Fidelius Charm speculation

[sunnyskywalker]

While looking over Oryx's posts on Vold War I, the question of why the Fidelius Charm seemed to be entirely broken by the time Hagrid arrived caught my eye again. Because obviously, anyone can see the house now--it's a graffitied memorial. Hagrid could find it with no problem (he doesn't seem likely to have been on the short list of people let in on the secret in the week it was active), and so could the Muggle emergency services shortly after.

Oryx suggested that the secret ended when its subject ceased to exist, whether that subject was the house or the Potters themselves.

However, the house didn't really cease to exist, except in the sense that having a big hole in one room damages its integrity as a house. Does it work similarly to Horcruxes, where if you damage the subject enough that it doesn't function properly (in this case, as a house), the secret breaks, even if the subject is otherwise mostly intact? This seems like a really bad way to set up the charm: all you'd have to do is figure out the general location and start lobbing small explosives in the right direction. Eventually, one would do enough damage to break the secret. But maybe wizards wouldn't think of that.

Also, making the secret be the Potters rather than the house causes its own problems. You'd have to assume that Harry wasn't part of the secret, most likely, or how would Petunia have been able to see him on her doorstep? But if Voldemort could still see Harry through the window, what would it matter if he couldn't see James and Lily? They don't know Harry is the primary target, but Voldemort taking Harry as a hostage to force James and Lily to reveal themselves should have crossed their minds.

Or maybe the secret was that "the Potters are inside Whatever Cottage in Godric's Hollow," so that they couldn't be seen while in the house, and then Harry could be seen by anyone as soon as Hagrid took him out. That brings us back to Hagrid having been brought into the secret. It couldn't have been by Peter telling him in person (unless Polyjuice was involved), but maybe Peter sent a note. On the other hand, there's still no obvious reason for them to have let Hagrid in on the secret. Unless Dumbledore convinced them that they needed someone on the Hogwarts staff to be a secret-knower for some reason, and they felt Hagrid was the most trustworthy?

However you work it, something always seems off. You can explain it... but it takes work and feels forced.

Here's another possibility, which I haven't fully worked through yet: no one told Harry, but the Secret Keeper isn't restricted to only telling one person at a time. The Secret Keeper has the option of revealing the secret to the world all at once.

After all, suppose the secret needed to be undone quickly for some reason? For instance, if the people inside a Fideliused location needed emergency help and you couldn't contact the Secret Keeper in time to let the rescuers in on the secret? Or maybe you would want whichever bystanders were closest to be able to get in, so breaking the secret for everyone at once would be the quickest method. Or maybe if a person inherited a secret-kept house like Grimmauld Place, they might want to de-secret it at some point when the danger had subsided and their kids wanted to bring friends over without needing to go through a magic ritual first.

Why would Peter have used this option instead of just telling Voldemort the secret, though? If the secret was the house, maybe Voldemort wanted to make sure the world could see his murderous handiwork right away. No point in sending up the Dark Mark to advertise that you've killed your enemies if no one can see anything when they get there.

A smart villain would have waited until after he'd killed his targets, but this is Voldemort. And maybe he had some concern that if he left Peter sitting around, thinking about how he'd betrayed his friends, Peter would try to run off or something before breaking the secret, reasoning that if he left the secret intact, everyone would assume Voldemort just used his mysterious dark powers to get in rather than that the Secret Keeper was a traitor. It should only take him a few minutes to kill them, so he should have plenty of time to get away before whatever alarms Dumbledore might have set brought the Order to the scene.* So the risk was low.

So Peter broke the secret and Voldemort immediately Apparated to the Potters' street (where a kid admired his "costume"). Then he busted in through the front door, killed James, ran upstairs, killed Lily, and failed to kill Harry. Fortunately, the secret being broken meant that Hagrid had no trouble digging Harry out of the rubble before Muggle emergency services arrived.

I'm not sure this works more smoothly than the other possibilities, but at least there's another slightly strained option?

Incidentally, what kind of alarms did Dumbledore have that he knew immediately that (a) James and Lily were dead, (b) Harry wasn't, and (c) he should send Hagrid to take Harry to Little Whinging? Or should we assume time travel shenangigans?

Comments

[chantaldormand]

I don't see much problem with Fidelius Charm in this case. It seems to me that the spell heavily depends on how you word the "password".
For example in OotP we have: "The Headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix may be found at number twelve, Grimmauld Place, London."

So if Potters worded their "password" something like 'The current home of the Potter family is so and so house in the Godric Hollow' it would work exactly the way it did in the books. The moment Lily and James died there is no more 'the Potters' or 'the Potter family, because Harry is the only living member of it ergo the spellwork falls apart.

Granted, I feel that this explanation is probably destroyed by all retconing JKR does in the HBP, DH and through her Twitter, but I tend to pretend that shortly after she published OotP she was abducted by aliens and was never heard from again ;P

As for time travelling shenanigans? Absolutely yes! Would explain wonky timeline from the first book!

[madderbrad.livejournal.com]

For example in OotP we have: "The Headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix may be found at number twelve, Grimmauld Place, London."

And this is the foundation of one of the infinite number of errors in that literary catastrophe known as 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows', I think.

Because in that tome we are told that the headquarters is *moved*:

They were often joined by other Order members for dinner now, because
the Burrow had replaced number twelve, Grimmauld Place as the
headquarters. Mr. Weasley had explained that after the death of Dumbledore,
their Secret-Keeper, each of the people to whom Dumbledore had confided
Grimmauld Place's location had become a Secret-Keeper in turn.

"And as there are around twenty of us, that greatly dilutes the power of the
Fidelius Charm. Twenty times as many opportunities for the Death Eaters to get
the secret out of somebody. We can't expect it to hold much longer."

"But surely Snape will have told the Death Eaters the address by now?"
asked Harry.

"Well, Mad-Eye set up a couple of curses against Snape in case he turns up
there again. We hope they'll be strong enough both to keep him out and to
bind his tongue if he tries to talk about the place, but we can't be sure. It would
have been insane to keep using the place as headquarters now that its
protection has become so shaky."

The secret was 'The headquarters of the OotP is at 12 Grimmauld Place'. That's what the Fidelius protected. Once the headquarters was moved anyone could have walked up to the front door, it wouldn't have been hidden.

But no-one notices this ... because their author didn't think of it.

At least, I think this is an error. I only noticed it in passing, never had it confirmed by anyone else. Whaddya think?

This whole bogus 'spawning of the Secret Keepers' thing meant that Snape could have told anyone - was any reason given as to why Riddle didn't suspect Snape's disloyalty, given as how Snape apparently never did so? - but yeah, I don't think there was a Fidelius at all after Dumbledore died.

[chantaldormand]

Generally speaking Potterverse magic isn't mystical (like SW Force), administered by some being (like in many DnD inspired settings), dependant on caster's willpower and interpretation (like in Dresden Files) or semi-sentient. Ironically it works like simple computer algorithm:

If actor does A and B then do C.

This means that in most cases magic would work with dictionary definitions and pick the most straightforward intent, since there is nobody to do interpretation for it.

The phrase I gave as example of password could be reduced to:

'Potter family lives at X'= true/false then 'Fidelius Charm'= true/false

Simple, no room for errors and something Lily and James might come up with.

The problem with Dumbledor's password is the same one we encounter with majority of things he says; just like majority of the readers assumed that "use his proper name, Voldemort" = You-Know-Who's true name is Voldemort, it's quite possible to misinterpret the password.

The devil is in phrase "may be found". It's vague language and it's quite possible that once somebody who knows how the spell works sat down and inspected it they realised there is a possible vulnerability and forced the Order to relocate. I would place my bets on Bill, since he is the next person to use the spell.

As for the whole spawning secret keepers? From outside perspective it's obviously JKR's attempt to retcon things so she can easily push forward plot. From inside perspective it could have been easily a lie that is told to kids and/or Order members so they won't have any stupid ideas.

Another explanation is that after caster's death the spell got weaker and weaker, but I don't think we ever learn who casted it.

[jana-ch.livejournal.com]

I don't think we ever learn who casted it.

I always imagined Dumbledore cast the spell because:
1) He's the leader of the Order.
2) He prefers to keep all important matters under his own personal control.
3) He's generally acknowledged (by himself and his followers) to be incredibly brilliant, incredibly powerful, incredibly skillful at complex magic, and (of course) utterly trustworthy. [insert sarcasm icon]

Canon doesn't actually say one way or the other.

[madderbrad.livejournal.com]

The devil is in phrase "may be found".

Hmmm, maybe. I admire the wriggle room you've found in how 'may' suggests less than absolute certainty but I'm not sure it's enough to get around the true/false pattern matching 'algorithm' you're using.

If one is looking for the HQ then certainly it 'may be found' at GP, so that secret is true, and thus should be hidden.

[chantaldormand]

Hmmm, maybe. I admire the wriggle room you've found in how 'may' suggests less than absolute certainty but I'm not sure it's enough to get around the true/false pattern matching 'algorithm' you're using.

I've considered it for a bit and I came to conclusion that if we use word may we are pretty much introducing an element of randomness to algorithm and this type of algorithm is not as simple as those I used as examples.
In this scenario we have:
While A=true and X≥Y then B
Where:
A stands in for actor knowing the secret
X stands for random number generated via random number generator or rolling 5x 20d dices :P
Y stands value allowing you access. The lower value the higher chance that the spell will allow you entering the HQ
B stand for the spell letting you see the HQ.
Of course this is optimistic approach where FC will only occasionally troll a member of OotP and not for example let random person see the HQ.
In that case we potentially have:
While A=true and X≥Y then B
While A=false and X≤Y then C
While A=false and X>Z then B

C stands for the spell not letting you see the HQ

Obviously it's simplified version of algorithm, but I see no point in complicating things too much.

[dorea-ysleen.livejournal.com]

I agree that the secret no longer existing would generally void a Fidelius, but I think that in case of the Potters, it broke because Peter betrayed them. He was their secret keeper, the one they put their faith (fides) in, and he told the one person they needed protection from most, going completely against the intent of the spell.
(It would mean Voldemort knowing this much about the Fidelius Charm and only having Peter tell him the secret once he was ready to go so the Potters wouldn't have time to notice that something was wrong with their protection, but I don't think that's impossible.)

As to who cast it... the switch in secret keepers was known only to Lily, James, Sirius and Peter. I imagine the bonding of the secret keeper is part of casting the Fidelius, similar to the unbreakable vow, where both parties are present as well as named, so that would narrow it down a lot - to either Lily herself, as has often been speculated because of her Charms talent, or (if she couldn't as one of the subjects to be protected) to Sirius.

[jana-ch.livejournal.com]

You’re right that having the Secret Keeper present means that Dumbledore can’t have cast the Fidelius. Some have suggested that Dumbledore cast it with Peter-Polyjuiced-as-Sirius standing as Secret Keeper, but that adds an unnecessary layer of complication. Besides, I don’t think the Marauders were disloyal enough to go out of their way to deceive Dumbledore. They just left him out because they thought they were so much cleverer than he was, and they had always done things on their own.

It doesn’t feel quite right to me, however, for Lily to have cast the spell, despite her supposed Charms skill (which is based solely on what Olivander says about her wand, not any evidence we see about Lily herself). The whole thing feels to me like an all-Marauder production. No need to get the little woman involved. Sirius is so incredibly talented (just ask him) that he can do it. Lily doesn’t even need to be in the room; Prongs has talked it over with her, and she’s busy with the baby, after all. It’ll be just us three trusted Marauders, like in the old days, out-foxing Voldie like we out-foxed Dumbles.

I can’t present any actual evidence for this. It’s just a feeling on my part, but it sure seems like the sort of thing they would do.

[sunnyskywalker]

That does sound like them, unfortunately. And Lily was probably so exhausted caring for both a toddler and James (an emotional toddler climbing the walls with cabin fever), with no support and little or no contact with her friends or the outside world generally, that she might not have had the energy to argue about something they'd already done or grill them for details about the exact wording they'd used. (Even if you don't posit a James as bad as in Terri's "Liberacorpus," Lily's life those last few months must have been rough. I tend to read her letter to Sirius as desperately trying to convince herself that things aren't so bad, really. Sure, she cries all night sometimes when she hears a colleague has been horribly murdered, but otherwise everything's great, honest! They're a happy family having a mostly-normal life!)

Hm, it also occurs to me that maybe Flitwick called the Fidelius Charm "complex" in part because there are several different ways of casting it, not just because figuring out how to word it and/or the spellcasting itself is complicated. He described it as holding the secret within a single living soul when we learn later that multiple people can hold the secret under certain conditions, so he must have been simplifying for his audience. Maybe all the secret-knowers becoming secret-keepers when the original SK dies isn't the only possibility; it's just that Dumbledore used that version for No.12. Maybe you can also cast it so that it expires when the SK dies, or so that the SK can release it to the world at will, or so that every secret-knower automatically becomes an SK. For instance, maybe that last version is on the Leaky Cauldron, and when Hagrid pointed it out to Harry, he was actually letting Harry in on the secret (after which Harry could have told anyone else). That's weak security, but it would have to be--it's the entrance to a shopping district. Whoever originally cast it might have felt that keeping out a few people people with no personal connection to wizarding Britain was better than nothing. Or maybe it was originally about keeping out hedge witches and cunning folk who hadn't attended Hogwarts, idk.

Point being, if there are different ways to implement it, which did they use? And given how infrequently used the charm apparently is, did whatever they use as their source of information describe all the options fully? Maybe they assumed Magic Wikipedia explained everything, and it didn't. (This is why you don't ignore the footnotes.) Which still makes them overconfident, but slightly less so than if they deliberately ignored potentially better options.

And there's the Peter factor, of course. We know there are magical way of, erm, nudging people into having impaired understanding and judgement. Peter could easily have "nudged" them to a particular option and "nudged" them to feel like it was all their own idea, and a really great idea too. They wouldn't expect the weak toady to Confund them, now would they?

Maybe Peter thought that if he could get them to use a version--either through wording or the spellcasting or both--which would release the secret into the world all at once, everyone would assume Voldemort broke the secret with his Amazing Dark Powers^TM, and Peter would have an easier time getting away with his betrayal if anything went wrong. I mean, it's best to have layers of protections, right? First make sure that they use a version that will make it look like the SK didn't reveal the secret, Voldemort broke it. Then make sure everyone except Voldemort and the intended victims think Sirius is the SK, so not only can Peter give Voldie the secret, but if necessary, it will be easy to frame Sirius and Peter's still covered.

[seductivedark.livejournal.com]

On may be found - I'm guessing that it means the place is able to be found at (location), that is, the person hearing this from a legitimate source is now allowed to see the property. What I'm not about to guess is, if someone is just walking down Grimauld Place and not looking for the HQ of the OotP, would they be able to see #12?

I think this goes along with your question of, once the Order has moved, will #12 be visible? I think it will because that use of the property is the secret, not the property itself or the Order itself independent of each other. The DEs know the Order exists, and they know the Blacks lived somewhere in London. But this raises the question, would the Blacks or their friends and relations, if not looking for the Order, be able to see #12? No matter how you try to figure it out, it doesn't work on some level.

[chantaldormand]

If Dumbledore walked up to me and said "You know, the Headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix may be found at number twelve, Grimmauld Place, London *wink**wink**nudge**nudge*" then I- a human capable of understanding subtlety- would understand that if I want to visit the headquarters of OotP I should go to this address.

The problem is that this password is also a rule set for non-human entity to interpret. "May be found" adds chaos to the spell because Albus doesn't follow it with some kind of a specific rule.

Let's say that the ministry covered the Diagonal Alley with this spell to hide it. Then the password would be something like "The Diagonal Alley is located at this and this location and can be entered upon using this and this sequence of taps on the wall behind the Leaky Cauldron."

So we arrive at very absurd situation where person who knows the password cannot enter the HQ, because the spell glitches up.
If this was DnD or gods forbid Shadowrun campaign a GM who is sticker for following rules would ask a player to roll his dices each time the player wanted to enter the HQ. Players would start to arrive at HQ in pairs or small groups so they could drag into HQ their team members who failed their rolls.

This gets even more entertaining, if we consider that the same glitch might randomly show the HQ to people who don't know the password.
I imagine that at some point during OotP's residency at the #12, one of elderly neighbours was dragged out by kind men in white coats all while screaming "You must believe me! I really saw a whole building appearing and crazy people in colourful bathrobes coming in and out of it!"

Granted with "may be found" it's hard to say how often the spell would glitch up and either not let in authorised person or showing unauthorised person the HQ. There may be only one incident or there might be log of incidents as long as my arm.
But let's say that due to Kreacher's actions a smarter (yeah I know, not very realistic) DE figured out where the HQ might be and camped out in the neighbourhood. Then he doesn't need to know the password, he just has to wait for the right moment. That is horrible security system.

Does Fidelius stops working after OotP moved to another location... well yes and no. Yes the HQ changed, but Albus didn't use phrase "is located" but "may be found". This potentially means that until the OotP is dissolved the #12 might randomly phase in and out of existence scaring the shit out of neighbours and passer bys alike :D

Can Blacks and their friends/relatives see/enter HQ? It's bit complicated issue.
I can't remember if it's book canon, interview canon or fanon, but I seem to recall that Fidelius was just cherry top placed by Albus on already pre-existing spellwork created by paranoid Blacks. Now if Albus out of laziness hooked up Fidelius to pre-existing spellwork with ruleset that automatically adds people to list of people who are authorised to walk through the Black's spells, then we end up with problem on our hands.
Would Fidelius reference that list when interpreting "may be found" rule? Then if Albus didn't scrub the list, anyone allowed to enter the #12 before FC was placed can not only still see it, but also enter it.
If that is the case then the OotP's HQ wasn't raided only because: a) wizards are stupid; b) plot armour; c) Blacks believed that #12 is sealed up and thus they are unable to enter it.

[sunnyskywalker]

I would really love to see the missing scene where people not looking for the Order HQ can see #12 perfectly well because Dumbledore can't word something clearly to save his life. (Er, well, mostly his followers' lives.) Just imagine some nice Jehovah's Witnesses knocking on the door to spread the good word and Arthur answering the door. Hooray, Muggles! Can they explain ecklectricity? The poor Witnesses would be going, "Ok, these people are weirder than usual... clearly they need help, so it's good we're here... just keep smiling..."

DE figured out where the HQ might be and camped out in the neighbourhood. Then he doesn't need to know the password, he just has to wait for the right moment.

And we saw that they can do that when the Trio set off the Taboo and the DEs started loitering across the street. If they'd thought of that two years ago, they could have just cast Fiendfyre at that side of the street and been done with it. They don't care if the neighboring homes burn with #12, right? So why not try it? For that matter, if Voldemort weren't so determined that he and only he could face Harry, they could have done that in DH too. It's a really terrible security system.

I'm not clear on what the other protections the Black family put on the place, either. Did they fireproof the house? Bar it to certain people or classes of people? Put Imperturbable Charms around the exterior to make it impossible to eavesdrop from outside? Make it Unplottable? Order Kreacher to act as bouncer and toss everyone on their list of undesirables? Which protections they used could make a big difference in how they interacted (or didn't) with Dumbledore's Fidelius.

[seductivedark.livejournal.com]

"May be found" adds chaos to the spell because Albus doesn't follow it with some kind of a specific rule.

Unless the language is a bit older than current modern English. Even into the 1960s teachers and parents admonished kids that 'can' is to be able, 'may' is to be allowed. This usually happened when a kid said, 'Can I go to X's house?' or, 'Can I be excused?' The response always started with, 'May I...' and then the answer. I'm in the U.S. If Rowling remembers something similar in Britain, and she was a teacher at one point so it's possible she did it herself (though that would have been very late in the game) then she's making the distinction of being able (can) and being allowed (may).

Though I think it's more likely that Rowling just crafted an ambiguous magical rule.

(Editing because of typo)

[madderbrad.livejournal.com]

What I'm not about to guess is, if someone is just walking down Grimauld Place and not looking for the HQ of the OotP, would they be able to see #12?

Oooh, nice. Never thought of that.

Such a pity that Lupin told Harry where they were going before Harry ended up in Grimmauld Place:

'Where are we going? The Burrow?' Harry asked hopefully.

'Not The Burrow, no,' said Lupin, motioning Harry towards the kitchen; the little knot of
wizards followed, all still eyeing Harry curiously. Too risky. We've set up Headquarters
somewhere un-detectable. It's taken a while...'

... because then we'd have an answer.

I think this goes along with your question of, once the Order has moved, will #12 be visible? I think it will because that use of the property is the secret, not the property itself or the Order itself independent of each other.

Yes, exactly. I agree. So I count this as a (small) error of DH; any DE would have been able to enter Grimmauld Place. All the rumination over Snape giving away the secret is unnecessary; the secret has evaporated.

But it's a much greater error that Riddle doesn't accuse Snape of withholding the secret or the DEs don't sack the place due to Snape being one of the Secret Keepers. Rowling didn't want them go there so magically none of her characters had the brains to press Snape on it.

[sunnyskywalker]

Dumbledore and his waffle-words! *headdesk*

I would say that maybe one of the Order members made some explicit magical statement along the lines of, "Even though we aren't currently meeting here, we may continue to use #12 as HQ at some undetermined time," so that the charm would interpret this as the secret still being active--but given the quote about not using it as HQ, that sounds less likely.

I'm tempted to think that Dumbledore worded the secret poorly to give Voldemort a fighting chance of getting in. At least subconsciously. But maybe he's just made such a habit of speaking ambiguously to not-technically-lie to people and cover his ass that he genuinely forgot how to word it more clearly.

[sunnyskywalker]

Yeah, you could also do a lot with how they worded it, but I thought I might as well add a possibility to the mess. Because it wasn't messy enough ;-)

I like your point about the wording including "the Potters" or "the Potter family," so that the secret expired as soon as there was only one Potter left. They might have even considered the possibility that both adults might die and Harry would need to be findable in order to be rescued. They did a poor job of planning ahead, but maybe they at least sort of tried to plan for a few different scenarios? I'd like to think they weren't totally inept. They were all supposed to be clever, even if they were overconfident and also kept ignorant of the full situation by Dumbledore.

Hm, I wonder how they did word it? "The Potters live at..." might just make it impossible for anyone to remember that they live there but not stop anyone from seeing that they happen to be in the house at the moment, if the charm is very literal. "The Potters are in X Cottage...?"

And what would be good wording for this sort of thing? I really wonder how useful the Fidelius Charm is. It seems awfully easy to botch the execution with poor wording. Maybe it isn't used frequently not because it's all that difficult to cast, but because it's so easy to word things poorly and find yourself rudely disillusioned about how safe you are. Maybe that's why the Black family didn't use it even though they were layering protections onto their house. Dumbledore being Dumbledore would have been confident that he would never make such a mistake. (Assuming he didn't make one deliberately, if you're feeling cynical.)

[chantaldormand]

What would be a good way to word such thing?
Hmm, the most obvious way is to hide existence of the family (Lily, James and Harry). That would create massive problems for both the family and any institution that processed any kind of paperwork related to them. Not to mention that there is possibility that the more people know the secret before you cast the spell the more power you must use to hide it.
Another possibility, if the parents knew about prophecy, is to hide existence of Harry. Obviously that, depending on how Hogwart's admission system would react, could exclude Harry from going to Hogwarts, but when you are concerned parent with death thread hanging over your kid's head, you have more important things to worry about.

IMHO the best scenario would be this: a few months in advance move your money/assets, preferably in non-obvious way, shortly before using FC legally change your name, have FC's secret be that your new identity=you, then move to another country.

If you really want Potters to live at GH and successfully use FC to hide them I have one more scenario for you: Fidelious Charm Matryoshka Doll!
1)Have Potters hide 24/7 in the cottage, yes that is right, no going out not even for groceries or walks.
2)Secret Keeper no. 1 hides fact that Potters are at this location. The more specific language, the better.
3)Secret Keeper no. 2 hides who is the first Secret Keeper, thus controls whom he can reveal the information. Depending on how you word it you could make so that the first secret keeper wouldn't remember that he holds the secret unless he was approached by person vetted by the second secret keeper.
4)Create the third secret keeper who would only know location of the first secret keeper, but wouldn't know who it was.

In this scenario you could torture to death Sirius and he wouldn't be able to tell you where the Potters are only who is their Secret keeper. You could torture to death Peter and he wouldn't be able to tell you where the Potters are unless you were vetted by Sirius. Heck first you would need to get Remus talking to learn where you might find Peter. And if the secret keepers do errands for the Potters, it would be easy to notice when somebody disappears, so you would know when to start to run.

Obviously this plan is nuts, but if I was in the Potters place I wouldn't care about costs or how insane I would look to my friends :P

If wording is as important as I suspect, then Fidelius is very tricky spell to set up. Honestly the best thing for anyone who wants to set up this kind of thing, is consulting it with a lawyer and security expert so all loopholes and holes in security would be discovered during planning stage of the initiative.
Considering how much Albus likes convoluted plans and vague language, I wouldn't be surprised if his overconfidence made him not consult anyone and create faulty security system :P

[sunnyskywalker]

Ooh, I like your Fidelius Charm Matryoshka Doll scenario! It's usually a bad idea to have only a single line of defense or a single person who knows everything, and you're right, they shouldn't worry about looking silly under the circumstances.

I suspect there's a whole legal specialty just for magical contracts. I have no evidence for this other than gut feeling and Umbridge's blood quill. Signing in blood is a traditional way to seal contracts according to some legends, right? She's just misusing it.

And yeah, Dumbledore thought he didn't need legal advice just for a simple little charm he could do in his sleep. *headdesk*

[chantaldormand]

Blood in the Potterverse has a lot of power; we have Unicorn blood in PS, purebloods valuing blood, certain potions using blood and Voldemort using Harry's blood as part of ritual. I would say that no matter what traditions we have in our world, in HP verse blood is powerful enough to seal deals.
IMHO goblins probably use the quill for certain types of paperwork. Knowing them their human employees probably have to sign their contract in blood.

Because Harry is so sheltered/incurious we never learn if there is *lawyer* profession in WW. Heck considering OotP I would even say that there is no such thing as attorney or prosecutor in WW. Perhaps people who study law fulfil a bit different role from what we see in real world? Perhaps they only advise instead of representing?
After all "representing" suggests an *active role* and as DH showed us being proactive is bad :P

[jana-ch.livejournal.com]

In Mottsnave’s series of post-DH stories on fanfic-dot-net (https://www.fanfiction.net/u/1854509/Mottsnave – highly recommended!) we meet seventh-year Slytherin Charles Frederick Montgomery Sullivan Urquhart, aka “Sully”, who specializes in vows and contracts, and plans to join the legal firm of Farnsworth, Frobisher, Fotheringham, and Khan after graduation. When Millie Bulstrode threatens to bring in “that swot Granger” to write a contract she needs, Sully says, “Oh, lord no, she’d leave all sorts of loopholes.” He’s a minor character, but I like him. Really, Slytherin House has to be full of pre-law students, along with all its artists and actors.

[sunnyskywalker]

Way late obviously, but I was re-reading and remembered that Scrimgeour asked Hermione if she was considering a career in magical law. So there is some sort of legal profession. They must not be entitled to barristers to represent them at trial, but you can still have solicitors who draw up wills and write contracts and such. Maybe some of them do advise on spell wording for spells involving protection, inheritance, and things like that.

And maybe there are civil suits. Lucius Malfoy might have overlooked an opportunity to fight for damages from Buckbeak's injury as well as pushing for the "criminal" trial. Okay, fine, Buckbeak escaped execution, but Hogwarts still owes the Malfoys a gazillion galleons, so there!

[vermouth1991.livejournal.com]

I'm just amazed sometimes at the flippancy of the language in HP books. Prof. Flitwich saying that You-Know-Who wouldn't be able to find the Potters even if he'd pressed his face flat at their house's window glass comes to mind.