"You're not my phoenix now... are you?"
Caw!
"Oh," Harry said, his voice trembling a little, "I'm glad to hear that, Fawkes, because I don't >think - the Headmaster - I don't think he deserves -"
Harry stopped, took a breath.
"I don't think he deserves that, Fawkes, he was trying to do the right thing..."
Caw!
"But you're angry at him and trying to make a point. I understand."
Did Fawkes' "caw!" mean "yes" or "no"?
I interpreted it as meaning "no", then Harry says he's glad because Dumbledore doesn't deserve to have his pet leave him because he was trying to do the right thing, but Fawkes is angry and wants to show Dumbledore how mad he is by giving him the cold shoulder for a short while.
One of the reviewers interpreted the caw as "yes', then Harry says he's glad because he doesn't think Dumbledore deserves a phoenix, then he takes a breath and sort of changes his mind and briefly applies principle of charity to Dumbledore, but understands that Fawkes is trying to make a point by leaving him.
Which way is intended?
It must be the first because there seems to be no reason for Eliezer to have induced this particular bit of ambiguity in this particular place deliberately, and there is no way he could possibly have missed that cutting off a sentence and then uttering a sentence that starts with a repetition of the cut off sentence might be interpreted as completing the cut off sentence. On the other hand it's perfectly plausible that he might have overlooked the other possible reading.
Update: Discussion has moved on to a new thread.
After 61 chapters of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality and 5 discussion threads with over 500 comments each, HPMOR discussion has graduated from the main page and moved into the Less Wrong discussion section (which seems like a more appropriate location). You can post all of your insights, speculation, and, well, discussion about Eliezer Yudkowsky's Harry Potter fanfic here.
Previous threads are available under the harry_potter tag on the main page (or: one, two, three, four, five); this and future threads will be found under the discussion section tag (since there is a separate tag system for the discussion section). See also the author page for (almost) all things HPMOR, and AdeleneDawner's Author's Notes archive for one thing that the author page is missing.
As a reminder, it's useful to indicate at the start of your comment which chapter you are commenting on. Time passes but your comment stays the same.
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: