Um... I haven't been participating in these threads until now (will do so vigorously now), but what are current theories on the reasons behind what Quirrellmort has done so far?
It's clear to me that Hat and Cloak = Quirrellmort. So what did Quirrellmort stand to gain from this ploy? Was he trying to deprive Harry of allies, to eventually force him to rely more on Quirrellmort? Or specifically remove Hermione as a Morality Chain? Is this about maneuvering Harry into a position where he will eventually feel he must make war on Magical Britain, with Quirrellmort acting as the Man Behind the Man? Setting up Harry as a fall guy when Voldemort makes his second play for control of Magical Britain? Very confused here.
It's interesting that Harry needed to consult his dark side to arrive at this solution. It seems that the dark side is the piece of Voldemort's soul put into Harry when Harry was made a Horcrux. But is there a telepathic connection to Quirrellmort? When Harry consults his dark side, does it result in general Voldemort-like thoughts, or does the dark side coordinate with Quirrellmort? If the latter, maybe Quirrellmort wanted Harry to call in the blood debt for some reason.
Let's assume that Hermione had actually been sentenced to Azkaban. How many advantages would Quirrelmort have gained?
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: