The funny part is that Dumbledore warded Grimmauld with the Fidelius. But I do agree with you.

 

I think Dumbledore was serious when guarding the stone. When facing Voldemort what other wizard could pose a serious hindrance besides Dumbledore. He probably allowed the other teachers to put defenses to stop the everyday student, but when it comes down to it, only Dumbledore's defense was needed. I'm sure he knew this and planned accordingly as we saw with the Mirror (which worked by the way).

 

It's important to remember how many of the traps they got past because of Quirrell going before them, as well. Without Quirrell, they probably would have all been eaten by Fluffy. Without Quirrell, they'd have been flying around on brooms looking for keys all night, and without Quirrell, they'd have had to fight another, even larger troll than before, upon whom the Levitation Charm may not have worked with as much success another time.

I also have the feeling the Chess Set would have had protections to make those attempting to get to the stone play the game, and unless you're Ron or Voldemort (or probably Dumbledore), good luck. There's also the fact that apparently only Harry would have ever been ignorant/innocent enough to only want the stone to protect it, and not to use it.

EDIT: I suppose Harry had the flute from Hagrid, IIRC, but I don't know how well that would have worked.

 

Did Dumbledore know? No, of course he didn't. He isn't your typical manipulative!dumbles and therefore does not have access to the entire story beforehand.

He did suspect though. Everything pointed towards it being Voldemort, but all Dumbledore has at this point is his own suspicions and rumors of a "dark presence".

The point brought up yo prove the defenses inadequate usually goes something along the line "If dumbles wanted he could have just layered super powerful wards around the stone blahblahblah.".

The thing about all the wards is that there is no real mention of them in the books. Hogwarts is supposed to have super wards, but how many things that should be kept out got in there over the years? If they can't keep out dementors, someone who is on a mission to kill person under their protection and cursed object's than what do they do? Grimmauld place was supposed to have wards, but the only protection we see is fidelius. The DH tent actually used wards, but those were more of a hiding your location from the outside world than anything else. Same with the Unplottable spell and the hide-shit-from-muggles spell. The only ward that keeps people out on a specific criteria I can think of is the age line.

Then there is whole host of trick walls. The cave with the locket, the RoR, Hogwarts kitchens, all the secret passages, DoM doors etc. Plus all the guardian creatures. Dragons used to guard the golden egg and within gringotts, the sphinx used in third task, hell even the basilisk could sorta count.

So perhaps that's the best magic can do? If we look at it that way the protections were more than adequate. Two different guard animals and four different trick doors. That is if you count the mirror as a door.

Why he brought the stone to Hogwarts? Dumbledore is justifiably arrogant. He believed that he is the only one capable of protecting the stone if his suspicions of the would be thief being Voldemort turned out to be true.

 

Before Albus said this Snape had been bitching about his first impression of Harry, which means Dumbledore knew exactly who Quirrell was very early on in the year.

 

Quirrell-Voldemort couldn't retrieve the Stone. So. Yeah, pretty decent protection all things considered! Better than Gringotts, given the whole deal with Quirrellmort actually successfully breaking into the place.

As for why, probably something something Hogwarts super magical something. Also, the Mirror of Erised was at Hogwarts. It's never really said either way whether or not Harry was supposed to find the Mirror over Christmas.

I lean fairly strongly towards Dumbledore playing it straight as regards protection. "Just testing Harry" doesn't really square with his characterization in the other books; if anything he didn't do enough testing of Harry.

The farthest you can probably reasonably stretch it was that Harry was given the choice to trust the protections or face Voldemort.

If you take it to "Harry was a fallback in case the protections failed" or something similar, it'd be this. And you'd have to bend the characterizations a little. If you go to IT WAS ALL JUST A TEST LOL you're derailing the established characterizations.

It's a bit of a plot hole to be sure, but just...indulge your inner Mystery Science Theater guy. Unless you're thinking of writing a terrible indy-Harry Omniscient-and-Manipulative Dumbledore fic in which case kill yourself.

 

How about we ignore what Harry knows? He's an eleven year old, limited narrator who is receiving information from a man a dozen times his age. Dumbledore has no intention of giving Harry most of the information we learn later, so why would he be entirely honest about the situation with the stone?

 

If I'm remembering this right, we haven't seen the Fidelias Charm used on anything other than houses. Could be that you can't just cast it on a box and be done.

 

If that's true, and it very well could be, that just illustrates the point even better.

Lock the stone in a box, use magic to put together a little hut out in the middle of ass-nowhere on the Scottish Moors, put the box in the hut, and then use the Fidelius to hide the hut, with Dumbledore as the secret keeper.

It's not an immediately obvious solution, because the Fidelius can only be used to hide buildings and areas, so it's not necessarily what someone would think of first when they have a small object like a stone that they need to hide. But on the other hand, it's easily the best solution, and requires minimal logical train of thought to get there.

But it's still probably beyond the means of most wizards to come up with such an idea.

 

I always like to think that Flamel got tired with his omnipresence in alchemy. Just imagine how many people must come to him; for immortality, for riches, for knowledge in alchemy, for knowledge in history. I imagine he just wanted to drop of the map, so he decided to fake his death.

But how do you fake your death if your immortal? He coudn't just get killed or make an accident, that would ruin his image. But then, in a talk with his young friend Albus, he had an idea! He would heroically forfeit his immortality and his stone to stop the Dark Lord of this age.

So he gave Albus his spare Philosophers Stone. That he could set a trap for and most certainly reveal Voldemort was just a bonus.

 

I always limit the shit out of the Fidelius in my head, otherwise it's an OP as shit spell.

For example, I play up the trust angle more. Fidelius can only be cast on a location that someone considers home. The spell would actually be cast on another person, as opposed to a location. Or at the very least linking a specific individual TO that location.

The person must spend X amount of time there. If they don't, it falls. This could be a good reason why Sirius had to stew at Grimmauld a bunch, and also why the Potters had to go deep into hiding.

The secret keeper can't spend a ton of time there. If they do, it falls. - You could vary the length of this one and the last one based upon how much trust is between the individuals and the strength of the caster.

There's a certain range on it (for example Grimmauld would be about as large as it goes, no Malfoy Mansion, or a Potter one for that matter, would also preclude Gringotts, Ministry shit, and Hogwarts.)

The person casting must actually trust the person they are casting it on, and probably vice versa as well. This prevents Voldemort from OP haxing his stupid hideouts.

It'd be one of the most difficult spells to cast considering its actual effect and the emotion required. It would limit the spell to only a few wizards.

You couldn't be your own secret keeper, as there is no trust there.

What do you guys think about that? Fidelius is one of the most interesting spells, and its retarded powerful so there has to be a reason its not all over the place. Otherwise you end up with stupid shit like Harry and his friends fideliusing the library for private study time and shit like that.

 

The only problem with your theory is that Bill Weasley cast it on his home and he was also the secret keeper .

 

All of them may not be viable in every context, and IIRC, DH did that to a few spells, but I found the majority of them to be interesting ways to approach the idea of limiting a potentially OP spell.

 

And, when Dumbledore dies, people suddenly find themselves another country of strange buildings that are filled with dangerous artifacts of painful death.


To be fair, my own thoughts were along the reasoning of Russano. As in, Fidelius must be very limited.

As for Bill, if you read Bungle in the Jungle, I guess the fairest guess would be that he tricked that Fidelius ward that he's an uncle and lives somewhere else. ;D Although, honestly, I have nothing that could explain him. Unless he was a Secret Keeper for other Weasleys and Arthur was for his house. But it's against the facts that we have, right?

 

Of course, that's all predicated on JKR actually being consistent with things like timelines. Anyone figure out if she was?

 

What?

No. Seriously. What?

 

I was confused as fuck by that sentence as well.

 

It's a natural extrapolation of hiding everything behind fidelius charm.

 

Only the people who were in on the Fidelias before Dumbledore's death were aware of Grimmauld Place afterwards. The spell didn't end with Dumbledore, it just made everyone who knew the secret into Secret Keepers.

 

Ah, you were saying that Dumbledore would of fidelius'd so many things over his lifetime that when it all ended everyone would look around and go "where the fuck did all this shit come from?". Is that right?