gwern comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 18, chapter 87 - Less Wrong

4 Post author: Alsadius 22 December 2012 07:55AM

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Comment author: gwern 30 December 2012 03:50:17AM 2 points [-]

Further, the assumption is that he just cast Avada Kedavra against Lily and James. So that would have been the last spell if he cast no spells at Harry and just left.

If we're assuming a clever Voldemort, there's any number of ways that 'check his wand's last recorded spell' could fail to be conclusive evidence. He could've used someone else's wand (a backup wand is a good idea for a ton of reasons). He could've brought someone else to do the actual deed (how else did Bellatrix get to the wand before anyone else showed up like Dumbledore or Aurors?). He could've used any of a billion Muggle methods, as you point out (plausible since we know about Pioneer and Dumbledore regards clever use of Muggle tech as pointing to Voldemort). He could've used an innocuous spell in a fatal way (a dark lord in hiding could be expected to use Apparating all the time, and Apparating seems like it could be quite fatal given 'splinching'). He could simply have broken the detection spell and set up a false audit trail, as it were. And so on and so forth.

Comment author: buybuydandavis 02 January 2013 03:33:40AM 1 point [-]

The official story seems completely inferred.

Lily and James are dead. Harry has a scar. There is a burnt husk of something nearby.

In fact, not even so much. What the world sees are Dumbledore producing the dead bodies of Lily and James, a scarred Harry, and a burnt husk of something.

One point against a Dumbledore conspiracy theory - how would he know that Voldemort wouldn't show up a week later and blow his story?