= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Vaniver comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 15, chapter 84 - Less Wrong Discussion
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
Comments (1221)
So, it seems more likely that Quirrel was behind the plot.
The thing about there only being seven houses seems big, though, and as far I can tell isn't from canon. (The list of purebloods, for example, doesn't include Jugson, though 500 years old might not be enough to be Most Ancient. I think we have HPMOR confirmation of Malfoy, Potter, Greengrass, and Longbottom, and I think in canon the only ones that get that description are Malfoy, Black, and maybe Potter (really, Peverell).
The 1926 hint narrows it down to four canon characters (though, of course, Bones might be mistaken). Interestingly enough, all of them were sorted into Slytherin- Tom Riddle, Rosier, Avery, and Lestrange. All of them were Death Eaters, and so it seems most likely it's Tom Riddle. (He would be the last of the female line of the Gaunt family, descended from Salazar Slytherin, which seems like it qualifies for Most Ancient. But I suspect the female line doesn't count for things like the Wizengamot, in canon at least.)
(Interestingly, in canon, Morfin Gaunt was memory-charmed to believe that he was the murderer of Voldemort's parents. Riddle did that to cover up a number of his murders. Even more pieces falling into place.)
Tom Riddle as hero seems... really bizarre, though. Who was Voldemort instead? (It seems implausible that Voldemort could have been an alterego; I suspect quite a bit of his pureblood support came from his lineage.)
We know Dumbledore thinks Tom Riddle was Voldemort, because when he's looking for Voldemort within Hogwarts he tells the map to find Tom Riddle.
And all the other occasions Phoenix members speak of Tom Riddle or poison his father's grave.
Way back in chapter 7, Draco refers to "the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black". That's a fifth noble house.
JKR said Nott was ranked as highly as Malfoy. Doesn't necessarily apply in MOR.
I was going to say the Blacks are all (supposedly) dead in HPMOR at this point, but then I remembered that Sirius is (supposedly) just in Azkaban, not dead yet, and if he's counting the female line (like he would have to for Riddle to count) then there's also Bellatrix.
Maybe Andromeda Black-Tonks can to revive the house even though she was disowned if all the other members are dead or Azkabaned.
There's also Draco, Tonks, and Andromeda. (Andromeda is Tonks' mother, Bellatrix's and Narcissa's sister.) This is all assuming that the female line counts, which it more or less has to.
Yes, I'd assume one of Draco's children would take up the mantle of Black if it came to that.
Or Draco himself.
I assume Draco will remain a Malfoy and that you can't have both.
Can't you? Multiple titles, and even personal union of crowns, are pretty common in RL nobility and royalty. It being allowed would be my default assumption, and I know of no Potterverse evidence to the contrary.
There's a difference between dynasties and titles. Houses are dynasties- lots and lots of people were Habsburgs, even though only one person held a title at any particular time. For example, Philip I was, in 1505, King of Castile, Duke of Burgundy, Duke of Brabant, Duke of Limburg, Duke of Lothier, Duke of Luxemburg, Margrave of Namur, Count Palatine of Burgundy, Count of Artois, Count of Charolais, Count of Flanders, Count of Hainault, Count of Holland, and Count of Zeeland, but only a member of one House- the Habsburgs.
Also, take a look at cadet branches.
It doesn't seem likely that wizards actually have hereditary titles that are linked to locations, since their power comes from magic, not farmland. Lord Malfoy is probably only a Lord because he's on the Wizengamot- Draco doesn't seem to have a courtesy title, as would befit the son of an important position in Muggle Britain.
In MoR, Malfoy is a Noble and Most Ancient House, which presumably comes with a title. In canon, Lucius is neither a Lord, nor on the Wizengamot.
Also, in MoR we have
In that case I'd expect in that case there to be more people whose title is something like "Lord of Malfoy, Black, Longbottom, and Potter".
Oh god, bad fanfiction flashbacks...
Long-form noble titles are used very rarely, because they're so unwieldy, and we've only seen a couple of folks who would be in a position to have multiple titles at all in the sort of detail where the long form would be used. Dumbledore is the only example I know of where they actually used anything longer than a few words. You're right that we might have seen one, but Rowling would likely have found it a bit too complex, and they're not so common that the lack is significant.
Remember that Quirrel is NOT Riddle. He's Riddle in the body of someone else. It's pretty damn voldemorty to come back in the body of one of your enemies, too.
I've been peddling the scheme of uploading into Harry when Harry supposedly defeats him.
It makes sense too that he has more power through Dark Rituals. He uses up the host body through the costs born by the host, and then moves on to another.
Upload Vohaul to the computer, then beam him back into your son's body. (BEAM UPLOAD, BEAM DOWNLOAD)
Well, that's just great! Now Vohaul's on the loose again, disguised as your SON! You lose 3 out of 2.
The only canon character that matches Bones's description is Riddle (though he only does so partially, having murdered his family before his graduation in canon). So either EY stuck in a Mary Sue who just happens to have Tom Riddle's biographical details, or Bones wants Tom Riddle to take up the Gaunt seat in the Wizengamot.
Or maybe there's a third option you haven't thought of. How confident are you?
I thought of three other options, and dismissed all of them. Riddle gets over 98% of the 'canon character born in 1926' probability mass, and so I intend to spend a comparable amount discussing him over other options.
Hmm. It seems it was supposed to be obvious it wasn't Riddle. How odd.
Why does it seem that way?
Word of God.
Okay. I still stand by my probability (after I revised it down from the Noble House conversation) but it's irrelevant because the new birthdate suggests Quirrel is supposed to be a non-canon character.
You sure? The graduation date didn't change, so it's still one of Riddle's classmates. How many boys were sorted into Slytherin in 1938?
Edit: I just realized class sizes in 1991 have been more than doubled from canon, so you may have a point.
It strikes me as simply bettter writing, or at least, better fanfiction writing, if this new, extremely skilled and competent and apparently original character, can be explained by the original divergence between HPMoR and canon, and the most obvious way for that to be the case is if Voldemort controlled or impersonated him in some way, making his competence a consequence of Voldemort's competence.
Tom Riddle wasn't a hero. He was a villain whose villainous plot was to create a fake villain named Voldemort for him to defeat. He arranged for there to be a kidnapping attempt on the daughter of the minister of magic so that he could save her and be propelled into herodom. But things did not go according to plan:
At this point, he decided to go full-time as the fake villain persona, and did so for the next eight years, when he decided to abandon it.
The reason I think this is odd is because, in canon, Voldemort was a name change, not a new person. So instead of Tom Riddle getting together with his Slug Club friends and saying "hey, maybe we should run this country, and by the way I never liked my old name," Voldemort is some external actor that managed to get the loyalty of a bunch of Britain's nobility.
Really? In canon I thought Voldemort = Riddle was a pretty well-kept secret. But as per Eliezer's comment elsewhere in the thread, it looks like Riddle's hero persona wasn't called "Tom Riddle," he impersonated (possessed?) a descendent of some more respectable house to create that identity.
That could be- I haven't read the books since the last one came out. This is what I'm seeing on the HPWiki:
That suggests to me that the early Death Eaters grew up with him as Tom Riddle, and it was just a name change. If the "Voldemort = Riddle" thing is poorly known, it's probably because no one has reason to know that his name was Riddle (like, for example, most people have heard of Stalin but haven't heard of Dzhugashvili).
That seems spectacularly stupid for someone as smart as we've observed him to be.
You should say what part is stupid.
Creating a plan that complex and prone to failure?
It isn't a very complex plan -- it just required that he play two roles; this gave him two avenues of success (if resistance to Voldemort is strong, take over as the hero -- if resistance to Voldemort is too weak take over as Voldemort). And it fits in perfectly with the plan that he has already suggested to Harry Potter (find an actor to play Voldemort, have him cast Avada Kedavra at you, block it with Patronus, be hero), so it's perfectly consistent with Quirrel's way of thinking.
When we talk about too complex plans, we talk about plans with multiple points of possible failure. You call this complicated because it had multiple points of possible success.
My hypothesis is stated here, by the way- the thread goes on to include discussion of Noble Houses.
None of the canon classmates are noble, though.
The only canon Noble and Most Ancient House is Black, though.
Hm. It looks like EY just took any pure-blood family and decided to make it a Noble House- that suggests Crouch is one too, and possibly Lestrange. (But there are way more than seven of those.)
Thank Donny for noticing this, but apparently there's a distinction being drawn between 'Noble' Houses like Potter and 'Noble and Most Ancient' Houses like Malfoy, Longbottom, Greengrass and Black.
Indeed. I count 18 families 'related to' the House of Black, and if all of those are Noble or Noble and Most Ancient we could quickly round out the list.
Both Rosier and Lestrange show up on that list, so that raises my estimate that Bones thinks Quirrel is one of those classmates instead, but both of them were Death Eaters. Since so much is diverging from canon here, I suspect I should stop trying to predict based on canon and just wait to see what's changed.
(I couldn't resist, some more research: the Peverell family is extinct in the male line, suggesting that they might have been Noble and Most Ancient and the Potters, descended from them in the female line, are just Noble. That would mean that Riddle is just Noble, rather than Noble and Most Ancient, though, but who knows.)
Presumably they're... well, at the risk of being obvious, the Most Ancient Houses?
Then how could the destruction of one cause their numbers to fall from eight to seven? If it's just a matter of who can trace their roots back the farthest, surely the next-oldest would be bumped up.
Possibly there's some cutoff point, with only houses founded before that point given the Most Ancient label; whether this comes with any official privileges beyond just being old and respected remains to be seen.
It seems like the obvious cut-off point would be the original houses founded when Merlin created the Wizengamot.
By now the Most Ancient label has shifted from being descriptive, to just part of the name
This is lazy of you, downvoted.
The Crabbes and Goyles have not been declared noble. The Parkinsons and Montagues and Boles have not been declared noble.
House Potter is not "Most Ancient".
In HPMor, we have Malfoy, Black, Greengrass and Longbottom declared explicitly as "Noble and Most Ancient".
Eliezer has jossed this. Page 118 or so of the TVTropes discussion.
A link would be very helpful.
It's elsewhere in the thread, now. But here it is, anyway.