Alice and Frank Longbottom were Aurors, not the Potters. And it was Demented!Harry who thought "final failure as a mother"; Warm!Harry went on to think "He had regained an impossible memory, for all that the Dementor had made him desecrate it".
It's my understanding that in this theory, it was Voldemort's line "I accept the bargain. Yourself to die, and the child to live." that fulfilled the description of a ritual, not anything Lily did.
At least James was an auror, as testified by Remus, top of page 697. Perhaps not Lily. I've seen it concluded from the "thrice defied" that they fought him and lived to tell about it, but I don't think any of that has happened on stage.
If she didn't offer it, I don't see why he would have said what he did out of the blue, or that it would have fulfilled the terms of a dark ritual even if he did, unless by saying that Lily instantly dropped dead. In this case, I see the ritual made by offer and acceptance. Without an offer, there is nothing for h...
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: