pedanterrific comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 17, chapter 86 - Less Wrong
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Comments (606)
An excuse to stop, or further evidence of the 'teaching them to fight' theory?
One hundred Voldemort points to Mr Dumbledore, and twenty points to Gryffindor.
I thought of this too, but how about this variant: teaching himself to fight.
Early on, Quirrell says he realized his ambition was to be the greatest fighting wizard of all time. He might have decided that winning the moment he got good enough to win once would cut short his learning too much.
Good point.
Not so much an excuse to stop, but no need to continue after the lesson had been learned. It always indicated to me that for him killing and torturing wasn't a terminal value.
This lines up perfectly with the worries Quirrel expresses to Harry about a possible war between Muggles and wizards, as well as his attempts to unify magical Britain. He gave up being Monroe when he saw Britain wouldn't unify behind him, and gave up (it's possible he was actually destroyed by Harry but it seems pretty sketchy to me) being Voldemort because he couldn't unify it by force either. Sort of a reverse of Watchmen. The trumped up threat is in order to prepare Wizards for a much larger threat in the end.