I’m reading the Harry Potter books to my daughter, and something has been weighing on my mind ever since The Prisoner of Azkaban. Stay with me here.
The most common way of sending messages in the wizarding world is via owl post. The magical owls employed for this purpose are able to magically find the receipient of the message they carry, no matter where they are in the world and whether or not the sender of the message knows where the recipient is.
Owl post is not, however, magically secure. Characters in the books frequently worry about owls being intercepted and censor their own messages in case they should fall into the wrong hands. This, along with occasionally long delays before an owl returns to its owner, suggests that the post owls simply fly from the sender to the recipient, without teleporting or anything.
Given the above, and considering the immense pressure being brought on the authorities to catch Azkaban escapee Sirius Black, why didn’t some Auror ever say, “You know what we should do? We should send Black a letter by owl post, and then follow the owl right to Black’s location.”
Am I missing something? Can anyone come up with a plausible, in-canon explanation why this wouldn’t work?
Aside from Uncle Vernon, I cannot recall seeing anyone receive owl post unwillingly. I suspect (warning: fanwank ahead) there is some kind of “registration” one must do with the owl post to be “available” to receive mail. Otherwise, it will probably go to your “registered” address. Which, for Sirius, I’m guessing, was still the pokey.
There are two spells I remember from the books that sort of meet your description, so I’ll go ahead and mention them to head off others.
First, a location can be made Unplottable (example: No. 12 Grimmauld Place, Sirius’s house), so I suppose if you stayed in such a place 24 hours a day you’d be owl-proof. Sirius doesn’t do this until book five, though, and not when he’s on his own without help. (remember, Sirius doesn’t even have a wand until after he escapes from Hogwarts at the end of PoA.) Before then he’s on the run, changing locations
There’s also the Fidelius Charm, which lets a wizard keep anything (such as another wizard’s location) a secret. But who would do such a thing for Sirius when he was alone and friendless?
I suppose there are other ways, such as the wards Hermione sets around The Brotherhood of the Traveling Tents all through the first half of book seven. With any and all such spells, though, it comes back to “could Sirius Black, alone and wandless, accomplish this method while on the run?” So far I don’t see a way that sounds plausible to me.
Yes, I know. How is that “unwillingly”? My proposal is that Sirius, while on the run, is able to tell the owl post (however that works), “please forward to [this location] any letters from [safe senders].”
If memory serves, we have evidence that Harry and Dumbledore were on his safe senders list.
Yes - AFTER the Pettigrew dustup comes to pass and those two people know he’s innocent.
But what about, let’s say, a week - or a day - after he escaped? No wand; no way to cast any spells. Owl post goes to the person, not to a location. We always see that in the books - owls don’t just deliver mail to the Hogwarts mail room, they drop it right in the recipient’s lap. I don’t see why my idea wouldn’t work.
I don’t remember coming across Unplottability - I’m only up to Order of the Phoenix. In that book, the secrecy of No. 12 Grimmauld Place was explained, as far as I can remember, by…
The Fidelius Charm. Dumbledore was the Secret Keeper, so Harry couldn’t see it until he was shown the note that Dumbledore wrote him.
Was this a case where the explanation changed in later books?
Part of the problem is that we get most of our information regarding the nature of the wizarding world via Harry and Harry is surprisingly uninterested in anything magical for a child of prophecy. He’s hilariously unsubtle and lunkheaded throughout the books in any sensitive magical situation. Had the narrator been Hermione, say, I imagine there’d be an entire chapter on the nature of owl post. As with so many other aspects of the books, I tend to take it as a given that there is a mechanism that prevents or allows whatever process I’m imagining and Harry the clod just doesn’t care.
Sorry, no, you’re right – I misremembered. In an earlier book, it’s Hogwarts itself that Hermione says is Unplottable, and that just means it doesn’t show on any map. My bad.
No, as far as I know, the only location the characters spend any real time at that’s specifically described as Unplottable is Hogwarts. It’s possible that Grimmauld Place was Unplottable but as you clearly remember, the specific defense used and mentioned was the Fidelius Charm.
That’s an explanation that’s hard to argue with. Besides, I specified a PLAUSIBLE, in canon explanation, not just “The books have so many holes that anything could be true.”
Still, if I were an Auror, I would have at least suggested the attempt. Here’s Harry and Hermione insisting to Fudge and Snape that Sirius is innocent. Shortly after that, Sirius escapes under very suspicious circumstances. Snape clearly suspects Harry of being involved. Why not keep a beady eye out for Harry to send Hedwig to deliver a message and then follow HER (or even put some kind of magical trace on her so you’ll know when she goes anywhere)?
Upon reflection, I realize that Unplottability is obviously no barrier to owl post, since Hogwarts is Unplottable and the owls deliver mail there every day. So that just leaves the Fidelius Charm and whatever charms Hermione was using during the Endless Camping Trip of Incredible Boredom during book 7.
Of course if they could do that for Sirius, then why not Voldemort? Or Harry when he is in hiding?
My guess is that owls don’t literally fly from point A to point B but rather magically get to the person. A magic that only owls can do.
Besides, I specified a PLAUSIBLE, in canon explanation, not just “The books have so many holes that anything could be true.”