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Snowyowl comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 4 - Less Wrong
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So many questions... For one, Quirrel is pretty good at magic - did he figure out a way past the Interdict of Merlin, or is he just that good? And does he still have You-Know-Who in the back of his head in this continuity?
We don't know. Maybe he is Voldemort sobered up and his magic skillz are from the basilisk; maybe Voldemort is a parasite again, or maybe he and Quirrel have 'traded utility-functions'. Tons of speculation has been offered - indeed, one might say that of the many mysteries in MoR, Quirrel is chief.
Eliezer has drawn attention to the fact that Quirrell just has a bald patch on his head, which he does not conceal, where canon!Quirrell has Voldemort's face. This suggests that MoR!Quirrell at one time had Voldemort's face stuck there, but somehow got free of it. In which case, where is Voldemort now? Who would be absolutely the worst person, from Harry's point of view, to turn out to be possessed by Voldemort?
Dumbledore.
Harry.
Dumbledore? I think the worst situation for him would be if it was hermione
Harry is smart enough not to be so scope-insensitive. It would be personally painful for him if Hermione had succumbed to that fate, but disastrous for the world which Harry wants to save if Dumbledore had. Dumbledore's power, plus Voldemort's own, plus what he got from Slytherin's Monster looks like a challenge fit for a superrational scientist-wizard.
Although my point was mainly on the emotional level, I don't know... even with Dumbledores political power and magical experience, possessed!Hermione would be a much greater threat to the world than possessed!Dumbledore, given her memory, her sanity, and the speed she learns spells. combined with the motivation of wanting to take over the world, I would expect her to be much stronger than Dumbledore before long. (both in combat and politically) Though she seems like an unlikely choice for a muggle-born hater.
On another note, I do not think that Voldemort left Quirrel for someone else, he still seems to be controlled by another being most of the time, even if there are less visible marks. Quirrel may have applied some kind of permanent illusion, instead of using a turban.
Or better than a permanent illusion, a magically-induced blindspot like the Interdict of Merlin or the thestrals.
Why have a noticeable bald spot instead of hair?
Maybe a blind spot is an empty spot, and an empty spot on a head = bald spot? Hair would be a presence, not an absence.
Presumably when one reads a book under the Interdict of Merlin, one reads blank pages, not mildly obscene limericks about a man from Nantucket.
I think a sensible wizard would cover any blind spot they create with something very ordinary, if this is possible.
Possibly it's an illusion or Someone Else's Problem Field (Perception Filter) such that the evil is still there, most people just don't see it because they don't want to.
Presumably some people knew the real Quirrel person back when Voldermort was still alive. Maybe he just naturally had a bald patch all along.
Also, we don't know that hiding a bald spot is possible (or safe). For instance, making someone pretty using magic is known to be very dangerous.
...in which case the bald patch isn't evidence to us that Voldemort is or was there.
Yes, I don't have any ideas about zombie-Quirrel/lucid-Quirrel, or Harry's sense of doom around the latter. Does any of that exist in canon, and if it does, what's the story there? I'm only familiar with the general ambience of the Potterverse, not having read any of the books or seen the films. (Spoilers welcome, I don't intend to read/see them.)
Here's an idea about the sense of doom following on from V having tried but failed to possess Q: Harry's scar is a piece of Voldemort (doesn't canon have the scar being a horcrux of V?), and the sense of doom is the Voldemort-fragment's fear that Quirrel might discover and destroy it.
Quirrel has spoken of at least one past experience that appears to have been Voldemort's (killing an entire monastery because the master wouldn't teach him). So, maybe what we are looking at is a Quirrel/Voldemort merging, in which Quirrel is in control (except in zombie mode), and the Voldemort-fragment reduced to nothing more than memories.
remember what the sorting hat said though... It seems unlikely that voldemort put the necessary protections on harry's soul-fragment to stop the sorting hat from detecting it considering that he almost died as soon as he attacked harry.
The sense of doom may just be a filled-with-fantasy Harry brain's interpretation of the Voldemort-emotion/proximity as opposed to the pain that cannon!Harry felt. MoR!Harry already has a far different view of things due to his fiction reading (just look at his interactions with Hermione), why not a different mapping of an unnatural sense?
Haven't read Canon Potter in many years but I believe Harry had pains in his scar when Voldemort was awake/active on Quirrel's body. In the book, Harry often misattributed this to Snape's presence (I think).
Harry's scar wasn't a Horcrux (nor was Harry*) in canon, although that was a very popular fan guess before the 7th book came out. I'm extremely intrigued by how this whole story line is going to play out.
*Actually, according to canon, Harry had a piece of Voldemort's soul but was never Horcruxed on purpose, so Voldemort was unaware of this fact.
Er, I thought Harry was one of Voldemort's horcruxes in canon, or something very much like one.
Whoops, you're right about that. Though, according to wiki Harry isn't technically a Horcrux:
So you can hold a part of a guy's soul and not be a horcrux?! This is why HPMOR is better than canon.
What was the Interdict of Merlin again? I googled but none of the links were defining, just referencing.
If Vold. is in his head, it isn't visible, Quirrel no longer wears the turban he used to hide it in canon.
From Ch. 23
Ahh, was that what Harrizer called his plan to stop the misuse of magic or knowledge in general by limiting it to people who can discover it for themselves?
If so I was actually trying to do the reverse lookup a week or so ago.
OK, I think that is it. H.P. thinks its why witches are no longer as powerful as they used to be. The idea was to prevent dangerous fools from having powerful magic, but it also means a lot of ancient magic was lost as some spells were never orally transferred, and there was no written copy to be discovered later.
It was the ancient magical equivalent to an existential risk prevention mechanism.
And note the hat's commentary on the matter.