Oh, I know they aren't exxactly exosed in any case; but floating in magma implies some pretty hefty protective charms.
The thing about that quote that bothers me is that he seems the be referring to himself as "one of us", genuinely worried that his world is in danger - not just cooly amused at their folly, or even irritated by their incompetence. Maybe I'm just reading too much into it.
... or maybe he's worried that without followers, there's no-one to bring him back? Spending time as "less than the meanest ghost" is implied to be unpleasant in canon IIRC.
Edit: New thread posted 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 86. The previous thread has long passed 500 comments.
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, 15, 16.
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: