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gwern comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 20, chapter 90 - Less Wrong
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The first time this sentence appears in HPMoR is in the italic text that begins Chapter 2:
I'll assume the difference between "it's" and "it was" isn't significant. I'm inclined to refocus my attention now on the italic text that begins Chapter 1:
I didn't know what to make of this when I first read it, and I still don't. Does this describe an event that has already happened? It's not Hermione's death, since that didn't happen in the moonlight.
It's been debated constantly since the start because it's highlighted as important. The best guess was that it might have been when Voldemort attacked the Potters, but there's obvious problems with that (what's the silver? and as far as we know, no blood was shed by Voldemort since he favored AKs). Given that ch90 brings up blood as a powerful sacrificial element, it's looking more like it's about a future event and maybe a ritual by Harry - pursuant to bringing back Hermione being the obvious goal.
When you said AKs, I immediately thought you meant AK-47s. That put a very amusing picture in my head.
I might play too many videogames.
They share many characteristics, don't they?
The only plot-significant things that have been described as silver are Fawkes, the Time-Turner, Dumbledore's beard, Lucius Malfoy's cane, and Patronus charms. I think we can safely eliminate Dumbledore's beard and Malfoy's cane. If it is in the future, I would have dismissed the time-turner before the past 2 chapters, but not anymore.
(I still believe it likely describes the attack on the Potters. Edit: I no longer believe this.)
"Beneath the moonlight glints a tiny fragment of silver, a fraction of a line..."
This sounds like an alchemy circle, which has to be drawn "to the fineness of a child's hair." I guess it involves the creation of a philosopher's stone.
Or a horcrux? We still don't know what the ritual for that looks like.
We know from canon and Word of Rowling that it involves murder, and is so disgusting it almost made her editor vomit.
Nitpick: "felt like vomiting" is well short of being almost made to vomit.
And if Yudkowsky's going to make a Fullmetal Alchemist reference, we know how to make a philosopher's stone, or even crude approximations, but only using human scarifice.
Could be alchemy or related magic used to turn someone's blood into a fake burned body. (Free transmutation seems easy to recognize.) But I've been thinking of it as an event in the past, which now seems dubious.
In the first Canon, unicorn's blood is silver, and that has a life-extension effect.
IIRC, Canon!Dumbledore says it is used as a last, terrible resort of a wretched life (or something).
In canon, it's also Unicorn blood.
It could also be Harry using Godric Gryffindor's sword to murder someone (Bellatrix?) in order to power the Summon Death ritual.
I've always interpreted the Summon Death ritual to just create a dementor.
That is completely out of character.
Remember his anti-Batman resolution from a few chapters ago, where he said that a dead body means the gloves come off and he quits trying to fight a bloodless war.
Eliezer edited out his explicit resolution at some point before these updates began.
Noted. I think it's still a fairly accurate summary of his mental state, however.
Edit: Half of Ch. 85 is still basically in this vein.
<badass voice> Not anymore. </badass voice>.
Or he could just go all brutalist utilitarian.
You mean like this?
Ooops. No. I mean more like Grindelvaldesque.
Would Harry have access to the sword, being a Ravenclaw?
It could just be a random knife.
Possible, but unlikely.
The detail given could be that a knife is being used rather than a wand. And no-one we know would use a knife to kill rather than a wand unless there was a very special reason to do so.
Unless they can't do magic...
An alternative to Harry doing the ritual would be that Harry get's sacrificed by a ritual of Quirrelmort to bring back Voldemort.
Given how much Harry trust Quirrelmort, it should be in Quirrelmort's power.
Harry doesn't trust Quirrell anymore, hasn't trusted him since the Azkaban arc. That was made pretty clear inthe conversation in the dark warehouse immediately after the raid.