Godric's Hollow location and Secret Keeping business

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 148687

Amiable Dorsai wrote:
> > This brings to mind an old question, what is the importance of the
name of the the charm--"Fidelius"?
> > The obvious root is "fidelitas" faithfulness. What if the charm
requires just that, fidelity? 
> > Perhaps, when Peter violated the trust placed in him by spilling
the secret to Voldemort, he broke the charm entirely. 
> 
Jen responded:
> I like this option. Seems like it could be a form of love magic if
Dumbledore believed so faithfully in it he suggested it to the Potters. 
> Wonder if there's any implication for the Unbreakable in this idea?
It's based on distrust, seems like. 

Carol adds:

I like the idea of the Fidelius Charm being a form of love magic, or
at least good or "Light" magic, in marked contrast to the UV, which is
by its nature Dark, binding the person who takes it to keep the vow or
die. To be sure, the Potters would have been safer if they had forced
or coerced PP to make such a vow, but they would never have done so
simply because they would not want to doom a friend to death if he
failed them. Better to trust to that friend's fidelity rather than use
the arts and devices of the enemy. Contrast Narcissa, who places her
son's life above Snape's and dooms him to death if he fails. (On a
side note, it has been suggested that DD placed Snape under a UV, but
DD believes in trust, not coercion, and would never, IMO, have
resorted to such cruel and Dark means to achieve any end. Coerced
loyalty is not loyalty.)

I also like the idea of a breach of fidelity breaking the Fidelius
Charm because it makes sense of the name of the charm, which has
always been a bit of a puzzle to me. (Good one, Amiable Dorsai!)
Moreover, it virtually eliminates the question of whether the secret
was the Potters' whereabouts or the house itself. I would venture to
say, however, that the secret was "The Potters are hiding in [specific
address} Godric's Hollow, so that *if* the charm was not broken by
Peter's infidelity, so to speak, it would certainly have been broken
when two of the Potters were dead and the other had been found by the
person he was hiding from. Moreover, the house was destroyed, so the
hiding place no longer existed. There was, quite simply, no secret
left to keep. (I think that until that point, the house was visible
but its occupants hidden. Contrast the case of 12 GP, where the secret
involves the headquarters of the Order rather than the Order members,
a place rather than people, so the building itself would remain hidden
to anyone who didn't know the secret, as would the Order members
inside it.)

The secret, assuming that it had not been voided by the breach of
fidelity (different from revealing the secret to people who intend the
Potters no harm), would be voided by the fact that the Potters (two of
them dead) were no longer hiding anywhere, and the hiding place itself
no longer existed. So the question of whether Harry or anone else can
see their graves is a nonissue. All he needs to do is Apparate
(presumably with Ron and Hermione) to Godric's Hollow (a village, not
a specific house), whose location he can find on a map. He might want
to Apparate to a specific point on the outskirts of the village rather
than to the house itself, rather like Narcissa and Bellatrix, who
don't show up on the doorstep of Snape's house in Spinner's End
because they're unsure of its exact location ("He lives *here*?"
indicates that Bella, at least, has never been there before.)

At any rate, whether the house was visible or not while the secret was
in place, its ruins were apparently visible, even to Muggles, when
Hagrid (and soon afterwards, young Sirius Black) arrived. It's clear
to me that, for whatever reason--a breach of fidelity or the nature of
the secret--the charm was broken by that time and remains permanently
broken. Unless Muggles have built a new house on that spot, Harry
should be able to see both the ruins of the house and his parents'
graves (which, of course, will eliminate any needless plot
complications relating to Harry's visit to GH).

The question for me now relates not to the nature of the FC but to the
consequences of the Secret Keeper switch. Did Sirius Black, as the
original Secret Keeper, tell Dumbledore about Godric's Hollow? PP
certainly didn't, or DD would have known that he was the SK. (I think
that James Potter simply told DD that he intended to make Black the
Secret Keeper, but I could be mistaken.) And Lupin also seems to have
known that Black was the original Secret Keeper ("You didn't tell me
about the switch," he says in PoA, badly quoted from memory), so
wouldn't he have known the secret as well? Or was he only told that JP
*intended* to make Black the Secret Keeper without either SB or PP
actually telling him the secret?

And, assuming that one or two people had been told the secret by
Sirius Black, what happened to their knowledge of the secret when the
SK was changed? Would the few people who had been told the secret by
Sirius Black cease to know it when the SK changed? If that's the case,
wouldn't DD's suspicions have been aroused when he suddenly no longer
knew the secret, and Lupin's as well? (Black himself still knew it,
but maybe PP had to tell him in front of James and Lily to keep his
cover.) 

Apparently both Dumbledore and Lupin knew that there was a Secret
Keeper and that he either was or was intended to be Sirius Black. But
did they know the secret itself? Did anyone else *at that time* even
know that there was a Secret Keeper? Surely it would not have been
common knowledge, even among members of the Order, if the whole idea
was to protect the Potters from a spy and traitor in the Order itself.
Perhaps DD told Snape and/or Hagrid that the Potters were protected by
a Fidelius Charm and that the SK was Sirius Black, but that would be
all that he could reveal even if he knew the location himself.

I do think that Black was, for a time, the actual SK, so that until
the Secret Keeper switch, the Potters really were protected by the
Fidelius Charm. They became vulnerable only the week before GH, when
the SK was switched from Black to the *Unfaithful* Pettigrew. Also, I
don't think they waited until mid-October to implement the Fidelius
Charm, or that DD waited that long to suggest it, which would have
been unconscionable given their grave danger. I also think that even
the existence of the charm was known to very few people and the Secret
to fewer still. No doubt a number of people, especially members of the
Order, realized that the Potters had gone into hiding, but that
doesn't necessarily require that a Fidelius Charm had been placed upon
them. 

Carol, who thinks she understands how the charm works but is still
confused about the consequences of the SK switch for DD and Lupin in
particular