I didn't think of that. Sounds worth considering. But it doesn't change the fact that pretending to be a healer doesn't prevent being a healer. Quirrell knows that Harry knows it, so to me, "pretending to be healer" doesn't provide meaningful evidence in any direction.
Plus, Quirrell is exploring a hypothetical, here. And the healer could be genuine, and somehow tricked, seduced, or bribed. Now that I think of it, this is even more probable than the false healer hypothesis: a real healer genuinely convinced of doing good is probably both easier to find and more reliable than an actual minion.
I guess for me the thing that tips the scales between 'real healer' and 'minion pretending to be a healer' is that I don't think it's actually in Quirrell's interests to deprogram Bellatrix of her loyalty to Voldemort.
Though presumably she is at least competent in regular healing, of the sort needed to get Bella back in fighting trim.
The next discussion thread is here.
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 84. The previous thread has passed 500 comments. Comment in the 14th thread until you read chapter 84.
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.)
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: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14.
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: