You know, you're right. I was going off the demonstration of partial Transfiguration:
And a few minutes later, Harry was strapped into the safety chair and resting his wand against a metal ball - one that, based on his current test scores, should have been too large for him to Transfigure in less than thirty minutes.
And a few minutes after that, Minerva was leaning against the wall, feeling faint.
There was a small patch of glass on the ball where Harry's wand had rested.
Which seemed to me to indicate that the glass didn't appear until a few minutes after he started the transfiguration. And the bit where Harry cuts through Azkaban's interior wall seems to make somewhat less sense if it's gradual- the motor oil would just drip out, for instance.
But the fact that Goyle could recognize the cauldrons before the transfiguration was done pretty conclusively rules the idea out. Oops.
(The HPMOR discussion thread after this one is here.)
This is a new thread to discuss Eliezer Yudkowsky's Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality and anything related to it. There haven't been any chapters recently, but it looks like there are a bunch in the pipeline and the old thread is nearing 700 comments. The latest chapter as of 7th March 2012 is Ch. 77.
There is now a site dedicated to the story at hpmor.com, which is now the place to go to find the authors notes and all sorts of other goodies. AdeleneDawner has kept an archive of Author's Notes.
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, seven, eight, nine.
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: