Three shall be Peverell's sons and three their devices by which Death shall be defeated.
- chapter 96
The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches, born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month -
- chapter 86
There has previously been some speculation that the dark lord in Harry's birth prophesy is death rather than Voldemort. I think this interpretation just got a lot stronger.
James and Lilly had defied Voldemort but not death. The new lines back an interpretation that the Peverells thrice defied death with the three deathly hollows and Harry is born to the Peverell line.
This is, in some ways, a more natural interpretation of that clause since James and Lilly were in the Order and were defying Voldemort on a daily basis not just 3 times. The line of the Peverells makes the number three make sense rather than being arbitrary.
Great idea, but what of the rest of the prophecy ?
And the Dark Lord shall mark him as his equal
That I can't think how to interpret it... how did Death mark Harry his equal ?
But he shall have power the Dark Lord knows not...
That could be any of love, rationality, or hope, the most common hypothesis of what powers Harry have.
either must destroy all but a remnant of the other
The remnant would be memory then ? If death defeats Harry, Harry is dead, but people will still remember him, probably for a long while, and if Harry defeats death, the memory that death existed will stay forever in everyone. Or the remnant of death would be death of non-sentient beings ?
Dementors symbolise death. Dementors can destroy humans (by their kiss), and Harry can destroy dementors (by True Patronus). That if anything marks him as Death's equal. If not, dementors obeying him can be understood as him being Death's equal.
[tinfoil hat]
mark him as his equal
Suppose that Killing Curse just bounced off the night Voldemort died, just refused to work for some reason. If "magically embodied preference for death over life" haven't worked on someone, I would pretty much say that it means something.
Also, possible foreshadowing in chapter 5:
"I have formed an idea..." said Professor McGonagall. "After meeting you, that is. You triumphed over the Dark Lord by being more awful than he was, and survived the Killing Curse by being more terrible than Death."
Funny to think about, but probably I just see patterns where there are none.
remnant of the other
My a bit stretched interpretation is that Bayesian Conspiracy and Chaos Legion are Harry's remnants.
[/tinfoil hat]
Or it's the ritual to create dementors. Quirrel says that "the spell to dismiss Death is lost" and nobody knows how to destroy a dementor.
I can't believe no one has pointed this out yet. One line differs from the HPMoR prophecy and the canon one:
and either must destroy all but a remnant of the other, for those two different spirits cannot exist in the same world
and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives
This has obviously been rewritten to take out any reference to life or death, and instead talking about destruction and existence. Eliezer must have done this because "killing death" doesn't make sense. I would say 75% chance this theory is either true or discussed at some future point in the fanfiction.
Just remembered a serious objection, originally from Tarhish on reddit:
I had been thinking about this possibility for a while, but now it also requires Dumbledore to have lied about Lily and James hearing the prophecy in the Hall of Prophecy. Because if they did, then it means they were mentioned in the prophecy, and this theory does not, at first thought, seem to allow that.
(from here, it's only 4 months old, you still can upvote that)
This argument can be somewhat handwaved away by "James is ascendant of Ignotus Peverell, and prophecy talks about several possible futures", but still.
The legend in canon says exactly that; the Peverell brother who got the Cloak was most successful, and lived a long time because the Cloak allowed him to evade death (until one day he took it off and got screwed).
Complexity means it requires additional things to happen even if you had no evidence.
For example, a more complex hypothesis than "Bob is a human" is "Bob is a human who lives at 123 Fake St."
Voldemort being called the dark lord is evidence, and learning about new evidence does not itself make a hypothesis more or less complex. It's just evidence.
1) Why "complexity penalty" should work in fiction, even in a rationalist fiction?
Because there will still be an infinite (countable) number of finite hypotheses which could be considered and only a finite amount of probability to divide among them, which necessarily implies that in the limit more complicated hypotheses will have individual probability approaching zero. This will be true in the limit even if you define 'complexity' differently than the person who constructed the distribution.
Given that the brothers lived 800 years ago and the magical world is quite small that's very probable.
Just spelling out that we have a much better idea now what the first lines of the book mean:
Beneath the moonlight glints a tiny fragment of silver, a fraction of a line...
(black robes, falling)
...blood spills out in litres, and someone screams a word.
The silver likely refers to:
Neither of them noticed the tall stone worn as though from a thousand years of age, upon it a line within a circle within a triangle glowing ever so faintly silver, like the light which had shone from Harry's wand, invisible at that distance beneath the still-bright Sun.
There'd been some discussion of why HPMOR!Hogwarts was founded around 1200, as opposed to canon Hogwarts, which was "established around the 9th or 10th century." This chapter seems to make the reason clear: the founders were near-contemporaries of the Peverells, who kept their canon birthdates. Godric Gryffindor in particular seems likely to have been involved.
silently, making less noise than the dead leaves slithering along the pavement...
This is a quote from canon, in a scene where Harry is nearly possessed by Voldemort; it's Voldemort's memories of the night he died. It's italicized, as with Harry internal conversations, suggesting that this is part of Voldemort in Harry, remembering the night he died. (?)
My model of the Peverells has them substantially earlier than Hogwarts (because the Elder Wand seems like a more powerful artifact than the Sword of Gryffindor).
Aha! The prophecy we just heard in chapter 96 is Old English. However, by the 1200s, when, according to canon, the Peverell brothers were born, we're well into Middle English (which Harry might well understand on first hearing). I was beginning to wonder if there was not some old wizard or witch listening, for whom that prophecy was intended.
There's still the problem of why brothers with an Anglo-Norman surname would have Old English as a mother tongue... well, that could happen rather easily with a Norman father and English mother, I suppose.
And the coincidence of Canon!Ignotus Peverell being born in 1214, the estimated year of Roger Bacon's birth, seemed significant too... I shall have to go back over the chapters referring to his diary.
Godric was the highest-profile member of a small group who led armies in battle, raised a castle by magic alone, and vanquished at least one and probably many Dark Lords. The Peverells created a small number of artefacts whose very existence faded into obscure myths known only to the learned. The difference in fame is entirely logical based on what we know.
It strikes me that this is even more obviously a turning point than it already is.
First: This is the first hint to Harry that he is not alone. All this story, Harry has been defined by his aloofness; the one person as "sane" as he is cannot be trusted, and for all that Hermione tries she's just more of a apprentice than a co-hero, she's not on the same scale that Harry acts on.
No longer. Harry knows, now, that there are more like him, and they too are smart, and competent, and they have gifts for him from hundreds of years in the past.
Second: This also solves one of the problems I had been worrying about, which was: How can Harry solve Death without it looking like a Deus ex Machina? Sanderson's First Law: magic cannot be used to solve a problem except where it is foreshadowed and constructed from existing effects. There's been a few ideas tossed around - Summon Death + True Patronus and the like - but they all seem to have... unhelpful side effects. (In particular, actually ending "Death" would be a bad thing, because Death kills bacteria as much as it kills humans. You want to destroy "Death of Humans" or come up with a mass-producible immortality elixir, not kill Death outright.)
Relevant quote, conversation with a Sorting Hat:
"And you would find loyalty and friendship in Hufflepuff, a camaraderie that you have never had before. You would find that you could rely on others, and that would heal something inside you that is broken."
It seems that something broken was healed at last.
PS: Tangentially related to the Harry's inability to rely on others: chapter 31, chapter 70 (Maybe if there were more heroes, their lives wouldn't be so lonely, or so short.), chapter 93.
Just because something is defined on a higher layer of abstraction doesn't mean that there is "no such thing", any more than there is "no such thing as an apple" just because physics doesn't draw object boundaries. Humans draw object boundaries, and in the HPVerse, magic listens to humans. I think the strongest thing you can say is "There is no such thing in reductionist physics as a consciousness", which is not the same as "consciousness doesn't exist" even in our universe, and doubly so in Harry's where magic gives concepts direct relevance.
casting a spell similar to Merlin's Interdict, a global enchantment, that saves the data that makes someone this person whenever a consciousness is terminated, and respawn it in a functional body
Maybe someone (the Peverell brothers) already did something like this, just incompletely. The data is saved... but not respawned; just collected somewhere. This may be what is referred to as "souls".
Of course, humans being what they are, even if some wizards notice the souls, they don't start thinking about reincarnating them.
Now I have the image of someone wearing "armor" made of live animals of some sort in order to absorb Killing Curses.
There's a new Dark Wizard in town, boys and girls... and he's COVERED IN BEES!
You jest, but it seems -- depending on whether one believes that AK works on animals or not -- that you have just come up with a way to block the unblockable curse. That's some serious lateral thinking, right there.
More likely still is that people really don't think on the matter much and so don't have well formed or necessarily consistent views of souls.
For those who don't know, the actual origin of "The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death" is Corinthians 15:26, specifically, the King James version.
The last one of {X; X is enemy && X shall be destroyed } is death.
It can be true assuming that the remaining enemies are indestructible.
Well, the Christus Victor theology of the resurrection of Christ is basically that Christ broke our slavery to death by going through the process Himself, which caused a divide by zero error and broke death permanently.
That was when the shining creature came to him, gleaming soft white beneath the candlefires of the Ravenclaw common room, as it slithered out from nowhere, the silver snake.
Any guesses why Draco is contacting Harry?
My second guess is that Minerva got in touch with Draco. She knows Harry taught him the Patronus from a conference in the headmasters office and has seen Harry's reaction to losing Draco.
At first I dismissed it at a silly thing for her to try, but now that she will be really making an effort it seems much more likely.
It's just over 24 hours since Hermione died - he probably just found out. It's the sort of reason you'd get in touch with a friend you used to know pretty well until recently.
Different usages: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/falsifiable
- Capable of being falsified, counterfeited, or corrupted.
- able to be proven false, and therefore testable
I'm referring to the first usage -- it can't be counterfeited.
The first definition of "falsifiable" means that it's easy to fake - if a Patronus is falsifiable under this definition, you don't get much information when you see a Patronus, since it could easily be something else and you couldn't tell the difference.
The second definition of "falsifiable" means that it's easy to prove that it's not fake - if a Patronus is falsifiable under this definition, you get a lot of information when you see a Patronus, since it is very difficult for something that looks like a Patronus to actually be a fake.
Because the two defintions are pretty much opposites, between them they cover everything - the ones that are easily fakeable and the ones that are not easily fakeable.
Heh. Mine are something like 95% and 1%. I'd actually consider it more likely for it to be Lucius's patronus, than it to be Quirrel's.
There had been only one thing Remus Lupin had thought of that might help, after he'd received the owls from Professor McGonagall and that strange man Quirinus Quirrell.
Harry was morally certain that Dumbledore, or both Dumbledore and Mad-Eye Moody, were following them invisibly to see if anyone tried for the bait.
It's seems that McGonagall and Quirrell are responsible for Harry spending the day with Lupin, and that Dumbledore knows exactly what they're doing. It's not entirely clear whether McGonagall and Quirrell knew that Lupin would decide to take Harry to Godric's Hollow, but Quirrell at least could probably guess.
All three of these people knew what Harry would find on his parents' grave. I don't recall McGonagall ever encountering Harry's transhumanist ideas, but Quirrell and Dumbledore would certainly know how Harry would choose to interpret the inscription.
Which makes it look as though one or more of these people might be indirectly trying to encourage Harry's efforts to resurrect Hermione.
As I interpreted canon: Canon!Voldemort also didn't recognize the symbol. Inference: Grindelwald studied the Deathly Hallows particularly and thus learned that symbol, to use as his own. The Deathly Hallows in general are well-known enough to have sayings like "Wand of elder, never prosper" but not the symbol.
... On a side note.
That's a prophecy. Which means it'd be recorded in the Hall of Prophecy.
I'm starting to wonder exactly how many very good reasons Dumbledore had for keeping Harry out of that Hall.
Wow, this was awesome! I wish I had read the canon so I would have had a chance to think about/predict what would happen when Harry read that inscription. This was just beautiful - a reminder of the heritage that transhumanists often forget we have. True, we have precious little tradition or precedent to fall back on - but in every generation in every era in every part of the world, there have been people who knew death for what it was and loathed it.
HPMOR is starting to be one tear jerker after another. I hope we'll get to see a couple more moments of levity, or - ideally - a moment of euphoria, when Hermione joins millions and millions of others we thought lost to history.
Edit: I really wish the word "pro-life" were available to describe this position.
Which is a bit frustrating in a couple ways, seeing as Paul (the most popular candidate for the originator of said line) was talking about a literal resurrection of everyone, hopefully during his lifetime, and canon Harry then proceeded to defeat death by dying and coming back.
That was what frustrated me the most - how canon could preach to us about accepting death as inevitable while giving its main character the power to defeat death. It's sad that the narrative just accepts it as okay that the main character and the subject of the prophecy gets to be resurrected, but for anyone else to seek that would be folly.
Vague stylistic thought - I don't have anything specific to base this on, but this chapter feels like something EY has been saving up, and is now throwing in as he's decided it's time to start the ending.
(By the way, tags on the opening post are wrong. There should be a tag reading "harry_potter", not two separate tags for the first and last name.)
Given the increasing number of prophecies that could refer to Harry, it's no wonder why Dumbledore refused to bring Harry to the Department of Mysteries. I mean, besides the possibility that he'd get knocked out by the storm of orbs. We know of four so far--at the time that Dumbledore refused to take Harry to the Hall of Prophecy, Harry only knew about the one.
Isn't the fact that people like Dumbledore don't invest significant amount of time into thinking about ressurection a sign that they really do believe in life after death?
I'm an idiot. I'm not sure why I didn't see this before, except that it was 2 am when I first read the chapter.
I've read the other posts below, but I think we are missing something specific here.
Þregen béon Pefearles suna and þrie hira tól þissum Déað béo gewunen.
Three shall be Peverell's sons and three their devices by which Death shall be defeated.
-Spoken in the presence of the three Peverell brothers, in a small tavern on the outskirts of what would later be called Godric's Hollow.
Spoken in the presence of them. Not by them.
It was spoken to them by ...
Þregen béon Pefearles suna and þrie hira tól þissum Déað béo gewunen.
Harry perhaps now recognizes himself not as an originator of a plot against Death, but as an intermediate result of that plot.
Has it been pointed out yet that while Hermione lay dying and Harry was trying to save her, he neglected to cover her in the cloak that hides the wearer from death, and also neglected to notice this fact during the time afterwards when he was getting mad at himself for everything he had screwed up?
Prediction: HPMoR will end after 108 chapters.
(Warning: TV Tropes link. Notably, Failed Utopia #4-2 is listed as an example (because 107 clauses in a wish to make people happy are not enough); moreover, Death Note also has 108 chapters. There, now you don't have to click on the link if you don't want to.)
I think this chapter explained something which has struck me as strange for a long time:
If the killing curse can be stopped by love, how come only Harry ever survived? Its not like Lilly is the only person who ever loved anyone, nor the only person who would sacrifice themselves to save another.
Maybe the Potters possessed a new, experimental deathly hallow, one capable of stopping the killing curse (or, alternativly, an old one whoes purpose has been forgotton). It must have limits on its power, otherwise James and Lilly would have lived, and probably wou...
"You." Professor Quirrell spun, and she found herself gazing directly into eyes of icy blue.
... (a few paragraphs, whose action gives no great reason to think that eye contact was broken) ...
A wordless image crossed her mind of a patch of glass on a steel ball.
Uh-oh.
Don't know if this has been suggested before, but:
Possibility: Harry's "Father's rock" is the Resurrection Stone. Giving this one low probability, since it has thus far demonstrated no other magical properties, and just seems like a way to get Harry to grind his Transfiguration and mana stats.
Possibility: Harry's "Father's rock" is the Philosopher's Stone. Giving this one even lower probability.
Possibility: The Philosopher's Stone is actually the Resurrection stone, or a similar magical construct. Middling probability; Dumbledore refers...
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 96. The previous thread is at almost 300 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, 21, 22, 23, 24, .
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: