So, Dementors Part Deux.
First, because someone had to say it:
Harry took all the silver emotion that fueled his Patronus Charm and shoved it at the Dementor; and expected Death's shadow to flee from him -
-and as Harry did that, he flung his hands up and shouted "BOO!"
The void retreated sharply away from Harry until it came up against the dark stone behind.
In the hall there was a deathly silence.
...And to everyone but Harry, that deathly silence seemed to say "Please do not punish this one, my Dark Liege!"
Harry turned his back on the empty void, and had a moment to wonder why Dumbledore and Lucius were making such odd faces before the Aurors acted on reflex.
(I guess Dementors aren't that smart.)
Secondly, I noticed that Harry's first Transfiguration lesson includes a photograph of a Dementor. What would that look like? What does Harry see, compared to everyone else? Why was he asking all the other students what they saw in the Patronus lesson without ever once thinking of that photograph?
The Dementor's goal was to not die. You don't generally accomplish that by antagonizing the one guy who can kill you.
This is a new thread to discuss Eliezer Yudkowsky’s Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality and anything related to it. This thread is intended for discussing chapter 81, which should be published later today. The previous thread passed 400 comments as of the time of this writing, so it will pass 500 comments soon after the next chapter is posted, if not before. I suggest refraining from commenting here until chapter 81 is posted; comment in the 12th thread until you read chapter 81. After chapter 81 is posted, I suggest all discussion of previous guesses be kept here, with links to comments in the previous thread.
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. (This goes up to the notes for chapter 76, and is now not updating. The authors notes from chapter 77 onwards are on hpmor.com.) When posted, chapter 81 should appear here.
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, ten, eleven, twelve.
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: