirius is a very tricky customer--it could take a very long time for
Voldemort to find him.  By the time Voldemort gets down to Peter,
Harry may be ready to take him on, or Neville maybe revealed as the
true Chosen one.


Lolita:
And add the whole sorry episode to the list of Black and Potter's
instances of sheer stupidity. Has it never occured to either James or
Lily that the best thing would be for one of them to be the Secret
Keeper? 

Why drag either Sirius or Peter into this? In OotP, DD, who is the
founder and a memebr of the Order is its Secret Keeper. This is how it
is supposed to be done. In the case of the Potters, the
best course of action would have been for one of them to be the Secret
Keeper, and thus to keep both the secret and its keeper where LV could
not find them. But no. They had to drag a third person into
this, and botch the whole thing by it. (And they probably botched the
casting as well. There is no other explanation for everyone being able
to find the house when the Keeper outed the secret to just one
person, and was still alive. Or at least, there is no other
explanation that I can think of.)

Amiable Dorsai: 
Perhaps it's not a good idea to be your own Secret Keeper.  Maybe it
weakens the charm.  Dumbledore doesn't seem to spend much time at
Grimmauld Place.

But there's no reason at all to assume they botched the casting. 
Dumbledore, Hagrid, and Sirius all had valid reasons to know the
Secret, and there was an easy way to communicate it to them.

Amiable Dorsai