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 81, which should be published later today. The previous thread passed 400 comments as of the time of this writing, so it will pass 500 comments soon after the next chapter is posted, if not before. I suggest refraining from commenting here until chapter 81 is posted; comment in the 12th thread until you read chapter 81. After chapter 81 is posted, I suggest all discussion of previous guesses be kept here, with links to comments in the previous thread.
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.) When posted, chapter 81 should appear here.
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: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight,nine, ten, eleven, twelve.
As a reminder, it’s often useful to start your comment by indicating which chapter you are commenting on.
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Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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.
This is probably not the solution Harry's going to use in Chapter 81 (I'm writing this before it was posted), but a friend and I were discussing it and came up with a possible solution. I decided it would be much more fun as a piece of fanfanfiction rather than an abstract description, so here it is. I hope you have as much fun reading it as I did writing.
Chapter 81b: Alternate Solution
Beyond all panic and despair his mind began to search through every fact in its possession, recall everything it knew about Lucius Malfoy, about the Wizengamot, about the laws of magical Britain; his eyes looked at the rows of chairs, at every person and every thing within range of his vision, searching for any opportunity it could grasp -
And the start of an idea formed - not a plan, but a tiny fragment of one. He spelled out N-O-T-E on his fingers, and, as discretely as he could, drew a piece of paper out from his bag that he did not remember putting there. It read:
And then he heard a loud bang, and another while he was stuffing the note back in his bag, and he looked up to see that a circular piece had pushed out from the wall, (that wall that could've withs... (read more)
Idea: Making the money back will be much more difficult than most people anticipate, including Harry.
Reason: Many wizards are highly motivated towards finance and would exhaust every opportunity to generate infinite gold. The rich wizards of the Wizengamot considered 100,000 galleons to be a lot of money.
First, imagine all the ways a wizard could make effectively infinite amounts of muggle money. Arbitrage. Use a time turner and win at the stock market. Use a time turner and win the super-lotto. Imperius (or love potion, false memory charm, groundhog day attack, etc) any billionaire and take part of their fortune. Mind trick some bankers with fake documents (as Dumbledore does in book 6). Go rob some banks with invisibility and teleportation (and/or a time turner). Use magic to secure a job with a 50 million dollar golden parachute with very generous terms. Make huge amounts of drug money as a courier via teleportation/portkey. Sell 5 galleon trinkets to muggle collectors for millions of dollars each. Etc., etc., etc..
Some of them are more risky, some of them are less risky, but I bet that any member of these forums could get at least $50 million in a week if we were w... (read more)
I think that taking advantage of muggles in lots of ways is against the law, so imperiusing or memory charming a billionaire would be forbidden. I wouldn't be at all surprised if people have thought of and maybe tried using time turners to cheat the muggle lottery, so I'd give fair odds that's illegal too. When it comes to arbitrage though, remember that while wizards in general may not be tremendously stupid, they tend to be incredibly clueless about the muggle world; remember that Arthur Weasley can pass as a premier expert on muggle artifacts. The fact that the values of gold and silver in the muggle world are totally divorced from their value in the wizarding world is likely to be very little known, and the concept of arbitrage may be completely foreign to them as well (look how primitive their whole financial system appears to be.)
The fact that Mr. Bester, Harry's occlumency instructor, said he wished he could remember "That trick with the gold and silver" implies that a) the idea is not obvious to most wizards, and b) he thinks he would at least stand a chance of getting away with it.
I completely agree. Recall also Draco's speech about muggles scratching in the dirt, and his reaction to Harry's estimate of the lunar program budget. It's not just wizards not paying attention to relative values of gold and silver in the muggle world---for the most part, the possibility that there could be a substantial amount of either in the muggle world doesn't occur to them. Now you might expect muggleborns to know better, even after making allowances for the fact that they enter the wizarding world at age 11. On the other hand, if a muggleborn is clever enough to see the potential for profit, they might also be clever enough to see what Harry apparently does not---that calling attention to the fact that the muggles are ripe for exploitation is a Bad Idea.
I would actually suspect parents of a half blood (is there a name for this?) would be the weak link, rather than muggle-born children.
You've got people who have lived their whole lives as muggles, then suddenly they fall in love and get married and find out their spouse is a wizard. They've spent ~20 years in the muggle world and probably have a career of their own. No way they don't ask their spouse to spend a couple hours and let them both live like kings for the rest of their lives. And if they don't even get that much information about their other's life, that's some seriously messed up power dynamics in that household.
Also, as Harry himself speculates, muggleborns, like his mother, probably tend to fall into the habit of not thinking of muggles as Real People anymore, because it's too emotionally taxing, and they're living in a different world. They may stop concerning themselves with the muggle world much by the time they're grown up. The muggle raised wizards in the original canon certainly seemed to.
My guess is that rather than policing any of various muggle institutions, they investigate, as we do in our own world, whenever anyone appears to suddenly come into possession of large amounts of money for no clear reason, and if they find out they did something illegal, they throw them in jail.
Maybe people are already using wizardry to get huge amounts of money through the muggle world, but if so they may have to store and use the money very inconspicuously.
I wonder if they do. The wizarding world is a bizarre mix of modern and ancient traditions. It seems just as likely for them to have an income tax as not. So, they may or may not have the bureaucratic apparatus in place to know how much money people have and make.
I also wonder what the official stance would be on, say, bilking the stock market. It seems like standing up for muggle rights would be an unpopular political stance. Since there's no direct victim and you're doing things that aren't even illegal in the muggle world (nevermind they don't have time-travel), it seems unlikely the authorities would care to stop you, unless they have a blanket ban on anything that would result in inflation.
God, I'm such a double-nerd. There's a dark lord to be fought and I'm hoping the next plot arc is about wizard tax law and how magical Britain handles inflation.
The funny thing is, it's not really bilking the stock market. The whole argument for stock trading is that traders create value by accurately pricing securities, and thus allocating capital efficiently. Time travel is just a ridiculously efficient means of doing so. Given common access to Time-Turners, the stock market would literally be perfectly efficient(assuming that using turner-induced stock prices doesn't violate the 6-hour rule). People without them would be very pissed off, but I'd actually argue it as being the right and proper way to run a stock market if the technology existed.
In canon at least, it's pretty clear that there is few interaction from Muggle Prime Minister and Minister of Magic, unless exceptional events occur. IIRC, in first 5 years, there is only two interactions : the Minister of Magic informing the Prime Minister about the escape of Sirius Black, and the dragons for the Triwizards Tournament. And there seems that not once did the Muggle Prime Minister directly contact the Minister of Magic, it only went the other way around.
So I'm sceptical about that. More likely the Ministry of Magic has someone working in the staff of the Muggle Prime Minister and informing the Ministry if something odds is happening.
Neither of which are known to the Wizarding world, as evidenced by the Occlumency teacher's reaction to his discovery of it. (and his discovery of it, and his discovery of it... :) )
Your assessment of the Wizarding World's evaluation of the Muggle world. To the supermajority of Wizards, science is a total unknown. Economic and sociopolitical theory are terms they've simply never heard of.
They are isolated and effectively are like the apocryphal Chinese Emperor who burned his fleets because there was nothing left to discover; or the equally apocryphal Patent Office official who wanted to close the Patent Office in the 1800's because there was nothing left to invent.
So basically what you're seeing is what's called "hindsight bias". It is obvious to you, who knows what "Muggles" have, that the Wizards are vastly disadvantaged here -- insanely so -- but remember that as further demonstrated by Draco's total ignorance of Man's visit to the Moon, Wizards believe Muggles are "wallowing in the mud". The idea that they might LEARN from Muggles is actively suppressed by a concerted political campain by a powerful and long-standing major political faction.
Like going off to live in a poor country if you have a first-world income to live on. I believe it's already been remarked that this is about how magical Britain views muggle Britain.
Some counter-evidence for getting gold being difficult: In chapter 27, Mister Bester (the Legilimens who trained Harry) said:
Implying that it was at least somewhat practical as a means for getting rich quickly.
I meant it as Bayesian evidence. (updating P(Arbitrage works) down on Bester regretting means updating up on him not Regretting)
Plus, this is stronger evidence for us than for Harry due to Conservation of Details and the recent disclaimer by EY that there are no red herrings, and that simple solutions != bad solutions (and in fact, the opposite is usually true).
ETA: Also, Bester probably thought about it more more than a few seconds, at least the first time he saw it in Harry's mind - Remember that he didn't just see those Ideas/secrets, he's also seen key moments of his previous conversations.
Theres also a psychological dimension to consider. To most wizards, and especially the rich pure bloods who this would be most relevant to, muggles, muggle-borns and anything associated with them are incredibly low status. Mere knowledge of muggles is seen as a major social negative (see treatment of Arthur Weasley). As such they would have a strong incentive not to investigate muggle knowledge, and if you suggested to Lucius that he made his fortune and power from dealing with Muggles his brain might actually explode from shame.
Remember, most of wizarding Britain is either people who were taken out of the muggle world at age 10-11 and don't come back, or people who never lived there at all. How many of them are actually going to understand finance well enough to have a sense of how to exploit it? And the ones who actually have money at Gringott's are almost by definition the ones who never even spent those 11 years in the muggle world, so they may well not have any idea that finance exists. And even if they do, the ignorance and prejudice is rather overpowering, and may well prevent proper use of it. Someone who has both seed capital and the knowledge of how to exploit the crap out of it is going to be rare, and the DMLE is likely going to step on anyone who gets too egregious about using wizarding advantages to do so.
(Edited first sentence for accuracy)
I don't believe this is correct. In fact, isn't there a section in MoR where McGonagall relates to Harry that less than 10 "muggleborn" Wizards are being inducted into Hogwarts that year? (With Harry being one of them?)
Let's quote the current author's notes:
Now, yes, it is possible that Eliezer Yudkowsky's Author Note on this very chapter is a lie, and he will suddenly reveal a whole series of... (read more)
I think that's an inescapable result of the idiot world J. K. Rowling made. There is just so much in cannon that makes so little sense.
Not really. All sorts of arguments and fights over importation rights occurred even during the height of merchantilism. That importing goods can be profitable is a much more obvious claim than that moving goods between markets can be profitable. The second is more abstract. Moreover, they don't think of the Muggle world as that important, so the fact that the Muggle world has imbalanced prices may not be obvious to them as something to even think about.
Note that Harry secretly buried 100 Galleons in the backyard of his parents' house back in chapter 36, so having seed money is not an issue.
For what it's worth, I interpreted this exchange as Dumbledore recognizing why it would be bad for someone to read Harry's mind. In other words, a competent plotter who didn't have society's interest at heart could implement Harry's ideas successfully to cause significant harm. I didn't take the exchange to show that D believed the ideas wouldn't work basically as intended with a minimum of unanticipated consequences.
In short, Lucius Malfoy shouldn't be able to read Harry's mind to gain a destabilizing amount of wealth.
Do you have this opinion of realistic fiction too?
I have always thought that but the story makes the point even better. Click on that link, everyone.
Uh, wow, I have linked this story on LW before, but your endorsement apparently makes a great big screaming difference to how much traffic a link gets.
Please endorse more of my things. I am addicted to web hits.
If you're Lucius at this point, how the hell do you now update your "Harry is Voldie" hypothesis?
On the one one hand, he just paid 100K galleons to save a mud blood girl. On the other hand, he spooked a dementor. On the other other hand, while that feat may be impressive, it's certainly not anything the Dark Lord had been known to do previously. And is he consprasizing with Dumbledore, or against him?
Probably a very confusing time to be the Lord of Malfoy.
It makes a great deal of sense as a purely political ploy. Harry just greatly strengthened the legend of the boy who lived, and since that is the result, Lucius is likely to suspect that it was also the intent.
That mudblood girl is also the most talented witch of her generation. Maybe Harrymort just wants another Bellatrix and this is the first step towards it. Maybe the debt doesn't matter because Britain is going to be at war / Lucius will be dead before Harry would graduate. Also, Harry just gained a sworn minion out of it, which is arguably a lot more useful than a large sum of money.
Confirmation bias remains and this is Lucius who whatever his cunning isn't a rationalist. So he's more likely to be thinking "Why did Voldemort save the mudblood girl?" than consider that he was wrong thinking Harry was Voldemort.
I'm not sure if anyone has commented on this, but I just noticed it while rereading the Self-Actualization chapters:
Hermione went to tremendous lengths to be her own person rather than just something of Harry's, including becoming a general and fighting bullies. Now she has sworn herself into Harry's service and house forever. That is really sad.
Can you please reread them instead of just going by memory? Here, I'll make it easy for you:
Now, please actually read the above sentences again, and tell me now whether they sound like marriage vows to you?
And if you still think they've gotten married, in short if you're arguing that P(they've gotten married)> 50%, then I'll put my money where my mouth is and bet you they haven't. I'll bet 10 of my dollars for every 1 of yours, up to a maximum of $10,000 of mine. That should be an easy way for you to make some money.
Agreed mostly, but I don't think McGonagall figured out that he was about to propose marriage to Hermione. She just came up independently with the idea of inducting Hermione into House Potter; and of course she preferred to use a more age-appropriate (and less emotionally-charged) path than marriage. The alternate option of service, which Harry didn't even know existed.
Hypothesis: the Source of Magic is an AI with the goal to work in the way (magical) people really believe it should work. Or maybe, to make the world work in the way (magical) people really believe it should work. The strength of belief appears to be important, so a strong belief can override weak ones. On the other hand, when something is already "generally known" to work in a certain way, this is a very strong belief.
Examples:
Magic doesn't make sense to Harry because it now reflects lots of ad hoc rules and beliefs accumulated in centuries. Wizards and witches believe them from childhood. [No wonder they are half-insane.]
Interestingly, this hypothesis implies that Dumbledore's narrative causality may actually work - people do believe in stories.
After this chapter, a lot of people are going to deduce that Harry was in fact the person who broke out Bellatrix. Including, probably Dumbledore.
Quirrell will likely be forced to show his hand when Dumbledore accuses him of having engineered the escape. Somehow, this turns into Quirrell leaving his post. End of story seems imminent :(
No. Mind the Conservation of Detail.
Harry doesn't know that Dumbledore's patronus recognizes Harry's patronus. This is a trap EY has laid for Harry.
For no internal reasons, but for story reasons, Dumbledore will not figure out that Harry was in Axkaban until the next time both he and Harry have their patronuses up at the same time. It is set up to be a shocking reveal, maybe a cliffhanger.
Harry Potter is not so clever, part 2. (Perhaps I should call this "advice for Harry," to be less negative.)
Overall: what the heck is Harry's model of... (read more)
Harry may be an overachiever, but he's still 11 - he's allowed to be bad at manipulating people. He's still at the "All I have to do is out-clever everyone and I can take over the world" stage. He has the tools to pull it off much of the time, but he still thinks of his opponents as pieces, not as players, which is a pretty serious hole in his worldview when it comes to things like manipulating Lucius Malfoy.
Even if he does his arbitrage trick, what benefit would he get from telling it to Malfoy in advance. Why share unnecessary information with a potential adversary? Why risk additional penalties if something unexpected happens and the arbitrage takes five weeks instead of four?
I think that the can of worms of why wizards don't immediately go cure world hunger etc. is best left to be opened near the end of the fic, if at all.
Actually, there's a fairly complicated question of why don't we immediately go cure world hunger. I mean, the production and logistics aspects wouldn't be very difficult compared to what today's industry can output on an everyday basis. I guess that it's 80% pure irrationality and only 20% politics.
You mean IRL? It mostly boils down to "we've tried giving hungry people food, it doesn't work, and that's pretty much all the ideas we've got". It's a much messier problem than it seems at first glance, and it isn't all politics or insanity. To pick the most obvious, when you dump planes full of grain on the tarmac in Zimbabwe, what did you just do the finances of the local farmers who now need to compete with free? And what does that do to next year's crop?
So, new speculation: who are the sharp players in the Wizengamot who are drawing up lists on Harry?
They're not Lucius or Dumbledore, both of whom already know a great deal, and the former is too enraged to really be thinking beyond 'why did Voldemort just sacrifice all his wealth for a "friend"?'
I would be a little shocked if Umbridge was meant; she's so moronic in canon that even a MoR brain-upgrade still leaves her dim and bureaucratic, and she certainly doesn't match. And the powerful-wizard background is much more of a 'male' thing, to boot.
Mad-eye Moody could be expected to be making a list, but as far as I can tell he's not present and is remarkable enough that if he was, he would be mentioned. He's also apparently busy watching over & poisoning graves. In one chapter, Bones mentions he just retired, so he wouldn't be there in an Auror capacity. EDIT: Aftermath would seem to imply Moody was not there, because Harry didn't recognize the Moody in the Pensieve memory at all, despite him being quite striking.
Madam Bones seems too much on Dumbledore and Harry's side to be so suspicious, and not 'new' in any plot-meaningful sense. She's otherwise a decent enough candi... (read more)
Well, he's certainly on the list now.
Not necessarily, but this does seem the sort of thing Moody would go out of his way to keep an eye (ha) on.
Or, depending on how the interrogation went, ScrimQuirMort.
So how many other ex-death-eaters now officially owe House Potter? Surely they can pay him.
That's an interesting possibility, but I favour the interpretation that this is the source of dementors:
It fits very nicely. Dementors (Death) were unkillable (undismissable) because the "true" patronus charm (counterspell) had been lost.
Ha!
Remember when H&C told Hermione that Harry would sacrifice her if she became inconvenient to his plans for global domination? Guess Hermione can tell him to kiss her ass on that one.
I doubt she remembers any of that conversation.
The next chapter is going to be horribly depressing, you know. Harry is going to have to have it explained to him why it's a bad idea to do things that are a bad idea. Otherwise this arc would have the wrong moral...
On the other hand, it's now in Dumbledore's interest to see Harry make a lot of money quickly in order to discharge the debt, which means he's far more likely to approve of things that otherwise would be considered unacceptable, like:
In short, a sixty thousand Galleon debt, while it feels huge, is not obviously a major obstacle given the number of possible solutions already implicitly presented in HPMoR, and it would almost seem a cheat for it to be one
That wiping out the debt easily might have its own negative consequences, on the other hand, is potentially interesting.
Dunno about that. The debt will have concsequences, certainly, but Hermione is not in Azkaban.
Yes, it's super sad to let a little girl be tortured to death. But there is a cost large enough that it is not worth paying to prevent it, even if the cost is only in terms of mere cash, political capital, personal reputation as not being more fearsome than Fear itself, keeping important military secrets for the coming war secret, and the enmity of those you failed to lose to. That's the meaning of the phrase "Taboo Tradeoffs", it's that stating you kept Hermione out of Azkaban is not enough justification.
Of course, if he had counted the cost, he would have been an awful hypocrite. Recall what he said after Hermione rescued him from the Dementor:
At least he's holding himself to the same standard, even if it's a bad one.
I wish to register my alarm at this:
Given that he was "amazed" at our performance this time, presumably an equivalent performance would pass the future test — but even if that's true it doesn't comfort me much.
I humbly beg our author to consider simply withholding updates, rather than issuing an ultimatum that may result in us never getting the "true" ending. "I won't post any more chapters until you solve this," rather than "I'm going to torch the last few years of your life if you're not smart enough."
A always thought the false ending was better.
What can I say? I'm a sucker for stories where everyone lives happily ever after. :-)
You're so upset that McGonaggal's intervention prevented Harry from asking Hermione's hand in marriage? You're a Ravenclaw girl at heart, I see. :-)
There are reasons for avoiding being hit with an anti-polyjuice spell even if you aren't polyjuiced. (1) The spell would reveal that you aren't polyjuiced, which might be useful information for your adversaries if you're masquerading as someone else by other means. (2) If your policy is only to counter such spells when they would have revealed something, then your decision to counter or not is itself revealing. Better to have a general policy of not letting people probe you at all.
I've seen a few variations on "why does Lucius prefer vengeance to maintaining/expanding his political power?" First of all, for someone like Lucius, what's the point of power if you can't get stuff you want, like vengeance for your family members? Like how it's pointless to save if you're never going to spend.
And second, something that's on my mind because I just finished The Origins of Virtue by Matt Ridley. Emotions like vengeance evolved for a reason. Harry sees it as a weakness of Lucius's that he would give up anything politically to avenge his son. And it's true, that can be manipulated by people who want to see him lose his political power. However, it is also a powerful deterrent to his enemies. If Lucius is publically known as someone who would stop at nothing to avenge his family, then those that would provoke him will be few and far between, and he will probably not have to make the sacrifices that his vengefulness commits him to.
When he accused Dumbledore in public of the murder of his wife, even at political cost, I'm sure everyone got the message: "if I hurt Malfoy's family, even if I make sure it would be very politically costly for him to pursue me f... (read more)
Eliezer has used that line in nonfiction too; I'm very confident that Harry's pro-immortality stance is endorsed by the author, but that the "induction proof" is meant rhetorically and should not be construed to imply infinite certainty.
You misread the passage. McGonaggal helped Harry take Hermione into the sworn service of House Potter. A very feudal type of thing, but certainly no marriage.
Has Lucius not spoken to Draco in private yet?
If he hasn't... when he does, and tells Draco what happened at the trial, and finds that Draco isn't surprised (or at least, not more than usual when it comes to Harry)... what will he think then?
Even if he knew, saying that would be a good way to try to get Harry to reveal something. What he would have heard from Draco is that Harry has a super-bright Patronus whose form he keeps secret; he would be curious. So I don't think this quote is strong evidence that Lucius hasn't heard about the Patronus from Draco, since it is pretty likely that he would say something like this even if he has.
EDIT: Actually, since he believes Harry is Voldemort, he probably thinks the Patronus light he showed Draco was an illusion, and not useful for getting out of Azkaban at all. If he thinks Harry is Voldemort he's unlikely, then, to pry for information about it in this way.
Lucius didn't ask if Harry could cast a Patronus, I could buy that. But Draco's Patronus didn't come up? Harry's vow of vengeance against Narcissa's killer didn't come up? That whole thing was possibly the single most important interaction Draco and Harry have had, next to when Harry tricked Draco into sacrificing his belief in blood purity.
Why does Dumbledore not give a quick Summary of the worst consequences of being in debt to Lucius Malfoy? It's hard to see how that could necessitate telling secrets that cannot be revealed in public, the laws involved should already be known. Naming a few of the "certain rights" Lucius would have shouldn't take more time than Dumbledore actually spends trying to convince Harry.
I suspect that everyone discounts the "I was Imperiused!" claim for being an obvious lie, and thus discounts the implications of it being officially true. It's certainly a plausible hole in worldview - ignoring the implications of a false statement being "true" is an easy mistake to make.
Dumbledore may simply not have considered Hermione WORTH the debt.
I think Dumbledore is more into the "general wanting to win a war" mindset. In that mindset, you don't spend a trump card like a blood debt from one major enemy just to save one life. So he shouldn't (in his pov) speak about that issue to Harry.
Or just that he's pissed with Harry for putting himself in Malfoy's debt.
Or for painting a giant bulls-eye on himself.
The icy glare could really mean anything.
Also, IIRC McGonnagal was there, presumably she would have said something if Griphook was obviously lying or omitting something important, as suggested above. (Also, I got the impression goblins were really serious about money.)
Harry named two people in particular - Hermione and Draco - who made him less susceptible to Quirrelmort's influence. This plot nearly removed both of them from Harry.
In other words, the wizarding world is sufficiently accepting of same-sex relationships that Death Eaters could use the idea that Muggles are homophobic as a somewhat believable slander against Muggles.
So the Ree are still loose then!?!?
Heee~eeey!
Um. Hi, Rei.
We'd, uh, we'd like you to give Mr. Yudkowsky back, if you don't mind.
Prophecy update!
Like most readers, I took Trelawney's magical clock for a listening device. What if it transmits instead of receives?
We've seen Dumbledore manipulating events into storylike patterns. He was the instigator of the three-way tie, and he precipitated Snape's fall and eventual redemption by the power of love.
In his Fortress of Regrets, Dumbledore gave the surface appearance of being terribly reluctant to allow his decisions to cause the deaths of others. But in the last chapter he was ready to let a small child be tortured to death - with much trembling reluctance, of course - in order to preserve his plans.
Could he have caused Trelawney to deliver the prophecy, triggering the other half of Snape's destiny, while feeding the Potters to Voldemort to create his orphan hero?
Dumbledore meant for Voldemort to have been killed by Lily's sacrifice. He believes it happened. Instead, Voldemort, taking the obvious trap (thanks Vladimir!) as a challenge to his wit (thanks Gwern!), pretended to lose (thanks buybuydandavis!), while fulfilling the letter of the prophecy in a manner maximally advantageous to himself.
He disarmed the trap by goading Lily into attacking him. He left a bu... (read more)
Oh hey. And we have a confession.
I actually noticed the dissonance when I read this, that Dumbledore had apparently overlooked the biggest and most obvious tragedy of Harry's life. But I didn't realize what it meant. Whoops.
I'm loving the idea that time travel is being proposed here as the simpler, less over-engineered solution to making a bunch of money.
I love Chapter 81, but it would have been way better if Draco was the one accused of murder, so Harry could marry Draco.
Let's assume that Hermione had actually been sentenced to Azkaban. How many advantages would Quirrelmort have gained?
There may be more that aren't coming to mind, but, well, the potential payoffs for Quirrelmort were pretty high.
Mostly good points, but one issue:
If Quirrel were worried about this, he could have just not put all the effort into teaching her military command and battle magic (at a level so far beyond what is expected of his position). If light-side heroes like Hermione are something he's worried about, best to just not go around creating them.
Ministry-issued textbooks might not have the best dramatic pacing.
A matter with the Comed-Tea that was bugging me for a while:
Chapter 14:
Hypotheses: Comed-Tea on person = impulse to drink, Comed-Tea not on person = no impulse to drink.
According to Chapter 12:
So no matter what, even if you don't end up drinking it, you will get the Impulse before something funny happens.
Chapter 46:
So Harry has used up all of his Comed-Tea. (edit: it appears that Harry actually has tons left unless he's not mentioning some he drank/gave away, look at bottom of post)
...
WHY? WHYYY?!
It is apparent that you'll still get the impulse to drink whether or not you do end up drinki... (read more)
Prediction: Harry will try to explain the general concept of arbitrage to Dumbledore, and it will be blocked by the Interdict of Merlin.
Because otherwise, certain things about the wizarding economy make no sense at all.
Funny, but unfortunately people telling other people things is exactly what the Interdict of Merlin doesn't forbid.
The Interdict of Merlin blocking transmission of non-magical knowledge between living minds?
On the contrary:
Lucius never meant for Harry to accept the monetary bargain. This is clear from his reaction. He wanted his revenge, and Harry was interfering.
Something I just noticed on a second read-through - the reuse of the word "riddle" in context here seems like a reminder to Lucius of who he thinks Harry really is, and this is not the first time it's come up when Harry is exposed to Dementors. Perhaps this lends credence to the theory that riddle is the "strange word" he learned when first exposed?
Voldemort used the word to tease as Quirrell and as the cloak and hat. He probably did it in the last war, too. Lucius may think that Voldemort is teasing him just like he used it, when Harry says it.
It's not a strange word, though. That's probably so we know the spell being cast was not AK.
This is another case of an issue that's supposed to be mysterious to the characters, but not to the readers. We know what actually happened: the Sorting Hat said "SLYTHERIN!" to try to scare the crap out of Harry, to make his life flash before his eyes, to make him think that his hopes and dreams were ruined, so he would get serious and vow right then and there not to become the next Dark Lord. But the Hat actually, truly meant him to go to Ravenclaw.
Harry acknowledges that this is what happened: "It had been an awfully cruel prank the Hat had played on him, but you couldn't argue with the results on consequentialist grounds."
No other characters know what happened, so it adds to Harry's mystique for them, but we, who saw the whole thing from Harry's point of view, ought to know better.
Your "neutral interpretation of the facts" apparently ignores the facts that the Sorting Hat has never been self-aware before, that Harry is aware that the Hat is self-aware now, and that the Hat is borrowing a lot of knowledge and a little bit of personality from Harry's own brain at the time of the prank.
I just fail to see how you can take an explanation that fits 100% of the known facts, and then somehow, by applying
, you come up with a needlessly complicated and speculative idea that assumes the existence of secrets we have no clues about.
My working theory for Dumbledore's emphasis on story logic is that it's a pragmatic decision supporting several different lines of influence.
First, we know he's pretending to be a lot crazier than he is: he acts like a character in a roleplaying game with "Insanity" marked down in the flaws section of his character sheet, not someone with an actual personality disorder, and going out of his way to act like Gandalf fits in fairly well with that.
Second, he spends a lot of his time working with kids, who're probably a lot more familiar with stories than with their real-life cognates: how many times does Draco make an analogy to something he's seen in a play?
Finally, people really are prone to generalize from fictional evidence, and maintaining a semi-fictionalized persona can aid in achieving instrumental goals when they're aligned with the narrative patterns it corresponds to. The Self Actualization storyline provides a good example of this in action: I read Dumbledore's part in that early on as using his persona to nudge Hermione into the high-fantasy hero role that Harry occupies in canon (and considerably more shakily in MoR). When she went off script, so did he. (I suspect that Riddle's Lord Voldemort persona was adopted for similar reasons, incidentally. He might even have picked up that trick from Dumbledore.)
Progress of Eliezer vs JKR, Fvapr Ryvrmre unf fgngrq gung gur fgbel jba'g or ybatre guna gur frira obbxf, cre jbeq, naq gung vg'f zber guna unysjnl qbar
Is it just me, or does that NOT sound like someone who just found out that dementors, thought to be manifestations of fear, are afraid of her student? I'm guessing it's one of two things:
She's so relieved that one of her student isn't going to be tortured to death that she isn't really processing everything else that's going on or
She thinks the whole thing is a trick Harry and Dumbledore came up with, and dementors aren't really afraid of Harry.
Either one could lead to a very entertaining aftermath.
Unlike most of the room she knows Harry well enough that even him scaring a Dementor, no matter how surprising, wouldn't make her personally afraid of Harry; she might be worried about what trouble he could cause but she knows perfectly well that he wouldn't do anything to her. Besides it was less of a surprise for her since Dumbledore already told her Harry had developed a new charm.
Or, she's simply ceased to be surprised at the extent of Harry's abilities outpacing her expectations of them.
McGonagall is House Head of Gryffindor.
She is just that unflappable.
She's so unflappable that she's the best choice to demonstrate that a situation inspires the maximum amount of flap, I guess.
We know this not to be true since Quirrel changed back into his normal appearance when the polyjuice wore off in Azkaban while he was unconscious.
Being in debt is probably not the same thing as being a vassal, even temporarily.
(Well, maybe... Dumbledore still hasn't told us what rights Lucius now has over Harry.)
I think my favorite part of this update comes not from the chapter, but from the Author's Notes:
"If you write sufficiently good fanfiction, you can realize your romantic dreams!"
(Although "Make him go away" is either tied for the position or a close second.)
I have a suspicion that the average fanfic-created relationship is not caused by anything best described as "good".
I think I figured out how Dumbledore knew about Harry wanting to change the rules of Quiddich. Instead of reading student minds he used the cloak:
(Emphasis mine. Well, of course, that he would use it is obvious and the note is not proof of anything, but that’s what triggered the idea. Also, it makes a lot of sense that Harry’s father would lend the cloak to Dumbledore for study.)
If he did this on the train platform (which would make sense as an opportunity to be mysterious to new students, or just to Harry) there’s a bit of other interesting stuff he might have heard. Whatever Draco cast (the description doesn’t quite match Quietus, and it was wordless or at least not heard by Harry), it probably doesn’t work for a cloaked guy near you, and certainly not Dumbledore if he really wanted to listen.
I don't think so. It's clear from his reaction that he did not want Harry to accept the trade:
And later:
Indeed, it is a taboo tradeoff from Lucius perspective. He has traded justice for his son for money and the resolution of a political (though not moral) debt to Harry. He picked the amount because he thought there was no possibility that Harry would accept such a large amount.
So, Dementors Part Deux.
First, because someone had to say it:
(I guess Dementors aren't that smart.)
Secondly, I noticed that Harry's first Transfiguration lesson includes a photograph of a Dementor. What would that look like? What does Harry see, compared to everyone else? Why was he asking all the other students what they saw in the Patronus lesson without ever once thinking of that photograph?
Edit: While some points may remain useful for the sake of reference, this theory is disproved in Chapter 82, and Aberforth's death no longer lacks narrative purpose.
Who killed Narcissa?
Suspects:
Dumbledore
Bones
Lucius
Voldemort
Someone else
HJPEV tells us that this doesn't fit the headmaster's style. His style is curiously consistent.
There is one offhand remark, vengeance, and a practical cold-heartedness favoring Bones. "Why not Bones?" is only a little better than no argument at all.
Lucius is presented as a devoted family man. It would be inconsistent characterization for him to do this. That works for real life, but HP&tMoR is fiction, which must make sense.
Voldemort has reason not to do this, as it made a fool out of one of his tools and weakened his side by making them less willing to strike indiscriminately.
I have a 'someone else' theory: Aberforth killed Narcissa. Aberforth is dead, and meaningfully so due to Conservation of Detail. We know little else about him from HP&tMoR. Only that he didn't testify against his brother in the death of his sister, and his brother got quite stern when he died. Basically, this theory allows me to put a pie... (read more)
Also there is the fact (mentioned by someone else, sorry I forget who) that Narcissa's sister, Bellatrix, murdered Bones' brother. Edit: I am an idiot, you already mentioned this.
Bringing in Aberforth is a really interesting idea. Now that I think about it, even given the wizarding wars, it is remarkable that so many siblings have died or nearly died:
Albus/Aberforth
Bellatrix/Narcissa
Bones/her brother (who, exactly?)
Petunia/Lily
The last one is interesting with the role of survivor exchanged as well, since there is a hint that Petunia may have threatened suicide in order to convince Lily to brew the beauty potion.
Your idea of marriage vows seems rather lifestyle-specific.
Can we add the 'harry_potter' discussion tag to this post?
(Contrary to what the post text says, as of right now this post does not show up on the list of Harry Potter discussion posts.)
I am really interested in how this is all going to work back at Hogwarts. Harry has already been pushing the envelope in the past, but this was a public power display. Draco's out for a while, Hermione will be considered a murderess by significant portions of the school (and apparently she's now magically sworn to obey Harry?), Quirrel is doing... something... and all the schemers and plotters are scheming and plotting on overdrive. I think the money will really be the least of Harry's concerns before this tangle is unwoven. I sort of enjoy learning little bits about Eliezer in the author's notes. "Why yes, I do lead the same sort of life as fanfiction characters, thank you for noticing," made me laugh quietly to myself. This is doubtless because I am a gossip-monger and a hopless platonic voyeur of other peoples lives.
But he threatened to, and that's almost as bad.
Just an odd thought about something Draco said in Chapter 48:
...is - is Hogwarts sentient? If it's animate, capable of creative expression, and self-constructing, it's not out of the question that Hogwarts might be in some sense intelligent or alive. It'd also explain some things about the Hogwarts security system, to say nothing about the Room of Requirement, in canon.
Chapter 6:
Chapter 8:
While reading, I never considered this to be a mystery, or even a question.
I agree. But y'know, it's odd that the three people most affected by the prophecy had their major life outcomes determined by Dumbledore's machinations. That's a coincidence that needs explaining, I think.
Another implication just hit me: it could make Sirius his accomplice, not Voldemort's. Odd that he didn't get a trial while Dumbledore was Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot, come to think of it. Huh.
Transfiguration is non-permanent, and any gold sold to Gringotts would be immediately tested for transfiguration. Additionally, trying to counterfeit gets the goblin nation to declare war on you. (Ch 15)
Nevertheless, I believe it was two drops used, not three - so Draco didn't have to volunteer information.
Funny how karma never adds up in those polls.
There should be a house rule about always linking to the karma sink in the poll choices.
Not that it matters that EY or anyone else gets a few points of extra karma, it's just my "defective mechanism detected" brain lobe giving me OCD.
April 1991 price of silver was $3.9707/oz troy, gold was $358.38/oz troy. That's a 90:1 silver-gold ratio, ounce to ounce.
Now, the Sickle-Galleon ratio is 17:1. But a Galleon is larger than a Sickle, by a significant amount, as can be seen here; , and gold is denser than silver, by a significant amount. Assuming the coins are similar thickness, the Galleon is about 1.7 times larger than the Sickle, and about 3.1 times heavier. So the ratio by weight is around 5.4:1 silver-to-gold.
That means each cycle of arbitrage is a multiplication by, well, we'll round down to 16 for various transaction costs in our Fermi estimate. 100 Galleons becomes 1,600 after one cycle, and 1,600 becomes 25,600 after cycle 2.
Okay, that "couple times" didn't quite get us all the way there from 100. Harry needs to manage to get his hands on (considering the uncertainties on transaction costs) more than 234 but almost certainly less than 300 Galleons and run through the arbitrage cycle twice to get the 60,000 galleons.
+100. Prudence is really more of a Slytherin virtue.
Time Braid is far, far better than Chunin Exam Day. For many reasons, including not being written by a sociopath.
Suspicious? Sure, but will they care? He is dealing with Gringotts, or more specifically with specific goblins at Gringotts. They will be following their job specifications, probably their legal obligation, giving their company a profit and adhering to tradition. Gringotts wins, Harry wins, law is followed.
The people who lose are anyone who has invested in wizard cash (which is being inflated). But they aren't involved in the transaction and don't lose enough or rapidly enough that they would object before he has finished farming. In fact they only start experiencing negative effects once Harry starts spending.
I wonder what Draco is going to say -- or to remember, for that matter -- about the duel.
I worry that Draco may be more or less written out of this fic - I can't imagine Lucius sending his son back into Voldemort's maw. There are other schools, even if none are as good.
Draco's going to want to go back, of course.
Well we'd need a better developed Theory of Fun to quantitatively answer that. How about, "a lot"?
ETA: and there's so much talk because Eliezer resumed posting new chapters (and a new arc) a couple of weeks ago after a long hiatus. And the new chapters have already set up a very dangerous situation and all end in cliffhangers and Eliezer added notes asking people to try to out-think Harry in solving the crisis before the next chapter is out. Which resulted in a lot of theories and suggestions being posted.
"Eliezer told us to" -> Good answer.
And he still owes 60,000 galleons, which is 1.2mil.
A pair of dentists with over a decade of practice? My friend with 15 years of practice by himself could handle that. It's not pocket change, but this was to avoid the torture execution of their daughter. I think they could pony up for that.
I see it as a status game. Previously Lucius had suggested that Dumbledore take Hermione's place in Azkaban, not because Lucius thought there was much of a chance that Dumbledore accept this offer, but rather to strike at the idea of Dumbledore's supposed heroic altruism.
Now when Lucius named 100,000 galleons as the price to erase the debt, he was trying a similar tactic -- Lucius didn't expect that Harry accept this, Lucius wanted to strike at the idea of his enemies being heroic and altruistic.
But Harry accepts - which in terms of impressiveness is a blow in Harry's favor and against Lucius, despite the fact that Harry's now endebted to Lucius, and because the sum named is so outrageously large.
But then Lucius thought he saw a opportunity to strike back at Dumbledore and Harry, because he thought they were pretending a play to raise Harry's status even further (not just heroically altruistic, but super-heroically tough, able to destroy Azkaban, all by himself).
So he attempted to call Harry and Dumbledore's bluff. And it failed again.
Mostly - fail.
For a detailed explanation, I recommend "The Big Problem of Small Change" - Thomas J. Sargent, François R. Velde published in 2002 isbn 0-691-02932-6
A common strategy was to ignore the problem and hope it goes away. It didn't - see Gresham's law
All of which leads to "economic hardships" on the poor, which sounds a lot nicer than "the poor died in droves."
It seems strange, but the idea of a representational currency, coins that you can officially exchange for a fixed amount of gold, is actually a relatively recent invention. Not to be confused with fiat money - coins that you can't officially exchange for anything.
Edit: Did you mean "how did countries set the exchange rate in the old days?" If so, then typically the government reserved the right to mint coins, and the exchange rate was set by law.
I find it quite astonishing how often I have to remind people that they're eleven years old.
Fewer shrieks of horror from their parents? Also Hermione doesn't need to change her name into Hermione Potter-Evans-Verres-Granger.
He didn't. It was right before. Harry knew of only marriage as a way to induct Hermione into his House. McGonagall knew of a somewhat simpler way, and one less emotionally charged than marriage.
I think he realized it the moment he heard the words McGonagall was having Hermione say. Keep in mind that it's not as if McGonaggal realized Harry was considering marriage at all.
Nah, snapping fingers doesn't possess meaning for the Wizengamot, that's what Harry is known for in Hogwarts. "Boo!" is better in the circumstances.
Sorry, the reason for the stereotype is the fact that fanfiction is findable only on unmoderated internet archives where anyone can post. If you had to look on the internet for all your original fiction, you'd have the same problem. Also, it's in some ways harder to use someone else's voice and be bound by characters that maybe have traits you're scared to write about than to be able to write in your own voice and avoid certain kinds of characters.
But when you compare cherry-picked original fiction weeded through by editors until you get to read only a fraction of the total submitted for consideration and utterly unmoderated, undifferentiated fanfiction by good and bad authors alike side-by-side in the same archive, of course the original fic is going to be better.
Well, if you make enough guesses, sometimes one of them will be partly right...
My prediction doesn't seem to have paid off in anything but karma, so I'm wondering how Eliezer's clue about Harry seeing the members of the Wizingamot as player characters has played out or if we're going to see something of the sort in future chapters.
The problem is that he did not - he treated them as a passive audience without any consideration of how they view him. So now some of them have reached the same conclusion as Lucius, and think he is a case of bodysnatching. Possession is a real possibility in the universe he inhabits, and he is showing all the signs. That is quite likely to get him killed by people with the best of intentions. At best, I am expecting kidnapping attempts aimed at extracting voldemort from his host. Also, Harry really should listen to Malfoy. Scaring Lucius is not a good idea.
Mark right the ones that got included, and wrong the ones that didn't. There's still more in the latter category.
A comparatively small amount, relative to the fun involved in reading the chapters. I think waiting is probably a good idea - you're spared the agony of waiting. It's too late for all of us, though.
"You can't put a price on a human life."
"I agree, but unfortunately reality has already put a price on human life, and that price is much less than 5 million dollars. By refusing to accept this, you are only refusing to make an informed decision about which lives to purchase."
It suddenly occurs to me that Dumbledore has seen two interactions between Harry and a Dementor. In the first one, it almost destroys him. In the second, he casts a Patronus that destroys it. Neither would seem to provide the kind of evidence that you would need to confidently assume that other Dementors would run away from you if you said "Boo" to them.
So, is this enough evidence for Dumbledore to decide that he's wrong about who broke Bellatrix Black out of Azkaban?
Actually, it seems that they do have same-sex marriage. Chapter 42:
By exception probat regulam it seems that there are same-sex marriages between MoR wizards.
I'm thinking more "Go magic that banker and we'll be rich."
Or "Hey can you use that wicker spinmaster thingy to get us the lotto numbers?" I presume if the witch/wizard owned one they'd figure out what it does eventually. They'd have to after a long enough time living together.
It varied. Some countries used a bimetallic standard with fixed exchange rates, some used one as the standard and let the other float. There's even been trimetallic(gold/silver/copper) at times.
It's actually been a political issue which of those to use more recently than you'd expect(and no, I don't mean Ron Paul) - the 1896 US Presidential election was fought in significant part on a Democrat plan to move to a bimetallic standard away from straight gold, which was in the day an inflationary move designed to help indebted farmers. If you've ever heard of ... (read more)
If Harry is Voldemort in hiding, and Harrymort needs Hermione for something, Lucius should absolutely get out of the deal. Lucius is not a supporter of Voldemort per se, he allied himself with Voldemort because he thought he could get an advantage out of it. Possibly he regretted it deeply when it cost him his wife. And this new Voldemort seems likely to cost him his son? Lucius should do what he can to destroy him while he's weak and ensure he never becomes strong.
(1) She already knows how a Patronus is cast, she just can’t do it yet.
(2) The text Harry gave Hermione is not actually teaching a spell. It is a cryptically-written secret about what Dementors are and what the charm does, not how to cast it. Knowing the secret will allow her to discover the new Patronus, not teach it to her.
This.
But gaze not overlong into that particular abyss.
Edit: In retrospect, TvTropes itself is probably the bigger abyss of the two. So don't gaze overlong into that one either.
Hatred may not be the only way to cast Avada Kedavra, just as the happy memories are not the only way to cast the Patronus Charm, and Oogely Boogely doesn't need to be pronounced correctly if you don't care whether your bats glow. Maybe he'll discover a True Killing Curse.
Dumb used to mean mute. Personally, I think that's going a little overboard with the political correctness, though. (And this from someone who doesn't use retarded as an insult, or even crazy.)
IMO, new thread for Ch 82, not before - the "show all" button is still here, and the thread proliferation is getting silly, this is the third in a week. Alternately, can we get better forum software?
No, as I pointed out, one would expect, based on its past performance, the dark side to come up with disastrous yet simple and effective solutions, and this expectation is another desiderata. Which that solution filled as well.
(A token 'dispel the Patronuses and make the Dementors eat people' is at least a gesture in the right direction, for all that I find Harry's belief he can cripple Aurors like that to be risible - if you yell at a pilot 'actually it doesn't run on the Bernouilli effect but spiral vortices' or whatever, does he immediately panic and fl... (read more)
Given that the wizarding aristocracy is supremely concerned with perpetuating its bloodlines, I doubt that the issue of same-sex marriage has ever been brought before the Wizengamot.
Draco knows that HJPEV claims to be able to Patronus. Draco knows that HJPEV presented himself as though he needed to hide his Patronus. Lucius knows that the 'light' side regards the ability to Patronus as a 'light' qualifier.
If Lucius also knows what Draco knows, then he would know that inviting HJPEV to Patronus would probably result in one of two things: either he learns something HJPEV may believe to be a valuable secret, or he casts doubt on HJPEV's 'light' side qualities.
it's win-win, just like you know he likes it.
I wasn't aware that Draco was an Occlumens. (If he can't beat Veritaserum, those promises mean precisely nothing.)
Draco's a manipulative little snake. Lucius never probably never asked, "Son, are you able to cast the Patronus Charm?" because he was probably under the impression that Slytherins weren't able to cast Patronuses so why bother asking. Hence, the topic never came up. Draco's a scientist now, he doesn't completely believe everything that Lucius says anymore. Draco's probably avoiding talking about dangerous subjects with his father. And of course, he could always lie.
If regular courts had veritaserum, I imagine the first question they'd ask would be "What are the things you don't want to tell us?".
The issue isn't that puzzles can be easy are hard. The issue is that a good hard puzzle is still solvable. It takes no talent to make a puzzle that no one solves. The difficulty in making a puzzle that's worthwhile is making it in the narrow band of puzzles that are tough enough to be interesting but are still solvable.
Sure, but that's a Slytherin virtue.
They're from this.
Do you feel the same way about published by known publishing houses fiction that based on other fiction? I'm thinking about The Once and Future King, Wicked, The Ayre Affair.....
and
and
ETA: Oh, haha, maybe I should have just gone with
... (read more)But they don't wear any fancy jewelry, though. And their animal familiars are not nearly as cute.
Edit: Hmm, Soul Gems as Horcruxes... Horcrux'd wizards as liches... we're on to something here.
If it worked like that, there’s still the question of “what component?” Muscles becoming stronger as a result of exercising them is a complex behavior, governed by many genes. Harry’s reasoning towards one “magic marker gene” suggests that is not the case.
I can think of all sorts of possible explanations, I just can’t see one that looks really reasonable; since we have no actual explanation about how stuff works, you need a lot of assumptions for anything and stuff tends to be arbitrary. If you t... (read more)
Only Quirrel and Dumbledore know of it, since even the three accompanying Aurors were False-Memory-Charmed.
We don't know what the cover story was that Dumbledore thought up to justify the lost Dementor.
Honest dilemma: Should Hermione decide to get the memories of casting the Blood-chilling Charm obliviated?
On one hand, one would think that messing even more with Hermione's mind should be a no-no. On the other hand, we're pretty sure it's a false memory, and it seems grossly unfair for her to have to remember attempting to commit a murder that she didn't truly attempt.
Second question: Regardless of what Hermione should do, will she so decide it?
Third question: If she doesn't so decide, will some helpful other person override said choice for her sake and obliviate her anyway?
They could happily provide a laundering service of sorts. If the goblins get suspicious of where Harry got the muggle money (which he will supposedly get via one of many ways outlined on this thread), he could just say that the Grangers gave it to him to rescue his daughter-- He earns money through them (stocks in their name, or whatever), and they turn around and give it back to him to trade into galleons for the Hermione-Rescue Debt.
I doubt the goblins would look into how MUGGLES managed to earn so much money. Especially if they already seemed to be relatively well-off.
Actually, Draco muses on the history of House Malfoy at some chapter I can't find right now, and how they're always the second-in-command to greatest leaders. Saying Draco would never agree to service is probably disregarding important and relevant information.
Given your belief that the oath of fealty was a marriage vow and your claim here that Draco would not submit, a carelessly judgmental spectator Might come to possibly unfair conclusions about you. Namely, that you place such a high value on dominant roles for males and submissive roles for females that your perception is skewed.
I'm curious if you think there might be some accuracy in that.
There are probably laws against busting people out of Azkaban too.
Vassalize.
If you don't put it in a bank account, then assuming no magical tracking, you could spend lots of money so long as you don't reach a point where anyone starts asking "Hey, where did you get all this expensive stuff?"
Since the wizarding world has so much smaller a population than ours and seems to be quite class stratified, it's quite conceivable that every person who's supposed to be really wealthy is already known and identifiable, and any Joe Shmoe who tries making a thousand galleon purchase is instantly flagged as suspicious.
Given what I’ve seen about goblins up to now, I’d rather expect their reaction to be somewhere between “ROTFLMAO” and “Blasphemy!!!1!!”
There are so many ways for Harry to get money - I hope the debt doesn't become a major plot point. If there are downsides to the debt in terms of obligations to Lucius, Harry should just get the money and be done with it.
If the Supreme Mugwump doesn't want Harry to be indebted to Lucius, shouldn't he be able to call in a few favors and have it paid off tomorrow? There's the general blood debt to Harry. The general goodwill to Harry. The desire by others not to have the Boy Who Lived in debt to Malfoy.
There should be enough people in the Wizarding world w... (read more)
Early '90s. That'd be a JANET connection, which was an academic network. I expect AOL or Compuserve might be possible. We're talking about the mists of prehistory here, i.e. before 1995. Heck, it was even before the National Lottery was operating in the UK (that started 1994). The stock market would be playable, if he had a suitable adult to front for him.
No, how he makes serious money in the muggle world in 1991 Britain may require actual research.
They might be enchanted to be lighter as a convenience. That would throw off Harry’s arbitrage calculations, though.
[Edit:] I didn’t think of this before, but I’d expect Harry to notice if they were significantly lighter (a factor of ten) than gold; even if he never handled gold, a factor of ten would make them lighter than aluminium. He’d have asked about it. Is their actual size mentioned anywhere in MoR? Perhaps Eliezer just departed from canon because it didn’t make much sense.
Pretty closely, I think; we have
and
I rate it likely that she'll read it. Unlikely she'll babble. But she's no Occlumens. (She should strive to be real quick, though.)
Highly unlikely: blood debts have probably been a significant political currency for a long time, and both due to institutional path-dependency and a lot of vested interests, I highly doubt that they'd change the importance of blood debts. Also: it seems like a lot of the justice system is built up around this concept. It would require a total overhaul of the justice system to deal with the blood debt. Otherwise they'd have to change the significance of being imperiuse'd which is also unlikely due to most of them otherwise being Azkaban(ne)d
How about a concerted campaign to persuade the public to lessen the importance of that particular debt? Remind everyone that Harry was a baby at the time and couldn't have intended to defeat the Dark Lord, emphasise that it must have been some kind of freak accident, start spreading rumours with alternative explanations...
Anyway my point isn't about any single thing they could do; the point is that there are a lot of powerful and politically-skilled people who would very much want to do something, and I don't feel at all confident that we can assume they'll be unable to come up with anything now that the gambit is no longer a surprise one.
I'll see your credential challenge and raise you the inevitable creation of immortal boredom.
But Dumbledore has given no sign that he finds it unethical to make money. All he's said was "You're not ready to play, I'm not going to give you the bankroll to upset the board". If the cash is going to something this concrete and hard to abuse, he'd likely allow it. I doubt he'd abet with a method as easy as the Philosopher's Stone, but he'd likely not stand in the way.
There was a large gap where nothing was posted and chapters are now being posted regularly. And almost every new chapter has ended on a cliffhanger.
re-reading chapter 76 made me realise the prophecy could not be about Voldemort at all :
Let's look at this prophecy in detail :
"The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches,"
Vanquish, as Snape said, is a strange word to describe a baby accidentally toasting Voldemort, especially since we have evidence that this might not be what really happened. "Dark Lord" is used by EY quite loosely, and not as something specifically relating to Voldemort. Indeed, Dumbledore seems to worry that he could be this Dark Lord. Now, if we ste... (read more)
You said:
But you did not consider that since the Sorting Hat was sentient for the first time in its existence, it would be very likely to do other things for the first time in its existence.
... (read more)Thank you, this comes of posting in a hurry. Let me restructure that in a better way: How well supported is the theory that HJPEV's behavior is completely explained by rational extensions of something in-canon? Has he done anything that could not be explained by the interference of Horcrux!Riddle (who did in fact have pretty much the upbringing that McGonagall describes), and has anything at all happened in the story that would suggest something else at play there?
It looks like the pair of you are having trouble communicating. Would you like to:
Almost all the possible consequences of Quirrell's plot with Hermione might have helped Quirrellmort somehow:
- Hermione goes to Azkaban and Harry goes permanently Dark.
- Hermione goes to Azkaban and Harry goes permanently Light, killing himself to destroy it.
- Harry saves Hermione, further antagonizing Draco's father and thereby Draco himself.
- The wedge is driven further between Harry and Dumbledore.
- Harry looks very Dark in front of all of wizarding Britain, losing him Light allies.
- Harry looks very powerful in front of all of wizarding Britain, gaining him
... (read more)Thoughts on the whole "guess the solution" situation from last chapter.
When I first reached the end of the chapter and the "You have 5 days to find the solution" bit, for some frantic moments I was worried that Eliezer would let get Hermione go to Azkaban if we weren't sufficiently clever to find the solution. It seemed rather unlikely, because we didn't seem to be so very near the end of the whole of HPMOR (and surely Hermione's effective killing would have major repercussions).. but I had already known about the similar situation in T... (read more)
The individual colored patches are the five first JKR books, and the overlapping patch is The Methods of Rationality, plotted by chapter and book, vs the number of total words written. MoR is now longer than all the first four books put together. The reason I made the graph was I was wondering if those two individual EY statements (rot13'd in my statement above) were would add up to make more than one bit of information, but they did not.
If Eliezer finishes Methods of Rationality at 150% of current length, we'd end up midway into the sixth book.
Regardless of the reason for the spit Harry would still have to follow through with whatever that is for the signal to be sent back in time to cause the urge to drink. Otherwise it would be like Harry escaping from that locked classroom after Draco tortured him without then going back in time and sending the Professor to let him out.
So from what we know of Quirrell, it would be just like him (having recently learned about Comed-Tea) to have a policy of spitting out soda that he drinks, so that no one gains information on whether or not he is surprised.
Chapter 27:
... (read more)It was't a joke, but rather a completely serious prediction of a joke. That's hardly the same thing at all.
I think it hasn't sunk in yet that he's not Harry's mentor; Quirrel is.
Honestly, that comes across as a flaw in Eliezer's worldview more so than Harry's. I've seen him make the same argument in his own name, and it's pretty transparently false(cf. anyone committing suicide, ever). Being forced to die is evil and ought to be opposed, but I have a feeling that literal immortality would appeal to many fewer people than might be expected.
It's not the "gender inclusiveness" that's the problem, it's the vagueness. Harry is male, why not call him "Master" instead of "Master or Mistress"? It's because the oath is a fealty oath sworn to the House, and after Harry dies, the mastery of his house may pass to a daughter of his (which Hermione would then be still sworn to obey).
Marital oaths are between specific people. In this case obedience was sworn to House Potter, and Harry accepted it as the heir and last scion of House Potter.
"Squib" is a nonmagical child of magical parents, at least in canon. MoR seems to be using it as a genetic marker, which I'm honestly not sure is compatible with canon.
(Now that I think about it, if Harry's genetic theory is correct, doesn't a squib child of a wizarding couple imply that Mom was getting some on the side?)
As long as their child is not named Albus Severus...
In this story, it seems a lot more likely to be Quirinus Tom Potter-Evans-Verres-Granger.
... He's The Boy-Who-Lived. EVERYONE knows everything he does is insane.
Also, he already has history giving multiple individuals exactly that order. And one of them made good with it (which is why Dragons also wear green goggles.)
That would be arguing that you should be allowed to do something because of all the things you were not successfully disallowed to do. It does not necessarily follow and probably does not Dumbledoredly follow.
In canonical!HP, halfbloods are wizards/witches with one witch/wizard parent and one Muggle parent. "Dad's a Muggle, Mum's a witch. Bit of a nasty shock for him when he found out." Muggleborns have two Muggle parents.
Sometimes people with a Muggleborn and a pureblood for parents are called halfbloods (Harry is one of these). Finer gradations aren't referred to (I'm not sure what Harry and Ginny's kids would be called).
I can't think of anything in MoR that contradicts it, but in canon, when a wizard tries to pay a muggle, the muggle later comments about someone trying to pay with a bizarre kind of coin. IIRC, it's in Goblet of Fire, and it's the muggle who runs the campground where they're having the World Cup. He got memory-charmed afterward.
So he definitely saw some kind of wizard money.
I don't think it would be that difficult for him to "destroy" it in the sense of making it no longer a practical method of imprisonment. All he would have to do is start disseminating knowledge of the true patronus charm, and using dementors as the primary guards of a prison would cease to be viable.
People could still be tormented by the dementors when their wands are taken away, and left unable to escape, but using dementors as a torture device which itself needs to be guarded from anyone who might decide to obliterate them all is probably a lot... (read more)
Also, he scared pretty much the entire Wizengamot (plus a Dementor!), not just Lucius. “I scared him, and people know why” is different than “I scared him, and people know it”. [ETA:] It’s no loss of face to be scared by someone who more or less scared everyone else.
But you probably can't do it over the Internet in 1991.
Goreans are the creationists of lifestyle BDSMers...
Not hindsight bias, just an asymmetrically easy verification. Imagine a large subset sum problem: answers can all be found logically, it's very hard to find an answer, and it's very easy to verify an answer. Any such problem can trigger hindsight bias of the form "that clearly would have been easy to solve; I just wasn't trying", but that's a flaw of the biased person not the problem.
It is. Winning on the stockmarket with this time-travel system is barely any different (in terms of mere physics) than using it as a sleep aid.
In a fantasy world this ad hoc most of the wizarding population has to be holding the idiot ball most of the time for things to be as they look in the story.
Good bit, though a bit of a hodgepodge. I presume the real culprit will be found, but that doesn't necessarily counter the debt - the Wizengamot would have to agree, and the truth could be found out in a way that leaves little actual proof, even aside issues of Wizengamot's fairness. I'll be disappointed if paying the debt turns out to be too arduous though, but of course depending on the methods chosen there may be side effects. (One way would be for Draco to accept a counterdebt, having been convinced of the truth of the matter and seeing that being on g... (read more)
Oh god, why did you have to go there. Whyyyy
Edit: at least you didn't mention the squid
I think he has six and a quarter years to turn zero galleons into sixty thousand - I interpreted it as him having to pay what he could immediately.
Personally, I'd be inclined to just Imperius Lucius into cancelling the rest of the debt, then obliviate him and memory charm him into remembering doing it of his own free will, but perhaps I'm a little more Dark Harry than Light Harry.
He's got a time machine and the stock market exists.
Give him a few days a month outside of Hogwarts (or just a telephone/television) and he could own every gold mine, hell, own everything in the muggle world. I could pull that off with just a time machine.
Why on earth did this not immediately occur to me? This is usually my first thought in time-travel stories. Clearly my dislike of Lucius is clouding my judgement.
Most muggleborns may not be able to do calculus, but they know about lotteries. The ministry would keep tabs on this stuff.
Which is why he wouldn't win top prize - 5/6 numbers is usually a couple hundred grand, that's tons of seed money.
He has a hundred in his back yard. Worst comes to worst, he arbitrages that up to 60k.
Edit: or time machine+stock market. In retrospect, that's a much better solution.
It's an ugly hypothesis, because so far Hermione's influence in Harry has been that of greatest opposition to Quirrel's influence... If Quirrel set it up so that they met, then this would have all been to his purpose since the beginning, setting up some future betrayal from Hermione from the start. (e.g make a paragon of goodness friends with Harry, so that he'll do anything to keep her from Azkaban, even if that means declaring war on magical Britain?)
Thankfully, I don't consider it very likely. I think this being McGonaggal who matched the two of them is still much more likely.
Is he not the interrogator in a ministry holding cell? Oh boy.
Oh, of course not. Harry's arbitrage attack, assuming it happens at sufficient scale, will either shift or destroy the Galleon/Sickle/Knut pegs(edit: or, if Gringott's has a bigger bankroll than the muggle economy, it'll shift the muggle prices to the Gringott's ratio), but it won't cause the wizarding economy to go fiat. If nothing else, do you really trust Lucius Malfoy in charge of the Federal Wizerve? I just have this debate as it relates to RL politics on a regular basis, so I threw in the side note.
Edit: I should also add, a basket of commodities can work very well. That's the method we use to calculate inflation, and it's quite stable.
Unless they already plan to kill you, in which case antagonizing them can potentially reduce their threat.
Someone tried to murder his son, and all he got for it was a bit of cash. As if he gives a damn about cash. I can't imagine anyone, rich or poor, who'd say "A fat stack of bills and clearing an old favour, in exchange for attempting to murder my child? Sure, sounds fair!". I'd be throwing around terms like "sociopath" if anyone was actually okay with that(whether or not it's the proper psychological term).
It varies. There are trains and gaslamplikethings and indoor plumbing.
Monometallic systems run by honest authorities are actually relatively stable. I don't think they're as good as a fiat system run by honest authorities, because the price can fluctuate for reasons unrelated to actually being money(supply shocks of the sort that wrecked the Spanish economy in the 16th-17th centuries, new industrial uses, etc.), but they're not crazy. Multimetallic(or, really, any multi-commodity) systems are just completely insane - the pegs are set without regard to economic reality, and they work exactly as well as any other time governme... (read more)
Perhaps you're expected to gracefully retract at some point.
I think the striken out posts can't be further down voted and you are expected to use that tool to defend yourself against excessive down votes. That is entirely a guess and I am new here.
Harry has a father who is quite respectable. He could act through his father.
We don't know if this is the case. Looking at squib/wizard descent rates from wizard/muggle marriages would be an obvious additional test of Harry's genetic hypothesis, which he hasn't done. We don't know if Harry is correct about there being a single wizard gene.
In canon they call “squib” the non-magic-capable child of two wizards.
In MoR, that means the child has only one copy of the recessive magic gene. (Either mommy didn’t love only daddy, or one copy of the gene got messed up somehow.) But in MoR you need to distinguish between genetic|squib (has one copy of the gene), and genealogic|squib (can’t do magic but has wizard/witch parents).
All genealogical|squibs are genetic|squibs, but wizards use the word “squib” only for the former, since wizards don’t know much about genetics, and about the magic gene in particular. They call anybody who isn’t a part of magic Britain a muggle (genealogical |muggle), even though they might actually be genetic|squibs.
An example: Wizard Nasty Pants does the nasty with lots of muggle women a couple of centuries ago. He doesn’t like commitments, so he abandons the women to raise their children alone.
All his children are genetic|squibs, but they’re raised by muggles and—after Mr. Nasty dies because he tried that with a witch married to a Gryffindor—nobody knows they had a wizard parent.
M... (read more)
Yes, he can. Fawks is completely good and Harry has a connection with him. Fawks would take him there and Harry would destroy the Dementors. Azkaban is Dementors in a convenient package. Once the Dementors are gone, the packaging is no longer really Azkaban.
Harry believes he can do it and EY doesn't make it look like he can't.
This is much harder to do then you seem to think.
Not that much. Both rules have their reasons. Real consistency is hard.
If any money tracking is going on, I suspect it's done by the goblins, who I believe canonically have means of magically tracking things.
You don't need to magically track money though, to keep record of how much money is in people's bank accounts, and take notice if someone who's not supposed to have lots of money suddenly starts making a lot of very expensive purchases.
From that note:
Shouldn't Hermione have read that note the moment she realized she would be arrested and had a chance of being sent to Azkaban?
Given that Hermione's recent mental processes have essentially been put through a cheese shredder by various magic spells, I'm not sure such a moment actually occurred.
Am I the only one that doesn't think Harry is going to pay off Lucius as fast as possible? Unless the demands on Harry are seriously onerous this is a superb opportunity to learn about the most powerful family and one of the most powerful wizards in Magical Britain. From a story perspective, it gives Eliezer an easy way to add difficulty to Harry's life at any point and a good chance to keep writing about villains like Lucius instead of boring villains like the Jugson kid. I think Harry will end up working with Lucius to uncover who framed Hermione.
In the "DO NOT MESS WITH TIME" case, he tried to manipulate time-loop paradoxes in his favour.
In what Xachariah suggests, he'd just be manipulating the stock markets, not deliberately attempting to construct time paradoxe. Therefore I don't think it qualifies as "messing with time".
How do you determine that a puzzle is completely fair and isn't solved? Is that a meaningful category?
I would say that the "most wise" one among Dumbledore, Quirrell, and Harry is definitely not the one whose model does not account for observed reality.
Oh god where are they being held?
DO NOT SPEAK THE NAME
The Ree are from Nobody Dies, a Neon Genesis Evangelion fanfiction.
And Hogwarts has ventilation ducts large enough to fit a basilisk!
In fairness, circulating air in a castle whose geometry is best represented by an arbitrarily connected graph (not necessarily acyclic), is a non-trivial engineering challenge. After a few student asphyxiated, they may just have gone a little overboard.