"to obey its Master or Mistress"
His theory is that they wouldn't work. So, if his theory is true, it's true. Not sure how else to explain it.
Maybe H&C's final form was McGonagall? That'd be a fun twist.
Actually, that's not the only(or even best) solution.
It's pointed out in a previous chapter that intimate knowledge of such spells disables the regular patronus. Which is Harry's only weapon at this point - that threat. He can't say "I can kill dementors" without making the threat because he'll become an obvious man behind the break-in. What will he do, threaten to destroy them? They'll just send his ass to jail. No, he needs some kind of threat to the wizengamot, which in this case would be to ruin their Patronus spell. However, that still won't work because D knows what Harry can do and can likely stop him before he fully explains the his theory, and if that he fails at that, it'll be a pretty simple task to kill/disable him and then Obliviate the various wizards present.
Hah. Fun, but completely unreasonable. The Wizengemot is ultimately responsible for the safety of wizard-kind, and though they're pretty selfish when it comes to minor issues, as soon as a Harry makes the threat to disable wizard-kind's defenses against Dementors, everyone, Dumbledore and Malfoy and Bones and so on, will be his enemy, and they will disable him.
Well, Snape himself was bullied, and earlier in the story he asked HP to stop a bully, so I'm guessing he orchestrated the fight to raise the reputation of SPEW and marginalize the bullies. It was mentioned that a first year wouldn't be able to break the protego spell, so perhaps he helped out?
This would, of course, mean that he delivered the letters and/or orchestrated the "prophecy" as well.
As a side note - it's been so long since the last update that it took me maybe 1/4th of the chapter to fully understand what's going on. Perhaps I should have skimmed 71 before reading.
Final side note - Eliezer, what do you think of ASOIAF?
FFSN - On the whole 'forgetting the story' theme - who was Rianne?
Oh, send me a link to this rationality group.
Let's speculate.
Say, Harry Potter tried, failed, and sent a note to the past. What happens to the Harry in the future? He presumably continues to exist, in an alternate universe where he didn't get a note and went on with the plan.
Thus, we have a scenario where, if the test was planned for, Harry must have both Gone on the mission and Not Gone on the mission, and we're merely following the one that did in the narrative.
However, the brain is a physical object. The soul is not.
Ah, but Harry doesn't believe in the concept of a "soul" as anything other than the result of a physical brain. Thus, his interpretation should be focused on damaging the brain.
Assume for a moment that Quirelll was being honest with Hermione, in a twisted way. He was the hero and he invented Voldemort in order to defeat Voldemort. He then realized that being a hero wasn't working out for him, so he went away, but unlike his Riddle persona, Voldemort would continue to be hunted, so he had to fake his death.