MuggleNet - Godrics Hollow Theory. General vs Specific

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 163624

Carol earlier:
> > If the house were hidden by the charms that the elder Blacks
placed on it, the order members wouldn't be able to see it,
"propriety" or not. Sirius black would have to remove those charms,
and I think they're still there  <snip>
> > But once Harry reads and memorizes the note Moody hands him, he
can see 12 GP. It's knowing the Secret, as told to him in writing by 
the Secret Keeper, that enables him to see the house  <snip>
> 
> Mike now:
> I was trying to reconcile logically what JKR wrote (using Flitwick
as her mouthpiece) about how the "Fidelius" functions with how the
charm manifests itself in canon. This might be a fruitless effort
seeing as how JKR herself doesn't seem to be concerned with
consistency in how this charm works. <snip>
> Start with DD's note about 12 GP. It read: "The headquarters of the 
> Order of the Phoenix may be found at number twelve, Grimmauld Place, 
> London." (OotP ch 3) To me, that reads that the secret is the 
headquarters location, IOW, where the headquarters was is the secret,
not number twelve. Or, equated to the Potter's "Fidelius", the 
headquarters equals the Potters and #12 equals 'address', GH. IF you
see it differently, the rest of this explanation becomes nonsense ;-)
<snip>

Carol responds:
But the problem is, we have two different kinds of Secrets. One is the
location of the Potters (people), the other is the location of the
Order HQ (a building). so in the first case, while the charm is in
effect, the Potters' house can be seen but the Potters themselves are
invisible as long as they're in that house. To repeat the canon
already cited by Brothergib: "As long as the Secret-Keeper refused to
speak, You-Know-Who could search the village where Lily and James were
staying for years and never find them, not even if he had his nose
pressed against their sitting room window!" (PA10) So the *house* is
never hidden. 

But in the second case, the house *is* the Order HQ; therefore, the
location itself must be hidden. So the Order members standing in
Grimmauld Square are not themselves invisible. Harry is still
"disillusioned" but not technically invisible. The rest of the Order
could be seen if they weren't careful. Moody has to use DD's Put-Outer
to keep them from being seen, exactly as DD does in SS/PS, where
neither he nor McGonagall nor Hagrid is invisible to any Muggles who
may be out and about at that hour ("That'll take care of any Muggles
looking out of the window, see?" OoP Am. ed. 58). 

Harry, unlike a hypothetical Voldemort wandering through Godric's
Hollow without having been told the Secret, cannot see *the house*,
even after he has read the Secret on the paper that Moody hands him.
"Harry looked around at the houses again. They were standing outside
number eleven; he looked to the left and saw number ten; to the right,
however, was number thirteen." He has to think about what he's
memorized, the address where the Order of the Phoenix may be found,
before he sees the house. "Harry thought, and no sooner had he reached
the part about number twelve, grimmauld Place, than a battered door
emerged out of nowhere between numbers eleven and thirteen, followed
swiftly by dirty walls and grimy windows" (59). Until he knows (and
understands) the Secret, the house is invisible. 

Clearly, the invisibility is directly related to the Secret (which is
why Moody immediately burns the paper so that no one else will read
it). It cannot be a charm placed by Orion Black or none of the Order
members would be able to see their own HQ. One thing that Orion Black
did do, apparently (besides probable anti-Muggle charms, given his
neighborhood) is remove the doorknob and any normal means of accessing
the house: "There was no keyhole or letterbox," only a door knocker in
the form of a twisted serpent (60). Lupin opens the door by tapping it
with his wand--either the house recognizes him as an Order member or
he knows the proper nonverbal charm to open it (60).

So the two Fidelius Charms can't be equated. One hides the Potters but
not their house; the other hides the Order HQ but not the Order
itself. In the one case, someone who doesn't know the Secret can see
the house but not the Potters if they're in it (Voldemort can see them
after they've been betrayed, whether the charm is still in effect or
not). In the other case, someone (like Harry) who doesn't know the
Secret can see the Order members, even when they're standing in front
of Order HQ, but he can't see the house until he's memorized and
understood the Secret. So if a traitorous SK were to tell Voldemort
(or Bellatrix) the Secret, they'd be able to see (and enter) the
House. (Snape, not being the SK, can't speak the name of the place
even if he wanted to, which I'm sure he doesn't. And with Dumbledore
as SK, there's no chance that Bella or LV or anyone else can see the
house--unless they get hold of that note, which is why Moody
immediately destroyed it.)

It will be interesting to see how this relates to the Dursleys, who
were rather indirectly informed of the Secret (without understanding
it) by the SK himself in HBP. Will they see the house, or will any
anti-Muggle charms placed by Orion Black still be in place? And are
owls, not being magical "beings," exempt from Fidelius Charms?

As for the Potters' Secret, once the Potters were no longer hidden,
the Secret, for all intents and purposes, ceased to exist. The deaths
of two out of three Potters made the Secret untrue--they were no
longer hiding anywhere, and when the house itself was destroyed, the
hiding place itself no longer existed, so there was no Secret to keep
even if it had been in place up to that poing. Consequently, Harry
(and presumably the bodies of his parents) was visible to Hagrid, who,
IMO, had never been told the Secret, by note or any other means. And,
again, I'm sure that the breaking of the Charm alerted Dumbledore to
the Potters' danger, which would suggest that the betrayal itself, the
breaking of the Faith or Trust placed in Peter Pettigrew, broke the
Charm. Otherwise the name, Fidelius Charm, is meaningless.

Carol, who wonders if Dumbledore made the building itself the Secret
in the case of the Order because hiding the Potters rather than their
house was such a spectacular failure