A certain someone tried to do this, but got accused of writing a Mary-Sue. You fuckers.

But yeah, it's retarded that all of Slytherin is basically evil

 

I was thinking someone in Harry's age range but yes, she does qualify. Marrying a Muggleborn post-Hogwarts + raising Teddy with Harry's help makes her a close friend (although this is purely post-Hogwarts and not really what I was looking for). Good look.

 

i'd love to know a little more about the founders of Hogwarts and the grounds itself. Perhaps even a bit more about the Unspeakables of the ministry. we know that they research about magic but how come Voldemort was able to do such dark magic as the 'Horcrux' and Dumbledore was the only one who was able to piece together what he did with his information?

 

-Clarification on the Fidelius Charm. My personal headcanon: Fidelity really is key. You have to put your faith in someone else, so the Secret Keeper can't be someone who lives inside the charmed home. In turn, the magic doesn't allow the Secret Keeper to be forced to reveal the Secret. It can only be given voluntarily.

 

Bill Weasley was the Secret-Keeper for his own home, Shell Cottage, in the last book.

 

Ah, fair enough. I forgot about that. Still prefer my way.

 

This is another Rowling mistake, because if the above was a possibility, why would James choose Peter (or Sirius) in the first place?

 

There could be an owner/occupant distinction. Occupants can be their own secret keeper, owners can't. Wasn't Shell Cottage owned by Muriel?

 

I'm not sure if there are any explicit rules for fidelius in canon.

If we look at the example of OotP Grimmauld Place, Sirius owns the house and Dumbledore is the secret keeper. Dumbledore can enter and leave as he pleases, and presumably if he wanted to live there nothing would be stopping him. So why couldn't Sirius be his own secret keeper? Presumably because the charm itself requires trust of a secret in another soul, i.e the one who wants to keep something hidden (Sirius) has to trust the secret to someone else (Dumbledore).

The question then becomes why doesn't this work between couples. So as you said, why couldn't the owner of the home at Godric's Hollow (James) trust the secret to Lily, who as Dumbledore has shown at Grimmauld could live there no problem. I can imagine this is what happened at Shell Cottage, with Fleur owning the home and trusting the secret to Bill.

My personal headcanon why this didn't happen with James and Lily is that married couples aren't considered magically satisfactory for being secret keeper. Much like how in court a prosecutor can't make your wife testify against you (I think, ask Taure to be sure), magic assumes your spouse will always hold your secrets anyway. It works for Bill and Fleur because either Fleur's parents bought the house as a holiday home, or the couple purchased it as their marital home before they were actually married and had it under Fidelius already as an order safehouse.

 

It's because the plot needed it and Rowling doesn't care about plot holes. Ron also told the location of Shell Cottage in DH despite not being the secret keeper.

 

Maybe Ron was also made a Secret-Keeper of Shell Cottage. We know there can be more then one Secret-Keeper because many Order of the Phoenix members became Secret-Keepers for Grimmauld Place after Dumbledore died.

Multiple Secret-Keepers might be a way to make silentclock's interpretation of the Fidelius Charm hold up with canon. Maybe residents can be Secret-Keepers, but the charm requires at least one Secret-Keeper that doesn't reside at the hidden location.

 

I think one of the most important things we need is a realistic perspective on the other houses from their own internal point of view. In canon, we see other houses from Harry's point of view, which usually results in stereotyping.

Almost everything we see about Gryffindor in canon is mostly what we would see from any other normal group of kids. I think the same would hold for all the other houses, with any differences coming not from external factors like stereotyped house characteristics, but from the inter-house interactions.

 

I've always wondered about Wormtail's blasting curse that killed 12 people simultaneously, and left a crater in the street. While we see a few other pieces of magic capable of a similar scale of destruction, we never see anyone else's blasting curse do anywhere near that level of damage.

So either:

1. Blasting curses can do that much damage generally, and wizards are just holding back out of fear of collateral damage/friendly fire.

2. Wormtail cast some impressively powerful magic that few other wizards could match.

While I appreciate the former for its ability to further empower wizards on the wizards vs Muggles spectrum, it stretches belief somewhat that it would never have been used in all the books, especially given the sanity levels of some of the villains. So I lean towards the second.

Wormtail, while clearly nowhere near the magical slouch the Marauders considered him (he did manage the Animagus transformation, after all) is never presented as a particularly impressive wizard. This makes it hard to reconcile his level of talent generally and the power of that curse in particular.

If I were augmenting canon and explaining the act, I would make it so that the cutting off of his finger was itself part of the magic. Dark magic seems to appreciate the power of sacrifice, as we saw in Voldemort's resurrection. So maybe Wormtail cutting off his finger gave his blasting curse a huge boost in power. It doesn't even have to have been intentional.

 

There is a third explanation. Wormtail, like Lockhart, could have been good at that one spell.

 

4: He hit a Muggle gas pipe (purposely). Boom.

 

5. Sirius himself cast a Blasting curse (or some other curse) at Pettigrew, their spells collided and combined into a huge blast. Sirius actually thought he killed Pettigrew until he saw him in The Prophet.

But I'm all for Blood Magic!Pettigrew.

About augmenting canon, I'm currently planning to include in my fic a genetic disorder that affects Pure-Bloods, due to inbreeding. It's the main reason for the dwindling number of Pure-Bloods. I'm thinking dementia (a la Walburga Black or the Gaunts) is a symptom, but feel free to add more.

 

No, because this is not augmenting canon but modifying it.

 

I wasn't suggesting that as augmenting canon, but as a possible scenario.

 

And like I said, it isn't a possible scenario, because it directly contradicts canon facts.

 

Nevermind, I've checked the book and you're right. Seems that Pettigrew even did it all with his wand behind his back... if Sirius is reliable.