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Alsadius comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 19, chapter 88-89 - Less Wrong
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I'll agree that his rush to the combat is almost certainly an attempt to keep Harry alive. Unnecessarily, but he had no way of knowing that. But the troll attack seems to almost certainly be the doing of the person who used Hermione to attack Draco, and it's hard to believe that was anyone other than Quirrell.
Care to explain why?
I'm seeing a pretty sharp gap in planning style between the framing and the troll attack. "Brilliant first-year student attacks student with a possible grudge" is almost believable; "troll enchanted against sunlight kills first-year" can't be anything other than a murder attempt. The latter is quite a bit more sloppy than the first.
Because the same tactic wouldn't work again. And this time, he has Lucius Malfoy to pin it on.
Waitaminute...how exactly have we gotten this far without considering the possibility that Lucius did this? It seems tailored to the protections on Hermione more closely than he would usually be able to manage, but he'd know the Hogwarts wards as well as anyone who wasn't Headmaster, and the "eating the feet first" bit could be coincidence. And plausible deniability plus brute force seems exactly like Lucius' style.
The timing doesn't make sense for this interpretation. We know Quirrell starts moving when he notices Harry's intent to kill. But, Harry takes out the troll (and hence any threat to his life) several seconds later, and Quirrell notices this. However, he doesn't seem to stop moving then; several seconds is hardly enough time to blow through much of Hogwarts. Instead, he seems to stop when Harry's killing intent stops. This suggests, to me, that Quirrell was worried about this intent -- perhaps that it wouldn't stop when the troll was dead.
Hmmm. How large is Hogwarts? It's non-Euclidean, but it's Euclidean enough for Quirrel to shortcut by blowing up walls in a quasi-straight line.
Given Quirrel's rarely used but significant ability to blow stuff up, I think that once he reached steady state he could blow up several cubic meters of masonry per second for a good few meters per second rate of travel.
Alternatively, Quirrel's Potterdar gives him a direction sense that follows a geodesic.
When going out of your way to turn a troll into an assassination tool, wouldn't you also instal some explicit instructions NOT to harm Harry Potter or anyone else vital to your future plans? At the very least the troll was ordered (imperio-ed?) to ignore any other victims and go straight for Hermione since it let Filch go. The fact that after killing his target the troll attacked anyone nearby makes me suspect Lucius, who has no reason to keep any Hogwarts student alive since his son is no longer there.
The troll didn't ignore other victims - it ate Filch's cat. Perhaps troll brains are too weak for Imperio to work perfectly(though ofc, Quirrell would know this...)
It ignored other humans, Filch was standing close enough to be spattered with his cat's remains, there is no way he could have outrun the troll. He was alone and it's stated that trolls go for isolated targets, the only reason the troll would have let him go is if it was commanded to.
I do retract my later claim that Lucius wouldn't care about other Hogwarts students, it should have occurred to me he wouldn't risk his allies' children.
Between his blood purism, his many allies with children there, and how he de facto rules magical Britain, he has plenty of reason.