skeptical_lurker comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, February 2015, chapters 105-107 - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (353)
I feel the need to point out that the first three rooms can be beaten very quickly in the manner that a first-year might (assuming that flying over the chessboard is ok) and yet Quirrel only slows down for the room which takes an hour. It would only have taken a moment to summon the snitch-key, and since they don't have a perfect read on Snape, if the potions room might have been trappeded, then so might have the other rooms.
The other rooms were trapped, but Quirrel detected and disarmed the wards. In Snape's room, he detected no wards, and that's what makes him suspicious.
Snape has much better muggle lore than the average wizard. I'm guessing anyone trying to solve that room with violence will get a faceful of claymore mine or the equivalent. No wards detectable because the traps are not magic.
Snape is an asshole, but my model of him would not actually kill a first-year.
I doubt a first year would have any chance of brute-forcing their way through a fire door that normally requires such a ridiculously complex potion to nullify.
If Fiendfyre is the only way to force it, then I agree. But ‘anyone trying to solve that room with violence’ is pretty broad.
And if this is possible (I have no idea whether there is a 'detect claymore' spell) then the other rooms could have had claymores too.
Well, it's possible that all the rooms were designed by different professors with little to no cooperations so that one single breach would not compromise the security of the whole thing. If Snape wanted to put claymores in other rooms, he'd need to tell the other professors.