Talk:Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place

The House

I re-added the lines on the possibility of the house being a town mansion - the text itself does not make reference to adjoining walls, but rather just says that the houses on either side move out of the way. I also added a section on the possibility that Arcturus may have remained in the house until 1991 and that it's still a bit of a bone of contention. I also restored the more neutral phrasing regarding ownership of the house to the text bloc. Party on. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Starryeyedguy (talk • contribs) 17:14, 16 January 2007 (UTC).

Kreacher

Does Kreacher still count as a permanent resident? Sonic Mew | talk to me 19:41, July 18, 2005 (UTC)

Point. I'll add a note of that.

White sheep

It eventually passed into the hands of Sirius, the "white sheep" - I get the joke, but is it a good idea? Slobo 11:35, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

Why wouldn't it be? "White sheep" is an existing term for the opposite of a black sheep. --Kizor 14:58, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I didn't see that. My fault. Slobo 15:05, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

The Street

Grimmauld Place is the name of the street that Number 12 is on. The house itself is NOT called Grimmauld Place, or Dumbledore would have only written "Grimmauld Place, London" on the piece of paper. The name of the house is, like Number 4 (Privet Drive), Number 12.

I'm going to take it upon myself to reflect this. PantherFoxie 17:21, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

Yes, even I thought of the same thing. The title of the article should be Number 12 (or 12), Grimmauld Place, London (well london may be optional...) Jam2k 09:54, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

M'daughter (not named Merope) noticed that "Grimmauld" sounds like Grimaldi, the name of the wealthy, hereditary ruling family of Monaco.

There was infact a poet by the name of Nicholas Grimald (who also spelled it "Grimoald"). Perhaps his name gave part of the inspiration. Gruesome Pet 18:15, 27 March 2007

Owner

In the code it shows Harry as the owner, but this isn't shown on the page, can someone sort it? Gary Kirk 16:17, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

The current template doesn't have provisions for the "owner" variable to be used, so therefore it isn't displayed. I'm going to leave the "owner" definition in there for now, to allow for the potential future expansion of the HP Place template, though I have no real objections if someone else chooses to remove it from the code. --Deathphoenix 18:30, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

Outside appearance

The article says that the house appears small to Muggles. I didn't think anyone could see it at all because of the Fidelius Charm. I thought that the house was not visible at all until Harry read the note from Dumbledore. Can someone point out to me where in the OotP it says that the house appears small to Muggles?

And while I'm mentioning the Fidelius Charm, I don't understand the reasoning of the third sentence below:

"After Dumbledore's death, the Fidelius spell may have broken. Unless a new Secret-Keeper is installed by the Order, Grimmauld Place could be again uncovered. This is, however, unlikely, seeing as Snape used the Fidelius spell as a excuse for not being able to reveal the location of OotP Headquarters to Voldemort."

Snape used the Fidelius Charm as a reason before Dumbledore was killed, so that doesn't indicate that the Charm would continue to work after his death.

I'd like to change these two sections, unless someone can help me understand the reasoning behind them. Thanks! Kam Tonnes 00:38, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

As revealed yesterday by JK Rowling at http://www.jkrowling.com/textonly/en/faq_poll.cfm when a secret keeper dies, the secret dies with them. So I edited this section to include this. However, I do not know how to include footnotes, so if someone can please add the footnote with the link directing it to the proper page. Billvoltage 01:12, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

Everyone who they told still knows, and because the Fidelius Charm is no longer, the people who know are now able to tell others. Thus the house is less than "forever safe". Noneofyourbusiness 13:05, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Actually, that's not true. Only the secret-keeper can reveal the secret behind a Fidelius charm, and the charm is still in effect even though the secret-keeper is now deceased. Therefore, the secret cannot be revealed by anyone and only the people who currently know the location of 12 Grimmauld Place will be able to find it. Jwkpiano1 18:38, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Re the house appearing small to muggles - if they'd been able to see it before the fidelius charm, I'm not saying taht it would have appeared small and modest to muggles, but the chances of there being a relatively opulent house, let alone mansion in that area of London (especially if it's also slightly east of King's Cross - the area is not a pleasant one and still looks like a slum in places) are small, as things tend to get vandalised, windows broken etc etc quite a lot. If it is a mansion or something, then it's unlikely to looklike it from the outside. Starryeyedguy 22/10/06

Knight Bus?

How was Hermione able to take the Knight Bus to 12 Grimauld Place? She couldn't have told the location to Stan Shunpike, because she was not Secret-Keeper. ---Ransom (--69.111.109.108 00:27, 26 November 2006 (UTC))

Simple! all Hermione would have to do is take the Knight Bus to Number 11 and walk next door-User:Booksbooksbooks

Numbering

In book 7, it's mentioned in passing that the neighbors on Grimmauld Place had gotten used the idea of the odd house numbering that left number 12 missing between number 11 and number 13. However, isn't it very rare in England not to put odd and even houses on different sides of the street? Is this mentioned in any of the other books? --85.24.240.247 19:25, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

This isn't really the place to discuss stuff like that (try one of the fan sites), but it isn't at all unknown for street numbering in England to be sequential. For instance some streets might have all houses on one side numbered from 1-40 and on the other side numbered from 41-80, in the opposite direction. Another example might be in a square overlooking a small park, of the kind that is particularly common in Kensington and Chelsea. The house doors might for instance be numbered in a clockwise or anticlockwise direction, because the other side of the street would have only the fence of the park.

However it's quite true that the alternating number scheme is by far the commonest. --Tony Sidaway 20:04, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

More then four floors

I think there must be more then four floors. We know that Sirius's mothers bedroom is on at least the third floor, because it is above the 1st floor as sirius says in book five that he keeps buckbeak in his mothers bedroom upstairs, and later on in book five when harry is in the room with buckbeak, and Hermione came back from holiday, he "went back to the second floor" so he must have been on a higher floor then the second floor. Further more, in hp7, harry walks to the top floor, which "only contained two rooms" neither of which were Sirius' mothers room. Sothere must be 5 floors if not more, including attic and basement. Also, the buckbeak could not have been moved between pages 95 and 440 of hp5 because harry "retreated further upstairs" to buckbeaks room "where he had been hiding"

Ben 1220 08:40, 27 August 2007 (UTC)