Secret-Keepers!

[azurelunatic]

JKR answered the question of what happens when a Secret-Keeper dies.

This would be an immensely simple way for an unethical wizard to keep something secret forever. Make someone the secret-keeper of it, then kill them.

It's a dark, dark world that she writes in.

Comments

[standing-dragon.livejournal.com]

You know, though - that doesn't explain what happens when someone uncovers the secret without being told; e.g., someone like Lucius stumbling on to the Potter's hideway. Would he then, also, be bound by the secret-keeping, or would the secret no longer be a secret?

Ishi

[azurelunatic]

I think it's supposed to be impossible to stumble upon other than through the Secret-Keeper. The person doing the stumbling wouldn't notice or something.

[pyrogenic.livejournal.com]

So a sequential dialer would mysteriously skip over Harry's phone number, if that was the secret?

Oh, how I wish we had this spell for email addresses...

[azurelunatic]

Or the call would connect but it wouldn't be sent to an agent on time, or someone would have mis-typed it in for another number in the dialer's exclude file, or the agent getting the call would have enough dyslexia-fu to not read the number correctly off the screen...

[pyrogenic.livejournal.com]

"Immensely simple" in the "immensely complex" sense, anyway. (It's "an immensely complex spell.")

I don't remember her specifying that the spell automatically destroys all printed or otherwise previously-recorded copies (in non-persons) of the information. I suspect that for such a spell to be effective one might have to know every place in which the information resides at the time the spell is cast.

If that is not the case, then I would support your contention that keeping something secret forever is too easy in JKR's universe.

[azurelunatic]

And in the case of a scientific advancement, it might be able to be re-discovered. Or -- what a thought -- if it's not, that might explain why the wizarding world seems stuck in the past: because they've kept Secret all the relevant technological advancements that make the Muggle world tick!

[azurelunatic]

Immensely elegant?

[amberfox.livejournal.com]

So no one new will ever be able to go to 12 Grimmauld Place, ever? They'd better start taking out anything they want to keep, then. Some of that stuff is historical!

[azurelunatic]

Was Sirius the Grimmauld Place Secret-Keeper, or Dumbledore?

[elance.livejournal.com]

Dumbledore was.

I think it's not that no one new will ever be able to go to 12 Grimmauld Place, it's that no one new can ever know that 12 Grimmauld Place is the headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix.

[amberfox.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but until Harry saw the note, he couldn't see the house. It wasn't there.

[azurelunatic]

Perhaps it's like the Leaky Cauldron, only a little more so, in that unless you know it's there (and are a wizard), you can't see it there.

[amberfox.livejournal.com]

But the Secret Keeper has to tell you. Hmm. If the Order of the Phoenix ended, would it reappear?

[azurelunatic]

Or I'm thinking something like pizza delivery. One pie, pepperoni and cheese, to that house right there. No, not that side or that side -- ok, lemme come OUT and I'll SHOW you where the bloody house is. Right HERE, idiot.

One thinks that for things other than OotP Business, it might be able to be seen.

[amberfox.livejournal.com]

And just hope it's not a Death Eater working his part-time job? *grin* Crabbe/Goyle Sr, maybe?

[azurelunatic]

Wouldn't the Juniors be more likely to be doing pizza delivery over the hols?

[azurelunatic]

Yes, but if it were, then he'd not realize that it was.

[amberfox.livejournal.com]

Dumbledore was, wasn't he?

[godai.livejournal.com]

No one tell voldemort.

V:"Hmmm, I need a safe hideaway. Yo deatheater #34543 come here."
V:*performs secret keeper etc*
V:"Hey D.E. #34543, look over there"
V:*points*
DE:"Huh"
V: *stabby stabby*
DE *dies*
V: * puts final soul thingy in hideaway*
V:"Powned"

[azurelunatic]

Exactly.

So unless it was randomly destroyed (ain't gotta know what it is to wreck it) it's safe.

[errant-variable.livejournal.com]

Carpet Bombing uber alles?

Which raises the question of how the wizarding world dealt with WW2, etc and how they did or did not become involved...

Too many tangents.

[azurelunatic]

IIRC, the Wizarding World was involved with facing down Grindlewald at that point in time, who seems to have been their Hitler-figure.