Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 28, chapter 99-101

palladias

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 99, 100, and 101. The previous thread is at nearly 500 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, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27

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Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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

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, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27

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Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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

Why did Quirrell allow the unicorn corpses to be found? Why didn't he dispose of the corpse by making it disappear, instead of trying to pass it off as a predator? Would anyone notice if a unicorn vanished without leaving a corpse? ( I suppose they might, since they're medically valuable, but since unicorns are known not to have predators the predated corpse is hardly a good cover, as we saw. Vanishing the corpse would have made it take longer to notice.)

Anyway, this is one of the few times we see Quirrell's plot clearly failing without anyone actually acting to thwart him. Is it plausible that he was actually unable to kill and drink a unicorn without anyone immediately noticing?

And if he's going to leave a corpse, he could at least do it silently.

Remember that Tracey ran towards the sound of a unicorn being attacked?

That's what makes me sure that Quirrell wanted to get caught. There's just no reason for him to skip the silencing spell, otherwise. (Unless he's hiding from someone that can detect the use of magic?)

I don't know how he got Tracey to approach, though.

6ChristianKl13y

The alternative is that Quirrell does want people to know that unicorns get attacked. If you want to make a magical reanimation ritual, a species that helps people on the verge of death seems to be a path to go. This whole interaction gave Harry information about unicorns.

4ygert13y

Hagrid would have noticed. Hagrid named each individual unicorn in the forest, and if one disappeared, he'd definitely go to Dumbledore about it.