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alethiophile comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 6 - Less Wrong Discussion
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A question: In canon, Dumbledore is satisfied with letting Harry go home to the Dursleys' in the summers because the magic that Lily imbued Harry with on the night of her death somehow extends to the home of her blood relatives. Shouldn't this effect happen in MoR as well? Assuming so, why is Dumbledore paranoid about allowing Harry to go home? Is it simply that canon!Dumbledore doesn't know about the ritual of the blood of the enemy?
Also, why isn't Hogwarts warded somehow against Portkeys? In canon, Voldemort gets Harry off for the blood of the enemy ritual by tricking him (through Crouch-Jr.!Moody) into touching a Portkey. Is there some ward similar to Azkaban's anti-anti-gravity that requires a password in the Portkey spell, and Crouch-Jr.!Moody was able to get the password? Or is that just a gaping, obvious hole in the defenses? (Actually, the fact that no one ever invaded Hogwarts with a Portkey suggests that there are some wards against Portkeying in.)
During the Christmas break, Quirrellmort was able to get as far as the Verres-Evans garden, so if the protection is in place it extends at most to the physical walls of the house, which isn't much - first, because Harry isn't likely to stay secluded (and even if he swears to do so, his parents won't, and while outside of Dumbledore's authority he is susceptible to blackmail), and second, because there are probably sufficiently creative solutions to that little snafu (hijack and crash an airplane on the house? I doubt the Power of Love super-enchantment turned the building into an adamantium-darksteel nuclear bunker).
In canon, it certainly doesn't extend to Harry's wandering about on the streets, which is a huge hole in the protection (making it necessary for the OotP to tail him whenever he leaves the house).
In general, canon wizards completely neglect Muggle artifacts when making their plans. canon!Voldemort could have done that at any time, enchantment or no. So it might just be a function of this Dumbledore not being stupid. (Of course, in this instance he thinks the pertinent threat is Harry being kidnapped for his blood, not killed, so there's a different threat model there.)
No-one's said the blood has to be taken from his living body, though.
True. What are the constraints on that sort of thing? If it were feasible to do so, would getting a DNA sample and cloning the requisite amount of blood work? (Or whatever you would do to generate blood. It probably involves marrow cells somehow.) Does there have to be some sort of connection between the blood and him? Does he have to be alive, or present, during the ritual?
You would need Harry's stem cells, presumably from his marrow. Even with those, I doubt that Voldemort has access to the necessary technology, especially in 1991.
Oh, he would do it by magic.
When Snape and McGonnagal travel to Mary's, they have to take the Floo to Gringotts first, and remark that this is the fastest way out of Hogwarts. Presumably a Portkey would be faster (since it could take them directly where they wished), so either Dumbledore doesn't have Portkeys prepped for major locations like Diagon Alley (which would be stupid), or MoR!Hogwarts is warded against leaving by portkey.
Confirmed:
The instructions also explicitly state that he has to take them beyond the edge of the Hogwarts wards for the cards work.
Also, Quirrell transported Harry using a coin-shaped portkey, and they had to leave the wards first.
Either that or Portkeys take some difficult preparation and have a limited lifetime in which they will work. Requiring a trip to the target location with a lifetime limit of as little as a day would not stomp over any of their uses in cannon or in MoR up to this point IIRC. This would of course preclude Dumbledore from having Portkeys on hand to go to Diagon Alley.
It would render the king of hearts portkey Harry got from Santa Claus useless.
Not if Santa Claus intends to stick around and either recharge the king of hearts or wait for Harry to trigger it, and then transport him manually, but that's pushing it way too far.
It's possible that Hogwarts is protected against portkeys in, but not portkeys out. We saw that sort of 1-way wards was possible in Azkaban, and it might be smart to leave a method of getting out that could be used to evacuate somebody/everybody on short notice.
Not clear if we still have the love-magic in the MOR-verse, given that Lilly's death went down a little differently (she tried to fight back).
I don't see any reason why that would have changed if not to get rid of the love-magic or at least call it into doubt among the readers. Of course, a blank map does not correspond to a blank territory; it could just be making Lily act more rationally.