What happened to the Harry from Chapter 6?
"Um," Harry said, "can we go get the healer's kit now?"
McGonagall paused, and looked back at him steadily. "And if I say no, it's too expensive and you won't need it, what happens?"
Harry's face twisted in bitterness. "Exactly what you're thinking, Professor McGonagall. Exactly what you're thinking. I conclude you're another crazy adult I can't talk to, and I start planning how to get my hands on a healer's kit anyway."
A time turner is a superior to a healer's kit in very nearly every way and by a huge margin. Yet all Harry does when he loses free access to his time turner he sulks a little and that's all. He doesn't plan at all! I don't even recall one line of introspection on the subject! It takes very little ingenuity to to react:
"Harry, give me your time t..."
shit. shit. shit. Activate time turner. Escape. Then, he can spend five minutes and think up a dozen ways to retain time travel capability. Let me see...
Really... the best Harry can come up with is to say "that's not fair"? WTF?
First, Harry discovered a gag beverage that he thought could be a key to power, although he quickly realized the Comed-Tea wasn't as powerful as it seemed. A few days later he fell in love with a device that is sometimes given to students who want to take extra classes, although he has since discovered some limits to its powers. If he goes rogue over his Time-Turner's crippleware, then who knows how much other cool and useful magical stuff he will miss out on, and how much trouble he'll be in.
Plus, McGonagall had him cornered when she confronted him abou...
Update: Please post new comments in the latest HPMOR discussion thread, now in the discussion section, since this thread and its first few successors have grown unwieldy (direct links: two, three, four, five, six, seven).
As many of you already know, Eliezer Yudkowsky is writing a Harry Potter fanfic, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, starring a rationalist Harry Potter with ambitions to transform the world by bringing the rationalist/scientific method to magic. But of course a more powerful Potter requires a more challenging wizarding world, and ... well, you can see for yourself how that plays out.
This thread is for discussion of anything related to the story, including insights, confusions, questions, speculation, jokes, discussion of rationality issues raised in the story, attempts at fanfic spinoffs, comments about related fanfictions, and meta-discussion about the fact that Eliezer Yudkowsky is writing Harry Potter fan-fiction (presumably as a means of raising the sanity waterline).
I'm making this a top-level post to create a centralized location for that discussion, since I'm guessing people have things to say (I know I do) and there isn't a great place to put them. fanfiction.net has a different set of users (plus no threading or karma), the main discussion here has been in an old open thread which has petered out and is already near the unwieldy size that would call for a top-level post, and we've had discussions come up in a few other places. So let's have that discussion here.
Comments here will obviously be full of spoilers, and I don't think it makes sense to rot13 the whole thread, so consider this a spoiler warning: this thread contains unrot13'd spoilers for Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality up to the current chapter and for the original Harry Potter series. Please continue to use rot13 for spoilers to other works of fiction, or if you have insider knowledge of future chapters of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality.
A suggestion: mention at the top of your comment which chapter you're commenting on, or what chapter you're up to, so that people can understand the context of your comment even after more chapters have been posted. This can also help people avoid reading spoilers for a new chapter before they realize that there is a new chapter.