Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 17, chapter 86

Alsadius

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 86. The previous thread has long passed 500 comments.

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, 15, 16.

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Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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.

Edit: New thread posted here.

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Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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.

Cross-posted from the TVTropes forum. (There's more to the post there, but I didn't think it all needed to be repeated.)

Why would this important? Well, obviously, this memory represents a huge turning point for Harry. This is when he started to turn against Dumbledore. It suggested to him an interpretation of his parents' death in which Dumbledore deliberately set them up for it. This interpretation of events is itself a bit suspect; Harry thinks (Ch. 46) he came to it sometime during or immediately after the period of his Dementation, but he can't quite place exactly when that was, and it certainly doesn't appear in his narration at the time. He is presently sticking to this interpretation even after receiving information that should falsify it: according to Snape, it is impossible to tamper with the memory of a prophecy.

And, let's not forget, there's another reason this is important: the memory is leaking back into Snape. According to Minerva, Snape is held to Dumbledore's service by his guilt over Lily's death. Whether or not Lily was tortured seems to matter to him... perhaps Dumbledore had told him that she was. Now, Snape knows that the memory falsifies torture; this may weaken the bonds tying him to Dumbledore. This is without even touching upon Harry's interpretation of events, in which Dumbledore deliberately set up Lily and James to be killed in order to bring down Voldemort. Obviously, should Snape come to the same conclusion, his anger over the death of Lily will suddenly pivot and he will become unpredictable.

I wondered whether he had been memory charmed with that memory, but since Harry could see Thestrals afterwards, I assumed it was a real memory.

One of the problems of fiction, and particularly magical fiction, is that all the rules aren't spelled out. If you're memory charmed with the scene of a death, does that allow you to see a thestral?

EDIT: IN Chapter 86, a very strange description as Harry recounts his memory of his parents' death to Snape:

Slowly, like a body floating to the surface of water, Harry returned from wherever he'd been.

Sounds like so... (read more)