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Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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.

There is another point which wasn't discussed much, but does trouble me : the "outpouring of magic" that happened in chapter 89 when Hermione died.

It's the first time we heard about anything like that happening after a wizard death. It's not canon. It wasn't hinted to before, like Dumbledore didn't speak about it in "pretending to be wise", when he tries to convince Harry souls exist. Harry didn't feel it when his parents were killed. Harry didn't feel it when Rita Skeeter is killed by Quirrell. That's a lot of evidence pointing to it not being the common thing that happens when someone dies.

And yet, Harry doesn't ask any question about it, he doesn't try to know if it happens rarely (and then in which circumstances ?) or frequently, or if it's even an entirely new phenomena, it doesn't ask around if it could be faked, ...

Some possibles explanations :

It's the Source of Magic recording the brain state of person when it dies, allowing for resurrection before. But then, why no hint about it before ? Why Harry didn't feel it for Rita ?
It's the Source of Magic recording the brain state of person when it dies, but the Source of Magic didn't use to do it. Harry had to hack the Source of Magic to implement it. And he had to cleverly use Time Turners so he could hack it before Hermione's death.
Someone made an Horcrux of Hermione, and it's the Horcrux that gives the feeling.
It doesn't occur usually, but it does occur because of a bond between Hermione and Harry, be it just "love magic" or be it with Hermione being bound to House Potter.
This is purely faked (either memory-charm, or a fake feeling) by either Dumbledore or Quirrell (maybe using a Time Turner) to try to convince Harry that Hermione is really dead so he doesn't do any folly to try to save her (but then, it seemed to fail).

Its the process of someone trying to save hermione.

6Intrism13y

I don't think Rita Skeeter is good evidence. It would not do for Quirrell to have Harry notice an unexpected, strange burst of magic when he's trying to quietly kill someone; Quirrell would have found a way to suppress it, if it had existed. (It's also possible that her Animagi transformation suppressed the effect.) The absence of the burst of magic in Harry's parents' deaths, on the other hand, has led me to an inverse suspicion to yours...

2Benquo13y

What about proximity? It could be that you have to be physically pretty close at the moment of death. That would explain why Harry didn't feel it when Rita Skeeter died.