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Lavode comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 11 - Less Wrong
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Eh, she is a first year at hogwarts - from their perspective, what is she going to do with it? Apparate out?
Just because they don't expect her to be able to accomplish much with it doesn't mean that they wouldn't stop it as a matter of policy. You don't let a character witness walk up and hand anything to a prisoner on the stands without clearance.
A whole lot of plans proposed here seem to rely on the assumption that Harry can treat the Wizengamot as a captive audience who'll humor any attempt he makes to sway them or prove his points. The Wizengamot is a highly authoritarian court of law, and Harry is a first year student. They have little incentive to humor him about anything.
The blunt force way to play it is to just expecto patronum the dementor into oblivion and go "Would you like me to explain how I did that"? They would almost certainly make him do so, veritas serum, legimens and the whole nine yards. And once they know, they are fucked. I dont think the wizengamot would go for collective obliviation of the events of the trial, so once the cat is out of the bag, its not going back in.
I wasn't that happy with that plan to begin with, but the more I've thought about it, the more I've started to like the elegant simplicity of it. He'd get tremendous political turmoil, and possibly throw suspicion on himself with respect to the Bellatrix breakout, but he can still deny that, and they've got another suspect anyway. At the same time, he has a chance to sink Azkaban in one shot. I'm calling this one the Damn The Torpedoes Option.
In his place though, I wouldn't necessarily encourage them to find out how I did it (he can resist veritaserum and leglimency,) but I'd tell them that it's already too late for them to stop the dissemination of the spell, thus rendering dementors and azkaban obsolete.
Bluffing would be dangerous - if he doesnt actually publish the information, killing him makes the problem go away. And if he commits to "Tell the world, make dementors useless" Then the wizengamot entire are simply more information pathways, and are in fact far better ones than just about anyone else he could tell because it is much harder to obliviate them than Jane Q Wizard,.
If he doesn't get a chance to arrange, say, for messages to be sent out in the event of his death or incapacitation, then his best bet might be to tell them, but if it looks like he can get away with it it might be better for him to imply that he's already told some people, but not reveal who. That way they will conclude they can no longer rely on dementors, but the secret doesn't actually escape.
He did already give Hermione that letter which she could use to find out the secret, but it's probably too late for her to make any use of it. It would have been a good idea for her to read it as soon as she was told that she was accused of murder, except she probably never had the chance to do that, and anyway she won't have a wand in Azkaban.