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pedanterrific comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 10 - Less Wrong
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So, I guess I missed something. What was the magical ingredient in Harry's potion of light?
Just because every potion in the two textbooks Harry looked at involved magical ingredients doesn't mean all potions require a magical ingredient. As I read it, Harry found the potion he used in a more obscure book suggested by Prof. McGonnagal or Flitwick, probably something like a wilderness survival guide. Converting acorns into a beacon would be pretty helpful for getting found by search parties.
It turns out the common Oak is actually a magical plant.
That's what the Druids thought, anyway, right?
From the story:
This leaves me with two possibilities:
1) Harry invested the energy himself in the potion. Instead of just using his magic to release the ingredients' potential, he poured in the required magic from his own cores.
2) Harry can now create potions from any non-magical substance as if it were a magical substance.
I believe option 1 is the correct one. First, Harry didn't play a part in the battle, probably because he was magically depleted. He's learned just as much dueling as Neville, and yet contributed nothing and died offscreen. Second, Harry wasn't rejoicing the next day and testing out a dozen different types of potions. He didn't act like someone who just uncovered a global victory condition or new branch of magic. Third, wizards would have discovered this if you could simply make potions without investing in magic of some kind. As the name of the chapter implies, Harry discovered a tradeoff, not a loophole.
The fact that the light was impossible to Finite suggests that Harry did tap the energy of the acorns. It's implied that the magical cost to the creator of making a potion is a minor cost to reshape the components. So, the potion taps the light stored in the acorns, and Harry's magic is tapped only to do the reshaping. Probably most magical potions use the magic of the magical ingredient to do most of the reshaping work, so the user only has to invest a tiny bit of magic, while a potion not involving any magical ingredients might require much more input from the creator for the reshaping. That would explain why Harry is drained, but also why the light can't easily be dispelled.
The other critical limitation on potions is that you must known the stirring pattern and the recipe in general. Figuring out the stirring pattern is the sort of thing that gets you permanently turned into a cat. So, Harry does not have god-mode because he doesn't have the time or expertise to do all the potion experimentation necessary to invent new potions without blowing himself up; he's limited to potions with known (but possibly obscure) recipes.
The Finite charm was trained to be used en masse by an entire army. It's a brute force spell requiring lots of power to dispel it's opposing spell. The usefulness of the sunlight potion wasn't in it's raw magical strength, but how quickly it disabled it's opponents.
He entertains either option, but he chose the more risky one that immediately finishes the battle. It merely needed to stand up to a handful of Finite spells, rather than a massed and coordinated dispel. I say it is the more risky one because he did in fact lose by choosing this option instead of brewing an invulnerability to sleep potion. If he could have chosen to make potions of any potency, he would have obviously chosen a certainly victorious spell of a risky spell.
This is evidence towards him putting in the magic himself. In order to deduce the stirring pattern, he looked up a potion with the similar ingredients and the same spell function from a preexisting recipe. If potionmakers could make the same potion using non-magical ingredients, then why wouldn't any of them have already invented a potion with nonmagical ingredients unless there was a significant drawback?
I think this is almost certainly what harry actually discovered.The other option is simply too powerful. He can use the essence of acorns to lead his own magic to a place he does not know how to take it, but he still uses his own power to get there.
There wasn't one, as he wasn't making something magical. He was making sunlight.
Sure. And the potion of fire breathing doesn't make anything magical, it just makes fire. It still requires Ashwinder eggs.
Not quite, I think it actually makes (well, regains) fire breathing, not just fire, just as Ashwinder eggs need fire breathing, not just fire or heat AFAIK. If only heat or fire was needed, a copper coin has lots of it (see the other example) and isn't magical in itself.
The copper coin example is arguably a magical ingredient: the text emphasizes that it stores the heat of the goblin forges, and I imagine that those are somehow magical in nature.
The sun features prominently in so many mythologies that I would be mildly surprised if sunlight didn't count as magical in some way.
I'm guessing he used some kind of magical plant, possibly even a magical oak tree, since the text does specifically say it's lucky that the battle takes place in the Forbidden Forest, where actually magical plants grow, as opposed to the regular non-forbidden forests surrounding the grounds which have only mundane plants.
Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong wrong.
I stand corrected.