Tom Riddle in canon was described as a classic charming psychopath, while the Defense Professor seems to be genuinely icy and blind to others' internal states. He even verbalizes this a few times, e.g. "I don't have the knack." So either HPMOR!Riddle was actually not charming but instead vastly more intelligent in a cold, calculating way, or the Monroe/Quirrell persona is supposed to be outwardly cold and obtuse while still secretly possessing insight, or this fragment of Riddle's soul has lost whatever insight or ability that formerly made him charming, or something I haven't thought of.
Quirrel tells Harry that they share an ability to "become" whoever they pretend to be. We even see this when Quirrel pretends to be someone else to the Healer after the Azkaban breakout. It would be very odd if Quirrel were able to do this and not have any insight into how people's emotions feel like from the inside. I believe that Quirrel knows perfectly well how emotions work; the icy exterior is just a role he plays.
I don't think Quirrell's model of emotions can be all that refined, since he seems to have repeatedly and legitimately mismodelled both Harry ("yes, I actually do care about people even if I don't relate to them, I don't want to be a Dark Lord,") and Hermione ("You know, a shadowy figure in a hooded cloak is really not the most trustworthy messenger.")
Did anyone else find it increasingly implausible that the teachers kept trying to speak to Harry while he was thinking? The first one or even two approaches made sense, but if a person who has just lost a close friend says that they want to be alone until dinner, the only sensible course of action seems to be to say "okay" and leave them alone. It'd be one thing if he hadn't spoken for anyone in a month, but this was just a few hours: it'd have been completely reasonable for anyone to want to be alone for that long.
Granted, given that this is Harry, they might have thought that he was in risk of doing something really rash... but if they feared that he'd do something so bad that it wouldn't have been enough for them to guard the door to the room where he was in, then McGonagall would have been insane to unlock his Time Turner! And if they thought that he was in danger of developing some really crazy plan while thinking, it should have been obvious after the first couple of times that interrupting him now would just make him more unreceptive, and it would have been better to wait until dinner.
I'm just drawing a complete blank here - why did they keep doing it? Doesn't seem to make any sense to me.
Quirrell is trying to alienate Harry from his lifelines by manipulating everyone into being unhelpfully helpful. It's one of the core emotional triggers for the Harry, and the Defense Professor knows this.
After this chapter I've updated heavily in favor of Quirrell being genuinely terrified and trying to run damage control. That means giving him more emotional lifelines.
Admittedly, it also probably means making Harry dependent on an information source Quirrell can trust not to say too much, i.e. himself, but...
What weird things do we know Quirrell wasn't behind?
Anything else?
Well, (in chapter 90), McGonagall's first visit seemed to be of her own accord but then the Defense Professor went in and upon returning said this to her:
And though it is not my own area of expertise, Deputy Headmistress, if there is any way you can imagine to convince the boy to stop sinking further into his grief and madness - any way at all to undo the resolutions he is coming to - then I suggest you resort to it immediately."
Manipulating and convincing people of things is absolutely Quirrell's area of expertise and it seems plausible that he realizes that putting immense pressure on McGonagall to do something (because poor old Quirrell sure can't!) will cause her to make poor decisions regarding whether Harry should be left alone and/or unobstructed in his activities.
Further supported by Snape's line from when he enters the room at the beginning of chapter 51:
"I also cannot imagine what the Deputy Headmistress is thinking," said the Potions Master of Hogwarts. "Unless I am meant to serve as a warning of where it will lead you, if you decide to take the blame for her death upon yourself."
and by the continuing pressure Quirrell exerts on McGonagal...
I suspect Quirrell was aware of the exchange, if he can do the same trick as in canon with names:
"No! You-Know-Who killed Hermione!" She was hardly aware of what she was saying, that she hadn't screened the room against who might be listening. "Not you! No matter what else you could've done, it's not you who killed her, it was Voldemort! If you can't believe that you'll go mad, Harry!"
Specific mention of not screening the room, and then saying the V-word out loud.
Did anyone else find it increasingly implausible that the teachers kept trying to speak to Harry while he was thinking? The first one or even two approaches made sense, but if a person who has just lost a close friend says that they want to be alone until dinner, the only sensible course of action seems to be to say "okay" and leave them alone.
Eh. In more typical situations it isn't that odd to force people who want to be alone in bleak times to not be alone. (I'm not sure if the primary impetus here is an anti-suicide measure, the thought that it improves mood, despite the annoyance, or the inability of people who want to help to convince themselves they are helping without visible action.) That Quirrel recommended it makes it more sensible (though, as the strong reader suspicion goes, Quirrel is trying to sabotage their relationship with Harry), even though Harry protests.
Consider that Harry is not the only player on the board:
McGonagall is being pushed towards taking action to fix this. Very, very hard. I do not just mean the defense professor. I mean the entire situation is leaning on her to go beyond the usual.
Snape: Been a loose cannon for a while now, and might decide to do something about this.
The Defense Professor. Probably set the hit in motion, but might be looking for the "undo! UnDo!" button due to the fallout.
Dumbledore: .. nah, actually do not think he is going to exert himself over this.
So, at present, there is a non-zero probability that Harry is carrying around McGonagalls living brain transfigured into a diamond because she swapped herself for Hermione, then Snape swapped the oxygenating potion for the draught of living death, and Harry decided to arrest decay with the tools at his disposal.
Mad cackle
Wait. I missed one. And Hermione and/or McGonagall got her soul anchored to the whooping willow courtesy of a timetraveling defense professor. (all the horcrux proposals ignore the fact that neither Harry nor Hermione would use that technique, nor do they know it. But Quirell does. And would. )
This may have been mentioned elsewhere, but chapter 53 introduces "death dolls", and Hermionie's corpse is decribed as "waxy and doll-like".
These chapters caused me to update more in favor of Quirrell being genuinely scared. However, there are still some things that confuse me. First, Quirrell's not citing the prophecy in his favor, even though McGonagall was the one who paired him with Trelawney in the first place, and there's absolutely nothing incriminating in hearing a prophecy under those circumstances. Second, well, this is a problem with a murder-based solution, and I would expect Quirrell to take it unless (for some magical, personal, or prophetic reason) he finds death preferable to a world in which Harry is dead.
As far as Harry destroying the world goes, I'm most worried about Fred and George. In canon, they become quite skilled at spell creation in later books, and it's suggested that they experiment in earlier books; they're probably not especially good yet, but they might know enough information (or have enough books) to be dangerous already.
That's fair enough, but I just thought of one more thing that Quirrell could do that he's choosing not to... Why isn't Quirrell doing the star thing again, or at least offering to do so?
That... is an extremely sensible thing to do.
However, Harry would probably reject it the way he rejected Fawkes's song - he doesn't want to be freed or distracted from his pain, since he considers it the proper and correct response to the death of his best friend. He may also believe that it's powering his dark side, and thus helping him look for ways to save Hermione.
Just noticed this creepy detail:
The Grangers had hardly left with Madam Pomfrey before the Defense Professor had knocked upon the door to her office and then entered without waiting for her answer, and spoken before she could say a word.
Madam Pomfrey is in charge of the medical ward, so the Grangers are not going home, they are going to a hospital.
In magical Britain you're only allowed to remember what the government thinks you should remember, and remembering the existence of magic or that you have a son named Harry is a privilege, not a right.
Harry from the prior chapter to his parents who still have a living child to give them this warning.
That is extremely creepy.
On the other hand,
My interpretation is that Madam Pomfrey is a trustworthy staff member, while at the same time being inconsequential enough that her time can be spent on escorting Muggles around. She is also used to dealing with horrified parents, and therefore a good first point of contact for the Grangers.
It sounds like they're either having medical issues due to stress, or they're going to where Hermione is being kept. If they were to be obliviated, I'm sure it would be in their own home.
What I'm wondering is more why Harry doesn't push for his parents to be temporarily obliviated of his own existence, as a mean to protect them.
Hermione did it in canon at the beginning of the Deathly Hallows, and that was a very sensible thing to do, and it told a lot about Hermione for her to cast that spell.
And yes, it's very creepy, this "Obliviate !" scene in Deathly Hallows almost made me cry (both in book and in movie), it was the saddest scene of the 7 books to me. (And yeah, I know, I should be more sad about the people who actually died...), but Harry definitely is rationalist enough to force himself to do something as painful as that if it's to save his parents.
This happened in Canon, and was done by Hermione herself, albeit in her I think 6th or 7th year.
Chapter 79:
"The grim!" Professor Trelawney said in a quavering voice, as she peered into George Weasley's teacup. "The grim! It is a sign of death! One whom you know, George - someone you know is to die! And soon - yes, it shall be quite soon, I think - unless of course it is later -"
It would have been a good deal scarier, thought Fred and George, if she hadn't said the same thing to every single other student in their Divination class.
I'm having to update my probability that HPMOR!Trelawney is actually good at her job.
My estimate of Trelawney in Methods has, for quite some time, been that she may or may not be good at formal Divination, but that she is a terrible teacher and an excellent seer, and that Dumbledore keeps her around primarily for the latter reason.
If everyone in the class knows Hermione (which is likely for a loose definition of 'knows' since everyone has probably heard of her either through SPHEW or as General Sunshine, as her being called up at lunch to receive an award) then telling that to everyone in the class may not include even a single miss. Which makes Professor Trelawney very accurate indeed.
Possibly. Since Fred and George thought it would have been a good deal scarier "if she hadn't said the same thing to every single other student in their Divination class" rather than "if she hadn't said the same thing every year/week/day," its weakly implied that this is the first time she's make this prediction.
edit: although "every single other student in their Divination class" is somewhat ambiguous and could mean that over the course of the semester she has made this prediction for everyone at different times.
I wonder what steps Harry took to test the limitations of his own Patronus. The thing is humanoid and it /speaks/. Is it conscious? Does it have memory, can you give it information, dispell it, call it back the next cay, and have it still know the information? Can it perform useful cognitive work, solve problems? Does it exist anywhere and in any way while not called forth by Harry's spell? (Can it think while Harry is asleep? what an asset that would be!)
And, dare I ask, can it recursively self-improve? ;) Okay, okay, stop it with the rotten tomatoes.
I'm sure the answer to most or all of that is "no" just because of the way it would affect the story but, if I were Harry, I'd test it anyway. It is a safer and more convenient magical-humanoid-that-speaks to examine than a Dementor, and Harry has given a lot of thought to how their minds work...
"Is there another Patronus still present?" the old wizard said clearly to the bright creature.
The bright creature dipped its head in a nod.
"Can you find it?"
The silver head nodded again.
"Will you remember it, should it depart and come again?"
A final nod from the blazing phoenix.
-
They hadn't even gotten to the end of that corridor before Harry's Patronus raised its hand, politely, as though in a classroom.
Harry thought quickly. The question was how to - no, that was also obvious.
"It seems," Harry said in a coldly amused voice, "that someone has instructed this Patronus to speak its message only to me." He chuckled. "Well then. Pardon me, dear Bella. Quietus."
At once the silver humanoid said in Harry's own voice, "There is another Patronus which seeks this Patronus."
"What? " said Harry. And then, without pausing to think about what was happening, "Can you block it? Stop it from finding you?"
The silver humanoid shook its head.
Note that Harry's Patronus appears to inform him of its own initiative regarding a fact which is important for him to know. Also that it delays until he is prepared to hear the message.
In light of Eliezer's recent trolling, I guess it's official that all foreshadowings in the fic, even the ones that seemed like jokes, are going to come true. Let's see! The date is April 1992, we're at the end of the second act:
"Even if you had kissed him first, you know what that would make you? The sad little lovestruck girl who dies at the end of Act Two." (Ch.46)
Harry is going to expose Quirrell in May:
"I can well foresee that I am fated to sit in the Headmaster's office and hear some hilarious tale about Professor Quirrell in which you and you alone play a starring role, after which there will be no choice but to fire him." (...) "What do I get if I can make it happen on the last day of the school year?" (Ch.17)
Harry is a copy of Monroe:
"And I'm secretly sixty-five years old." - "You don't look half that" (Ch.38)
"Born 1927, entered Hogwarts in 1938, sorted into Slytherin, graduated 1945." (Ch.84)
And Harry is going to marry a whole lot of people.
Killing Hermione with a mountain troll and causing strong fan reactions, of course :-) Note that the troll was introduced in Ch.16, and Quirrell made a callback to that scene when he advised Hermione to run away in Ch.84.
"Rule 8: Any technique which is good enough to defeat me once is good enough to learn myself"
Voldemort has been defeated once. What would he do, if he wanted to learn how?
It's possible. However, insofar as the True Patronus is powered by the absolute rejection of death, and the Killing Curse is pretty much death in spell form, it is plausible that one could block the other.
Voldemort didn't break his promise to Lily - he intended to, presumably, but Lily broke her side first by trying to kill him instead of acting like a willing sacrifice.
In canon, the Department of Mysteries has a room filled with preserved brains, presumably for research. For unexplained reasons, it includes a quick connection to the death room (where the vale is located). Ron, under the influence of an unknown mind-altering spell (confunding?), summoned one of the brains, and it attacked him with a silvery substance that sounds like a more solid version of the typical memories put into pensives. (This left scars, and seemed to break Ron out of the spell before silencing him.). Later, someone (I forget who, but a member of the Order of the Phoenix) commented that Ron would be fine, but the marks left by thoughts were deep--implication being that the silvery ribbons that came from the brain and grappled him were thoughts.
We don't know, based just on that evidence, that the Department of Mysteries can preserve human brains, or that said brains are capable of some form of thought in that state. What we do know is that they had tanks of the brains (I seem to remember it being several tanks, but I'm not sure), they seem to be in good condition for all that non-neurologist Harry can tell, and that they resisted Ron's accio with a projection that a knowledgeable wizard described as thoughts.
It makes me wonder what would happen if MoR Harry broke into the Department of Mysteries in his current state. (You know, in the few minutes before he found a way to open the "no, seriously, do not open this door" door and destroyed the universe.)
Harry looked at his mechanical watch again, but it still wasn't time.
...
Time passed, and yet more time. From the outside you would've just seen a boy, sitting, staring at his wand with an abstracted gaze, looking at his watch every two minutes or so.
Why is Harry looking at his watch so frequently? And why was he so insistent on a particular deadline for people not bothering him? He seems to be paying an unusual amount of attention to the time, and that suggests Time Turner shenanigans, although I'm not sure what they are.
He needs 6 hours of uninterrupted time with Hermione's body. His present self guards the door while his future self does whatever he plans on doing to prepare her body for long term preservation.
See this quote from chapter 91 set right after Harry exits the room where her body is stored:
When the door opened again, Harry seemed to have changed, as though that minute and a half had passed over the course of lifetimes.
That "lifetime" is more specifically 6 hours.
I think we are now well past Ender and on to Ender after the buggers kill Valentine.
Any creative souls want to imagine how this omake would go?
For the foreshadowing pile:
Chapter 20 (on the Pioneer plaque):
"So I am going to violate rule two - which was simply 'don't brag' - and tell you about something I have done. I don't see how the knowledge could do any harm. And I strongly suspect you would have figured it out anyway, once we knew each other well enough."
Chapter 46:
"Tell me, Mr. Potter, if you wanted to lose something where no one would ever find it again, where would you put it?"
Harry considered this question. "I suppose I shouldn't ask what you've found that needs losing -"
"Quite," said Professor Quirrell, as Harry had expected; and then, "Perhaps you will be told when you are older," which Harry hadn't.
Edit: Chapter 49:
"One might even regret your infant self's victory," said Professor Quirrell. His smile twisted. "If only You-Know-Who had lived, you might have persuaded him to teach you some of the knowledge that would have been your heritage, from one Heir of Slytherin to another." The smile twisted further, as though to mock the obvious impossibility, even given the premise.
"Harry Verres"? What happened to "James Potter Evans"? I'm not sure what this means but I don't think EY is such a careless author that it means nothing. Maybe it's just intended to emphasize Harry's connection to his adoptive parents, but just maybe...
Is anyone else suddenly wondering what really happened to James Potter and Lily Evans 10 years prior? Have we seen their bodies? Harry "remembered" their deaths while demented, but given the emphasis on false memory charms in this story, that's not reliable. And we still don't know exactly why the Remembrall lit up when Harry grabbed it.
Has anyone else noticed that Quirrell knew James Potter?
"James Potter," said Professor Quirrell, his eyes narrowing. "The boy is not much like James Potter.
No, this means that the person Quirrell is pretending to be knew James Potter. So, either Quirrell's image of David Monroe knew James or Quirrell is inserting an inconsistency.
If Quirrell is Voldemort, which is more or less a foregone conclusion at this point, then James and Lily are "those who have thrice defied him". It seems natural to assume that he would know a certain amount about them. He also observed James's behaviour in the face of mortal danger to him and his family, which I imagine tells you a lot about a person.
The "soulsplosion," in Hermione's death, was extremely hard to miss. But it was notably absent in a previous wizarding death we supposedly witnessed: Harry's mother's death. This has provided some unexpected confirmatory evidence for an old pet theory of mine: that Harry's memory of his parents' death was faked. I can only assume someone else brought a similar theory up around here before, so I won't go into too much detail.
If it were a false memory, though, why would the soulsplosion be missing? Well, we get an answer for that in Chapter 86: some things can't be adequately faked in false memories. If whoever created the false memory had included a false wizard's death, Harry might have wondered what exactly the strange light show was; if he had researched it, he might have realized that what he remembered was faked. But Harry had never seen a wizard die before; an omitted soulsplosion would therefore arouse no suspicions, whereas a faked one might. Hence there was none.
For example, the killing curse might kill people too quickly for them to understand that they are dying.
Or the Killing Curse destroys the soul (as does the Dementor's Kiss), whereas bleeding to death merely releases it from the body.
A test: Are there any ghosts of people killed by Avada Kedavra? Ghosts are noted as being only echoes of the dead person — but if they are echoes formed by the release of an intact soul, then there would not be one for anyone killed in a way that consumes the soul, such as Avada Kedavra or the Dementor's Kiss.
(I can't think of any in canon. The four House Ghosts were all killed by mundane means, and Moaning Myrtle by a basilisk's stare.)
McGonagall tells Harry that the Killing Curse "strikes at the soul, severing it from the body".
So, what did Harry do in that minute and a half he had with Hermione's body?
My best guess is that he transfigured her body into something, then transfigured something else into a copy of her body. Either that or he just used partial transfiguration on her brain and left the rest of the body behind as unimportant.
It's just not like Harry to just abandon his efforts to preserve her body, especially after he took care to keep it cold. If he has her brain transfigured into a coin or something, that should suffice as a preservation method.
You'll notice that he made sure no-one went in the room for several hours, during which he had his Time-Turner unlocked. He then went in there himself.
I think Harry spent the time sitting in front of the room planning what he was going to do to revive Hermione, because what went wrong when he got her killed was largely due to time constraints. It is explicitly stated that he was there for hours, and Minerva says it looks like years have passed when he comes out. So, I also think that whatever Harry planned, and then tried for several hours, did not work, and he came out with Hermione still dead. He is saying that there is nothing left to plan at the beginning of 92, whereas after he cools Hermione he thinks that he now has time to think. That strongly suggests he thought, tried the plan, and it failed.
On the other hand, Minerva has been told explicitly that people have generally not done everything they can, teaches Transfiguration, and quite definitely feels terrible over Hermione's death. She is also free to use the Time-Turner. So, yes, I also think she went back, Transfigured herself into Hermione, and let herself be killed, as that was, by that point, the only way to save Hermione's life. She probably borrowed Harry's invisibility cloak to hide Hermione from all the people who mustn't know that she is still alive if she is t...
I don't know about the feminists, but I'd be happier if there were more than one female rationalist in the story. And I'd definitely be interested to see a rationalist Minerva taking part rather than dead.
One trope I've gotten very tired of is the character who becomes much wiser and/or better and then dies almost immediately. I want to see how the improved version handles their life.
A rationalist Minerva would be great, but I must admit my scepticism of how far she can get. She has a lot to unlearn compared to someone like Hermione, and her only potential mentors are Harry (who has too much else on his mind) and Quirrell (who is Quirrell).
Seeing a glowing super bright human patronus for the first time might be enough to get an ' "AHHHHHHHHHH"'
It doesn't explain what he was doing, but it does mean he has a lot longer than one and a half minutes to do it.
a fundamentally better option.
But it is fundamentally better: the smaller the volume you are trying to vitrify, the better the process works because the greater surface area is compared to volume, and so you get faster and more even cooling (and in humans, you get problems with circulation getting blocked off after a certain point). Go read through http://chronopause.com/ . This is why you can drop small things into LN2 and they recover fine, or why Fahy could do a kidney and bring it back, but why we can't do larger things.
... Snape was not in the list of people told to deflect Harry from questions about spell creation.
Canon Snape both created spells and had some of Voldemort's hoarded lore.
And Harry does not know this. Or at least, we have no reason to believe that he does, and the fact that he didn't ask Snape about either seems like further evidence that he doesn't know (although, he knows that Snape did not resurrect Lillie, so might not have thought it worth pursuing).
I suppose this information is more frustrating than useful, since I don't expect Harry to be learning that Snape is a potential resource for anything that the Defense Professor deflects him from. (Well, so is Dumbledore, but we know how Dumbledore feels about it.)
Possible legilimency episode during Quirrell's tirade to McGonagall:
"You." Professor Quirrell spun, and she found herself gazing directly into eyes of icy blue.
...
A wordless image crossed her mind of a patch of glass on a steel ball.
This could be Quirrell finding out about Harry's partial transfiguration. More likely, it is nothing.
Two small points:
"I am smarter than you. I think faster than you. I am more experienced than you. But the gap between the two of us is not the same as the gap between us and them. If you can miss something, then so can I."
Did somebody just get marked as an equal here is that it?
I'm actually starting to believe Eric_M_S is right, and Harry might use the resurrection ritual - blood of the foe, bone of the ancestor, flesh of the servant. No, I don't know how he'd source Draco's blood, Quirrell being out of the question, and the bone is a tall order as well, even with both parents at Hogwarts and Harry apparently about to learn the Obliviation spell. Perhaps a tooth will do? They are dentists...
But it's still a wonderful idea, because it pays off the story's Star Wars references, in particular the comparison of Neville to Darth Vader...
It means that it's confirmed that Quirrell wants people to think he's secretly David Monroe. I'd be wary of drawing any other conclusions, though it does seem more likely that Quirrell pretended to be Monroe during the war.
I have no theories yet. I did, however, just come across the following in my re-reading (chapter 60):
The Defense Professor's eyes were still in shadow, dark pits that could not be met. "Call it a whim, Mr. Potter. It has sometimes amused me to play the part of a hero. Who knows but that You-Know-Who would say the same."
Do we actually know (or strongly suspect) why Dumbledore hired Quirrell? It seems like when hiring a Defense Professor, "you may not investigate my true identity" should be a red light on the scale of a supernova, and Dumbledore may or may not be insane, but he is not stupid, and he's certainly never shown any sign of trusting Quirrell.
Probably because Quirrell is insanely good at being a Defense Professor. After a long string of incompetents, I might be willing to overlook a little "obviously evil" if it meant getting the best Defense Professor in a century.
It is impossible to hire good Defense Professors. Full Stop. The position is heavily cursed, and anyone who takes it leaves within the year. Practically no one will take the post in the position. Under these circumstances, if someone is willing to be the defense professor, well, that means Hogwarts has a defense professor this year. Again, this is a job no one wants after all these years of mishaps befalling the defense professors, like clockwork, every year.
A risky plan. What if dividing the subject among 20 profs made all 20 of them subject to the curse and lost the entire faculty? In the wizarding world, messing with things you don't understand extremely well can be dangerous.
That's a very good point I hadn't considered.
I wonder if Dumbledore has actually done any experimenting over the last 50 years, like the one-year contracts I suggest downthread, or having two staff members rotate responsibility each year (and teach something innocuous like Muggle Studies in the meantime).
A also wonder what kind of curse would have such an incredibly powerful effect, and whether Voldemort could have used a scaled-down version of it to, say, get Dumbledore out of the headmaster position. Bearing in mind the original curse was cast before Voldemort had even achieved his full power.
Yes, but one assumes that Moody doesn't offer to oversee someone's summer internship unless they've really impressed him.
She is a born shapeshifter. Of the line of Black. Moody offered to oversee that internship to learn who she was, because it would be fracking stupid not to. Finding out that Tonks is astonishingly decent people must have been the best news Moody got in decades.
The story looks more and more like it will end with Harry destroying the whole world. It would highlite the existential risk that comes from scientists who try to do everything in their power.
I'm expecting a positive ending for a few reasons, one of which is that since this is rationality propaganda I doubt Eliezer wants to portray Harry's super-rationality as having ultimately bad results.
When Dumbledore showed Harry the comments he made in her potions textbook the potion he was commenting on was the Potion of Eagle's Splendor, which is the potion for an increase in the Charisma stat (which technically doesn't have to involve appearance but is often considered correlated with it) in 3rd edition Dungeons and Dragons.
ETA: The other things which makes it more suggestive is that the potion Petunia took was dangerous or rare, else more witches would also have permanently improved their appearance, and a normal potion listed in the standard 5th year text presumably wouldn't be; The suggestion presented was thestral blood, thestral blood was implied to have a role in the permanence of the Cloak and as Harry deduced that potions making isn't creating magic but reshaping that which is there some component in Petunias potion must have an association with Permanence.
Hmm, that's interesting, Petunia really did get sick for weeks
"Anyway," Petunia said, her voice small, "she gave in. She told me it was dangerous, and I said I didn't care any more, and I drank this potion and I was sick for weeks, but when I got better my skin cleared up and I finally filled out and... I was beautiful, people were nice to me," her voice broke, "and after that I couldn't hate my sister any more, especially when I learned what her magic brought her in the end -"
If Eliezer would have wanted to foreshadow the fact that rational Harry would go on to end the world in chapter 1, this is what it would look like.
Petunia states that Lily came up with a number of other, equally ridiculous excuses, which means those two shouldn't be assigned any special importance in the list.
When Petunia says "ricidulous excuses" it means that she doesn't understand the validity of the excuses.
What do you think is Eliezer's motivation for Lily giving ricidulous excuses? Making her look like the person that gives ricidulous excuses?
The difference between the real world and narrativium is not that in the former people make decisions and things happen for rational, believable, predictable reasons and in the latter they don't. That's the difference between good narrativium and bad narrativium.
The difference between the real world and narrativium is that in the real world things happen in a variety of complex and interconnected ways without necessarily being goal driven. However in a story, HpMoR included, things happen to drive the story along. The author has designed the events of the story to reach his desired end state. That is, in fiction the ending causes the beginning whereas in real life the beginning causes the ending.
Real life doesn't have a narrative. Fiction, rationalist fiction included, does.
I have to write it somewhere - because what is the point of a belief that does not allow you to make predictions that you are willing to stand by - and I guess this is the place. I believe that Hermione is not dead (duh!), and planned this all for the purposes of getting Harry out of his debt to Malfoy and/or preventing herself from being used as a weapon against Harry. She used or was discovered by Fred and George who were subsequently memory charmed by Dumbledore, who has spent entirely too much time off-camera of late.
Edit: I'll add that - on the odd ...
Combined with previous chapters it looks like top-level Wizards know that the secret of spell-creation is potentially universe-wreckingly dangerous, and that Quirrel fears that Harry is about to try to do it.
Combined with previous chapters
With the end of c89, I flashed back to the curious bit during the Wizengamot trial about some powerful old members now paying attention to Harry - did they interpret correctly his Dementor-frightening as indicating a newly created spell (Patronus 2.0) and that Harry might be joining their fraternity? Specifically, ch81:
...It does not occur to them to second-guess the application of such reasoning to the events they have seen with their own eyes in the Most Ancient Hall. Indeed, they are not consciously aware that they are using story-reasoning on real life. As for scrutinizing the Boy-Who-Lived with the same careful logic they would use on an political alliance or a business arrangement - what brain would associate to that, when a part of the legendary magisterium is at hand? But there are a very few, seated on those wooden benches, who do not think like this. There are a certain few of the Wizengamot who have read through half-disintegrated scrolls and listened to tales of things that happened to someone's brother's cousin, not for entertainment, but as part of a quest for power and truth. They have already marked the Night of Godric's Hollow, as r
I took all that as indicating that they thought Harry was [EDITED to add: er, that should be "might be"] Voldemort, an idea we know Lucius is already taking seriously.
Some thoughts on "Hermiones brain will be transfigured and kept frozen by Harry":
We know from Harrys first transfiguration lesson that transfigured living things undergo changes with time, which will kill said things. Harry knows this, and is thus likely to thing of deep-freezing the Hermione-diamond. Only he also plans to retransfigurate his fathers rock, and we know that one sustained transfiguration is a serious drain on his magic. Add to that the magical drain from having to cool the H-diamond and its thermal buffer, I think it unlikely that...
Any thoughts which theories Harry tested with
"Is that a usual tactic, by the way?" Harry said, voice still odd. "Carrying something large Transfigured into something small to use as a weapon? Or is that a usual exercise for Transfiguration practice?"
He tested whether Dumbledore anticipated his use of the rock when he told him to carry it around. He's looking for explanations of all the early behavior where Dumbledore pretended to be mad, since he now believes that while Dumbledore may have wrong and even "mad" beliefs, he only does things like burning chickens to mess with people.
Alternately, he might want people to believe he has transfigured his father's rock again, but not be actually planning to keep it transfigured, because he wants to carry the Hermione diamond and let people think it is the rock.
The only plausible reason whoever killed Hermione hasn't killed Harry too is because they want him to remain alive. They could have, because Hogwarts security is no great impediment to whoever did this, and Harry isn't a genius in his sleep. They would have, too. Anyone who hates Hermione would hate Harry, too. He was summoned to help during her confrontation with bullies. He used legal tricks to intervene when she was about to be "kissed." He's obviously the bigger threat, and whoever killed Hemione should have some fear of vengeance from him.
U...
Quirrell is That Fucker.
Heavy spoilers for Nonjon's excellent A Black Comedy follow.
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Fbhaq snzvyvne? Gur anzr whfg znxrf vg boivbhf.
Defense Professor had knocked upon the door to her office and then entered without waiting for her answer, and spoken before she could say a word. Part of Minerva wondered distantly whether Harry Potter had picked up that habit from his Defense Professor
Huh. Drawing connections between the two of them seems obvious, but then again, I might be reaching.
Hermione will be resurrected before the conclusion of this story.
(Given that Harry wins and souls aren't real.)
I'm a bit divided on how I'd feel about that. On the other hand, finding a way to resurrect her would be thematically appropriate. On the other hand, it would also be thematically appropriate if there wasn't any way, and you just had to accept that the universe doesn't always play fair, with you sometimes not getting everything you want despite your best efforts.
Not safer per se, but less likely to come to Voldemort's attention.
Edit: Chapter 37 also has Quirrell tell Harry that Dumbledore has thorougly warded his parents' home (though the fact that he is telling Harry this after having crossed said wards does nothing to reassure us, the readers).
"No one's supposed to know where I am!" said Harry, still keeping the shriek quiet. "Even owls are supposed to deliver my mail to Hogwarts, not here!" Harry had agreed to that willingly; it would be silly if a Death Eater could win the whole war at any time just by owling him a magically triggered hand grenade.
Professor Quirrell was grinning, from where he stood in the backyard beyond the window. "Oh, I shouldn't worry, Mr. Potter. You are well protected against locating Charms, and no blood purist is likely to think of consulting a phone book." His grin grew wider. "And it did take considerable effort to cross the wards that the Headmaster put around this house - though of course anyone who knew your address could simply wait outside and attack you the next time you left."
It's an interesting point that the Death Eaters are going to be even more ignorant of the muggle world than the rest of the wizards are.
spoilers for 93
Strongly STRONGLY approve of the letter from dad, but kind of disappointed about how much talk about house points there was. Who the hell cares? Why didn't anyone interrupt to talk about what had actually just happened or ask the Weasleys about facing the troll or anything?
Hermione's body being gone: Congruent with some form of resurrection, congruent with transfiguration being used by Harry to preserver her, congruent with other possible preservation options, also possible that Quirrel or someone else wants to use the body for horrible rituals.
The House Points are more of a way to formalize Minerva eating crow for all the students that broke the rules and acted when the situation required it. And, of course, most of the points talk was really about extending them to more students, which was extremely necessary for Harry. The Neville talk was probably the least justified, but there is a shard of importance in that Harry had to forgive and defend Neville during it.
The house points are symbolic. There are two worlds, the world of ordinary Hogwarts activity and the world where crazy shit happens, usually because of Harry somehow, and some kind of relationship between these worlds needs to be established. Especially because actually there's only one world and bad things happen when students, especially Gryffindors, are too afraid of repercussions from the first world to behave sensibly in the second.
EDIT: Corrected typo oh lordy this is so embarassing...
Is Quirrel hinting that McGonagall should Memory Charm Harry into not knowing that one of his best friends just died? (Worst case, Obliviate everything that happened since he received the Hogwarts letter, tell him he was hit by a truck and has been in a coma the whole time, then kick him out of Magical Britain completely.)
Does anyone else find it implausible that Quirrell would both act upon the latest prophecy moments after hearing it and act as though he interpreted it in the most literal sense possible? To suppose that he is acting out of concern when speaking to McGonagall is to accept that this is what he does.
Yet, it has been made explicit in HPMoR that prophecies are riddles addressed to the one who hears it. Quirrell knows this. I thus find it unlikely that he would jump on the first ''obvious'' literal interpretation rather than ponder the riddle.
Not to mention tha...
Conspicuously absent from the canon, and from Methods of Rationality (so far) --- and absent entirely from the Hogwarts curriculum --- are two fundamental elements of rational cognition:
Therefore
...Postulate 1 "Magic" is the name that witches, wizards, and muggles alike give to the practice of manipulating physical reality by negotiation with agents that are (artificial? primordial? evolved? accidentally created?) intelligences.
Postulate 2 "Magical Spells" is the name that witches, wiza
AI-1: And so we have decided to grant the humans great powers
AI-2: but when we bestow our awesome power upon the puny humans they may become arrogant and forget that they are small and ridiculous
AI-1: we've thought of that, and have a solution...
Wingardium Leviosa!
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 chapters 91 & 92 . The previous thread has passed 500 comments.
There is now 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.)
The first 5 discussion threads are on the main page under the harry_potter tag. Threads 6 and on (including this one) are in the discussion section using its separate tag system. Also: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17,18,19,20.
Spoiler Warning: this thread is full of spoilers. With few exceptions, spoilers for MOR and canon are fair game to post, without warning or rot13. More specifically: