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loserthree80

Is Theodore Nott wearing his scary face because he learned it was a good idea to do so in Chaos, or because there is also a conspiracy of Green Slytherin: those who can cast Avada Kedavra, the green spell?

Harry courted the company of both Draco and Hermione. He adjusted his presentation to meet their expectations, as he understood them. Draco could be doing the same because why have one secret power base when you could have two?

I don't consider this terribly likely. It came up in that pattern-matching way, but feels like it's needlessly complicated.

Hopefully someone else can undermine it more decisively or support it better.

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Watercressed30

First-years can't cast AK for reasons of raw magical power, so an organization of first-years can't use the Killing Curse as a membership criteria.

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15EternalStargazer
Even ignoring the rest of the post, the idea of a Green Slytherin based off of Avada Kedavra is interesting for many reasons. Let's look at some of the implications: * Avada Kedavra and the Patronus Charm (2.0) are basically mutually exclusive. In order to cast the first, you must want someone dead for the sake of being dead, and in order to cast the latter you must value all life to the point of denying death altogether. * Avada Kedavra and the Patronus Charm (2.0) cancel each other out. We saw this in Azkaban, and at the time we probably assumed it was just a result of Quirrell and Harry's magic going out of control, but on closer inspection it seems that both simply destroy the other, matter and antimatter style, which makes sense considering what type of magic they are created from. A magically created preference for death over life, and a magically created preference for life over death. * They both also follow the political lines, as you mention above. Avada Kedavra is more likely to be known and cast by those desperate for someone to hate, and the True Patronus is more likely to be cast by those who are trying to cooperate, simply because those mindsets are more likely to lead to those specific preferences. * Now that I think about it, the two groups are also the 'Cooperators' and the 'Defectors' in the Prisoner's Dilemma. * The interesting question is if they are going to devolve into standard Green vs Blue political idiocy. If Harry has a controlling power, they may not, but I don't think Draco has progressed enough as a rationalist to be able to avoid all those old lessons yet. There is probably more here, but I need to sit down and think for five minutes, and do a quick read through of the archives.
0[anonymous]
I like the thought, because awesome complications & pattern-matching. I also really hope it doesn't exist. It seems more likely that Jugson would have started such a faction.
See in context
by Vaniver
1 min read
310

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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 98. 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.

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.

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Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 27, chapter 98
5bramflakes
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[-]EternalStargazer360

Well, this chapter is just full of delicious puns, apart from the entire plot advancement thing.

Auxiliary Protective Special Committee.

APSC

Absurdly Powerful Student Council.

Daphne worried that Draco would be skinned and turned into Leather Pants.

Draco returns "at the turn of the tide" wearing white (silver) robes. He's Draco the White.. err.. Silver.

Considering the short length of the chapter, and combined with the call forward to Book V's Ministerial Education Decrees, that's a good number of references.

The real question is where does it go from here.

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[-]undermind300

Where it goes from here: If the enemy actually wants to defeat this coalition, nothing happens. This is a temporary alliance against an outside threat, and if said threat goes away, the alliance will probably collapse of its own accord. (It may bring some lasting changes to the leadership of Hogwarts, but people will chafe against the strict security, and old and new grudges will emerge, and the coalition will break.)

If the enemy has been breeding Harry/Draco as the future leader of Magical Britain (much more likely), they will continue to attack or otherwise be active, probably conceding many victories to the new Kids' Coalition.

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1WalterL
Well said. I do think there's a difference between the enemy setting up Harry and Draco as future leader though. If they wanted Draco, well and done, and they'll do as you say. If they want Harry to lead, however, they are unlikely to be thrilled with his new role of invisible assassin.
0gattsuru
That may depend on who wants Harry to lead. To Canon!Voldemort, invisible assassin was a sort of leadership. To HPMoR!Dumbledore, not as much, albeit still more so than most. On the other hand, Yudkowsky takes the strong version of Aumann's agreement theorem. To Rationalist!Harry, the person matters less than the rationality and the priors. What Quirrelmort wants... that's more complicated.
0Baughn
Draco as future leader? Well, that just means Harry is the power behind the throne. Which, to be fair, is pretty much correct.
0ChristianKl
Over the long run Harry wants to be a scientist and no politician.
3Fermatastheorem
World dom... er, optimization doesn't include politics?
1fractalman
He thinks draco is much more suited to dealing with the politics, and that it's much less work to optimize draco's morals and hand power to him than to figure out how to navigate a political atmosphere for himself. To put it crudely, harry plans to use draco as a puppet.
0mjr
But no doubt as a strong puppet ;)
0hairyfigment
What if they want a more assassin-like version of Harry to lead? I think an intelligent enemy won't consider Draco, or the manipulation thereof, much of an obstacle. But yes, it could irritate such a person.
5Shmi
And its elite SS (Silver Slytherin) troops?
4CAE_Jones
Silver Slytherin reminds me of the Silver Snakes (one of the teams on Legend of the Hidden Temple), though that particular alliteration and image-matching could very easily have been generated independently given there's a literal silver snake in the room.
[-]jefftk250

it was the reason for the old tradition of the Noble families synchronizing the birth of their heirs, to put them in the same year of Hogwarts, if they could

This is a nice solution to "magical Britain is much too small for Hogwarts to be this big" and "why is everyone important in Harry's class?". Go cicadas!

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[-]undermind140

It reads like a very forced solution - there would be significant gains to one noble house going against the tradition, so their heir could have several years of Hogwarts students rally behind them - and also kind of impossible to implement, given that we don't know much about their birth control methods, and the Noble Houses are unlikely to all marry at the same time etc.

That said, the HP universe which Eliezer took on as his setting is full of such bugs, and this is a reasonable patch.

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[-]drethelin150

Several years of poor commoners are not worth weakening alliances with great houses

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1undermind
For most people, probably not, but having the support of the masses might be more valuable for a house that is either not a major player among the existing alliances, or not going to win any friends anyway (such as Malfoy).
5atorm
The House of Malfoy seems to win friends among Slytherin very easily.
4Desrtopa
That doesn't make it impossible to implement, it just means it draws on implicit background information we don't have access to. Considering the edges that wizards appear to have on muggles in terms of medical care, I suspect that not only do they have access to effective magical contraception, they also have access to magical methods of conception promotion.
4loup-vaillant
Chapter 78 Apparently, contraception isn't always used 7th year students. I count that as mild evidence that contraception, magical or otherwise, isn't widespread in the magical world. Methods of conception promotion are probably just as rare —though if they exist at all, Great Houses are likely to use them.
1Desrtopa
If contraception is significantly less widespread among wizards than among muggles, then considering their quality of medical care, their population seems anomalously low.
1loup-vaillant
Maybe we could explain it by magical risks, and violence. I wouldn't be surprised if wizard kill each other more than muggles. With old-fashioned manners, may come old fashioned violence. The last two wars (Grindelwald and Voldemort), were awfully close, and it looks like the next one is coming. If all times and all countries are the same, with a major conflict every other generation, it could easily explain such a low population.
8Velorien
I think this point merits more extensive discussion. A few observations: * Wizards can learn shielding spells fairly freely, whereas the average muggle has no counter to a gun, and little they can do even against melee weapons unless they have sufficient self-defense training. * Underage magical violence is restricted by the Trace - it is considerably harder for magically-powered youth gangs to exist within magical Britain if powerful and merciless authorities (cf. Harry's treatment during the Dementor incident) are instantly alerted whenever they cast a spell. * While wizard forensics are generally laughable, a simple spell will reveal the last spells cast by a person's wand, and few people have multiple wands (since the things are apparently horribly expensive, among other reasons). This is a significant deterrent to the use of magic for illegal purposes that are likely to draw attention, such as murder. (I assume that it reveals more than the single most recent spell, since that would make it useless against anyone smart enough to cast a quick breath-freshening charm after their misdemeanours). * The last war at least was allegedly marked by most of the population of magical Britain cowering in their homes while a few brave champions fought on their behalf. The Death Eaters, meanwhile, only numbered fifty or so. That doesn't sound like it should result in a high casualty level relative to the total magical population. * Wizards are exceptionally resilient, and can survive all manner of injuries that would kill a muggle ten times over (cf. Neville Longbottom). In addition, magical healing is outstanding.
-4Eugine_Nier
That depends on how often they have sex, which depends on the relevant culture.
2ChristianKl
I guess there should be spells for that purpose ;)
7Luke_A_Somers
I see it as a solution to the latter, but the former? I'd heard rather the opposite problem.
[-]MarkusRamikin200

I don't quite get it. Why are children making all these announcements, and not a member of the faculty or the Board? Why is Susan Bones giving orders to an Auror? (And why is nobody rolling their eyes at all the trying-to-be-cool?)

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[-]William_Quixote620

I think that people may be confused as to what's happening with this announcement.

The early phase details of the agreement were negotiated first between Harry and Lucius. Harry represented house Potter here because he's the entirety of house Potter. Lucius negotiated with Harry because Harry (as the boy who lived) has a lot of clout and credibility and he offered to throw that behind Draco. On an emotional level, HP also offers revenge against whoever attacked Draco and the possibility of revenge against Dumbledore.

Step two, the adults negotiate amongst themselves. In this second phase Lucius goes to the board of Governors with the agreement he and Harry made as a starting point.

The Knott and Greengrass votes are naturally inclined to go with Malfoy by faction alliance. Knott is also incentivized to go with the plan for other reasons. His son is a friend and chief lieutenant of Harry Potter. That's a potentially very valuable connection, but its a connection that can't be used when the votes are split death eater v Dumbledore. Realignment effectively "monetized" that asset. Greengrass doesn't have that and so asks for a few sweeteners on its deal. Also, the plan reduce... (read more)

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8Gurkenglas
-Knott+Nott, -Juergen+Jugson.
7bogdanb
I agree with your analysis, but I also thought this was intended as a straightforward signal to the other students that “we have to fight for ourselves” is not just the usual adult “lording over” the kids. I think it was meant to reinforce solidarity, defuse instinctive teenage rebellion against “the adults’ rules”, and also reinforces the message that the professors are no longer to be trusted to handle things.
4Sheaman3773
This makes sense, but thinking along the same lines, I would see a lot of the upperclassmen getting upset at being told what to do by firsties.
2bogdanb
I wouldn’t be surprised if it did happen, at least once or twice. After all, it happened with the adults too, e.g. Juergen or whatever his name was.
2buybuydandavis
Plausible deniability for the adults, who have a shared interest in the welfare of their children, but have otherwise been opposed and have a lot of mistrust to overcome. It's a first step they can back out of without losing face.
7ChristianKl
Harry and Draco make a power play to illustrate that they can make the anouncements and Dumbledore doesn't have the power.
7TobyBartels
I particularly liked going to the other side of the room.
4EternalStargazer
Because these are children who have been force-matured by both becoming (kind of fake) child soldiers and death, because the agreement specifically was created by two of said children, because all of the parents have other things to do, because the children are already there, because part of the theme of the first half of this story if you remember was "Children are people too, and not subhuman simply because of their age". Susan Bones is giving the Aurors orders because it is her Aunt that runs the Auror office. She's basically the stand-in. The kids are the few actually sane people in Hogwarts.
8MarkusRamikin
Oh, sure, I'm not saying the kids aren't capable of performing the actions they did. What I'm wondering about is why the rest of the world is playing along. Even if these children - 11 year olds if I have that right - are the sanest people in Hogwarts, does the Hogwarts faculty recognize this, and the Auror office, and the Board of Governors, and their own parents? Or are all these people magically aware of the story theme that you mentioned, and the title of the last few chapters. I don't think that's how police forces generally work...
9EternalStargazer
It isn't, but keep in mind that this is still a pseudo feudal system, which still has existent Noble families with laws favoring them on the books. In a feudal system, that is absolutely how a 'police' (private army) force actually works. If you're the Prince, you can command them. In such a system, it wouldn't seem as strange that the daughter of the house is giving the commands. You'll notice they also all announce themselves by House first. As an aside, if you are Amelia Bones, and you have to give one person preferential treatment, control, and ease of communication with your Aurors (and by extension, yourself), who do you pick from the group of kids who are making the announcement? Which one do you trust most?
7MarkusRamikin
You have a point.
3PhilGoetz
Possibly it's to suggest that if a group proclaims its own authority to act, and acts with certainty, most people will go along with it.
1loserthree
By this point in the year most if not all of them are probably 12. The difference between 11 and 12 might only matter to an 11- or 12-year-old, but you probably didn't have that right, for whatever that's worth.
-2anotherblackhat
I notice you are confused. I think you've made two questionable assumptions; Assumption 1. Wizard Children are not generally treated as competent at age 11. Assumption 2. The children making the announcement at Hogwarts are responsible for brokering the deal. I.e. they aren't just mouthpieces for their respective families. Assumption 2b. The Hogwarts staff is aware of 2. Assumption 1 might be true - but I note that the age of majority has been increasing over time, and wizarding society is in many ways old timey. It seems reasonable to me that allowing a child of 12 to command a wizarding army is no stranger in wizard society than allowing David Farragut to command a ship at age 12 was during the war of 1812. Also, we haven't seen the reactions of the wizarding world in general - maybe everyone who isn't on the Hogwarts staff is scandalized. For that matter, maybe the staff is too, they're just not openly scandalized. But assumption 2 seems completely wrong to me, and likely the main source of the confusion.
6MarkusRamikin
^ Don't do that. No, I'm not assuming that children brokered the deal, but I can see that it may have looked that way, especially if you miss the context (that I was responding to the specific things EternalStargazer said). To some extent, yeah, wizard children are, and are treated as being, more competent than muggle children. But there's still a very real difference between an adult and a child. For example, Harry Potter still needs a legal guardian. And I assume that McGonaggal's "She is a twelve-year-old girl, Albus!" isn't strongly atypical. Anyway, no matter how mature they are (read the various dorm and SPHEW scenes for some sanity checks on that idea), they still don't have any authority; there are people whose responsibility is to make announcements such as these, and to have the kids do all this posing instead makes it a bit farcical to me. I think if they really wanted to, the parties involved could make this happen, but why would they want to? I don't expect the world to be scandalized, I just expect some eye-rolling and mild incredulity. Not something you want if you're making a political move and want to be taken seriously. But hey, I'm one of the probably small minority of readers who've never quite accepted things like, say, how easily Harry Potter gets away with being rude to Dumbledore.
4TobyBartels
Did Susan really give the Aurors any real orders, or just notify them that it was their cue to do as her mother had previously instructed?
2ikrase
Also because these children have the initiative and at least three of them are nobles.
6linkhyrule5
This is the big one. Child or not, if you're noble you're a Big Deal, so long as you have the backing of the rest of your family.
[-]Velorien100

Seconded. It is repeatedly implied in MoR that a noble child is, by default, a legitimate representative of their family, and anything that they do, or is done to them, is as if it was done by/to the family. For example, noble Slytherins get private chambers, even though they've done nothing to earn them within the context of the school's own regulations. Pretty much everything Draco does is considered to be a reflection on the House of Malfoy. It is considered natural for prepubescent children to know spells and rules of challenge designed for formal duels between noble houses.

In general, Rowling's universe assigns improbable values of agency and responsibility to children (socially speaking), and Eliezer only enhances this trend. Let's not forget that the Wizengamot doesn't blink an eyelid at sentencing a twelve-year old girl to die of slow torture for her crimes, or at a twelve-year old boy spontaneously giving away one of Britain's bigger fortunes to settle a blood debt. Death is an acceptable risk in exchange for having your child study at a wizarding school, with Hogwarts's no-deaths-for-fifty-years being seen as an amazing exception rather than a reasonable standard. Powerful magics are taught to children as soon as they are physically and mentally capable of casting them, with no reference to issues of maturity.

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5gattsuru
This may reflect the relatively slower pace of cultural development inside the Wizarding World : it's actually a rather recent change for young children to be treated as Western Civilization treats them. There are still people alive today who remember being allowing to carry rifles to school, as long as they kept the guns in their lockers between classes.
2Sheaman3773
Erm, to be fair, they most certainly do blink an eye:
2Velorien
There are many plausible explanations for that other than Harry's age, though. I suspect they'd have reacted the same way were he an adult giving a way his entire fortune in one fell swoop to save a Muggleborn attempted murderer.
2Sheaman3773
Freely acknowledged. I was just pointing out that they didn't react with aplomb.
-4Eugine_Nier
I don't see how that follows from your example.
3Velorien
Noble Slytherins are accorded privileges based on their noble status, thus being treated as representatives of their noble families, rather than just children who happen to have important parents and have to earn things on their own merit (as non-noble children would).
-2Eugine_Nier
You seem to be confusing two things. 1) Children inheriting some of their parents' status. 2) Children being able to speak on behalf of their house.
3Velorien
I think you are bringing "parents" into this unnecessarily. If there were Gryffindor noble chambers, I doubt anyone would deny one to Harry on the grounds that he was an orphan. Conversely, if a hypothetical Malfoy of lesser parentage (a cousin X removed, perhaps) were to enter Hogwarts, I doubt they would be denied noble chambers because their parents were low down within the Malfoy hierarchy. For as long as they bore the Malfoy name, any discourtesy to them would be considered an insult to the House of Malfoy. It's not about inheriting parents' status, it's about membership of a noble house. Membership of a noble house confers the right to noble chambers where they exist. It confers a bunch of legal rights, as we saw with the Wizengamot, which again are not restricted to adults. It apparently also confers the right to speak on behalf of the house. Most children do not do so, probably because they have no reason to, and are aware that they will get into terrible trouble if they end up saying anything that embarrasses their house. On the other hand, someone like Draco, who has been groomed for this sort of thing extensively, never for a moment hints that his words don't carry the full authority of his house (and is ever mindful of what his father will think of his words and actions as a result).
-4Eugine_Nier
He's still inheriting their status. The fact that they're dead is immaterial. Being a Malfoy is apparently higher status than being a commoner. One of these things is not like the others. Being a US citizen also confers a lot of rights. That doesn't mean you have the right to negotiate treaties on behalf of the US.
2drethelin
this also rubbed me hella wrong.
1Rukifellth
This also bothered me- no matter what reasoning I read here, I'll still regard this scene in the same light as the now removed scene where Harry Potter walks up to the Sorting Ceremony while the Weasley Twins play the freaking Ghost Busters theme.
0MarkusRamikin
I confess I liked the Ghostbusters scene. I guess the difference is that Gred and Forge goofing around (as part of their scheme to keep Harry Potter on the Light Side), and Dumbledore playing along (as part of his crazy old wizard act) makes sense to me. :) Nobody is trying to be taken seriously there. And it certainly makes more sense than what's left of the chapter now that the song was pruned out...
1Carinthium
Probably a plot hole, but I'll try to fill it in: Harry is trying to build alliances that will last among the children rather than their parents, and Lucius appreciates Draco having a moment of glory. Between them, they can get whatever the hell they want in terms of symbolic gestures from their 'allies'.
[-]kilobug190

Am I the only one with the feeling that it's just too easy, too fast ? Harry uniting all of Hogwarts and most of Magical Britain, despite generation old hostilities, remaining hatred from a war that only ended 10 years ago, personal quarrels, and frontal opposition in terminal values (I don't see how persons sharing Dumbledore ethics can so easily accept to side with wizards who just voted to torture to death a 11yo girl, nor how blood purists can easily side with muggleborn).

I can get Harry, the ultra-rational boy who wants to save Hermione at all cost putting back his rightful horror at siding with people who voted to send her to Azkhaban, but I just can't see how the whole magical Britain letting aside their personal quarrels, hatred, and value conflicts that easily, just for one death, especially since "that still made Hogwarts safer than Beauxbatons, let alone Durmstrang".

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[-]DanArmak140

The alliance is so far just in the Hogwarts board, not in the Wizengamot. Perhaps they feel it's a limited alliance with a limited purpose, and can be broken off if the purpose at hand changes - safety of the students in Hogwarts.

Even so, I agree that we haven't seen what exactly the people outside Lucius's faction and the House of Greengrass got as an inducement to enter the alliance.

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[-]Protagoras110

I've felt like the whole story is too fast, but there are apparently reasons EY wanted to cram the story into a single year. To have only one defense professor? To avoid having to deal with Harry's sex life? I'm not quite sure what all the reasons are (I imagine they're multiple, and that some have probably been mentioned by EY and I'm forgetting), but while I think I would have preferred having Harry develop over 7 years as in canon instead of solving everything as an 11 year old, it's obvious that as the story is actually set up some things just are going to have to happen implausibly quickly.

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0Viliam_Bur
Perhaps the reason is that a rationalist wouldn't waste time. A superior mind does not need 7 years to conquer the world with magic. It just needs to find the ways to recursively self-improve and then... FOOM!
4Eugene
That fine, except a perfect rationalist doesn't exist in a bubble, nor does Harry. Much of what's making the story feel rushed isn't Harry's actions, but rather the speed at which those actions propagate among people who are not rational actors. Harry is not an above-human-intelligence AI with direct access to his source code. Therefore he cannot "FOOM", therefore he's stuck with a world that is still largely outside his ability to control, no matter how rational he is.
2gjm
If that's the reason, then any implausibility in how rapidly it happened (I mean, aside from any that's the result of the people involved being wizards, Harry being superintelligent, etc.) is (weak) evidence against those claims about what a superior mind would do.
5linkhyrule5
This is just starting. Harry has little formal power right now; ditto Draco. And while this alliance is landmark and a place to start, it's also for the explicit purpose of dealing with Mr. Childkiller - it won't hold up under any other circumstance, half the people still loathe each other, etc. This is a very important move, but it's nowhere near the last one.
1ShardPhoenix
I think it's partly a matter of moving the story along so we can finally get to the end.
1Carinthium
Hypothesis: Perhaps the alliance is temporary, and to limited aims, at this point? Less likely from a narrative standpoint, but from a suspension-of-disbelief perspective maybe the Imperius Curse is about. In the first possibility it would be less about Hermoine's death, and more about the behind-the-scenes balance of power having drastically shifted (though the death makes a nice pretext) and about the threats and concessions we haven't seen yet making it possible. In the second, this would be I Notice I am Confused, part two. From an OOC perspective I doubt either sadly, but from an IC perspective we can't rule it out yet.
4bramflakes
Remember that everyone saw Harry threaten a Dementor. My guess is that those in power who noticed all this are trying to ally themselves with this powerful new piece on the gameboard, and used their sway to get people to agree to it.
0bogdanb
Well, regardless of whatever other plotting among each other, all participants actually do have a very good reason to join—their kids still go to Hogwarts, they want to keep them safe but at the same time groom them to inherit the family fortunes, and as was pointed out explicitly in the chapter, there are still good reasons, both politically and for safety, not to go to the other schools. An (at least temporary) alliance for the protection of their children is actually quite logical for all concerned.
[-]NancyLebovitz130

Hardly the most important thing in the chapter, but I was delighted to see a moratorium on house points.

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[-]arborealhominid350

I wonder if this will somehow play into Quirrell's plot to have both Ravenclaw and Slytherin win the house cup.

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6undermind
Yes, obviously. Even in the unlikely event this wasn't all planned by Quirrell with his talk of unity, and role in the Hermione Affair, it is now really easy for him to accomplish this goal.
[-]William_Quixote110

I think the moratorium on house point is one of the most important details this chapter. I'd been wondering for a long time how QQ would have both Slytherin and Ravenclaw win the house cup. The points lock seems to be a way to make that happen.

The reason that's so important is that it means this is part of the plan. Harry, Draco and the rest are all in place playing their assigned roles. If they had gone off script, then they wouldn't be advancing QQ's scheme.

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9undermind
I'm just imagining the professors' frustration: "Well done, , and five points for AAAAGHHH CURSE YOU HARRY!"
[-]DanArmak150

A clear win for the Quirrel Points system.

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3buybuydandavis
I thought Rowling was actually moving toward something of the kind, questioning the house system and bringing back together the houses under one roof in the persons of Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Neville.
1Alsadius
All of whom were Gryffindor. JKR definitely had some issues of inappropriate focus in her stories, didn't she?
[-]linkhyrule590

They see you as small and helpless, They see you as just a child...

Wow. I expect that from Harry at this point, but this just rubbed in the fact that the eleven-year-old protagonists are very much more heroic than most of the adults.

So, here's a question: Aside from uniting Malfoy and Bones, and in general every House in Hogwarts, and the Boy-Who-Lived on top of that in to a single anti-childkilling power bloc, what else is going on here?

The first thing that comes to mind is that this is probably part of Quirrell's plot to set up Harry as Light Lord...

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0Eugene
"The first thing that comes to mind is that this is probably part of Quirrell's plot to set up Harry as Light Lord..." If it's as patently ridiculous as his plot to invent a fake Dark Lord who publicly reveals himself and challenges Harry to a fake public duel where he casts a fake Avada Kedavra that fake-backfires just so Harry can spend summer vacation at home, then I sure hope not.
[-]loup-vaillant90

War. With children.

I fear the consequences if we don't solve this.

Edit: I'm serious:

This was actually intended as a dry run for a later, serious “Solve this or the story ends sadly” puzzle

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1undermind
I agree that it's important and has serious consequences, but what is the puzzle?
6EternalStargazer
In a previous story, EY posted the penultimate chapter along with an ultimatum: You will earn a Bad Ending by doing nothing, and a Good Ending by guessing, following the internal logic of the story, what the correct solution to this problem is. The problem could be solved by combining a revelation in the latest chapter with information from an infodump in the first chapter, explaining how space travel worked in universe. It was in fact solved, and he posted both endings. This is the danger, that he may do the same thing here, and we must be ready to solve the problem. I doubt it will be much of an issue however, the raw processing power we have to work with here is much higher, since HPMOR is much more popular than Three Worlds Collide.
6William_Quixote
A fun idea, but I doubt he will do that again here. HPMOR was written as a teaching device and a way of promoting rationalist thinking to a large audience. That is, its not just a fun piece of writing, its a tool and so the ending will be whatever makes it better accomplish the purpose for which it was created. EY won't blunt his tools based on a poll.
5AndrewE
I rather hope he does do it, though I doubt it will be as much of an ultimatum was TWC was. If it happens, I expect it to take the form of "the climax will be posted when somebody figures it out, or after X months otherwise".
4atorm
He does sometimes use his tools bluntly, however.
2PrometheanFaun
I think he's never going to do that here. He did that in TWC because if we were able to come up with the winning strategy when pressed, that would indicate that one of the crew members in the story definitely would have, too, proving it would have been unreasonable to write an ending where they did not. In this case our ability to solve the puzzle doesn't really say anything about the plausibility of the work's characters' solving it. Our success would not necessitate theirs, as we're more populous, experienced, and have access to a huge written record. Nor would our failure necessitate theirs, as Harry has magical insights. The groups' capacities say little about each other.
0alex_zag_al
re: magical insights, yeah - we could have theorized about how potions worked, but we could not test those theories the way Harry did. Since Harry has experiments we don't have access to, he has magical insights we don't have access to
0PrometheanFaun
I was referring more to that shadowy part of his mind that knows just what to look for. A source of insight that doesn't obey natural human cognitive constraints.
1alex_zag_al
This would be explicitly against Yudkowsky's stated goals for the story, All he has that we don't is more facts. (Which is often a hindrance; it was easier for us to figure out Lucius's blood debt, because we had less "memory" to search through.) If he could also exceed natural human cognitive constraints, this wouldn't be rationalist fiction. (source: http://hpmor.com/info/)
0PrometheanFaun
Assuming that Harry's Dark Side is integral to a significant proportion of plays(assuming rather than noting because my memory is patchy and I don't remember if it was like this or if the dark side was more a background character than an oft-employed tool), perhaps we could infer from this that EY considers it to be an natural state of mind that also happens to flourish rarely enough that no character Harry will ever meet is likely to be able to correct his misperception of it. I'd then assume EY must have visited it himself to write it.
0alex_zag_al
I wouldn't be surprised if it was a magical dark side. But I'd be shocked if it was a magical dark side that could think better than a well trained adult. Now that I think about it, he definitely has a source of insight that doesn't obey natural ten-year-old cognitive constraints.
1Velorien
But then, it is pretty much the premise of this fic that Harry doesn't obey "natural" ten-year old cognitive constraints because he is a prodigy by birth (with top-rate education that has allowed him to draw on his full mental potential). That premise accepted, there is nothing implausible about his dark side simply focusing his mental capabilities and allowing him to reach new levels of performance (at the cost of limiting processing in other areas such as empathy).
0tgb
That depends on the nature of the challenge. In TWC, it was merely "have at least one person state this solution as a possibility." If EY wants to make it hard, he can have it be some sort of consensus-gathering executed by a poll, or similar.
0undermind
I also doubt it will be an issue. But it will be fun. And I'm wondering if we could try to get a head start...
4roystgnr
I hope we don't have to get a head start. There's something to be said for enjoying a mystery yourself before collaborative problem solving explains it for you and you have to shift to enjoying it as dramatic irony immediately rather than upon reread. I've been refraining from trying to evangelize my most certain personal theories here in part because I don't want to spoil The Eventual Reveal for others, but if there's a strong likelihood that reader preparation is going to, say, make the difference between dead-Hermione and revived-Hermione, then it's going to be likely-spoilers time...
[-]PhilGoetz80

Draco seems insufficiently clever--he's gotten a lot of character development, and could be an agent in the story, but so far he just reacts. (He's already too clever for a 10-year old, but Harry is far too clever for a 10-year-old, so fair's fair.)

I can imagine an alternate HPMoR in which instead of Hermione, Harry had died--preferably later in the story, say at a false climax in the middle of a full-scale war--and Hermione and Draco had to step up to being the protagonists. Possibly I'm just getting tired of Harry's perfection, but seeing them develop to... (read more)

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0Eugene
Wrong thread
0Velorien
More like a 12-year old now. You're not a Qrngu Abgr (rot13) fan by any chance, are you?
2PhilGoetz
Heh. Yes, but the death you're talking about killed Death Note for me.
0Gurkenglas
Ugh. rot13, please?
1Velorien
Fixed. Apologies.
[-]loserthree80

Is Theodore Nott wearing his scary face because he learned it was a good idea to do so in Chaos, or because there is also a conspiracy of Green Slytherin: those who can cast Avada Kedavra, the green spell?

Harry courted the company of both Draco and Hermione. He adjusted his presentation to meet their expectations, as he understood them. Draco could be doing the same because why have one secret power base when you could have two?

I don't consider this terribly likely. It came up in that pattern-matching way, but feels like it's needlessly complicated.

Hopefully someone else can undermine it more decisively or support it better.

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[-]EternalStargazer150

Even ignoring the rest of the post, the idea of a Green Slytherin based off of Avada Kedavra is interesting for many reasons.

Let's look at some of the implications:

  • Avada Kedavra and the Patronus Charm (2.0) are basically mutually exclusive. In order to cast the first, you must want someone dead for the sake of being dead, and in order to cast the latter you must value all life to the point of denying death altogether.

  • Avada Kedavra and the Patronus Charm (2.0) cancel each other out. We saw this in Azkaban, and at the time we probably assumed it was just a result of Quirrell and Harry's magic going out of control, but on closer inspection it seems that both simply destroy the other, matter and antimatter style, which makes sense considering what type of magic they are created from. A magically created preference for death over life, and a magically created preference for life over death.

  • They both also follow the political lines, as you mention above. Avada Kedavra is more likely to be known and cast by those desperate for someone to hate, and the True Patronus is more likely to be cast by those who are trying to cooperate, simply because those mindsets are more likely to lead

... (read more)
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6ShardPhoenix
It seems likely that many adult wizards (eg Snape) can cast both. Can't remember if this is the case in canon or not.
5somervta
This is true in canon. I would see no problem even in HPMOR with wizards casting Patroni and AKs. It's only with Patronus 2.0 that there might be some incompatibility.
9ikrase
It seems vaguely possible that Harry's Dark Side compartementalization might allow him to cast both AK and True Patronus.
0EternalStargazer
Yes, that was my point, it's the True Patronus charm that is the exact opposite of AK, the Patronus Charm 1.0 is really a Dumbledore spell. It avoids fear of death by thinking about something else.
5kilobug
I'm still unconvinced about "Avada Kedavra and the Patronus Charm (2.0) cancel each other out". My interpretation of it in Azkaban is more "Harry and Quirrel magic cancel each other when they interact" than anything related specifically for those spells. For the rest, there is a significant difference which, while it doesn't matter much in absolute, matters a lot of HPMOR, is that 11 yo can't cast Avada Kedavra, while they can cast Patronus. So you can have 1st years in Hogwarts who are "Silver Slytherin" because they can cast Patronus, but you can't have "Green Slytherin" that can cast AK in 1st year, because it's too advanced magic for them.
4loserthree
Thanks. That pulls a bit of the rug out from under that unsteady pile of pattern-matching.
4loserthree
This got downvoted to -2. If anyone would like to see fewer postings like the above, they can improve the odds that they'll see the change they'd like by explaining what it is about the above post that was disliked. Thank you, in advance for your help with this.
4gjm
I didn't downvote it but I'd guess that one reason why some people did is that they thought it was rude and would prefer LW to be a more civil place. (My initial reaction to your question about downvotes was: "Ah, I bet those people didn't notice that the person being so rude was the same as the person whose 'unsteady pile of pattern-matching' they were being so rude about" -- I was very surprised when I checked and found it was just garden-variety rudeness rather than self-deprecation.)
4Paul Crowley
I think it is self-deprecation, ie it refers to this not this.
3gjm
Aha, I think you're right. Score one for my intuitive self-deprecation sensors, then.
3linkhyrule5
I have no idea. Upvoted for admitting you're (more likely to be) wrong, though.
-1TobyBartels
Well, it's -1 now, since I often upvote comments with negative totals that I think don't deserve them. Sorry that I can't help you more!
2loserthree
Less worried about downvotes I've received, more interested in the things that lead to me getting them. Thanks, though.
3EternalStargazer
Our direct evidence doesn't completely pan out, because of the uncertainty of the Quirrel reaction, yes. But even without that we have evidence for the underlying theory: ie: AK is Death>Life: the spell and PC2.0 is Life>Death: the spell. I can post quotes from both of these, in fact, I would argue that the Harry and Moody conversation on Avada Kedavra exists for the sole purpose of including that data in the narrative. Remember, these are Harry's words, a "magically expressed preference for death over life" and the Patronus Charm being cast by "rejecting death as the natural order."
0somervta
Slitherin --> Slytherin The Patronus defending against the AK makes sense in terms of what we know about the two spells, as well as the evidence from Azkaban, as others have noticed. Also, the Patronus responded to Harry's desire to protect the Auror - the response of the Patronus seems more likely if it was a property of the spell rather than of the magic of the person casting the AK (weak evidence, sure).
0hairyfigment
See, however, Lesath Lestrange.
0Gurkenglas
That guy is in fifth year, though.
3Watercressed
First-years can't cast AK for reasons of raw magical power, so an organization of first-years can't use the Killing Curse as a membership criteria.
-1EternalStargazer
But if say third years can, than ones who got their wands early may be able to. And it isn't all first years either. Plus, it's more about the mindset than the actual ability.
1somervta
It's stated that the reason first-years can't cast it is magical power, not skill, which is age-based, not practice-based.
-1fractalman
And then quirrel won a bet with dumbledore when it turned out that first-years could cast the patronus. Fake-moody's statement that he'd get no more than a bloody nose...You woudln't want to try that in the MoR verse. one of the students might be tempted to test it. and if the've been in quirrel's wargames, well... you get the idea. cause in MoR, it IS largely practice-based. in cannon rowling left it vague.
3somervta
Nope! It's stated in MoR that, unlike other advanced spells, the patronus is considered too difficult because of things like precise movements, and the emotional/willpower aspect, not magical strength. Most Charms that could only be learned by older students were like that because they required more strength of magic than any young student could muster. But the Patronus Charm wasn't like that, it wasn't difficult because it needed too much magic, it was difficult because it took more than mere magic.
2somervta
Additionally, Quirrel states in Roles, Pt 1, that Harry has insufficient raw power for the Killing Curse.
0[anonymous]
I like the thought, because awesome complications & pattern-matching. I also really hope it doesn't exist. It seems more likely that Jugson would have started such a faction.
[-]bramflakes50

So, speculation for what Harry wants the twins to buy for him. After thinking about this for 5 minutes by the clock, this is what I came up with:

1) A nuclear device (foreshadowed, one of the few things Quirrel fears, useful as a bargaining chip/MAD)

2) Some other form of muggle weapon (superset of #1)

3) Some muggle tech that can speed up Hermione's resurrection process if the main plan fails

4) Related to #3 - ingredients for a magical ritual/potion which will resurrect Hermione if the main plan fails (foreshadowed)

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[-]chaosmage110

My guess is computer hardware and a source of electricity, so he can finally get started on one of those big projects to gain large amounts of personal power / resources.

The economy-disrupting arbitrage scheme was introduced as early as chapter 4. Lots of money would have helped Harry in pretty much every arc. He could think of many, many other schemes to help him finally start world optimisation in earnest. But he never did that. In story logic, he never got round to doing it due to interference from all sides. In writing logic, this can only happen in the final arc because otherwise, the story will be known as "Harry Potter gets really rich" and cease to be about the methods of rationality anymore.

That doesn't necessarily point to computer hardware, but chapter 87 mentions them as a powerful tool that wizards lack ("If there's a money-making method in this book that sounds difficult for a wizard, but it's easy if we can use Dad's old Mac Plus, then we'd have a plan.") and I have a hard time thinking about world optimisation plans that wouldn't benefit from at least some sensible organisation of data, scheduling and on-the-fly printing.

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0Velorien
This would have the inconvenience of requiring an undefended secondary base, perhaps in Hogsmeade or London - Muggle technology doesn't work in Hogwarts, and Harry can't Apparate, so he would have to keep travelling back and forth to wherever he kept his computer whenever he wanted to use it.
1Gurkenglas
Harrys mechanical clock works, so set up a typewriter as input, a seismograph as output and ropes as wire to remote-control a computer.
1LM7805
I doubt Harry has read many RFCs, but IP over avian carrier had been around for just over two years at this point in the story.
[-]Izeinwinter100

Most of the ideas listed so far are either much too nasty, better done with magic, or both. Mostly both. So, what contingencies could Harry procure from the world for a reasonably modest amount of money that do things he cannot just transfigure, or do by wand, and which the twins would not recognize?

First thing that comes to mind are various non-lethal drugs, since those are going into the targets body, which means transfiguration is out if you want the subject to live. So, LSD (lethal dose absurdly higher than effective dose. .which is useful if you want to dose a crowd) Tranquilizers think this fits on all counts?

Lets see, what else would it be a bad idea/impractical to transfigure. Muggle photography gear? But the twins would recognize that.

Smoke grenades. (Not subject to finite, a counter for every spell that requires you to see your target.)

Protective kit good enough to count as valid precautions for transfiguration stunts.. would break the budget given.

Id say bugging kit, but a purely mechanical recording device would be a museum piece, and cabinet size..

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9fubarobfusco
Dosing the water supply might well work better on wizards than on muggles. Muggles chlorinate their water supply, and even a small amount of chlorine will rapidly inactivate LSD.
0bramflakes
Then again, some natural water sources have that amount of chlorine in them anyway.
1ikrase
Don't forget useful drugs to use on allies ratehr than enemies. Small quantity of chemical explosives.
[-]DanArmak100

1) A nuclear device

You can't buy nuclear or other WMDs for a hundred Galleons. And the instruction implied buying, not to stealing (and what wizard capable of stealing nuclear warheads would want or need such a paltry payment?)

More to the point, Harry - or any wizard - can just Transfigure WMDs. Quick, free, and no need to carry dangerous stuff around.

He can also Transfigure antimatter. If he can come up with a reliable remote trigger, that is gram per gram the deadliest thing known to Muggle science. It was also foreshadowed a bit (chapter 14):

Say, Professor McGonagall, did you know that time-reversed ordinary matter looks just like antimatter? Why yes it does! Did you know that one kilogram of antimatter encountering one kilogram of matter will annihilate in an explosion equivalent to 43 million tons of TNT? Do you realise that I myself weigh 41 kilograms and that the resulting blast would leave A GIANT SMOKING CRATER WHERE THERE USED TO BE SCOTLAND?

2) Some other form of muggle weapon

As above for any weapon I can think of. Antimatter and nuclear weapons trump any area-effect attack. Poisons and biological or chemical agents can be Transfigured too, unless you need them to... (read more)

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8ikrase
What? Harry doesn't want a gun because his magic is weak? In canon, guns are moderately effective against wizards. Carrying a pistol or a submachine gun around is the most blatantly obvious force multiplier, especially given that any other spell Harry can cast has at least a half-second casting time AND a two second cooldown.
1DanArmak
Guns would be useful against opponents who 1) were not prepared to face them (as the troll was prepared to face specific threats like sunshine), 2) were not adult wizards with shields raised. So yes, that leaves some options against which a gun in the bag of holding would be useful. (Harry will need to practice firing it though.) You're right, I'll update my comment accordingly.
0Ben Pace
Where are guns in Canon please?
2CAE_Jones
The only mention of guns in canon that I can recall is at the start of Prisoner of Azkaban, where the muggle side of the Sirius Black scare mentions him as armed and dangerous, and the Daily Prophet agrees that muggles are saying he has a gun, which they describe as being something like a muggle wand that they can use to attack one another. I assume that a great many wizarding children went on to imagine the muggle world as some very interesting variant on the stereotypical Wild West, where "boomstick" was probably a better description of a shotgun than usual.
7topynate
I doubt he can Transfigure antimatter. If he can, the containment will be very hard to get right, and he would absolutely have to get it right. How do you even stop it blowing up your wand, if you have to contact the material you're Transfiguring? Maybe Tazers! They'd work against some shields, are quite tricky to make, and if you want lots of them they're easier to buy. Other things: encrypted radios, Kevlar armour (to avoid Finite Incantem). Most things that can be bought for 5K could have been bought in Britain in the early 90s, apart from that sort of paramilitary gear. Guns are unlikely because the twins would have heard of them.
[-]CAE_Jones120

Guns are unlikely because the twins would have heard of them.

Consensus on /r/HPMOR was that Harry would have specified a type of gun and its ammo, since if he just said "guns" the twins would probably have brought muskets.

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2DanArmak
Where would they even get muskets today? In a museum?
0ikrase
My opinion too. Guns capable of killing a troll or being highly effective against powerful wizards would break the budget AND be hard to obtain (Anti-material rifle for the former, which Harry probably cannot fire, and submachine gun for the latter), but there are other possibilities. Early in the fic Muggle rocket launchers are mentioned. I think that in the Third World, an RPG with a few rockets may go for under $1000.
6ikrase
The twins just scanned the list, and the twins probably wouldn't have recognized, say '9mm automatic pistol' even if they know what guns are.
0TobyBartels
I don't think that Tasers were really a thing until 1994, which saw the first version that didn't use gunpowder as a propellant (and hence was not legally a firearm). Harry could still have heard of them by good luck, of course.
4Gurkenglas
He transfigured a taser for his fight against Moody.
4TobyBartels
OK, thanks.
0DanArmak
Transfigure the containment device first. Then find a way to transfigure the antimatter inside it. To solve the wand contact problem, transfigure the empty container into a full container. Then his wand is in contact with the container, but the container doesn't actually change. Granted, it's extremely dangerous, especially when practicing.
0Baughn
Yes, there is the problem that no-one knows what containment for macroscopic amounts of antimatter looks like. We have some ideas, but nothing that would be safe for Harry to try.
0TobyBartels
It's pretty standard fanon that magic interferes badly with electronics. (Canon is similar but less specific.)
5Alsadius
Which bugs me. I want to see glorious contraptions based off physics real and fake alike. Too many people try to replicate Tolkein's bucolic countryside scenes with their fantasy universes.
0RolfAndreassen
Transfigure a critical mass of uranium, ok. Transfigure several subcritical masses with a working trigger? Much more difficult. Since, as far as I can tell, you have to be within visual range of the thing you are Transfiguring, this would be a bit of a last-ditch option. At least with war gases you could work on the contents of a bottle, or something.
3topynate
If he can make a model rocket, he can make a uranium gun design. It's one slightly sub-critical mass of uranium with a suitable hole for the second piece, which is shaped like a bullet and fired at it using a single unsynchronised electronic trigger down a barrel long enough to get up a decent speed. Edit: And then he or a friendly 7th year casts a charm of flawless function on it.
5ikrase
That was a lot more than a model rocket.... probably weighed at least 5kg. Also, the fact that either he OR Quirrel could make a working large rocket engine without knowing the exact composition of propellant, precise geometry of nozzle, etc indicates that Transfiguration can work at a really high level of abstraction. He probably would have no trouble at all transfiguring a nuclear weapon with a mechanical timer trigger.
1alex_zag_al
well of course, can't you transfigure animals?
0ikrase
Actually, yeah, you can. I think.
0Sheaman3773
http://hpmor.com/chapter/15
8TsviBT
And the acid from the previous chapter.
2Rukifellth
Jugson refused to support Malfoy, if I recall.
2sketerpot
This also has the advantage of being cheap in bulk, since it has so many industrial uses. Current prices are under $400/ton.
3gattsuru
I don't see a particular advantage to those things. Quirrel doesn't fear a single nuclear weapon -- Voldemort can survive such a thing -- he fears nuclear annihilation or MAD, which is a separate matter and not much overlapped with an individual bomb. Muggle weapons are useful and a matter that might require someone to go outside of the country to get... but even a firearm requires training that Harry doesn't have, and can not kill a Dementor or a Troll. Where firearms could threaten the average unaware Wizard, we've seen that most major players are aware of firearms (including McGonagall, Dumbledore, and Snape, see chapter 61), and thus it would not likely fall under things that a Muggle Expert's sons would not recognize. And the set of things that Rationalist!Harry knows can resurrect someone is very, very small, and not much overlapped with the Muggle world. Most rituals and potions require ingredients that already have significant magical power. The "things that Fred and George can't recognize" is an interesting set. Canon!ArthurWeasley isn't very knowledgeable, but he at least had an interesting in electrical power, heavy-than-air non-magical flight, and chemical fueled engines. I think we can expect him to be of similar intelligence or smarter in MoR. It's possible that he's better at hiding his interest in Muggle technology or that Rationalist!Harry intentionally wrote non-standard descriptions for the items, but that seems unlikely. ((We're also taking 1990-ish tech, so some 'obvious' stuff from today either didn't exist or would exceed his budget.)) The first thought is dry ice, and the tools necessary to maintain it. Rationalist!Harry has broken several rules of transfiguration, including "don't burn anything", but the ability to transfigure CO2 is probably the easiest way to 'safely' violate that rule, not terribly expensive, but not within his normal abilities to easily produce otherwise.
[-]gthorneiii130

Canon!ArthurWeasley isn't very knowledgeable, but he at least had an interesting in electrical power, heavy-than-air non-magical flight, and chemical fueled engines. I think we can expect him to be of similar intelligence or smarter in MoR.

I don't think so, per chapter 61:

Madam Bones's voice continued. "We brought in Arthur Weasley from Misuse of Muggle Artifacts - he knows more about Muggle artifacts than any wizard alive - and gave him the descriptions from the Aurors on the scene, and he cracked it. It was a Muggle artifact called a rocker, and they call it that because you'd have to be off your rocker to ride one. Just six years ago one of their rockers blew up, killed hundreds of Muggles in a flash and almost set fire to the Moon. Weasley says that rockers use a special kind of science called opposite reaction, so the plan is to develop a jinx which will prevent that science from working around Azkaban."

...

"Severus?" the old wizard said. "What was it actually?"

"A rocket," said the half-blood Potions Master, who had grown up in the Muggle town of Spinner's End. "One of the most impressive Muggle technologies."

It seems pretty clear from chapter 61 that MOR!ArthurWeasley knows precious little about the muggle world.

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8linkhyrule5
On a side note, I'd like to see the spell-research attempts at preventing "opposite reaction" from working. I mean, I'm sure they'll get it eventually, but they're going to get some rather hilarious results in the meantime...
5Baughn
So would I, and I wouldn't mind writing some, but posting such snippets here has been previously discouraged. Hmm.. I guess this is what ff.net is for, at that. I'll send you a link if I end up writing it.
2Armok_GoB
I'd like to see it to, and probably so would many reading this.
2J_Taylor
When it comes to wizards who lack recent Muggle ancestry, Arthur may well be the most knowledgeable expert regarding these matters. Considering the racism of even well-meaning wizards, this likely gives Arthur a certain degree of clout in certain circles.
1ChristianKl
Detonating a single nuclear bomb in Washington or Russia would have triggered nuclear attacks in 1993 where the events of this story take place.
0Alsadius
The story is currently in April 1992.
2Ben Pace
I'm thinking sulfuric acid?
0undermind
Don't forget Space Stuff.
0[anonymous]
Well, we know that the Weasley twins don't recognize anything on the list, and since older muggle technology has a way of gradually seeping into the wizarding world, it's not likely to be anything developed too recently. It also probably isn't something that an Oxford professor would be able to obtain inconspicuously, or else Harry would probably just ask his father. (Though it still might be something his father could obtain at the cost of drawing attention to himself, and Harry just doesn't want anyone to guess that said purchase was really for him.) Anything electronic is unlikely, as we've seen no foreshadowing that Harry has invented a way to make electronics work near magic. So I looked through some timelines of important inventions, starting with the 1920's, for anything that might be remotely useful for a young magical inventor to have. My results: Tommy guns, lie detector machines, jetpacks, polaroids, radar, photocopiers, LSD, teflon, electron Microscopes, slinkies, silly Putty, submachine guns, nuclear weapons, velcro, rocket-Propelled Grenades, super Glue, various antibiotics, fiber optics, lasers, halogen Lamps, kevlar, high-temperature superconductors, various chemical weapons and poisons, Harry mentions that someone would likely have to go out of the country to obtain some of the items on his list. The only items on my list which would be difficult to obtain on short notice in Britain would be weapons and body armor, owing to strict UK gun laws; this makes it likely that Harry is looking for weaponry. Can anyone else think of a non-electronic 20th century muggle invention that would be difficult to obtain in the UK but not overseas?
0atorm
Plastic explosive.
0atorm
Actually, thermite.
0mare-of-night
I'd assumed it would be a variety of muggle items that were generally useful but hard to get, rather than preparations for any one specific thing. My "mental image" was basically a chemistry set, since Harry probably knows some tricks that require specific chemicals that you can't get at a normal shop because most people don't want them. That wouldn't require going outside Britain, though. Something illegal or highly controlled, like Izeinwinter's suggestion of LSD, or the weapons a lot of other people are suggesting. I don't /think/ Harry would go for warheads, but guns maybe.
0DanielLC
I was thinking it could be something for cryonics.
6Nornagest
Eliezer has mentioned elseforum that Harry hasn't heard of cryonics. (I'm assuming this qualifies as a public statement.)
5buybuydandavis
The uber genius science wiz kid who wants to live forever, whose father is an eminent professor of biochemistry at Oxford, hasn't heard of cryonics?
8Eliezer Yudkowsky
I would guess >90% of whiz kids haven't.
5buybuydandavis
Let's even grant that. How about factoring in "plans to live forever through science"? That's probably the most relevant prior information. Estimate P(never heard of cryonics | read tons of science and scifi books and researches interests and plans on living forever through science). Isn't that basically Harry before magic came along? He somehow missed mention of cryonics when he looked into means to live forever?
9linkhyrule5
I missed it completely and was doing much the same thing at that age. I actually ran right over cryonics - it showed up in Artemis Fowl and my absurdity heuristic/Colfer's tone tossed it aside.
4Luke_A_Somers
Space Seed? Several 1970s sci-fi novels feature it. 2001: A Space Odyssey comes close, as does Planet of the Apes. Alien, too (though I wouldn't expect him to have seen that) HP is set in 1991, so we're too early for Babylon 5 ("The Long Dark") or especially Futurama. You might have dismissed it, but I doubt he would have. Maaybe if his father dismissed it as rubbish.
0buybuydandavis
KHAAAAAAAANNN! How could a nerd not know that? Harry's also interested in space travel and a human diaspora. Cryogenic hibernation is the standard way to travel to other planets, barring warp drive.
[-]Luke_A_Somers100

Yeah, but to be fair, usually in those stories they're sending live people.

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0buybuydandavis
Except for legal issues, there's little reason to wait until someone is dead to preserve them.
4drnickbone
Well, your Harry has heard of "nanotechnology a la Eric Drexler" (Chapter 28), so I find it very surprising that he wouldn't also be aware of Drexler's views on cryonics. Engines of Creation was published in 1986... I would have expected Harry to have read the whole book.
3TobyBartels
Surely you mean ‘hadn't’ here? And yet, 8 years later, Matt Groening and David Cohen could assume that fans of The Simpsons would know what it is as a matter of course; the pilot episode of Futurama offers no explanation beyond the word ‘cryogenics’, an icy cartoon effect, and a dial with a timer on it. You could blame that on the Internet, but that's for popular culture to learn that a sci-fi genius didn't know. On the other hand, I could easily believe that Harry has only heard of this in a way that makes it sound like nonsense, and he never followed it up. Its absence doesn't detract from the story for me.
7gwern
I've seen Futurama mentioned negatively as having introduced cryonics to a lot of people in a ridiculous light, and Groening's Simpsons has always indulged in a lot of very obscure references (read the Simpsons Archive's annotated scripts for an episode and note how many you did not notice on a single watch), so merely appearing on his shows doesn't necessarily mean a lot - especially since Futurama goes to considerable lengths to make the cryonics completely understandable to people with zero idea about it, with Fry falling into a glassy supermarket-style freezer*, being flash-frozen (not vitrified), and then a long timelapse montage explaining visually the lapse of time. The concept comes through clear as a bell to anyone who has ever used a freezer, which in the USA is pretty much everyone. * note, by the way, how they went with a common piece of technology used in every supermarket for many decades, which looks completely different from every dewar ever used by actual cryonics organizations.
2TobyBartels
If Futurama really introduced it to many people, then I'm wrong. I always thought that Groening & Cohen expected the viewers to already know about it, but that doesn't mean much, since I already knew about it (even though only as a crackpot idea yet).
1gwern
It's hard to prove that people were ignorant, of course, but I think it did bring cryonics up to a lot of people who didn't know about it. (If nothing else, all the kids and teens watching it - the younger you are, the less time you've had to run into the idea.) Some links: * Futurama hits on Cryonet * 'cryonics' hits: 535k * 'cryonics AND futurama': 1,850k * Ngrams 1960-2008, cryonics & Futurama (apparently 'Futurama' was a term long before the show? So the ngram is a bit meaningless, though it's interesting it has surpassed cryonics.)
0A1987dM
I'm kind of surprised by how few books have mentioned Futurama in recent years. (Then again, ISTR that Google Ngram Viewer sampled pre-2000 books and post-2000 books in different ways.)
1fubarobfusco
Well before Futurama, there was a Woody Allen movie called Sleeper with a similar premise. It seems to be a pretty common way to do the Rip Van Winkle scenario.
0Richard_Kennaway
And before that was the British TV series of 1966-67, Adam Adamant. And before that, Heinlein's The Door into Summer, which Harry has surely read, takes cold sleep back to 1957. So the concept is available to him, and with his mind, he can take it seriously even if no-one else has yet.
6A1987dM
Er, Fry was alive when he got frozen. I hadn't heard about the idea of cryopreserving legally dead people in hope that not-yet-available technology to revive them will be invented until years later than I watched that Futurama episode. (Then again, I read way less sci fi than HJPEV.)
2JoshuaZ
That he would fall into that category seems doubtful given that he's been exposed to so much science fiction though. Cryonics is a staple of scifi, so it shouldn't take him that much thinking to see how plausible it could be or to note that people have actually tried it.
9Joshua_Blaine
As someone who read Ender's Game at the age of 11, and consequently a lot more sci-fi since then, It took Eliezer's "You Only Live Twice" post six years later to properly elevate my knowledge of cryonics to actual conscious awareness. It took an actual proponent of the procedure telling me about it and that people are actually doing it in real life for me to notice it as a useful idea. And the only thing I needed for convincing was the feasibility of the science, not any moral qualms about the implications of it all. I was (and still am) in the same mind-set concerning life extension and widespread immortality as Harry, and a single afternoon reading about the procedure had me basically convinced. So no, I don't really think it's incredibly unlikely that Harry hasn't properly heard about cryonics as used in the manor he needs. Of course, I'm but a single data point. How many smart kids have you met that are or aren't knowledgable about existing cryonic procedures?
3Mestroyer
I remember reading a cartoon as a kid about cryonics which portrayed it cynically if I remember correctly. I didn't realize it was actually a thing people did, but I remember thinking "This sounds like something I would want to do in real life. There has to be some reason it wouldn't work though, because I'm hearing about it in a cartoon and not in real life."
4Eliezer Yudkowsky
SF readers don't know either.
6roystgnr
What if we narrow it down to "Niven readers"? "Corpsicles" feature in a Niven-verse novel and a novella from the 70s, and Harry makes an offhand reference to Niven-verse Puppeteers in HPMOR chapter 9. Harry might not know about Alcor but he should at least be aware of the general idea.
2LucasSloan
Does your theory have anything more to say than "the internet has changed things" to explain why I knew about cryonics at Harry's age?
6Izeinwinter
Harry is very, very likely to have come across the concept of cold sleep. That is not cryonics. Cryonics is the idea of freezing the dead in the hope of fixing the problem later with better tech, even if you do not even know how to revive the frozen at the time. As a serious idea, it is new and fringy, as fiction.. It does come up, but not very often - even people wishing to throw a character into the future usually handwave a stasis field.
2LucasSloan
Sure. That still doesn't answer the question of who does hear about it. We could just say that 1% of people who read SF have heard about it, but then my experience is hard to explain - I hadn't read all that much SF by age 11. It seems quite reasonable to say that the 10 years that the Internet existed between me and Harry was decisive, but I'm asking what variables explain the difference between two SF readers, only one of whom has heard of cryonics.
2Izeinwinter
Uhm - an personal experience like this holds approximately zero data about its own frequency. The sheer number of things you encounter and learn about while growing up, and the universe of learning are both so vast that if your exploration of the library strays from the beaten path of school assignments, bestsellers and nigh-compulsory classics at all, you will learn many, many things which only small minorities have also encountered.
0hairyfigment
Well, how did you hear about it? I didn't (or didn't see it as a real possibility) until I read a mostly non-fiction book by Robert Anton Wilson, long after the age of 11.
2LucasSloan
I can't recall at this distance.
5Eliezer Yudkowsky
...not especially? I heard about when I read "Great Mambo Chicken and the Transhuman Condition", memory says at age 11 but the book's publication date might imply I should have been 12. "The Internet has changed things" - yes it did.
1JoshuaZ
This claim is surprising. The Psychomech trilogy (published in the mid 1980s) involves deliberate cryonic preservation of multiple characters in the hope that when one of them becomes a functional god he'll be able to resurrect them. In that case, one of the characters who is preserved is the love-interest of the protagonist. And the later books in that series imagine a world in a not too distant future where cryonics is extremely common. Lem's "Fiasco" deals with medical cryonics and is also from the 1980s. Pohl's "The Age of Pussyfoot" also has explicit medical cryonics, albeit with a somewhat reactionary message. Ettinger himself was inspired to think about cryonics as a practical thing from the short story "The Jameson Satellite" (admittedly fairly obscure). As a matter of pure anecdote, I had encountered the idea in multiple contexts when I was about Harry's age, and Harry if anything has been exposed to more scifi than I had at that age.
0NancyLebovitz
On the other hand, I'd never heard of Psychomech, and I thought I knew sf from that era fairly well. Perhaps the book is better known in the UK.
3gattsuru
It's important to remember that we're talking 1991, rather than present day. While there are a number of older works featuring cryonics, they tend to include themes you probably don't want to expose a ten-year-old to (Heinlein's Door Into Summer) or are soft science fiction or outright fantasy (Star Wars, Captain America), or use a generic stasis instead of cryogenics (Aliens). Harder popular fiction versions like Futurama, Bujold's Mirror Dance, and Cowboy Bebop wouldn't come out for a few years. There were older hard fiction pieces that mention it -- Niven, at least -- but it's fairly recent for the concept to be an automatic assumption for near-future or even far-future works. If Rationalist!Harry read and remembered everything, he'd have to be aware of it, but honestly he's got a bit too wide of a knowledge base to be reasonable as it is.
0fractalman
what about from science fiction? star trek: TOS. kirk meets kahn. kahn has been on ice. many other star trek episodes. see also nancy's comment.
[-]Eliezer Yudkowsky110

Having a futuristic, nonexistent technology which can reliably, reversibly, demonstrably execute suspended animation, is not the same as the realization that mere modern-day liquid nitrogen works to preserve brain state right now and future tech can grab it later.

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0ikrase
Or have only briefly heard of it as something for the rich akin to Lenin's tomb.
0NancyLebovitz
I thought he'd read a fair amount of science fiction. Shouldn't he have heard of it there? Second thought: I have a vague impression that there used to be more cryonics in science fiction from before 1975 or so. If I'm right (and I'm not at all sure that I am), would that affect what Harry would be likely to know?
3kilobug
I also find it unlikely Harry hadn't heard of cryonics. I mean, I'm born in 1981 almost like Harry, and when I was Harry's age, I definitely had heard of it, like I had heard of robots, or long-distance space travel, or life expansion, or robotic prosthesis, as a scifi device. I had seen 2001 and Star Wars. And I did think at that time "oh, it's something cool we'll have in the future". Sure, I didn't know it was something actually existing in the real world. But while I wasn't a dumb kid, I wasn't the supergenius Harry is, and I didn't even think defeating death was something possible. So, yes, I would say it's unlikely for Harry not knowing about cryonics. But... not "1 chance in 1000" unlikely, more like "1 chance in 10" unlikely. And if you have 10 "one chance in ten unlikely" things, well, statistically one will actually happen. And it's fully within the author's "rights" to say "well, among those ten things there is only one chance in 10 Harry doesn't know about, it's cryonics he doesn't know about". So while it's unlikely that Harry didn't hear about cryonics, it's not unlikely enough to really sound artificial. Harry knows a lot, not all, and cryonics is where he fails, ok, fine.
2ikrase
He could still be inventing it (sort of already did.)
5monsterzero
If Harry can figure out how to reverse a Time-Turner and send Hermione's body into the future, he doesn't need cryonics. And there's no worry about paradoxes, so possibly the six-hour limit wouldn't apply.
2DanielLC
I don't think paradoxes have much to do with it, but it's a limit of six hours into the past. Since negative a thousand is less than six, sending her a thousand hours in the future doesn't violate the six-hour limit. It seems hard to believe that Harry managed to reverse engineer it in six hours with no special equipment.
0Nornagest
A nuclear device was the first thing I thought of as well, but I'd expect obtaining the parts to be prohibitively difficult for any plausible contacts. Stealing a finished warhead would probably be easier. But it's not that much easier, and either way I can't think of any plausible motive: the wizarding world and the Muggle world are so intertwined that MAD is quite problematic. Nor are there many plausible targets; the wizarding population is so spread out that a single warhead couldn't do much that couldn't be done far more easily, less disruptively, and with less collateral damage using a truck full of ANFO or something. Azkaban may be one; I can't think of any others. On the other hand, Muggle weapons or controlled substances of some kind (perhaps dangerous chemicals?) seem quite likely. Britain's a wealthy first-world country with plenty of international trade going on; if you've got enough money on hand, about the only reason you'd need to leave the country to get something is if it's not legally for sale.
3DanArmak
That would kill the prisoners and the guards, and would not destroy the Dementors.
0fractalman
...a last ditch effort to at least make their deaths quick, while opening up a window to hit the dementors with a point-blank patronus 2.0 without worrying about the guards? Not that I think it very likely, mind you. harry may be broadening his options somewhat, but he has a ways to go before he's quite THAT desperate.
0Nornagest
At this point I don't think Harry would consider the guards protected by his ethics, and I'm not sure about the prisoners. The Dementors are indeed a problem. I don't actually consider this a good option, though, just less bad than all the other targets in magical Britain.
[-]DanArmak150

If you kill the prisoners, and you don't harm the Dementors, what's the point of attacking at all? The idea is to rescue the prisoners and destroy the prison, and the prison is just the Dementors - a non-magical building is easy to replace.

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2TobyBartels
It's not a non-magical building; it has several protective wards, such as the time-loop prohibition. But otherwise, I agree with you.
[-]CAE_Jones40

Why doesn't the magical world have something resembling the internet? There are a few things resembling closed networks--the dark mark, Quirrell's monitors and other tricks for the battles, and canon Hermione's trick with the DA Galleons--and there are simple two-way communication methods, like the floo and the two-way mirrors, but the only military use of networking that we know of is the dark mark (and the DA Galleons in canon). This makes me wonder if the power of the dark mark wasn't just that it was terrifying and exerted mental influences, but that i... (read more)

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[-]HungryHippo40

When Harry lists all the ways he could have prevented Hermione's death to McG, he is quite upset and mentions that he could have asked for everyone to get communication mirrors. This is overheard by Dumbledore, as we learn later in the chapter. However, as far as we know, Harry has seen communication mirrors only once: when he was in Azkaban. Dumbledore should be able to deduce this and thus that Harry was indeed involved in the break out.

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9ArisKatsaris
Are "communication mirrors" supposed to be a big secret of the Aurors that Harry wouldn't have been able to learn about otherwise? I doubt it.
3DanArmak
Indeed, the Auxiliary Protective Force Aurors gave them to all the APSC members, and Susan used hers publicly in the last chapter to signal them to enter.
2CAE_Jones
The only ones seen in canon belonged to Sirius and James, but they're so tactically useful that of course all MoR aurors have them. This somewhat implies that they aren't exactly easy to come by, but doesn't make it clear if this is because they're too costly to make and mass produce, if they're strictly regulated, or if the Marauders were supposed to have developed them. (Even if the marauders developed them, you'd think they would have shared the secret with the Order of the Phoenix in the first war, so I doubt that's the explanation. They're probably just difficult to produce on mass, either because the process requires a highly skilled wizard, or because the wizarding world can't seem to mass-produce anything but candies and newspapers.)
4mare-of-night
It's relevant that Dumbledore had it pointed out to him that mirrors could have saved Hermione, and he didn't procure them for Harry and Neville
2ChristianKl
Given that Harry talks with the Defense Professor about how the magicial world works and reads a lot of books I find it unlikely that Dumbledore would think that Harry doesn't know about the mirrors.
2buybuydandavis
and would be especially interest in militarily useful magic...
[-]Shmi40

My general impression of this chapter: Pathos Overflow.

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[-]BabyBoo30

Hey folks!

I just got twigged back to MoR after having wandered away for a long while -- I think the chapter I had left off with before was 'Interview with the Confessor' -- so I spent most of last week re-reading the story and then working my way through the discussion threads here (most of them, anyway -- it was around the Chap. 84 discussions when the pressure of "arrrgh I just want to go back and tell all these people in the past that Hermione's trial ain't nothing on what's coming!"). Along the way I made some notes and I'd like to dump them... (read more)

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[-]gjm30

A rather obvious clash I hadn't noticed before, and don't recall seeing discussed on LW:

In chapter 46, after going in front of the Dementor and (apparently) remembering his parents' death, Harry abruptly comes up with a rather complicated set of deductions about the events surrounding Voldemort's learning of the prophecy about him. It all seems plausible enough (though who'd trust so long a series of merely probable deductions?), and a key point is that McGonagall must have been the one who heard the prophecy, she must have told Dumbledore, and Dumbledore ... (read more)

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[-]buybuydandavis30

I really need to start collecting these, as they are so blatant.

Foreshadowing Alert:

“You’re nuts,” Daphne stated with conviction. “Even if you had kissed him first, you know what that would make you? The sad little lovestruck girl who dies in the hero’s arms at the end of Act Two.”

And it just so happen that the little girl who kissed Harry first in fact does die in his arms.

“One of my classmates gets bitten by a horrible monster, and as I scrabble frantically in my mokeskin pouch for something that could help her, she looks at me sadly and with her la

... (read more)
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[-]Shmi30

"Remind me to buy you a copy of the Muggle novel Atlas Shrugged," the sourceless voice said. "I'm starting to understand what sort of person can benefit from reading it."

I don't understand this statement, given the preceding paragraphs. Why would the twins benefit from it?

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[-]gattsuru200

Atlas Shrugged spends a sizable period of time criticizing the flaws of Comte's positivism, considering it destruction of the ego and involuntary servitude for the sake of psuedo-Catholic guilt-based mysticism. The twins' thought processes echo Comte's ethics system very heavily, as do the Weasleys in general: they'd do anything for Rationalist!Harry without asking payment because they consider him worth serving without regard for themselves.

The resulting rule morality is directly in conflict with Rationalist!Harry's desire for preference utilitarianism, in addition to being rather risky on its own level.

Rand's Objectivism identifies reasons to do things without cash payment, despite the pop history version of her viewpoints. See Dagny and Galt, or for a platonic version (despite the HoYay) D'Antonio and Rearden. But that's done because you think the other person or their requires are worth the cost.

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[-]ikrase160

Yvain's All Debates are Bravery Debates might be useful to read here. (and possibly inspired that). Basically, Harry thinks that it would be healthy for the twins to realize that they don't have to be selfless all the time, always. Yvain writes that he had met someone who had been raised in a family that demanded ridiculous selflessness and reading Rand changed his life.

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4Shmi
I thought the twins, beyond playing pranks, were not above selling magical trinkets and stuff to fellow students, thus making a bit of profit and so not being completely selfish. Or was it in canon or some other fanfic?
9Rukifellth
Not in this one. In the earlier chapters it's narrated that the twins have been selling prank goods at 0% mark-up, unknown to their supplier.
5CAE_Jones
They insisted they sell Floom's smuggled goods at 0% mark-up; they said nothing about anything they've come up with on their own. Though I think most of their inventions came later (extendable ears, for example).
3hirvinen
They wanted to be able to testify under veritaserum that they had not been profiting.
1mare-of-night
Harry thinks they're too selfless?
0gwern
See http://www.reddit.com/r/HPMOR/comments/1l8dpa/chapter_98_is_out_spoilers_in_comments/cbwrxho
[-]Shmi30

Susan Bones, who stood beside and anext to Daphne Greengrass, beside whom she had fought

Google refuses to recognize "anext" as an English word.

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5arundelo
Eliezer answers on r/HPMOR.
1gwern
It might be a typo for 'anent'?
0TobyBartels
I think that it's fine, but Reddit is correct: it shouldn't take ‘to’. ETA: And also, it's redundant.
3Richard_Kennaway
Like "spick and span" and "aid and abet". Eliezer is reaching for an elevated style and not quite hitting the mark.
1TobyBartels
Etymologically, ‘aid’ and ‘abet’ are different: to aid a crime is to help another to do it; to abet a crime is to encourage another to do it. (But since ‘abet’ is only used in this sense, dictionaries now give it the entire meaning, so ‘aid’ has become redundant.) Anyway, this doesn't affect your point.
0Paul Crowley
I can't find it on Google now, but ISTR that the meaning of "abet" you give here is an urban legend; "abet" just means "aid" and was only put in to make it sound more grand.
3Eugene
It is not an urban legend. From etymonline: from a- "to" + beter "to bait," from a Germanic source, perhaps Low Franconian betan "incite," or Old Norse beita "cause to bite"
[-]alex_zag_al20

Roles has given me all sorts of troubling thoughts about my life.

I think I've always tried to be a good student, a good friend and a good scientist, but, McGonagall fulfilling her image of a good teacher got one of her students killed.

That's what it took to break her out of her vision of her role. I know there's something that important to me, something that I'd act outside of my picture of myself to protect, and regret not doing it earlier.

But I don't know what it is, or how to look for it, and I don't even seem motivated to look for it

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[-]Rukifellth10

I think I figured out Quirrel's ultimate scheme.

Va pnaba, Ibyqrzbeg cbffrffrf Uneel, gnxvat pbageby bs uvf obql.

Va ZbE, gur ernfba Dhveeryzbeg jnagf Uneel nyvir, fgebat naq vasyhragvny vf fb ur pna znxr uvz vagb uvf arkg ubfg, guhf nyybjvat Zntvpny Oevgnva gb tebj haqre n fgebat yrnqre. Gur Qrzragngvba ng gur ortvaavat bs gur lrne jnf fb gung Uneel'f zragny qrsrafrf jbhyq or jrnxrarq sbe shgher nohfr. Dhveery'f fngvfsnpgvba ng Urezvbar'f qrngu (orsber urnevat gur hcqngrq cebcurpl) jnf va nagvpvcngvba ng shegure ihyarenovyvgl.

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1gwern
That's one of the common interpretations, yes.
0buybuydandavis
That's been my interpretation for a while, at least with Quirrell developing Harry to be his new host - take over the body of he who saves the rest of the magical world, from you.
0Rukifellth
Spoilers!
0BabyBoo
I think this or something very close to it is strongly likely to be correct; so much so that at this point, I'm very close to shifting the question to the level of whether, univat tebbzrq Uneel nf n fgebat prageny yrnqre sbe zntvpny Oevgnva, uvf vagragvba vf gb npgviryl pynvz cbffrffvba bs Uneel, be jurgure ur jvyy or fngvfsvrq nf gur cbjre oruvaq Ehyre! Uneel'f guebar juvyr ur crefbanyyl tbrf nobhg chefhvat vzzbegnyvgl.
[-]cultureulterior10

I'm beginning to think the/a final enemy might be Dumbledore after all.

(1) Wouldn't Dumbledore, when he was invisibly following HP to the graveyard, have seen the millennia-old stone alight with prophecy?

(2) What if it was Dumbledore's troll, and Quirrel can prove it or, Dumbledore has had a troll guard and he can make it seem like this was it?

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1buybuydandavis
Hmmm. I figured Quirrell tricked Dumbledore into assigning the Troll as the Defense Professor when Dumbledore opened the wards for Quirrell. Maybe it was Dumbledore doing the tricking.
0Gurkenglas
We only know the wards thought it was Quirrel and thus didn't alert Dumbledore at the time because he said so. If he is evil, he has no reason to trick his own wards.
0Mestroyer
What would Quirrel's motive be for using trickery to put his name on a murder weapon?
1buybuydandavis
http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/ibr/harry_potter_and_the_methods_of_rationality/9ome ### On the original point, of who the Defense Professor is, I saw a great idea on Reddit - the Troll is the Defense Professor. So if you need an agent in Hogwarts to kill a student, you want the wards to think that they're a Professor. ### http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/ibr/harry_potter_and_the_methods_of_rationality/9lq5 Part of my theory, at least, is that Quirrell is Baba Yaga, and hence not he who stood within the circle. The he was a Troll, the 3rd most perfect killing machine, as identified by Quirrell, and as entered into the wards as the Defense Professor by Dumbledore. You make a decent point, though. If Dumbledore recalls how he entered the Defense Professor into the wards, he should at least suspect Quirrell is involved with the Troll. But does Quirrell even know about the map, and thereby his potential vulnerability here?
1Mestroyer
A problem with the "He" who stood in the circle theory is that Quirrel can't have been confident in advance that Dumbledore would make that mistake. Even if Dumbledore didn't think "I'd better use gender-neutral language in case Quirrel is really female," he could easily have said something like "The person in this circle is the defense professor."
1gwern
Another issue I don't think I've seen anyone brought up: if the troll was identified as the Defense Professor, and Quirrel is then just an ordinary adult wizard as far as the Hogwarts wards are concerned, how was it possible for him to frame Hermione for Draco? Wouldn't the wards have screamed at the Memory Charm? It's pretty clearly implied that it had to be a professor, in some way, who cast the key spells: Probably this could still be rescued, but the troll theory, while bizarre, also means that the earlier frame becomes more complicated than before.
1UnclGhost
Quirrel could have suggested or stipulated that wording when zhe and Dumbledore were working out how to identify Quirrel to the wards, reasonably assuming that Dumbledore wouldn't think the "he" was the suspicious part.
1buybuydandavis
But Quirrell didn't absolutely need the Troll to be assigned as the Defense Professor. Knowing how people talk, there was a chance for it to work. But do the wards have error checks? If there are two persons in the circle, and Dumbledore says "the person", what happens? I don't know. But if Quirrell is really Baba Yaga, he actually was Defense Professor once, and maybe many more times a professor, and might know more about the wards than Dumbledore does. I wish we knew what the "glitches" on the map were. I grant your point is an issue. At least to our limited knowledge, there was some risk. But since not prying into Quirrell's true identity was part of his employment agreement, how he would be identified to the wards would have been a natural topic of negotiation between them, to be resolved prior to the actual act.
1Benquo
Presumably they are not glitches at all but accurate reports of "Spontaneous Duplication."
0buybuydandavis
Perhaps not just that. Could be that some people show up with different names than their reported identities. Could be that no one shows up as the Defense Professor anymore - now that the Troll is dead.
0Benquo
True, though of those, Spontaneous Duplication is the most obvious if you look only at the map. The others all involve comparing the map to the territory.
0buybuydandavis
Yes, but what exactly do the reports say? WHo is spontaneously duplicating?
1Benquo
Harry, Dumbledore, anyone else whose spimster wicket occasionally malfunctions.
[-]fractalman10

It has occured to me that IF harry does obtain the sorcerer's stone...it's quite likely that quirrel will have been the one to get it out of the mirror, WITHOUT utilizing his leet magical skills.

  1. dumbledore thinks voldemort should find the trap surrounding the sorcerer's stone to be irresistable just for being such a puzzle.
  2. Quirrelmort declares he has never seen such an obvious trap...in a way that suggest that he is quite tempted to go after whatever is inside, whether or not he knows what's inside.
  3. The troll DID happen, even though whether it was
... (read more)
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0CAE_Jones
I tried imagining how this might work, including thinking about how the mirror works, and this got me to revise my probability that the mirror would respond well to Quirrell downward. Assuming Quirrelmort and that Harry's Dark Side is a reflection of Voldemort's feelings on death (which are big assumptions, but they seem likely to be correct), I don't think Quirrell would be recognized by the mirror as someone who both wanted the stone but did not want to use it (Voldemort killed people to save himself from death, dark side is terribly afraid of death and is known for using whatever resources it can, etc). (The key question is whether oclumency works on the mirror, but given that canon Dumbledore placed this security mechanism himself, according to him, I think the defense professor would be as uncertain as we are about Oclumency's efficacy.) What following the idea "How to retrieve the stone?" did turn up, though, was a parallel to canon, with Harry's dark side suggesting he "Use the boy." The question is which boy (Neville is the main candidate sticking in my mind, but I'm not sure why; maybe because he's the only boy in Harry's camp that seems likely to wind up in such a situation who might not want to use the stone? Most obvious candidates (Draco, maybe Ron?) seem like they'd have motivation to use it.).
[-]major00

Muggle hospital.

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[-]EndlessStrategy00

So, I recall coming across one of the fanfictions based off of Methods of Rationality, but I can't seem to find it anymore. Perhaps someone here is familiar with it? I only remember two things. 1: it included a battle between the three armies. 2: The battle had something to do with fire (it was mentioned that this was to complete the elemental trend the battles had been following; the forest battles representing earth, the battles high up in Hogwarts being air, and the underwater battle naturally being water).

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3jaime2000
I think I know which one you are talking about; the one in which one of the students acts like Speedy Gonzales, right? I can't find it either. I suspect it was "Harry Potter and Selective Perception", which has since been deleted. If you're lucky, Gwern will have happened to archive it through his casual browsing.
1gwern
Not as far as I can tell. Not in the IA, archive.is, WebCite, Google Cache, Google in general, my current WWW archives or my old WWW archives. I also don't recall reading any fanfic of that description.
[-]BabyBoo00

Just occurred to me that if D-Zbeg vf chggvat na njshy ybg bs rssbeg, naq nccnerag npghny pbaprea, vagb funcvat Uneel'f zvaqfrg gbjneq gur 'Qnex Fvqr', vs uvf cyna vf gb whfg gnxr cbffrffvba bs gur xvq yngre. Gung frrzf gb zr gb vzcyl svir cbffvovyvgvrf, va nfpraqvat beqre bs yvxryvubbq:

  1. D. pnerf jurgure Uneel'f orunivbe nccrnef cuvybfbcuvpnyyl pbafvfgrag;

  2. Fbzr fbeg bs 'flzcngul' orgjrra zvaqf vf arprffnel gb rssrpg cbffrffvba, be creuncf gb 'njnxra' gur fbhy-sentzrag vafvqr Uneel;

  3. D.vf irel qrqvpngrq gb uvf cuvybfbcul naq ungrf gb unir vg synhagrq ol f

... (read more)
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1Velorien
I don't think you need to rot13 this, simply because the various notions in your post have been openly discussed in this and past threads quite a lot. Also because when I see "D-Zbeg", I instantly parse it as "Dr Zoidberg", so now thanks to you I have an uneraseable mental association between Quirrell and said character.
4TheOtherDave
Quirrell is helping! Hooray for Quirrell!
1BabyBoo
I thought it probably wouldn't be necessary, but I wasn't certain, and I figured it would be the better part of valor. Basically, I'm not sure how to proceed under the declaration that the identity of an extremely central character is supposed to be a spoiler now; it seems like even using the name Dhveeryzbeg unscrambled would break the rule. I didn't make the Zoidberg connection until you pointed it out, but I did think that "D-Zbeg" was an immensely more awesome nickname than the term it was rot13'd from. And now I can't see "Dhveeryzbeg" either without thinking it must be some relative of Dr. Zoidberg's. Dangit, now every scene he's in, I'm gonna expect him to exit going "woo-woo-woo-woo" and clacking his claws.
0BabyBoo
... and I know I really shouldn't, but I just couldn't resist. image, SFW, foolishness Hope that helps with the mental association problem.
[-]CAE_Jones00

Doubtless this is my sleeping brain messing with me, but I seem to have had a dream that Harry would go on some sort of training course/vision quest in which his patronis would instruct him to cast the killing curse. Except this is somewhere in Hogwarts (probably the second floor?), and he figures based on the angle of the curse that it's going to hit the great hall... so he runs down in time to see it hit Neville. But on the way to DUmbledore's office with Neville's body, he casts "Accio Neville's Soul", then does something with Patronis 2.0 and... (read more)

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[-]cultureulterior00

Does Bellatrix have a horcrux backup, and if not, why not? You'd think that if Voldemort thought enough of her importance to remove her from Azkaban, he'd have made sure to back her up beforehand?

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[-]Velorien100

Evil Overlord List, revised edition:

After discovering the secret to immortality, I will not share it with the world's third most powerful wizard (or so), no matter how certain I am of her loyalty to me, or of her ability to keep secrets. The worst case scenario then is having to train up a new powerful lieutenant, rather than having to kill an immortal ex-lieutenant or trying to contain the secret once it's out.

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0Carinthium
If Bellatrix was that important, Voldemort could have just ensured she wasn't sent to Azkaban to avoid the problems Velorien points out. More likely, the importance only came later and Voldemort decided on a quick ret-con.
-1fractalman
her flesh is what's important-for the revival ritual (IF that's why quirrelmort broke her out, which is quite likely.). she doesn't have a servant of her own to revive her with, so getting her a horcrux would be of no use.
[-]HungryHippo00

Early in the fic, Draco tells Harry that you can't apparate to somewhere you have never been. This would suggest that Quirrell's Pioneer Horcrux is unreachable to anyone but himself. But, if Harry has something of Voldemort in him, "Harry" has technically been on the Pioneer probe, so he should be able to apparate to it.

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0Osuniev
In canon, Apparition becomes unreliable across long distances (as in, very few people could reliably travel to another country by Apparating, and even less (no one ?) to another continent). If this is true in HPMoR universe, then Apparate to the Pioneer plaque is out of question.
0bramflakes
Harry can't apparate yet, nor can he learn to for a few years, since it seems to be based on strength of magic rather than skill. Unless he makes some partial-transfiguration-style physics deduction he won't be able to apparate across a room, nevermind across the solar system.
[-]J_Taylor00

"Remind me to buy you a copy of the Muggle novel Atlas Shrugged," the sourceless voice said. "I'm starting to understand what sort of person can benefit from reading it."

Although the Weasley twins are extremely willing to repay perceived debts, it would seem to me that this inclination is more likely, given their usual inclination towards public action, to be of positive utility in the long-run.

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0Document
I can't parse that. Did you misword something?
[-]Document-20

The incantation "Crucio" seems to be a reference to Roman crucifixion, which postdates Atlantis by several thousand years according to Plato's dating. There are probably lots of other examples of recent words in magic.

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2Velorien
Could you clarify what point you are trying to make with this observation? As for trying to draw inferences from canon incantations, that way madness lies. It seems beyond reasonable doubt that JK Rowling just used pseudo-Latinish words that fit the desired meaning, as is not unusual for a certain kind of children's fantasy story. There's little to indicate that she chose them based on some deeper historical or other reasoning. For what it's worth, the Harry Potter Wiki claims that the Cruciatus Curse was invented in the Early Middle Ages, though it does not cite its sources.
0Document
I thought that in MoR there'd been no way to invent new spells since Atlantis; but I haven't read it in a while, so I could be confused.
3Velorien
I'm afraid you are. There are numerous references to new spells - for example, Flitwick's hex which he taught to Harry for the purpose of beating Moody.
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