= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 10
(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:
You do not need to rot13 anything about HP:MoR or the original Harry Potter series unless you are posting insider information from Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).
If there is evidence for X in MOR and/or canon then it's fine to post about X without rot13, even if you also have heard privately from Eliezer that X is true. But you should not post that "Eliezer said X is true" unless you use rot13.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d){kind=logo}
Comments (641)
I found stuff about the "Centre for Modern Rationality" hiding on hpmor.org!
There are more goodies there than just that.
So does HPMOR.com not update as quickly as I thought? They're quite late with this latest author's note.
It seems like HPMoR is on hiatus... not sure if it's been abandoned yet, but I wouldn't expect an update any time soon.
This was rather lazy of you. If you had just checked the latest author's notes you'd have noticed that Eliezer mentions a hope to post the next chapter before March 11th.
Even if you don't expect his update to come that soon, this hardly qualifies for a "hiatus" or even worse "abandonment", when the author expresses the desire to post the next chapter at start of next week...
I guess I had the author's notes page cached; I force-refreshed it just now, and saw the latest update. Good catch.
What bothers me is that the AN dated 28 Feb was posted on 7 Mar. What happened in the intervening time?
(My personal guess is that Eliezer was attacked by ninjas.)
Edit: Oops, that's exactly what the great-grandparent is about. Never mind.
The note was edited-in as part of the 77th chapter, so it probably updated as part of the mirror of that chapter quickly, but was explicitly recognized as a note only a few days later and copied in the correct section.
If Eliezer updates on the eve of the SAT, I'm going to track him down and read Vogon Poetry at him.
As a new lesswrongER, perhaps the most exciting thing about this community is the ability to reference Douglas Adams un-cited and assume that people will know exactly what I'm talking about.
Wow, which communities did you previously hang out in?
Welcome, both to LW and to the part of the internet where you can reference SciFi to your heart's content.
What's the eve of the SAT?
March 9, apparently.
Although I don't see why this is important enough to consider. How many HPMOR readers do you expect will be taking the SAT on March 10?
Oh bloody hell. Well, now I have a cute little Moral Dilemma on my hands.
Huh? Looks easily resolvable to me.
If disutility of Locke (possibly) doing significantly worse on his SAT outweighs the utility of hundreds (thousands?) of readers getting an HPMOR chapter a day early, release on March 9. Otherwise, release on March 10.
Or, you know, release on March 8. No one would complain about that.
Moving on March 10th. Board meeting March 11th. Said I'd try to get to it by 11th.
The SAT really matters to a lot of people's lives, though. But maybe some people would get a nice hedonic boost? Ugh.
How long does it take to post a chapter? o.O
I'd have thought you could do it in 2 minutes of off-time.
Presumably the writing is the major factor. I doubt he's sitting around going 'where could I possibly fit in 2 minutes of Internet access?'
He's already written all but the last chapter, I believe.
There you go, then.
Eh, if on March 11th the guy will have just moved, it'd probably take him significantly more than 2 minutes to just unpack his computer, set up his internet connection (if it has been set up all), etc, etc.
Still, I'd tell him to leave it for the 11th, or even the 12th if that's not possible, rather than distract SAT students on the 9th or 10th. (Not that this relates to me personally, btw, I'm neither an American nor a student). He can leave a small note saying he leaves it for the 12th, if need be.
That possibility had just not occurred to me. Everyone I know has a laptop or a phone with internet access for when they're on the move. And I live in India. I'd have expected America to have better always-on internet connectivity.
I myself live in Greece and do have an IPhone with internet access, but I'd still not try to upload a whole chapter onto fanfiction.net with it.
My current plan is to try to do it during the Board meeting on Sunday. 7pm on Saturday I'll probably be driving, or if not driving, supervising a move with no Internet access set up yet.
You have my gratitude. Do you think you can post a status update so people who don't browse Less Wrong can know?
I'll get back to studying now.
Awesome. Thanks so much for making time for your enthusiastic and eager followers during what must be a hectic period.
I'm a reader who would not be directly affected by the timing relative to the SAT, and I say, please don't stick to the earlier date on my account. I would feel bad suspecting that other readers, who are taking the SAT, were harmed for my pleasure.
Don't know if I am a representative reader, though.
I agree.
Will you do that before or after taking the SATs?
LATIN REQUEST: I need a spell that Dumbledore uses to summon the Sorting Hat. So far, Google Translate on "Attend, Sorter!" got me "Adtendite Ordinarium!" but I'll take other appropriate phrases if they've got better translations.
What's wrong with "Accio Sorting Hat"?
Accio Ordinarium?
This is a special spell, not Accio.
pileum dictionis, affluere!
It would make Vergilius turn over in his grave, but it roughly means "(felt)hat (of the) talking, flow (to me) (i.e. appear)"
took the liberty to base it on the german translation of the sorting hat, which is "talking hat"
Edit: Adtendite Ordinarium means something like "mind the order". google really sucks at latin ;)
fluo and its derived verbs (like ad-fluo -> affluo) refer mainly to a liquid that flows. I don't think is the more appropriate. Edit: also pileus is a different hat: it is the one used by ex-slaves to mark their acquired freedom. It was high and conic, only made by wool, with no brim. (I know they are nitpicking but maybe they could improve the book and could help sound more professional)
The original reference to liquid is of course correct, e.g. ibi Isara Rhodanusque amnes ... confluunt in unum - where the rivers Rhodanus and Isere flow together [merge], but it can also be used figuratively, for example for crowds of people "flowing" together: undique ad hoc spectaculum confluere. In the context of calling the hat, I was thinking of "flow of magic" mainly to have a more nicely sounding phrase.
I agree that pileus is not a good choice, because it is actually dome-shaped and the basis for the pileolus that is worn by roman-catholic dignitarys, but then the Romans never had the concept of a pointy wizards hat. Also it was not technically the sign of an ex-slave - it might gained recognition, because the were allowed to wear the pileus - but usually worn by fishermen and workmen.
Anyway, when I realized that Eliezer is after a phrase that emphasizes the deciding/choosing trait of the hat, I remembered a description of a football (soccer) game in latin, and the term it used to describe the referee, so here's my new proposition:
disceptator, accede!
the one who decides/arbitrates, step up / step here! (imperative form)
or one could also use
disceptator, appare!
which again is the imperative of apparere - appear/show yourself
Edit: You might have confused the pileus with the phrygian cap, which is sort of pointy and looks like a smurf cap. Funny factoid, the french revolutioners mixed it up as well and chose the phrygian as a symbol of liberty.
Pervenit Judex translates to "Here Comes the Judge".
...that is oddly appropriate.
Premise: I've studied latin for about 5 years, so I'm not going to use gTranslate for Latin :) my dictionary sounds better for this scope.
The verb prodeo [pro-eo] is the best I could think.
the particle pro- means something like in front of, even between (me) and something, or near (me): this last one is peculiar and happens only sometimes.
eo is the most common and even one of the ancient verbs (that's why is defective/irregular) that means simply go.
So when Cicero (Br. 39) said :
he probably meant something like
come out from dark in the light.
Other times is used, like in Caesar (Bg):
that should sound like
come out and go to the battle.
OT:
(If you need for other occasion for a "incantation" in a more militar situation , a good one could be subject in ablative case+ proelium proditu (prò-e-li-um prò-di-tu), but that's another topic :) )
Even flowers prodent and in a figurative way, even
(Apuleio)
tears of joy appeared/came out of (him)
but this sense doesn't matter that much for our problem, i guess.
Since you don't use "Hat" for the Sorting Hat, but it seems to me that you want to stress the fact that this "entity" is that important because is a Sorter I would guess
Deligitor
would be the best.
Also Eligitor would be nice there is a subtle difference: the last one means "the one who choose what he prefears". Deligo[de-lego -> de-eligo] means choose what (or who) is more apt to a peculiar aim.
A Cicero's quote:
meant something like
choosen among the cives/citizens to form the senate(to be senators)
Deligitor is the noun formed by the verb, means "who choose, who looks for the fittest men (or stuff) for a task and choose them for that task"
The spell: JKR spells are really more naive, but that's not the point: they are not meant to be real Latin, but they are meant to sound like "Ancient powerful spell with complicated and forgotten words", imho.
The best grammatical looking phrase would be:
Deligitor prodi
that means "Chooser, be present"
because the verb is in the imperative mode, second person singular: prod-i. But that doesn't sound that good, imho.
A more free construction could be
Deligitor prode
That literally means "(the)Chooser has come to be present here."
and could be quite nice (not too far from Latin, not too boring for a fan-fic).
Or dozen of combination of this ones: deligit[or;-us,-um] prod[i,it,es,
oh! that could be nice also:
deligitor prodeas
is exhortative(or exhorting, i don't know) conjunctive, that simply means:
please, do this or would you mind doing this or it could be perfect/awesome if you bother to do this
that would sound like Chooser, please come here asap , or Sorting hat, come here since we need you
I'll stop here, waiting for some feedback, because otherwise my mind would be lost in this long trip.
Update March 12: He's reading HPMoR, thanks presumably to the 7+ fan reviews from LWers, tvtropers, and whatever you call an xkcd fan. Still no fan reviews for Luminosity or Hamlet and the Philosopher's Stone.
Damien Walter reviews sci-fi and fantasy for The Guardian. He's looking for weird, self-published online fiction to read over the next month, and he'll review the best ones he finds. He's just asked people to recommend stories in the comments to his latest article. If you want to see Methods of Rationality, Luminosity, or my Hamlet and the Philosopher's Stone reviewed in a respected newspaper (there is precedent!), please consider heading over there and posting a short review (one link per comment, you can comment more than once). Each of the three is a hard sell even by online fantasy standards, and I imagine it would help if a disinterested party vouched for them.
How about Three Worlds Collide?
Go for it if you want! I love the story, but I'm not sure how well it works as Rationality Outreach.
Success!
Alright, let's get this speculation-train started. My first and most obvious thought is this: Hermione beat Draco to a pulp, and Lucius reported it. He was definitely intending to do something, and would have been monitoring his son. The trouble with this theory is that it involved admitting that Hermione beat Draco fair and square. Still, for Dumbledore to cooperate Lucius is probably involved somehow.
Also, there's Professor Quirrell to account for. I find it unlikely his absence in unrelated, especially when he probably knew Lucius would be up to something. And come to think of it, he probably has his own Marauder's Map(we now know they're in play). Hell, come to think of it I wonder who wouldn't make one if they could. Anyways, he probably doesn't want Granger thrown in Azkaban. Perhaps we'll finally get to see him up against Lord Malfoy?
My own immediate reaction was 'this in no way serves Hermione or Draco's plans, so it must be a third party, and Lucius just stormed out of the battle'. Except how could Lucius know, and what exactly good does prosecuting Hermione do? It's implied he can't be monitoring Draco in real time by his ignorance and the letter-writing, and it also runs afoul of the Hogwarts magical defenses - so what happened, Draco got beaten, crawled to his room, wrote a letter to Lucius, got it delivered, and Lucius roused the law which rushed to arrest Hermione, all in the <~8 hours after the duel? And while Lucius may have influence in the courts and so risks little by this tactic, it makes Draco's reputation hugely worse to basically everyone (either because he looks extremely weak and dependent on his father or because he's attacking an innocent or because he's using outrageously disproportionate retaliation), and I don't see how it helps Lucius or Draco very much. Dumbledore being imprisoned would be one thing, but Hermione?
It's entirely possible that this is entirely natural. Hermione beat Draco badly enough to put him in the Hospital Wing; either he's legitimately near-death, or Lucius blew it out of proportion.
Alternatively, Hermione and Draco actually talked it out and are currently laying a mutual trap to figure out who's using them both as pawns. I like this option, but it's also probably the least likely one.
I actually think their likelihood of talking it out based on them being alone and unwatched is pretty high, and given hermione's apparent lack of worry in the morning I think that's what happened. It's possible someone else interfered after the duel to incapacitate draco and incriminate hermione.
To be honest, she reads more "hysterical and hiding it" then "unworried" to me.
One way or another she seems to have been expecting this. Otherwise she'd have been freaking out that Harry had done something. So that might eliminate the possibility of the duel having gone perfectly fine and then some plotting going on afterwards.
Yeah, one way or another Draco is either injured or "injured" (with quotes), but the duel definitely didn't go off as might be expected.
Sure. It's just... I feel this would violate the idiot-ball rule - Hermione going berserk enough to put Draco in the hospital wing? Yes, she was angry before, but losing control is an idiot-ball thing to do.
Agree. Not sure how such a mutual trap would expose their manipulators either.
It could be an accident - Hermione hits a chandelier with a cutting cures, etc. It's a fight, things like that happen.
Whoever's manipulating them is probably not anticipating a team up. (And if they are, they're beyond the two's ability to deal with anyway, so no point in worrying about that option.) So, Hermione apparently gets taken out of the picture, while Draco is free to investigate what's going on with a manipulator who's moving ahead with his plan.
... Okay, so that was kind of nonsensical since I was deciding what my opinion was while I wrote it. Let's try this again:
Hermione and Draco meet, and actually talk it out. They decide to work together against their mysterious puppetmaster by playing along with the plot, as opposed to completely derailing it and then not knowing who was behind it.
Draco being legitimately injured would explain a bit. If a cover-up was impossible and he was going to be shamed regardless, Lucius might as well have Hermione punished.
I really like that option as well. Rereading about Hermione's demeanor at the breakfast table it does come across to me more as playing it cool then resignation at an impending arrest.
Additionally, to meta-speculate a bit. I think it is more likely that Eliezer would pretend to destroy the relationship between Draco and Hermione that he has been carefully nudging together for many many chapters then to actually destroy the relationship.
Draco definitely won't be pleased by these accusations. I wonder if he's going to have to reveal himself as a non-racist before this arch is up.
Furthermore, if Draco was seriously harmed there is absolutely no way Hermione wouldn't have seen him to Madam Pomfrey. Perhaps it's going to be made to look like Hermione did something unfair, like tried to cast the Killing Curse?
As for the monitoring, it's possible Lucius didn't need to write but also didn't want his son to know how much he knew about what goes on in Hogwarts.
And as to his goal, I suspect getting the twelve-year-old's wand snapped is not his end-game. However, he could definitely get some leverage over Dumbledore if he has a serious case.
Hermione is a kind, caring person with a strong moral core, a "Milgram resister" who wouldn't even cast a Simple Strike Hex on orders from a teacher. But she's not a pacifist, is she? Perhaps she could be convinced that harming someone, or letting them be harmed, was the right thing to do. Especially if she was brainwashed a bit.
What makes you think she didn't see him to Madam Pomfrey?
Though it's always possible the wards in the castle immediately warn the teachers of a student wounded to the point of danger to life , and that therefore she wouldn't have time to get him to Madam Pomfrey before she or a teacher arrived to the scene.
Only applies if Hermione is aware of Draco being seriously harmed.
Suppose she stuns Draco, leaves, then someone else decides to do a number on him, either hoping Hermione will take the blame, or just not thinking about it.
Personally, I'm worried about how Harry will react. He's not going to take this well, certainly.
Now, the question here is how intelligent Hermione was. If she left the letter somewhere Harry can find it - or would know to look - then Harry would at least know what happened. Probably couldn't be used as evidence, but it would help.
Hermione probably won't be cut off from any outside contact, so she will be able to tell Harry about the duel if she wants to/is able to. We can't discount the possibility of obvliation.
Hence, a dead-drop, assuming she thought of it.
The terms of the challenge state that she can't tell anyone about it before or after the duel or it goes to the Wizangamot. So, no, presumably she can't tell Harry about it.
Heck, she might have severely injured Draco by accident, rendered basic medical care, and then just left, because she can't tell anyone. If someone found Draco unconscious and half-dead later, and they figured out Hermione did it and left him, that would look like attempted murder.
Oooh, now that's interesting. If mentioning the duel means she automatically gets declared guilty as per the Ancient Rules, it's going to be damned tricky to walk away from this.
Hermione beat Draco in a duel; he is trying a Xanatos gambit: I win? I trumpet the win loudly, purebloods rule! You win? The evil mudblood broke the rules (that she probably didn't know) and tried to kill me.
I don't think Draco would choose to have Hermione's life completely destroyed. He wants her shamed, not imprisoned, dead, or wandless.
Re-read the chapter: he's furious and working himself further into a state where he could want that. Xanatos Gambit is maybe not the right concept; it sounds pre-planned. This could have been rage-driven, spur of the moment.
His thoughts clearly state that the purpose of the duel is to be a test for the real thing.
It is highly unlikely that Hermione would agree to the duel considering her reaction to whatever H&C convinced her of, and Draco saw attacking her on the spot as a forced move. So, Hermione declined Draco's duel and Draco attacked her on the spot.
I think Hermione fought it life-or-death and did Draco serious damage.
Edit: Actually she should not have been able to do him serious damage if the wards actually work as they are alleged to work. Maybe she tried to do him serious damage, the wards did... whatever they do and Dumbledore felt compelled to report the attempt? I'm not sure any more.
Now that she's H&C's Mind-Rape slave, Hermione probably told him/her as soon as she got Draco's letters. So the question is what H&C would tell Hermione to do.
Come to think of it, all this has been the result of Hermione being convinced Draco is a bad egg. So, whoever benefits from this may well be or command H&C.
Hmm, I assumed that H&C did what he did with Zabini and just planted the ideas that he wished in Hermione and left the results to play out rather then engaging with Hermione in a ongoing conversation.
H&C presumably contacted Zabini more than once when using him as a pawn. I imagine he'd talk to hermione after the battle regardless of whether she was able to summon him when she got the letter.
Ok, that sounds reasonable enough.
I thought last we heard Hermione was being brainwashed. Is this all happening afterward? What does Hermione think Draco is plotting? Why is Hermione so upset and why hasn't she been talking to Harry?
I am so confused.
Presumably, Hermione has just been the subject of a Groundhog Day Attack, and is now believing whatever the mysterious figure wants her to believe. Said figure is presumably new to the concept, as he almost slipped several times. So Hermione thinks Draco is plotting something to exploit her mysterious destiny.
Hermione hasn't been talking to Harry for awhile, I believe.
I wouldn't say that H&C is necessarily new to the concept of Groundhog Day Attacks. If Quirrell is Voldemort and also H&C, he would not likely have a good mental model of the pure and innocent and good and upright Hermione Granger. It would take him a few tries to find the right levers to push.
But I'm not sure that Hermione isn't simply under the Imperius Curse at this point. When she's fighting Draco, she gives her wand a "mysterious flick" in a very un-Hermione-like feint. I don't know why Eliezer would deliberately place that word "mysterious" there unless he wanted to hint that Hermione isn't fully in control of her faculties.
I think you're reading too much into it. Mysterious makes sense when you're describing a feint.
Especially when the person in question has been fighting a lot of bullies lately AND is royally pissed off.
Quirrell told Harry that reading minds takes the fun out of things, but then that's just what he'd say if that wasn't true.
It's possible that H&C never did figure out an effective lever. In that case, he might have given up on Memory Charming her (requires the target's defenses to be lowered, at least in the case of an experienced Auror and possibly for a very pissed off first year) and just oblivated her. If he'd managed to memory charm her, I don't think she'd have been so freaked out. She also wouldn't have 'lost track of time', she'd have had a perfectly reasonable legitimate excuse put in place.
Also, have we seen Quirrell use Legilimancy at all? If we have, that's an argument for H&C not being Quirrell, because if you've thoroughly read someone's mind you it shouldn't take that many tries for a groundhog day attack.
See above. Quirrel wouldn't have made the slip that alerted the readers to a Groundhog Day Attack.
Now, the imperius... I could believe a confundus, maybe. She's not mindless enough for an imperius.
I don't know, Canon!Harry was the only one in his class who could resist it if I recall. And that was in their fourth year.
I think linkhyrule5 means that she isn't acting mindless enough for an Imperius.
When you're going to Obliviate the target anyway, there's little downside to letting some frustration slip through. I don't think that necessarily counts as a screwup.
Hat & Cloak is almost definitely going to play a part in whatever happens to Hermione now. Come to think of it, he/she might have somehow been involved in Draco's injuries. Or might even be the one who arranged for Hermione's arrest, since it isn't obvious how that helps Lucius.
Are you truly confused about these?
Yes, this is happening after the Groundhog-day attack. Obviously so.
We don't know yet what Hermione thinks Draco is plotting.
We don't know what exactly happened to make Hermione so upset.
What is there to be confused about? Don't misuse the word to merely signify lack of knowledge.
It wasn't so obvious to me because the chapter started by stating the date and time.
I wasn't sure whether I was missing information because I wasn't understanding the story properly or because it was for dramatic tension.
If the answer was dramatic tension, then I was merely missing information, however, if I wasn't understanding the story properly then I would consider that confusion.
I believe if you don't know whether you are confused then it is acceptable to call yourself confused.
Okay, but there was this paragraph, which clearly indicated the groundhog attack had already happened:
"Hermione had even missed her Sunshine Regiment Official Planning Meeting, which seemed understandable enough; but when Susan had offered her sympathy afterward, Hermione had stammered that she'd lost track of time, which wasn't at all a usual thing for her to say, and the girl had looked exhausted and frightened like she'd just spent three days locked in a bathroom stall with a Dementor. "
Presuming this all does lead up to a trial, I look forward to Harry's reaction to the Magical Justice System.
"Hasn't it ever occurred to anyone to have a suspect's guilt decided by an unbiased panel of judges?!"
Oh, and I suspect that the Sorting Hat Summoning is going to happen during the trial, perhaps as a means of impartial mind-reading.
Yes, it is.
Either that or Eliezer anticipated this train of thought (not unlikely) and is playing at the second level (slightly unlikely). Multiplying that out, the probability is miniscule.
Eleizer is always playing at one level higher than you...
Even after you've accounted for the fact that Eliezer is always playing at one level higher than you.
i know were all buzzing about this new chapter, but I found a gem in our newly placed 76 with this ""Grindelwald possessed an ancient and terrible device," said Dumbledore. "While he held it, I could not break his defense. In our duel I could not win, only fight him for long hours until he fell in exhaustion; and I would have died of it afterward, if not for Fawkes. But while his Muggle allies yet made blood sacrifice to sustain him, Grindelwald would not have fallen. He was, during that time, truly invincible. Of that grim device which Grindelwald held, none must know, none must suspect, there must be not a single hint. And therefore you must not speak of it, and I will say no more for now. That is all, Harry. There is no moral to it, and no wisdom. That is all there is."" Definitely Gur erfheerpgvba fgbar and we know this is probably not canonical.
For this chapter, V guvax vg jnf boivbhf nf fbba nf fur jnf natel ng Qenpb gung U&P jbhyq ghea ure ntnvafg uvz. Ur NPGHNYYL yvxrq Urezvabar naq ur pnag svtug ure pbeerpgyl juvyr urf fgvyy uheg bire ybfvat ure cfrhqb-sevraqfuvc. Can't believe were hitting the trial subgenre though, keep up the good work eleizer.
A rather strange conclusion, since what Dumbledore says about a "an ancient and terrible device" in this altered paragraph fits much better to the canonical Ryqre Jnaq.
That would also fall well into HPMOR style ideas of what ryqre means in terms of requiring human sacrifices, cthulu style.
I don't mind it being the death stick, but for some reason resurrection stone seemed to be quite possible to me when I read it last night. I cant wait to see what happens nonetheless :)
Voted down for rot13-ing non-spoilers. Doing so wastes the readers time and makes people more likely to accidentally read actual spoilers they expected to be similarly harmless.
I like rot13-ing my predictions, but if its bothering you I apologize.
Since you brought it up, just thought I'd mention for anyone who might benefit: I recently realized there's a rot13 extension for Chrome that saves a lot of time (relative to using rot13.com).
If that's not true, then all I can say is "I am confused".
I quite doubt Lucius is upset with Harry at the moment. He's not stupid, and Harry is not to blame for what happened to his son.
And I'm quite confident Quirrell is not H&C, as the Defense Professor would have been considerably better at brain-washing Hermione. Besides, Harry will know that Hermione truly going dark is far more unlikely than interference via mind-magic or blackmail. He is going to stay on her side and investigate what happened, and Quirrell would anticipate this and not expect Harry to fall into darkness.
Harry's not to blame, but the person Lucius believes is posing as Harry might well be.
From Lucius's perspective it must seem more likely that Hermione is a cat's paw than that she's actually strong enough to beat Draco fairly. Plus, having a Muggleborn arrested for the attempted murder of another student hurts Dumbledore as well. It would be far from unreasonable for Lucius to leap to conclusions at this point.
He would not have been considerably better at brain-washing Hermione. Others, yes, but not Hermione. Quirrell is Voldemort, the ultimate evil (that we know of). Dumbledore has said that "Evil is that which does not love, and cannot know love without ceasing to be evil," or similar.
Quirrell has already tried to convince Harry that Hermione is making a show of goodness to further her own ends. If he really believes that to some extent, given that he's the ultimate evil, he would have a hard time modeling Hermione's thought process well enough to get it right on the first try.
Eliezer thoroughly deconstructed Dumbledore's (And Gandalf's) view of evil in Lord of the Rationality. "If the Enemy thought that all his foes were moved by desire for power alone - he would guess wrongly, over and over, and the Maker of this Ring would see that, he would know that somewhere he had made a mistake!"
Even if somehow Quirrell was stupid enough to not truly understand non-sociopathic motives, he would not make the obvious mistake of revealing this weakness to Harry. Harry thinks that Quirrell can't comprehend good because that's what Quirrell wants him to think.
And H&C didn't even fail because of a miscalculation about Hermione's altruism. It was a rookie mistake to not use a different appearance than you did with Zabini. Even if you still wanted to look dark and mysterious, you wouldn't pick the exact same disguise you used earlier, just in case.
Finally, H&C's dialogue is highly unquirrellish. "I hoped for better from you, Hermione. Surely such a Ravenclaw as you, the most intelligent Ravenclaw to grace Hogwarts in a generation, knows that appearances can be misleading." Those are not the words of a Dark Lord who doesn't care about your opinion and is about to wipe your memory.
I have no strong opinion on whether H&C = Quirrell, but Harry has already remarked on Quirrell's facility at playing different roles.
The strongest evidence that H&C is not Quirrell seems to me to be how much more amateurish he is at manipulating people than Quirrell is. I don't believe it would have taken Quirrell dozens of iterations to realize he ought to change his appearance. It probably wouldn't have taken him one.
As you should know, appearances can be misleading. (This was not the first iteration, so whatever the default, this iteration already incorporates some adjustments.)
Yes, but he wouldn't have made obvious slip-ups. H&C came within two words of blurting out "Time travel." No way Quirrel did that, unless he's playing a nth-level game through the fourth wall. (Which I wouldn't put past him at this point, but anyway...)
Possible reference for the Chapter 78 title:
http://faculty.bschool.washington.edu/ryalch/M581/Postmodern/McGraw-Tetlock.pdf
Taboo Trade-Offs, Relational Framing, and the Acceptability of Exchanges A. Peter McGraw University of Colorado, Boulder Philip E. Tetlock University of California, Berkeley
This seems like it could offer some excellent hints. I'm going to try to read it later. If anyone scientifically-literate wants to summarize it for the rest of us, we'd be quite gratefully.
Just google it. The summaries I found were understandable enough.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=psychology-of-taboo-tradeoff looks fairly understandable and a bit less formal than the paper.
It's also mentioned in Circular Altruism.
I'm sure there's a hint in there, but I don't know what it is.
Quite a few ways this could be relevant.
Lucius and the sacred value of his son, Dumbledore giving up on Hermione so as not to be blackmailed by Lucius, Harry considering throwing away all his plans to save Hermione from Azkaban, Hermione having to abandon one of her host of sacred values, the list goes on.
I didn't spot that.
Probably a better source than mine, as it reflects EY's thoughts on things.
Ch 78 You know, of all the things in the chapter, the law of Potion-Making seems the most important, by far - if I understand it correctly, it has staggering implications.
It's clear that you can extract more than purely physical processes from ingredients - since we have potions that bestow even entirely abstract concepts like luck(and canon!Snape claimed to be capable of brewing fame and glory, I'm unsure if MoR!Snape claimed the same).
So, could you, say, take a CD with some software on it and use it as a Potions ingredient in order to extract the mental work that went into programming that software, creating a Potion of Excellent Programming or something? Or, even better - could you take a copy of some brilliant scientific research paper, extract the brilliant scientific genius out of it and use the resulting Potion in order to create an even more brilliant scientific breakthrough? That's godhood in one shot right there.
I also have to wonder how Potion-Making interacts with the Mind Projection Fallacy. If you use a video game as an ingredient, can you create a Potion of Fun out of the video game or no? Fun isn't an inherent property of video games, it's in the minds of the players.
Might explain all those Nazi book-burnings. Grindelwald's human allies weren't just providing human sacrifices.
My intuition, my sense of fairness, says that you can't get back the work required to create information without sacrificing an appreciable fraction of the number of extant copies of that information.
I would guess that Magic and the Mind Projection Fallacy are sittin' in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G.
As I interpreted it, potions are doubly bound. The ingredients only 'remember' as much of an affect (light, luck, heat, strength) as was put into them, but they're also constrained by magic. Everything is bound by Magic In, Magic Out. Hence the talk of potions requiring magical ingredients.
Under this interpretation, it means that potions act only as a coiled spring or temporary battery. Sacrificing software would only be useful if you needed intelligence right then and couldn't afford the magic at the time; if you just wanted to be generally smarter, you would just continually cast intellect charms on yourself (or perform a ritual). This also fits in cannonically, with many of the most powerful potions (Polyjuice, Felix Felicis, Veritaserum) taking months to brew and providing short duration benefits.
So, I guess I missed something. What was the magical ingredient in Harry's potion of light?
It turns out the common Oak is actually a magical plant.
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.
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.
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.
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'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.
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.
You can make copies of books and of software CDs very cheaply. Given a law of conservation, it can't be the case that destroying (sacrificing) a cheap copy would gain you powerful results, or else you could generate infinite resources very quickly (and wizards would realize this).
Maybe destroying the last extant copy of a software would achieve the effect. One wonders what great magic was fueled by the burning of the Library of Alexandria.
True, using copies to achieve that kind of power doesn't seem to make much sense - the law even says that you can get as much... let's call it "work" out of the ingredient as was "invested". It's true that there isn't much of an investment of resources in copies.
So, forget the copies, let's use the originals.
For example, could you take Einstein's original notes/notebooks(copying them beforehand, of course, so that you don't lose information), liquefy them into a Scientific Breakthrough Potion and use that Potion to quickly figure another brilliant breakthrough? That's the kind of thing I'm wondering about.
If this were the case, could Hermione sacrifice the paper marked 42 for a Potion of Humanism?
Or if Harry wrote down his thesis on Partial Transfiguration, Hermione could make a potion from that (without reading it), and write down whatever discovery she made under the influence of the Breaking the Laws of Magic Potion, which Harry could then use to make a potion...
No, because the notebooks do not "contain" the work Einstein did, Einstein's brain contains it. So you'd need the living brain of a scientist as brilliant as Einstein. Which may not be that difficult; Einstein was good but he was also lucky - he glommed onto exactly the right Big Problem at exactly the right time. It's quite possible that there are any number of equally-brilliant scientists alive today who just happened never to find their Big Problem. The point remains, however, that paper and notebooks are not sufficient, you need the brain which actually contains the comprehension.
Moreover, since magic works by sensible-to-humans laws in the MoRverse, even if you copied the brain you'd have to use the original in the potion, and you only have one of those. The reason being, the copy hasn't "done the work" even though it contains the comprehension; and you can only get back out the work that was put in. This of course makes no sense, information should be information, but the laws of magic were apparently designed by a human.
Obviously it powered first Julius Caesar's conquest of the Mediterranean, and then Islam's conquest of North Africa.
Another thought: write down a description of a complex magical principle that you understand, but that the interdict of merlin would prevent someone else who was reading it from understanding. Use the parchment you wrote on as an ingredient in a potion to make a potion with the mental work needed to discover/comprehend that principle.
Poof, Interdict of Merlin loses its teeth entirely. :)
Another thought that occurred to me: Felix Felicis. No wonder it's hard to brew. Only way you could brew it is if you literally got lucky in the process of brewing it, by chance, so that you can take that "chance" and put it into the potion.
(hrm... might be able to automate the process of making Felix: Have a machine that keeps mixing the ingredients many times in parallel, ie, many "potential potions", and in the process does something like for each potential potion, has a coin (or some random bit source which can then be physically placed in the potion) which it flips a 100 times. It also tracks the results, and when one of the coins comes up all heads, it drops it into the candidate potion then calls up the wizard to complete the potion.)
Oh, and MoR!Snape did claim you could brew fame and stuff. That was one of the things MoR!Harry challenged him on, saying something like "How does that work anyways? You drink it and turn into a celebrity?"
Or, wait, an even more recursive version of your science power potion:
Make a clever potion. Use that potion as an ingredient in a potion to extract the mental work of creating a clever potion.
Use that potion as an ingredient... repeat. :)
Entertainingly, precisely this trick can be used in Morrowind to beat what is meant to be a 20-40 hour game in a matter of minutes. Global victory condition, indeed.
I have to imagine there is no "clever potion" in MoR, though, because otherwise Harry would have seized on it instantly. It's too much like the recursive self-improvement we look for in AIs for Eliezer or Harry to have missed this possibility.
Hee hee. But no, I didn't mean a "potion of cleverness", I simply mean "be clever and invent a potion. Then use that potion as an ingredient to place the quality of the mental work of inventing a potion into a potion... then use that potion as an ingredient, etc.."
And actually, we know Harry meant to investigate mental magic, but we're not sure if he ever got around to it. (And, of course, there is Rowena's Diadem, which would seem to be an intelligence augmentation device. If that's in MoR, Harry's got to do something with it at some point. (But then, harry hasn't yet really jumped onto the existence of the Philosopher's Stone, so... well, I guess everyone here's already waiting for when he notices that and Epic Rages at the wizarding world along the lines of "you mean you already know how... you... ARGH!")
And we'd expect Ravenclaw members to already be using any clever potions or at least have rules against them (either imposed by the school or by themselves as 'cheating'). In canon, they all know about the Ravenclaw diadem which is supposed to make you more clever. So it's reasonable if there were any such thing, Harry would have been told about it (everyone knowing his interest in self-improvement or being more clever), heard of it, or read about it by now.
Yes, because people want Harry Potter to be smarter than he is.
On the topic of potion invention, what ever happened to the cloak from the dementor Harry killed? Based on the rules of potions given so far, that could probably make a nice Potion of the True Patronus™.
Or a potion of instant death if it instead stored the decay effect from the dementor.
I'd imagine that would be determined by the other ingredients and stirring patterns. It could also be used to make someone invisible to dementors, immune to the effects of dementors, temporarily unkillable, give off their own dementor-like aura, or just look like a dementor. Depending on what the other rules are, that cloak could be very valuable.
That's so easy to do you don't even need magic.
Either Dumbledore or Quirrel took it, or it's long since locked away in the Department of Mysteries.
But yeah, as JoshuaZ points out, just as easily could be a Potion-of-Death. (Or heck, "potion-of-anthropomorphic-personification")
I guess Harry's got another reason to destroy more dementors. Also, I suspect the cloaks will have more than one use. Dragons blood apparently has twelve uses, after all.
Um. It's not like Dementors come with cloaks, you know. If cloaks-that-have-been-worn-by-Dementors were really valuable potions ingredients, there's lots of easier ways to get them than by destroying Dementors. The Aurors manage to get the things to put them on in the first place, after all.
Yes, but the magic that was used to acquire that particular cloak was capable of blinding/destroying dementors, so it should be possible to get that magic back out using the newly revealed rule of potions.
I'm not so sure obtaining an object is the same as creating it. Using Accio on a potion-ingredient will not allow you to make a summoning Potion.
It's already established that obtaining a crushed ingredient will let you access the strength involved in crushing it. So obtaining an ingredient that had to be taken by invoking extreme powerful magic might let you access that...
Dementors are implied to cause their cloaks to rapidly deteriorate, so they probably don't last long. Maybe "living" dementors accept new cloaks, but don't let the people take the ones they're wearing any more than you'd let a stranger make off with your shirt.
I think you would need a remnant of the destroyed dementor itself, not just a cloak a dementor happened to be wearing when you killed it, and I don't think dementors leave anything behind when you kill them.
This thread is a little silly, even by local standards. First of all, the fact that a potion can be no stronger than its ingredients doesn't imply that a potion will always be as strong as its ingredients -- there are probably all kinds of other restrictions on what can be effectively brewed. By way of analogy, most Volvo engines don't run at Carnot efficiencies and most split pea soups don't run at more than 0.01 efficiency.
Second, all of the canon/fanon magical ingredients are non-copiable...a feather or a squished animal is not like a CD or a video game or a piece of parchment. Perhaps you could use the original of a piece of parchment if you didn't keep a spare copy, but EV drops lots of clues -- potion conservation was apparently designed by someone who thought the universe was fair, potion brewing is a substitute for a small, safe sacrifice, etc. -- everyone who's trying to figure out how to make a potion out of costless intellectual property is playing a different game than the one Harry's playing.
Third, advanced electronics tend to malfunction in proximity to strong magical auras -- so far the most advanced Muggle artifact that's been successfully used to interact with wizards are a car battery and a solid-fuel rocket -- both of which basically just discharged their stored energy, without any controls more subtle than an "on" button.
Fourth, would it really be fun if Harry put Science into a cauldron and took out a flask full of Win? A major theme in the fanon so far is the importance of working together in teams and coalitions. Harry already has enough power to singlehandedly overcome most casual bands of students. He destroys Dementors, outwits Headmasters, is fabulously wealthy, incredibly famous, has above-average magical strength, bloody single-minded discipline & determination, and of course an excellent background in basic cognitive science. If he suddenly became an expert programmer, researcher, etc. and broke Merlin's Interdict, he'd have enough power to singlehandedly overwhelm adult powerhouses like Lucius or Flitwick...I don't buy it. I predict that Harry will be prompted to learn how to play politics on a national scale, just as Harry has recently learned how to lead teams on a school-wide scale.
Wait, someone's calculated this?
I suppose it is for attempted murder, but I can't imagine it being normal procedure for three Aurors and the Headmaster to arrest a student.
My prediction: The sequence of events leading up to Hermione's arrest will not be predicted, because we don't have enough information currently to do so.
I don't think it'll come completely out of the blue. Come to think of it, perhaps the reason they need so many aurors is that they suspect Hermione of being more than she appears? Accusing a muggleborn of beating up your son is shameful, accusing a secret evil double-witch isn't. Maybe they'll accuse her of being an adult in disguise or something.
Well, I don't think it'll come completely out of the blue either, but I don't think predictions are possible at this time. (Should've clarified). I'm sure it'll all make total and perfect sense... In a few chapters.
By the way, EY, if you're reading this: for whatever it's worth, your writing is amazing, and stuff like the theory of potion making and then using acorns to make bright light is one of the best things I've read. Thanks for being awesome
Oh, he's reading this all right. The only question is in what manner he is laughing at us.
Prediction: Dumbledore is pretending to lose, probably to Lucius. The Auror trio is personally loyal to Dumbledore, and Amelia Bones either doesn't know this or can plausibly deny knowing this.
Confidence for conjunction of all events above: 15%.
This may have been covered already, but are there reasons why the armies (especially Harry, of course) aren't using magic to increase their mental, magical, and/or physical endurance? For that matter, what about ordinary stimulants?
You aren't allowed to bring stuff into the battles, and human-transfiguration is far beyond their level. But now Harry's figured out how to invent potions, who knows what he'll come up with for the next match.
I agree with what Locke said, and also probably for the same reason wizards aren't CONSTANTLY using magic to improve themselves, whatever that reason is.
As far as regular stimulants, most of them would probably count as bringing in muggle technology.
Possibly for the same reason real armies don't constantly use stimulants.
Perhaps I'm misunderstanding your point, but they (at least the American one) do constantly abuse stimulants; the US military even has special exemptions to use otherwise illegal amphetamines, and it's no accident that a ton of the early modafinil research was done for, by, or was related to the military.
The new Update Notifications features (http://hpmor.com/notify/) is pretty awesome but I have a feature request. Could we get some sort of privacy policy for that feature?
Like, maybe just a sentence at the bottom saying "we promise to only use your email address to send you HPMOR notifications, and we promise never to share your email address with a third party"?
It's not that I don't trust you guys (and in fact I have already signed up) but I like to check on these things.
I noticed that the MediaFire link for the PDF version is dead---is that still being actively maintained?
There's a subtle joke in chapter 78 that I'm not sure is deliberate or not. While the most obvious thing connected to polyjuice potion and catgirls is what happens to Hermione in The Chamber of Secrets, what Harry does is mix physics and magic in a way that is also connected to catgirls. In some forums devoted to Dungeons and Dragons there's a saying that goes more or less like "Whenever you try to apply physics to magic, God kills a catgirl." I have to wonder if there's a deliberate reference to this.
I think that's a stretch. It's just another poke at canon.
(To Eliezer: if you're ever worried about the legal status of MoR, parody is the most obvious way to protect yourself under fair use doctrine, and these pokes at canon will be a main part of your case. I suggest not going light on them to the extent possible.)
Thanks, Eliezer, for unpausing one of my substrates!
(Can't find a good place to insert my entire current edifice of theory elsewhere, so I'll put it as a top level comment.)
Quirrell is Voldemort is Mr. Hat and Cloak. Quirrell's ultimate goal is driving Harry permanently into his Dark Side, so as to be another Voldemort, either to rule alongside the real Voldie or to be led by the real Voldie.
Quirrell's first attempt at driving Harry over to his Dark Side was with the Dementor in the Humanism sequence. He would have succeeded, had Hermione not been there to bring him out of it. So from Quirrell's point of view, Hermione is Harry's anchor to his good side.
So then it makes perfect sense for all the events of Self Actualization and this new sequence to be Quirrel/Voldie/H&C's handiwork. Quirrell helped SPHEW win that last battle in Chapter 74 so as to paint a larger target on Hermione. When Harry came to him with his plan for that battle, he just laughed, because Harry had unknowingly come to him with a brilliant plan to further Quirrell's own goals for Hermione's doom. He poisoned Hermione against Draco (which was difficult, because Quirrell is pure evil and Hermione is pure good and he can't understand her) so as to provoke House Malfoy further.
Now Hermione is in deep trouble, just as Quirrell intended. All that remains is for something unspeakably awful to happen to her soon, which, Quirrell believes, will help do to Harry what the Dementor almost did in January.
Why, in this theory, did Voldemort abandon his quite successful campaign, become the lame Quirrel, and begin fiercely criticizing his former self and attempting to reform magical Britain's children into tools that would defeat his former self?
He didn't abandon his campaign, he got blown out of his body when he tried to kill Harry Potter. Later on he possessed Quirrell, and as he said himself, "One can never quite disentangle the mind from the body it wears". Perhaps he's imbued with some of Quirrell's own opinions. Quirrell must have been somewhat Voldemort-ish before the possession, if Voldie chose him as a suitable vessel.
Incidentally, when all has he criticized Voldemort? I can think of one time, when he said that Voldie was foolish to wish the story of the dojo to be retold. But if Quirrell's part of the story was really Voldemort, then that was simply a lie; Voldie DIDN'T kill everyone on his first visit to the dojo, but later on, deliberately, to sow fear. At any rate, we shouldn't take Quirrell's opinions of Voldemort at face value, given that, to some extent, they're the same person. "Don't believe everything you read."
And Voldemort isn't training Britain's children to defeat a Dark Lord, he's training them to defeat the Muggles. In MoR, Voldemort actually has a good reason to hate Muggles and Muggleborns: their recklessness with power (nuclear weapons, etc.). In his speech before Christmas he all but stated his belief that there would someday be a climactic battle between wizardkind and the Muggle world, which only a united wizarding world could win. That is his ultimate purpose for Dark Harry: to lead the world (or help Voldie lead the world) against the Muggles.
So basically he accidentally torpedoed his original campaign and his life as Quirrel is just making the best of it? But then why didn't he just restart his original campaign? Quirrel seems quite powerful enough to credibly claim to be Voldemort resurrected and enforce his rule, based on his duel in Azkaban with a top Auror and his general position at Hogwarts.
When Dumbledore tells his closest colleagues that draining the life from a follower over a long period would render Voldemort weak compared to his former power, I'm inclined to believe him. Even if you're not, there's the rather inconvenient periods of near-catatonia to get around. (Unless you think that's an act for some reason?)
Everybody sleeps eventually, which is worse than Quirrel's catatonia.
(Actually, I would expect that to be one of the first things Voldemort modified about himself, if it's at all possible.)
I meant more the problems it presents for intimidation value, but I guess if you've Marked your followers to ensure loyalty and/or obedience regardless, it's just a matter of not spending a lot of time in the public eye, which he'd be doing anyway. It's still pretty undignified, but that doesn't seem to bother Quirrell overmuch, so...
The real question, which I don't believe the duel with Bahry or the Massacre of the Bullies answers, is whether Quirrell could stand up to Dumbledore. If he couldn't - even if he just had significantly less endurance - that would make it pretty hard to claim the mantle of Voldemort.
Even in canon, Voldemort rarely goes up against Dumbledore directly. They rarely ever meet after he graduates. IIRC, it's something like he applies for 1) Defense against the Dark arts & is rejected; 2) hides from Dumbledore on Quirrel's head (indefinite number of encounters); 3) fights Dumbledore in the Ministry to a draw; and that's about it.
So in all that long period of open war, during which Lily & James Potter and Alice & Frank Longbottom both fought Voldemort and survived three times each, the strongest Light wizard in Britain never crossed wands with his foe?
Sure. We are told Voldemort feared Dumbledore, are we not? Does a chess player immediately send out his queen to duel the other player's queen? And is this not exactly what happened with the previous Dark Lord - were we not explicitly told in canon that Dumbledore only encountered Grindelwald at their final clash and they never met between that and the death of his sister?
If Quirrell was confident he could kill Dumbledore he would have done so by now, of that I'm certain. Gods, Eliezer better be planning to write this fight eventually.
So... Quirrel made that near-slip of "time travel" and "I'm going to go back in time and try again" in the Groundhog Day Attack? I'm afraid I'm not really buying it.
It wasn't time-travel (which through Time-Turner can only go back an hour per turn, 6 times used in total), it was repeated Obliviations of Hermione.
Other than that, your point stands.
Forgive me if I'm being dense, but I don't understand what remains of his point, given that he was wrong about how the Groundhog Day Attack worked.
Quirrel wouldn't have made any near slips. Apparently I don't know what he was about to say, but Quirrel wouldn't even have gotten that far.
Cloak & Hat kept saying "Hello, again", when for all Hermione knew he'd not talked to her before. That's indeed a somewhat bizarre slip for Quirrel to make. And regardless of whether he was going to tell "Time travel" or not, regardless of whether it was a lie or not, it seems a bit out-of-character for Quirrel to be catching himself mid-sentence.
Hmm, I just thought he was being, I guess, playful or something, rather than it being a slip.
Wait, but it seemed to be fairly clear that it's time travel from the slip-ups H&C made. (Of course, you'd have to postulate a different form of time travel that allows for paradoxes, so I suppose Obliviation has a point up on that...)
The sentence "Time..." is in response to a question from Hermione about how H&C knows Harry will turn dark and destroy her, not in regards to anything having to do with the conversation itself.
Also if you reread the passage in question, you'll see several hints that indicate a long time passed for Hermione also, even though she didn't remember it, e.g. *"Her hand was almost slipping on her wand, there was a sense of fatigue in her fingers like she'd been holding the wand for hours instead of minutes", and ofcourse the fact that the rush of adrenaline at the beginning of the conversations corresponds to the rush of fear at H&C decloaking at the end.
Hat-and-Cloak is Voldemort but not Quirrell. When in Quirrell, Voldemort has a whole (probably quite powerful!) brain to run his computation on. Outside of Quirrell, he relies only on what computation he can do purely as a 'ghost', or as magic, or whatever. Hat-and-Cloak is thusly disguised because Voldemort lacks a body. Or maybe Voldemort possesses someone else, who isn't as smart as Quirrell, and is proportionally dumber and more prone to mistakes. Quirrell is zombie while Voldemort's away because Voldemort set it up that way. Don't want your robot walking away without you.
Part of the groundhog-day attack involved setting up a trigger in Hermione, that when she can attack Malfoy, she should try to kill him. This explains her behaviour in the battle, and her apparent behaviour in the duel.
Hat-and-Cloak is a player in this story. Players in this story are clever and powerful. A sensible way of resolving this apparent contradiction is to postulate some form of disability or restriction applying to Hat-and-Cloak. Then all you need is Conservation of Characters.
If Voldemort's possession ability worked like that, though, why wouldn't he just use Quirrel's body for that? You'd think that he would make sure to use his smartest host for anything requiring puzzle solving or careful manipulation.
Perhaps Voldemort doesn't want Quirrell to know certain going plans? Perhaps Voldemort thinks not involving Quirrell is the most effective method of convincing targets that someone other than Quirrell is doing this? Perhaps Hat-and-Cloak's secrecy is to normal people what Quirrell's brilliance is to Harry (convincing), and Voldemort thinks or know that Quirrell can't pull off being H-&-C properly? Perhaps Quirrell is monitored in some way that he can't safely or nonsuspiciously avoid (I can believe Dumbledore setting up some such thing) and so Voldemort does just enough to fly under the "openly hostile" rader, using Hat-and-Cloak to strike the tinder as it were?
I don't know, but I suspect that if my claim is the case, the answer to your question is a reason the story itself does not reveal.
He certainly does the lion's share. Perhaps Hat-and-Cloak only handles less challenging or less dangerous-to-fail situations.
Was the potions thing foreshadowed? Did we ever see a magical weakling brewing an advanced potion before this chapter?
Do you mean aside from in Canon? If you are not familiar with the canon version, gur pngtvey Ryvrmre ersref gb vf Urezvbar va UC naq gur Punzore bs Frpergf.
Yes.
More specifically, I meant in this fic.
Nope. It's new. Well, aside from the fact that it can be logically induced the moment you see a potion's effects.
It seemed to me that I'd read a lot of chapter 77 before. Not all of it, but most of the conversation in Dumbledore's memorial room. Did Eliezer already use this scene earlier? Or was the chapter posted earlier, withdrawn, and then revised?
The author's note for the latest chapter mentioned something about swapping chapters; maybe that's what is confusing you.