Someone tried to murder his son, and all he got for it was a bit of cash. As if he gives a damn about cash. I can't imagine anyone, rich or poor, who'd say "A fat stack of bills and clearing an old favour, in exchange for attempting to murder my child? Sure, sounds fair!". I'd be throwing around terms like "sociopath" if anyone was actually okay with that(whether or not it's the proper psychological term).
Cash is a minor issue in that, just a cherry on the cake.
I get the point of you (and other answers) of "getting vengeance over an attempt to murder his son" and "making it clear that attacking the Malfoy family will cost you terribly". But those points are achieved with the deal, as much as with sending Hermione to Azkaban.
Accepting the deal would say "if you attack the Malfoy family, your life will become hell, unless you happen to have a friend who happens to own a blood debt from the Malfoy family and his ready to sacrifice abou...
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: