Izeinwinter comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 26, chapter 97 - Less Wrong

5 Post author: palladias 15 August 2013 02:18AM

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Comment author: DanArmak 15 August 2013 06:40:54PM 5 points [-]

Lucius Malfoy nodded distantly. "I could not think of any reason why you would pay a hundred thousand Galleons to save a mudblood's life. No reason save one, which would account for her power and bloodthirst alike; but then she died at the hands of a troll, and yet you lived.

What was the reason Lucius Malfoy thought of?

Comment author: Izeinwinter 15 August 2013 08:12:39PM 16 points [-]

That Voldemort is her father, and her muggle background a lie. "Secretly a pureblood" really is a very credible explanation if you actually believe in blood purism.

Comment author: DanArmak 16 August 2013 08:41:40AM 1 point [-]

And Bellatrix Black is her mother?

But why would they place her in custody of Muggles, instead of purebloods?

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 16 August 2013 02:08:42PM 0 points [-]

Break the trail connecting her to Bellatrix?

Comment author: Izeinwinter 16 August 2013 07:39:29PM 14 points [-]

Fostering her out would be insurance against defeat. Placing her with pure-blood allies would not suffice for that eventuality, as such allies would most likely be going down with the ship too. Placing her with muggles takes her out of the war entirely, and the trace means she gets back into the wizarding world 11 years later no matter what happens..

Uhm. This is spookily compatible with Canon. For a girl with supposedly loving parents, she spends an inordinate number of holidays at hogwarts and the burrow. Worse, we never actually meet said parents at all in canon. We are told. By Hermione, that they get shipped to Australia with a case of amnesia. And I mean, "my parents are dentists" is exactly the kind of lie a clever 11 year old orphan might tell people to get them to iose all interest in further enquiries. So, basically, her family could oh-so-easily be entirely fiction in-universe.

Comment author: Atelos 16 August 2013 09:42:34PM 7 points [-]

Actually her parents, or at least people claiming to be such do appear in canon, if barely. They get no dialogue, but during the shopping trip in the second book there's some mention of them being uncertain around all the magic and weirdness, Arthur Weasley saying something along the lines "oh wow, I get to meet real muggles, look they're exchanging muggle money!", and few lines about them being unnerved by the confrontation between Arthur and Lucius in the bookshop.

Comment author: TobyBartels 23 August 2013 05:47:28AM 4 points [-]

‘The great tragedy of Science — the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.’

Comment author: Baughn 18 August 2013 03:22:18AM 0 points [-]

Ah, but surely an orphan's guardians might be similarly uneasy.