Dumbledore pointed to the second scrawl. “The ones in this handwriting,” he said, still in that low voice, “were written by your mother. And the ones in this handwriting,” moving his finger to indicate the first scrawl, “were written by me. I would turn myself invisible and sneak into her dorm room while she was sleeping. Lily thought one of her friends was the one writing them and they had the most amazing fights.” ... Dumbledore was looking at him with a serious expression. “Do you understand the implications of what I have just told you, Harry?” ... “Ah well,” said Dumbledore, and sighed. “I suppose your intelligence has limits after all, then. It seems I was greatly premature in my enthusiasm. Shall we all just pretend I didn’t say anything incriminating?”
We have inferred that he got between Snape and Lily with the notes in the potions book. But Harry has no way of inferring this from the above. The only thing I can think to infer here is that Dumbledore was taking an "inappropriate interest" in Lily while she was a student.
I'm running with the theory (from Donny) that the prophecy was planted by Dumbledore as a plot to lure Voldemort into a trap, where Lily completed a dark ritual to protect Harry and destroy Voldemort should he attack Harry. Thinking further on this, I concluded that Lily would have to be in on the plot for it to have any hope of working. Then I recalled feeling that there was some "off" connection between Lily and Dumbledore, and came up with this.
What was Harry supposed to conclude from Dumbledore invisibly sneaking into Lily's room while she was a student, besides the obvious that Dumbledore was fooling around with Lily? It almost seems like he's trying to tell Harry he's his father. See his sadness and disappointment later in the scene.
I'm running with the theory (from Donny) that the prophecy was planted by Dumbledore as a plot to lure Voldemort into a trap, where Lily completed a dark ritual to protect Harry and destroy Voldemort should he attack Harry.
Objection. I don't believe Lily completed a ritual. She's not the one who spoke the words in the correct order. I don't think Voldemort would accidentally confer a protection upon an intended victim, either.
My version of this theory has Dumbledore creating the same setup as in canon because he thought it would lead to the same result...
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: