Talk:Muggles' Guide to Harry Potter/Magic/Fidelius

"J. K. Rowling had stated that when a Secret-Keeper dies, the ability to divulge the secret dies with him."

That's not actually what she said. What she said was that upon the Secret-Keeper's death, no one who didn't know the secret would then suddenly know it. That's not the same thing as the secret could not be divulged after the Secret-Keeper's death.


 * Her actual words, from the quoted link: "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." True, it says nothing about everyone privy to the secret then becoming secret-keeper, but she also says, "a secret (eg, 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 subjects of the secret themselves – can divulge the secret. Even if one of the Potters had been captured, force fed Veritaserum or placed under the Imperius Curse, they would not have been able to give away the whereabouts of the other two. The only people who ever knew their precise location were those whom Wormtail had told directly, but none of them would have been able to pass on the information." Which implies pretty strongly that if the original secret-keeper dies, the ability to divulge the secret dies with him. Chazz (talk) 21:06, 21 November 2008 (UTC)