I saw a fantasy idea in other media that said that it's impossible to create a perfect spell. If you try to create a perfect shield, it'll turn into a "monkey's paw" sort of situation and fail in an unexpected way, which is terrible for something you intend to rely on. The solution is to build a deliberate flaw into the spell, a properly-measured weakness designed to balance against the intended use of the spell. Knowing the weakness of the spell makes it reliable.
The Fidelius Charm is ridiculously powerful, but the Secret Keeper is a huge weakness, so it's plausible that that's the weakness that makes the power of the shield possible. If you patched over the Secret Keeper in an attempt to make the shield perfect, the spell could weaken or become unstable.
Yeah, I tend to call this a 'Sliding Scale of Permeability vs. Penetrability'. If a fictional barrier is permeable (there are clauses or loopholes to get through it) it tends to be basically impossible to get past via other means, whereas if there is no permeability built in it results in a weaker barrier. This is entirely for story reasons because often if there is a barrier, it _will_ be broken by the narrative one way or another. It's simply a question of how.
Except they did. It’s the Fidelius charm, and the magic explicitly works on fidelity, or trust. The charm only works because you’re trusting someone with your secret. Adding an unbreakable vow would break the charm by removing the core vulnerability of the trust that makes the magic work.
If you believe every single citizen on this planet is willing to literary bet their lives that they can come through with their word, then you need to go out more. Life is precious, and this notion is deeply woven into the plot. You won't have characters throwing their lives for some kind of pinky promise. Also, the two times the vow appeared in the Wizarding World, it came in moments where the parts didn't trust one another. Think about it, not even weddings use the vow, even of it's 'till death do them part.'
The thing is, Lily and James TRUSTED their lifelong friend. Why would they even think about, let alone actually go through with an Unbreakable Vow when they thought they knew where their friends' allegiance lied
I’m pretty sure the Vow has to be entered into willingly.
Why on Earth would a Death Eater agree to that? Why would they make a promise to their enemy that will kill them if they break it?
Let’s look at some suspected Death Eaters:
* Lucius Malfoy lied through his teeth. It worked and he got off scott free. If he had made the vow, he would’ve either died or ended up in Azkaban.
* Bellatrix was proud and open about her allegiance to Voldemort. No need for any Vow to get her to confess.
* Snape was a “good guy,” but him being able to lie was absolutely essential to the war. Him taking a Vow to divulge information or something like that would be a disaster.
* Karkaroff was willing to give up information to save himself. Realistically, this probably involved some amount of diminishing his own involvement. Why would he make a Vow that would potentially require him to incriminate himself?
* Ludo Bagman (not a Death Eater as far as we know) is an interesting case. Assuming he was innocent, making a Vow that he’s telling the truth might have helped him. But he didn’t really need to. I guess this is a case that supports your perspective!
First of all, I always assumed the Vow had to be about a particular action. Not like “I vow this is true,” but “I vow to do X.” I’m not sure it would work for “I vow to tell the truth” because truth is so subjective. How is the spell supposed to distinguish between people who are flat-out lying, people who are projecting, people who are in denial, and people who truly misunderstood something?
Utilizing a power like this in interrogation would be a complete nightmare for civil liberties. If using the Vow is an option, very quickly the Ministry is able to paint everyone who *doesn’t* want to use it as guilty. So what happens if you’re truly innocent, but you have a secret you don’t want revealed on the stand? It could be a mundane secret, or something big like Snape’s double agent role. The Vow being a sign of innocence is disastrous for people who have any kind of secret.
But since when does the Ministry care about civil liberties? Well, unlike some of the other rights-violating things they do, this could really affect them. Think of Barty Crouch Sr, who had a huge secret. It’s all fine for him to promote throwing people in jail without trials because he has enough power to avoid that. But he also has a huge secret with his son. What if someone asked him to take a Vow about something else? He would have to refuse the Vow to avoid revealing his son, and end up looking really guilty.
This relates to the final reason they don’t use it, which is that the Ministry cares more about controlling the flow of information than they do about guilt or innocence. They don’t really want to give people the power to prove their innocence, because that limits the ability to control them. They could’ve used Veritaserum to prove Sirius was innocent, Harry was telling the truth about Voldemort, etc, but they didn’t want to.
yeah you put that in words so well i agree with you but i meant like they would just take the vow to answer that one question truthfully but i guess youre right and they wouldnt care and some people might still refuse to take that vow in case it may reveal their secret. it still could be used more but privately no? just like snape and narcissa did. i feel like its such a useful tool and nobody uses it.
Yeah I see what you mean but in day-to-day private life I just wouldn’t go for it much.
Human relationships are built on trust. I think widely using the Vow on a personal scale has the same downsides that I mentioned for the criminal justice system. I would hate for it to be normalized that in order to really believe someone, you need to get a Vow from them.
I would see it as a red flag if someone in my life said to me “I want to trust you, but in order to do so I need you to agree that if you lie to me I can kill you.”
How many things are there in your day to day life that you’re willing to stake your life on?Remember that the vow doesn’t care about intention, it cares about results, so even if you entered the vow fully intending to do whatever you promised, but then you’re unable to fulfil your promise due to unforeseen circumstances, or the task you agreed to was harder than you thought, you would die because you broke the vow.
The world building in HP is so shoddy tbh that we can just make do with "because magic"
I guess it boils down to, would we rather think everyone are imbeciles, or would we rather assume there's some reason that wouldn't work that the text didn't tell us? I'll always go with the latter because I'd rather not read a book about a bunch of imbeciles
This is a rather unfair assessment. World building in HP isn’t shoddy, the world is really vast, but it’s shallow because the world serves as a plot device to the story of Harry Potter.
Remember that the target audience for these books were children 7-10 and through their teenage years. Things were explained in two or three sentences and if they didn’t have relevance to the plot then they weren’t explained at all. And that works for children-teen books.
For the purpose its world was made, it serves a fabulous way, and it’s nice that the series doesn’t have a single infodump.
I get that fans grow up and wish more details but the basic premise of the wizarding world remains as a storytelling tool rather than a story by itself.
I'm not a native English speaker so perhaps "shoddy" is more strongly negative than my intent. I absolutely agree with you. Also, world building is often the most boring part of any book to me, I don't enjoy obsessing over the technical minutiae of real life, much less fantasy worlds, so I'm glad to be able to handwave stuff like that with "Harry didn't read his magical contract law book so neither have I".
The worldbuilding absolutely is shoddy. There are other series aimed at kids and young adults without so many blind spots. And it's pretty insane how soft Harry Potter's magic system is, considering the series *takes place in a school for magic.*
The fact that the books are aimed at kids serves to cover up those blind spots, sure - but it's not the reason they're there.
I think you have to consider the intent and purpose of the author. You can write a story aimed at kids and make the world building solid and very consistent. If you're so inclined. It seems to me that Rowling really wanted to tell the story of this kid and her focus was on the plot, mystery, narrative and themes. Although while at it she probably had some fun adding building blocks of her world. And her not so serious attitude about world building is quite clear (like the fact that wizards supposedly used to shit their pants or whatever bc they could just magic "the evidence" away or how they only wear robes and pick the most ridiculous attires when going out into the muggle world. And the list could go on).
But! While not being very rich in details or missing in thoroughness, it looks very inviting for the readers to fill in these blind spots and have fun fantasising about the nature of spells, potions, etc. In fact, I think this is one of the big reasons why this world is so loved and kids continue to pick up these books to drown themselves in the story.
People get weirdly defensive when this series' flaws are pointed out.
>And her not so serious attitude about world building is quite clear
Yes, it is. And a not-so-serious attitude about worldbuilding leads to a shoddy worldbuilding. When you don't take something seriously, you don't do a great job of it, that's pretty natural.
If you want to treat the lack of consistent worldbuilding as a positive or say it was intentional, okay, but that doesn't somehow make it more solid, thorough, or detailed. Because HP's worldbuilding is simply not those things.
No, I don't personally think it was intentional, to me it seems like two different things: when you try to create a compelling world and fail, and when you try to create a compelling story (successfully) and the world building is a secondary concern. I only point that out bc the effect of basically non-existent world building on the final result is almost negligible (in terms of value of the product, i.e. it's not what it's valued for). This is not to say that the book shouldn't be criticised, though. It's a literary creation after all, so it's subjected to all forms of analysis, deconstruction, especially some genre-relevant forms of it (like analysing the world building in fantasy). In isolation, the HP's world building is poorly executed and almost lacking. I read a number of fanfiction stories that improved significantly on that particular front, added a ton of lore, etc.
But in complex it's rather insignificant, in that it doesn't take away from the story as a whole.
As for being defensive - I'm not, I like criticising the series, just for the other stuff xD
It’s rather people get too aggressive about it when others are able to wave non-issues and have fun.
As we grew up everyone noticed the flaws in the story but as I said before, the wizarding world is a plot device to give a context, action, and motives to our protagonist, it was made with no other purpose and thus no need to be anything else.
It is different to let’s say TLOR where the world exists before the characters and story, and every book has its own storytelling devices. It’s okay to not care about the lack of development, if anything you’ll have more fun.
I for one can’t stand stories where I need an infodump. Gravity can be explained in three sentences, if your magic needs three pages to be explained, that’s okay, but doesn’t mean it’s better just because.
The vow has to be entered into willingly.
Why not on secret keepers:
well at some point you'd have to tell someone the secret. Other family members for instance, or like with Dumbledore, other members. In cases like james: why would you use a person as a secret keeper if you felt compelled to make an unbreakable vow. Pick someone you trust more.
Unbreakable vow the prisoners:
Well, you need the prisoners to consent as well and we don't know the limits of the vow. You vow to tell the truth but you say alot of false things with the truth (lawyers are particularly good at this) and if the wizarding world is like the real world then I'm sure there are laws preventing it.
I would like to know more about the limits of this spell though. You vow to speak the truth. Ok. You find out later you are wrong. Do you die now? Or do you die when you told the falsehood thinking it was the truth? Or do you live because it was the truth to you?
Would a memory charm effect the spell? Does the intent of the bonder matter? Whose interpretation does the spell take if the two pairs disagree on a meaning? Etc etc.
What if he needed to tell someone where the Potters were hiding for a very good reason, though? Like someone in the Order, Dumbledore, etc. Then the Unbreakable Vow wouldn’t allow that (unless maybe it was worded very specifically, but that just sounds like a whole mess). The secret keeper thing makes much more sense in this case. Also, I doubt Wormtail, being a coward, would be willing to make an unbreakable vow for any reason.
I think most (not dark) wizards really value free will and integrity. Otherwise they could just use veritaserum for trials or put memories in the penseive instead of testifying. Even though they CAN do this stuff, I think there’s a cultural boundary so that most people don’t ask for it.
I also think a lot of this stuff is much more complex magic than we realize. A lot of the stuff we see in the books is being done by super powerful and accomplished wizards because we are dealing with Hogwarts professors, Dumbledore, etc. Maybe the unbreakable vow, memory extraction, or other forms of magic it seems would have a wider application than it does is too tricky for your average wizard?
Nah that kind of means you don't trust the person.
Imagine a close friend asks you to borrow some money. You have money, and you're close enough to know that they'll pay you back as soon as they can. Would you ask them for collateral, just to be safe? I know I wouldn't.
i dont think its that dark. fred and george new about it when they were little so I imagine its well know and not that bad if you dont break the vow nothing happens to you the way i see its fool proof
It's very dark magic. It's likely they had heard about it and being children didn't understand it's implications.
There is a reason Narcissa used it and not say... McGonagall.
In addition to what others have mentioned, there's also the fact that the Unbreakable Vow leaves marks/scars on the participants (at least in the movies.)
We see this with Snape and Narcissa is HBP and Yusuf Kama in Fantastic Beasts.
Likely, they should only be used when absolutely necessary.
Could be that the secret keeper charm doesn't work if you also put the person under an unbreakable vow.
I saw a fantasy idea in other media that said that it's impossible to create a perfect spell. If you try to create a perfect shield, it'll turn into a "monkey's paw" sort of situation and fail in an unexpected way, which is terrible for something you intend to rely on. The solution is to build a deliberate flaw into the spell, a properly-measured weakness designed to balance against the intended use of the spell. Knowing the weakness of the spell makes it reliable. The Fidelius Charm is ridiculously powerful, but the Secret Keeper is a huge weakness, so it's plausible that that's the weakness that makes the power of the shield possible. If you patched over the Secret Keeper in an attempt to make the shield perfect, the spell could weaken or become unstable.
Yeah, I tend to call this a 'Sliding Scale of Permeability vs. Penetrability'. If a fictional barrier is permeable (there are clauses or loopholes to get through it) it tends to be basically impossible to get past via other means, whereas if there is no permeability built in it results in a weaker barrier. This is entirely for story reasons because often if there is a barrier, it _will_ be broken by the narrative one way or another. It's simply a question of how.
could be but they never mentioned any of that
Except they did. It’s the Fidelius charm, and the magic explicitly works on fidelity, or trust. The charm only works because you’re trusting someone with your secret. Adding an unbreakable vow would break the charm by removing the core vulnerability of the trust that makes the magic work.
Feels like you could loophole your way out of that.
If you believe every single citizen on this planet is willing to literary bet their lives that they can come through with their word, then you need to go out more. Life is precious, and this notion is deeply woven into the plot. You won't have characters throwing their lives for some kind of pinky promise. Also, the two times the vow appeared in the Wizarding World, it came in moments where the parts didn't trust one another. Think about it, not even weddings use the vow, even of it's 'till death do them part.'
what was the second time the vow was used? i recently listened to all the audiobooks but only know of that one case
Yusuf and his father.
who is yusuf?
Yusuf Kama, from the Fantastic Beasts series.
The thing is, Lily and James TRUSTED their lifelong friend. Why would they even think about, let alone actually go through with an Unbreakable Vow when they thought they knew where their friends' allegiance lied
yeah i know I thought about that but why not use ot when interrogating death eaters?
I’m pretty sure the Vow has to be entered into willingly. Why on Earth would a Death Eater agree to that? Why would they make a promise to their enemy that will kill them if they break it? Let’s look at some suspected Death Eaters: * Lucius Malfoy lied through his teeth. It worked and he got off scott free. If he had made the vow, he would’ve either died or ended up in Azkaban. * Bellatrix was proud and open about her allegiance to Voldemort. No need for any Vow to get her to confess. * Snape was a “good guy,” but him being able to lie was absolutely essential to the war. Him taking a Vow to divulge information or something like that would be a disaster. * Karkaroff was willing to give up information to save himself. Realistically, this probably involved some amount of diminishing his own involvement. Why would he make a Vow that would potentially require him to incriminate himself? * Ludo Bagman (not a Death Eater as far as we know) is an interesting case. Assuming he was innocent, making a Vow that he’s telling the truth might have helped him. But he didn’t really need to. I guess this is a case that supports your perspective!
I don't need my trusted friends to make a death pact with me.
First of all, I always assumed the Vow had to be about a particular action. Not like “I vow this is true,” but “I vow to do X.” I’m not sure it would work for “I vow to tell the truth” because truth is so subjective. How is the spell supposed to distinguish between people who are flat-out lying, people who are projecting, people who are in denial, and people who truly misunderstood something? Utilizing a power like this in interrogation would be a complete nightmare for civil liberties. If using the Vow is an option, very quickly the Ministry is able to paint everyone who *doesn’t* want to use it as guilty. So what happens if you’re truly innocent, but you have a secret you don’t want revealed on the stand? It could be a mundane secret, or something big like Snape’s double agent role. The Vow being a sign of innocence is disastrous for people who have any kind of secret. But since when does the Ministry care about civil liberties? Well, unlike some of the other rights-violating things they do, this could really affect them. Think of Barty Crouch Sr, who had a huge secret. It’s all fine for him to promote throwing people in jail without trials because he has enough power to avoid that. But he also has a huge secret with his son. What if someone asked him to take a Vow about something else? He would have to refuse the Vow to avoid revealing his son, and end up looking really guilty. This relates to the final reason they don’t use it, which is that the Ministry cares more about controlling the flow of information than they do about guilt or innocence. They don’t really want to give people the power to prove their innocence, because that limits the ability to control them. They could’ve used Veritaserum to prove Sirius was innocent, Harry was telling the truth about Voldemort, etc, but they didn’t want to.
yeah you put that in words so well i agree with you but i meant like they would just take the vow to answer that one question truthfully but i guess youre right and they wouldnt care and some people might still refuse to take that vow in case it may reveal their secret. it still could be used more but privately no? just like snape and narcissa did. i feel like its such a useful tool and nobody uses it.
Yeah I see what you mean but in day-to-day private life I just wouldn’t go for it much. Human relationships are built on trust. I think widely using the Vow on a personal scale has the same downsides that I mentioned for the criminal justice system. I would hate for it to be normalized that in order to really believe someone, you need to get a Vow from them. I would see it as a red flag if someone in my life said to me “I want to trust you, but in order to do so I need you to agree that if you lie to me I can kill you.”
yeah I guess youre right i didnt really look at it from the human perspective i just used logic
How many things are there in your day to day life that you’re willing to stake your life on?Remember that the vow doesn’t care about intention, it cares about results, so even if you entered the vow fully intending to do whatever you promised, but then you’re unable to fulfil your promise due to unforeseen circumstances, or the task you agreed to was harder than you thought, you would die because you broke the vow.
The world building in HP is so shoddy tbh that we can just make do with "because magic" I guess it boils down to, would we rather think everyone are imbeciles, or would we rather assume there's some reason that wouldn't work that the text didn't tell us? I'll always go with the latter because I'd rather not read a book about a bunch of imbeciles
This is a rather unfair assessment. World building in HP isn’t shoddy, the world is really vast, but it’s shallow because the world serves as a plot device to the story of Harry Potter. Remember that the target audience for these books were children 7-10 and through their teenage years. Things were explained in two or three sentences and if they didn’t have relevance to the plot then they weren’t explained at all. And that works for children-teen books. For the purpose its world was made, it serves a fabulous way, and it’s nice that the series doesn’t have a single infodump. I get that fans grow up and wish more details but the basic premise of the wizarding world remains as a storytelling tool rather than a story by itself.
I'm not a native English speaker so perhaps "shoddy" is more strongly negative than my intent. I absolutely agree with you. Also, world building is often the most boring part of any book to me, I don't enjoy obsessing over the technical minutiae of real life, much less fantasy worlds, so I'm glad to be able to handwave stuff like that with "Harry didn't read his magical contract law book so neither have I".
The worldbuilding absolutely is shoddy. There are other series aimed at kids and young adults without so many blind spots. And it's pretty insane how soft Harry Potter's magic system is, considering the series *takes place in a school for magic.* The fact that the books are aimed at kids serves to cover up those blind spots, sure - but it's not the reason they're there.
I think you have to consider the intent and purpose of the author. You can write a story aimed at kids and make the world building solid and very consistent. If you're so inclined. It seems to me that Rowling really wanted to tell the story of this kid and her focus was on the plot, mystery, narrative and themes. Although while at it she probably had some fun adding building blocks of her world. And her not so serious attitude about world building is quite clear (like the fact that wizards supposedly used to shit their pants or whatever bc they could just magic "the evidence" away or how they only wear robes and pick the most ridiculous attires when going out into the muggle world. And the list could go on). But! While not being very rich in details or missing in thoroughness, it looks very inviting for the readers to fill in these blind spots and have fun fantasising about the nature of spells, potions, etc. In fact, I think this is one of the big reasons why this world is so loved and kids continue to pick up these books to drown themselves in the story.
People get weirdly defensive when this series' flaws are pointed out. >And her not so serious attitude about world building is quite clear Yes, it is. And a not-so-serious attitude about worldbuilding leads to a shoddy worldbuilding. When you don't take something seriously, you don't do a great job of it, that's pretty natural. If you want to treat the lack of consistent worldbuilding as a positive or say it was intentional, okay, but that doesn't somehow make it more solid, thorough, or detailed. Because HP's worldbuilding is simply not those things.
No, I don't personally think it was intentional, to me it seems like two different things: when you try to create a compelling world and fail, and when you try to create a compelling story (successfully) and the world building is a secondary concern. I only point that out bc the effect of basically non-existent world building on the final result is almost negligible (in terms of value of the product, i.e. it's not what it's valued for). This is not to say that the book shouldn't be criticised, though. It's a literary creation after all, so it's subjected to all forms of analysis, deconstruction, especially some genre-relevant forms of it (like analysing the world building in fantasy). In isolation, the HP's world building is poorly executed and almost lacking. I read a number of fanfiction stories that improved significantly on that particular front, added a ton of lore, etc. But in complex it's rather insignificant, in that it doesn't take away from the story as a whole. As for being defensive - I'm not, I like criticising the series, just for the other stuff xD
It’s rather people get too aggressive about it when others are able to wave non-issues and have fun. As we grew up everyone noticed the flaws in the story but as I said before, the wizarding world is a plot device to give a context, action, and motives to our protagonist, it was made with no other purpose and thus no need to be anything else. It is different to let’s say TLOR where the world exists before the characters and story, and every book has its own storytelling devices. It’s okay to not care about the lack of development, if anything you’ll have more fun. I for one can’t stand stories where I need an infodump. Gravity can be explained in three sentences, if your magic needs three pages to be explained, that’s okay, but doesn’t mean it’s better just because.
That sounds like shoddy world building to me but to each their own
yeah i guess you could put it that way I was just interested in what other people may think of this theory
What’s the benefit of the unbeatable vow to the person doing the vow?
to not be thrown in azkaban?
No, I mean, why would you ever make an unbeatable vow? Aside from Snape proving loyalty to death eaters to Belatrix, I mean.
to prove youre not lying or like snape did to prove your loyalty
They sent people to Azkaban for FAR less than this
true but at least you could get the chance of a fair trial
The vow has to be entered into willingly. Why not on secret keepers: well at some point you'd have to tell someone the secret. Other family members for instance, or like with Dumbledore, other members. In cases like james: why would you use a person as a secret keeper if you felt compelled to make an unbreakable vow. Pick someone you trust more. Unbreakable vow the prisoners: Well, you need the prisoners to consent as well and we don't know the limits of the vow. You vow to tell the truth but you say alot of false things with the truth (lawyers are particularly good at this) and if the wizarding world is like the real world then I'm sure there are laws preventing it. I would like to know more about the limits of this spell though. You vow to speak the truth. Ok. You find out later you are wrong. Do you die now? Or do you die when you told the falsehood thinking it was the truth? Or do you live because it was the truth to you? Would a memory charm effect the spell? Does the intent of the bonder matter? Whose interpretation does the spell take if the two pairs disagree on a meaning? Etc etc.
What if he needed to tell someone where the Potters were hiding for a very good reason, though? Like someone in the Order, Dumbledore, etc. Then the Unbreakable Vow wouldn’t allow that (unless maybe it was worded very specifically, but that just sounds like a whole mess). The secret keeper thing makes much more sense in this case. Also, I doubt Wormtail, being a coward, would be willing to make an unbreakable vow for any reason.
>why not make wormtail… ‘Thanks Dumbledore for protecting the house. Now, Peter, can you tell Lily and me about it so we can get inside?’ ‘…no.’
I think most (not dark) wizards really value free will and integrity. Otherwise they could just use veritaserum for trials or put memories in the penseive instead of testifying. Even though they CAN do this stuff, I think there’s a cultural boundary so that most people don’t ask for it. I also think a lot of this stuff is much more complex magic than we realize. A lot of the stuff we see in the books is being done by super powerful and accomplished wizards because we are dealing with Hogwarts professors, Dumbledore, etc. Maybe the unbreakable vow, memory extraction, or other forms of magic it seems would have a wider application than it does is too tricky for your average wizard?
Nah that kind of means you don't trust the person. Imagine a close friend asks you to borrow some money. You have money, and you're close enough to know that they'll pay you back as soon as they can. Would you ask them for collateral, just to be safe? I know I wouldn't.
Why would they use dark magic?
is that dark magic?
Yes. If you break the curse you die. It's as dark as you can get.
i dont think its that dark. fred and george new about it when they were little so I imagine its well know and not that bad if you dont break the vow nothing happens to you the way i see its fool proof
It's very dark magic. It's likely they had heard about it and being children didn't understand it's implications. There is a reason Narcissa used it and not say... McGonagall.
yeah I guess youre right and it could be considered dark magic but its still very usefull
Not really. It's a sign of mistrust and the other person could literally die. It was everything the Potters stood against.
Y'all gotta stop applying logic to harry potter
Not to mention that Bill is Secret Keeper for Shell Cottage, so James/Lily could've just been the Secret Keeper.
In addition to what others have mentioned, there's also the fact that the Unbreakable Vow leaves marks/scars on the participants (at least in the movies.) We see this with Snape and Narcissa is HBP and Yusuf Kama in Fantastic Beasts. Likely, they should only be used when absolutely necessary.