I noticed quite a while ago with considerable disappointment that you had changed
Harry looked up at the sky, and began laughing. He couldn’t seem to help himself. This is the most improbable day of my life.
to
There was a long silence in the backyard. Then a boy's voice said, calmly and quietly, "What."
(with annoyance at the inappropriate punctuation on top of it: if you must avoid a question mark here, use an ellipsis, not a period!)
...but until seeing Eneasz's comment I totally failed to notice that you had deleted that whole paragraph! Shame!
As a regular reader of neither SF nor fanfiction, I don't really care about the "expectations" of those genres. As far as I'm concerned, Methods of Rationality is its own genre, and that paragraph was very much stylistically consistent with the rest of the story, funny parts and all, and it was particularly consistent with Harry as we have come to know him.
Actually, this part (minus the phrase "unmotivated conspiracies") sounds like something out of British children's fiction:
Even if Harry tried to explain the day’s events by sudden insanity or unmotivated conspiracies, that didn’t put everything back to normal. It didn’t make the day’s events expected. It didn’t make him feel not-confused. There was no denying that something very, very, very odd was going on
Anyway, maybe the passage could be tweaked for lightheartedness if that's what you prefer, but I was really sorry to see the point about noticing confusion disappear.
But, but... that was the defining introductory moment! It set the tone for the entire fanfic!
Update: Discussion has moved on to a new thread.
The load more comments links are getting annoying (at least if you're not logged in), so it's time for a new Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread. We're also approaching the traditional 500-comment mark, but I think that hidden comments provide more appropriate joints to carve these threads at. So as of chapter 67, this is the place to share your thoughts about Eliezer Yudkowsky's Harry Potter fanfic.
The first 5 discussion threads are on the main page under the harry_potter tag. Threads 6 and on (including this one) are in the discussion section using its separate tag system. Also: one, two, three, four, five, six. The fanfiction.net author page is the central author-controlled HPMOR clearinghouse with links to the RSS feed, pdf version, TV Tropes pages, fan art, and more, and AdeleneDawner has kept an archive of Author's Notes.
As a reminder, it's often useful to start your comment by indicating which chapter you are commenting on.
Spoiler Warning: this thread is full of spoilers. With few exceptions, spoilers for MOR and canon are fair game to post, without warning or rot13. More specifically: