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hairyfigment comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 11 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Chapter 26, "Noticing Confusion" : Don't know if anyone has pointed this out yet, but Quirrell says, "I...need to go off and set something in motion," before apparently going off to accost Rita Skeeter. During their conversation (Ch 25) she thinks about the alleged fact that a tipster directed her to Mary's Room, where she will shortly die. Now she may have thought this before meeting Quirrell -- she definitely had somewhere to be -- but then why would he bother to speak with her?
I just looked at the passage again, and it seems worse than that. She actually thinks,
A last chance? If she had done the right thing and apologized or retracted it, she would have shown up at Mary's Room and observed absolutely nothing of interest or been ejected or confounded or something. The trope might be Last-Second Chance, although this seems to be more of a martial-arts sort of trope where you are ultra-polite and correct as you give the other person a clear statement of their mistake and a chance to rectify it before you open the can of whoop-ass on them (Martial Pacifist).
My reading:
In 25 Harry asked the Weasley twins for help, and told them not to involve Quirrell in their plot, because he didn't like publicity. The Weasley twins agree, but are amused that Harry doesn't know them that well or he wouldn't have brought up Quirrell at all, and say they'll do Quirrell on their own time.
This part is never explicitly stated, but I assume they alert Rita to Quirrell and manufacture some silly rumors about him being a former Death Eater and training Harry to be the Next Dark Lord.
Rita then publishes an article making those exact accusations.
Quirrell confronts Rita about this. He pulls up his arm to show no Dark Mark. But she clearly shows she considers herself above all the rabble, doesn't give two damns about journalistic integrity, and simply doesn't care who she hurts. It is at that point that she thinks about Mary's Room, and turning into a beetle.
It is implied that Quirrell was reading her mind as she thought that, so now he has knowledge of her snooping habits and morphing abilities. He deliberately puns on this, saying that he now can't resist the urge to simply "crush" her instead. I don't think this first meeting was orchestrated by Quirrell, it was unrelated and simply gave him the knowledge he needed to set up her murder.
I deduce that Quirrell later leaks to her anonymously that he'll be meeting with Harry in Mary's room and something juicy will happen. I find it pretty damn delicious the way he toys with her without Harry's knowledge, she must've had a hell of a sphincter-tightening moment when he audibly considers casting a spell to reveal any animagi in the room. And it's awesome the way you (as a reader) don't notice that until your second read-through.
I agree — though it's hard to tell because chapter 25 is written out of order. But a week passes between when Harry asks the twins for a plot and the lunch with Quirrell when Harry reads the paper: Act 2 is stated as happening on Sunday; directly afterwards, in act 3, Harry talks with Draco and borrows 40 galleons, and sometime afterwards, probably directly after, in Act 4, Harry asks the twins for a plot, and the twins also discuss pranking Quirrell. In Act 5, the twins ask Flume for help, and show him an article in "yesterday's edition of the Daily Prophet", titled "THE NEXT DARK LORD?". In Act 6, Quirrell quotes that title when he confronts Skeeter; he also mentions he has no dark mark, which is one of the elements of the twins' discussion in act 4.
So at some point in the week between Act 4 (either Sunday or soon after) and Mary's room (Saturday), the twins convince Skeeter of certain things about Quirrell. The Prophet publishes the Quirrell article. At some point early the next morning, the twins ask Flume for help with Harry's article. At some point after that, and before Saturday, Quirrell confronts Skeeter on the street.
In summary, there's almost a week of lost time in chapter 25, which makes it a little difficult to see that the twins were behind Skeeter's article on Quirrell, but there are enough hints in there to make it a sure thing.
Good catch, that is definitely making my trope sense tingle.