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Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 15, chapter 84
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:
You do not need to rot13 anything about HP:MoR or the original Harry Potter series unless you are posting insider information from Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).
If there is evidence for X in MOR and/or canon then it’s fine to post about X without rot13, even if you also have heard privately from Eliezer that X is true. But you should not post that “Eliezer said X is true” unless you use rot13.
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Comments (1221)
Wild guessing:
There's a lot of things said about Voldemort that don't really make sense. How did get killed by a child? Quirrel himself makes fun of the Dark Mark, and why would someone who wants to be an effective leader torture his own servants for fun? He destroys the martial arts school without learning anything. I'm starting to think that Voldemort makes far more sense as a propagandized creation of Dumbledore's side than as a real entity. It's pretty obvious that the known story of what happened at Godric's Hollow isn't what REALLY happened. Dumbledore was the winner in the historic conflict, and who knows how well a wizard, the supreme mugwump, gets to rewrite history in his favor. He instantly acts to suppress knowledge of a prophecy, and why would he do that if he didn't have huge secrets to keep? Which is the side that uses dementors?
If Quirrel is Voldemort, I think it's possible he isn't and never was the Voldemort known from canon. Is it more plausible that crazy violent dumb Voldemort would become Quirrel, or that he never really existed at all?
Quirrell is reading Hermione's mind and manipulating her during their conversation at the end of 84.
And also:
He stares at her, and plucks thoughts out of her head to persuade her, and her eyes start burning (maybe she's not blinking or something, or EY is adding that as a side effect of legimancy, or it's just to draw our attention to the eye contact), and the instant she decides he's responsible he echoes her thought. So that seems pretty obvious. I now understand why EY thinks that we're bad at reading clues, I've read that chapter about three times and this is the first time I've picked up on it.
Also, I'd like to have said that he stopped manipulating her right after she broke eye contact, but it never explicitly says where she breaks eye contact. I would assume that she broke eye contact when she stepped away from him though, that seems more natural and is how the scene goes down when I imagine it inside my head.
No, he echoes her thought the instant she physically reacts to move away from him. NOT the "instant she decides". Keep the facts straight, please.
We've already been told that common sense is often mistaken for Legimancy. This event doesn't require reading her mind, it just requires reading her body language.
Eyes burning has never been mentioned as a side-effect of Legimancy previously, as far as I can remember -- so I don't see how you can use it as evidence in favour of Legimancy. Eyes burning seems more likely to be indicative of someone who's about to cry.
I feel like your post is a bit snippy and that your tone and the negative karma you gave are not warranted.
I should have phrased it differently, but it's not body language, it's Legimancy.
There are many possible reasons that she could have taken a step back. That she stepped away from Quirrell in no way mandates that she's distrusting Quirrell, it could be many other things. There's also many possible reasons she could distrust him. Him naming the exact thought that she had almost immediately after she stepped away from him seems improbable. Quirrell is an idiot if he jumped to the conclusion that she thought he was responsible just because she stepped away from him, that conclusion only makes sense in the context of the information in Hermione's mind.
We already know that Quirrell can read minds and there's decent reason to suspect that he would do so. We know that Legimancy requires looking someone in the eyes, and he's doing that. Additionally, if you'd read my comment more carefully you would have noticed that I gave many explanations for why her eyes might have been burning.
Means, motive, opportunity, no probable counterexplanation...
I didn't downvote you - please don't assume that a criticism is always accompanied by a downvote.
Name three.
When her first reaction to his sight was "Are you here to kill me?"
Except that he didn't name the exact thought that she had. The thought that she had at the moment was "If the Defense Professor was behind this whole thing then Professor Quirrell had done it all just to get her out of the way of his plans for Harry." -- in short she thought of his motivation. She had already thought of him as number one suspect just before she said "Are you here to kill me?" at the beginning of the encounter.
So he wasn't actually echoing any current thought. He just assumed she thought him responsible, after several obvious physical and verbal indications she feared him.
He would be an idiot if he didn't jump to that conclusion.
Ack. I can't believe it took me this long, but I think Quirrellmort's plan has finally fallen into place for me. Quirrellmort's primary goals are:
(1) Attain immortality. (2) Enjoy it.
But he believes a necessary means to those ends is:
(3) Kill Harry Potter.
When Quirrellmort first said that when he made his Evil Overlord list, he realized following it all the time would defeat the purpose of being a Dark Lord. I wondered if he was telling the truth about that. HPMOR is all about playing with things that don't make sense in traditional stories, and the fact the bad guy wants to rule the world in traditional stories is one of those things that rarely makes any sense. It's taken for granted that bad guys want to rule worlds, but why? Wouldn't it be a lot of work?
At first glance, though, having Quirrellmort not want to rule the world (or even just Magical Britain) would have done funny things to the dramatic tension of the story. Probably the story would end up being about whether Harry could think clearly enough to do utopia right, with Quirrellmort acting not as a traditional antagonist but more of a tempter-figure, trying to nudge Harry towards becoming a Dark Lord.
Now I've become convinced that Quirrellmort was very much telling the truth about deciding not to be a Dark Lord. Here's the thing, though: he still wants to be immortal. Remember the scene where Harry realizes that his mysterious dark side is terrified of death, and he needs to coddle it? If his dark side is a piece of Voldemort's soul, that's telling us that Voldemort is terrified of death.
And Voldemort has heard a prophecy saying that either he or Harry must die. He's absolutely terrified of death, so he's going to try to make sure it's Harry. He didn't intend to kill Harry on the Night of Godric's Hollow, but that's because he knew the part of the prophecy that said, "He will mark him as his equal." He realized if he tried to kill Harry directly, according to the prophecy something would go wrong, so he decided to first fulfill the part about marking Harry as his equal intentionally, and then figure out how to kill Harry in a way that nothing would go wrong.
For purposes of the story's plot, his central goal isn't any different than Canon!Voldemort's. Both are focused on killing Harry. But HPMOR!Voldemort, once he's done that, won't try to rule Magical Britain. He'll go off and do whatever the hell he feels like.
I wonder if maybe from '73-'81 Voldemort deliberately avoided winning the war, because he thought fighting a war would be more fun than actually trying to rule after you've won.
Despite the many good reasons to believe Quirrell is H&C, My Red Herring Alarm (©) wouldn't stop going off while Harry was going over the list of suspects. My gut is usually fairly good at seeing plot-twists coming, and it's very certain there's someone Harry is forgetting about. Anyone else getting a similiar vibe?
I think H&C is Snape. I am really confused about what was going on with H&C1 and Quirrell but everything since then is consistent with Snape plotting against Harry.
How Magic Works, Some Facts, Inferences, Conclusions, and Speculations
The Facts:
The Speculations:
The source of magic has a certain limited number of permitted Spell to Effect associations on each power level. These associations are susceptible for expiration when no-one knows the spell anymore. High level associations were frozen in place by the Interdict of Merlin, but low level slots are still expiring, and whatever ritual the wizards use to create spells is merely triggering a garbage collect and conditional new spell insert.
Upon reception of the insert ritual, the Source of Magic scans the Wizard's mind, and performs an optimization algorithm on a set of existing spells to make a new spell which is close enough in some set of dimensions to what it thinks the Wizard wants, after which it associates the spell and effect. Therefore it would use thousands of years of existing infrastructure for making intelligent object effects.
In this scenario a wizard might be trying to create a spell for years, until a slot opens up that he will get to first, competing with everyone else trying to make spells.
Wizards, of course, not willing to accept the apparent randomness of this, have additional learned behaviors about creating spells, things they believe are required, most of which are not required and boil down to daydreaming about the effect you want and practice with the spell string and wand wave.
You don't distinguish your facts from your inferences well enough. Your list of "facts" seems to contains inferences like "Therefore time turners were limited after the invention of Equinoctal hours, in 127CE.", speculations like "Wizards seem to spend most of their time in pocket universes, otherwise you'd spot dragons and hogwarts trains on satellite imagery." and assumptions like "Children have unconscious magic, but not to the extent that OT Harry did."
Chizpurfles appear to be canon.
Would you mind giving your evidence for the following points?
We don't actually have any general comments on what kind of animals and plants don't exist. We only know which ones exist in the vicinity of Hogwarts, plus a limited sampling of foreign ones (such as Veela).
Isn't this the opposite of what it does? I thought its sole effect was to prevent the impersonal transmission of spells (and thus the rediscovery of old powerful spells from books).
Example, please?
This is Draco's opinion, IIRC, and apart from the fact that he's an 11-year old boy of limited education, we know that his information sources on wizard power over the ages are strongly biased and unreliable.
Can you expand on the reasoning here? I don't see how you conclude that the limitation on time turners is somehow dependent on someone thinking in terms of equinoctal hours. It seems just as plausible that the (length of day)/4 limit (which happens to equal six equinoctal hours) is based on the physics of time turning and has applied all along.
My non-conclusive arguments for this are as follows:
I would like feedback on a theory.
First, some groundwork. Voldemort's first "destruction" as a result of Lily Potter's sacrifice does not seem right. Even if we accept that love and sacrifice somehow block the killing curse, she was trying to kill Voldemort when he killed her. That doesn't add up to burnt-out husk of Voldemort. Now, before I suggest a solution, you might want to consider alternatives for yourself.
I suggest that Voldemort was intentionally turning Harry into a Horcrux. There are at least two reasons for the burnt-out husk result. (1) Using a human as horcrux was probably experimental, and prone to disaster. (2) Voldemort's original body served as the human sacrifice to create the horcrux. There are many other possibilities, and the details are not critical. What matters is that Harry, as a horcrux, is at least partly a copy of Voldemort himself (thus the mysterious dark side). Interestingly, this means a copy of Voldemort grew up with a loving and supportive family.
Now for the important part: what the heck is Professor Quirrel up to? Acquiring political power for Harry seems to be high on his agenda. If Harry contains a copy of Voldemort, then acquiring political power for Harry is, in some sense, acquiring power for Voldemort.
Summary: Harry is (partly) Voldemort. Voldemort/Quirrel's plan (or at least one of them) was to make a copy, put it in Harry, and make Harry the new Lord.
The events of the recent chapters have provided significant evidence against this theory. Taking out Harry's best friends is not consistent with putting Harry in a position of political power, assuming that it was Voldemort/Quirrel behind the incident. But that's a problem regardless of theory. Professor Quirrel's obvious agenda is to put Harry in power. If he really wants to destroy Harry, why this agenda? Note that far less would suffice to make Quirrel look innocent in Harry's destruction. But if he really does want Harry in power, why remove his friends?
If someone else was behind it, who and why? Dumbledore should not be ruled out yet, although he doesn't have an obvious motive and he's putting up a damn good show if it was him. Lucius does have an obvious motive, but also put up a damn good show, and it seems overly clever for him. Postulating an unknown third party would take a lot more evidence to justify the increase in complexity and provide little predictive power, though it's not impossible.
So, three questions: (1) Any other evidence for/against the "Harry is the new Voldemort" theory? (2) If Quirrel was behind the attack on Draco/Hermione, what is his real agenda? (3) If someone else was behind it, who and why?
1926 is the date Amelia Bones gives for what she suspects to be Quirrell's true identity. It is also the date of Tom Marvolo Riddle's birth in canon. This and other details suggest that Bones believes Quirrell is Riddle. But for that to be true, it must be that during Voldemort's first campaign, Riddle was still appearing as Riddle until, apparently, 1973
Bones must not know Riddle is Voldemort, or she would be behaving very differently towards Dumbledore. Dumbledore, on the other hand, appears to believe Riddle is Voldemort, because just a few chapters ago he told the Marauder's Map to find Tom Riddle when he was looking for Voldemort. Therefore Dumbledore must not know Quirrell is Riddle. It's maddening how many problems could be solved here by the characters' sharing information with each other.
Anyway, given that Riddle is Bones' hero, much of what Riddle told Hermione may have been perfectly truthful. And here is what especially caught my eye:
So it sounds like Riddle initially created Voldemort so he could make himself into a hero, but then decided to be Voldemort full-time, because it would be more fun. This he did for eight years, from 1973-1981.
Similarly, Riddle previously told Harry (in chapters nineteen and twenty) that he decided not to become a Dark Lord, and that he realized that if he did everything necessary to do that Dark Lord gig right, there would be no point. What if he was telling the truth? What if Riddle decided to dispose of the Voldemort persona because it stopped being fun?
Personally, the thought of someone totally amoral and willing to totally change around their plans based on what is most fun is rather frightening.
EDIT: See also this comment of mine, which lays out the story I am proposing in chronological order. Note that my confidence in what Riddle was originally planning on doing when he first went full-time as Voldemort, and my confidence in his motives for abandoning the Voldemort persona, is lower than my confidence in the rest of my theory.
That makes a lot of sense, really. Nobody does things "For Teh Evulz!", they do them either because they think it's good or because they think it's awesome.
Just noticed this lovely little tidbit at the very end of Chapter 84:
What on Earth is that supposed to mean? Who or what is cawing in Hogwarts or on the grounds, and how does she know something about it that we don't? Or am I missing some terribly obvious connection here?
Fawkes.
I thought it was the phoenix, myself.
Snape may have used the sound of a phoenix call to guide Hermione in the past.
I was rereading the new chapters and got very confused about what happens between casting a spell and its effects.
Hexes are slow enough to be dodged from almost point-blank range. Chapter 78:
But some spells have instantaneous effect. Chapter 78:
(There is no way that could have been safe given normal reaction times and current values of g)
Then there is wandless magic, which (I think) is instantaneous in canon, but that would be far too overpowered for MoR. Actually even the hover charm, assuming it is instantaneous, could be deadlier in the hands of a powerful wizard than the killing curse.
It seems to be different for different spells. For example, some spells can't be dodged because of the missile shape rather than because of speed (e.g. wide blasts rather than beams or missiles). Likewise, some require physical contact (Transfiguration) while others affect everyone in the vicinity irrespective of location, targeting or obstacles (Muffliato, the one that stops people overhearing you).
Also, I don't think it gets deadlier than the Killing Curse by definition - it is unblockable and kills instantly. Any other spell we know of can be blocked by a good enough shield and/or have its effects undone before they are fatal (by an ally if not by the target themselves).
It can be dodged. My point was that if the hover charm is instant and cannot be dodged, then accelerating the victim into something (e.g. sky then ground) can kill them without giving them time before the spell hits. And with sufficient acceleration, the victim won't be able to react.
In canon, Snape was able to shut down everything Harry tried against him in combat in the sixth book, because as long as Harry hadn't mastered occlumency or silent spellcasting, his attacks were all sufficiently telegraphed that a superior duelist and leglimens like Snape could simply counter them all before he could fire them off.
Indeed. I'm reminded of martial arts - in a sparring match between a very fit beginner and a creaky master, the master still just toys with the beginner because their movements are so predictable. I've seen this in fencing, taekwondo, and karate, and it's a mixture of hilarious, impressive, and sad all at once.
If you're really good, you can toy around like that even with people who're quite proficient. I haven't seen it myself, but my sifu said that his teacher, grandmaster Al Dacascos, who's a first generation martial arts hall of famer, really is that good in his sixties, and on the wikipedia page of Kenshiro Abbe, it says that he recalled how his own kendo instructor, a 75 year old tenth dan (back when tenth dans in kendo actually still existed) couldn't be touched by any of the students or younger instructors.
I'm curious why the spell has to be shot out from the wand, rather than from a completely different direction or appearing spontaneously in the middle of the target. There's an underlying assumption that magic is like lasers and wands are like guns in much of Canon!HP and in MOR, but that doesn't really seem justified. Maybe this is just another conceptual limitation?
You're right, no hint of an explanation why wands are necessary has ever been given. Spontaneous underage magic, as well as high-level wandless magic, would be evidence in favour of the "conceptual limitation" theory.
On the other hand, this wouldn't explain why Bacon, who apparently lacked this conceptual limitation, was severely held back in his research by lack of a wand. Also, it doesn't explain why high-level wizards continue to use wands for the overwhelming majority of their spellcasting.
Prediction: Harry's investigation to clear Hermione's name leads him to Quirrlemort's true identity.
p=?
75%
Seems very clear at this point that Q. cannot predict Harry's actions, and that he was responsible for Hermione's framing. Truth is entangled, Harry is very clever, especially when not under a time crunch- this seems very likely to me.
I think the probability might be that high given narrative requirements(i.e., Harry will near-certainly figure it out, Potter books usually end at the end of school years and it's April, and we know that the series is in the homestretch), but I'd put an in-universe probability without reference to that data a vastly lower chance.
I'm wondering if EY is going to come through on this whole "Dumbledore is the Dark Lord and Quirrelmort was in the right all along" approach that he has hinted at recently. There's a precedent here which raises my probability estimate of this slightly, [rot13 for spoilers from another EY story] va uvf fgbel "Gur Fjbeq bs Tbbq" gur gjvfg jnf gung gur ureb'f pubvpr orgjrra tbbq naq rivy jnfa'g n pubvpr bs juvpu bar gb sbyybj (gung jbhyq or boivbhf, pyrneyl) vg jnf gur zhpu uneqre pubvpr bs juvpu jnf juvpu. Gur "tbbq thlf" ghearq bhg gb or rivy naq gur "onq thlf" ghearq bhg gb or tbbq.
So from recent chapters it seems like we're supposed to at least be considering the possibility of that Quirrelmort has been playing some colossal super-villain gambit this whole time in order to set up the rise of Light Lord Harry and defeat death once and for all, and that the Dark Lord prophesied to oppose all this is Dumbledore, who has marked Harry for his equal by nominating him as the future leader of the people he mistakenly believes to be The Good Guys and who wants us all to embrace death when it comes.
This concerns me a little bit, not because I don't like the idea of Voldemort being secretly good but because it would be tragic for Dumbledore to turn out to be so evil. Don't get me wrong, Dumbledore is greatly mistaken on many points but on the surface it doesn't seem fair to call him a Dark Lord. His intentions seem to be better than almost every other person in the wizarding world, and it seems a bit rich to brand him with that label just because he opposed someone who was doing a very good job of pretending to be EVIL with a capital everything.
This, of course, is WORSE because it means that EY won't do it like that - if Quirrel turns out to be good it will mean that Dumbledore has known the Voldemort gambit was a ploy all along, and has been actively opposing Quirrel's attempt to reform the world because he doesn't think the end justifies the means. And now he's been broken further and further, forced to do more and more horrible things and turned into a monster just because he didn't want monstrous things to happen! I just can't help but think that it would have been better for Quirrel to sit down and talk this all out with Dumbles, but even if for some reason he couldn't, I dunno if it's fair to Dumbles to call him a Dark Lord since he was trying hard but got it wrong.
Of course there's always the possibility that Dumbledore doesn't care about the means and is just opposed to Quirrel because Quirrel wants to kill death. That would make Dumbledore more evil but be less tragic. It also seems a bit less believable that Dumbledore could be so smart but so intractable in his wrongness on this one point, though.
What do you guys think?
I think you're confused about the meaning of Sword of Good. Without giving away too much, that is not the meaning I came up with. Instead I came away with the idea that everyone is the hero of their own story. Nobody is born innately evil
Dumbledore is good. Quirrell is good. Harry is good. Malfoy is good. But they're each only playing out the morality they've learned. Malfoy's morality about maintaining 1600s era stability and order and bringing prestige to the family. Dumbledore's is a conservative evolution of his imperial/nationalist era morality that turned sour. Quirrel's morality is difficult to discern, but I'd guess he was based on Randian Objectivism or Nietzschean philosophy. Harry's morality is rationalist and singularitarian. It's obvious to me that Harry's morality is the only one that's truly good. But then again I'm a rationalist singularitarian, and I bet people from other eras would look at the moralities differently.
I think the story is set up like this because that's the way the world works. Everyone thinks they're doing the good-and-right thing, but everyone has different starting points for their moralities. Wars occur because people have different ideas about what good-and-right is and how to achieve it. In real life, two good people sit down and talk to each other and neither one changes their mind, and the wars still happen. And the wars are not between good guys and bad guys, they're between good guys and good guys.
But that's the world we live in.
No, Argency summarized it well. It isn't a treatise on moral relativism.
That the only death Tom is opposed to is his own.
I don't think the guy who doesn't think twice about torturing or murdering anyone who slights him will turn out to be in the right all along.
This quote from Chapter 62 seems quite prudent to consider in hindsight.
Related to the discussion about the Defense Professor's talk with Hermione, but more generalized:
We've had Word of God (can't find the specific comment quickly) to the effect that parts of the text that are "too obvious" to readers are in fact meant to be that obvious, not meant as red herrings. Have we had any pronouncement about the truthfulness of things that the characters find "too obvious"? (As, for example, Hermione's realisation that Quirrell was apparently trying to get her to leave.)
Dumbledore tried to push Hermione away from heroism specifically to push her towards it. Maybe Quirrell thinks the same tool work work on her. He doesn't even have to know that Dumbledore thought that would work or used that tool on Hermione. He could just observe in her the same vulnerability to that method.
I find it fascinating that both the logical HPMOR analysis of Tom and the spiritual/magical analysis found in other fanfics both say that his downfall was trying to split himself up - with tricks or soul-wise, respectively.
Not that Rowling did impeccable world-building, but is it possible to put together a plausible history of muggle influences on wizarding culture?
In the first place, I realise that you're probably going for an understatement, but I think it's worth noting that Rowling's world-building, in terms of thinking through consequences and implications, is actually atrocious rather than merely inferior. I'll never forget the moment when I realised that DISINTEGRATING LIVE KITTENS is standard spell practice for schoolchildren in the Potterverse, and no-one bats an eyelid. I sometimes ponder whether Rowling herself places an unnaturally low value on any form of life that can't speak a human language, or whether the themes evoked in the last books (that wizards are overdue to pay for their appalling record on non-human rights) are deliberately woven into the Potterverse at an extremely deep level.
That aside, could you give some examples of what you would consider such influences? Given that senior wizards in canon need to have guns explained to them, and that Muggle expert Arthur Weasley struggles to even pronounce "electricity", wizard obliviousness to Muggle society would seem to run so deep that I struggle to imagine one much influencing the other.
Yes, understatement. I'm not sure what probability you should have attached.
They celebrate Christmas.
It's possible that they invented scrolls for themselves, but I'm not counting on it.
IIRC, they use the Roman alphabet, or at least I don't remember British muggle students having to learn a different alphabet.
Their spells show an influence from Latin.
Hogwarts resembles a British public school.
They speak English, even if words relating to technology and science are absent.
They use a train.
Faint memory: didn't they have a statue in plate armor?
Personally, I think Eliezer keeping the train- qua train- is a mistake. It shows too much influence from the muggle universe. I mean, what did Hogwarts use as soon as 200 years ago? Why would they change it given their extremely conservative world-view? A Eberron-style lightning train would be more plausible.
Clothing.
Crockery.
Shelters, both portable and permanent (masonry, carpentry, and textile)
Prepared foods (despite divergence).
Eye glasses.
The custom of men shaving their faces
The custom of women being more likely than men to have long hair (not actually sure about this one for adults, but it seems to apply to the children)
Theater.
It is a difficult thing to make a complete list. Days later I'm sure I'll have twenty more if I didn't hear of a better puzzle.
Yup. For that matter, Sir Cadogan is fairly unambiguously described as a mounted knight.
On the other hand, I'm not sure how this project is to be reliably carried out without knowing what wizards could have invented for themselves - or, indeed, how far back the separation between the two societies goes historically. I'll give you the train, certainly, but on the other hand:
Early Christianity may have existed before Muggle and wizard societies separated. It may have had both wizard and Muggle worshippers (Rowling is silent on the matter of religion, but resurrection would be just as miraculous to wizards). For that matter, Jesus could have existed in the Potterverse, in which case odds of him being a wizard are extremely high.
The Muggle and wizard communities are tightly bound enough to maintain the same language (they share the same geographical territory, and intermarriage is not uncommon). Assuming that, at some point in the past, wizardry emerged from a Muggle population, there's no reason why the two should not share the same linguistic evolution.
Which suggests the existence of Roman wizards, supporting the above point.
Fair point. Although I struggle to come up with a mechanism by which nearly-modern Muggle teaching practices should come to be adopted by a school founded nearly a millennium earlier by wizarding purebloods, and maintained in a highly conservative fashion. If anything, one might speculate that British public schools are influenced by Hogwarts.
See above.
No contest. Ditto the printing press. I think our best bet may be to look at technologies which wizards would not have developed on their own (e.g. in that no other standard wizarding form of transport we know remotely resembles a train, or something which could evolve into a train). But that's a much more limited list.
Early Christians did not have a tradition regarding a fat, bearded man commemorating the birth of their savior by giving gifts to good children.
What's wrong with disintegrating kittens? They're not much different than chickens, and we slaughter a billion of those(literally) every week.
Also, if you didn't realize by book 7 that wizarding Britain is actually a pretty terrible place, you weren't paying much attention.
Wizarding Britain is a pretty terrible place - my contention is that I don't think Rowling realised how terrible it was when she was writing the books.
Actually, as an ethical vegetarian, I find plenty wrong with that too. But that's besides the point. The point is that, in our world, the slaughtering is still done
The average teenager does not kill animals unless they've been brought up on a farm or in a context in which certain species have been firmly categorised as pests/vermin in their minds. They especially do not kill animals they categorise as pets unless they are psychologically disturbed.
Here we have a classroom of average teenagers who unhesitatingly follow instructions to kill kittens, in spite of the fact that some of them have pet cats and that there is no higher purpose for doing so (the goal is apparently to be able to Vanish higher-level animals still). Not one of them is described as objecting or showing distress (which even Milgram's subjects did).
There is no way that any citizen of a modern democracy could have written the courtroom scene in Order of the Phoenix and thought well of the society that produced it. That's when I started to really see how rotten the country was. Similarly, look at the utter incompetence of the politicians - they're worse than ours, and that takes some doing. There's enough other examples scattered throughout that I cannot believe that they were placed there unconsciously.
And yes, slaughtering is done in slaughterhouses...because it's messy, smelly, and requires some pretty specialized sanitation measures. The average teenager doesn't assemble cars either, for similar reasons, but they wouldn't object to auto shop. You're right that the pet/food distinction exists, though it's not universal - horse, for example, has commonly been treated as both. The fact that they use cats is odd for the muggleborn, even if wizards put them into a different category(assuming that they do die).
And re Milgram, remember that they were zapping humans, not animals. Even most vegetarians I know feel there's a pretty important difference there.
I agree that the politicians are deliberately incompetent/immoral, but overall my perspective on Rowling's world-building is opposite to yours. There are so many gaping flaws and inconsistencies in the Potterverse as a whole that I have trouble believing that a specific minority is deliberate while all the others are accidental.
Also, Rowling isn't exactly subtle with her villains. With the possible exceptions of Snape and very late Draco, Potterverse evil is morally unambiguous and obvious to the reader. This inclines me to believe that if an act is in no way condemned within the text, explicitly or implicitly, this is because it is not intended to be seen as wrong.
You seem to imply that, if it could be done in a suitably clean and convenient fashion, the average teenager would happily slaughter their own cows, chickens, lambs etc. for dinner on a daily basis, without a preceding process of desensitisation (which the majority do not go through). I disagree.
Definitely, but I think it's quantitative rather than qualitative. A human's suffering might have 500 AU of emotional impact whereas a cat's has 50, but when an animal's pain or distress is obvious, there will still be emotional consequences for the one causing it (unless they have succeeded in fully objectifying the animal, the way a psychopath objectifies other humans).
Up to a few hundred years ago, almost all teenagers lived in a rural context and did just that. A big part of the world population still does.
The necessary desensitization occurred simply by growing up there - being aware of it and considering it to be a normal part of life. Maybe if normal young children (11yo) are placed in an environment where their peers, upperclassmen and instructors all do it and act like it's perfectly normal, then they'll get used to it in a couple of days and it'll be normal for them too. Why do you expect otherwise?
I agree that killing species preconceived of as pets rather than food, pests, etc. could require more desensitization for some children.
You seem to argue that the majority of teenagers would act in the way you suggest if it were a natural part of the culture they were brought up in. I agree.
However, I don't think we have evidence to believe that British wizarding culture is such. And even if it were, this would not account for why Muggleborn students (including pet cat owner Hermione) act no differently to their pureblood counterparts.
World-building: Plot holes are a lot easier to make by mistake than atmosphere for the average author. Most of the "this place sucks" seems atmospheric to me - Rowling may not have thought as poorly of her world as I do, but I doubt she thinks it'd be a great place to live after the wonder wore off.
Unambiguous evil: I disagree entirely. Yes, the Death Eaters and Dementors are unambiguous, but Snape drove back and forth across that line so many times that it's ridiculous("possible", really?), Grindelwald was appealing enough to draw Dumbledore in, Hagrid was criminally stupid half the times we saw him(literally), Lockhart/Slughorn/every politician were some combination of pathetic and loathsome, Percy Weasley was an utter git and a massive enabler, and I could go on. Admittedly, most of those weren't big-E Evil, but they certainly did not lack for human flaws and ill consequences. Don't let the unambiguousness of Voldemort or Umbridge fool you.
Slaughter: It wasn't that long ago that's precisely what happened. And even today, I spent the last few days with the part of my family that's farmers, and all of them have been hunting since childhood. Perhaps that's "desensitization", but if so it's an utterly common sort in the right cultures. Death being locked away is a modern innovation, not the natural order of things.
Milgram: Yes, people react extremely poorly to animals suffering - sometimes worse than to humans suffering(which can be funny or just, depending, not necessarily simple torture). But Vanishing is not suffering, it's simply death, as odd as that sounds. That's a lot easier to handle when it's applied to animals.
Yet the "this place sucks" atmosphere doesn't actually kick in for real until Book 5, when the protagonist finds himself on the wrong side of the barricades for the first time (and also when Rowling leaves the teenage angst tap on). Until then, the dominant theme is that of a marvellous, whimsical magical world that's so dazzling with its uniqueness that you don't stop to question the holes and contradictions. It seems likely that touches such as Vanishing kittens are meant to be seen in this context rather than the negative one of the later books (which in any case focuses heavily on formal structures such as law, politics and media rather than day-to-day social practices).
That's exactly my point. Apart from Snape, the reader never has to stop and think "is this person good or bad?" Grindelwald is charming but proto-evil even in his youth (based on his views), Hagrid is unambiguously well-intentioned even at his stupidest, Lockhart and Slughorn are clearly low-grade evil (though at least by the time we get to Slughorn, Rowling is learning to make bad people slightly sympathetic), and Percy Weasley has no redeeming features until he actually gets redeemed. You never have to think in order to tell good from bad (apart from Snape). And this leads me to believe that if something is not portrayed as bad in the least, then you're not meant to think it is, because it seems foolish to save all your subtlety for details of world-building and use none in characterisation.
That's not relevant in this context, though. We're not dealing with people from cultures elsewhere in the world, or from a different time period. We're dealing with modern British children, some from Muggle society and some from wizard society, engaging in practices that contradict at least the norms of Muggle society and possibly the wizard one as well.
Yup, and that would certainly reduce the psychological impact of Vanishing Charm practice to some extent. Of course, there are also other spells practised on live animals that do not have this saving grace ("your pincushion still quivers in fear whenever somebody approaches it with a pin").
I find your impressions of good and evil rather amusing. Grindelwald is basically a utilitarian, something that most people are, he just doesn't do it very well. Slughorn was specifically introduced to be a good guy Slytherin, if a bit weaselly, so I disagree with you there as well. And Percy's a tool, but he's not actually evil, he's mostly just self-important and clueless - ditto Lockhart, for that matter. It's nowhere near as morally arguable as MoR, but it's hardly a world of cardboard either.
Re Vanishing, that's a fair point. But to counter - what do the kids get told about where the cats go? Regardless of the truth of the matter, if they're told "Oh, we just bring them back after class", then they'll be fine with it.
Lockhart mindwiped a bunch of people to steal credit for their good deeds. He ended up attempting to mindwipe Harry and Ron. He's evil.
Politics and litigation are almost totally incomprehensible to the average citizen. Therefore, it seems very plausible to me that Rowling thought she was depicting something analogous to what actually happens. Maybe not what happens frequently, but happens occasionally in a country the size of Magical Britain.
I think she's wrong to think her depictions were realistic, but that's a separate issue.
If she intended that to be accurate, then she makes CSI look well-researched.
I don't know, Magical Britain is the size of a small town. It doesn't seem unreasonable that small towns with no higher authority to answer to would devolve into that.
A problem with Quirrell's heroic alter ego being Tom Riddle, even if the only ones who know Tom Riddle is Voldemort are the inner circle of the Order of the Phoenix, is, why wouldn't madam Bones tell Dumbledore that Tom Riddle is currently inhabiting Quirrell's body?
Quirrell said that he "reported to the headmaster" by which I interpret Dumbledore wants to know in what ways the defense professor was involved in this whole debacle, from which we can infer that he will have or has had Bones report to him as well. The fact that a war hero that was an incredibly powerful wizard as well and led forces against death eaters in various occasions is inhabiting the body of your defense proffesor is not trivial. And then Quirrell also outright TELLS Bones that Dumbledore doesn't know his identity, so we can be sure that Amelia will be reporting that this alleged hero, whatever his identity is, is currently posing as professor Quirrell.
I had assumed before that Dumbledore knew Quirrell's identity, that perhaps he was told that upon his travels after his graduation, Quirinus Quirrell had stumbled upon an ancient tomb containing the soul of a powerful and clever dark wizard, and this spirit had taken possession of Quirrell's body. Dumbledore, accepting this, agrees to let him teach at Hogwarts given that he will be able to teach things to his students few other wizards will be able to. Or something along those lines.
But not before a warning the staff about his nature and making sure things don't get too freaky. From chapter 15:
After all, they've had all sorts of wacko defense professors already. From chapter 70:
So it's just another year at defense class.
But now it turns out Dumbledore doesn't know his identity? Or does he actually know it and it turns this fabricated heroic identity is not Tom Riddle? If he actually doesn't know, what is he playing at, hiring some incredibly powerful wizard from Merlin knows where who is obviously untrustworthy and likes to plot an awful lot? Dumbledore at one point states the three most powerful wizards in the school are him, Snape, and Professor Quirrell.
And the worst thing is that it actually does fit if the slytherin hero who rose against the death eaters and disappeared suddenly happened to be Riddle.
-Born in 1926
-Sorted into Slytherin
-People speaking of him as the next Dumbledore
-Likes to wander off in Albania
-Of noble house descent
I'm assuming that given how the politics and nobility work in MoR, House Gaunt didn't lose all their gold, or at least not in the same fashion as in canon given that there is probably some sort of convenient system to prevent this. But then again, House Potter did just go broke. And we are told that his grandmother is the Lady of his House. We do never see Merope's mother in canon; so I'm assuming that if the differences from canon are enough to keep House Gaunt from poverty, perhaps it's not all that strange if her mother is alive as well. However, it was Riddle's grandfather, not grandmather, who bore the name of Gaunt. If he died, would her wife inherit his title? I'm thinking not. Or perhaps yes if she was of noble ancestry herself, which is a given considering we are talking about someone who married a Gaunt. And if this new heroic figure wasn't Tom Riddle, then can we assume it was an actual heroic person and Voldemort it taking advantage of his story to cover his usage of Quirrell's body? After all, they were born in the same year, and I can't imagine Riddle manipulating another person since he was eleven years old into being Voldemort's nemesis for a huge social experiment in years to come. Or could he?
I notice I am terribly confused.
And Quirrell does speak about playing the two sides in different occasions, and he did sound to me like he was talking about a social experiment when talking to Hermione, on which he was a leader in both sides of the conflict, and whose outcome he did not expect:
Riddle appears to have convinced Bones that he's a genuinely good guy who's dying, and wants to live out the final months of his life without his true identity being known. She will likely respect his wishes because, hey, he was a real hero once.
Or Bones will tell Dumbledore and this will lead to a climax suitable for the end of a Hogwarts school year.
But unfortunately, it seems that in this fic even smart people are capable of shooting themselves in the foot not sharing information freely enough. I mean, if Dumbledore and Harry sat down and shared all the information they have, they'd have identified Quirrell as Riddle/Voldemort by now.
Or it's not Riddle at all. I was writing out a whack of reasons for this, but there is no need: Eliezer has spoken:
It seems perfectly in keeping with the foresight and planning we've seen from Quirrell that he killed off a classmate soon after Hogwarts in the event that he needed an identity to assume later. It seems equally plausible that Quirrell would have tried, to the extent he could do so costlessly, play a person on both sides of the conflict he created. It is worth noting that this supposed hero used Avada Kedavra on the Death Eaters, a signature of Quirrell. This hero also failed to kill Belatrix Black, a major pawn of the other side. I do not think that the name of this supposed hero is Riddle, given that Dumbledore knows that Voldemort and Riddle are one and the same, but it seems very likely that Quirrell was playing this man.
This was the primary conclusion that I came to as well. Quirrell has already demonstrated a propensity for playing multiple identities. Plus, if I were in his place as a professor needing a fallback secret identity, I would want it to be someone who nobody would find me suspiciously incongruous with on account of it actually also being me.
Also, the fact that the unnamed person lived in isolation, and was estranged from his family and friends, is evidence for this hypothesis. If he's under Imperius, being impersonated with polyjuice, or otherwise being magically replaced, Voldemort wouldn't want people around him who would notice any sort of incongruous behavior, or force him to play a role full time.
Well, the theory of this identity being Riddle has been jossed by Eliezer.
And you're right, I was thinking in terms of Riddle manipulating this other person into being Voldemort's nemesis since the start of his Hogwarts education (given how apparently magically talented this person was) but now after reading what you wrote I realize there is no information regarding this person's magical talent or political alignment while he was attending Hogwarts.
So Riddle/Voldemort murders this person when he is travelling after graduation. He assumes his identity in 1970 and gives this person a solitary life so he can manage his time better better between identities, and also to avoid commiting mistakes that would give away his impersonation in front of his family. A year later he jump-starts Britain's wizarding war setting this other identity as a prominent player in the anti-voldemort side in a single move. Beautiful.
I think most of the confusion surrounding this new character stemmed from the assumption that given his importance in the war, he would have an analogous in canon, and Tom Riddle seemed to fit pretty good (or maybe he is a modified canon character, but I can't really think of any).
Now I'm curious about the details of this impersonation. Amelia Bones mentioned that there was no explanation for his absence, so why did they just assume it was him? Surely someone would have tried a Polyfluis Reverso as soon as they saw him, so it's possible there are darker magics involved, which is totally justifiable with Voldemort. But perhaps it's not that uncommon for wizards seeking power to disappear for a few years and then reappear with a better mastery of magic and a more jaded personality. After all, travelling to exotic places is normal for wizards in canon too.
Is this a reference to A Black Comedy?
Vg frrzf yvxr vg vf. Ryvrmre unf vapyhqrq bgure ersreraprf gb bgure snasvpf va gur cnfg, naq guvf svgf irel jryy jvgu gur gurbel gung Evqqyr jnf onfvpyl gelvat gb chyy n "Qnivq Zbaebr" naq chg uvzfrys (be na nygreangr vqragvgl bs uvzfrys) nf gur ureb svtugvat Ibyqrezbeg. (Gur qvssrerapr jbhyq or bs pbhefr, gung va N Oynpx Pbzrql ur vf abg va pbageby bs obgu cnegf ("Qnivq Zbaebr" naq Ibyqrzbeg), ohg engure gur gb cnegf bs uvz ernyyl ner svtugvat. Vg vf cbffvoyr gung gung vf jung vf unccravat urer nf jryy, ohg V svaq gung engure hayvxryl.)
I was trying to avoid spoiling A Black Comedy, but whatever.
Anyone care to name three?
Her, him, and me.
1.Unless you have supreme power over everyone, you are very likely to need help from other people, and evil inhibits your ability to gain that help.
Evil causes cascade ripples with consequences that are very hard to see- large numbers of people you don't know about having personal vendettas against you, etc.
It is hard to inspire people to your cause with evil- they people you are using must at least think they are acting in accordance with good, and at some level have what we would consider a "good" set of rules for how they deal with each other.
Quirrell sure loves his stealth puns. Is there any reason he is not openly telling Hermione about Dumbledore's time turner?
Is Quirrell's half-smile a reference to Robin Hanson's picture?
Why would it benefit him for her to know about it?
If the light's coming from the doorway, it's one side of his face that's illuminated, not the bottom.
Edit: ...that is a pretty creepy picture, isn't it?
I've always had a soft spot for Quirrell. It's made me blind to a lot of his flaws, so I've tried to actively focus on his evil actions and how much I would hate someone doing that to me. But this latest chapter made me love him all over again. Even though I realize it probably contains huge amounts of misrepresentation if not outright lies.
I'm worried I may be turning Bad.
OTOH, this may just be superb writing, to make the villain so completely relate-able. Either way, every time a chapter goes Quirrell-heavy I swoon. Glad we got one in the current arc so I don't have to wait longer.
Upvoted for letting me know I'm not the only one.
Is he actually loyal to his students or Up To Something?.
Remember: Quirrell can care about his students any time he likes, because he's not Good.
Or perhaps it's more accurately phrased as "I can show up the good guys any time I want to make them look bad, because I'm not constrained by the same fear of ill consequences that they are".
I think he takes his responsibilities seriously. His evil comes from his condemnation of the weakness, stupidity, cowardice, and irresponsibility of others. He lives up to his standards, but others don't.
I agree that he takes his responsibilities seriously. But I think his evil comes more from the fact that he almost certainly had some plot in mind when he freed Bellatrix, and the fact that he tried to get Hermione fed to Dementors because he didn't like the influence she was having on Harry.
I'm confident that is how Quirrell is meant to appear. But the villain's real face may be a bit of a riddle.
Groan.
You know you love it.
I do, that's the worst part.
What exactly is this supposed to evoke?
It's... um, oversteeped lukewarm tea!
I had this idea about Tom Riddle's plan that I appreciated having criticized.
Tom Riddle grew up in the shadow of WWII. He saw much of the Muggle world unite against a threat they all called evil, and he saw Europe's savior, the US, eventually treated as the new world leader afterward, though it was somewhat contested, of course. That threat strongly defined it's own presentation and style, and so that style and presentation were associated with evil afterward.
Tom didn't want to be Hitler. Tom wanted to actually win and to rule in the longer term, not just until people got tired of his shit and went all Guy Fawks on his ass. He knew that life isn't easy for great rules, but thought that was worthwhile. He knew that life was even harder for great rulers who ruled by fear, so that wasn't his plan.
So Tom needed two sides, good and evil. To this end he needed two identities, a hero and a villain.
I guess he didn't think the villain didn't need to have any kind of history. Maybe he didn't think the villain would matter much or for long. Voldemort was just there for the hero to strike down. That was a mistake, because he lacked a decoy his enemies were eventually able to discover his identity.
Then there's this hero. The hero is a what passes for a minor noble in magical Britain. He's from a 'cadet' branch of the family, which means he doesn't stand to inherit anything substantial because he's not main line.
Most importantly, he goes missing in Albania. That's a shout out to canon and a code phrase for "became Tom RIddle's bitch."
As Voldemort, Tom sows terror and reaps fear. He's ridiculously evil and for Dumbledore redefines evil because he is apparently evil without necessity. Dumbledore can't tell what function that outrageous evil serves because Dumbledore thinks that evil is done sincerely. He doesn't know it's just a show.
Tom stages a dramatic entrance into the drama for his hero: he saves the president's daughter, or something like that. Totally Horatio Alger. It's a cliche, which may be EY's way of helping us to understand that Tom is fallible, more then than now.
Tom promotes his hero from Minor Noble to Last Scion of House X by killing off the rest of his hero's family. Tom simultaneously builds legitimacy for his hero's authority and leverages the tragedy to build sympathy for his hero's cause.
Tom's mistake was thinking that would be enough. There was a threat to the peace. There was a solution. The people instead chose to wallow in their failure and doom. He made it all so clear, so simple, and yet the morons just didn't get it.
I'm sure anyone whose been the biggest ego in the room during improv could sympathize.
When Tom realizes that his plan has failed and cannot be made to work in the intended fashion, he exits his hero, stage left. At that point, 75 or so, he doesn't have a good plan to leave the stage as his villain, so he kind of kicks it for a few years, tolerating the limits of his rule and getting what meager entertainment he can out of being a god damned theater antagonist.
When Tom gets a chance, he pulls his villain off the stage and may or may not have done something to the infant Harry Potter.
Now he's using the Scion of X as an identity layer to keep the fuzz off his back, while manipulating Harry into a position of power, and I'm guessing he plans to hit Harry with the Albanian Shuffle a little while later and give World Domination another try.
Tom Riddle is a young immortal. He makes mistakes but has learned an awful lot. He is trying to plan for the long term and has nothing but time, and so can be patient.
I really like your theory of what happened, but have a different idea about Tom's motives. When the hero disappeared, people were already speaking of him as the next Dumbledore. He had two easy paths to world domination. Put yourself in his place and his personality, what would you do? I'd probably get bored and set about creating the only thing I don't have: a worthy adversary. This also explains why Harry Potter is so overpowered.
I think this is right in broad strokes, but what you call "a few years" is '73 to '81, kind of a long time to "kick it" because your plan went astray.
Furthermore, Quiddle also often talks about his motives in terms of what he found "amusing," "felt like," or "pleasant" (in conversation with Hermione). Then there's this:
I think he's not quite so given to long-term planning as you imagine.
So in this scenario, why is he dying? Before, we were unsure that his cataplexy was getting worse; I pointed out that on-screen he seems as active or more active than ever. But Bones says: "And you seem to be resting more and more frequently, as time goes on." and she would know. Are we speculating that whatever dupe's body that Riddle stole is breaking down 60-odd years later after Albania?
That is a good question. I don't know why he appears to be dying.
Maybe Riddle was put Scion of X's body on ice when he put an Albania with a nail through it up side his head. Then he trotted it out for a few years in the seventies, then put it back on ice. And it turns out that's not good for a body and so it's kind of falling apart or something.
Maybe Quirrell wants the appearance of weakness, for all the right reasons.
Maybe Scion of X has been alive the whole time, imprisoned in his own usually motionless flesh. And since the only thing he could do was wait there, motionless, he practiced being lethargic. And he became strong and wise in the ways of lethargy, so that Voldemort must ration his own strength and only force Scion of X to action when absolutely necessary.
Maybe when Quirrell is 'resting' he's actually busy in the Dream Place leading the Crunch Rebellion against the Evil Empire of Sogg.
In case it's relevant, remember that Hitler was just a muggle pawn of Grindlewald, and the Holocaust existed to fuel Gindlewald's dark rituals.
The Holocaust wasn't why Hitler lost.
The world didn't know about the Holocaust and had trouble believing it had happened. Much of the Nazi higher ups didn't know about it. A particular high ranked Nazi officer kept a diary while he was in Nuremburg throughout the trials. Among other things, it records him being told about and shown evidence of the Holocaust, denying it, confronting it, and reconciling it with his beliefs. If I remember correctly he remains loyal to the cause, all except the Holocaust, which he thought was terrible even when he thought it was fake.
Tangent aside, Hitler was hated by many non-Germans before he started losing. He was hated by some of his own people before he lost. He didn't lose because he was hated, he lost because war is decided by logistics, strategy, morale, and luck. Even when his side could keep up the others, it couldn't sustain logistics against giants like Americans and Soviets.
Wait... was that another tangent?
Oh, yeah. So villains act and heroes react, right? Tom wanted to be the hero because he thought people love heroes and promote them to positions of power. And Tom wanted power. So first you make a villain who makes a mess, then you make a hero who rallies the people around himself, cleans up the villain, and sustains his momentum and rally to take over the world!
I guess.
But doesn't have to be about the Holocaust.
Downvoted because I don't see where thomblake is supposed to have said that the Holocaust was why Hitler lost, so I don't see what you're responding to.
Perhaps not so much. We may believe Voldemort to truly be Tom Riddle for the following few reasons.
But canon doesn't count, this fic diverges strongly in places.
And knowledgeable, otherwise competent characters are wrong about things.
And, most tellingly, we now know that Voldemort in his Quirrell mask has been dropping hints that he is actually your Scion X (or David Monroe or whomever). He could just as easily be falsely hinting at the Riddle identity.
Yes, I am suggesting that the student that opened the Chamber of Secrets in '41 was not Tom Riddle, but someone else. Why pick one patsy, when you could have two? It's just one more murder, hardly anything at all.
This means that Voldemort, whomever he really is, had a backup identity behind 'Voldemort' just like he has a backup identity behind Quirrell. It means that he didn't get discovered back in the '70s. And it means that he's just as slick and awesome and I hope he is, as I wish he is.
Oh, damn. I have far, far too much affection for this character. 84 is my new favorite chapter.
Right now this post has 53 points. WHY?
The post where put down the theory this grew from only has 2 points. Don't go voting it up just because I mentioned that. I don't want anything 'fixed' I just want an explanation.
This isn't written any better than my other posts, which commonly stay under 3 points and go negative often enough. Those other posts are totally contributions to the conversation. Some of them are even helpful.
I left points hanging. I didn't defend what I was saying. I just told a story. That's what you want?
I'm not even the first to revisit this speculation since my low vote theory post. Chris Hallquist was saying pretty much the same thing and he didn't get over 40 upvotes.
What are you upvoting?
I liked the story you told, I found it interesting so I upvoted (but your post was like at 5 or 6 when I upvoted it, I wouldn't have upvoted it if it was already above 30, I tend to avoid upvoting posts which are already too high, unless they are really wonderful).
I didn't see the first one - I don't read all the comments, depends of my schedule. Maybe since you posted your new one earlier in the thread, when it wasn't too bloated, more people saw it ?
Well, I thought it was!
I downvoted the previous post because it was a needlessly complicated, poorly justified plan. Crucially, there was little indication of why Voldemort would want to pretend to lose, when he was already winning the war. By contrast, your more recent post is a good analysis of the new insight into Voldemort's history and motivations provided by the latest chapter.
Maybe the illusion of transparency doesn't let you see how much clearer this comment [EDIT: I mean the parent comment] is.
You're probably right. I have no fucking clue what you're thinking.
I don't think your current post "deserves" as many upvotes as it got, but that other post is just bad. Badly written, badly argued, makes lots of unsupported random claims, like "Voldemort killed Narcissa".
I've been thinking along the same lines, probably because I watched Code Geass not too long ago, and this is basically the "Zero Requiem" gambit employed by Lelouch. He creates a totem of pure evil as a target of the world's hatred, then publicly destroys it, establishing a hero as savior-king. Riddle, like Lelouche, is portrayed as a "Byronic hero"--mysterious, cynical, cunning, arrogant, and brilliant. If this interpretation is correct, Harry might not be his future meatpuppet, but actually the "chosen one", who will fulfill the role of the hero and unite the world as savior-king after destroying the risen Voldemort.
But of course it could have just been a "Palpatine Gambit". In this version, Riddle was using his Voldemort persona to create fear, which his other persona takes advantage of to turn Magical Britain into the Empire, consolidating all power to himself. But in this version, much to the consternation of Tom Riddle, the "Republic" actually doesn't give up power to the obviously qualified hero (due to diffusion of responsibility, political maneuvering, etc.) So instead he decides to just seize power as Voldemort, but by bad luck, he is struck down by Lilly Potter's self-sacrifice. Now he is back, and wants to use Harry as his new hero, but he needs to make it plausible, by convincing Harry of his political views, and making him super-formidable. That way, when "Harry" (actually Riddle acting via Imperius/polyjuice, etc.) takes over Britain and strikes down the resurrected "Voldemort" in his 7th year, people will believe it was possible. Riddle will then rule Britain (and eventually the world as "Harry Potter".
Ron approves of trying to murder Draco Malfoy?
That's what I thought at first, but that explanation still leaves me confused. Canon!Ron was a good guy, more or less, I can't see EY flattening the character into a mere Malfoy-hater.
I'm sure the anti-Malfoy sentiment helped, but additionally he probably believes one of those poor explanations of what "really happened".
And it is likely that he likes her, just as in canon.
I wonder if Quirrel simply had a bad model when he tried to play the hero:
The theory about Quirrel creating Voldemort as a villain to vanquish is probable, especially if you ask Cui Bono?. I wonder if the opposition to his heroics was by the not-so-dumb portion of the Wizengamont:
How would they react to a savior?
Hm, so to rewrite the ending...
My comment from fanfic.net:
I loved the chapter- there was nothing wrong with the previous two, but this the mixed bag of very good stuff pointing in multiple directions that I hadn't realized I was missing. I'm talking about psychological/philosophical/emotional material more than the potential plot twists.
I've suddenly realized that this is a chapter in which almost nothing happens in terms of physical action- it's all talk and thought and emotion (and a bit of humming), and it's incredibly engrossing.
Is Hermione's inability to think that she might have been bespelled part of the spell, or normal psychological reaction?
Would fake memories have the same kind and amount of detail as real memories?
Harry saying that the first year girls should put their reputations on the line about Hermione is so perfectly Harry...
If you'll all forgive me a few moments of horrible nerdiness, and the attendant fictional evidence, I've said before that MoR's construction of heroic effort makes a good deal more sense once you've played Fate/stay night. This chapter certainly hasn't given me any reason to doubt that, but after Quirrell's speech with Hermione I think I might need to add watching Revolutionary Girl Utena as another prerequisite. The early parts of that exchange could have been lifted wholesale from Utena's princes and witches, and the world's expectations of them.
You are certainly not the only one who was reminded (eerily so) of a part of Fate/stay night that I won't discuss here for fear of spoiling the visual novel for anyone who hasn't yet played it. Quirrell's talk with Hermione made me think of a certain character from FSN immediately as I was reading.
...I don't know if I can back you on that one, I mean, I've seen Utena, but it wasn't my primary source material for Quirrell's bitterness (and neither was Atlas Shrugged). I don't suppose you have the FSN comment handy? That sounds a lot more plausible (w/r/t heroism).
Unfortunately, no. I'm not even sure it was here; it may have been over at TV Tropes when I still posted there.
I'm not accusing you of deliberately riffing on either work, though. It's just that FSN is all about a certain way of thinking about heroes -- you wouldn't be far wrong if you called it a character study of the "hero" role -- and Utena is largely (it's a more thematically complicated work) about the way non-heroes respond to heroic effort, and I'm seeing reflections of both here.
Although there's more than a bit of the latter in the Unlimited Blade Works route and in Fate/zero, too. I watched Utena first, though, so it has the benefit of primacy effects in my head.
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.)
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.
House Potter is not "Most Ancient".
In HPMor, we have Malfoy, Black, Greengrass and Longbottom declared explicitly as "Noble and Most Ancient".
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.
That seems spectacularly stupid for someone as smart as we've observed him to be.
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).
I needed chocolate to recover from reading this chapter. ;_;
You warm my terrible heart.
No one seems to be commenting on the way that dumbledore identified quirrel to the wards. It seemed to me to be a very clear hint that someone else was somehow within that circle and so is also recognised as the defence professor, has top level Hogwarts permissions etc. Possibly Mr hat and cloak?
It's possible, but not everything that's possible is true. You'd think there'd only be able to be one Defense Professor, especially if that position was referred to with the definite article, and so properly coded wards would throw an exception if his identifier did not uniquely pick out an individual.
It means that he won't show up as Tom Riddle or Voldemort or Quinirius Quirrell or Jeffe Japes or Scion of X on the Marauder Map. He'll show up as The Defense Professor.
That doesn't seem to follow.
Doesn't it?
Correct me if I'm misremembering, but can't the Marauder's map show all people people in Hogwards? Regardless of them getting explicitely identified to the wards, so it must get its names independently.
I mean, what makes you think the Map is affected by this?
In canon, the map was made by "Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs". I'm pretty sure Voldemort could override an artifact made my four teenagers.
In Methods of Rationality, the Weasley twins refer to the Map as being part of the Hogwarts security system. So it probably gets the information from the wards.
My interpretation of the quote is that the Headmaster overrode the usual process of identification (which is automatic) in order to protect Quirrell's privacy; in that case, the Map would also know nothing beyond "The Defense Professor".
An alternative interpretation, however, is that the circle-drawing bit was only meant to key Quirrell into the wards as a professor. Normally, I suppose, this would be done by something like "I, Headmaster of Hogwarts, declare Quirinus Quirrell to be the Professor of Defense Against the Dark Arts! So mote it be!" In this case, Quirinus Quirrell was a false name, and Dumbledore knew this, so he used an alternative process that doesn't require a name.
Yes, but how do the wards get people's names? It's not like the name "Ron Weasley" is tattooed on every molecule of the boy's body.
True Names are a feature of some systems of magic — Earthsea comes to mind — but not of the canon Potterverse, nor of MoR as far as I can recall. In canon, the name "Voldemort" has unusual power because of specific spells keyed on it, and it's an adopted name.
Real-time Legilimency? If so, we would expect the map to display whatever name matched a person's self-image; and a sufficiently potent Occlumens could be expected to fool it by sufficiently good Method acting.
On the other hand, there's a subsystem of Hogwarts Castle that does get told the name of every student on their first day, and has a close-up chance to read it from them by what resembles Legilimency: the Sorting Hat. Possibly a similar system is in place for professors and others ... which involves the Headmaster drawing a circle ...
Can somebody explain to me why Harry was so into House points before Azkaban recalibrated his sense of perspective? It makes sense why most people seek them; you take several dozen kids, split them up into different groups, and soon enough you hear them talking about how they can't let those Gryffindor jerkasses win the House Cup and so on. But it seems to me like you need to identify with your House to an unhealthy degree to take so much pleasure in earning points for it. Hermione obviously has that problem (cf. her speech about House Ravenclaw in ch. 34), but I would have expected Harry to avoid falling into such an obvious trap.
Note that Draco never seems interested in getting house points (as far as I can remember, anyways), so I guess his Slytherin education allowed him to see what the Ravenclaws missed: House Points are just one of those totally useless things you use to incentivize people into desired behaviors without having to give them any real, costly rewards. Like employee of the month awards, and military medals, and lesswrong kar-
...
Nevermind, I think I get it now.
(But seriously, karma at least has an individual tracking component that allows one to gain status in the community; is there anything about house points that would win Hermione or Harry more status than they would if they just kept getting good grades in class, answering questions correctly, and saving victims from bullies?)
In order to be an effective incentive system, house points would necessarily need to be awarded in social circumstances were other students can track them. And in practice that's usually how they're awarded. Points are given out in front of the class so all of the student's classmates can see them instead of privately. Some of this may be because teachers primarily interact with students in classes, but even private events which earn house points are announced publicly later.
Functionally, in canon, the house point system physically updates as soon as anyone authorized says "10 points to Gryffindor." Since it's auto-updating I'd be surprised if they don't track the reasons why as well in a magic ledger or something. When teachers were in strong contention for the house cup, they would give out house points on the flimsiest excuses, but they'd always have a reason for it, which implies that it's tracked. Otherwise teachers would subtract 50 points because 'potter looks stupid' when they're alone in the lavatory instead of taking 10 points for backchat while in class to unfairly win the house cup.
Sure. By earning house points, Harry and Hermione are essentially doing a favor for their houses independently of whatever they did to earn those points. It's a favor that's absolutely useless in functional terms (at least, I don't remember the House Cup granting any substantial perks), but that doesn't matter too much to the psychology involved; you're well above the 20 karma threshold but you still get a little spike of satisfaction when someone upvotes you, don't you? Same mechanism at play.
This is complicated slightly by the fact that House standing is zero-sum, but I still think in-house status gain would outweigh out-of-house status loss thanks to a number of considerations. Point allocations tend not to be announced to the entire school, for one thing.
Incidentally, are there no Author's Notes for chapter 84?
EY doesn't seem so fond of Rand, and it's like he's building her up as the great bugaboo of the story. That whole talk with Hermione was one of those "Gault Recruits a Striker" speeches.
If you live in a world where you are punished for what was called Good:
And rewarded for what was called Evil:
What should you do?
Voldemort Shrugged:
At that point, it's hard to complain. But I'm seeing Rand paired with Lord Foul. Consider Harry, Dumbledore, and Quirrell.
You get a lot of interesting passages just by searching for Hate.
A couple more that I recalled showing the difference between Harry answer and Quirrells. See the last in particular.