Yvain comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 3 - Less Wrong

5 Post author: Unnamed 30 August 2010 05:37AM

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Comment author: Sniffnoy 06 September 2010 07:24:57AM *  8 points [-]

These chapters (43-46) seem to have several pieces of evidence for the "Harrymort" theory. Quirrell's reaction suggests that he recognizes the particular ideas that Harry had, which in turn suggests they're where he hid his horcruxes. That those locations also seemed obvious to Harry could be simply because they are obvious, and Voldemort used them for that same reason, but it could also indicate Harry somehow "remembering" them. That Voldemort might not have actually attempted to kill Harry after having killed Lily also suggests something may have been up there, though Voldemort may have been simply lying. And we also now have a bit of evidence that Harry's "dark side" may actually be real.

Comment author: Yvain 06 September 2010 05:19:48PM *  6 points [-]

I'm still trying to figure out what happened at Godric's Hollow.

Voldemort went in there with the intention to kill Harry (evidence: the prophecy, his seeming willingness to let Lily escape). Lily asked him to spare Harry's life in exchange for her own. It would seem that Voldemort accepted this offer in some way: he verbally agreed to the bargain, he killed Lily despite a previous intention to spare her, and Harry ended up surviving the encounter. But why would Voldemort do that when he could as easily have killed both, when he wanted Harry dead for prophecy-related reasons, and when he wanted Lily alive for Snape's sake?

Theories:

  1. Voldy had always planned to save Harry's life for his own purposes - maybe he interpreted the prophecy as meaning this would be the boy into whom he could upload his personality. He only came to Godric's Hollow to cast the personality-transfer spell onto Harry and maybe get rid of the parents. He accepted Lily's offer because it amused him to have Lily sacrifice her life when he wasn't going to kill Harry anyway.

  2. Voldy came to kill Harry, and never gave up on that intention. He pretended to accept Lily's bargain because he was Evil, and pretending to accept bargains and then breaking them is what evil people do. However, there was some hidden magic that auto-cast the Unbreakable Vow spell without Voldemort knowing. Voldemort tried to kill Harry, which broke the vow he had made to Lily, insta-killing him. Harry was Horcruxed and Voldemort's soul survived in the Horcruxes in a way relatively similar to in canon.

Comment author: alethiophile 12 September 2010 12:28:02AM 2 points [-]

In canon, the explanation is that sacrificing your life in order to save someone else has actual magical force (the events of book 7, in which this effect works for Harry even though he did not actually die, imply that this effect is tied up with a person's intent to sacrifice their life, rather than their actual death). Thus, if a wizard knowingly and willingly sacrifices their life to save that of another, that other person gains a measure of magical defense, which was the reason that Voldemort's first attempt to kill Harry rebounded. I'm not sure how or whether this will be changed in MoR; if you use the intention interpretation, then it doesn't seem to horribly contradict any of the established contra-canon facts.

Comment author: TobyBartels 15 September 2010 12:14:00AM 1 point [-]

if you use the intention interpretation

I agree that the intention interpretation seems to be the correct one, based on canon. But that just makes all the more incredible that nobody has discovered this before, that Harry should be the first person in known history to survive the Killing Curse. So, it would be nice if MoR made this more sensible, especially if it could do so without contradicting the rules as they are played out in canon.