Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 13, chapter 81

bogdanb

9 Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 13, chapter 81

27th Mar 2012

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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:

You do not need to rot13 anything about HP:MoR or the original Harry Potter series unless you are posting insider information from Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).

If there is evidence for X in MOR and/or canon then it’s fine to post about X without rot13, even if you also have heard privately from Eliezer that X is true. But you should not post that “Eliezer said X is true” unless you use rot13.

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Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 13, chapter 81 — LessWrong

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ArisKatsaris14y110

Chapter 6:

"I am unlikely ever to forget it. Thank you, Harry, that does make me feel better about entrusting you with certain things. Goodbye for now."

Harry turned to go, into the Leaky Cauldron and out toward the Muggle world.

As his hand touched the back door's handle, he heard a last whisper from behind him.

"Hermione Granger."

"What?" Harry said, his hand still on the door.

"Look for a first-year girl named Hermione Granger on the train to Hogwarts."

"Who is she?"

There was no answer, and when Harry turned around, McGonagall was gone.

Chapter 8:

"No," Hermione said. "Who told you about me?"

"Professor McGonagall and I believe I see why."

While reading, I never considered this to be a mystery, or even a question.

Showing 3 of 4 replies (Click to show all)

clgroft14y00

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.

2bogdanb14y

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.)

9pedanterrific14y

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.

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