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(Harry had asked why Professor Quirrell couldn't be the one to play the part of the Dark Lord, and Professor Quirrell had pointed out that there was no plausible reason for him to be possessed by the shade of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.)

Also... why in the world is Harry using the labels "He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named" and "Dark Lord" in his thinking, rather than "Voldemort"? Ditto Quirrell. It seems pointlessly imprecise.

We've established that there can be multiple Dark Lords, maybe even at the same time, and I see no clear reason to believe there's only been one in the last century. And one can manufacture "He Who Must Not Be Named"s to one's heart's content. Is this deliberate, either on the author's part or (bizarrely) the characters'?

[edit: oops. I'm a doof; thomblake points to the relevant cite below. (Thanks thomblake!) Which now makes me really wonder whether there's a massive piece of misdirection going on along the lines of what I reference below.

What I ought to do is go back through the fic and see who says what about the-presumed-to-be-singular-entity variously referred to as "Dark Lord," "He Who Must Not Be Named," "Voldemort", "Tom Riddle", etc. and decide what I believe about that entity's singularity.

Well, no. What I ought to do is get back to work. Here I go...)

Now that I think about it, this would be a decidedly clever strategy for a mastermind in the HPverse has to adopt.

That is, suppose I establish the "He Who Must Not Be Named" convention and then order a trusted (male) lieutenant to do something, and order everyone never to call him by name, on pain of death.

Now, "He Who Must Not Be Named" is doing that thing, while I am doing something else (say, establishing an alibi).

There's a term for the fallacy this takes advantage of, where I confuse myself by forgetting that the referent for a label like "the President of the United States" can change between uses; I've forgotten what it is.

Of course, this wouldn't work with any forensic technique that actually involved interacting with objects in the world outside one's mind.

But magic in the HP-verse (and, really, magic in fiction more generally) is so bizarrely inconsistent about when it's interacting with objects and when it's interacting with labels that it might be worthwhile.