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Michaelos comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 23, chapter 94 - Less Wrong
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Comments (343)
I am predicting that Harry has Hermione's body, though I'm not yet sure where. The reason is that Harry, from whose POV we see Chapter 94, does not seem especially concerned or upset that someone has run off with Hermione's body. If someone else had taken it, and thus interfered with his plans, he would be. He'd be thinking hard about who has it, where they've put it, and how to get it back. He'd probably be yelling at the professors for being stupid and incompetent. Instead he barely reacts when the headmaster tells him "Hermione Granger's remains are now missing."
He has probably transfigured the corpse, since that explains all the emphasis on maintaining transfigurations of large objects like his father's rock earlier in the book.
I agree, and suspect a time turner is involved. Reasoning:
If I am reading this correctly, Harry asks about whether or not making Hermione an Infernius would allow her to keep her mind twice, once in Chapter 90, and once in chapter 94. In neither case does his reaction seem to phase the other person much, so it doesn't seem to be a social maneuver.
Harry also needs to urgently go to the bathroom in 94. So he doesn't seem likely to waste time asking questions that he already knows the answer to for no reason.
This strongly implies he has forgotten part of the events of chapter 90 at some point, or that he asked that question for some reason other than curiosity. Also, he has access to an unlocked time turner, and is going to have access to memory charms soon (the moment he gets to have a moment where he's not drowning in social contact and can actually go READ the book). He's also really, really, determined to do something to revive Hermione.
Harry could now suspect that he is GOING to take Hermione's body in the future. Then he can attempt to go back in time, and then steal the body, and then memory charm his past self so his past self didn't remember during the interrogation. It's chapter 13 all over again, except far more seriously this time.
This might explain his lack of surprise, and his vague mentions of probability. It could FEEL like he had been woken up in the middle of the night, stolen Hermione's body and handed it off to his time turned self, even though he can't actually remember his time turned self having told him to do that.
Also, it explains such remarks as:
Which in this case you could take as:
So forming an intention to do something really does mean to an extent it might already be happening.
I think Harry's second question about Infernius was rhetorical.
Harry is saying that he's mentally prepared to kill something that looks like and used to be Hermione.
I don't see the point in using it as an Inferius. Why would Dumbledore expect the Dark Lord to do that?
He would expect it because it's cruel. The Dark Lord seems to have optimized his (public) actions for sadistic pleasure more than effectiveness.
If Quirrellmort sees Harry as a genuine threat, though, he's probably holding the body hostage. He'll have placed it in stasis as best he can.
OK, although I also don;t think that any post-Azkaban Harry would be fazed by having to kill Zombie Hermione.
It's also possible that he wanted to confirm the validity of the information he got from Quirrell. If Quirrell and Dumbledore agree on something, it's probably true to the best anyone can tell, or at least that's probably how Harry sees it.
Also likely to hide the fact that he already had the answer to this question--it wouldn't do for people to start wondering what he and the Defense Professor were talking about...
Regarding Harry's lack of surprise, isn't it odd that he puts no effort into wearing the expression of someone who has no idea about Hermione's body being missing?
Remember that Harry had just been hastily awoken long before his accustomed time. It's not unreasonable for Harry to be behaving a little bit awkwardly, and it certainly isn't enough of a tell for Dumbledore to draw any conclusions.
What does seem to be a bit of a tell is his strange behavior around the ring; he seems to deliberately create tension before the ring is verified in order to, apparently, play for sympathy afterwards.
I suggest that Harry, upon finding himself being interrogated about Hermione's remains, resolves to time turn himself after the meeting back to before he was woken and replace the Hermione gem with the Father's Rock gem. Only after resolving on this course of action is Harry ready to submit the gem to Dumbledore for examination.
He can stow the Hermione gem anywhere non-obvious in the meantime and recover it later.
If that logic worked Hermione wouldn't have died in the first place.
Not necessarily. We don't know what causes ontological loops to form. Precommitting seems to be insufficient, but that doesn't mean that Harry can't get a loop when he needs it.
Except that Harry didn't have access to his time turner prior to witnessing Hermione's death. Once something has happened it cannot be re-written in the self consistent time travel of the HPMORverse.
Harry did ask Dumbledore about ways to create the illusion of death in order to get around this hurdle (essentially allowing the information to be the appearance of Hermione's death as opposed to her actual death), but the Headmaster said he had tried something like that with disastrous results previously.
I know of nothing in the known rules of time travel in HPMOR that wouldn't allow for Harry to plan to swap gems. In fact, he used basically this exact same trick for the Remembrall and Torture incidents.
I suspect a time turner is involved for different reasoning. Specifically, I suspect that Harry's wards allow time-turned copies of himself to do things while he is asleep (since future-him knows more). So, my guess is that Harry stole Hermoine's body last night, woke up to find it missing (hence, the fumbling under sheets), goes through the interrogation, goes back in time, and steals Hermoine's body from his sleeping past-self.
Nice.
Note that Harry has no legitimate way to know what an Inferius is.
Also, I highly doubt that Hermione is in the ring - it's just too awkward, it risks detection, if it gets detransfigured in a critical situation then suddenly he has to lug Hermione's body around while fighting off Voldemort or something.
It's far more likely to be an anonymous brick, marked with, oh, let's say a stylized helium atom, that he placed in plain sight somewhere. Shame he doesn't know about the Room of Requirement, or he could've used the Room of Lost Things...
Inferi appear to be common knowledge; they're cited in casual contexts in chapters 70 and 78, by Lavender Brown and the narrator respectively.
That said, the idea that Harry has Obliviated himself is interesting - there's been a timeskip and he's had access to his Time Turner, so he's had time to read his book, and he thinks about Memory Charms during the conversation, which is something of a dropped hint.
The transfiguration won't last forever if he leaves it on its own.
I'm not sure if this means that he actually has to have it on his person at all times, or if he just has to go near it every so often. Maybe he transfigured her into his blanket.
I would have guessed he'd have used the pouch, although Dumbledore can apparently search it without Harry's permission, so that's risky.