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Dentin comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 11 - Less Wrong
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The best solution I've been able to come up with on my own involves Harry breaking the compact between the dementors and the ministry:
"I am not yet done!
Lucius, while I appreciate you desire for vengeance, pointing it at the wrong target gains you nothing. However, it does inconvenience me. Hermione Granger is mine. I have claimed her, and I will have her, healthy and with her magical abilities intact.
Dementor! The compact you have made with the Ministry has been broken. I have already begun teaching the charm which was used to destroy one of your kind at Hogwarts earlier this year. You will return immediately to Azkaban and tell the other dementors to leave that place. Should any of you wish to side with the ministry, be certain that we will destroy you all. Go, now."
[dementor leaves]
"We are now at war. The spell to destroy dementors does in fact exist, a fact Albus Dumbledoor will verify. However, it is powerful, and can only be cast by very few wizards, wizards of a particular mind. Those who learn of it and fail will be permanently robbed of their patronus.
Hermione is one of the few wizards who can learn to cast the spell, and we all need her with her magical abilities intact.
Lucius, I may also need Draco, should he choose to side with me. As he is my friend, I will find who is responsible for this attempt on his life regardless of what has happened here today. As you have shown such devotion to him, I will not withhold anything I find from you.
I expect Miss Granger to be freed and returned to Hogwarts within the hour.
Professor, let us return."
This puts Harry in a position of power, where only he and his select crowd can destroy the dementors, with sufficient proof for the wizengamot to believe him. Breaking the deal between the dementors and the ministry drains Azkaban of its potency for punishing Hermione, and house Potter has claimed Hermione; but Harry has also offered to house Malfoy the dual olive branches of an unconditional offer to find the real perpetrator, and elevating Draco to a protected position of power in Harry's future hierarchy, which clearly does not involve the Ministry.
Should Lucius press Hermione to Azkaban regardless, it would be a hollow victory and serve only to piss off Harry. Harry has already demonstrated stronger control over the dementors than the Ministry, and can simply elect to send them to Malfoy Manor if he is sufficiently irritated.
The only down side is that I don't see a really good political escape for Lucius. There are a handful of minor ones that Lucius could use, for example his Imperius debt:
"In deference to the Noble House Potter and the blood debt owed it by House Malfoy, I rescind the order sentencing Miss Granger to Azkaban. I trust Lord Potter and my son to ensure that her debt is paid in full. I propose we remand Miss Granger to Hogwarts and discuss this more serious matter of the dementors."
Upvoted for the sheer epicness, even though I doubt it's going to happen.
Hah. Fun, but completely unreasonable. The Wizengemot is ultimately responsible for the safety of wizard-kind, and though they're pretty selfish when it comes to minor issues, as soon as a Harry makes the threat to disable wizard-kind's defenses against Dementors, everyone, Dumbledore and Malfoy and Bones and so on, will be his enemy, and *they will disable him. *
It says nothing about disabling anyone's defenses against Dementors; it is a fait accompli, where Harry simply states that anti-dementor spells now exist and are being actively deployed. The Wizengamot can disable him if they want, but it will not change the situation (unless they know Harry is bluffing.)
And why disable one of the few wizards who -can- actually combat the dementors? The only reason the ministry used them in the first place was because there was no way to destroy them.
Actually, that's not the only(or even best) solution.
It's pointed out in a previous chapter that intimate knowledge of such spells disables the regular patronus. Which is Harry's only weapon at this point - that threat. He can't say "I can kill dementors" without making the threat because he'll become an obvious man behind the break-in. What will he do, threaten to destroy them? They'll just send his ass to jail. No, he needs some kind of threat to the wizengamot, which in this case would be to ruin their Patronus spell. However, that still won't work because D knows what Harry can do and can likely stop him before he fully explains the his theory, and if that he fails at that, it'll be a pretty simple task to kill/disable him and then Obliviate the various wizards present.
Your plan basically relies on stripping your country of one of its most powerful weapons and then having the leaders of your country thank you for it. Good freaking luck.
(You mean like how the USA was stripped of multi-megaton thermonuclear weapons and how pretty much everyone was happy about it?)
My intent was that he should present it as an already accomplished fact. The alliance with the dementors was an uneasy one at best, something to be tolerated because there were no good solutions. This changes that - the alliance is broken, and there is a good solution.
In canon, at least, the Fudge/Umbridge faction of the Ministry embrace the alliance pretty wholeheartedly:
I don't get it straight: will Harry declare war to whom? To the dementors?
But, your line of thought is interesting.
I like that it is ambiguous. Its direct meaning is that magical britain is now at war with the dementors, and that the alliance between them is done; the indirect meaning is that those who would stand with or use dementors are also included.
(The taboo tradeoff would be along the lines of sending hundreds of dementors out into the world at large to terrorize and kill, or starting a war, all for the sake of one personal friend.)