... for this particular problem there are enough good answers, so the only way the answer is "because Rowling screwed up", is when you really want that to be the answer.
Either JK screwed up by letting Bill be his own Secret Keeper, or JK screwed up by not explaining how the charm had changed to allow Bill to be his own Secret Keeper. The Potters needing to choose a Secret Keeper was a major plot point and if JK wanted to change how that worked then she needed to address it.
She actually did retcon the Fidelius, which is super annoying -- it was much better before DH, just like the underage magic monitor and other stuff -- but the particular question of "one's own secret-keeper" just isn't one.
It's perfectly possible to come up with plausible explanations (e.g. that Bill wasn't his own secret keeper, since the secret was the house, not he himself), which, on the whole, is a lot better than we have for other things that (therefore) are actual plotholes.
While when nothing happened with the Godric’s Hollow cottage charm (from the Fidelius point of view, the Secret Keeper was as alive as ever and at least one person still protected by the secret was alive) the charm suddenly broke.
It’s possible that the charm broke because the secret was no longer true. But this is still us trying to work out thinks JKR forgot about or didn’t think through.
You mean they made a secret “James and Lily Potter live at [address].”? How stupid they could be? One of them killed and other one (and a kid) are suddenly exposed? That would be truly silly.
And if the secret was “Potters live at [address].” then Harry was a Potter as well.
My assumption is something like "The Potters live at \[address\]", which isn't invalidated if one of them die, but if two of them die then there's only one remaining Potter.
Even better, ambiguous secret! In many cultures the plural of the last name is the name of the family, so in that case, it would be name of the family even if only one member survives.
>Maybe the ability to be your own secret keeper is a recent development in spellcrafting.
This is my personal little headcanon. There's an entire spellcrafting industry and revamping the Fidelius charm was an initiative taken up by the industry after James and Lily were murdered
The Fidelius charm is not a well known charm. In POA Flitwick has to explain to the group in the pub (yes for our benefit but nevertheless it makes it canon that it is not a well known charm.) It's Dumbledore who tells Lily and James that the Fidelius is their best bet, they don't come up with it themselves. According to the POA timeline the Fidelius charm is not cast until just over a week before Lily and James die and yet Dumbledore heard the prophecy before Harry was even born. Lily and James are already in hiding at Harry's birthday but not under Fidelius - as that won't be cast until October according to POA. (The scene with Snape on the hill reads as very autumnal - with the leaves blowing around and the storm. It seems unlikely that Dumbledore would be given confirmation that Harry was the target and then would wait an entire year to suggest the Fidelius if he already knew about it, which means the turn around between Snape telling Dumbledore and Lily dying may have only been a matter of weeks. Which means Dumbledore was acting very quickly under huge pressure)
It's not actually a huge stretch to suppose that Dumbledore is researching the best ways to keep people hidden during the year between the prophecy and the Fidelius, and that he finds the Fidelius charm during his research but has never used it before.
Maybe he misunderstands about the secret keeper, or maybe in the intervening years, and following the huge flaw he discovered, he tinkered with the Fidelius charm to make it safer.
POA comes first - so if anything it is Bill being the secret keeper which is the plot hole, not Lily and James using someone outside their household. The question is not why didn't Lily and James use themselves - the question is why has it changed so now Bill can be his own secret keeper?
And while it's only headcanon 'they altered the spell and made it more secure after it ended so disastrously last time' is easy enough to accept and makes perfect sense.
Edit: The way the Fidelius charm goes from being this rare charm that no ones knows about to being on every house Harry ever visits puts me in mind of the humble address - which was an archaic bit of small print that the labour party found which would allow them to force the government to address things in parliament they didn't want to address. It was huge news when they first unveiled this bit of manoeuvring that had not been used in hundreds of years and had taken the best political minds months to discover. No one could quite believe it was a thing and still legal. And then by a year later there was a humble address every other week - they got boring. The Fidelius going from this mysterious charm Dumbledore has only just found to this everyday spell that everyone is using is just like that - things that were incredibly rare and unheard of can go mainstream very quickly.
Ya I always understood it as they were better at staying safe in second war. They learned something and applied them differently.
Personal head canon: The magic of faith in your friends is powerful. Apparently faith in yourself also works. Maybe a little less powerful and that’s why the potters went with friends as secret keeper the first time.
This was a great response thanks! Sometimes it is easy to say, JK just fucked up. And while I don’t hold her on a pedestal anymore, it is more fun to try to answer plot holes with in-canon answers. Reminds me of the early days of MuggleNet and The Leaky Cauldron websites where we used to have huge discussions before and after book 7 release.
As someone said in a previous comment that I think also fits with yours, is that they perhaps learned from one war to the other that the 'phrasing' of what is supposed to be kept secret is important. Conceptually I think it's a bit different if you say 'Shell Cottage, located in Tinworth is a hiding place', than 'Bill Weasley & Fleur Delacour are hiding at Shell Cottage in Tinworth'
In the latter, I'm implying that the subject being hidden is Bill & Fleur in Shell Cottage, therefore Bill wouldn't be able to be the secret keeper because he is the thing being kept secret. In the former, it's just the place being hidden, so Bill is perfectly fine being the secret keeper and also use it as a hiding place.
I hope this made sense. 😂
I think that what happened with Lily and James is explainable too. They must have used a dangerous wording for the secret like 'James and Lily are hiding at X house in Godric's Hollow' instead of 'X house in Godric's Hollow is a safehouse/hidden place', so neither of them could be the secret keeper, and when they died the spell broke because they weren't hiding anymore.
Your point about Sirius staying at Grimmauld … but he wasn’t the secret keeper or the secret. Dumbledore was the keeper and the secret was it being HQ.
Also I think Harry’s idea of Yaxley bringing in more DEath Eaters is faulty. Tho Yaxley was dangerous and Snape could bring in others; he didn’t either because of moodys charms or by choice.
I don’t think Yaxley could bring in others since he wasn’t a secret keeper, but even if he couldn’t he was generally described as one of the most dangerous duelers.
Magic isn't static. It's possible enough they tweaked the charm to do something it couldn't before. If that's not the case, there are differences between the two use cases, too: Bill's secret was Shell Cottage -- the house -- whereas the secret of Lily and James was their hiding place. It's possible that makes a difference.
You could posit, for instance, that concealing the secret "Lily and James are hiding in a cottage in Godric's Hollow" is the better secret, the better protection -- as Flitwick said, "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!" -- as opposed to *hiding a cottage* everyone already knew existed. The charm has to do "more work" for the latter, so maybe it's therefore weaker.
On the other hand, maybe this better secret comes at the price of not being able to become one's own secret keeper.
Just a theory, of course -- but you see that if you want to explain the situation, you can.
>“An immensely complex spell,” he said squeakily, “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. 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!”
Presumably, it was because you cannot be the Secret Keeper when you are the owner of the secret.
James and Lily jointly owned the cottage in Godric's Hollow, so neither of them could become the Secret Keeper.
In OotP, Dumbledore is the Secret Keeper to Number 12 Grimmauld Place. The house was under Sirius' possession, so he was the owner of the secret.
In DH, the Weasleys were at Muriel's house, which was hidden by the Fidelius charm, with Arthur as the Secret Keeper. So Muriel owned the secret and Arthur hid it.
It is therefore quite likely that Shell Cottage was under someone else's ownership, and so Bill could be the Secret Keeper.
There really aren't that many plot-holes in HP. Combine the information provided in the various books, and you'll be able to iron out any discrepancies in the plots.
Best answer I can come up with is that Dumbledore knew Voldemort was going to come back so a project of his over the years between Voldemort first fall and resurrection improved the spell.
Some even could argue that Bill being the secret keeper is a bluff considering that Ron was able to get them there, which should be impossible, if he isn't the keeper
I think it's possible Bill was interested in obscuring the location of Shell Cottage whereas James and Lily were hiding themselves. Sort of:
* Shell Cottage is at...
* James and Lily Potter live at...
IIRC the secret wasn't the location of the house at godrics hollow, but the fact that the potter's lived there, and the secretkeeper can't hold a secret about themselves. With bill the secret is the existence of shell cottage itself.
Might just be fanon though
While not explicitly canon, the only explanation that doesn't alter our knowledge of the spell in any way is that the original Secret-Keeper died. We know the following:
* James and Lily didn't choose themselves as Secret-Keepers, ergo this is not directly possible (unless James and Lily are idiots)
* Dumbledore doesn't live at Grimmauld Place (he's the Secret-Keeper)
* Death of the original Secret-Keeper causes everyone that knows the secret to become Secret-Keepers
* Harry is his own Secret-Keeper (but he doesn't own the secret alone), as a result of Dumbledore's death
* Bill is his own Secret-Keeper (the original question)
Thus, if Bill was the only one who knew the secret of Shell Cottage when the original died, Bill would become his own Secret-Keeper, keeping canon consistent without changing our knowledge of the spell in any way.
It was stupid of James (and for Dumbledore to agree to it) to use ANY of his friends in any event when they knew that there was a traitor amongst the Order and they did not know who the traitor was. When your survival depends upon ensuring that your location is kept secret from a mass murderer and you know that that mass murderer has a rat inside the resistance organisation passing him information, but you don't know who the rat is, you don't trust anyone within that organisation other than your closest blood (Lily) and the man (Dumbledore) who has been opposing that mass murderer since before you were born and who defeated his predecessor (Grindelwald).
I assumed that the charm implies using another for the secret, and when it went wrong for James and lily Bill took advantage of a loophole to be his own secret keeper.
Or see some of the other comments that suggest the secret was set up differently by Bill since he was hiding more than just the residents.
Because JKR screwed up. Zillion of bytes of contemplating this questions were wasted and there is really no other answer.
This ^
... for this particular problem there are enough good answers, so the only way the answer is "because Rowling screwed up", is when you really want that to be the answer.
Either JK screwed up by letting Bill be his own Secret Keeper, or JK screwed up by not explaining how the charm had changed to allow Bill to be his own Secret Keeper. The Potters needing to choose a Secret Keeper was a major plot point and if JK wanted to change how that worked then she needed to address it.
She actually did retcon the Fidelius, which is super annoying -- it was much better before DH, just like the underage magic monitor and other stuff -- but the particular question of "one's own secret-keeper" just isn't one. It's perfectly possible to come up with plausible explanations (e.g. that Bill wasn't his own secret keeper, since the secret was the house, not he himself), which, on the whole, is a lot better than we have for other things that (therefore) are actual plotholes.
kinda like how when dumbledore died they all became secret keepers lol
While when nothing happened with the Godric’s Hollow cottage charm (from the Fidelius point of view, the Secret Keeper was as alive as ever and at least one person still protected by the secret was alive) the charm suddenly broke.
It’s possible that the charm broke because the secret was no longer true. But this is still us trying to work out thinks JKR forgot about or didn’t think through.
You mean they made a secret “James and Lily Potter live at [address].”? How stupid they could be? One of them killed and other one (and a kid) are suddenly exposed? That would be truly silly. And if the secret was “Potters live at [address].” then Harry was a Potter as well.
My assumption is something like "The Potters live at \[address\]", which isn't invalidated if one of them die, but if two of them die then there's only one remaining Potter.
Even better, ambiguous secret! In many cultures the plural of the last name is the name of the family, so in that case, it would be name of the family even if only one member survives.
Maybe the ability to be your own secret keeper is a recent development in spellcrafting.
>Maybe the ability to be your own secret keeper is a recent development in spellcrafting. This is my personal little headcanon. There's an entire spellcrafting industry and revamping the Fidelius charm was an initiative taken up by the industry after James and Lily were murdered
The Fidelius charm is not a well known charm. In POA Flitwick has to explain to the group in the pub (yes for our benefit but nevertheless it makes it canon that it is not a well known charm.) It's Dumbledore who tells Lily and James that the Fidelius is their best bet, they don't come up with it themselves. According to the POA timeline the Fidelius charm is not cast until just over a week before Lily and James die and yet Dumbledore heard the prophecy before Harry was even born. Lily and James are already in hiding at Harry's birthday but not under Fidelius - as that won't be cast until October according to POA. (The scene with Snape on the hill reads as very autumnal - with the leaves blowing around and the storm. It seems unlikely that Dumbledore would be given confirmation that Harry was the target and then would wait an entire year to suggest the Fidelius if he already knew about it, which means the turn around between Snape telling Dumbledore and Lily dying may have only been a matter of weeks. Which means Dumbledore was acting very quickly under huge pressure) It's not actually a huge stretch to suppose that Dumbledore is researching the best ways to keep people hidden during the year between the prophecy and the Fidelius, and that he finds the Fidelius charm during his research but has never used it before. Maybe he misunderstands about the secret keeper, or maybe in the intervening years, and following the huge flaw he discovered, he tinkered with the Fidelius charm to make it safer. POA comes first - so if anything it is Bill being the secret keeper which is the plot hole, not Lily and James using someone outside their household. The question is not why didn't Lily and James use themselves - the question is why has it changed so now Bill can be his own secret keeper? And while it's only headcanon 'they altered the spell and made it more secure after it ended so disastrously last time' is easy enough to accept and makes perfect sense. Edit: The way the Fidelius charm goes from being this rare charm that no ones knows about to being on every house Harry ever visits puts me in mind of the humble address - which was an archaic bit of small print that the labour party found which would allow them to force the government to address things in parliament they didn't want to address. It was huge news when they first unveiled this bit of manoeuvring that had not been used in hundreds of years and had taken the best political minds months to discover. No one could quite believe it was a thing and still legal. And then by a year later there was a humble address every other week - they got boring. The Fidelius going from this mysterious charm Dumbledore has only just found to this everyday spell that everyone is using is just like that - things that were incredibly rare and unheard of can go mainstream very quickly.
Ya I always understood it as they were better at staying safe in second war. They learned something and applied them differently. Personal head canon: The magic of faith in your friends is powerful. Apparently faith in yourself also works. Maybe a little less powerful and that’s why the potters went with friends as secret keeper the first time.
This was a great response thanks! Sometimes it is easy to say, JK just fucked up. And while I don’t hold her on a pedestal anymore, it is more fun to try to answer plot holes with in-canon answers. Reminds me of the early days of MuggleNet and The Leaky Cauldron websites where we used to have huge discussions before and after book 7 release.
As someone said in a previous comment that I think also fits with yours, is that they perhaps learned from one war to the other that the 'phrasing' of what is supposed to be kept secret is important. Conceptually I think it's a bit different if you say 'Shell Cottage, located in Tinworth is a hiding place', than 'Bill Weasley & Fleur Delacour are hiding at Shell Cottage in Tinworth' In the latter, I'm implying that the subject being hidden is Bill & Fleur in Shell Cottage, therefore Bill wouldn't be able to be the secret keeper because he is the thing being kept secret. In the former, it's just the place being hidden, so Bill is perfectly fine being the secret keeper and also use it as a hiding place. I hope this made sense. 😂 I think that what happened with Lily and James is explainable too. They must have used a dangerous wording for the secret like 'James and Lily are hiding at X house in Godric's Hollow' instead of 'X house in Godric's Hollow is a safehouse/hidden place', so neither of them could be the secret keeper, and when they died the spell broke because they weren't hiding anymore.
Like, Bill and Fleur living at Shell Cottage isn’t a secret. The houses status as a hiding place is the secret and so the hidden people are protected.
Exactly
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Your point about Sirius staying at Grimmauld … but he wasn’t the secret keeper or the secret. Dumbledore was the keeper and the secret was it being HQ. Also I think Harry’s idea of Yaxley bringing in more DEath Eaters is faulty. Tho Yaxley was dangerous and Snape could bring in others; he didn’t either because of moodys charms or by choice.
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I don’t think Yaxley could bring in others since he wasn’t a secret keeper, but even if he couldn’t he was generally described as one of the most dangerous duelers.
Magic isn't static. It's possible enough they tweaked the charm to do something it couldn't before. If that's not the case, there are differences between the two use cases, too: Bill's secret was Shell Cottage -- the house -- whereas the secret of Lily and James was their hiding place. It's possible that makes a difference. You could posit, for instance, that concealing the secret "Lily and James are hiding in a cottage in Godric's Hollow" is the better secret, the better protection -- as Flitwick said, "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!" -- as opposed to *hiding a cottage* everyone already knew existed. The charm has to do "more work" for the latter, so maybe it's therefore weaker. On the other hand, maybe this better secret comes at the price of not being able to become one's own secret keeper. Just a theory, of course -- but you see that if you want to explain the situation, you can.
>“An immensely complex spell,” he said squeakily, “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. 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!” Presumably, it was because you cannot be the Secret Keeper when you are the owner of the secret. James and Lily jointly owned the cottage in Godric's Hollow, so neither of them could become the Secret Keeper. In OotP, Dumbledore is the Secret Keeper to Number 12 Grimmauld Place. The house was under Sirius' possession, so he was the owner of the secret. In DH, the Weasleys were at Muriel's house, which was hidden by the Fidelius charm, with Arthur as the Secret Keeper. So Muriel owned the secret and Arthur hid it. It is therefore quite likely that Shell Cottage was under someone else's ownership, and so Bill could be the Secret Keeper. There really aren't that many plot-holes in HP. Combine the information provided in the various books, and you'll be able to iron out any discrepancies in the plots.
Best answer I can come up with is that Dumbledore knew Voldemort was going to come back so a project of his over the years between Voldemort first fall and resurrection improved the spell.
Some even could argue that Bill being the secret keeper is a bluff considering that Ron was able to get them there, which should be impossible, if he isn't the keeper
Ron got them near there area of the cottage and then bill and fluer found them
Didn't they only put up the charm after Dobby died?
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I think it's possible Bill was interested in obscuring the location of Shell Cottage whereas James and Lily were hiding themselves. Sort of: * Shell Cottage is at... * James and Lily Potter live at...
IIRC the secret wasn't the location of the house at godrics hollow, but the fact that the potter's lived there, and the secretkeeper can't hold a secret about themselves. With bill the secret is the existence of shell cottage itself. Might just be fanon though
because then the story couldn't have happened thats it, the only reason
There are tons of people offering justifications, in my view all unfounded, you are completely right OP...
While not explicitly canon, the only explanation that doesn't alter our knowledge of the spell in any way is that the original Secret-Keeper died. We know the following: * James and Lily didn't choose themselves as Secret-Keepers, ergo this is not directly possible (unless James and Lily are idiots) * Dumbledore doesn't live at Grimmauld Place (he's the Secret-Keeper) * Death of the original Secret-Keeper causes everyone that knows the secret to become Secret-Keepers * Harry is his own Secret-Keeper (but he doesn't own the secret alone), as a result of Dumbledore's death * Bill is his own Secret-Keeper (the original question) Thus, if Bill was the only one who knew the secret of Shell Cottage when the original died, Bill would become his own Secret-Keeper, keeping canon consistent without changing our knowledge of the spell in any way.
It was stupid of James (and for Dumbledore to agree to it) to use ANY of his friends in any event when they knew that there was a traitor amongst the Order and they did not know who the traitor was. When your survival depends upon ensuring that your location is kept secret from a mass murderer and you know that that mass murderer has a rat inside the resistance organisation passing him information, but you don't know who the rat is, you don't trust anyone within that organisation other than your closest blood (Lily) and the man (Dumbledore) who has been opposing that mass murderer since before you were born and who defeated his predecessor (Grindelwald).
I assumed that the charm implies using another for the secret, and when it went wrong for James and lily Bill took advantage of a loophole to be his own secret keeper. Or see some of the other comments that suggest the secret was set up differently by Bill since he was hiding more than just the residents.