Donny comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 13, chapter 81 - Less Wrong

6 Post author: bogdanb 27 March 2012 06:07PM

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Comment author: alex_zag_al 29 March 2012 01:58:20PM 4 points [-]

Avada Kedavra leaves no mark, but getting killed by Lily's ritual sacrifice might. Even so, that the body was burned, which makes identification harder, is suggestive that it is not really Voldemort's.

Comment author: [deleted] 29 March 2012 02:27:32PM *  6 points [-]

Yeah, I'm less confident in the notion that Voldemort survived Godric's Hollow, and it's not integral to the hypothesis, but that's the obvious explanation for a burnt body, and the last few chapters have given me a new respect for obvious explanations.

Comment author: Eponymuse 01 April 2012 04:29:21PM 3 points [-]

It's also difficult to see why Voldemort would want to pretend to die at Godric's Hollow. He was winning the war. Why pretend to lose, throw away what he had built up to then, and try an entirely different approach to gaining power? I think the more obvious explanation for the burnt body is that whatever ritual magic protected Harry was very destructive to Voldemort. I think it is clear that some ritual magic is involved here; how else can we explain the danger of Harry's and Quirrell's magic interacting? And the violence of their magics' interaction in Azkaban makes it plausible that if Voldemort were to cast a killing curse directly at Harry, he might end up as a burnt corpse.

Comment author: [deleted] 02 April 2012 11:07:37PM *  0 points [-]

Why pretend to lose, throw away what he had built up to then, and try an entirely different approach to gaining power?

Tentative explanation: he was hedging his bets. If it's a trap, to walk into it would be stupid. If it's genuine, to ignore a warning like that would be stupid, too. He acted in a way that accommodated either possibility.

I think the ritual he performed that night was copying himself into Harry (note to self: this may or may not be the same thing as horcruxing), and the resonance between their magics is a side effect of that. As to which explanation is more obvious, well, I don't think an argument from obviousness is valid in the face of a genuine disagreement, so I withdraw mine. It's reasonable, though.