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Sunday, August 13, 2006

What happens when the Secret-Keeper dies?

This is all directly quoted from JKRowling's site:

"I was surprised that this question won, because it is not the question I'd have voted for... but hey, if this is what you want to know, this is what you want to know!

When a Secret-Keeper dies, their secret dies with them, or, to put it another way, the status of their secret will remain as it was at the moment of their death. Everybody in whom they confided will continue to know the hidden information, but nobody else.

Just in case you have forgotten exactly how the Fidelius Charm works it is

'an immensely complex spell involving the magical concealment of a secret inside a single living soul. The information is hidden inside the chosen person or secret-keeper and is henceforth impossible to find -- unless of course, the Secret-Keeper chooses to divulge it.' (HP & the POA)

In other words, a secret (e.g. the location of a family in hiding, like the Potters) is enchanted so that it is protected by a single keeper (in our example, Peter Pettigrew, a.k.a. Wormtail). Thenceforth, nobody else -- not even the subject themselves-- can divulge the secret. Even if one of the Potters had been captured, force fed Veritaserum or placed under the Imperious curse, they would not have been able to give away the whereabouts of the other two. The only people whoever knew their precise location were those whom Wormtail had told directly, but none of them would have been able to pass on the information."

I still say.. the theoretical piece of paper notwithstanding, that Hagrid had to have known where to go. Or Sirius did go get Harry and give him to Hagrid. The Aurors should not have been able to go to the site. AND.. if (without the paper Racie came up with) anyone DID know how to get there.. they should have TOLD that Sirius was not the Secret-Keeper.

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