Harry said without the slightest hesitation, "All right, Sirius will be the Secret Keeper."
Sirius's hands began to tremble slightly, and he forced a smile. Lupin rested a hand on his shoulder.
Douglas looked at Sirius and said, "Sirius, you should know the rules for a Secret Keeper. You must stay alive. War may come again in the future, and this will be Harry's last safe haven. So no matter what happens, you must protect yourself. Don't act rashly... you have a responsibility to bear..."
Something thundered in Sirius's mind. Had James... had James thought the same thing back then...?
The Fidelius Charm was an extremely difficult, powerful spell that could be used to conceal a secret within a person's heart. That secret could be an address, a person's name, or anything at all, as long as you considered it a secret.
Douglas first broke all the postwar protective magic originally placed around the yard. Only then did he pull out the wooden plaque in the yard and hand it to Harry to hold.
"In a moment, put this plaque up beside that statue in the square."
The group then appeared at the entrance. Sirius stopped Douglas, saying gloomily, "Let me cast it. I was the one who cast that spell in the end back then."
As he spoke, he waved his wand toward the house and recited the incantation. As streams of strange magic shot from Sirius's wand, Douglas quietly cast the Eye of Detection, through which he could faintly discern the causal relationships between these spells.
As the spell progressed, Douglas keenly noticed that the house before him was gradually disappearing from view. Slowly, he could not even remember there being a ruined house in front of him. Yet he clearly knew there was a house here; he