New long chapter! Since I expect its discussion to generate more than 160 comments (which would push the previous thread over the 500 comment limit) before the next chapter is posted, here is a new thread.
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 108 (and chapter 109, once it comes out on Monday).
EDIT: There have now been two separate calls for having one thread per chapter, along with a poll in this thread. If the poll in this thread indicates a majority preference for one thread per chapter by Monday, I will edit this post to make it for chapter 108 only. In that case a new thread for chapter 109 should be posted by whoever gets a chance and wants to after the chapter is released.
EDIT 2: The poll indicates a large majority (currently 78%) in favor of one thread per chapter. This post has been edited accordingly.
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.)
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: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Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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.
Eliezer and I are now part of the literary canon.
At least, we're both taught in the English department at Princeton. Anne Jamison's course, "Fanfiction: Transformative works from Shakespeare to Sherlock", will cover Eliezer's Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality on March 2, and one of my short stories, "The Magician and the Detective", on March 4.
Ch. 79 After the aurors come get Hermione for the attempted murder of Draco, Harry is in the Headmaster's office:
After a lengthy discussion of the case, Harry leaves:
But there is no reason to believe he left Hogwarts. Dumbledore then retrieves the Weasley twins from Divination class and gets their map:
I'd previously assumed that no information came of this, because the Defense Professor was being detained at the DMLE at the time, but Dumbledore almost certainly saw the map report Harry as Tom Riddle.
Does anyone else think this reads like Quirrel has an awful lot of emotional connection to and personal memories about this story, almost as if it were Baba Yaga speaking about herself in the 3... (read more)
This makes some sense, but if Quirrell could bamboozle the map, surely he wouldn't do so in such a way as to reveal vitally important and damaging secrets to his enemies.
Eliezer says on r/hpmor that the intermittent map "error" is V's intermittent control of Q's body.
Muggle research in the 2010s has revealed much about what actually makes people happy, and how often people are deceived. The best way to find out is with one of those mood-tracking cell phone apps, which eliminate the biases of memory. Quirrell doesn't have that, but as an approximation, I searched the PDF for the word "smile", which appears 310 times in chapters 1-106, and the word "enjoy", which appears 32 times. What did I find?
Interacting with Harry makes Quirrell happy. Moreso than killing idiots. Moreso than teaching Battle Magic. Killing him would be a grave mistake.
The book is mostly from Harry's perspective, so I would expect some selection bias in searching for interactions that make Quirrell happy, since most of the interactions described are with Harry as the protagonist. I agree with your conclusion though.
When Lord Voldemort was feeling down, Bella would bring him chocolate and idiots to kill to cheer him up. I don't know why it never worked.
... Huh.
The power that the Dark Lord knows not... might end up being love after all.
Agreed, and I want to expand that a little:
Muggle science determined that muggle minds are contained in muggle brains, and Harry has been reluctant to let go of this idea even though there are observations against it and he has seen that magic can freely violate very solid muggle conclusions like conservation of matter.
Even if muggle brain damage seems to damage the mind, it could be that it damages the mind's interface to the body. Here in the real world, this dualism adds additional complications and doesn't help explain any evidence. In the HPMOR universe there is a great deal that would be explained by mind/body dualism.
Animagus transfigurations almost require it. Skeeter's mind is not contained in the physical arrangement of a beetle's brain. Therefore, her mind isn't just a physical brain in this world. Her brain could be held in some extradimensional pocket and interfacing to the beetle. Her mind could be running on a magical, rather than physical substrate (always or just during transformation?). She could have a soul. (And some versions of "mind on a magical substrate" would also qualify as "souls".)
As DanArmak says, Quirrel didn't just have ba... (read more)
Quirrel says:
That seems very important, so why didn't he ask any of them why they arrived early? It looks like a blatant mistake on his part.
I agree -- this is central to figuring out the next few chapters. My best guess is that Harry said "Hello, Voldemort" so that an invisible Cedric Diggory could overhear. Diggory could time-turn one hour back to tell Dumbledore at 5:55 or so, or, alternatively, could inform Dumbledore after 6:55. Dumbledore himself has a time-turner, so as long as Diggory gave no information from after 7:00 Dumbldore could travel back 6 hours from then. Dumbledore knows that Harry is Riddle, so he probably has some aces up his sleeve.
Hmm. My probability that Hermione will be recreated as an alicorn princess is now over 75%:
It seems unlikely that Voldemort thinks that humans are the optimal creatures to be (that's flowing with the status quo, which he does not do). It might be best to be, say, both a Wizard and a Troll, or a Wizard and a Dragon, or a Wizard and some new optimized thing. But why try this out on himself first, when it could go horribly wrong, when he could try it out on Hermione?
I wonder if the final room is not visible on the Marauder's Map because it's warded or because the room you enter is determined by whether/how the potion is flawed.
As a veteran Potion's professor, Snape would be able to predict very accurately the way a first year would screw up such a fiddly task. Screw it up in the right way, see an innocuous final room with a little "Well done, don't spoil it!" from the Headmaster. Execute it perfectly and trigger... what exactly?
QQ has Harry's wand, so how is Harry going to get out of this mess? One of my theories is wandlessmagic. The existence of wandless magic at all is evidence the wand isn't strictly needed.
This makes sense if you buy that a wizard is pulling levers on the source of magic rather than actually enacting the spell
From Chapter 25
... (read more)Hmm... some thoughts occur to me:
Firstly, he hasn't used any of the muggle equipment Fred and George got him yet has he? But Quirrell's got his pouch.
Secondly, this may not come as a surprise but he is likely to succeed since "HE IS HERE. THE ONE WHO WILL DESTROY THE VERY STARS IN HEAVEN" this could refer to Quirell, true, but I far expect it to refer to HJPEV due to the timing. Also note that Quirell says something about prophecies in ch. 108, but I can't find the quote.
Third: obligatory wacky theory that his father's rock is the Stone of Permanency. Stones == rocks, and he was given it by Dumbledore after all. And Harry's magic interferes with Quirrell's so it might shield the magic trace.
Fourthly: this is my first post on LessWrong, nice to meetcha!
Old jokes from chapter 79:
And also
He's Mr. You-Know-Who.
Morfin is a Riddle family name, so we can probably rule out Eliezer choosing it for its anagrams. Nevertheless, might as well have some fun:
Tom Morfin Riddle
What else?
Norm Modifier, Ltd.
Dim dolt informer
Find old Mortimer
Doom mind trifler
I'm Milton Redford
I'm Milford rodent
Florid Tinder mom
And, ultimately ...
Lord Tim, [the] Informed
"There are some who call me ... Tim."
On Reddit, Eliezer endorsed these:
Firm dildo mentor
... Hm.
This isn't the chain of logic I followed - for the sake of authenticity I'll put that at the end, but -
Isn't a little... strange, that artifacts designed and destined to defeat death transfer primarily by death?
I mean, even aside from the "kill the previous owner and take their stuff" method, the other option - inheriting it - is also heavily tied to death, as powerful artifacts like these are unlikely to be permanently given away until the original owner has no further use of it.
Backing away from plot for a minute - if you don't expect to manage to destroy death yourself, you should really program your powerful artifacts to seek out the most effective owners, anyway. Inheritance is very unreliable, and murder is entirely counterproductive - both would be backup selectors to anyone designing such a thing. So what's the primary determinant?
I think we've seen it. The prophecy stone, that responded to Harry's oath to end death, engraved with the symbol of the Deathly Hallows, and completely unmentioned since - if I were going to design such a thing, gifting the Hallows to someone who had sworn an honest oath against death would be a good start, particularly if I cou... (read more)
So by the way, has anyone notice that Eliezer did something even more impossible? Not only was Harry saved from certain death at the hands of a hoard of Yaoi fangirls by Voldemort and it wasn't crack, but Voldemort was the one who responsible for the whole thing and it still isn't crack.
You probably mean a horde of Yaoi fangirls, but Harry would be wise indeed to hoard them, until he hits puberty.
How odd. You think the Order would've mentioned that Riddle and Monroe were in the same year at school.
Voldemort making random rocks into horcruxs? One day someone steps on the wrong rock and turns into LORD VOLDEMORT! I hate it when that happens.
It's worse than that. What's something you're likely to have on hand at all times, and worse, are then likely to hand off to someone other person, who will hand it off to another, and so on and so forth?
Even if wizarding currency is protected against such shenanigans, some unknown number of UK sterling could have fractions of Voldemort's soul in them.
Clever idea, but currency doesn't stay long in circulation. Coins longer than bills -- the oldest bill in my wallet is from 2006, while I found a quarter from 1976 in my pocket. And if horcruces are as hard to destroy here as they are in canon, I imagine even Muggles would find it curious if a 50p coin were found intact after it should have been melted down.
I suppose it'd work if you're planning to keep supplies up on an ongoing basis and didn't think much of Muggle investigative abilities or their ability to interface with wizarding authorities, though -- and the latter does seem minimal in this universe.
How about the doorknob on the men's room in St. Paul's Cathedral? Or some other building you wouldn't expect to go away for a while. Or, heh, the Blarney Stone, if you can find enough time alone with it.
I must say, the thought of Voldie kicking himself (well, wanting to, but he couldn't because no legs) while spending nine years as a disembodied spirit in the Voyager Plaque was extremely amusing.
I also loved the fact that his Voldemort persona was designed to be a stupid Dark Lord that would last weeks at most and ended up being way too strong for Magical Britain.
One of my favorite bits:
So, why did Quirrell offer Hermione to leave before killing her?
It seems to be a character trait that he tries to allow opponents a way out if they're smart enough: a chance to lose, if you will. He offered Harry's mother a deal rather than simply killing her, he offered Skeeter a chance to make amends before killing her, he offers the Auror a stun or an AK, he offered the master a chance to teach him rather than die - and he offered Hermione a chance to stop being the heroine opposed to the dark lord.
In each instance, the character chose... poorly.
'No possible reason'? Here's 4 off the top of my head. She could kill herself to avoid being tortured to insanity & then death. That's always a good reason. She could kill herself to frustrate Voldemort and deprive him of the satisfaction of killing her himself (also a classic, dating back at least to Masada). She could kill herself after he offers the deal, reasoning that even if you don't understand why, it's a good policy to try to prevent whatever your enemy wants. She could kill herself as part of a nasty ritual or black magic.
When does Voldemort ever linger at the scene of a crime for multiple hours? I'm fairly sure that would violate some Rule or other. No, simpler if the plan fails to fallback to killing Harry directly and making a timely retreat as a dark lord should.
META: I'd like to suggest having a separate thread for each publication. These attract far more interest than any other threads, and after the first 24 hours the top comments are set and there's little new discussion.
There aren't very many threads posted in discussion these days, so it's not like there is other good content that will be crowded out by one new thread every 1-3 days.
Quirrel has not confiscated Harry's ring with his father rock, which has been transfigured by Harry, in the setting. We've seen Quirrel's magic fluctuate out of control when touching Harry's, both in Azkaban and in his telling of the night at Godric's Hollow. We've seen Quirrel take care in the Azkaban escape to not even let Harry touch something that Quirrel has transfigured.
It is possible, if Harry simply touches Quirrel with the gem on his ring that Quirrel will be forced to once again throw away his wand and transform into a snake. It would affect Harry too, but Harry seemed less affected than Quirrel in Azkaban for whatever reason (because magic is stronger around Quirrel?)
Even if this avenue would destroy Harry, self-sacrifice is among my contenders for a "power the Dark Lord knows not".
There is also the "other" transfiguration, the one that's not the ring. Anyone have guesses as to what this is?
I just realizied that the trap for voldie might well be Baba Yaga's hairbrush.
It follows from the curse on the defense position.
Because I just realized that I think it was an accident, and happened because Voldemort moved the goblet of fire out of Baba Yaga's reach.
Theory: Voldemort is wrong about the Baba Yaga. She faked her death and ran off with her new wife. This part I am quite confident about. 70% probability? Most of the remainder is that her death was accidental and the reason Perenelle has spent centuries accumulating lore is that she wants her back. Yes, Im assigning under 10% likelyhood to the chance that Voldemort read this story right.
Anyway, given "Baba Yaga is not dead". A thought occurred to me. "Did they remember to terminate her employment? Could they in fact even do so without being whammied by the goblet?" The answers to which is obviously "No." Unfortunately worded contract is unfortunate, Baba Yaga has magical tenure despite slacking on her job for going on 6 centuries.
This was all well and good as long as the goblet was somewhere Baba could get at it. - Telling the goblet to lay of a new teacher every couple of decades isn't m... (read more)
There is no need for all of this to be plotted out in advance! In fact, I am pretty sure none of it was.
The wording on the binding is very much what I would expect someone to come up with if they wanted a binding to keep everyone involved safe, and had insufficient training in law and logic.
BY and Perenelle run off, and work out what happened when the replacement battle magic teacher is tragically struck by lighting, realize BY has stumbled into an absurdly broad defense and just keep it going while telling the goblet that they are giving each new teacher the position of her own free will.
Voldemort steals the goblet because he's a thieving magpie when it comes to artefacts of ancient power, and promptly new teachers of DADA start dropping like flies. He's credited with the curse, and not being an idiot just goes "Yup, that was me". It's not even weird that he doesnt make the connection - The teacher who held the job when he stole it should, if I am correct, have retired normally in his or her own time, so the curse starts quite a while after the theft.
A good bit of what is supporting this whole theory is that the DADA curse is ridiculusly powerful A Great Working. Thus, if it is a possible unintentional consequence of a Great Working which we know to have been preformed, well it likely is. This being more likely than two great workings being aimed at the same job. I mean, teaching at hogwarts is prestigious, but come on..
I decided to collect the stuff about these recent updates that confuse me, and when added together two were in the shape of a theory!
Even Quirrell is confused! Wow!
So... Dumbledore did know all along, just like cannon, and sent the map to the twins for plausible deniability. He can get away with that because he doesn't mind when people think him a fool. And he really needs Querrellmort to think of him as ignorant so he will play the role perfectly... well Voldemort said he could play chess.
In the last thread roystgnr wrote
... (read more)So far the update schedule seems to follow the Fibonacci sequence.
Aaaaand there were 107 horcruxes (meaning 107 murders) before he stopped keeping count.
I think it is highly likely to be coincidental :P
Is Quirrel aware of all the people whom he can possess via his True Horcruxes? Can he possess any one of them at will, without the original body dying?
This may explain the fact that he occasionally leaves his host body. We thought it was to inhabit his other horcruxes, particularly the Voyager one, but it may be to possess other people.
ETA: apparently the answer is yes:
That was absolutely awesome. This story is really very well written. So much exposition, and it just all made perfect sense. And it was even somehow brought back far more in line with the original novel than I thought possible.
And I guess the '"Power the dark lord knows not" really is love, which is kinda awesome.
It's still kind of obvious how to defeat Voldemort though. Simply permanently disable him without killing him. Some magical prison, or a coma, or a permanent transfiguration into a stone. This is in fact so obvious that Voldemort himself should realize it as well. Maybe he just figures he is so far above Harry's power level that he has nothing to fear. Or he has some defenses against even this.
Another way to get rid of him: Destroy all his horcruxes on earth, then kill him. He'll live on on pioneer, but that's fine. You can pick him up again in 10000 years when humanity has progressed far beyond him, and can probably even cure him. Heck that'd even be a nice ending. A epilogue set 10,000 years from now, with Harry recovering the Pioneer 11 and curing Voldemort.
The sequel could then be a Harry / Voldemort slashfic where Harry and a redeemed Voldemort rule the galaxy as father and son.
The solution seems obvious (albeit hard and dangerous): make the students smarter so they are no longer idiots.
He managed to last a year.
From chapter 25:
... (read more)In Ch. 37, Quirrell explains how he found Harry:
Conditioned on Lord Voldmort being a blood purist, this is evidence for Quirrell not being Voldemort (probably the intended interpretation). In fact, this was evidence for Lord Voldemort not being a blood purist.
And if you've been paying attention to the Muggle world for the whole 20th century, a blood purist is exactly the sort of villain you'd think up.
What the hell? Making horcruxes for your friends doesn't actually test the invention. You also need to kill your friends and hope that the invention works. That doesn't sound so nice, does it? And we don't have a good explanation why Riddle missed this idea anymore.
I don't think Harry meant to imply that actually running this test would be nice, but rather that one cannot even think of running this test without first thinking of the possibility of making a horcrux for someone else (something which is more-or-less nice-ish in itself, the amorality inherent in creating a horcrux at all notwithstanding).
You don't have to test it on your friends; you can test it on your enemies, or on bystanders you don't care about, or in Voldemort's case, on minions you don't care about.
Get a random wizard off the street (if you're Voldemort) or a prisoner you're going to kill anyway (if you're ethical). Control them by Imperius, Legilimizing, or plain threats. Have them make a Horcrux. Kill them and activate the horcrux on a second person you're willing to kill. Test the result. When done, kill the second person and destroy the Horcrux.
Harry thinks it's because making a Horcrux for someone else pattern-matches "teaching your most powerful spells to others", which pattern-matches "helping others altruistically", and Voldemort has an ugh field around that concept, or at least a blind spot. For what it's worth, Voldemort agreed with this analysis.
Make them for lots of friends, friends who like you lead dangerous lives and who unlike you are not vastly more powerful than every other wizard around. Some of them will likely die soon enough.
I just read up to the point in chapter 108 where Voldemort refuses to answer the question about the immortality spell (and haven't read the comments here yet.) It occurred to me immediately that since this is question about the past -- assuming Voldemort has already cast the spell -- that he has broken his agreement, which means that Harry can now start executing plans to overcome him, and say "No" without lying when Voldemort asks if he has betrayed him.
When the Dumbledore sees himself on the Map in chapter 79, it initials his middle names:
But when it shows the Tom Riddles, it doesn't include the middle initial M.
This is probably just an oversight.
Is this the same Asian combat instructor mentioned earlier, I wonder?
[META]
Is anyone in favor of going back to the old system of having one discussion thread per HPMOR chapter instead of the current system based on number of comments?
[pollid:825]
Fair point, though I feel like that logic is sort of letting them cause a comparatively large disruption to our enjoyment of real-time discussion of the final arc of a fiction we've been following for years, in return for the prevention of a comparatively small temporary disruption to their enjoyment of the Discussion forum. Scope, of course, plays a part here, but I doubt it's remotely enough on the side of the 500 comments people to tip the scales.
What did he do with it once he stole it?
So, if this were Pact, I would expect that Dumbledore has one of Voldemort's Horcruxes, and he can be possessed by Voldemort at will. Dumbledore would show up to save the day, and then the brief uptick in probability of success would be followed by a precipitous drop.
I am fairly confident this will not happen, but I'm noticing that most of my confidence seems to come from arguments that I am not confident in once I give them explicit form. For example, that seems too hard an antagonist for Harry, and he needs to have some chance of success, and EY seems ag... (read more)
One has to wonder about the "masters" of the Horcruxes Are the two Tom Riddles masters of their individual Horcruxes, or are they joint masters to both? In HPMOR, time turners are locked to a single individual. Then can Voldemort use Harry's time turner? My guess will be "no" for literary reasons.
Voldemort mastered the resurrection stone by defeating death. For Harry to master it, he would have to defeat death, either through Patronus or by dying and getting resurrected.
Has it been previously established that no lying can take place when using parseltongue or is Harry's belief in this based solely on his inability to lie to Quirrell?
Harry and Quirrell are about to enter the room containing the Mirror of Erised (desire), which shows the viewer's deepest desire. It contains the philosopher's stone, and (Ch. 104)
So, what is Harry's deepest desire? There are several candidates, but I think a strong contender is a Quirrell who isn't evil. Transfiguration can only create things that already exist. It is plausible that being seen in the mirror, modified as it is by the magic of the Stone, c... (read more)
Nobody seems to be asking the obvious question, after Tom and Harry's conversation: what happened to the Dark Lord Dick?
Did he try to turn the Muggle population against wizardkind through enchanted books that weakened False Memory Charms and Obliviation? Did the secret mind-controlling government eventually kill him? Inquiring minds want to know!
Prediction on destroying the Horcux network: we know that the Horcruxes are all connected to Voldemort. If you could locate one (and we know they are now distributed so anyone can stumble across and be possessed by them), perhaps you could use that Horcruxes's connection to the network to destroy or incapacitate it, then kill Voldemort. Locating all possible nodes to physically destroy is heavily implied to be infeasible even with magic. I give this 60% confidence.
Prediction on next chapter: Voldemort kills Harry and succeeds. After all, Harry just t... (read more)
I recall Quirrell saying that his spirit could fly free and choose a consenting person to possess if he so desired. Perhaps Lesath would let Harry borrow his body for a while?
"My life is yours, my Lord, and my death as well."
I like this.
More questions. I'll just gather them here, instead of making a new comment for each one.
1) Making horcruxes for your friends doesn't actually test the horcrux spell, you also have to kill your friends. So it makes more sense to test on a minion, which doesn't require you to be nice in the first place. Why didn't Quirrell think of that?
2) Why did Quirrell offer Hermione to leave before killing her? The plot against Malfoy wouldn't be served by her departure, only by her death.
3) If magical resonance can kill, why didn't it kill or otherwise affect baby Har... (read more)
A thought occurs: how do we know the Stone is actually at the end of the gauntlet? Is there anything to keep Dumbledore from setting up the traps as a decoy to flush out Voldemort while the real stone is elsewhere (and presumably under proper security)?
An allusion to the Passover ceremony? Why???
Passover is the reenactment of a ritual, powered by blood, to ward off the Angel of Death.
So who was Alexander Chernyshov? Wikipedia says:
This doesn't seem particularly relevant, and also he died while Tom Riddle was a young boy. But it's a common name (as Google tells me). Did anyone catch the reference?
After reading the chapter I am dumbstruck by similarities between Professor and Dr. Manhattan. There might be a trope for this kind of character somewhere..
This is precisely the plan that Quirrel originally planned for Harry, have him pretend to defeat LV and set him up to rule the country.
This chapter may sort out something which got on my nerves earlier in the story-- the long sequence where Quirrell is Harry's only friend. I'm not saying that Harry should have known Quirrell was Voldemort (and I still think it might have been more interesting if Quirrell had been seriously bad news, but not Voldemort), but it seems to me that Harry liked and trusted Quirrell more than he should have. (Sorry, no details-- I'm going by memory.)
Now I think that Harry's desperate desire for an intellectual equal (which to some extent translates as someone who... (read more)
Though Harry was careful not to touch Quirrell's snake form in Azkaban, this quote implies to me that Animagus forms might be more resistant to the Riddles Doom effect. This might apply to Harry as well, should he ever be in his Animagus form.
Is Snape being mind-controlled or truly in league with Quirrel (or pretending to be)?
From Ch. 77, Quirrell confronts Snape in a discussion that touches on Snape's loyalties and the 3rd floor corridor. It ends with this:
... (read more)I haven't re-read the fic in a while so this might be a stupid question, but does QQ know about Partial Transfiguration? I can't recall him being present/conscious at any point Harry uses it. That would be a power the Dark Lord knows not, right?
If Harry judged that whatever Quirrel was planning was X-risk level dangerous, he could try wandlessly Transfiguring a few micrograms of antimatter, destroying both of them (along with a large chunk of Scotland) in the process.
Apologies if someone else has suggested this before. I'm not going to read enough comments to find out. But why doesn't Harry just say in Parseltongue, "If you let me conquer the world, you will be more happy, and have more fun." Harry can totally deliver with his transhumanist future by uplifting normal people so they aren't "idiots" that bore Voldemort, and giving him the kind of rivals he wants to fight with. Like, worst case he has to leave a planet or whatever of shitty conditions where Voldemort personally fucks people up, because that's the only thing that will satisfy him. But it's still worth it for the improved chance to get the rest of the universe.
So far, the important spells get their detail work done. How does the improved horcrux work?
AFAICT all Q's claims of its total novelty are in human speech. It's possible but not certain that his previous Parseltongued comments horcruxes puts a lower bound on how similar they are. It certainly means he's confident his ritual is not the one the legends are about, but given that it ended up suiting the stories better than the weak horcrux, it's quite possible he unknowingly reinvented the true forgotten original. (speculation: this would explain the possible-... (read more)
I was somewhat surprised that V actually lost his body and had no ongoing role in limiting the tenure of Defense Professors. More importantly, I'm somewhat surprised he had no hand in the Stanislav Petrov affair in this timeline.
Does he think he saved the day some time around August 1991?
Or, if he really has a Limitus Professorium curse, did he also cast one before he left to prevent anyone from starting a nuclear exchange? ("Some curses are easier to cast when they bind yourself and others alike; Slytherin's Parselmouth curse is an example of such.&q... (read more)
I get what is meant, but if they had been lovers for some time then I would say that Perenelle was not a virgin in any meaningful sense of the word. Of course, from an old-fashioned point of view she might have been, but this sentence is not accompanied by a modifier expressing the change in values as the next one is.
If you're going to be using old definitions "lovers = having sex" is a pretty recent change in meaning.
Um, the relevant property is that the man can be sure the woman's child will be his, and for that "virgin = intact hymen" is useful.
Maybe, but it's certainly the common definition at the time, and besides the terms of the deal pretty explicitly said "drop of blood" anyway.
I have a cunning plan:
What constraints are Harry working under?
The deadman switch hostage killer cannot have go off because they are timeturned, and the deaths of hundreds of students would surely cause a paradox by disrupting the match. Its possible that it sets a timer to go off after Harry jumps back in time, but then presuming that Harry knows exactly when he jumped back and Quirrel does not, Harry can then warn the teachers before the bomb goes off. At the end of the day, even if the hostages die, hundreds of lives are a small price to pay for stoppin... (read more)