Has anyone ever tried to figure out why Quirrel (who is possessed by Voldermort) does not have Voldermort's face sticking out the back of his head? In this story, He is not wearing a turban, but is instead described as "slightly balding". Why this change from canon? The law of conservation of detail says that this means something. But what?
Another strange point is that Quirrelmort stopped an anti-polyjuice spell that was directed at him in chapter 79, for no apparent reason. Why? Is he for some reason using polyjuice? But I am pretty sure that he is possessing Quirrel, so what need is there to polyjuce into him?
My proposed answer is this: Voldermort is possessing Quirrel, and to avoid the possibility of being discovered on the back of Quirrel's head, he is using polyjuce to turn his Quirrel/Voldermort composite body back into a only Quirrel body, without a face on the back of the head. This allows him to throw off a certain amount of suspicion from people like Dumbledore who probably know that when a disembodied spirit posseses someone the possesee gets another face on the back of his head. Quirrel not having anyone on the back of his head is therfore proof to Dumbledore that he is not being possesed by Voldermort.
This is the only way I can think of to reconcile the fact that Quirrel is being possessed by Voldermort with the fact that Quirrelmort did not want to be hit with an anti-polyjuice spell, plus it also explains the departure from cannon about the back of Quirrel's head, and in addition it shows the high level of intelligence Voldermort has in this story.
Quirrel stopped the polyjuice spell to be intimidating, same as how he was manipulating the lights. Misdirecting the Aurors to polyjuice makes them more worried, and about the wrong thing.
But I think really it doesn't matter, because the reason in my mind why Voldemort isn't on Quirrel's head is because that would be fucking stupid. Plenty of changes from canon are simply people getting smarter, and this is one really obvious one. If his face HAS to be sticking out of whoever's body he is riding, the back of the head is basically the worst place to put i...
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 81, which should be published later today. The previous thread passed 400 comments as of the time of this writing, so it will pass 500 comments soon after the next chapter is posted, if not before. I suggest refraining from commenting here until chapter 81 is posted; comment in the 12th thread until you read chapter 81. After chapter 81 is posted, I suggest all discussion of previous guesses be kept here, with links to comments in the previous thread.
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.) When posted, chapter 81 should appear here.
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: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight,nine, ten, eleven, twelve.
As a reminder, it’s often useful to start your comment by indicating which chapter you are commenting on.
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: