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bogdanb comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 13, chapter 81 - Less Wrong
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I think I figured out how Dumbledore knew about Harry wanting to change the rules of Quiddich. Instead of reading student minds he used the cloak:
(Emphasis mine. Well, of course, that he would use it is obvious and the note is not proof of anything, but that’s what triggered the idea. Also, it makes a lot of sense that Harry’s father would lend the cloak to Dumbledore for study.)
If he did this on the train platform (which would make sense as an opportunity to be mysterious to new students, or just to Harry) there’s a bit of other interesting stuff he might have heard. Whatever Draco cast (the description doesn’t quite match Quietus, and it was wordless or at least not heard by Harry), it probably doesn’t work for a cloaked guy near you, and certainly not Dumbledore if he really wanted to listen.
Then maybe the cloaked Dumbledore is the one that told Harry to talk to Hermione.
Would that make the mysteries less complicated, or more?
We already know it was McGonagall that told Harry to find Hermione, no? Where's the mystery?
No? No, I suppose. Could you tell me how we know that?
Chapter 6:
Chapter 8:
While reading, I never considered this to be a mystery, or even a question.
To add another data point: When I read that, and after some subsequent events, I couldn't quite manage to ignore the fact that Quirrell was in the Leaky Cauldron at the time.
Perhaps you should.
McGonagall said what she meant to say, and then she said goodbye. Also, McGonagall doesn't do the Batman Exit at any other point in the fic or the source.
The way I see it, she then had a last minute thought that the loneliness avid book-reader Harry mentioned and the loneliness she saw in avid book-reader Hermione might be healed if they met each other. But she didn't want to say anything more, because it'd be inappropriate to actually discuss another student to Harry.
I think Eliezer just being silly with the dramatic-ness of the thing has a higher prior than Dumbledore going around invisible and playing ventriloquist to make him think that McGonagall told him to find Hermione -- especially when Dumbledore could have accomplished just as much by e.g. telling McGonagall to tell Harry to find Hermione. (And there's no other player at this stage, neither Quirrel, nor Snape, nor Lucius, that would know or care about Hermione at this point. It's unlikely that even Dumbledore knew anything about her beyond that she was a new Muggleborn student.)
But I don't think this is anything more complicated or mysterious than Minerva thinking that Harry & Hermione would be a good match for each other.
Now I do find it slightly more plausible that Dumbledore was following Harry around invisible during his King's Cross station visit -- but that's mostly because in that occasion Harry Potter was known to be in a known location and thus might have been a potential target for enemies and therefore require protection.
You are making excuses for your assumptions by piling on more assumptions. Chapter 6 is written in a way that does not make the speaker clear. That looks deliberate. We are given Harry's opinion of who said it, but he never confirms that with McGonagall. We've been in McGonagall's head quite a few times, and she has never thought back to playing match-maker.
You may believe that was McGonagall. You may be right. But when you say, "we already know," you are mistaken.
You're misusing the word assumption. I don't *assume" that was McGonaggal's reason, I simply judged it to be the most likely and most natural explanation, given the facts in evidence. But yes, I did assume that my initial reading of the text and that Harry also wasn't being mistaken about who told him about Hermione. As I said, I didn't even realize some people saw this bit as a mystery. That's what true assumptions look like, I guess, when one doesn't even realize some people consider it a question.
Okay. As I said, when I wrote that sentence, i didn't even realize there existed people who considered this a question. Discussing more about this would probably just be about what the word "knowledge" means.
You would think that Harry, on hearing a mysterious voice, would mention something. Harry turned around expecting McGonagall, not expecting some random person. Harry heard McGonagall.
The author would also mention that the voice changed owners or sounded strange. It's clever writing to drop clues in plain sight to the reader. It's not clever writing for your story to omit sensory experiences that are immediately apparent to all the involved characters, but are not conveyed to the reader.
I would be very surprised if there were a grand total of 0 voice-changing charms in existence.
And besides, it's a whisper. That's probably significant in some way.
You're multiplying hypothesises unnecessarily.
Every member of Hogwarts could actually be Dumbledore with polyjuice and a time turner. Remember we only know about the 6 hour limit from him (or people that could be him, or forged by him). There's no reason it couldn't be so, just like there's no reason that the person Harry was having a conversation with couldn't have changed out by a an invisible man with a 'changemyvoiceio' spell.
But it's way more reasonable to assume that people are who they think they are, and that the person that starts a conversation is the same one that finishes it.
Suddenly, Dumbledore EVERYWHERE.
Between this and the auncle comment by pedanterrific, it seems plausible that it was Quirrel who said that line.
It's an ugly hypothesis, because so far Hermione's influence in Harry has been that of greatest opposition to Quirrel's influence... If Quirrel set it up so that they met, then this would have all been to his purpose since the beginning, setting up some future betrayal from Hermione from the start. (e.g make a paragon of goodness friends with Harry, so that he'll do anything to keep her from Azkaban, even if that means declaring war on magical Britain?)
Thankfully, I don't consider it very likely. I think this being McGonaggal who matched the two of them is still much more likely.
Alternatively, perhaps Quirrel thought Hermione would make a good straw foil to himself. Set up the main anti-Quirrel voice in Harry's life as someone who's conspicuously naive, and Harry will be more inclined to see Quirrel as the voice of reason rather than the voice of evil.
From this I understand that she said goodbye outside the LC (in the magic side), then he entered, presumably closed the front door, traversed the LC, reached the back door that leads to the muggle side, and then he heard a whisper behind him. Unless the distance between the front door and back door is very short, if it was McGonagall she had to have gone to the trouble of crossing that long distance and exit the front door in the time it took Harry to turn around, or disappearing outright, or casting her whisper across the distance. While not impossible, none of that is very much in character for her, and Harry was distracted enough at the time not to notice.
I think it’s supposed to be a Clue, or at least a Mysterious Foreshadowing Event (TM). I’m not saying it was Quirrell, but the fact that he was noted to be there earlier seems like a hint. Although Hermione seems to have been an opposite influence to Quirrell, as Aris mentions below, remember that Quirrell is a very high level player. Much of that might have been intended as part of a complex Xanatos gambit, which can have more than three steps if you have access to prophecy and time-travel. “Make goverment crush hero’s girlfriend, hero crushes government” was suggested as a possible Quirrell plot, you need only prepend a “Make hero love girl” step to justify him being the whisperer.
(But don’t anchor on that one, plots that involve time knotting have plenty of opportunity for weird facts being explained as someone’s intent.)
FWIW I agree with your interpretation.
To take it further: McGonagall accompanies Harry to Diagon Alley, while (on Dumbledore's orders) learning as much as possible about him. She attempts to report to Dumbledore, but is speechless; Dumbledore may or may not be reading her mind, I don't know. Before this, he was happy to delegate the responsibility, but after this meeting, he naturally decides he'd better investigate personally. Platform 9.75 is the next convenient opportunity.
Yes, that's a lot of detail, but I think the story bears it out.