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JKR has revealed that:
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.
So, once the current generation have died off, the Black House will remain inaccessible forever. Unless Dumbledore knows some way of revealing the secret posthumously, and if anyone does it would be him.
But what struck me first was, why would anyone volunteer to be a Secret Keeper? Surely the most infallible way of keeping a Secret would be to persuade someone to Keep the secret, perform the Fidelius Charm, then kill them? The Secret Keeper is caught between having to trust the people in whose interest the secret is kept, and facing torture at the hands of those who want it revealed.
So I suppose it's to Sirius' credit that he didn't kill Peter after the swap was made, as that would have protected James forever - but given Peter's feeling of exclusion (expressed at the end of PoA), it's not unlikely that Peter feared that might happen. It would certainly add weight to his decision to turn to Voldemort in his quest for self-preservation.
I do like this stipulation though, because it makes the trust involved in Fidelius reciprocal. I'd always thought that it would be frightening to make someone your Secret keeper, because they would then hold your life in their hands. But this way the Secret Keeper also has to trust that those s/he protects values her/him more than their lives. Neat.
ETA: More discussions on Fidelius can be found here, here and here.
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.
So, once the current generation have died off, the Black House will remain inaccessible forever. Unless Dumbledore knows some way of revealing the secret posthumously, and if anyone does it would be him.
But what struck me first was, why would anyone volunteer to be a Secret Keeper? Surely the most infallible way of keeping a Secret would be to persuade someone to Keep the secret, perform the Fidelius Charm, then kill them? The Secret Keeper is caught between having to trust the people in whose interest the secret is kept, and facing torture at the hands of those who want it revealed.
So I suppose it's to Sirius' credit that he didn't kill Peter after the swap was made, as that would have protected James forever - but given Peter's feeling of exclusion (expressed at the end of PoA), it's not unlikely that Peter feared that might happen. It would certainly add weight to his decision to turn to Voldemort in his quest for self-preservation.
I do like this stipulation though, because it makes the trust involved in Fidelius reciprocal. I'd always thought that it would be frightening to make someone your Secret keeper, because they would then hold your life in their hands. But this way the Secret Keeper also has to trust that those s/he protects values her/him more than their lives. Neat.
ETA: More discussions on Fidelius can be found here, here and here.
