This seems to suggest that her memories of the duel are a fabrication (or the "Draco" she was fighting was someone else under the influence of polyjuice). Draco has no particular reason to further provoke her and was genuinely unsure whether he could beat her. It doesn't seem obvious why anyone would do that if there was going to be a genuine duel anyway, though.
Well, the whole obliviate cycle on Hermione took place at a time when the events that led to Draco willingly challenging Hermione to a duel probably could not have been predicted, unless someone caused them deliberately. Draco had no intention of challenging Hermione until his hand was forced by some apparently chance events in a battle that did not have to go that way. So if a third party was planning a duel, that turn of events might not have been in their plans.
Although it raises the question of what they would have done if the battle had not turned out that way, since Hermione probably would not have challenged Draco.
Create enough tension and it'll spring loose somewhere, and I doubt Quirrel much cared where. There's no way that those two(Hermione in particular, given the lack of political training) have enough self-control to hate each other, think that they're scheming at each other, and then do absolutely nothing about it for an extended period.
The next discussion thread 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 84. The previous thread has passed 500 comments. Comment in the 14th thread until you read chapter 84.
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, 14.
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: