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ChrisHallquist comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 25, chapter 96 - Less Wrong
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There has previously been some speculation that the dark lord in Harry's birth prophesy is death rather than Voldemort. I think this interpretation just got a lot stronger.
James and Lilly had defied Voldemort but not death. The new lines back an interpretation that the Peverells thrice defied death with the three deathly hollows and Harry is born to the Peverell line.
This is, in some ways, a more natural interpretation of that clause since James and Lilly were in the Order and were defying Voldemort on a daily basis not just 3 times. The line of the Peverells makes the number three make sense rather than being arbitrary.
"Three shall be Peverell's sons and three their devices by which Death shall be defeated."
When I first saw this line, I didn't think it was very important, but could it mean that Harry is actually going to use the three Deathly Hallows to defeat death, i.e. make everyone immortal?
I confess, I hadn't paid that much attention to the possibility, because the canonical Deathly Hallows don't seem well-suited for the purpose. But I suppose there could be some effect where when the Elder Wand is used to cast the Patronus 2.0, you get an Uber Patronus, or maybe it lets you lets you kill a hundred Dementors without depleting your own life force, or something. And I suppose the Resurrection Stone could easily get an upgrade from canon. But how could the Invisibility Cloak be used as part of the process of granting immortality, beyond hiding from Dementors? Could hiding from Dementors become really important at the climax somehow? Doesn't seem like it, if the Elder Wand + Patronus 2.0 takes care of the Dementors, hmmm...
There is the theory that the Invisibility Cloak's power to hide one from Death does not only apply to Dementors, but to death in general. So if you put the cloak over someone who is dying, they would stay alive, at least until the Cloak is removed and death can find them again.
It's just another of those crazy crackpot theories floating around here, but I think it could fill in that gap in your theory.
The legend in canon says exactly that; the Peverell brother who got the Cloak was most successful, and lived a long time because the Cloak allowed him to evade death (until one day he took it off and got screwed).
He took it off and gave it to his son. In canon he meets death intentionally.
I think that there's a difference between preventing imminent death, and avoiding death. That is, there's a difference between being in a situation where you "should" die, but you don't, and not getting in such a situation to begin with.
And in the canon story (which may not be canon; it appears in the canon, but that doesn't mean it's canon), the third brother greeted Death "as an old friend", so apparently he had the same attitude that Dumbledore had: dying after a full life is not a tragedy.
Of course he had that opinion, Rowling was writing themes so deathist that even the me of that time--who had yet to even hear of transhumanism--was thrown by it.
Voldemort is defined as evil partially just because of his fear of and avoidance of death--if you notice, she explicitly built it so that most of his atrocities occurred after and because of the steps he took to avoid death.
I'm surprised Harry didn't try this for Hermione, then. Maybe he wouldn't have expected it to work, but it's still an easy hypothesis to test.
It's a shame you retracted this, because I wanted to +1 it.
I don't actually remember why I retracted it. I tried to un-retract it afterwards, but I don't think that's possible.
Well, Harry suggested himself that they practiced on the "little deaths" of Dementors first ... so you're probably on to something ;-)