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I don't think that's the same gun.

And yeah, that line tripped my wires as well, but I think there are two more likely candidates for concealment than lack of intent to kill:

-Lack of ability to kill

-Whether there is a Headmaster of Hogwarts now (one can imagine a magically designated Interim Headmaster being immediately instated for the purpose of the wards)

DanArmak10y10

The old Headmaster isn't dead, just unreachable. It may be that noone has the access to the wards needed to become the new Headmaster.

See in context

5 Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, February 2015, chapter 111

by b_sen

25th Feb 2015

1 min read

174

5

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 111.

There is 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.)

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Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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

HPMOR (discussion & meta)

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Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, February 2015, chapter 111

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[-]Scott Alexander10y350

So Harry gets his wand back, gets his pouch back, Voldemort resurrects Hermione with superpowers, then Voldemort becomes super-weak, his horcruxes mysteriously stop working, and he mentions this is happening loudly enough for Harry to hear and kill him?

Either this is still all in the mirror, or Harry needs to buy lottery tickets right away.

[-]SilentCal10y470

Or this is a big setup by Voldemort. Saying "I must make a Horcrux" out loud is the giveaway; I doubt even Harry's fantasy of a beatable Voldemort would be that stupid.

My guess (conditioned on this not being the mirror) is that Voldemort gave Harry his pouch and wand and then faked weakness to trick Harry into attacking him so that he could kill Harry without violating his prior promise. He resurrected a nearly-immortal Hermione to dissuade Harry from ripping the stars apart in case killing him failed, as part of his defense-in-depth strategy against the prophecy. Since he could have tricked Harry by much simpler means if that were the only goal, he can say in Parseltongue that restoring her counsel is the greater part of his motivation.

4Ben Pace10y

hat tip

9MarkusRamikin10y

No, you've got it completely backwards, he just used some ancient pre-rolled dice, now he can't buy lottery tickets for like a zillion years until he builds that used up luck back. In other news, the chapter is titled Failure part 1. So we're still in for more Failure.

9linkhyrule510y

Meta-level evidence for this: Eliezer doesn't usually post two chapters, short or not, in one day. Not wasting his readers time speculating about a "dream" would be a good motive for that.

5Vaniver10y

I think it's more plausible that the mirror acts like it does in canon; that is, you see the room you're in, plus some features that you deeply desire; you don't see yourself leave the room unless you actually leave the room. I see three broad paths the next chapter could take: 1. Hermione, wake up! We won and now we have to rescue Dumbledore! 2. "You thought that would stop me? Now we fight!" 3. "You thought that would stop me? I had just made a horcrux for her, and your Patronus plus my horcrux is how we're going to solve the death problem. You've failed my loyalty test. And after all I did for you!" (As always, there is the category of "everything else.")

2TobyBartels10y

Upvoted retroactively.

1b_sen10y

They did leave the room and go to a graveyard before Hermione was resurrected.

2Vaniver10y

The reader sees them leave the room and go to a graveyard. But whether or not they in actuality left the room depends on how the mirror transmits information. Yvain is leaving open the possibility that Harry is hallucinating this (with the mirror's help), and giving it high probability because of how much is going in his favor very quickly. I agree that's a possibility, but think it's unlikely given how the canon mirror operated and the evidence we have of how the MOR!mirror operates.

2b_sen10y

I see. Point taken, then.

2imuli10y

Voldemort believes that Harry “WILL TEAR APART THE VERY STARS IN HEAVEN” without Hermione. What wouldn't you do to protect the person preventing that, given that you are willing to murder unknown hundreds for Horcruxes.

0linkhyrule510y

Be stupid? There's no excuse for letting Harry have his stuff back, after all.

1linkhyrule510y

Further speculation along this line: Even if this is a dream, what has Harry gained from this vision? * A reasonably non-Dark way of resurrecting Hermione. (!) * Insight into the Dark Lord's motives, assuming that this is all things he "might have" said. * A hint into how he might be killed.

1[anonymous]10y

How to resurrect Hermione when he gets around to it. After all, she has to become an alicorn princess!

1Alsadius10y

I suspect I'm spoiling the in-joke here, but is that a literal in-story thing, or just a fan joke? Honestly, it's getting hard to tell sometimes.

0Vaniver10y

It has to deal with an author's note written after Hermione's death, in which Eliezer responded to claims that the story was insufficiently feminist with 'wait until the story is finished!', and ended with the line that she would be resurrected as an alicorn princess. It was, I believe, at the same time that the MLP community was still reacting to Twilight Sparkle being turned from a unicorn to an alicorn princess. People have been genuinely uncertain how serious he was, given his reputation for both honesty and silliness.

2TobyBartels10y

And when the similarly themed, similarly silly suggestion came true that Twilight Sparkle (in a pre-alicorn state, as it happens) would appear in the fic, people really began to take it seriously.

2[anonymous]10y

I feel like the people who thought it wouldn't happen really underestimated him. Author!EY knows how to nail an ending.

0DanielLC10y

A reasonably non-dark way of making people nigh-immortal, though he might have to leave out the troll part if they turn out to be sapient.

2DanArmak10y

He hasn't actually learned the magic Voldemort was using just by observing it. And it's likely a Dark secret that noone else can teach him.

2linkhyrule510y

He doesn't actually know that ritual, though. Quirrell does stuff with his wand and Harry knows better than to just blindly copy whatever off his memory. The resurrection ritual, as near as I can tell, requires only going to that obelisk, placing flesh on the slab, and saying "X, X, X so wisely hidden", where "X" is whatever you you have - blood, flesh, bone, vitreous humors of the eye, whatever.

[-]lerjj10y150

Suggestion: the entire plot with super-Hermione is Voldemort's practise at being nice. But he's not being nice to Hermione, he's being nice to Harry. He reasoned that this is a better way of stopping Harry destroying the stars than simply killing him (this way carries a slight risk but stops him having to kill his friend). He simply didn't see it because is was a 'nice' method.

This would explain the extravagance of the immortality mechanisms he's giving Hermione.

[-]MathMage10y160

Not quite an either/or--perhaps he's also testing the immortality mechanisms he will use on himself. It hadn't occurred to me, but he may not be as confident as he pretends to be about how the Stone and the troll/unicorn/Horcrux spells will interact. And it closely parallels his previous failure to test his Horcrux system.

3lerjj10y

Thanks for pointing out the false dilemma. I'm wondering whether he ever intended to kill Harry, specifically as to whether that gun is loaded. Does anyone remember anything in Parseltongue which stated explicit intent to kill? I note that this line is not in Parseltonge: The previous dialogue is in Parseltongue, and the dialogue ends after this. I'll go have a more critical look at earlier chapters but I'm predicting the gun in Harry's hand will go 'click'. EDIT: my mistake, Harry brought his own gun. I have a strong sense of literary disbelief that Harry managed to shoot Voldemort while his horcruxes were so conveniently down. If the gun is not suspect, then back up hypotheses are: Voldemort can deflect bullets OR Voldemort's horcruxes were in fact still working.

2[anonymous]10y

That's Harry's gun, not Voldemort's

0lerjj10y

Damn. I missed that hypothesis. I had been assuming that Harry had somehow gotten a hold of Voldemort's gun (somewhat confused as to how it was in his pouch though). But yes, that clearly fits the data better and of course both Riddles would have thought of muggle weapons in advance, especially General Chaos.

1MathMage10y

I don't think that's the same gun. And yeah, that line tripped my wires as well, but I think there are two more likely candidates for concealment than lack of intent to kill: -Lack of ability to kill -Whether there is a Headmaster of Hogwarts now (one can imagine a magically designated Interim Headmaster being immediately instated for the purpose of the wards)

1DanArmak10y

The old Headmaster isn't dead, just unreachable. It may be that noone has the access to the wards needed to become the new Headmaster.

[-]solipsist10y150

Then Harry took off his left shoe, and his left sock, and took off the toe-ring that was Hermione Granger, the Transfigured shape identical to the toe-ring that had been given Harry as an emergency portkey.

(Chapter 111)

"Dumbledore resumed his examination. Harry had to remove his left shoe, and take off the toe-ring that was his emergency portkey if someone kidnapped him and took him outside the wards of Hogwarts (and didn't put up anti-Apparition, anti-portkey, anti-phoenix, and anti-time-looping wards, which Severus had warned Harry that any inner-circle Death Eater would certainly do). It was verified that the magic radiating from the toe-ring was indeed the magic of a portkey, and not the magic of a Transfiguration. The rest of Harry was deemed clear."

(Chapter 94)

9b_sen10y

Before that meeting Harry fiddled briefly under his sheets. Maybe he took the Transfigured ring off and put the real one on at that time? Alternatively, he might have used a different hiding-place for Hermione back then and only Transfigured her into the toe-ring later.

3Vaniver10y

The primary alternate hypothesis--that Hermione was transfigured to be his glasses--also requires there to be a transfigured object in his room that no one notices. It's not a contradiction (since he would have the real ring and the Hermione ring, and wear the real one to visiting Dumbledore).

[-]Velorien10y120

The pain in Harry's scar flared as the naked girl's body lifted into the air, then flared again as dead leaves danced around her and she was clothed in the seeming of a Hogwarts uniform, though the trim was red instead of blue.

(...)

The girl in the white shift was surrounded by a blazing aura of silver fire, as the Patronus was born inside her.

Continuity error?

[-]mjr10y120

So we have the Alicorn princess resurrection and the power he knows not being Friendship, seeing as he could've discovered the flaw in his Horcrux 2.0 system only fitting one person by sharing it before...

1lerjj10y

I still hold out hope that 'the power he knows not' is an actual power. Friendship, or Love is so clichéd as to be actively off-putting. But yay for Hermiocorn!

[-]ChristianKl10y100

Hermoine is now partly an unicorn, which is the first step towards becoming an alicorn at the end of the story. She's also constantly self-transforming due to the troll power.

The basics for her going FOOM are set.

[-][anonymous]10y100

In case you are unaware, hyakuju montauk is a reference to this horrifying SCP. Hyakuju is Japanese for 110.

Blood Fort is probably Blood Fort Andromeda, the Nobel Phantasm of Rider in fate stay/night, where it was also used to threaten a school full of students.

Apokatastethi is apparently a biblical Greek hapax legomenon that means resurrection, as in the resurrection that is promised by Christianity during the end times. I think the phrase means, "restore, restore, restore the body for me" but my biblical Greek is even worse than my biblical Hebrew, and both are decades old.

8cousin_it10y

Bring back, bring back, oh bring back my body to me (to me). I wish I'd made that connection myself, but actually I got it from Reddit.

0linkhyrule510y

... oh dear gods I wish I had not made that connection. Um. I really really hope that's not indicative of how horrible what he did to Snape was...

0[anonymous]10y

It's probably even worse. The Foundation doesn't use magic in their containment protocols.

[-]linkhyrule510y90

While I'm not at all sure this is all real (we did end the last chapter with Harry staring into the Mirror, after all), Quirrell's continued NOPE-ing over Trelawney's star prophecy remains utterly hilarious.

It's like he thinks that his own life depends on Hermione Granger being alive, somehow.

For I would never want you to be deprived of Hermione Granger's counsel and restraint, not ever while the stars yet live.

snickers

1lerjj10y

What's interesting is the irony- he seems to think that Hermione can stop Harry making world domination choices. Harry. This is Voldemort here, and he genuinely believes that his nemesis, who is very much against death (even more so than him) is a greater threat to the world. And his solution: make sure he has friends. I neither see how Voldermort sees Harry as a more credible threat than himself, nor why he thinks Hermione is a better option than simply killing Harry.

0linkhyrule510y

Partially, blindness due to not wanting to be bored again. Friendship is magic and alicorn princesses :p. Partially, because he's not sure that he can kill Harry.

0lerjj10y

Is there any legitimate reason why a gun wouldn't work? I mean, I now strongly suspect it wasn't loaded, but in theory it should do. I admit the uncertainty as to how the horcrux system works could mean that killing Tom R. Jr is a bad idea.

2[anonymous]10y

This chapter made me suspect that Harry would be brought back by Voldie's horcrux network.

0linkhyrule510y

General prophecy shenanigans. There are now two different prophecies orbiting Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres, one of which certainly seems to imply that he's going to survive to destroy the world. Obvious, predictable solutions are likely to fail.

0lerjj10y

Do we have a source for prophecies coming true reliably? Back in ch 108 Quirrell seemed to think it possible to avert a prophecy.

0TobyBartels10y

ch 108 Sadly, I don't think that HPMOR is ever going to have a ch 208!

0lerjj10y

Fixed

0Gondolinian10y

Why? The gun that Voldemort was using to deter Harry was not the one shot at the end of the chapter; that gun came from his pouch.

1CodingHare10y

It's interesting that Voldemort is so attached to the idea of this restraining power Hermione has over Harry. Does Voldemort believe that this restraint weakens Harry significantly, by restricting him from making morally ambiguous choices? There's strong evidence that Harry shies away from evil solutions (Horcruxes are not a valid immortality method while they require human sacrifice), but he is certainly capable of morally neutral solutions. Hermione's emphasis on doing the Right Thing in all cases might strike Voldemort as a weakness he can then go on to exploit in his counterpart.

7linkhyrule510y

I think it's mostly because of Trelawney's prophecy. The second Hermione died, Trelawney blurts out: "HE IS HERE. THE ONE WHO WILL TEAR APART THE VERY STARS IN HEAVEN. HE IS HERE. HE IS THE END OF THE WORLD." Which, y'know. Is a tad ominous.

1MarkusRamikin10y

Maybe he's really worried about Harry breaking the Universe at some point like Quirrel'd been worrying about some chapters earlier, and yet for whatever reason Harry's too important for his future plans to just kill? Though I can't decide which idea leaves me less confused, that one, or just "ulterior motives, hidden because able to lie in parseltongue".

[-]garabik10y70

hypothesis: Voldemort is pretending to lose.

Everything he said and did about Hermione is true - he wants Harry to have restrains and a sidekick (and a true friend, but his is an emotion he knows not). He knows that Harry has the best chance to defeat death, and so the best course of action is to move to the background to live a safe, boring life, now with his horcrux network, new body with who-knows-what capabilities, Harry being one of the very few things in the world that can hurt/kill him. So if Harry will think Voldemort is finally dead...

Against this... (read more)

2DanArmak10y

Assume Voldemort is pretending his Horcrux network became Hermione's, and then lets Harry kill him. When Hermione wakes up, she will tell Harry she senses no Horcrux network. Granted, they won't kill her to test this, and because they don't know Voldemort's Horcrux rituals (and don't even have the Resurrection Stone ring), they will never be sure. But they will (should) suspect. I wonder if there is any way to test if someone has a Horcrux 2.0?

[-]Vaniver10y70

I think I have a better interpretation of this line than I did before:

"My great creation -" gasped Voldemort. His voice was high, sounding panicked. "Two different spirits cannot exist in the same world - it is gone, it is severed!

The "great creation" is a 'pocket world' where a spirit resides, and can possess anyone who touches a portal to it, and can perceive the world around the portals, and so on. As another feature of not testing the Horcrux system, Voldemort is unaware that it's limited to one inhabitant--and so when he introduces Hermione, he evicts himself. This is a terrible shock, and gives Harry the drop on him.

2lerjj10y

This seems viable. The line immediately preceding: This strongly suggests to me that he wanted to make Granger a horcrux (as in, a horcrux for Granger). This helps to pattern match with 'practising being nice' but as before, we meet the same confusion: If Voldemort is going to kill HP, why is he trying to make Hermione invincible? At least if this all ends well, Hermione really will be the stand-out witch of her generation. And the next.

0Gondolinian10y

One obvious possible implication of this is that if Harry did kill Voldemort's current body with the gun, Voldemort may be permanently dead. I guess we'll find out in 22 minutes...

[-]jimrandomh10y60

Harry saw it the instant the Confundus wore off, and the man's expression changed, becoming again the face of Professor Quirrell.

Did it really wear off completely? Voldemort's behavior from this moment forward seems... confunded.

[This comment is no longer endorsed by its author]Reply

[-]nitrat66510y50

Some obvious theorycrafting: (presuming, based on Hermione's resurrection, that Voldemort's plan is for Harry to rule the world): (note: Quirrel did mention once before in Parseltongue: plan iss for you to rule country, obvioussly.)

possibility 1 (The simple and obvious version where Voldemort finally makes a mistake): Original plan - Voldemort plays the role of antagonist or whatever while Harry rules the world openly. However, the horcrux network glitches when Voldie tries to plug Hermione in, and we get what we see (Voldie supposedly dead, Harry wins).

... (read more)

2nitrat66510y

I also 50% expect, that when Harry surveys the scene, an unbelievably improper voice in Harry's head says "Hey, we've got our primary companion back... and we've got some phat loot!" and then gets silenced with great prejudice.

[-][anonymous]10y40

Harry kept wand and bag. Obviously planned. Especially with words suspiciously similar to prophecy.

Why the 'true form' with the weird appearance? Unless perhaps that form came about via sacrificial rituals and thus must contain evidence of such sacrifices to retain power.

What kind of sacrificial advantage do you get by destroying your nose forever?

3Nornagest10y

For whatever reason, Riddle seems to be planning to do some more stuff with his Voldemort persona; otherwise he wouldn't have summoned his Death Eaters etc. It follows that he needs to keep his pantomime-villain appearance at least in the short term, since that's what his followers expect. I gather from the last few chapters (though I've suspected for a long time) that he didn't originally intend to look or behave like that long-term, that the form was chosen to match his deliberately over-the-top villain persona, but that he's stuck with it for the time being since the Death Eater thing has evolved beyond his expectations. Perhaps he'll eventually alter himself not to look like Nosferatu crossed with an extra from David Lynch's version of Dune, but that's something you'd want to do after you've reestablished your authority, not immediately after returning from a long absence and the decay of most of your network. Right now, the more Voldemort he can seem, the better.

1bramflakes10y

He looks like that in canon, for which I think the underlying meaning was from the idiom "cutting off ones' nose to spite ones' face". Not sure if it applies to HPMOR.

0DanArmak10y

At least now he can change his body any time he wants, with the Stone.

[-]jaime200010y40

"Power of unicorn'ss blood to presserve life makess excellent combination with troll'ss healing. Only Fiendfyre and Killing Cursse sshall girl-child fear, from thiss day."

What, not basilisk venom? In canon, that was also a way to destroy a horcrux.

I am also updating towards the theory that what we are seeing in this chapter and the last is some sort of illusion; either the mirror or hpmor!legilimency. The biggest piece of evidence against it is Eliezer's assurances that the story will not lie to us because he wants the plot to be solvable; he was very careful to point out that Draco's false memory was, in fact, false.

1TobyBartels10y

There may be no more basilisks.

0DanArmak10y

It does seem very unlikely that there is no magic which can kill both unicorns and trolls other than Fiendfyre and AK.

[-]Scott Alexander10y40

How is Voldemort resurrecting Hermione?

With his own resurrection, he's transfiguring stuff into his body, using the Stone to make the transfiguration permanent, then having his spirit repossess the body.

With Hermione, the body was never the problem. Where's he getting the spirit? How does the Stone help?

5b_sen10y

Harry's Patronus appears to have solved that problem, although we don't know how. "Not another Tom Riddle" suggests that it worked. Hermione's body needs significant repair, and the only way we know of for the repairs in question (once the person is dead) is permanent Transfiguration.

2DanArmak10y

The body still needed to be restored to the state of a complete and healthy body, and the Stone made it permanent.

1linkhyrule510y

Presumably, the body was repaired to true health - which also means that the brain was restored to its original state, that is, functional. At that point, a Muggle can be revived by simply restarting her heart. A witch, apparently, requires a bit of magic.

2Scott Alexander10y

But that suggests that you can resurrect someone non-permanently without the Stone - and possibly keep them alive indefinitely by expending constant magic on it like Harry does with his father's rock.

0linkhyrule510y

I would guess that the True Patronus would fail in that case, because it is no longer true that "the only thing wrong with this body is that it's dead."

2[anonymous]10y

Electricity and drugs would probably have produced muggle-Hermione. Probably the system doesn't assign new usernames to beings that appear out of thin air except for patroni, and Hermione's account is long-retired in any case.

-1ChristianKl10y

The brain contains all the necessary information, I don't think a "soul" is needed.

[-]Vaniver10y40

!!!

[-]DanArmak10y30

So, now Hermione is by far the most immortal person in the universe. She has troll's and unicorn's powers and Voldemort's Horcrux 3.0 network. (Although she doesn't have physical possession of the Resurrection Stone, at least not yet. I wonder if she will be able to sense all of Voldemort's horcruxes right away when she wakes up, or if she would need to know some extra spells for that.)

A troll heals by continuously transforming into its form. Does this mean Hermione will never age, because she will always transform into a 12-year-old body? On the plus side... (read more)

4Izeinwinter10y

Trolls grow up, so..

3ChristianKl10y

I don't there's a mention of trolls not aging. Given that Voldemort doesn't know how many horcruxes he has, I don't think he senses all of the horcruxes. Even without an unlimited store of energy it's not clear that the process is fast enough to keep 6 billion humans alive.

4Vaniver10y

Can you count three-digit numbers easily?

2Jost10y

Okay, now I want to read an Arithmancer/HPMoR crossover fic, wherein MathWiz!Hermione figures out the differential equations underlying the trolls’ constant self-transformation and then goes on to create a magical equivalent of genetically modified trolls … ETA: In fact, it’s clear that the process is not fast enough: Search chapter 111 for mentions of the word “minutes”!

0DanArmak10y

Yes, but she isn't a normal troll. Ah well, magic.

2imuli10y

Hermione can always transfigure herself older - possibly with help from the stone - if that becomes a problem.

0linkhyrule510y

Nnnnot quite. Remember, for Harry, part of defeating death is mass true resurrection. And the only method of resurrection Harry knows of requires a finite amount of his own life-force. (I suppose that may not apply to Muggles, though.) Also, he needs the body, which doesn't usually exist for anyone dead too long ago...

0DanArmak10y

I said he would defeat death if he got the Philosopher's Stone (and it didn't have a finite charge). It can be used to return any living or recently dead human to a healthy young state. Granted, Harry can't use it as fast as people die (roughly 2 people per second around the world). So he would still need to make more Stones.

7linkhyrule510y

Pretty much. It's not mass producible, is the problem here. It's a start, and a pretty good start at that, but it's not done.

[-]Izeinwinter10y30

Okay, either we are still running sims in the mirror, or Dumbledore hexed the ever loving fuck out of that cloak. Voldemort is acting like he just took an enormous dose of Bhal's.

Or.. he can't kill Harry, and knows it? It's plausible, as about a million people have suggested it that killing Harry would send him into Voldemort's horcruxen, which might be bad.. but no, there are lots of not-fatal at all ways of putting a stop to that prophecy...

3Astazha10y

Not killing Harry has been confusing me for a long time now. I still don't get it.

1fractalman10y

Agreed. While Voldemort has 'stated' the reason for not killing harry until now, it still feels...incomplete.

[-]Tenek10y30

So, random possible goals... make invincible, intelligent horcrux. Provoke Harry to attempted murder.

I am somewhat suspicious of announcing one's own vulnerability as opposed to just killing her in the half-second it takes for AK.

2imuli10y

One does not get put back 49 years hard work toward immortality every day.

[-]Epictetus10y20

I wonder: if phoenixes originally came from within the mirror, does that mean they can travel freely back and forth? If so, it may be possible that Fawkes can get Dumbledore out.

[-]solipsist10y20

Anyone else thinking that Dumbledore's divination power comes from a reflective "what if?" machine?

[-]Baughn10y20

I wonder if that was all acting. If it wasn't, then Hermione may now be very hard to kill indeed.

This can only be a good thing.

1Gondolinian10y

Except by AK and fiendfyre, both of which come easily to Voldemort, and the former can be cast by many experienced fighters.

4Jost10y

In canon (book 7, after looking for Ravenclaw’s diadem in the Room of Requirements) there is one example of Crabbe-or-Goyle (i.e. a below-average seventh year student) being able to cast fiendfyre. While he could be rather more well-versed than usual in dark spells, this presumably means that fiendfyre is not too hard to cast for experienced fighters, either.

0TobyBartels10y

Crabbe, if anybody cares.

1MarkusRamikin10y

You clearly haven't read some of the same manga as I have. (Though I won't be more specific because, well, infohazard.)

[-]MathMage10y10

Taking a short break from trying to figure out just what is going on...how do y'all think Hermione would feel if, assuming no levels of deception, she woke up to this scene?

8DanArmak10y

"Hi Hermione!" said Harry. "You remember the troll killing you, right? I swore a mighty oath to bring you back to life. To fulfill it I consulted with the world's foremost immortality expert. I'd like you to meet Dr. Tom Riddle."

2linkhyrule510y

Extremely confused. Worried for Harry, worried for Harry's morality, which immediately leads into "wait what exactly did they do to me*"?

2Astazha10y

Yeah, no one has actually consulted Hermione on whether she would like to be immortal. She might take it poorly even without factoring in her disapproval of the dark arts used to accomplish it. Adding that in, I don't think her reaction is going to be any version of "THIS IS AWESOME!"

0ChristianKl10y

Heavily disoriented.

[-]b_sen10y10

Some quick predictions before the next chapter, adding to my previous prediction comment:

Conditional on the Mirror being involved in a test meant to distinguish some subset of rationalists (not necessarily a proper subset) from other people, Harry will pass its test by the end of the story. 95% (See my previous prediction comment for why I think this is a sufficiently plausible hypothesis to condition on.)

Conditional on the Mirror being involved in a test meant to distinguish Light Rationalists from other people, Voldemort will not pass its test without s... (read more)

[-]Vaniver10y10

I don't expect the gun to work; it seems to me that if Voldemort had a ritual to give people properties of magical creatures, he would have given them to himself, and firing a gun at a troll three times would not be terribly effective. But would his body recreated from his blood through this ritual have those features? Uncertain. But shooting a troll three times would still give you enough time to close the distance, or cast a spell on him before he could fly away, or so on.

[edit] As people pointed out below, I forgot about the temporary nature of the spell without the stone.

It is also interesting that the horcrux spell can be cast for others (or is he doing other mind magic at the same time?).

[-]DanArmak10y110

Voldemort would not have given the properties to his body before now, because he had not had the Stone, and without its permanence effect, after a few hours the transferred properties would wear off.

He was overconfident in giving them to Hermione now, instead of to himself.

3Alsadius10y

Hermione needed them immediately, due to fears of Transfiguration sickness. Voldemort did not.

3b_sen10y

Voldemort also says that the subject sometimes dies when the properties wear off, so he has very good reason not to give them to his body earlier.

0DanielLC10y

He should have brought two trolls and two unicorns. Or maybe three, just to be safe.

3lerjj10y

I suspect that Hermione goes first, because that's how you test that this is a safe idea: you do something 'nice'. I dispute the use of others as guinea pigs as actually being nice, though. Even when there are positives to them.

0Vaniver10y

I suggested as much last Saturday, but I was expecting him to do normal transfiguration and then make it permanent with the stone. When it was a ritual that he already knew, I assumed that he had already done it to himself--forgetting that it was temporary without the stone.

2RomeoStevens10y

remember that spell is considered temporary without the P.stone according to Voldemort.

0ChristianKl10y

The ritual only works permanently because he has the stone. He likely would have later transfered troll power to himself but I don't think he has the time at the moment.

[-]Epictetus10y00

Either Voldemort has something up his sleeve or canon-Harry's power to summon a deus ex machina are finally starting manifest.

EDIT: Seems to be the former.

[-]solipsist10y00

More than any chapter so far, this one makes me worry that the story will not have a happy ending.

[-]ChristianKl10y00

Given that Hermoine is the toe ring, what's up with the glaces?

2Shaedys10y

That might still just be an ordinary rock, though my confidence in that is not very high as my past results at predicting hpmor have been rather unsuccesful.

0LauralH10y

Red herring.

[-]linkhyrule510y00

On a side note - Blood Fort sacrifice, hm? *amused*

"Fal-Tor-Pan" similarly, though I had to Google that one.

0[anonymous]10y

That's the only one I recognized instantly. Good old Star Trek...

[-]DanielLC10y00

I'm curious where Harry got the gun. Unless it's some kind of railgun, the bullets can't be safely transfigured. Perhaps he asked one of the professors to get it for him. While given guns to children is normally incredibly dangerous, it's par for the course in Hogwarts.

4Gondolinian10y

Remember back when Harry asked the Weasley twins to get him an unspecified muggle artifact? Many have speculated that it might have been a gun.

2ChristianKl10y

There was a section about him sending out someone else to buy Muggle items. A gun seems a straightforward item.

2Nornagest10y

Getting a handgun in Britain is not straightforward, although I suppose wizards would have certain advantages in this department.

5topynate10y

It was considerably easier before the Dunblane massacre (1996).

3b_sen10y

He did tell Fred and George that their contact might have to go outside Britain for some of the items, so...

0ChristianKl10y

Wizards can travel quite fast via appariting and the floo network. They might have brought it at another country.

2Vaniver10y

It's probably one of the Muggle items that Fred and George provided for him.

0mjr10y

He ordered it from Fred and George earlier when he handed them a huge list of stuff for contingencies.

[-]MarkusRamikin10y00

Suggestion: fewer threads, more chapters per thread. Chapters aren't separated by weeks like we're used to.

5Vaniver10y

There was a vote on this a few threads back. It's not clear that we need a revote.

4[anonymous]10y

The current arrangement is the result of a previous suggestion for more threads, fewer chapters per thread.

[-]aleksiL10y00

Harry pulled the trigger. Bang or click?

What happens if you AK someone keyed to the horcrux 2.0 network?

Prediction: If Hermione is AK'd, her soul will be shunted to the network. There will be no death burst and Voldemort's horcruxing attempt fails. Then things get interesting.

0DanArmak10y

They are now outside the castle. Quirrel should just Apparate away, kill a random wizard, create a horcrux, and take his network back.

[-]MathMage10y00

Prediction: Voldemort ends up in Hermione's super-immortal body and claims it doesn't break his promise because Harry was the one who triggered it. This scenario is the only explanation I can think of for why Voldemort is prioritizing Hermione's body over his own, giving Harry all his options back, advertising his moment of weakness, and generally behaving like a second-rate Hollywood villain. Confidence: 25%.

[This comment is no longer endorsed by its author]Reply

6Vaniver10y

So, Voldemort has two approaches to the "prevent Harry from destroying the universe" plan. First is killing Harry, second is turning Harry away from destructive paths. He might reasonably be uncertain of how the first plan will work. Harry is Tom Riddle, and that means killing Harry might just put him in the Horcrux system, and now Good Tom and Bad Tom are having a psychic battle instead of a physical or a magical one. Given that Bad Tom has the upper hand in physical and magical battles, being reluctant to fight a psychic battle instead seems appropriately cautious. The second plan involves niceness, which Voldemort is not very practiced at. It does have the upside of having another sane individual to play chess with, and with Hermione keeping Harry from doing anything too crazy the stars are safe (indeed, safer, because now there's a second Riddle working to improve things). But, more importantly, because Voldemort hasn't tried this one much before, he doesn't know how and when to expect it to go wrong. So he makes rookie mistakes.

0MathMage10y

This would explain mistakes particular to being nice, like fortifying Hermione's body first, but it does not explain more general errors like letting Harry keep his wand and pouch.

0Vaniver10y

"Hey, long term ally! I'm going to make your friend immortal because I'm a guy that's profitable to work with! But first strip naked and give me your wand."

0MathMage10y

He already did that. After he absorbed the lesson about being nice. So I still don't see how being nice explains away these errors.

0Vaniver10y

In an alternate universe that no longer exists. (That is, Ch. 109 is different now.) I do agree that a retcon is involved makes that less probable. But in the intervening minutes I've thought of a better explanation: Voldemort is thinking about a new and difficult subject, and that's consuming enough of his attention that he is making general errors. Overall, the plausibility relative to the alternate theories--that Voldemort is pretending to lose--is indeed low. But given the fearsomeness of an intelligent Dark Lord, basically the only hope that Harry has is somehow surprising Voldemort, and this surprise seems more plausible than a partial transfiguration surprise.

2DanArmak10y

If he wanted that, he could have achieve it directly by transfiguring his own body to look like Hermione's and using the troll and unicorn on himself.

1ChristianKl10y

He might fail the ideological turing test for being Hermoine.

0DanArmak10y

But how is that different from ending up in Hermione's body via Horcrux?

0Alsadius10y

It allows for honesty in Parseltongue when hinting at his plan earlier.

1lerjj10y

He says in Parseltongue that his reason is to for her to help Harry. I don't believe Harry's fears about perfect Occlumens, because Slytherin would have known about their existence and not made such a mistake (I'm putting 90% on Parseltongue being a secure communications method between Voldie and Harry).

0MathMage10y

Hm. I did not properly account for that. Specifying "girl-child friend's counsel and restraint" and "that she is a part of this world for you to care about" is definitive in that Voldemort intends to restore Hermione as Hermione. For my theory to work, this would have to be a long-term gambit that Harry has made immediate; but this would not explain why Voldemort has made so many tactical, i.e. short-term, errors. So I agree this is strong evidence against my prediction. New confidence: 1%. EDIT: If someone can explain how to add strikethrough to my original confidence, that would be helpful.

1linkhyrule510y

You can retract your entire post in the bottom-right corner.

0MarkusRamikin10y

Hm... this isn't a dig at you or anything, just a thought I'm having trouble answering for myself right now, but how low does one get to set the probability of a prediction, and still call it a prediction? At which point - seems it's not 50% - should you rather say "I'm predicting this won't happen?"

5linkhyrule510y

If your prediction is lower than 50%, what you're really saying is, "Of all the hypotheses I that have been elevated to my attention, this one is most likely; however, I am so uncertain that I am more likely to be wrong than right." Or in other words, to paraphrase Eliezer, I'm fairly sure that random person's name isn't Klein, but I'm very sure it's not Ktlzybplq.

[-]Alsadius10y100

I've spent too long on LW, I think - I saw "Ktlzybplq" and assumed it was rot13.

0TobyBartels10y

It's almost Mxyzptlk.

0[anonymous]10y

Heh, had the same thing. I already figured it wouldn't be rot13, but I was still uncertain enough that I went and checked.

2MathMage10y

Imagine that Eliezer has 100 possible ways to complete this puzzle. 25% means that the combined weight of all the other possibilities outweighs the one I've outlined, but I am still privileging the one significantly over a typical possibility. (However, lerjj has convinced me that I was most likely wrong to do so.)

0MarkusRamikin10y

Right. What I was thinking, except for some reason I had a complete block on putting that thought into words. Thanks.

1Vaniver10y

It seems like it would be determined by the relevant maximum entropy distribution.

0ChristianKl10y

It's useful to be able to simply focus on probability values it makes things less complicated than always having to shift when the probability goes beyond 50%.

[-]Tenek10y00

Fantasy / Double Shyamalan

[-]b_sen10y00

So it looks like some of Harry's magic is on the diary for whatever reason, because Voldemort casting a spell on the diary sets off the resonance hard. Did Harry cast a spell on it earlier?

9Phigment10y

Harry cast a spell on Hermione just minutes prior. A spell imbuing her with his magic and life force, which would never return to him. I imagine that's what cause the resonance reaction.

2Vaniver10y

I think Voldemort thought of that:

0b_sen10y

True, but then Voldemort performed magical rituals on Hermione. I imagine that ritual magic would also count as magic interacting, although it's possible that it doesn't. It's also possible that the Patronus is somehow protective from whatever Dark magic Voldemort just attempted (and needed to kill Quirrell for). Good point, in any case.

2Phigment10y

You're right, I would expect the troll and unicorn merges to have caused interaction. Hmm. Seems, then, like the resonance is more a complication of doing unusual things with the horcrux ritual than a matter of Voldemort's magic affecting Harry, per se.

3lerjj10y

Maybe the final spell is the alicorn Princess spell, and the resonance was caused on a meta-level by the literary gods.

0GeraldMonroe10y

Why does he need to create a Horcrux immediately? Theory : Each horcrux, even with Voldemort's modified ritual, is just a snapshot of Voldemort's mind-state at the instant the horcrux was made. What Voldemort has somehow managed using magic is to interconnect all these Horcruxes into a network, and build some kind of non-biological system to "run" his personality based on the snapshots. This explains why he was able to observe the stars and think about his mistakes for 8 years until someone touched one of his horcruxes. Somehow, his network sends only the presentMindState to the body it hijacks. This is how I assumed, previously, that Harry might defeat him. Since magic thinks he's got the same identifiers as Voldemort, is Harry is killed a moment after voldemort is, his mind should become the "top" element in the stack of memory states that is Voldemort's horcrux network. I would assume that he would have access to all of the knowledge in the lower states, but as the top, canonical state, he would have control when Voldemort respawns. As it is, I'm guessing the respawned Voldemort after he's killed by magical resonance will lack the mind state changes since his last horcrux.

[-]Izeinwinter10y110

Voldemort isn't that good a coder - It's a continually updating system, that loads his present mindstate onto the entire system.. And he just rekeyed it to Hermione. All backups and lore: Gone.

Dumbledore loaded the cloak with Bhals stupefication, didn't he? Some delivery mechanism that only tiggered when worn by an adult. Hence the mad cackling and very poor plan for stopping Harry from breaking the universe <,<

8Phigment10y

This is a completely excellent suggestion. Dumbledore, knowing that Harry was an expected pawn in Voldemort's plans, just booby-traps all the personal possessions that Voldemort would logically want to deprive Harry of, like the cloak, his wand, his pouch, his time-turner, Hermione's corpse... In the same vein, booby-trap the Philosopher's stone. Coat it in a fine layer of contact poison, so that anyone who managed to retrieve it from the mirror and handled it with bare skin would get whammied. Then, if you actually win, wear gloves.

0Alsadius10y

Is poison really a good attack against someone who holds the Philosopher's Stone?

2Phigment10y

Depends on the poison. If it's something that prevents the poisoned person from noticing he has been poisoned, sure. Doesn't matter if you could fix the problem, if your brain has been prevented from realizing there IS a problem. Alternately, if the "poison" is some sort of deleterious transfiguration effect upon the subject, which the stone will immediately make permanent, it would be hilarious. Snape, at least, thinks this way. Remember his attempt spike Voldemort's resurrection components with LSD?

1linkhyrule510y

It is if the poison's effect is to make the person a complete drooling moron. Google Bahl's Stupefaction, and then Idiot Ball.

0GeraldMonroe10y

I agree that Voldemort seems to be holding the idiot ball this chapter. With that said, you'd kind of expect an immortal god-wizard who's 10 steps ahead to be buffed with poison and magic protections up the wazoo, etc.

1Phigment10y

My thought was that his personalized horcrux spell tied whoever it was used upon to the horcrux network he built. Therefore, by using it on Hermione, instead of having two parallel horcrux immortals, Hermione's mind was connected to his network, and he was disconnected. This was not something he had ever examined in detail, because it never occurred to him to spread his horcrux method around before.

0DanielLC10y

If Voldemort just gave Hermione a horcrux, how does he plan on killing her and using her for a horcrux.

0Alsadius10y

He presumably planned on killing Harry, or just Apparating somewhere and killing a random person.

[-]linkhyrule510y-20

...

Seriously, EY? You split it up into two chapters just for that? -.-

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