Oh my god! You killed the fourth wall! You bastard!

Yeah. Right. Ronald, who's too stupid to remember an incantation that both Flitwick AND Hermione have just demonstrated seconds ago (and that reeks of obliviation after the troll scene, to make Ronald look better than he is For The Greater Good (TM)) can keep in mind sounds that have no meaning to him, and that he, nor anyone else, can't learn, that he can't produce because it's hereditaryly acquired or in ONE singular case magically transferred, over FIVE years to save the world in an emotionally charged situation within the chaos of a battle. Sure.

Many authors have put their conspirational spin on that scene. From Dumbledore replacing the real snake speak by just some hissing as password to Ronald being a parselmouth but keeping his gob shut about it, because HE knows how people like him think it's a dark trait.

Yep. Definitely. No one ever has found this place. It's just, er, that in such magical places, er, magic sometimes acts up and conjures tons of silly useless things in completely secret places that no one will ever find. Yes, that must be it. There must be hundreds of secret caches of junk all over the world at each and every magical place. The one under Stonehenge must be humongous after 5,000 years of use. Er, perhaps.

There is no curse on the defence post. Otherwise Dumbledore could've just hired a curse breaker to solve the little problem they're specifically trained for. Even if he doesn't want to hire goblins, it's not as if he doesn't know a light sided curse breaker personally, even if that would be for only a couple years, since Bill can't have been a curse breaker for long during Harry's first year. Still, Remus could've stayed...

By the way, why WAS Hermione the only one to find out that the monster is a basilisk? SLYTHERIN's monster, hm, would possibly be a kind of snake, huh? Makes sense since he could talk to them and he has one in his coat of arms. So, let's look up snakes in our fine book "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them". Because, as it's on the first years' book list, EVERYONE MUST have this book. And now let's look up snakes that can grow a thousand years old, after all, that's how long Slytherin has been dead.

It's clear what follows now: conspiracy theories galore, because there's NO way that NO ONE ever leafed through that book and found the basilisk entry.

Especially as Dumbledore himself wrote the foreword for that book and said that the knowledge in this book is the absolute minimum about magical creatures, that EVERYONE HAS TO know the content. And suddenly no one remembers that they're hauling the doorstopper around all year. AND no one ever finds a basic animals' book in the library... Really? Really really honestly?

the way i see it bill only said that they live at muriel, however the secret wasn't the fact that weasleys lived at muriel'sthe secret was location of muriel house. i mean trio could talk about grimould place as sirious house or headquarters.

Well, actually, I think Bill can tell Harry that the Weasleys are at Muriel's as long as he doesn't tell him WHERE that is. The secret is the location, not who is staying there or who owns the location. If I told you "let's meet at my place" that does not tell you where I live, does it?

What the plot demands, the plot gets.
Fuck Logic.

Couldn’t they also stun Lupin or something? I’m not sure if it’s canon or not that they are highly resistant to spells, but even if they are, surely that would be possible? You’d think that in all the time werewolves have existed that someone would have worked out a better way to deal with them on the full moon than brew an incredibly difficult potion that Ames them able to logically think so that if they just so happened to want to hurt someone even when not raving mad, they’d have a ridiculously easy way to hurt someone.

‘Most wizards haven’t an ounce of logic,’ as Hermione says in book one. That still implies that there are some who do, though. And if Snape made that puzzle, surely he’d be one of those logical wizards. You’d think he’d come up with something at some point, or surely someone else would have. The staff knew, and surely some students would have worked it out and actually been worried. Hermione could have just expressed her concerns, once she found out.

In fact, if there was a secure way of holding them - stupefy, petrificus totallus, asking the Room of Requirement for a way to securely hold werewolves and then replicating it (only works if they know about it, though).

And now I’ve thought of loads of ways the RoR can be used. How big can it get, I wonder? Or maybe you could replicate the charms on it to make something even more secure than (let’s face it, the safest place is not safe at all (also, wasn’t it ‘safest place in Britain’? The Flamels are French, right? So why hide the Stone in Britain? Why hide it beyond what they’d already done?)) any other supposedly safe place. There are so many things they could do, if they only thought for a few minutes.

They really need to introduce a ‘common sense’ class at Hogwarts.

That would also mean that all Voldemort would need to do is get someone like Draco to say ‘Voldemort’ while in the school.

And, if the taboo drops protections, couldn’t they just do it on a few really common words ‘a’, ‘the’, and so on, or maybe even spells. They might be alerted every millisecond, but they do already know where many Order members are. It would drop their own protections as well, but just casting Silencio on all the Death Eaters for the duration of the taboo (since it does end at some point) should work.

Actually, couldn’t the Ministry do a taboo on Avada Kedavra? Since it doesn’t seem possible to do it non-verbally. And Imperious and Crucio. I suppose you don’t exactly want to apparate (except it can’t be apparation if you can only apparate to places you’ve been) straight to where a potential murderer/torturer/mind-controller is, but surely it’ll help, right?

Admittedly there are other non-illegal spells to kill people (the spells aren’t illegal, usually, though killing people is), so all that that would mean is that they’d just have to be a bit more inventive in their spells. Might find one shorter than six syllables, too (in point of fact, couldn’t Voldemort have learnt a useful spell to do that). One use of an Unforgivable is that it can’t be shielded, I suppose.

Amazing.
Needed to be said.

I honestly think of the charm with two criteria.
1. the magic of the person powering the charm can not be the secret keeper.
2. The charm is very draining and either one person needs to be charging it daily and doing nothing else magically or multiple people/[leyline] need to be charging it.

Those unfortunately actually cover all it's plot holes on being used. For creating it one could saw that only 3 character have shown the skill to make it. Lily Potter, Bill Weasley and maybe Albus Dumbledore.

If you argue that Lily's protection of Harry was a ritualistic ward. then between that and the Fidius charm the potter's were probably having to recharge them with the majority of their combined magic. Because they both were charging it neither could be the secret keeper.

With Bill in the Order he could have made every other fidius we have seen. Headquarters either Sirius or possibly ambient magic, leylines, any B.S. for magic to not be pulled from a specific person. Burrow was charged by Molly, and Shell shack was charged by Fuere. No wards are mentioned for either Weasley family property so we don't have the power issue that the potter's faced.

Well isn't that the point. It's accidentally easy to get into but hard to actively find.

"The fangirls have wanted you to have mastery of Draco's wand for ages, Harry. Let it not be said that Jo does not indulge her fans."
Jimbocous bangs head on table, repreatedly ...

Interesting concept, never occurred to me. One of the reasons I'm enjoying your stuff is that total "out of the box" approach you take to canon. Thanks!