Can I ask for clarification as to WHY a Harry/Quirrel alliance is a bad thing?
Please don't say "because he's Voldemort". It seems possible that MOR!He-Who-Sall-Not-Be-Named wasn't pure evil, and it's been hinted that even good people like Dumbledor used some decidedly evil tactics. Furthermore, it is strongly suggested that Quirrel/Voldemort have learned quite a bit from the first attempt at world-optimization and are taking corrective action.
Is it because this path leads to taking over the world? This seems a strange objection if we consider that one of the purposes of at least a portion of the HPMoR readers is to create a minor god. World-optimization is an explicit goal.
Is it because if a Harry/Quirrel alliance takes over they won't implement at CEV? Is that necessarily a bad thing if we consider that a CEV may well result in Azkaban staying open?
I love the battle of wits between the two, especially because it seems a large part of it isn't just "using" the other person, it is attempting to convert the other person to one's own view. And I think I particularly love this battle because I myself am often caught between cynicism and idealism, and I find myself rooting for BOTH of them at the same time. As a result, I kinda hope they both win together. Maybe end up using each other for balance, each one preventing the other from swinging too far to one extreme (or at least from taking extreme action). Everyone needs a check, and only Harry is powerful enough to be Quirrel's, and only Quirrel is powerful enough to be Harry's.
There's a lot we don't know about Quirrel, which might turn out to make him a good guy, or an interesting guy, or a guy who we ultimately would root for for one reason or another.
Right now, we don't know those things. What we do know is that he killed Rita Skeeter for, as far as we can tell, no good reason. That's one thing we know for sure which Harry specifically doesn't know, and IMO it's enough to assume that (from our perspective) Harry should not be working with Quirrel. Eventually we may learn new things, but for now the disconnect is too great for ...
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: