"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...
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 h...
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.
What were the two fanfics you recommended for their beauty?
True, but we saw him the next day as well. I find it hard to believe that he wouldn't even reflect on his conversation. The dark lord coming back isn't the kind of thing you ignore, even if you know it's false.
Is Harry already aware of the Horcrux's and the need for a servant to revive Voldermort? He seemed to completely ignore that bit of information when Dumbledore mentioned it to him.
Oh my! That's an interesting point. What if his suicide was a way of short-circuiting the Prophecy?
I'm assuming that's what your scenario is, and it's brilliant.
Oh, I'm sure you and I can come up with lots of rationalizations to justify using her. Problem is, Harry, in addition to being a rationalist, is also a fictional character.
Eliezer, through Harry has, thus far, had a certain sense of poetic justice. Using Bella as bait would go against that. The same drive that leads Harry to see himself as the mesiah of two worlds -- the man who will kill death, that same drive will balk at using Bella. It's too ugly.
(Chapter 58)
Harry, once again, plays (or is played like) the fool. He places his life in obvious danger by going with Quirrell, and trusts Quirrell. Again. Agh! Here's what a suspicious Harry would think: Harry is the only one who knows that Quirrell is responsible for break in. Harry plans on staying behind. Quirrell can't stop Harry from staying behind with magic, and can't convince Bella to stop either. One choice left for safety -- manipulate Harry into making the vastly more dangerous choice and leaving.
I feel like the Harry of these past 8 chapters i...
I wonder if Harry's dark side (assuming it's part of Voldermort) knows it's part of Voldermort. If it doesn't, what will happen to it when it/Harry finds out? Obviously Harry considers Voldermort an enemy. Will he try to destroy it?
I don't think it's reasonable to assume that he could predict the Patronus stopping the curse. Harry didn't know it could do it. How could Quirrell, who can't even cast Patronus 2.0?
Additionally, he had to be certain that Harry wouldn't be able to recall his Patronus, which would also be beyond him.
Slight spoilers for those who haven't read chapter 55:
My god, Harry is infuriating. Why, after realizing that Quirrell might have set him up, after deciding to doubt everything Quirrell said about the plan (and needlessly dismissing his doubts), did he assume that there really is a magical psychologist to fix Mme.Black up?
Why, after deconstructing his predicament did he then fail to apply the same rationalism to its immediate effect? Ugh. If there's one scene that convinced me that he's under the Imperius curse, it's his thinking up ways of convincing the...
How would this be done client side? Perhaps I'm misunderstanding the request, but to me it sounded like he wanted to have an option to vote to rot13 posts that you think are spoilers.
Edit: To clarify, the reason I think that's what he meant is that he said it should appear next to the vote up/vote down buttons. Those only appear after you post. I suppose you could still have a client-side rot13 button down there, but it'd be a bit useless.
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.