I am confused as to why Dumbledore tolerates Quirrell's presence at Hogwarts: he clearly suspects Quirrell, and we've just seen that he can be exceedingly ruthless. At the very least, one would expect Dumbledore to put heavy security precautions in place around him (along the lines of tracking his movements, etc).
One hypothesis that would partially explain this, along with many other things, is that Quirrell might be a fragment of Voldemort's soul that disagrees with the other fragments, or at least with Voldemort himself. (Or, equivalently, that it has persuaded Dumbledore of this.) (Presumably, it is the one based on the Pioneer horcrux.) This fits with (real-life) modularity of mind, which has been extensively discussed on LW, and has also already been shown to exist in-story by Harry's internal, conflicting voices.
(In addition to explaining why Dumbledore trusts Quirrell, this would also explain why Quirrellmort acts so differently from Voldemort.)
To extend this line or reasoning a bit, there's no reason to think that Hat and Cloak and Santa Claus are any of the previously introduced characters- they could easily be yet another fragment of Voldemort's soul, possibly cooperating with or opposing the other fragments.
(My previous hypothesis was that Dumbledore was simply so desperate to gain a DADA teacher that he made concessions and accepted as possibly dark candidate. However, this doesn't fit with the ruthless Dumbledore we've seen in recent chapters.)
(My previous hypothesis was that Dumbledore was simply so desperate to gain a DADA teacher that he made concessions and accepted as possibly dark candidate. However, this doesn't fit with the ruthless Dumbledore we've seen in recent chapters.)
The position is cursed (I think in MoR as well as canon). Many of the ways someone can vacate the position forcibly by the end of a school year are fatal or debilitating. It might be that he's willing to trade a year of Defense education for all of his students in exchange for putting a suspected enemy in harm's ...
The new discussion thread (part 15) is here.
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 82. The previous thread passed 1000 comments as of the time of this writing, and so has long passed 500. Comment in the 13th thread until you read chapter 82.
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.)
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: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13.
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: