This is a new thread to discuss Eliezer Yudkowsky’s Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality and anything related to it. This thread is intended for discussing chapter 116.
There is a site dedicated to the story at hpmor.com, which is now the place to go to find the authors notes and all sorts of other goodies. AdeleneDawner has kept an archive of Author’s Notes. (This goes up to the notes for chapter 76, and is now not updating. The authors notes from chapter 77 onwards are on hpmor.com.)
You do not need to rot13 anything about HP:MoR or the original Harry Potter series unless you are posting insider information from Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).
If there is evidence for X in MOR and/or canon then it’s fine to post about X without rot13, even if you also have heard privately from Eliezer that X is true. But you should not post that “Eliezer said X is true” unless you use rot13.
I can't believe Hermione Granger has been framed for murder by Tom Riddle....again.
On /r/HPMOR, some have been speculating that Dumbledore coated the Philosopher's Stone with Bahl's Stupefaction, which you might remember from chapter 63:
This would explain why Voldemort let Harry keep his wand after swearing the Unbreakable Vow, and now also might explain Harry's recent actions.
That's a literal Idiot Ball reference, not to mention canon. I don't think we'll see it.
Any volunteers to tell invincible resurrected Dark-Lord-slayer Hermione what grade she got in Defense Against the Dark Arts?
She initially got a fail grade for dying, but then Professor Quirrell let her retake the test.
She got a Dreadful for dying . . . then Professor Quirrell revived her and re-graded her Troll.
Yup. The fact that she defeated the Dark Lord right after the Professor who flunked her failed to do so will only serve to underscore the injustice.
Oh. I was expecting something like...
-
Chapter 116, alternative version
Harry spun his Time-Turner and returned six hours into the past. Then he took his broomstick and hurried towards Hogwarts.
This time he decided not to repeat his usual mistake. If Lord Voldemort could learn, so could Harry. He didn't have to solve all the problems of the world alone. And Professor Quirrell, his alter ego, was not the only available option.
He hesitated a bit before knocking on Headmaster Dumbledore's door. This is going to be so awkward, he thought. He tried to imagine what to say. Hello, Headmaster. Professor Quirrell is Lord Voldemort, and I have killed him in the future. By the way, it was me in Azkaban, sorry about it, I didn't know back then. Anyway, you are going to die in the mirror soon. To avoid a time paradox, could you just send a copy of yourself or something? Please hurry, we don't have time, you have to trust me! Ironically, that would sound really insane, but Harry now trusted Headmaster Dumbledore to be able to deal with the news. Dumbledore was willing to sacrifice his own life, if it meant destroying the Dark Lord, but Harry hoped there would be a way to avoid it. The timeline had... (read more)
Harry only has one hour left on his Time-Turner for the day; he used five hours to do everything he did with Voldemort after Voldemort sent him the forged note at the Quidditch game earlier.
"Harry, let me verify that your Time-Turner hasn't been used," said Professor McGonagall.
"LOOK OVER THERE!" Harry screamed, already sprinting for the door.
I think there is a very good chance that McGonagall is worried enough about Hermione, about Dumbledore, ... and won't check Harry's Time-Turner. She's not much into multilevel plots, she's smart, but too honest to live in constant suspicion.
Like she didn't think much about the consequences at the "war level" when she offered the fealty oath to Hermione back then in the Wizengamot.
She sees Harry in pain and traumatized, and she sees the immediate chaos, it wouldn't be very "in character" for her to suddenly suspect Harry and probe him like that.
It could happen because she learned to not follow her "role" anymore, but it still doesn't seem the most likely thing for her to do.
Moody or some aurors on the other hand...
It seems that death eaters have "anti-time-looping wards" (chap 94), we don't know exactly how they work, nor if they were used in the graveyard, but it could very well be that no time-traveler can check the events that happened on the graveyard.
The stage seems to be set for a sequel adventure series, The Three Immortals. Three great heroes, each blessed with a fragment of immortality, work together to fend off the forces of destruction and bring true immortality to all of humanity.
Unicorn Girl, filled with the life-giving, regenerative powers of two noble magical creatures. Her mind captures everything that she sees, with amazing fidelity, while the purity of her heart pulls her to do what's right with similar fidelity. Some call her "mudblood", in honor of the ancient myths about the creation of man from earth, because the power to re-create herself flows continuously through her veins.
Mr. Physics, the culmination of the great Peverall line which has sought immortality for generations, is the heir to many great and powerful magical artifacts. But it is his deep and detailed knowledge of the laws of the universe which grants him his greatest power - the power to make anything out of anything, even reshaping his own body. He has made a solemn vow to protect humanity, with Unicorn Girl as his moral compass.
The mysterious Cloud has dark secrets which are hidden even from himself, but his mind still holds a wealth of ancient lore to share and an intellect so sharp it can cut through any facade or riddle... except perhaps his own past. This great mind is backed up, a hundred times over, in a vast network which allows him to be reborn in full force should his body ever fail him. The first to reach immortality, Cloud helped bring both his companions into their powers.
Voldemort's greatest fear is death. Death's greatest fear is Harry Potter.
This story will collapse after a very few prior incantums on Quirrelmort's wand by the investigators.
Yeah, and not just that. The magical equivalents to forensic science would have to be terrible indeed if this works, with a lot of fail from intelligent people like Bones, Moody, or for that matter Snape.
I'm kinda hoping that what we're actually heading for in the next chapters will be some kind of payoff to this:
PS. I wonder what an analytic charm cast on Harry's "bleeding" scar would show.
They will have to find the wand first:
Shouldn't Harry have fallen to his knees twenty seconds earlier, if he originally heard/saw the explosion via Voldie-simulcast?
Harry implicitly took it to be instantaneous when he mentioned the 20 second delay.
Well, that's certainly one way to explain away all of the strange aspects. Establish them as fact, through the mysterious bond between LV and HP, and do so in front of a huge crowd so that the word can spread and mutate on its own. By the time anyone comes to investigate or question, they will already be influenced by the show or rumors they've heard, promoting that hypothesis to their attention rather than coming to it naturally.
It's pointing the police at Mortimer Snodgrass, from chapter 17, as it were.
Oh, trust me, they can't discern the truth from wild rumors even if it's normal. (I am speaking of real life, here.)
To be fair, it's really hard to figure out WTF is going on when humans are involved. Their reasoning is the result of multiple motivations and a vast array of potential reasoning errors. If you don't believe me try the following board games with your friends: Avalon, Coup, Sheriff of Nottingham, Battlestar Galactica, or any that involve secrets and lying.
Prediction 1: Hermione will soon harrow Azkaban. Why wouldn't she? She's all but immortal, now.
Prediction 2: Time-travel and memory-charm shenanigans incoming. Evidence:
Harry weirdly ignored the missing recognition code on LV's forged message.
Cedric considered in Harry's plans, and his Time-Turner mentioned, then seemingly forgotten.
Death-Eaters all dead, but no faces observed.
Flamel asserted dead, but we didn't see it, and LV explicitly didn't kill him personally.
Dumbledore thinks in stories, yet we're supposed to believe he's surprised when the villain reveals he's captured the hero and his equipment (Harry and the Cloak), just like villains always catch heroes and take their stuff near the end (see: Frodo Baggins, Luke Skywalker).
Hermione has been asleep the whole time, neither giving nor receiving information.
Questions:
... (read more)did Harry tell Cedric to do certain things before Harry left? Did Harry tell Cedric to Obliviate Harry afterward so Harry could play his part convincingly? What did Harry most likely tell Cedric to do?
who will do the Time-Turning, Hermione, Cedric, or Harry?
who will be saved? Obvious candidates include Flamel, Dumbledore, Lucius Malfoy, maybe
I just noticed something:
Chapter 79:
Chapter 108:
... (read more)At least of the latter, see the "I laughed and I laughed when I realized you [Voldemort] had made a Good Voldemort to oppose the Evil."
Of the former, yes, I think he knew. See his over the top protestations of how he was oh so ever so completely fooled by Quirrell, had absolutely no idea whatesoever that he was Voldemort, and felt like a fool and a moron for missing it.
At the time when Dumbledore uses the map, Harry is in Hogwarts, investigating, while QQ is at the DMLE, being investigated.
And thus, Eliezer's mild obsession with conspiracy-for-the-greater-good-in-fiction-and-science rears its head again...
Didn't Harry JUST learn a lesson about not keeping secrets and assuming he's smarter than the rest of the world put together?
Well, he also learned a lesson about not keeping secrets, in the way he told to Voldemort about the Deathly Hallows.
I was thinking the same thing. If I were Harry I would call Moody and McGonagall to the headmistress' office and spill everything. As a side-note, I think Moody would rather appreciate Voldemort being taken down by stuporfy.
Questions I still have:
After rereading, I beleive that Mr White is Lucius Malfoy. Not only is the name an allusion to his hair, he is said to be less useful than he was in the past due to the fact that V will soon rule openly. In the past Lucius was V's puppet in the Wizengamot.
Mr Write then proceeds to sacrifice most of his magic to bind Harry Potter. I suppose with him dead, this doesn't matter.
If Harry's right about the effect that transfiguring the stunned Voldemort will have, won't the wards identify "the Defense Professor" as still alive?
It's a nice story. But it won't work.
Harry wants folks to think LV killed the death eaters and not him. But he has trained Draco too well. Given priors on someone defeating Voldemort you would assume it's Harry, DD, or QQ in that order. Draco knows Harry and QQ were up to something because he and several other kids bumped into them and had a scuffle at the third floor corridor. If that wasn't entirly obliviated away, Draco will figure out that Harry was involved.
I was wondering if one of the things Harry would do with his extra hour was a Patronused message to Lucius to "Stay where you are, remain silent, do not respond to the Dark Mark, for one hour, if you want to live." Or even better, a message to Draco to send that message to Lucius, except Draco is probably still sleeping off Harry's stunner.
In any case, under the circumstances, Harry might be able to trade the whole sad story, including confirmation of Dumbledore's ordered killing of Narcissa (now that Dumbledore is gone) for Draco's forgiveness.
Since time loops are stable, no reason not to try. Even if Mr. Counsel is Lucius, the most stable time loop is that Lucius doesn't believe the Patronus and gets killed anyway, and then Harry can at least truthfully tell Draco he tried.
DumbleDore?
Hello. My name is Draco Malfoy. You killed my father. Prepare to die!
Come to think of it, what Harry said was mostly true. It's just that he omitted the part that the Tom Riddle who killed Death Eaters was known to magical world as Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres, that Hermione followed him by means of being attached to his toe and that only the weapon which "destroyed" LV was first transfigured by Hermione.
I'm curious a bit about how he achieved the trick with the scar. Was it just by prodding? By taking/applying anticoagulant? DId he ask Moody to help him with it (apart from other things to cover the real story)?
A couple guesses about scenes that might be coming:
Harry has a (mostly) honest conversation with Moody about what happened to Voldemort, with an eye to adding more safeguards. They consult with the world's foremost expert on memory-charming powerful wizards into insignificance, Gilderoy Lockhart.
Hermione is determined to rescue Dumbledore from the Mirror, and a phoenix comes to her because of it.
I cannot for a second imagine Moody allowing Harry to hold on to Tom Riddle. There are too many ways in which keeping a superpowered, immortal amnesiac former villain on your person could go wrong. Harry must anticipate this, so can't consult Moody.
The actual order of the stories is probably better, but it would have been interesting to read 116 first and then find out what really happened.
So, the revival of Hermione would be explained by Voldemort trying to resurrect himself, making a mistake, and resurrecting Hermione with superpowers instead (or alongside) him, as a side-effect of his own resurrection process? (St. Mungo will surely detect at least some of the "upgrades" Hermione got)
By the way, I think Harry is likely to make those upgrades to himself, and maybe even use the idea of these upgrades to elevate some (or, as a long term goal, ALL) of mankind to posthuman level, using the Stone.
It does. I mean, it's possible "Goblet curse" trumphs Rebirth Magic,
But my preferred theory is that Flamel is Baba Yaga, and Voldemort read that story all wrong because he managed to err on the side of excessive cynicism, which is a lot simpler. No murdering took place at all, just an elopement.
This also explains why Flamel only interferes in politics by teaching chosen champions - She is still bound by the goblet rite on the Battle Magic position, so that is the only way she can oppose dark lords that don't show up at her door and try to kill her. Well, unless they graduated elsewhere, but selectively showing up and vanquishing only those fell practitioners that studied in other schools would make things just a tad obvious.
"No, what you remembered was how you considered lining up all the blood purists and guillotining them. And now you are telling yourself you were not serious, but you were. If you could do it this very moment and no one would ever know, you would. "
The Sorting Hat sees the future! Tom lined up the blood purists and guillotined them, and no one will ever know.
Would be amusing if Voldy has been playing as the Cthaeh for the last few chapters, in strategy if not in power.
Am I missing something? Why is Harry inventing this silly story?
I bet Hermione is just going to love being the center of all the attention and scrutiny this will bring on her.
Why I think he's doing this :
so Draco doesn't know that Harry probably killed his father ; Harry values his friendship with Draco and doesn't want to lose it ;
so Harry doesn't have to tell everyone about his secrets (like partial transfiguration) ;
so they don't search for Harry for the transfigured Voldemort ;
so Harry doesn't have too many legal/political problems for actually killing dozens of people, including some very powerful ones ;
to give some credit and status to Hermione, which at this point Harry trusts more than himself to take the ethical decision (and not destroy the world) ;
to save the image of Quirrel, I think Harry still has emotional commitment to the character of Quirrel, even if it was just a mask, and doesn't want that image to be destroyed.
Preserving the image of Quirrell also helps in continuing to restore Slytherin, whereas outing him could damn the house to be forever ignoble or be removed completely
But why is any of original!Quirrell's biographical information relevant to this discussion? Everyone who knew Quirrell the Defense Professor will remember him as a Slytherin.
I begin to wonder exactly how the story will be wrapped up. I had thought the source of magic would be unlocked or the Deathly Hallows riddle would be tied up. However, I wonder if there are enough chapters to do these things justice. I also wonder whether Eliezer will do anything like was done for Worm where the author invited suggestions for epilogs for specific characters.
Ch. 116:
Should be "Confederation".
Should be "blew".
I'm sure there's some small simple potion that makes a whistling noise as its only effect...
Okay, Harry is really overdoing it here. It would have been much safer to pretend utter ignorance of everything, or at least to limit his reaction to falling over. The scene as set will cause sufficient theorizing without trying to force a particular narrative.
On a meta level: Getting this scene from a bystander means they are not in the mirror. So that's that.
I.. also just realized that "Flamel" can't possibly be dead. The rite Voldemort used on Hermione was not one of his own devising, but a piece of lore well known enough to have a usual res... (read more)
I've argued before that HPMOR probably includes some kind of mind/body dualism. It occurs to me that an interesting experiment is about to be performed.
The body of Hermione Granger has been infused with the life and magic of Harry Potter. I assume for narrative reasons that Hermione will wake up as Hermione. But a copy of Harry could wake up in Hermione's body instead.
The mechanisms behind a person' life force, magic force, and mind are unknown to us. We don't also don't know whether or to what extent these aspects of a person are separate or connected... (read more)
Hey what ever happened with Snape's complicated potion in the Chamber of Secrets? Was that just a red herring?
Edit: I mean the other chamber.
It was an excuse to have two characters talk about the plot - doesn't seem like there was anything more to it.
I read this as metaphorical, with Harry the Slytherin-just-kidding-Ravenclaw going Slytherin, but I don't see exactly how that fits.
We know that many other Hogwarts students will invent and/or believe the weirdest theories. I’m definitely looking forward to the theories about why Hermione’s body was there for Voldemort’s rebirth, and about how she defeated him …
Any suggestions? (Aside from the obvious one: “Harry must have taught her some of his tricks!”)
"Well, obviously, if I'd been at the scene and defeated You-Know-Who and the Death Eaters and brought Hermione back from the dead by channelling General Chaos's unspeakable dark powers, I wouldn't just tell you that," Tracey Davis told the reporters.
Edit: "And that's Darke, with an e."
"What explosion? You mean you didn't realise that was Harry Potter snapping his fingers extra hard?"
"Of course she came back. Having two lives is why they call someone a double witch!"
"And then You-Know-Who cast the Killing Curse on her, but it rebounded because she was protected by the power of Harry Potter's love. Huh? Of course she's his true love. How else would he have been able to pull her out of the Mirror in the first place?"
"So Harry Potter spent all his Quirrell points to get Professor Quirrell to let Hermione take a make-up exam. And everyone knows those are meant to be harder than the original..."
Just wait for the next issue of the Quibbler.
The Boy Who Lived impregnates the Deathly Hallow Girl with Tom Riddle's child!
The Boy who Lived kills 30 high ranking witches and wizards, resurrects his first kiss, fakes the death of Voldemort and wears him as a ring!
I'm not sure how Quirrell's last plot could still come to fruition. Slytherin have won the house cup and one of the professors awarding house points to Ravenclaw at this stage would feel like Quirrell's plotting had failed.
Unless they award the points in response to Voldy being killed by Hermione. Which means even in dying, Quirrel wins.
"For defeating the Dark Lord, we award Hermione...wait, what was the difference in score again?...four hundred and twenty points."
It's a fitting honour for the brave Professor Quirrell; no fair Slytherin would deny him this.
Failed, I think. As of 104, it looked like his Christmas plots were all going to succeed - the Ravenclaws and Slytherins were in the process of tying for the Cup, and raising the popularity of Harry's anti-snitch proposal in doing so.
It is only the revelation that "Professor Quirrell had gone out to face the Dark Lord and died for it, You-Know-Who had returned and died again, Professor Quirrell was dead, he was dead", which Quirrell would not have planned around, that threw a spanner in the works by motivating the Slytherins to seek outright victory.
Interesting, I was expecting Harry to ascribe the destruction of the Death Eaters + Voldemort to Dumbledore.
I was expecting him to ascribe it to Quirrel.
Adding to my previous prediction comment:
Predictions:
Harry did at least one plot-relevant thing in the time we haven’t seen (between him time-turning back at the graveyard in Chapter 115 and returning to the Quidditch match for Chapter 116). 80%
Harry intentionally made his scar bleed in Chapter 116. 95% (Perhaps using Muggle special effects?)
Someone will see through Harry’s acting (in Chapter 116 at the Quidditch match), whether by deducing things themselves or being told some part of what really happened, by the end of the story. 90%
Draco will figure out ... (read more)
The following seems like a very obvious observation, but I don't recall seeing it made so far.
Tom Riddle Jr #1 (aka Lord Voldemort, aka Quirinus Quirrell) attempted to create an intelligent being in his own image, with the intention that it would share his values and cooperate with him in bringing about the sort of future he wanted.
This didn't go well, for reasons including (1) that Tom Riddle Jr #2 turned out not to share TR#1's values after all, and (2) that TR#2 developed new abilities TR#1 never suspected and that TR#2 was able to use against TR#1 when... (read more)
I'm not actually sure any more. Was Voldemort really unaware that Harry could Partially Transfigure Things?
I will note that Quirrel watched over Harry as he felled a bunch of trees in Precautionary Measures pt.2. And that involved partial Transfiguration.
ch12
... (read more)So I guess no effort is going to be made to rescue Lucius or Dumbledore directly.
Remember that if Tom Riddle dies, a potentially vengeful demon with significant magical power is unleashed. Preventing that from happening is worth doing for the sake of those common people, regardless of its impact on Tom Riddle.