Pettigrew was Potter's Secretkeeper... Fidelity - a Condition

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 161165


bboyminn wrote:
<snip>
> It would seem that the Fidelius Charm is made up of two
> parts 'the Secret' and 'the Secret Keeper'. I agree that
> trust in the Secret Keeper is important. You don't make
> this Charm unless you have a very serious Secret that
> needs keeping, so finding someone you can trust to keep
> the Secret is critical. 
> 
> Yet, it is the Secret itself that is being hidden, and it
> is hidden by the magical oath of Fidelity by the Secret 
> Keeper (speculation of course). "I solemnly swear that I
> will take this Secret and hold it in myself with the 
> greatest, truest, and most honorable Fidelity."
> 
> First, I have to believe the Secret Keeper Charm was 
> broken, any other option simply compicates the plot too
> much. JKR can't waste pages and pages trying to work
> around a still in effect Secret Keeper Charm. But that
> bring up the question of how and why it was broken.
> 
> I say 'Breach of Fidelity'. Other say it was something in
> the phrasing of the Secret itself that caused it to break.
> 'Twelve Lake Street; Godrics Hollow, Wales is the location
> at which the Potter are hiding' is very different from
> 'James and Lily Potter are hiding at twelve Lake 
> Street; Godrics Hollow, Wales'. The difference is what is
> the subject of the Secret. In the first example, the 
> subject is '12 Lake St, Godrics Hollow'. In the absents 
> of '12 Lake St', there is no secret left to keep. When 
> the house was destroyed, the secret was destroyed. In the
> second example, 'James and Lily' is the Secret and '12 Lake
> St' is incidental.  When the Potters were destroyed, the 
> secret no longer existed, and so the Charm was nullified.
> 
> Yes, I know that leaves Harry out, and I know that is a
> problem, but I'm just trying to illustrate a point, not
> solve the mystery completely.
><snip>
> 
> So, the only logical conclusions, unless JKR wants to 
> dedicate the whole book to it, is that the Charm is
> already broken, or she has some plot-line shortcut to
> by-pass it. <snip>

Carol responds:
I agree that the Fidelius charm is broken, at least in part by a
breach in fidelity which made possible the destruction of the secret.
However, I don't believe that if the Secret is worded "The Potters are
hiding at 12 Lake St., Godric's Hollow" (reworded to include Harry in
the Secret) the location is incidental. In the case of 12 GP, the
wording is "The Headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix may be found
at 12 Grimmauld Place," the subject is Headquarters but the Secret is
the location of those Headquarters, which is invisible to anyone who
doesn't know the Secret. So it's important that neither Voldemort nor
anyone else not in on the Secret not know *where* the Potters are
hiding, if only because if they left their hiding place for any
reason, they would be visible.

In this instance, unlike 12 GP, it's apparently the people, not the
hiding place, that's hidden. DD(?) says that Voldemort could have
pressed his nose against the window and not have seen the Potters, so
the Potters must have been invisible but the location was not. that
explains how Muggles could have come to investigate and Hagrid, even
without knowing the Secret, could have known which house to go to--the
one that exploded.

I think that once even one Potter was dead, the Secret was breached
and the Charm broken, not only because Wormtail had broken his faith
and betrayed his friend but because the Secret was no longer true. The
Potters were no longer hiding. And with Lily also dead and Harry
vulnerable to attack from the person he *had been* hiding from (past
tense--he's no longer hiding), there's no Secret to keep. With the
house also destroyed, there's no hiding place, and Harry can't hide
from anybody until Dumbledore takes him and provides a new form of
magical protection. (Obviously he couldn't stay in the rubble of the
Potters' former hiding place.)

So the hiding place isn't incidental. It's part of the Secret and must
not be known. Once the location is revealed, the Potters can be seen.
But I don't think the house itself is hidden, only the Potters
themselves, from everyone who hasn't been told the Secret by the
Secret Keeper. I think it was known only to James, Lily, PP, and
Sirius Black--until PP violated their trust by revealing it to Voldemort.

The only question is, at what point was the Charm broken? That it is
broken and that Harry will have no trouble finding it, I have no doubt.

Carol, wondering who buried James and Lily and whether that's part of
the missing twenty-four hours