Troll be able "...Legs eaten off at the thighs." "Harry bent down and picked up the troll's head by its left ear."

What is the weight of trolls head?

Funny thing about this chapter: up until now, I was growing fairly convinced that if any major character was going to die early, the most logical choice would be Harry. His character arc was plateauing while Hermione's was growing ever larger, many loose ends about himself were being tied up, and new ordeals were arising which propped up either-or-both Draco and Hermione as potential candidates for being the true protagonist(s) of the story. Unfortunately, the events of this chapter have at least given an appearance of permanently closing that path forward. I'm afraid this leaves us with - I claim at my own risk - a more predictable story than I was anticipating.

Granted, I don't mean to claim the author has shot himself in his own foot. Although I will comment that he appears to be doing everything in his power to try. Given two stories with happy endings - one where Hermione dies early and one where Harry dies early - the second story is clearly the most interesting challenge, presents the more exciting of the two puzzles, and is much harder to predict for the reader.

But to be fair, that doesn't mean the first isn't also worth reading. After all, I recognize that the primary goal of the story is to advance lessons about using rationality, which is far easier to accomplish when your main character is a rational actor already, rather than someone on the road to becoming a rational actor. As such, it may have simply been outside of Eliezer's skill-set to effectively or confidently continue imparting lessons while impaired with the further challenge of working with developing - rather than developed - rationalists as the main characters driving the story onward. Even if this were not the case and Eliezer does have the means for crafting that story, it still would be reasonable to predict that such a challenge would take the story much, much longer to write than perhaps the author was willing to consider acceptable. A disappointing decision, no doubt, but we all have to manage our time.

Still, what a fascinating challenge that would have been...

High-entropy, low-confidence theory I'm going to throw out there: Trelawney's prophecy refers to Death with a capital D, not to Harry. Someone (like a time-traveling Harry) summoned Death around the time Trelawney spoke.

I'm actually very very bothered by "0.3% of the speed of light". This is 900,000 meters/second. A passenger airplane flies at slower than 300 meters/second. Harry is flying 3000 times faster than an airplane?

Let's say a broom accelerates a thousand times faster than a car. A car can go to 60 mph in 7-8 seconds. Let's say 5 seconds. That's an acceleration of about 5 meters/second squared. Let's say Harry accelerates 5000 meters/second squared (an impossibly large acceleration). It would take him 3 minutes to get to that speed. All the while experiencing 500 G force, that is 500 times the force of gravity. The record G force survived by a human is 46.2.

Seriously. This is 9000 football fields in ONE SECOND. He can't possibly be making those turns and bumping the Weasleys like a bludger. He'd be killing them all (in a fraction of a second). Throw in some more zeroes please! 50 meters/second (about 100 mph) is the limit of what I find believable.

I will throw in several predictions. I myself am not completely confident of some of those.

1. Time-turners, prophecies and similar devices, which predict that something will happen, work by exerting some mind control upon people in the form of unexplicable urges, such as the urge to take the left turn this one time. I'm not sure how far can they go in order to fulfill themselves.

2. The events in the magical world are not just dictated by the already-discovered laws of physics, but also by the laws of fairy tales. Dumbledore is pretty damn rational, at many points more rational than Harry (he might even be more rational overall). His reasons for having an evil Potions master aren't simply because this happens in fairy tales. The Universe liked it more if that was the case, so he was probably represented with an evil person who is highly suitable for the Potions position, or something like that. Dumbledore is most probably aware of this law. After Harry case the true Patronus and Quirrell asked him where he'd hide something, Harry gives 5 places: volcano, inside earth, deep in the ocean, somewhere in the air, and in space. Fire, Earth, Water, Air, space-thingy. He can't have said that by coincidence, and this is evidence of that law existing. Quirrell's reaction indicates he's aware of the law.

3. Part of Voldemort is in Harry. The Sorting Hat either lied, or more likely, Voldemort isn't in his scar - Harry asked about his scar (I realized that much before it was reminded in chapter 90 or 91 and therefore have read a lot of HPMOR with that in mind), but it may still be inside Harry, just not in the scar. Evidence: his unusual 26-hour sleep cycle was probably inherited; he is exceptionally intelligent, and just 11, while his parents aren't particularly intelligent (intelligence is usually mostly inherited genetically); he is better with a broomstick than children who have used broomsticks before going to Hogwarts; his dark side seeks destruction (Voldemort appears to seek destruction too), and is very cold (from his flashback, Voldemort's voice is really quite cold). This probably happened by accident, rather than as a plot - it may be explained with the law from 2. - Voldemort tried to kill Harry, the universe interfered in the simplest possible way, although I'm surprised as to why did the universe let Voltemort find Harry in the first place then.

4. Quirrell is not Voldemort. I'm still very perplexed by Quirrell, but it would make an awful, predictable plot to have him be Voldemort. He does appear to be a Dark wizard, the Monroe story seems implausible (he doesn't believe in others' love, why would he be a hero? Unless he did that for himself). He probably has a lot to do with Voldemort, but they were neither friends nor enemies. I don't know about the sense of doom, but it probably is connected with what happened when Harry's parents died. It appears that Quirrell doesn't know about it, either - therefore it is probably because he could not see an explanation, because the explanation involves love, and isn't obvious.

5. Voldemort is the one who will (at least try to) TEAR APART THE VERY STARS FROM HEAVEN. He seems to be all about destruction, though I'm not sure why, and I'm not sure why does he not take the shortcuts Harry had in mind, and this is the weak part of this prediction. Perhaps it is the universe's will that people must die for a good reason, rather than having the world's strongest wizards destroyed by a handful of highly toxic molecules each.

6. Magic is like that because it is made by humans. This is probably obvious - magic came to exist by humans, this is why a lot of it only make sense in terms of human intuitions, and not so much sense in terms of laws of physics. I'm still very puzzled by the fact that it appears to violate the laws of physics. It also sounded like magic might be a superintelligent AI, but I forgot my arguments for that.

I also wonder, what would happen if you use a time-turner to do the impossible, for example talk to your older copy, so when you see the newer copy, don't time-turn. Would it turn out that someone strongly felt like approaching you while Polyjuiced as you? Is it that nobody would ever think of that in the wizarding world? I'm sure there's a lot more going on with time-turners.

A proposal for how Harry could WIN (defeat death). Tl:DR at end.

There has been a TON of reference to harry's goal to defeat Death. Hermione's death has merely sped up the timetable and increased Harry's chance of success...though it has also increased the chance of complete, utter, catastrophy if he fails.

It is most likely that Harry will use three magical items to do it, which need not be the deathly hallows. ("...three items needed to complete the cycle of infinite wishes/infinite wish cycle".

1. "He is here! the one who will tear apart the very stars of heaven" -so harry WILL destroy the stars with...~99% certainty, though that doesn't mean anyone needs to remember it happening "the next day".
2. "...potion cannot be hotter than the goblins fire[that made the knut, even though the knut is now quite cold]" -so for more power, find a hotter furnace that was used to make something. 3-Harry now knows about cursed fire, which uses only ONE DROP of blood to pay an estimated 70-98% of the manna cost. He also has the sheer drive to control it, though he really does need to pass a lesser trial first as a safety-precaution -Rational!harry has already shown himself to be mildly competent when it comes to potion-making....wait, no, that's not quite right: he has shown himself to be capable of EDITING the ingredients of a potion.

so. Let's make The Big Potion of Life. step 1. obtain cauldron. the actual size is not particularly relevant. step 2.: put [universe-solar system] [or even entire universe, but that's annoyingly risky] into cauldron with a space-folding spell. step 3: heat cauldron contents with massive cursed-fire spell (note: rob some blood banks) step 4: Add the resurrection stone or philospher's stone and some pheonix tears.
step 5: Stir with the elder wand while wearing The Cloak.

WARNING: DO NOT ATTEMPT ON THURSDAY. DO NOT ADD TIME-TURNER DUST WITHOUT FIRST UNDERSTANDING TIME! DO NOT LET DRACO MALFOY TOSS A GLASS JAR INTO THE CAULDRON! and for armok's sake, DO NOT ATTEMPT IN SNAPE'S CLASSROOM! that is all.

Tl:dR: make a potion powered by THE BIG BANG and guide it with the deathly hallows.

HPMOR prediction of low confidence: The Weasleys' use of the deligitor prodi spell gives Harry a good way to access high-level magical artifacts. If the Hat shouts 'Gryffindor!' to the Weasleys, might it not shout 'Ravenclaw' to Harry? There are no magical items from canon other than maybe the stone that I would expect Harry to want more than the Diadem. And surely Harry has the proper motive to use the Hat, regardless of whether it would require a Ravenclaw or a Gryffindor motive to get the diadem.

Quirrell can feel Harry's emotions. This can partially explain at least some of the cases when he unexpectedly realized what Harry was thinking (for instance, this probably gave him some information during their conversation about Parseltongue). It might be worthwhile to find all cases when they talked and Harry attempted to hide his emotions.

In the intervening hours did Hermione have any interesting thoughts about the Philosopher's Stone? Will Harry shortly?

My friend and I were emailing about this update. I asked her for her opinion on it and whether or not she liked it. Here are her thoughts:

"Yeeah, I kind of don't. I posted this review on it yesterday (after quietly fuming for a bit):

If this had been Neville or someone, I'd be commending you on how you handled the emotion here, but as it is I was too annoyed and appalled that you were damseling and then fridging fricking Hermione while halfheartedly suggesting she put up an offscreen fight to be able to appreciate it.

I'm not easily annoyed with fridging, or character death in general. In fact, a lot of my favorite scenes in fiction involve my favorite characters dying, and I've always argued that a character of any gender dying as a vital part of the main character's arc is fine. But Hermione had a huge incomplete arc and you've just rendered the entirety of it pointless. This is Hermione, she wasn't as rational as Harry, she tried to be a hero but only made things worse, she was framed for murder and ended up in a huge debt to Harry, which she had plans to try to settle and potential for interesting emotional growth, except whoops, then she died, and nothing ever came of any of it. For shock value and unexpectedness purposes, I guess that's cool. But for storytelling purposes, it's breathtakingly unsatisfying, and the fact she was your primary female character by a mile and you just killed her off in an offscreen fight because a boy was too late to save her, her last words spent reassuring him it's not his fault, adds a bitter aftertaste of typical gendered tropes to the whole thing.

I'm hoping this isn't what it seems, one way or another, and Hermione gets to come back and do some of the stuff she should have gotten to do so that maybe at least some of the time you spent developing her wasn't just inane inconsequential filler. But if it is what it seems, I'm just emptily disappointed - too distracted sighing dejectedly at the fact I thought you were better than this to even care on an in-world level that she died.

A chapter like this shouldn't fall flat like that. Although my reasons for disliking it may be fairly meta and you could argue you're intentionally averting accepted standards of when characters cannot die, the ultimate result is just that I'm left unaffected by a chapter that should have been powerful and emotional. As an author you should care about that if nothing else.

Basically, remember when I was telling you that one of the few things that bugged me was how near the beginning Harry's interactions with Hermione where she was traditionally smart but he was rational seemed to be belittling her to glorify him? Well, the reason it didn't bug me that much was that Hermione was still interesting and seemingly getting real development and they story seemed to be giving her her own quest of self-improvement through which she could easily become his equal or better. Now she turns out to have existed purely to make Harry care about her and nothing she did mattered and she never got to be anything but Harry's less rational, less successful, less efficient, overemotional love interest foil. Argh. And we didn't even get to see her put up a proper fight! I wouldn't have minded nearly so much if, say, Harry had arrived to find Hermione had already killed or otherwise disabled the troll, with a victorious smile of contentment on her face, and died from her injuries as he watched while whispering "I did it, I'm a hero." But NOPE she put up some kind of fight and threw some explosive-looking spells but of course she was actually helpless and couldn't possibly have defeated the troll on her own so her survival completely and utterly depended on Harry making his way there in time which he didn't, oh no, look at his sadfeels while all she cares about is telling him it's not his fault instead of being livid that she didn't achieve fucking anything in her life because Harry constantly overshadowed her and now she's dying before she could figure out how to fix it.

All that made me too angry to give a damn about the plot or emotion or anything, which is a shame because otherwise I'd probably have enjoyed this update."

I'm tentative to make predictions here since, reading through comments, I consider you folks more grounded in rationality, logical thinking and also fictional predictions than me. But I wanted to share a thought and get feedback, so here goes.

My interpretation of the big magical release goes like this: Hermione's brain, experiences, knowledge, magical ability, etc., are programmed via the genetic magic marker to upload into... something. The Atlantean Neural Database, or something like that. We've got reason to believe that magic was artificially created and the genetic marker programmed into people, so that they are capable of interfacing with reality on a far more interesting level than most people. We've also got plenty of evidence to suggest that the brain is, if not fully understood by magical knowledge, more than capable of being interacted with. We have Legilimency and Obliviations capable of accessing memory, thoughts, knowledge, and intentions; the author is capable of working with things WE don't know about because wizarding knowledge is stated to have been lost, so we also have some unknown-unknowns working against us. So the odds of neural magic having existed in a more advanced form (peaking in Atlantis) seems pretty decent to me.

If I imagine myself as a group of wizards (or an ultra clever protoMerlin), capable of interacting with time and brains, and I'm still interested in doing research and data gathering, then it seems like being able to collect ALL neural data on ALL wizards would be a big boon in doing research. So the magic marker, given a certain degree of trauma, could trigger the release of information back to the source of magic. Dumbledore's certainty that Hermione is dead (despite certainty in other comments that HP should still be capable of preserving her brain) tells me that he knows, based on that big blast of magical resonance stuff, her death is now as official as it gets. He's also very confident that life goes on after death; if you're capable of uploading every part of your brain that makes you YOU into a big database, there's no reason for him to be wrong, in this sense.

And from a narrative perspective, the fact that Harry immediately jumps to conclusions about Atlantis and searching outside of time to bring her back--no to protect everybody else from death, as was his original statement, but to specifically fetch the string of information that represents Hermione and restore it to existence--suggests they're related.

Maybe I'm late to the party on this idea though. Odds of somebody else thinking of it before, especially if I'm the one thinking about it, seem pretty good.

"Time Pressure" is a pun! Somewhere previously, prophecies were described as being caused by a sort of pressure built up on time, and TP2 ends in a prophecy.

I don't understand how Quirrell could possibly be behind the troll situation, given that he apparently didn't know where the troll would be and had to resort to extreme measures to get to the scene quickly, instead of conveniently waiting just nearby.

I posit a roughly 70-90% chance that Quirrel was behind the troll. (large range; I could probably boost the upper end to 95% with "quirrel got X to unleash the troll". )

why not 95%+? well. 1. Quirrel never actually admits he was behind the troll to us readers. 2. Weasely memory: tampered with.
Two OTHER characters have been in a good position to do this: Dumbledore and Aberforth.
3. Snape got his wildcard status restored. And...I never really understood WHICH results of the whole SPHEW fiasco he actually liked (even if the whole thing was "according to plan", that doesn't mean he had to like ALL the results-he could have been constrained by maintaining status quo with dumbledore...). With Snape declared as at LEAST a level 2 player...he could have faked relaxing after harry's revelation. or it could have been genuine. 4. Sprout. -at about 1.25-2.5%, formerly 5%. "last suspect" updates are weird.
5. Lucius Malfoy: he has the motive. pretty slim slice of the pie, though, as he doesn't really have access.

It appears Quirrell now believes Harry has used the killing curse. Applying Story Logic, this misjudgement of Harry will lead to Terrible Bad Consequences for Quirrell.

Some ramblings before ch90: Quirrell will not learn the truth of how Harry killed the troll, since Dumbledore will memory charm the Weasely brothers (they saw Harry's patronus) and thus discover that their minds have been tampered with (by Quirrell). Suspecting Quirrell, Dumbledore will also erase the Weasely brothers' memories of how Harry actually killed the troll. Quirrell will not actually see the dead troll. He will not be told how it died.

If Dumbledore does not find memories of the maraurder's map in the Weasely brothers' minds, he may well make the Quirrell=mort connection immediately: Dumbledore used the map to unsuccessfully locate Tom Riddle, and only a professor could have tampered with the minds of students who have been in Hogwarts this whole time.

From Chapter 6:

Harry was examining the wizarding equivalent of a first-aid kit, the Emergency Healing Pack Plus. There were two self-tightening tourniquets. A Stabilisation Potion, which would slow blood loss and prevent shock. A syringe of what looked like liquid fire, which was supposed to drastically slow circulation in a treated area while maintaining oxygenation of the blood for up to three minutes, if you needed to prevent a poison from spreading through the body. White cloth that could be wrapped over a part of the body to temporarily numb pain. Plus any number of other items that Harry totally failed to comprehend, like the "Dementor Exposure Treatment", which looked and smelled like ordinary chocolate. Or the "Bafflesnaffle Counter", which looked like a small quivering egg and carried a placard showing how to jam it up someone's nostril.

From Chapter 89:

"Fuego!" / "Incendio!" Harry heard, but he wasn't looking, he was reaching for the syringe of glowing orange liquid that was the oxygenating potion, pushing it into Hermione's neck at what Harry hoped was the carotid artery, to keep her brain alive even if her lungs or heart stopped, so long as her brain stayed intact everything else could be fixed, it had to be possible for magic to fix it, it had to be possible for magic to fix it, it had to be possible for magic to fix it, and Harry pushed the plunger of the syringe all the way down, creating a faint glow beneath the pale skin of her neck. Harry then pushed down on her chest, where her heart should be, hard compressions that he hoped was moving the oxygenated blood around to where it could reach her brain, even if her heart might have stopped beating, he hadn't actually thought to check her pulse.

The oxygenation potion also slows circulation. Did Harry accidentally kill Hermione? Would the potion have unintentionally prevented blood flow to her brain by retarding flow in her carotid artery, while unhelpfully oxygenating her neck? It makes sense that a potion designed to prevent the spread of poison would prevent movement of the blood. It's also stated that it works on "a treated area." If it's primarily meant to slow the spread of poisons from bites, the spell's "treated area" might be defined as the volume of flesh a certain distance away from the injection site.

Also, giving CPR to someone when their heart is still beating is definitely not good for them.

What with the timey-wimey shenanigans in the writing and her brain not having spent too much time "dead" yet, I'm suspecting Hermione will yet live.

What with the show and Dumbledore's diagnosis, I'm suspecting Magic will continue to think her dead and thus her career as a witch being over (pending Harry hacking the Source of Magic).

Plus repercussions of the "Do not mess with time" kind.

Bearing in mind that Eliezer consistently foreshadows important events, let's brainstorm what Harry might do to end the world.

First, ritual magic and Dark rituals have played a prominent role in the story. Dark rituals have been mentioned over and over, and it's been emphasized that they are dangerous and powerful.

A magic ritual, much like a magic potion, seems to achieve much more than a spell. In my opinion this is probably because of the same conservation law by which potionmaking uses a small amount of magic to unlock the power already in some sense inherent in the potion's ingredients. (Example: Lily Potter sacrifices her life and successfully provides Harry with lifelong magical protection, while not even Dumbledore is capable of casting such a spell even with the Elder Wand.)

In fact, I conjecture that Eliezer brought potions into the story the way he did as a way of making us aware of this magical conservation law. A potion, to my mind, is merely a certain class of magic ritual which produces a magically potent substance. I may be wrong, since we don't know that potionmaking obeys the same ceremonial formula as a ritual.

Here's Quirrell's description:

An ordinary Charm, Mr. Potter, can be cast merely by speaking certain words, making precise motions of the wand, expending some of your own strength. Even powerful spells may be invoked in this way, if the magic is efficient as well as efficacious. But with the greatest of magics, speech alone does not suffice to give them structure. You must perform specific actions, make significant choices. Nor is the temporary expenditure of your own strength sufficient to set them in motion; a ritual requires permanent sacrifice. The power of such a greater spell, compared to ordinary Charms, can be like day compared to night. But many rituals - indeed, most - happen to demand at least one sacrifice which might inspire squeamishness. And so the entire field of ritual magic, containing all the furthest and most interesting reaches of wizardry, is widely regarded as Dark.

So, I think Harry will either discover or, equally likely, invent a magic ritual which sacrifices something really ... squeamishness-inducing ... in exchange for root access to the Atlantean mainframe, or whatever.

Unlikely theory:

It's all a fake. Harry set the whole thing up with Dumbledore, then obliviated himself. The real Hermione has been spirited away somewhere she won't be in any danger. Harry relied on his own likely reaction to ensure things would occur more or less as planned.

We can keep Hermione alive yay! But it doesn't work dramatically.

Other unlikely theory:

Harry will calm down tomorrow and realise his vow was a mistake.

I kind of like this as what a saner person might do, but again it seems very unlikely within the confines of Harry and the story.

Let me use this opportunity to re-raise a question I've been puzzled about for awhile now: how does Harry win?

According to an author's note, we have "two major story arcs" left before the fic is finished. Eliezer also mentioned possibly doing a "solve this puzzle or the fic ends sad" thing, but implies he's at least going to give Harry a chance to win.

It's not certain what "two major story arcs" means in terms of story time, but it seems very likely that it at least means "before the start of the next Hogwarts school year." So there has to be some way for Harry to win, not just in his seventh year like in the books, but in the next several months.

I confess, I'm tempted by the part of this theory (not the whole thing mind you, not this one part), that suggests that the Pioneer Plaque gets less and less useful as a Horcrux as it drifts farther and farther from Earth. That would give Harry a path to defeating Voldemort more or less permanently

But that seems problematic, because of Rational!Voldemort being smart, and because of the hint in the humanism arc that Voldemort has horcruxes hidden in other places, corresponding to the other traditional elements.

So I'm stumped. I suspect we'll get some major other puzzle pieces when Voldemort reveals his plan, or a significant chunk of it, to Harry. Which won't necessarily be an instance of Bond Villain Stupidity. Basically everything that's happened from the end of the Stanford Prison Experiment arc to now has been Voldemort trying to make Harry more compliant (Qiaochu_Yuan pulls out the key quote here), suggesting there's something Voldemort needs Harry to do, and that may require explaining what that thing is.

That said, I'm still wondering if Voldemort is going to end up making a rather catastrophic blunder of some sort, perhaps out of his cynicism getting in the way of accurately predicting people's behavior. My estimate of the chances of that happening is increased somewhat by Qurriellmort as Robin Hanson which hadn't occurred to me before this thread but which I now think was probably Eliezer's intent.

Some of the comments on what Harry should do reminded me of something that has yet to, as far as I know, appear in HPMoR: The Room of Requirement (aka "the god room"). In canon, Dumbledore (apparently) didn't even know about it; it was Dobby who revealed it to Harry, and hence the DA; I don't remember there being an explanation for how Draco found it (maybe Dobby knew about it before Order of the Phoenix, and Draco ordered him to tell him about it?). It also had some poorly defined, but clearly restrictive rules, which Neville eventually mastered over the course of Deathly Hallows (if not off screen in the previous books): it can't provide food, it didn't show Harry what Draco was up to based on the way Harry was requesting, there was something about what conditions prevented people from entering that I don't remember in detail, etc. It clearly wasn't much use at conjuring up god-mode equipment for use outside of the room, since Neville didn't use it as an armory for the final battle.

I don't remember this being mentioned among the "not appearing in this fic" elements of canon, though it does strike me as ridiculously overpowered in this Harry's hands. However, canon Riddle used it to hide Ravenclaw's diatem, which suggests that canonmort knew enough about the room that rationalmort would almost definitely have found it and abused it for all it's worth if it exists in HPMoR. (It seems to have a decent supply of books, at least, though I have to doubt it could generate information that wasn't put into it beforehand.)

Thinking about the RoR also reminded me of that two-way vanishing cabinet connecting Hogwarts to Borgan and Berk's, which I'm rather doubtful JKR thought much about before Order of the Phoenix, since at some point since it's creation, enough people will have had to have been put through it to make the connection and exploit the blatant hole in Hogwarts security.

Most of the plans to use time turning to fix this are massively overly complicated, by the way. Best bet is to swap the oxygenating potion for something which will make her death less permanent.

Which Harry can find or have made in < 6 hours.

Options: 1: Elixir of life. The stone is at hand, Snape is at hand. It is possible that shout is what taking it looks like. 2: Undeath. The potter verse does have vampires, and they are integrated in magical society at least to the extent that seeing one in a bad neighborhood is not grounds for an auror raid. Werewolf infection might also do it. 3: Draught of living death?

Given that a bunch of people in the Great Hall should know about the fact that one can send messages via patronus, it's a bit unlikely that no one of them thinks about sending a patronus to Minerva.

Harry is also quite stupid for sending the patroneus to Hermonine instead of addressing Dumbledore who could use the time turner (in Harry's perspective) and who also can go directly to Hermoine via Fawkes and is able to fight the troll. But then Harry thinks that he's the hero who has to do things himself, so that can be forgiven.

We could certainly expect Minerva to patronus directly after she left the Great Hall and tell Dumbledore and also other members of the order of the Pheonix. An attack on Hogwarth is certainly a big deal and I would suggest them to time turn as much people as possible to get them on the battlefield against the troll.

The only reason why the couldn't defend that way if there was some decoy event that already used up the time turner abilities of Dumbledore and Amelia Bones.

We also know that Hogwarts has alarms that trigger when a student get's hurt and getting your legs bitten up probably qualifies.

... On a side note.

Hermione Granger, of House Potter, at great cost to House Potter, was just killed on Potter's watch.

I think I've identified three techniques Eliezer uses to create associations in the readers' minds and promote ideas to their attention.

There's repetition. If you're sensitive to repetition then the repetition will drive you mad. Five false prophets, many uses of Grindelwald's name, and about a zillion instances of the phrase 'the old wizard'. Dumbledore is old, old, old.

There's placing two related ideas side by side. Like Harry wondering how magic could possibly work, then segueing into an 'analogy' to artificial intelligence. (Repeatedly, so it's a twofer.) Or the description of phoenix travel appearing in the same chapter as Harry confronting Dumbledore over Narcissa's death.

And there's the throwaway gag that contains the literal truth. "It's not like I'm an imperfect copy of someone else." "Let me know after it turns out that it was Professor Quirrell who did it."

And, perhaps, "And if you coincidentally crack the secret of immortality along the way, we'll just call it a bonus."

After Chapter 87, I thought it likely that Hermione's primary contribution to the story would be to rediscover the Philosopher's Stone through the application of the scientific method, solving humanity's biggest problem with the method humans actually use to solve their big problems. It's a natural fit for her talents, it teaches the lesson that saving the world with science is no less heroic than wandplay and derring-do, and it's a goal she could pursue if her magic deserted her, as it may have just done.

The problem was, Hermoine had a heroic task, but not a heroic motive. And of course she has bigger problems now. They're problems for the story as well. Judging by the number of words he's spent on the subject, it looks like one of Eliezer's goals for HPMoR is to teach us his ideas of what it means to be a hero. Hermione's premature death spoils the lesson. The story's told us that she's a hero, but she never finished becoming one. She never found something to protect.

So. I'm confident that she'll return, and that death will be her Azkaban, the injustice that calls her to action. I rather think her heroism will take the form of research into a source of immortality. This will require Harry's means of restoring her to life to be insufficiently general to help the rest of humanity, but I have no idea what Harry's going to do so I think I'll end my speculations here. Am I on the right track?

What will it take to give Harry a breakdown, to have him say, or think, "this is too much"?

At the start of this story he's human, vulnerable to stress; merely facing up to Minerva McGonagall is enough to make him have to excuse himself and go retch. When I consider everything that's happened to that boy since then, it's a wonder he's not in need of therapy. But now his strength and sanity seem inhumanly unerodable; even Hermione's death immediately leads to an "unyielding resolution" that he's going to get her back.

Question: how emotionally plausible do people find Harry's reaction to Hermione's death?

In the Sorting Hat chapter, Eliezer gave us a very strong hint that Harry would very nearly turn dark at some point in this fic, and by the end of chapter 87 it seemed all but certain.

All the stuff pointing in the Harry-going-dark direction up til this point has felt very emotionally plausible. But... "He would rip apart the foundations of reality itself to get Hermione Granger back"? I'm having a hard time buying it.

And it invites some unflattering comparisons with other works of fiction. I hated the Star Wars prequels about as much as most people, and that was the first place my mind went, that suddenly we're dealing with Anakin!Harry. Or, I didn't hate Buffy season 6 as much as most people, but Willow not just wanting to kill the Trio, but destroy the world was pretty WTF and this feels similar.

It's not reacting strongly to one person's death, or wanting revenge, it's the idea of going full supervillain over one person. That does not feel at all emotionally plausible to me. And technically Harry hasn't actually done that yet, but he seems very close.

However, though I say this like it's a criticism, I realize my not empathizing here may be a reflection of my having an unusual personality. So let me hereby give people an opportunity to tell me, "You have an unusually personality for being unable to see that lots of people would totally go full supervillain over the death of one person."

Hmm. It seems highly likely that the troll was timeturned back six hours itself in order to prevent people using time turning against it - given the amount of prep work that went into this (sabotaging Hermoine's kit, lifting the map, making her miss that meal. sun proofing it...) it would be a major oversight to not do that. Of course, that limits the suspect pool to people who know about time turning. From our perspective, all relevant suspects do, but in universe, this probably does rule out people. For example, if means Lucius may in fact know that it was not one of his minions getting overly ambitious.

When I first read the end of the chapter, my thought was that Quirrell hadn't arranged the incident; he had thought it was a "surprisingly good day" which suggested to me that he hadn't expected the troll.

After reading comments, I became less sure about that; someone suggested that Quirrell might have simply not intended for Harry to be at the scene and in danger. This seems plausible, but one thing still makes it difficult for me to believe it was Quirrell.

The troll had been enchanted against sunlight:

someone had enchanted the troll against sunlight before using it as a murder weapon and might also have strengthened it in other ways.

And Harry transfigured part of the troll:

Harry visualized a one-millimeter-wide cross-section through the enemy's brain, and Transfigured it into sulfuric acid.

But before, it was stated that Quirrell could not charm something that Harry had Transfigured:

Professor Quirrell could not cast spells on something Harry had Transfigured, for that would be an interaction, however slight, between their magics, but -

For Quirrell to have been behind this, I can see only two possibilities: 1) Harry can transfigure something Professor Quirrell has cast spells on, even though Professor Quirrell can't cast spells on something Harry has transfigured, or 2) Quirrell had a confederate (or imperiused lackey) cast the appropriate spells.

If you go with option 2, the increased complexity makes it less likely that it happened (though not necessarily less likely than a given alternative).

Although I'm not at all sure it was deliberate (is there a way to submit potential typos?), we may have just gotten some new evidence about the true nature of magic. In Ch 89 Fred/George cast a spell solely from the memory of seeing Dumbledore cast it ("Deligitor prodi"), got the incantation wrong ("Deligitor prodeas"), and yet still achieved an (apparently) identical effect (The summoning of the Sorting Hat). It appears that if this is legitimate evidence rather than a typo, magic has an error bound for the correct pronunciation of spells.

I predict that Harry will save many or all people who ever died from oblivion with magic that reaches backward through time to capture the mind of each person at the point of their death.

I further predict that this magic will create the mechanism of magic, possibly incidentally, and be responsible for the sort of Atlantis that magical Britons believe in.

I speculate that magic and ghosts are unintended byproducts of Harry's Afterlife Immortality Project.

Harry is an anti-death hero. Whatever villains he may encounter, his enemy is death and his heroic victory will be over his true enemy.

The afterlife figures centrally in the original work in ways that are incompatible with the author's worldview. In this way, the author incorporates important elements of the original work without betraying his convictions.

I made this prediction last April, and wish there had already been an admonishment to share predictions like the one involving 75th, yesterday.

The Headmaster can feel when a student dies in Hogwarts. That's how he showed up the moment Hermione died.

But the Headmaster can also feel when a creature unknown to Hogwarts is in Hogwarts. That's how he showed up when Harry rejected his phoenix.

But so why didn't Dumbledore feel the troll and intercept it much sooner? I expect before long the Dumbledore-haters — both those in the story and those on Less Wrong and Reddit — will latch on to this as proof that Dumbledore has been evil all along.

The problem is, we know a thing or two about Hogwarts's wards by now. We know, for instance, that Salazar Slytherin was the one who wove them:

or by some entity which Salazar Slytherin keyed into his wards at a higher level than the Headmaster himself.

Salazar Slytherin's wards. Salazar Slytherin, who left a basilisk that knew all his secrets. Secrets that Quirrellmort now knows.

Dumbledore will try to tell the wizarding world that the only explanation of Hermione's death is that Voldemort was behind the attack. This will be seen by the world as the same thing Headmaster Dippet actually did when Myrtle died: the accusation of an unlikely — "preposterous!" — scapegoat.

And now, Lucius Malfoy is there to stir up the opposition:

Lucius Malfoy controls Minister Fudge, through the Daily Prophet he sways all Britain, only by bare margins does he not control enough of the Board of Governors to oust me from Hogwarts.

Those bare margins are about to be erased. For the first time in fifty years, a student has died in Hogwarts, and there is reason to suspect Dumbledore of involvement. Dumbledore is not going to be Headmaster for very much longer.

And the Philosopher's Stone is there, in Hogwarts, in the place, until now, of Dumbledore's own power.

Eliezer took the troll fight that a first-year Ron Weasley won in canon and turned it into the death of the #2 character in Methods. I can't wait to see what he does with this.

Harry has shown again and again that he can't lose, and instead doubles-down. He did so with Hermione, and now Lucius has killed her. If people realise it's Lucius, all the better for him; nothing can be proved, but he shows himself to be extremely dangerous and willing to protect his family.

Hermione's cheeks were going even redder. "You're really evil, did anyone ever tell you that?"

"Miss Granger," Professor Quirrell said gravely, "it can be dangerous to give people compliments like that when they have not been truly earned. The recipient might feel bashful and undeserving and want to do something worthy of your praise.

There was a burst of something that was magic and also more, a shout louder than an earthquake and containing a thousand books, a thousand libraries, all spoken in a single cry that was Hermione; too vast to be understood, …

This is one of the saddest things I have ever read.

Also, it reminds me of Ed Fredkin's work on digital philosophy; specifically, conservation of information:

In ordinary physics, conservation of information is not something that has the same absolute character as conservation of momentum. If DP makes sense, then that would mean that in the real world information could never be lost, and as a consequence we might conclude that information would be conserved, absolutely, just as momentum is conserved.

I predict once Harry inevitably becomes omnipotent, he will recover Hermione's pattern, and reconstitute it in the center of a Hermione shell.

Someone should cast a chain-Imperius , commanding the victim to:

1) Not attack anyone else subject to these rules 2) Imperius anyone not subject to these rules, and subject them to these rules 3) Inform your enchanter of any plans you know of that might hinder the grand Imperius effort.

It's established in Rowling!Cannon that the spell can be chained, and Harry has probably read the GNU manifesto, so he should have these sorts of ideas.

A liberal arch-wizard might object that this would reduce the entire world to a dull statis of mindless servitude:

every thought and worry in his head was wiped gently away

But there would be ways around it; maybe just 10% of the world could be Imperiused at any one moment as a police force. They could then use a shift system, so that everyone got 90% freedom. This might seem extreme, but I think the devastating, distributed destructive powers of magic render it (or something like it) the only sane response for a society not comprised of angels.

Why isn't Harry more concerned about Memory charms? He knows Hermione's been attacked, inside Hogwarts. For all he knows, every other character could be being manipulated by the enemy. His own memories could be false in arbitrary ways.

He should have gathered all his trusted allies and kept together. They can keep watch while each other sleep, and enlist the portraits to help. Give up on separate dorms. His enemies are playing to win; he needs to give up on his childish notion of 'going to school'.

"HE IS HERE. THE ONE WHO WILL TEAR APART THE VERY STARS IN HEAVEN. HE IS HERE. HE IS THE END OF THE WORLD."

This reminded me of a dream I had the night before Sunday, Dec 2, 2012, which I posted to my livejournal blog the next day. I'm not sure what I expect to accomplish by posting this here, but I thought you might find it interesting. Here is what I wrote about that dream:

" A scene where I dreamt I was reading the next chapter of HPMOR. It was extremely vivid. As if I was there. Very clear image and sound. Even some dramatic music. Ominous countdown to doom music. At least 3 different instruments.

Quirrel's plan is revealed. He plans to destroy the universe and re-create it "in his own image". Simpler laws of physics, that grant him unlimited power just by physically being at the center of the new universe. The new universe also contains magic, the dream showed a simple two-gesture spell that would allow Quirrel to "become a sun god", allowing him to create, destroy, and manipulate stars.

Quirrel's plan involved some extremely powerful magic, beyond what anyone thought possible. It involved creating a sphere of ultra-condensed matter, energy, space, and time, just outside Hogwarts. Quirrel put his plan into action during the last moments of his life, but as he entered the sphere of "MEST compression", subjective time for him slowed down by orders of magnitude, and he had immense power, allowing him to create the massive structures required for his plan in what looked like just a few seconds to the world outside the sphere. And there were other sentient beings in the sphere with him. Harry was there, near the center of the sphere, tricked into believing that he was saving this universe, not helping to destroy it. Also some other characters, with a generic "shopkeeper" or "smith" personality, who were in charge of helping the construction of something that vaguely resembled a series of Large Hadron Colliders, enormous metal rings and other structures arranged in a precise 3d structure resembling an enormous lattice, or cage. Quirrel giving instructions to these assistants on how to assemble the structure. The dream showed some of their replies. "You're not going to believe this, but there's this giant metal tube floating towards me. It's exactly the shape you described, but Merlin it's huge! I cant even see the end of it! I'm standing by to attach it to the next piece, which is also floating this way now. This won't be easy."

And so Quirrel continued assembling the structure. Most of it went according to plan, but then one of the helpers, panicking, informed him that one of the pieces wasn't lining up correctly. Harry had figured out that something was wrong with Quirrel's plan. He deactivated the barrier around the sphere, and summoned McGonagall, who also earned immense power when she entered the sphere. Harry told her some of what was happening, and said that they needed to find a wristwatch that Quirrel had charmed, which was somehow controlling the time compression. McGonagall found the watch, and started to move it out of place, but then Quirrel found her. Quirrel was far to powerful to be killed directly, but if they could somehow delay his plans long enough, he was already dying. McGonagall didn't stand a chance in the battle, but Quirrel didn't destroy her entirely, he instead left her mostly powerless. He hadn't given up on regaining Harry's trust.

The scene ended on a cliffhanger. "Wait until next week when I'm finished writing the next chapter to find out what happens next" "

Why are people here reacting like Hermione is perma-dead?

I get that they'd act that way on reddit, but people here actually believe and sign up for cryonics. Harry's got a whole team of Alcor cryonic specialists right in his wand. And if he can't manage the magic, Dumbledore can. Hermione's soul and magic may have exploded in an impressive lightshow, but her brain is still fully oxygenated and hasn't even begun to decompose.

Everything that makes her her is still doing fine.

(And on a meta level, Elizer knows that fictional examples are strong drivers of behavior. A fictional example of cryonics working would be big for cryonics adoption.)

"So," Harry said, "you know those really simple Artificial Intelligence programs like ELIZA that are programmed to use words in syntactic English sentences only they don't contain any understanding of what the words mean?"

"Of course," said the witch. "I have a dozen of them in my trunk."

Did she mean that she had muggle computer programs? Or did she mean some magical artifacts that work in the same way, or was this just a simple misunderstanding?

I predict that it will be revealed that Quirrell or a closely related entity has been abusing Harry on and off throughout his life, to try and make him into a Dark Lord.

He can go to Harry's house like the time he played Father Christmas.

Obliviated memories leave residue, which is how in Chapter 88 the twins remembered that they could find people, in the castle, but couldn't remember how.

In the first chapter, Harry noticed that he believed in magic.

some part of Harry was utterly convinced that magic was real

In chapter 16, Harry is almost reminded of something when he looks at Quirell, but can't remember what. And when Quirrell is first introduced, Harry ominously recognizes him

"Professor?" Harry said, once they were in the courtyard. He had meant to ask what was going on, but oddly found himself asking an entirely different question instead. "Who was that pale man, by the corner? The man with the twitching eye?"

"Hm?" said Professor McGonagall, sounding a bit surprised; perhaps she hadn't expected that question either. "That was Professor Quirinus Quirrell. He'll be teaching Defence Against the Dark Arts this year at Hogwarts."

"I had the strangest feeling that I knew him..." Harry rubbed his forehead. "And that I shouldn't ought to shake his hand." Like meeting someone who had been a friend, once, before something went drastically wrong... that wasn't really it at all, but Harry couldn't find words.

In the sixth chapter, McGonagall points out that Harry can act like an abused child.

sometimes, you say or do something that seems very much like... someone who spent his first eleven years locked in a cellar.

Quirrell uses Obliviation and memory charms and as Mr. Cloak-and-Hat, he manipulated Blaise. And he uses Obliviation and memory charms more subtly, to change someone's mood and personality over time, as shown when he brute-force-save-scumed his way to making Hermione suspicious of Draco.

Quirrell expected Harry to become a Dark Lord when he spoke with him after the first class and was surprised that Harry aspired to science.

Quirrell expects the worst out of people, and so he expected that an abused Harry would be destined to darkness.

Edit: I just realized that Harry was probably abused almost every night (or day) for some significant period. There was a time turner involved, and that's why his sleep cycle is off.