Note that the Grimmauld Place mansion took up no space in the neighborhood outside when Harry went there. I’d also imagine (purely because Fidelius is supposed to be a slam-dunk in terms of defense/secrecy) that, for example, if you tossed a baseball from one house to the other “across” a Fidelius’d house, the baseball would not vanish at the boundary as it falls into the hidden lawn. So presumably there’s a spatial effect going on that would exclude such things from working.
Something curious happened in canon, where the Death Eaters knew enough about #12Grimwald Place to set up a vigil around it, but they couldn’t enter until one of the keepers actually showed them in, so Harry et al had to stand at the very edge of the wards and apparate everywhere. What’s curious about this is that it means Snape told them enough (or maybe it was Creacher? Hm.) to narrow down its location, but not enough to get in, and this never set off “Snape is hiding something” alarms among the Death Eaters. Which tells me that the naive interpretation where the secret dies with the original keeper was the common interpretation, but the Order of the Phoenix knew that it was much less secure than that and everyone who knew the secret became co-keepers on the original’s death. This also begs the question of what happens when all the keepers die (what happened with Godrick’s Hollow? The magical Graffiti implies that the Fidelius was broken altogether, not just by Voldemort).
So, according to canon, it’s still possible to lay siege to a place under the Fidelius, and the Death Eaters eventually broke in because Yacksly was grabbing Hermione when the trio made a return trip (How would that work with a small animagus, I wonder? Tracing wards probably wouldn’t work—the trace on underaged magic apparently wasn’t enough to get anyone in to any of the locations under Fidelius in Canon).
. What’s curious about this is that it means Snape told them enough (or maybe it was Creacher? Hm.) to narrow down its location, but not enough to get in
I think it was actually the constant use of the name Voldemort by Harry and Hermione, as they had not yet heard of the Taboo, that told the Death Eaters there was something worth investigating in the area.
I was under the impression that it just appeared to take up no space. It was there, just your brain couldn’t actually take notice of that. People do keep describing it in terms of it being impossible to locate, not that it spawned a pocket dimension or anything.
Using your example, the baseball wouldn’t vanish at the boundary, you just wouldn’t notice that it was passing a house, and couldn’t be able to explain why you can’t throw it as far in this spot.
The problem is, there’s an easy way to break that. If you toss a ball so that it lands in the yard, it’s in a place you can’t access: from your point of view the ball has vanished. Then you can break the Fidelius for certain purposes by figuring out the general neighborhood and then tossing conjured balls everywhere, then picking up all the ones you can find (magically) and counting them. If you’re missing a ball, it’s because you can’t find it, so there’s a Fidelius or equivalent nearby. Repeat on smaller scales until you’ve narrowed it down to a particular house, then Fiendfyre.
Oh, absolutely, that is a way to break it. It requires a certain level of logic that most of the wizarding world lacks, but sure.
Did anywhere state that it was perfect?
Or, more on point, do we know if people even remember the general location of the neighborhood? I didn’t think that they could. If they don’t remember the general location, how would they narrow it down?
The thing is, even though Voldemort/Harry level competence is absurdly rare, Moody level competence is significantly more common.
And yes, the Fidelius is supposed to be the highest-end absolutely-perfect conceptual defense against being found.
As far as finding the general location… it’s nontrivial, but it’s a whole lot easier. Tail known Order members and track where they go; if you see a vague density start tossing balls around. Or, if you’re clever/powerful, come up with a city-wide version and then go in order of population.
Sorry, I wasn’t clear. Yes, it’s referred to as the best they have. But who says it’s actually perfect?
If anyone actually said it, they’re wrong. If it was perfect, then Lily or James could have been Secret Keeper. Or even Frank/Alice for the Potters and Lily/James for the Longbottoms.
Moody said that the werewolf that he trusts slightly more than usual figured that most Aurors died 8.5 times before ‘lucky’ became ‘prepared.’ Assuming he wasn’t lying. That doesn’t indicate a higher level of competency that many people achieve. Though once you start looking at particulars, it gets difficult to distinguish higher competence in general from higher skill in a particular area.
Tail them. While they can—at least—Apparate. That may prove rather difficult, esp if they are doing so directly into the protected area. That’s even assuming they were getting visitors...
And now I can’t get the image of a ball-chucking Voldemort getting AKed in the back by the hidden Potters out of my head.
*shrug* Ask Rowling. It’s treated as perfect: Voldemort gets foiled by it twice, and both times the only way it’s broken is through a mistake by the Secret-Keeper.
And “throw balls everywhere” hardly requires the top-tier of competence.
Also note that there are some obvious downsides to Apparating onto the top step. Like balance.
I don’t really have very much respect for the plots, or really the cunning, that go on in Rowling’s books. Those weren’t really the lure of the series.
Doing it? Not a whole lot. Coming up with it? Tracking them down closely enough that it could be implemented? Maybe.
I’ve seen that in a fic as well. Even assuming that the boundary is the house itself rather than the surrounding property, why wouldn’t they be able to Apparate into the house proper? Isn’t that what they did with the whole Yaxley debacle?
Though, on further reflection, since the charm seems to work by messing with perception rather than actually making something invisible, it’s possible the person wouldn’t be able to perceive that the ball was missing—forgetting its existence or not realizing that it hadn’t been retrieved.
I’d say that the secret protected by the fidelius couldn’t actually include the Secret Keeper (also that no secret keeper can enter a diffrent fidelius), but Dumbledore attended meetings at #12Grimwald Place, so that can’t be how it worked in canon. There could be some nasty side-effect to the secret keeper hiding inside the Fidelius ey keeps, like it threatening to damage their soul or weakening the fidelius or shortening the keeper’s lifespan or something, but that’d be the sort of nerfing EY has said he probably won’t be trying.
I have to assume, though, that if a secret keeper dies and the secret hasn’t been given to someone else, the fidelius breaks, otherwise we get permanent secrets, which are just broken.
I interpreted their failure to do such a thing not as being illogical—they did have Lily, after all—but as part of a downside to the spell. As in, yes, the Secret Keeper being in the hidden area would destabilize the spell given enough time. It couldn’t be too little of time, or Dumbledore wouldn’t risk coming in, but as I recall he just popped in and out. This is what I mean, when I say that it’s not perfect—a perfect hiding spell would have allowed the weakness to be hidden inside with it.
That kind of limitation actually makes sense from an in-universe stance. When you designate a Secret-Keeper, you are entrusting someone with your life and safety—deliberately placing your lives in the hands of another. How much trust does it take, to ask someone to protect themselves? At least to me, it seems to match up fairly well with the kinds of sacrifices required for the Unbreakable Vow. The reasoning for why it doesn’t work for other Secrets is shakier, but it could be along the same vein, or perhaps the charms can’t really tell the difference between Keepers. Hrm.
That...is an interesting possibility. I read a fanfic which had them work like that, except that they started to destabilize after a while, a slow process that made them still very difficult to discover decades later. Kinda makes you wonder anew why Voldemort didn’t stash one or two of the horcruxes behind a fidelius and then kill everyone else involved, but eh.
Note that the Grimmauld Place mansion took up no space in the neighborhood outside when Harry went there. I’d also imagine (purely because Fidelius is supposed to be a slam-dunk in terms of defense/secrecy) that, for example, if you tossed a baseball from one house to the other “across” a Fidelius’d house, the baseball would not vanish at the boundary as it falls into the hidden lawn. So presumably there’s a spatial effect going on that would exclude such things from working.
Something curious happened in canon, where the Death Eaters knew enough about #12Grimwald Place to set up a vigil around it, but they couldn’t enter until one of the keepers actually showed them in, so Harry et al had to stand at the very edge of the wards and apparate everywhere. What’s curious about this is that it means Snape told them enough (or maybe it was Creacher? Hm.) to narrow down its location, but not enough to get in, and this never set off “Snape is hiding something” alarms among the Death Eaters. Which tells me that the naive interpretation where the secret dies with the original keeper was the common interpretation, but the Order of the Phoenix knew that it was much less secure than that and everyone who knew the secret became co-keepers on the original’s death. This also begs the question of what happens when all the keepers die (what happened with Godrick’s Hollow? The magical Graffiti implies that the Fidelius was broken altogether, not just by Voldemort).
So, according to canon, it’s still possible to lay siege to a place under the Fidelius, and the Death Eaters eventually broke in because Yacksly was grabbing Hermione when the trio made a return trip (How would that work with a small animagus, I wonder? Tracing wards probably wouldn’t work—the trace on underaged magic apparently wasn’t enough to get anyone in to any of the locations under Fidelius in Canon).
I think it was actually the constant use of the name Voldemort by Harry and Hermione, as they had not yet heard of the Taboo, that told the Death Eaters there was something worth investigating in the area.
Prediction: we shall see Fidelius Charm 2.0.
I was under the impression that it just appeared to take up no space. It was there, just your brain couldn’t actually take notice of that. People do keep describing it in terms of it being impossible to locate, not that it spawned a pocket dimension or anything.
Using your example, the baseball wouldn’t vanish at the boundary, you just wouldn’t notice that it was passing a house, and couldn’t be able to explain why you can’t throw it as far in this spot.
The problem is, there’s an easy way to break that. If you toss a ball so that it lands in the yard, it’s in a place you can’t access: from your point of view the ball has vanished. Then you can break the Fidelius for certain purposes by figuring out the general neighborhood and then tossing conjured balls everywhere, then picking up all the ones you can find (magically) and counting them. If you’re missing a ball, it’s because you can’t find it, so there’s a Fidelius or equivalent nearby. Repeat on smaller scales until you’ve narrowed it down to a particular house, then Fiendfyre.
Oh, absolutely, that is a way to break it. It requires a certain level of logic that most of the wizarding world lacks, but sure.
Did anywhere state that it was perfect?
Or, more on point, do we know if people even remember the general location of the neighborhood? I didn’t think that they could. If they don’t remember the general location, how would they narrow it down?
The thing is, even though Voldemort/Harry level competence is absurdly rare, Moody level competence is significantly more common.
And yes, the Fidelius is supposed to be the highest-end absolutely-perfect conceptual defense against being found.
As far as finding the general location… it’s nontrivial, but it’s a whole lot easier. Tail known Order members and track where they go; if you see a vague density start tossing balls around. Or, if you’re clever/powerful, come up with a city-wide version and then go in order of population.
Sorry, I wasn’t clear. Yes, it’s referred to as the best they have. But who says it’s actually perfect?
If anyone actually said it, they’re wrong. If it was perfect, then Lily or James could have been Secret Keeper. Or even Frank/Alice for the Potters and Lily/James for the Longbottoms.
Moody said that the werewolf that he trusts slightly more than usual figured that most Aurors died 8.5 times before ‘lucky’ became ‘prepared.’ Assuming he wasn’t lying. That doesn’t indicate a higher level of competency that many people achieve. Though once you start looking at particulars, it gets difficult to distinguish higher competence in general from higher skill in a particular area.
Tail them. While they can—at least—Apparate. That may prove rather difficult, esp if they are doing so directly into the protected area. That’s even assuming they were getting visitors...
And now I can’t get the image of a ball-chucking Voldemort getting AKed in the back by the hidden Potters out of my head.
*shrug* Ask Rowling. It’s treated as perfect: Voldemort gets foiled by it twice, and both times the only way it’s broken is through a mistake by the Secret-Keeper.
And “throw balls everywhere” hardly requires the top-tier of competence.
Also note that there are some obvious downsides to Apparating onto the top step. Like balance.
I don’t really have very much respect for the plots, or really the cunning, that go on in Rowling’s books. Those weren’t really the lure of the series.
Doing it? Not a whole lot. Coming up with it? Tracking them down closely enough that it could be implemented? Maybe.
I’ve seen that in a fic as well. Even assuming that the boundary is the house itself rather than the surrounding property, why wouldn’t they be able to Apparate into the house proper? Isn’t that what they did with the whole Yaxley debacle?
Though, on further reflection, since the charm seems to work by messing with perception rather than actually making something invisible, it’s possible the person wouldn’t be able to perceive that the ball was missing—forgetting its existence or not realizing that it hadn’t been retrieved.
I’d say that the secret protected by the fidelius couldn’t actually include the Secret Keeper (also that no secret keeper can enter a diffrent fidelius), but Dumbledore attended meetings at #12Grimwald Place, so that can’t be how it worked in canon. There could be some nasty side-effect to the secret keeper hiding inside the Fidelius ey keeps, like it threatening to damage their soul or weakening the fidelius or shortening the keeper’s lifespan or something, but that’d be the sort of nerfing EY has said he probably won’t be trying.
I have to assume, though, that if a secret keeper dies and the secret hasn’t been given to someone else, the fidelius breaks, otherwise we get permanent secrets, which are just broken.
I interpreted their failure to do such a thing not as being illogical—they did have Lily, after all—but as part of a downside to the spell. As in, yes, the Secret Keeper being in the hidden area would destabilize the spell given enough time. It couldn’t be too little of time, or Dumbledore wouldn’t risk coming in, but as I recall he just popped in and out. This is what I mean, when I say that it’s not perfect—a perfect hiding spell would have allowed the weakness to be hidden inside with it.
That kind of limitation actually makes sense from an in-universe stance. When you designate a Secret-Keeper, you are entrusting someone with your life and safety—deliberately placing your lives in the hands of another. How much trust does it take, to ask someone to protect themselves? At least to me, it seems to match up fairly well with the kinds of sacrifices required for the Unbreakable Vow. The reasoning for why it doesn’t work for other Secrets is shakier, but it could be along the same vein, or perhaps the charms can’t really tell the difference between Keepers. Hrm.
That...is an interesting possibility. I read a fanfic which had them work like that, except that they started to destabilize after a while, a slow process that made them still very difficult to discover decades later. Kinda makes you wonder anew why Voldemort didn’t stash one or two of the horcruxes behind a fidelius and then kill everyone else involved, but eh.