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mjr comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 14, chapter 82 - Less Wrong Discussion
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So it (not very surprisingly) came to pass that Draco was not sent back to Hogwarts, at least not yet.
Might be some pressure off of Harry to actively harass Dumbledore what with the enemy pledge. Especially as Draco might be unable to continue with his part of the deal. Though Harry is probably curious at this point himself what the real deal is.
I'd still call it possible that someone else did the deed and Heh just took credit for the good of all, but the probability of him being directly responsible got boosted as he was depicted to consider it important that he doom his brother in person also. Then again, though I'd rate it unlikely, perhaps mommy dearest can be found in a private dungeon or a memory charmed witness protection program.
Anyway, Draco. He's probably restricted from communicating with Harry. As if that'd do any good, it having been established that they can communicate through Patroni. It would, of course, require Harry to reveal his Patronus 2.0 to Draco, though. Draco will certainly be the one to initiate contact, mentioning that he's in a secure location. It seems from TSPE part 6 that the Patronus just appears into existence if the caster is far away from the target, so if Draco actually is in a secure location, others wouldn't probably see it. Harry might just risk it.
So I'll bet there will be a visit from a silver serpent soon, though perhaps only after things have settled down for a couple of chapters.
Not quite, you can answer to a patronus and it carries the message back. This happens in all caseswe’ve seen in MoR. (McGonnagal checking on Harry in Mary’s room, and even when Harry and Draco tested the communication method, when Harry answered in Parseltongue.)
So Harry just can’t initiate a conversation, but if Draco does they can communicate freely.
Minor magical nitpick: the Patronus is described to move away, not just dissappear, except it doesn’t actually cross through the intervening space. Or in other words, it dissappears but doesn’t appear to. Nice UI.
Point. SIlly me. Well, that makes future communications between them even more of a no-brainer.
As soon as I read that Draco was to be pulled out of Hogwarts, I imagined Lucius was going to obliviate or memory charm Harry's influence on Draco away.
It's pretty much a given that Draco was interrogated under Veritaserum by Lucius privately, what we don't know is if Lucius is aware of the total extent of Harry's influence over his son. Precisely what questions would he ask Draco, and based on these questions and the quantity of veritaserum taken, what would the answers be?
He can't know the full extent of what Harry taught Draco, because it would take a lot of time for Draco to explain it, and because Lucius would then also have to forcibly see the flawed logic behind blood purism if he happens to analize what Harry said and it makes sense to him, as he would want to understand the details behind Draco's brainwash (from his point of view) in a deep level. Perhaps. Maybe.
How much would he be willing to invade his son's privacy and forcibly extract information from him? Does he know the gist of what Harry did or in full detail according to Draco's recollections? To Lucius, Draco's knowledge about Harry is extremely valuable intel, and it'd make sense for him to want to know Harry's modus operandi in as much detail as possible.
Draco compared his awakening as a scientist to unknowingly participating in a ritual that irreversibly sacrificed his belief in blood purism. Would Lucius see the irreversibility of this state of mind and decide that the best thing for his son would be to not have this knowledge any more? I assume the obliviation of such a large amount of memories would take its toll on the mind of the mind-wiped as it has happened in canon, but it's more likely Lucius would want to do this carefully and not screw around with his only Son's brain. Would it result in a slightly different personality from the original Draco none the less?
I was under the impression that Draco thought that that was literally what happened.
You know what they say, sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic.
I hear this inversion all the time, but this is the first circumstance under which it was actually very appropriate and witty! Well done.
Yeah, I saw the comment above, and was sort of surprised nobody had made the joke yet. I doubt I'll ever see a more perfect spot for it, either.
IIRC, at multiple drops of Veritaserum, you volunteer information you think is relevant. So unless Lucius is holding the idiot ball, he should know all about the blood purity experiment stuff.
Of course, Draco was entangled with Harry from the start, so unless Lucius wants to Obliviate his entire Hogwarts career, basically setting him back a grade...
When canon!Hermione memory charmed her parents she didn't have to take out all fifteen years of their lives that she'd spent with them. Likewise, when Mr. Hat and Cloak erased himself from Blaise's mind he left in all the other stuff Blaise had done between talking to Mr. Hat and Cloak.
Memory charms can be selective. Lucius has time, money, and influence. He can afford to have a trustworthy expert go through Draco's memory and edit out only the events that increased Harry's influences over Draco in a fashion Lucius disapproved of.
You read
as being selective?
I admit I never read it at all.
That doesn't undermine my argument, though, since that's canon and not EY's version. Blaise remains proof that memory charms are selective and don't just wipe out a whole patch of time.
(People don't remember in a linear fashion, anyway.)
Hm. Can a poisonous snake Patronus poison someone?
I don't think a Patronus can bite someone; I don't think they're corporeal. If Harry's Patronus could have grown and grown until all the Dementors in Azkaban were destroyed, that's a pretty good sign that it can pass through ordinary matter.
Yup. Guess I was just being paranoid. As I would be, if I were Harry.
I'd doubt they can actually be poisonous.
But can Harry suborn a snake Patronus using Parseltongue and perchance gain leaked information from the other side of the link (or even fake a message from Draco to someone else)?
So someone can suborn Harry's Patronus by speaking English?
Parseltongue speakers don't just talk with snakes, they command them.
English speakers have no greater ability to command than speakers of most other languages.
Do they really? The boa constrictor seemed pretty interested in its own stuff, Nagini is a pet and pets in general are obedient, Harry didn't command the Basilisk... so is this actually canon? Admittedly, maybe I just missed something, but I don't remember this.
Harry didn't give the boa any commands, and both Nagini and the Basilisk are being commanded by someone else (specifically, a Voldemort). In Chamber of Secrets, Malfoy summons a snake, Harry talks to it and tells it to not attack anyone, and IIRC, it does not.
(The original suggestion is still improbable though - Patronuses wouldn't be the ne plus ultra of secure communications if they could be suborned like that, especially in a war against a famous Parseltongue.)
Now that I think about it, why hasn't Harry bought a pet snake yet? Having an animal minion he could command would be extremely useful in any amount of situations, and you'd think he'd make the best of his abilities. If he's worried about remembering to feed it, he can have Hermione be responsible for it.
In fact, a pet snake would be a great gift from professor Quirrel.
Evil image, more work and complexity (Harry is busy - is a animal minion really a marginal gain?), the need to run it by Dumbledore to get a vault withdrawal (large healthy snakes in the real world are expensive, AFAIK) and the lingering issue of creating sentience?
Because the pet rock turned out so well.
Because getting a pet snake is going to be interpreted as either a sign of Slytherin(which will hardly play well in Ravenclaw) or, if the observer is clever, as a sign that he's a Parselmouth, which is something he'd prefer to keep hidden. The image effects may outweigh the uses.
Oh, crap. Malfoy's blue krait is Voldemort's spy in the Malfoy home.
Besides the reasons already mentioned, the standard Hogwarts letter in canon had restrictions on what kinds of animals were allowed as pets -- owls (like Harry has), cats (like Hermione gets in PoA), and toads (like Neville's). All three are stereotypical wizardy/witchy beasts.
The Weasley rat is not explained in canon but can be assumed to have been granted as an exception. A snake would probably not be given such an exception, as it might be used to scare other children.
Or perhaps snakes are disallowed because then the Gryffindors would ask to be allowed pet lions.
And you wouldn't want an explicit rule against pet lions, because then the Gryffindors would definitely have secret pet lions.
IIRC, Harry thought through similar issues with respect to having a pet owl in the early chapters and rejected it on ethical grounds. Perhaps he is generalizing that to all pets.
If so, though, I don't think he's correct to do so. A pet that is (assuming Parselmouth works this way) only social when it's with me and not when I'm absent has a very different set of ethical costs than one that is social even when I'm absent.
Even if it were possible, it would only affect snake Patroni. If no one in the Order happened to have one, it would be irrelevant.
I guess it could work either way. I mean, Nagini could be obeying Voldemort by virtue of being a well-trained pet, the Basilisk for... whatever reasons the Basilisk does anything for, and Malfoy's summoned snake might listen to Harry because it's inclined to grant random non-difficult favors when asked. None of those seem any less probable than snakes winking, talking, having theory of mind, speaking in ridiculous hisses or knowing Spanish. In fact, none of the snakes in this series seem like snakes at all, so I'm not sure what my priors are regarding them.
I'd say that "Hey, this guy speaks our language, he must be a cool dude" is a lot simpler a hypothesis than linguistic mind control, given that none of the commands are particularly unlikely anyways.
Wait, so you think snakes really are independently sentient?
No. We already know that sentience-borrowing can be accomplished magically(cf. the Sorting Hat). Given that they need to be sentient for the sort of commands Harry discussed earlier to be possible, that is a necessary feature of whatever it is that a Parselmouth does. Mind control is also magically possible, of course, and there's no particular reason it couldn't be included in Parselmouthing, but it seems to violate Occam's Razor to assume that it's necessary as well.
Using Parseltongue to get a snake to do something is supposed to be persuasion, not mind control. (Although getting a snake brain to understand what you want would take quite the feat of magic... they're not social animals and they aren't as smart as, say, dogs.)