Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 23, chapter 94

elharo

This is a new thread to discuss Eliezer Yudkowsky’s Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality and anything related to it. This thread is intended for discussing chapter 94. The previous thread has passed 200 comments.

There is now a site dedicated to the story at hpmor.com, which is now the place to go to find the authors notes and all sorts of other goodies. AdeleneDawner has kept an archive of Author’s Notes. (This goes up to the notes for chapter 76, and is now not updating. The authors notes from chapter 77 onwards are on hpmor.com.)

The first 5 discussion threads are on the main page under the harry_potter tag. Threads 6 and on (including this one) are in the discussion section using its separate tag system. Also: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22.

Spoiler Warning: this thread is full of spoilers. With few exceptions, spoilers for MOR and canon are fair game to post, without warning or rot13. More specifically:

You do not need to rot13 anything about HP:MoR or the original Harry Potter series unless you are posting insider information from Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).

If there is evidence for X in MOR and/or canon then it’s fine to post about X without rot13, even if you also have heard privately from Eliezer that X is true. But you should not post that “Eliezer said X is true” unless you use rot13.

Spoiler Warning: this thread is full of spoilers. With few exceptions, spoilers for MOR and canon are fair game to post, without warning or rot13. More specifically:

You do not need to rot13 anything about HP:MoR or the original Harry Potter series unless you are posting insider information from Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).

If there is evidence for X in MOR and/or canon then it’s fine to post about X without rot13, even if you also have heard privately from Eliezer that X is true. But you should not post that “Eliezer said X is true” unless you use rot13.

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...

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.

7Intrism13y

Inferi appear to be common knowledge; they're cited in casual contexts in chapters 70 and 78, by Lavender Brown and the narrator respectively.

3linkhyrule513y

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.