Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 21, chapters 91 & 92
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 chapters 91 & 92 . The previous thread has 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, 17,18,19,20.
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Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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 (366)
The story looks more and more like it will end with Harry destroying the whole world. It would highlite the existential risk that comes from scientists who try to do everything in their power.
I'm expecting a positive ending for a few reasons, one of which is that since this is rationality propaganda I doubt Eliezer wants to portray Harry's super-rationality as having ultimately bad results.
It's rationality propaganda that isn't supposed to encourage people to accelerate the way to unfriendly AI but rationality propaganda that is supposed to prevent unfriendly AI from happening.
As far as the story goes, Harry is very rational but Quirrell is on a level where he outplays Harry. In the end Harry is a bit a projection of how Eliezer sees his own childhold self.
On the one hand Eliezer was very smart and rational. On the other hand he was delusional because he didn't take unfriendly AI seriously as something that can actually happen in reality.
A little bit of knowledge is dangerous. Creating people with enough rationality to do damage but not enough rationality to see the dangers of the whole enterprise isn't in the interests of MIRI.
If the reader learns that just being rational doesn't mean that you and that you better think before you mess with powers outside your control like an AGI, Eliezer teaches a very valuable lesson.
The hero always wins isn't a rationality lesson.
As far evidence in the story goes, Harry is rational because Petunia got a beauty portion from her sister. He sister got told from a centaur that the world would end when she gave Petunia the portion.
It's in chapter 1. (edit: I first mistakenly wrote chapter 10)
Now we have "HE IS HERE. THE ONE WHO WILL TEAR APART THE VERY STARS IN HEAVEN. HE IS HERE. HE IS THE END OF THE WORLD." at the end of chapter 89.
Quirrelmort takes it extremly seriously. He makes a point that when he was hypersmart Voldemort, he respected some sensible boundaries.
Quirrelmort is the person who fears that scientists will destroy the earth. He shares the fear to which Eliezer pledged his life.
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You're conflating two different reasons there. Also, Lily was not stupid. I find it hard to believe that she could receive an apocalypse prophecy and not share it with Dumbledore at the very least. There is no evidence whatsoever that Dumbledore is aware of a prophecy connecting Harry to the end of the world.
Edit: Also, having gone through Chapter 10, I can't see anything there which supports your theory.
Oh, my mistake. It says at the top http://hpmor.com/?post_type=chapter&p=10 so I thought it was chapter 10. It's chapter 1.
I'm refering to the paragraph:
Lily told Petunia that the world would end when Lily gave Petunia the beauty potion. Lily isn't stupid and would tell that to her sister for no reason.
Let's say a centaur just told Lily that the world would end when she gave Petunia the beauty potion without being in prophecy mode.
At the beginning that was enough for Lily to refuse. But in the end she didn't saw how giving Petunia the beauty potion would end the world in any literal sense so she gave it to Petunia.
Excuse 1) The world will end if Lily is nice to her sister (with no source cited).
Excuse 2) A centaur told Lily not to give Petunia the potion (with no explanation of why not).
These are two completely separate assertions.
Furthermore,
Petunia states that Lily came up with a number of other, equally ridiculous excuses, which means those two shouldn't be assigned any special importance in the list.
From what we know of centaurs, they are rare and typically hostile to humans, which makes it highly improbable that Lily had any sort of meaningful conversation with one.
All prophecies we know of are highly cryptic, and there is no reason to believe that centaurs can decode them well enough to identify two specific, highly obscure humans.
Lily already has far better motives not to give Petunia the potion, namely 1) they dislike each other and Lily doesn't want to grant her sister's wish and/or 2) the potion is very dangerous to take and she doesn't want to endanger her sister's life. Prophecies of doom are a much less probable explanation than either.
If Lily heard what she thought was a prophecy of doom, she would be very stupid not to share it with anyone, say Dumbledore. Lily was not stupid, but there is no evidence that she told anyone about such a prophecy.
Conservation of detail. The two excuses mentioned can be assigned greater significance on a meta level.
And an apocalyptic prophecy is much like Pascal's Mugger: the centaur may not be in prophecy mode, so fear-of-embarrassment might keep you from telling Dumbledore, but you'd still rather not take the risk.
If Eliezer would have wanted to foreshadow the fact that rational Harry would go on to end the world in chapter 1, this is what it would look like.
When Petunia says "ricidulous excuses" it means that she doesn't understand the validity of the excuses.
What do you think is Eliezer's motivation for Lily giving ricidulous excuses? Making her look like the person that gives ricidulous excuses?
So, what did Harry do in that minute and a half he had with Hermione's body?
My best guess is that he transfigured her body into something, then transfigured something else into a copy of her body. Either that or he just used partial transfiguration on her brain and left the rest of the body behind as unimportant.
It's just not like Harry to just abandon his efforts to preserve her body, especially after he took care to keep it cold. If he has her brain transfigured into a coin or something, that should suffice as a preservation method.
Would it make more sense to just save her brain instead of saving her whole body?
Yeah, on reflection that branch of my theory looks more likely.
Figuring out how to resurrect the dead will be hard enough. Figuring out the way the brain connects to the body and reconnecting all the individual nerve connections makes the challenge much harder. I'm not sure we know all the connections even now with much better technology and decades of additional scholarship. Saving just the brain makes the problem much harder. Keep in mind that the reasons actual cryo sites offer brain only options has a lot to to with cost, storage, transport, etc and not due to thinking its a fundamentally better option.
But it is fundamentally better: the smaller the volume you are trying to vitrify, the better the process works because the greater surface area is compared to volume, and so you get faster and more even cooling (and in humans, you get problems with circulation getting blocked off after a certain point). Go read through http://chronopause.com/ . This is why you can drop small things into LN2 and they recover fine, or why Fahy could do a kidney and bring it back, but why we can't do larger things.
I study neuroscience. You may know something I don't, but I think body transplants would be a lot easier than resurrecting the dead, as long as you save the first few sections of the spinal chord as well - repairing broken spinal chords, albeit imperfectly, is somewhat in the realm of current technology. If we're talking magic, I don't think spinal chord injuries would even be a big deal.
Edit: never mind everything written below about the freezing
I was quite disappointed when Harry just froze her like that. The rapidly expanding ice will destroy much of her data - in real cryonics you pump 'em full of antifreeze to prevent this. Even if he revives her, she might not quite be the same now. He should have transfigured her head into a small crystalline structure and later found some way to securely maintain the spell (and if no one knows he did it, the pesky authorities won't try to take off the spell).
Harry didn't freeze her. He cooled her to 5° Celsius, equivalent to 41° Fahrenheit and well above the freezing point.
Oops...somehow my imagination inserted freezing! In that case, he really aught to contact a team of muggle and wizard doctors and have them swap knowledge immediately...(might be too risky for other reasons, of course)
I don't think think I know anything you don't. It's possible I just have a dated conception of how hard it is to repair severed nerves.
Definitely. There's been some news around this: HEAVEN: The head anastomosis venture Project outline for the first human head transplantation with spinal linkage (GEMINI.
You'll notice that he made sure no-one went in the room for several hours, during which he had his Time-Turner unlocked. He then went in there himself.
That doesn't explain what the past him was doing. Had six hours past between the troll attack and then? Even if not, it seems a wast of time to sit for awhile and just waste time when he could have done his traveling back immediately after his time-turner was unlocked.
It doesn't explain what he was doing, but it does mean he has a lot longer than one and a half minutes to do it.
I see what you mean. Good catch. That broadens up the possibilities a bit. In any case, he almost certainly was doing something to preserve Hermione's body. He certainly wouldn't just abandon it like that.
Hmm, it looks like the first version of this did break a convention, and a strikethru won't stop it annoying people, so let's edit it as well and put a new post up.
I think Harry spent the time sitting in front of the room planning what he was going to do to revive Hermione, because what went wrong when he got her killed was largely due to time constraints. It is explicitly stated that he was there for hours, and Minerva says it looks like years have passed when he comes out. So, I also think that whatever Harry planned, and then tried for several hours, did not work, and he came out with Hermione still dead. He is saying that there is nothing left to plan at the beginning of 92, whereas after he cools Hermione he thinks that he now has time to think. That strongly suggests he thought, tried the plan, and it failed.
On the other hand, Minerva has been told explicitly that people have generally not done everything they can, teaches Transfiguration, and quite definitely feels terrible over Hermione's death. She is also free to use the Time-Turner. So, yes, I also think she went back, Transfigured herself into Hermione, and let herself be killed, as that was, by that point, the only way to save Hermione's life. She probably borrowed Harry's invisibility cloak to hide Hermione from all the people who mustn't know that she is still alive if she is to survive. That hasn't happened yet, but there is still time. (Note that she also identifies with the other specified victim of the troll, Mrs Norris.)
This is well within Minerva's capabilities as stated, explains who was asking for the troll to be led away (Hermione under a cloak), and fits with Dumbledore's comment about losing another friend instead. It also has the potential to appease the feminists, because Hermione is saved by a woman acting heroically after Harry has failed.
I also find it a lot easier to live with. My reaction to death has got stronger as I've got older, and I cope a lot more easily with someone sacrificing themselves to save someone else than with someone just being killed. Agency matters. I still feel a bit sorry for the troll, though.
I don't know about the feminists, but I'd be happier if there were more than one female rationalist in the story. And I'd definitely be interested to see a rationalist Minerva taking part rather than dead.
One trope I've gotten very tired of is the character who becomes much wiser and/or better and then dies almost immediately. I want to see how the improved version handles their life.
A rationalist Minerva would be great, but I must admit my scepticism of how far she can get. She has a lot to unlearn compared to someone like Hermione, and her only potential mentors are Harry (who has too much else on his mind) and Quirrell (who is Quirrell).
The likelihood of this theory is definitely boosted by "Hermione's" last words, as that's exactly the message that a disguised McG would want to give him.
If we're thinking of who else might have been in Hermione's place, McGonagall only kind of fits:
"There was a burst of something that was magic and also more, a shout louder than an earthquake and containing a thousand books, a thousand libraries, all spoken in a single cry that was Hermione; too vast to be understood, except that Harry suddenly knew that Hermione had whited out the pain, and was glad not to be dying alone."
That's a very Ravenclaw way to die. Who fits better?
Any member of the Verres family.
I think this theory is cool, and sort of hope that this is what happened. But... Dumbledore says he felt a student die. Whatever magical detection he uses for this probably wouldn't trigger for Polyjuiced McGonagall.
What about Transfiguration, which is what davidchart talks about? If you are literally becoming another copy of an existing student, perhaps this interacts with the wards differently than merely drinking a potion that alters your appearance.
(Yes, transfiguring yourself into another living being is fatal, but not straight away, and this is a suicide mission)
Mcgonagal would have to have someone else transfigure her, or else the spell would end when she dies. (Perhaps dumbledore? Not sure he would go for it.) Polyjuice would be another approach, but it wears off after an hour, so dumbledore would have to do another body swap after Hermione/mcgonagal is killed. Again, not sure he would go for it. Who else? Quirrel might be desperate enough. Snape is loose but I don't see him going for it.
So several things would have to fall into place but the plot buildup is definitely there.
Wasn't there a story about someone who accidentally Polyjuiced herself into a cat and, instead of getting help, hid from the teachers, so she got stuck cat-like? McGonagall could turn into a cat and Polyjuice herself into Hermione from that state, to get the effect deliberately. The waxy, doll-like appearance could be a side-effect of deliberately botched Polyjuice. Or... Hermione could Transfigure McGonagall. Hard, but quite possibly just within her capabilities, with guidance.
The ward message is a problem, but, as jaibot suggested, maybe McGonagall enrolled herself as a student. Or maybe the wards sound the same for students and teachers, and Dumbledore interpreted it when he saw "Hermione" dead.
The description of the death scene is Harry's interpretation, not objective truth.
At this point in the narrative, I can add epicycles to deal with the problems, which is just as it should be. It is a beautiful theory (and my baby!), and I still have a few hours before the really ugly facts show up.
Edit: And here they are. The tragedy of theories strikes again…
Unless she told him what her plan was before he encountered harry.
I bet the Deputy Headmistress can enroll students at will.
Harry told his patronus to specifically seek out Hermione, which lead him to the Troll. He also got a response back of "AHHHHHHHHHH", which seems suspicious enough, but not completely solid evidence. These details don't seem to match up with the idea that somebody else died in Hermione's place.
I think we are meant to assume that Hermione did die, or at least experienced something close enough to death that Dumbledore was alerted.
On the one hand, some things make it look like he did something of great significance there. (Which is why this subthread is happening at all.)
On the other hand, ch.92 seems to show Harry, from his own point of view, at least convinced that Hermione is lost-and-gone-for-ever and that there's nothing he can do about it. Which means that either Eliezer is deceiving his readers in ways I think he wouldn't, or Harry has managed to memory-charm himself, or he hasn't done anything that (from his own perspective) gives a substantial chance of saving or recovering her. The first two of those three options seem pretty unlikely to me.
It strikes me that Harry just asked how to use Memory Charms, and he has access to a time turner...
Consider that Harry is not the only player on the board:
McGonagall is being pushed towards taking action to fix this. Very, very hard. I do not just mean the defense professor. I mean the entire situation is leaning on her to go beyond the usual.
Snape: Been a loose cannon for a while now, and might decide to do something about this.
The Defense Professor. Probably set the hit in motion, but might be looking for the "undo! UnDo!" button due to the fallout.
Dumbledore: .. nah, actually do not think he is going to exert himself over this.
So, at present, there is a non-zero probability that Harry is carrying around McGonagalls living brain transfigured into a diamond because she swapped herself for Hermione, then Snape swapped the oxygenating potion for the draught of living death, and Harry decided to arrest decay with the tools at his disposal.
Mad cackle
Wait. I missed one. And Hermione and/or McGonagall got her soul anchored to the whooping willow courtesy of a timetraveling defense professor. (all the horcrux proposals ignore the fact that neither Harry nor Hermione would use that technique, nor do they know it. But Quirell does. And would. )
Is it reasonable to think that Harry's parents will be safer at home?
Not safer per se, but less likely to come to Voldemort's attention.
Edit: Chapter 37 also has Quirrell tell Harry that Dumbledore has thorougly warded his parents' home (though the fact that he is telling Harry this after having crossed said wards does nothing to reassure us, the readers).
It's an interesting point that the Death Eaters are going to be even more ignorant of the muggle world than the rest of the wizards are.
MoR Voldy shouldn't need any hand holding to come up with a list of useful leverages against his mortal enemy.
Do we actually know (or strongly suspect) why Dumbledore hired Quirrell? It seems like when hiring a Defense Professor, "you may not investigate my true identity" should be a red light on the scale of a supernova, and Dumbledore may or may not be insane, but he is not stupid, and he's certainly never shown any sign of trusting Quirrell.
Dumbledore seems quiet desperate to find a Defense professor, so much he'll accept about anyone (except Snape, but I guess that's because he wants to keep Snape in Hogwarts for more than one year), both in canon and in MoR. He keeps a close eye on the defense professor then (or at least, he does in MoR, he didn't seem to do it much in canon).
It is impossible to hire good Defense Professors. Full Stop. The position is heavily cursed, and anyone who takes it leaves within the year. Practically no one will take the post in the position. Under these circumstances, if someone is willing to be the defense professor, well, that means Hogwarts has a defense professor this year. Again, this is a job no one wants after all these years of mishaps befalling the defense professors, like clockwork, every year.
I know it would defuse the whole dramatic potential of the thing, but has the wizarding world really not heard of one-year contracts? After all, there seems to be no rule that the professor has to leave due to harm coming to him or her, and many appear to leave due to circumstances set in motion before their arrival (like pre-existing incompetence).
I've seen a fanfic where they started using that loophole.
Lupin, Umbridge, and Snape all survive their terms as Defence professor essentially intact. One is drummed out by PR pressure, and two get promotions. Out of six total, that's not an awful record.
Why doesn't Dumbledore just diffuse the responsibility? Have battles like the current ones run by different teachers throughout the year, and also have each teacher, in their own lessons, teach a bit more practically about their spells?
Or is a tradition thing, like the snitch? Will people not let Dumbledore get rid of Defence Against the Dark Arts, even though it means their children won't learn anything?
It would be very hard to implement. Hogwarts only seems to have one teacher per subject, and many of those have given no sign of usefulness outside their own subject area (Hooch, Sprout, Sinistra) or indeed within it (Binns, Trelawney). They would struggle to take on the content of the DADA curriculum even collectively.
We do know that some past defense professors have been effective even during just one year - Tonks is considered Auror material, for example, and she didn't pick all of that up from Quirrell. So abolishing the subject would be a step too far, not to mention that it would lead Hogwarts into conflict with the Ministry for failing to follow the national curriculum.
I thought that was because Tonks trained under Moody?
"Sign up for the Auror preparation program in your sixth year," said Susan. "It's the next best thing. Oh, and if a famous Auror (assumed it was referring to Moody?) offers to oversee your summer internship, just ignore anyone who warns you that he's a terrible influence or that you're almost certainly going to die."
Yes, but one assumes that Moody doesn't offer to oversee someone's summer internship unless they've really impressed him.
She is a born shapeshifter. Of the line of Black. Moody offered to oversee that internship to learn who she was, because it would be fracking stupid not to. Finding out that Tonks is astonishingly decent people must have been the best news Moody got in decades.
A risky plan. What if dividing the subject among 20 profs made all 20 of them subject to the curse and lost the entire faculty? In the wizarding world, messing with things you don't understand extremely well can be dangerous.
That's a very good point I hadn't considered.
I wonder if Dumbledore has actually done any experimenting over the last 50 years, like the one-year contracts I suggest downthread, or having two staff members rotate responsibility each year (and teach something innocuous like Muggle Studies in the meantime).
A also wonder what kind of curse would have such an incredibly powerful effect, and whether Voldemort could have used a scaled-down version of it to, say, get Dumbledore out of the headmaster position. Bearing in mind the original curse was cast before Voldemort had even achieved his full power.
Probably because Quirrell is insanely good at being a Defense Professor. After a long string of incompetents, I might be willing to overlook a little "obviously evil" if it meant getting the best Defense Professor in a century.
Being sinister and secretive is also a common Slytherin behavior, and they're not ALL evil. It's also possible he thinks he hired an incognito David Munroe.
Combined with previous chapters it looks like top-level Wizards know that the secret of spell-creation is potentially universe-wreckingly dangerous, and that Quirrel fears that Harry is about to try to do it.
With the end of c89, I flashed back to the curious bit during the Wizengamot trial about some powerful old members now paying attention to Harry - did they interpret correctly his Dementor-frightening as indicating a newly created spell (Patronus 2.0) and that Harry might be joining their fraternity? Specifically, ch81:
I took all that as indicating that they thought Harry was [EDITED to add: er, that should be "might be"] Voldemort, an idea we know Lucius is already taking seriously.
... Snape was not in the list of people told to deflect Harry from questions about spell creation.
Canon Snape both created spells and had some of Voldemort's hoarded lore.
And Harry does not know this. Or at least, we have no reason to believe that he does, and the fact that he didn't ask Snape about either seems like further evidence that he doesn't know (although, he knows that Snape did not resurrect Lillie, so might not have thought it worth pursuing).
I suppose this information is more frustrating than useful, since I don't expect Harry to be learning that Snape is a potential resource for anything that the Defense Professor deflects him from. (Well, so is Dumbledore, but we know how Dumbledore feels about it.)
He also doesn't particularly trust Snape; Snape is still on his list of potential suspects.
Of course, Quirrell is also high on his list, but having already become part of (in a sense, the entirety of) his inner circle, it's hard to kick him out again.
Snape is a professor. Why wouldn't he ask Snape?
He obviously can't ask everyone, but I'd expect he'd at least ask the professors, some of the more promising students, and any student who seems to create a spell. And maybe all of Hogwarts.
Just noticed this creepy detail:
Madam Pomfrey is in charge of the medical ward, so the Grangers are not going home, they are going to a hospital.
Harry from the prior chapter to his parents who still have a living child to give them this warning.
It sounds like they're either having medical issues due to stress, or they're going to where Hermione is being kept. If they were to be obliviated, I'm sure it would be in their own home.
That is extremely creepy.
On the other hand,
My interpretation is that Madam Pomfrey is a trustworthy staff member, while at the same time being inconsequential enough that her time can be spent on escorting Muggles around. She is also used to dealing with horrified parents, and therefore a good first point of contact for the Grangers.
That makes sense, its possible I'm being paranoid, but when people with inconvenient memories get taken to hospitals it does make me worry.
What I'm wondering is more why Harry doesn't push for his parents to be temporarily obliviated of his own existence, as a mean to protect them.
Hermione did it in canon at the beginning of the Deathly Hallows, and that was a very sensible thing to do, and it told a lot about Hermione for her to cast that spell.
And yes, it's very creepy, this "Obliviate !" scene in Deathly Hallows almost made me cry (both in book and in movie), it was the saddest scene of the 7 books to me. (And yeah, I know, I should be more sad about the people who actually died...), but Harry definitely is rationalist enough to force himself to do something as painful as that if it's to save his parents.
This was a bad idea in canon and will be an even worse idea here where obliviations are permanent.
Actually, they were pseudo-permanent in canon too. It seems like the caster of a Memory Charm can revoke it, but nobody else.
Or, perhaps, Madam Pomfrey is taking them to see the body, since it is in her medical ward.
Obliviating the whole of Hermione's existence seems counterproductively difficult: She lived in Muggle Britain for 11 years. Are they going to Obliviate all the neighbours and relatives who remember her and might ask casually how she is doing at school? As for Obliviating the memory that she's dead, then why tell them in the first place? It is not clear what sort of memory eradication could be usefully applied. Maybe a False Memory of her dying in some sort of sports accident, rather than being half-eaten? But again, in that case, why tell them the actual truth?
This happened in Canon, and was done by Hermione herself, albeit in her I think 6th or 7th year.
Well. I stand by the criticism. Either Hermione, or Rowling, wasn't thinking things through.
Hermione didn't erase her own existence, but implanted false memories to get her parents to go to Australia. Distance did what magic couldn't.
Actually, she did both of those things. And, incidentally, it's the false memories bit that would be impossible in Methods - Hermione, of course, did not spend years to give her parents what are apparently years worth of memories.
"Harry Verres"? What happened to "James Potter Evans"? I'm not sure what this means but I don't think EY is such a careless author that it means nothing. Maybe it's just intended to emphasize Harry's connection to his adoptive parents, but just maybe...
Is anyone else suddenly wondering what really happened to James Potter and Lily Evans 10 years prior? Have we seen their bodies? Harry "remembered" their deaths while demented, but given the emphasis on false memory charms in this story, that's not reliable. And we still don't know exactly why the Remembrall lit up when Harry grabbed it.
Has anyone else noticed that Quirrell knew James Potter?
If Quirrell is Voldemort, which is more or less a foregone conclusion at this point, then James and Lily are "those who have thrice defied him". It seems natural to assume that he would know a certain amount about them. He also observed James's behaviour in the face of mortal danger to him and his family, which I imagine tells you a lot about a person.
No, this means that the person Quirrell is pretending to be knew James Potter. So, either Quirrell's image of David Monroe knew James or Quirrell is inserting an inconsistency.
That doesn't seem likely to be an inconsistency to me. James (and Lily) Potter were members of the Order of the Phoenix during the last war. I don't recall David Monroe being a member of that group in this continuity, but he was an active member of the opposition. It stands to reason that moderately important opposition figures would have known each other, especially since there seem to have been relatively few people actively involved in the war on either side.
Moody's wording in ch86 seems to imply the Order may not have even existed before Monroe 'died':
(Although you could argue that Monroe had formed and was the head of the Order, and that is what Moody meant.)
The boy is not much like David Cameron either. I haven't met David Cameron, but still feel qualified to make that assertion.
James Potter was not a David Cameron-level celebrity before his death; even if he were a celebrity, I strongly doubt that one could understand his reasoning processes from only what was reported in the Daily Prophet.
Unlike Potter and Evans, Verres is a name with no connection to the wizarding world.
These chapters caused me to update more in favor of Quirrell being genuinely scared. However, there are still some things that confuse me. First, Quirrell's not citing the prophecy in his favor, even though McGonagall was the one who paired him with Trelawney in the first place, and there's absolutely nothing incriminating in hearing a prophecy under those circumstances. Second, well, this is a problem with a murder-based solution, and I would expect Quirrell to take it unless (for some magical, personal, or prophetic reason) he finds death preferable to a world in which Harry is dead.
As far as Harry destroying the world goes, I'm most worried about Fred and George. In canon, they become quite skilled at spell creation in later books, and it's suggested that they experiment in earlier books; they're probably not especially good yet, but they might know enough information (or have enough books) to be dangerous already.
Quirrell values Harry - at least instrumentally, for purposes as yet uncertain, and possibly emotionally (if he is capable of valuing a person in that way). He is too valuable to kill except as a last resort, and Quirrell's actions suggest that he thinks he can avert the prophecy and make the killing unnecessary (otherwise he would not be taking all the measures he is currently taking).
As for not informing others of the prophecy, doubtless he feels that whatever (frantic and desperate) actions they might take in response would interfere with his own much more intelligent attempt to resolve the situation.
I do kinda feel like "Snape asked for advice on understanding a prophecy; the defense professor should consider it." Except I'm sure Quirell doesn't view anyone else as smart enough to be any better at it than him, except possibly Harry/Snape/Dumbledore, except (A) not really and (B) he doesn't trust any of them with the prophecy, I'm sure.
That's fair enough, but I just thought of one more thing that Quirrell could do that he's choosing not to... Why isn't Quirrell doing the star thing again, or at least offering to do so?
That... is an extremely sensible thing to do.
However, Harry would probably reject it the way he rejected Fawkes's song - he doesn't want to be freed or distracted from his pain, since he considers it the proper and correct response to the death of his best friend. He may also believe that it's powering his dark side, and thus helping him look for ways to save Hermione.
It's possible that he would reject it, yes, but I don't think it's that easy to compare it to Fawkes' song. If memory serves, phoenix songs actually change one's mood; the stars wouldn't do that, just comfort him. And, even if Harry does reject it, it's unlikely to cost Quirrell anything to make the offer.
Showing Harry the stars at this point would probably kill him. The image of the stars is a talisman to him, representing the necessary triumph of human will over death. Harry has just made a resolution to unmake death, and we know he can do it because of Trelawney's prophecy. The next time he sees that image he is going to act on his resolution if he hasn't already, and right now he's exhausted and confused and desperately unhappy... He needs to be rested.
And besides, given that Quirrell thinks that Harry will destroy the world when he acts on his resolution, he should be diverting Harry's attention from the stars at all costs, and trying to bind him more strongly to the Earth and the people on it, which he is doing. I'm loving the irony of Voldemort desperately trying to remind Harry of all the people who love him.
Mind you, whilst I think Quirrell is smart enough to not show Harry the stars given what he knows, I could be wrong. So maybe he will try that at some point and it will blow up in his face.
EDIT: Hmm, prediction failed. I guess this means that I'm more swayed by emotion than Harry. No surprises there.
Unfortunately, he has no way to prove the existence of a prophecy beyond taking asking Dumbledore to take Harry to the Hall of Prophecy. And a prophecy that Harry will end the world, coming from the obviously evil Defense Professor, is... well, obviously evil. Even if it isn't.
He has a way: Legilimency. Occlumens can let others into their memory, and we are told the intonation of prophecy cannot be faked by false memory charms. Let Dumbledore into a carefully guarded compartment of his identity, expose only the memory of the prophecy, and you're done - everyone will trust Dumbledore's word.
It seems like there is some conflicting text here
in 27 we read:
http://hpmor.com/chapter/27
But on the other-hand Snape says
but, we have no confirmation that Snape is a perfect Occlumens and if the Defense Professor is, or is suspicious enough that people think he might be, its unclear if even Legilimency could be trusted to confirm the prophecy
Actually, examining Snape's words more carefully than my memory, I think I was simply wrong. Snape says that the 'quality' is something that 'even Legilimency cannot share', and so how did the Dark Lord then verify Snape's memory? He seized Snape's mind with such force and magic that Snape's Occlumency would've been hopeless and instead of perceiving the prophetic quality of voice, he looked for Snape's personal confusion at not understanding the prophecy.
So it seems that Dumbledore could not verify it after all: he could not be sure of breaking Quirrel's Occlumency both out of ethics and because Quirrel seems to be closer to Dumbledore in power than Snape was to Voldemort, and he cannot simply verify the prophetic quality in whatever memory Quirrel chooses to provide.
Which of course still leaves the Hall of Prophecy: surely Quirrel's word about a prophecy of the apocalypse would be worth defying the Department of Mystery over, in order to verify?
To hear the prophecy you need to be mentioned in it. So maybe anyone can hear this prophecy because the end of the world effects everybody. But if not, taking Harry there and him hearing it would be confirmation that its about him.
Though, verification may be a moot point and Dumbledore may already know the prophecy about Harry. After all, Dumbledore heard the end of the prophecy in the dinning hall back when it was "he is coming" rather than "he is here". And Dumbledore also gave excuses not to take Harry into the hall of prophesy
Quirrell can't prove it, but as it happens, the Headmaster has recently heard a true prophecy with (likely) very, very similar wording. Since Quirrell didn't hear more than a few words of the other one, the fact that the two are so like each other would be strong evidence that Quirrell's prophecy is also genuine.
In canon, the Department of Mysteries has a room filled with preserved brains, presumably for research. For unexplained reasons, it includes a quick connection to the death room (where the vale is located). Ron, under the influence of an unknown mind-altering spell (confunding?), summoned one of the brains, and it attacked him with a silvery substance that sounds like a more solid version of the typical memories put into pensives. (This left scars, and seemed to break Ron out of the spell before silencing him.). Later, someone (I forget who, but a member of the Order of the Phoenix) commented that Ron would be fine, but the marks left by thoughts were deep--implication being that the silvery ribbons that came from the brain and grappled him were thoughts.
We don't know, based just on that evidence, that the Department of Mysteries can preserve human brains, or that said brains are capable of some form of thought in that state. What we do know is that they had tanks of the brains (I seem to remember it being several tanks, but I'm not sure), they seem to be in good condition for all that non-neurologist Harry can tell, and that they resisted Ron's accio with a projection that a knowledgeable wizard described as thoughts.
It makes me wonder what would happen if MoR Harry broke into the Department of Mysteries in his current state. (You know, in the few minutes before he found a way to open the "no, seriously, do not open this door" door and destroyed the universe.)
Unlikely to ever make an appearance, due to meta-knowledge:
Jura Ryvrmre fgnegrq guvf fgbel, ur unqa'g ernq gur obbxf, naq gubfr fprarf qba'g nccrne va gur zbivrf. Jr nyfb xabj gung ur xarj rknpgyl jung unccraf sebz gur fgneg, fb ur unq guvf cynaarq orsber ernqvat nobhg gur QbZ oenvaf.
Excellent point, though gur jnl Uneel zragvbaf Ibyqrzbeg'f syvtug va uvf Qrzragbe synfuonpx vzcyvrf Ryvrmre ng yrnfg yrnearq ubj zhpu ovttre n qrny gung jnf va gur obbxf guna va gur zbivrf, nygubhtu fb sne vg'f orra n guebj-njnl yvar, fb vg qbrfa'g ernyyl punatr gur cbvag.
Did anyone else find it increasingly implausible that the teachers kept trying to speak to Harry while he was thinking? The first one or even two approaches made sense, but if a person who has just lost a close friend says that they want to be alone until dinner, the only sensible course of action seems to be to say "okay" and leave them alone. It'd be one thing if he hadn't spoken for anyone in a month, but this was just a few hours: it'd have been completely reasonable for anyone to want to be alone for that long.
Granted, given that this is Harry, they might have thought that he was in risk of doing something really rash... but if they feared that he'd do something so bad that it wouldn't have been enough for them to guard the door to the room where he was in, then McGonagall would have been insane to unlock his Time Turner! And if they thought that he was in danger of developing some really crazy plan while thinking, it should have been obvious after the first couple of times that interrupting him now would just make him more unreceptive, and it would have been better to wait until dinner.
I'm just drawing a complete blank here - why did they keep doing it? Doesn't seem to make any sense to me.
McGonagall may have been insane to unlock the Time-Turner, but she was simply incapable of withstanding the emotional pressure Harry suddenly put her under. Doubtless it is not something she had originally intended to do, and she may well regret it horribly once she regains the capacity for rational thought.
Dumbledore spied on their conversation, though - if he'd considered the matter that serious, he ought to have stepped in and taken the Time Turner or re-locked it.
At the price of alienating Harry a good bit further, of course.
If McGonagall wouldn't, Harry would go to Dumbledore. It's extremly unlikely that Harry wouldn't get his Time-Turner unlocked in the situation as Harry is willing to alienate the two but they aren't willing to alienate Harry.
Had the first two been Macgonnagle and the Defense Professor, then the rest make a bit more sense in that the Defense Professor urged Macgonnagle to do whatever it took to get Harry off his current path, and, well, Harry had just lectured her about how responsibility works, and so she was in a state of mind that demanded action.
That said, you're totally right: continuing to throw potential emotional bonds at him to try and cheer him up wasn't the best idea, at least not so soon. Surely Macgonnagle is smart enough to know that Harry knew exactly what was going on, and would therefore be less receptive? It's a general trend when working with stubborn and upset people, and I imagine this is no less true among Hogwarts students, and thinking about it for five seconds should have made it clear that it'd only be worse with Harry. I suppose she couldn't think of anything better to try.
It wasn't just McGonagall, though - Dumbledore was the one who fetched Harry's parents, even though he had listened to Harry's and McGonagall's conversation and thus knew exactly what the situation was. Not to mention all the other teachers who she had clearly briefed on the situation before they went in.
Quirrell is trying to alienate Harry from his lifelines by manipulating everyone into being unhelpfully helpful. It's one of the core emotional triggers for the Harry, and the Defense Professor knows this.
It wasn't done at Quirrel's suggestion, though, as far as we can tell.
Well, (in chapter 90), McGonagall's first visit seemed to be of her own accord but then the Defense Professor went in and upon returning said this to her:
Manipulating and convincing people of things is absolutely Quirrell's area of expertise and it seems plausible that he realizes that putting immense pressure on McGonagall to do something (because poor old Quirrell sure can't!) will cause her to make poor decisions regarding whether Harry should be left alone and/or unobstructed in his activities.
Further supported by Snape's line from when he enters the room at the beginning of chapter 51:
and by the continuing pressure Quirrell exerts on McGonagall at the end of chapter 52:
Again Quirrell cites his own inability to help with the problem and now disqualifies Dumbledore as well. The last part in particular echos Harry's criticism of her ineffectiveness and I wouldn't be surprised if Quirrell was somehow aware of their exchange and using McGonagall's weakened confidence to spur her to action.
So Quirrell seems to be manipulating McGonagall directly and everyone else by extension.
I suspect Quirrell was aware of the exchange, if he can do the same trick as in canon with names:
Specific mention of not screening the room, and then saying the V-word out loud.
For a rationalist fic, where you're meant to be able to work things out though, it does seem a bit 'magical' if the answer to every "well that's a bit weird" is "Quirrell probably did it". It's fitting the evidence to your theory.
Good point. Now if only Quirrell wasn't actually behind 75% of all the weird things happening in the story (as far as we can tell)...
For any weird thing, you may be able to find someone who thinks that "Quirrell did it". That doesn't mean some faction out there believes Quirrell is responsible for every weird thing -- different people think Quirrell is responsible for different weird things.
After this chapter I've updated heavily in favor of Quirrell being genuinely terrified and trying to run damage control. That means giving him more emotional lifelines.
Admittedly, it also probably means making Harry dependent on an information source Quirrell can trust not to say too much, i.e. himself, but...
That does not seem to jive with the last lines of chapter 89, which are first-person accounts of Quirrell's feelings.
EDIT: I also updated in favor of Quirrell being genuinely terrified after chapter 92, but only slightly. The evidence from chapter 89 still dominates in my mind since 89 has an uncensored account of Quirrell's true feelings.
And quite specifically, ironically, and counterpointedly placed before the prophecy.
It seemed to me it was the way Harry told them off. He didn't exactly act like the day was wrapped up and everything was already said.
Eh. In more typical situations it isn't that odd to force people who want to be alone in bleak times to not be alone. (I'm not sure if the primary impetus here is an anti-suicide measure, the thought that it improves mood, despite the annoyance, or the inability of people who want to help to convince themselves they are helping without visible action.) That Quirrel recommended it makes it more sensible (though, as the strong reader suspicion goes, Quirrel is trying to sabotage their relationship with Harry), even though Harry protests.
This may have been mentioned elsewhere, but chapter 53 introduces "death dolls", and Hermionie's corpse is decribed as "waxy and doll-like".
For the foreshadowing pile:
Chapter 20 (on the Pioneer plaque):
Chapter 46:
Edit: Chapter 49:
I wonder what steps Harry took to test the limitations of his own Patronus. The thing is humanoid and it /speaks/. Is it conscious? Does it have memory, can you give it information, dispell it, call it back the next cay, and have it still know the information? Can it perform useful cognitive work, solve problems? Does it exist anywhere and in any way while not called forth by Harry's spell? (Can it think while Harry is asleep? what an asset that would be!)
And, dare I ask, can it recursively self-improve? ;) Okay, okay, stop it with the rotten tomatoes.
I'm sure the answer to most or all of that is "no" just because of the way it would affect the story but, if I were Harry, I'd test it anyway. It is a safer and more convenient magical-humanoid-that-speaks to examine than a Dementor, and Harry has given a lot of thought to how their minds work...
Technically, a Dementor is not a humanoid - it only appears as one to those unable to face the cognitive gap that represents death.
-
Note that Harry's Patronus appears to inform him of its own initiative regarding a fact which is important for him to know. Also that it delays until he is prepared to hear the message.
Huh. Drawing connections between the two of them seems obvious, but then again, I might be reaching.
Hermione will be resurrected before the conclusion of this story.
(Given that Harry wins and souls aren't real.)
I sorta feel that I know what you're getting at, but "Hermione lives" seems like a precondition for "Harry wins", no?
By "wins" I just meant "beats the bad guy(s)".
I'll go a step farther, and say that regardless of the existence of souls, Hermione will be resurrected before the conclusion of this story.
I'm a bit divided on how I'd feel about that. On the other hand, finding a way to resurrect her would be thematically appropriate. On the other hand, it would also be thematically appropriate if there wasn't any way, and you just had to accept that the universe doesn't always play fair, with you sometimes not getting everything you want despite your best efforts.
I continue to have at least 30% confidence that Hermione was never dead. There are too many would-be-conclusive bits of evidence just barely out of reach.
I'm about 95% confident Eliezer wouldn't do such a thing.
I really miss Intrade.
Quirrell is That Fucker.
Heavy spoilers for Nonjon's excellent A Black Comedy follow.
Va N Oynpx Pbzrql, Qnivq Zbaebr vf gur ragvgl perngrq jura gur Ubepehk va Evqqyr'f qvnel fhpprffshyyl erfheerpgf vgfrys, jvgu gur gjvfg gung vg jnf perngrq hfvat nyy bs Ibyqrzbeg'f 'cbfvgvir' rzbgvbaf. Guhf Qnivq Zbaebr vf bccbfrq gb Ibyqrzbeg, unf uvf zrzbevrf naq fxvyyf, naq frrf gung fgbel'f Uneel nf n cbgragvny gbby, nyyl, be rira rdhny.
Fbhaq snzvyvne? Gur anzr whfg znxrf vg boivbhf.
The story had me at
Started reading now. It's highly rated, so I'm expecting it to be at least amusing.
I read it on recommendation from one of these threads. It was amusing, but I've enjoyed others of the author's stories more - the Potter/Firefly crossover Browncoat, Green Eyes, for all that the premise sounds dumb, was excellent.
Any creative souls want to imagine how this omake would go?
On a side note, this probably should've really, really worried Michael.
... For that matter, it probably did.
What does anyone make of Quirrel's claim to be David Monroe?
Do you mean in general, or in Chapter 92?
In Chapter 92.
I have no theories yet. I did, however, just come across the following in my re-reading (chapter 60):
It means that it's confirmed that Quirrell wants people to think he's secretly David Monroe. I'd be wary of drawing any other conclusions, though it does seem more likely that Quirrell pretended to be Monroe during the war.
"Rule 8: Any technique which is good enough to defeat me once is good enough to learn myself"
Voldemort has been defeated once. What would he do, if he wanted to learn how?
I am inclined to believe that he wasn't defeated - the body everyone believes to be his had been "burnt to a crisp", which is inconsistent with everything we know about the Killing Curse.
Assuming, however, that the official account is accurate, the logical next step would be to learn the True Patronus Charm, the only thing he knows which can block a Killing Curse. He might also want to study Harry for lingering magical effects (if any such effect can endure over twelve years), though this is made more difficult by the resonance effect.
Nobody checked for dental history, did they?
It seems unlikely that the DMLA are even aware of such techniques. However, we do not know either way.
Edit: How would anyone have access to Voldemort's original dental records in the first place? And would they be accurate given all the self-modification he apparently underwent during his time as the Dark Lord (glowing red eyes, serpentine features etc.)?
Assuming the official account is accurate, we have no better explanation for what happened than Rowling's love shield(though I've heard the closely related theory that it was Voldemort breaking his promise to Lily that did it, because the laws of magic somehow enforce contracts). MoR!Voldemort is not the sort to leave it as an enigma, so he's likely gone looking through obscure magical texts of the sort that he didn't check pre-death to figure out what had the power to do it. As such, he would presumably have learned the importance of true love and/or honesty, and altered his tactics accordingly, which may be why Quirrelmort is noticeably less evil-acting than Voldemort.
Voldemort didn't break his promise to Lily - he intended to, presumably, but Lily broke her side first by trying to kill him instead of acting like a willing sacrifice.
Two small points:
I'm actually starting to believe EricMS is right, and Harry might use the resurrection ritual - blood of the foe, bone of the ancestor, flesh of the servant. No, I don't know how he'd source Draco's blood, Quirrell being out of the question, and the bone is a tall order as well, even with both parents at Hogwarts and Harry apparently about to learn the Obliviation spell. Perhaps a tooth will do? They are dentists...
But it's still a wonderful idea, because it pays off the story's Star Wars references, in particular the comparison of Neville to Darth Vader. If a lightsaber spell is introduced in the second act, someone must lose his hand to it in the third.
Neville Longbottom cuts off Ron Weasley's hand with a lightsaber. This has to happen.
Truly awesome though that wouuld be, as others pointed out in the thread you link, there's no reason to believe that said ritual works on the properly dead.
Furthermore, think about the implications if it did work - everyone who knows about it, including all Death Eaters, would have those three items readied in case of their unexpected demise, and would thus be functionally invincible.
I don't see why bone would be difficult, given that it doesn't have to be taken from a living ancestor. Not unless Dumbledore prepared for this and warded their graves.
Harry's unable to leave Hogwarts. There could be ways around the restriction, but they add complexity to the solution.
ETA: Which, to be clear, looks completely unworkable on its in-universe merits. The real problem is that Harry's never heard a full description of the ritual, neither Dumbledore nor Voldemort would give him one, and Voldemort would have stolen the book that contains it.
Maybe, though I don't think teeth have any actual bone in them. But I'm sure a pinky toe wouldn't be missed. Not so much as one's child, anyway.
I don't think teeth have any bone in them either. I'm perplexed by the number of serious criticisms this comment has received. I was telling a joke. Does it not read like one?
Not really, but all of the responses sound friendly to me. Mine certainly was.
Is there anyone who qualifies as a servent for Hermoine?
As far as foes go, the troll might be viable.
Is Quirrel hinting that McGonagall should Memory Charm Harry into not knowing that one of his best friends just died? (Worst case, Obliviate everything that happened since he received the Hogwarts letter, tell him he was hit by a truck and has been in a coma the whole time, then kick him out of Magical Britain completely.)
Where could the story possibly go in your worst case?
Now that I think about it, I wouldn't mind seeing a story about a middle-aged person who was kicked out of their Chosen One situation twenty years ago, but now the politics have shifted and they have to deal with magic and intrigue again. However, this would not remotely be HPMOR.
Harry somehow figures out what really happened and breaks the Masquerade wide open on his own? (No police record of the hit and run, for example?) You're right, though, it is a story-killer, so it's not going to happen quite that way, but anything less comprehensive would be a much easier lie to catch.
Why is Harry looking at his watch so frequently? And why was he so insistent on a particular deadline for people not bothering him? He seems to be paying an unusual amount of attention to the time, and that suggests Time Turner shenanigans, although I'm not sure what they are.
The answer s much simpler I think. He has precommitted to stay there until dinner, but the process of thining over his failures is deeply emotionally unpleasant so he really wants it to be over.
One point for parsimony. Minus one point for failure to properly model the character.
He needs 6 hours of uninterrupted time with Hermione's body. His present self guards the door while his future self does whatever he plans on doing to prepare her body for long term preservation.
See this quote from chapter 91 set right after Harry exits the room where her body is stored:
That "lifetime" is more specifically 6 hours.
"Lifetimes" could also be literal (though this is a bit dubious considering that it's from McGonagall's POV) - perhaps Harry managed to reanimate Hermione for multiple brief periods? Or, perhaps Harry experimented with animating, killing, or reanimating other, smaller creatures?
I highly doubt that he would mess around with her body more than necessary. He knows that he doesn't yet have the knowledge or power to resurrect her, and any experimenting will have to be done when there isn't a limited time-frame to stop her body from deteriorating further.
My current best guess as to what happened in that room is that Harry spent a good deal of time transfiguring her body into an element so stable, that the atoms won't move around "too much" in the days/weeks/months/years he would need before being able to resurrect her. He then transfigured a replacement body from some dirt lying around.
It's also possible that he just transfigured her brain into this element and just left the rest of her body as it is.
Alternatively, he could have simply entered the room and watched the room for six hours, perhaps while random-walking. By doing so, he ensures that the only observer he needs to worry about himself, so that far-future Harry can plan a time travel trip in security.
I highly doubt he would do that as well, given that there is no known method to travel further than 6 hours back in time. He would not base his entire "save Hermione" plan on a hope that he could somehow find a way around this constraint.
What he does at this very moment should exclude as few plans to save her as possible, and not preserving her brain would exclude almost all of them.
Also, given how time travel works in this story, the only thing he would achieve with this is making it impossible for future Harry to do any changes at all to Hermione's body in these 6 hours (since he can only "change" what he doesn't know).
The former is granted; better to be sure. (Though any trick that can overcome information-theoretic death has a decent chance of allowing arbitrary time travel anyway.)
The latter, however, is easily dealt with: show up under the Invisibility Cloak, hit his past self with some variant of the Confundus Charm. Since he's watched the entire 6 hours, he can be certain this will be sufficient.
... except he can't, because someone else could've pulled the same trick. Nevermind; retracted.
Tom Riddle in canon was described as a classic charming psychopath, while the Defense Professor seems to be genuinely icy and blind to others' internal states. He even verbalizes this a few times, e.g. "I don't have the knack." So either HPMOR!Riddle was actually not charming but instead vastly more intelligent in a cold, calculating way, or the Monroe/Quirrell persona is supposed to be outwardly cold and obtuse while still secretly possessing insight, or this fragment of Riddle's soul has lost whatever insight or ability that formerly made him charming, or something I haven't thought of.
Quirrel tells Harry that they share an ability to "become" whoever they pretend to be. We even see this when Quirrel pretends to be someone else to the Healer after the Azkaban breakout. It would be very odd if Quirrel were able to do this and not have any insight into how people's emotions feel like from the inside. I believe that Quirrel knows perfectly well how emotions work; the icy exterior is just a role he plays.
I don't think Quirrell's model of emotions can be all that refined, since he seems to have repeatedly and legitimately mismodelled both Harry ("yes, I actually do care about people even if I don't relate to them, I don't want to be a Dark Lord,") and Hermione ("You know, a shadowy figure in a hooded cloak is really not the most trustworthy messenger.")
Quirrell == Voldemort. This does not imply that Voldemort == Riddle. Dumbledore at least thinks that Voldemort was Tom Riddle, but consider the possibility that Dumbledore is wrong about this. Remember Voldemort really doesn't look very human at all, and could be almost anyone. Maybe Riddle was misdirection.
I know someone with Asbergers who manages to be very charming because he learnt social rules.
You don't need empathy to charm people.
Aspergers. (I've occasionally heard "Ass burgers" used as an insult. No 'b'!)
That's a South Park reference. Insulting, yes.
Yes. Psychopaths are a prime example.
The only plausible reason whoever killed Hermione hasn't killed Harry too is because they want him to remain alive. They could have, because Hogwarts security is no great impediment to whoever did this, and Harry isn't a genius in his sleep. They would have, too. Anyone who hates Hermione would hate Harry, too. He was summoned to help during her confrontation with bullies. He used legal tricks to intervene when she was about to be "kissed." He's obviously the bigger threat, and whoever killed Hemione should have some fear of vengeance from him.
Unless it's Voldemort, who knows that Harry is a horcrux, as in canon, and knows that in killing Harry he would injure himself. Quirrel knows that he has a telepathic link with Harry. As Quirrel told McGonagall, he is a wizard "almost" on the level of Dumbledore and Voldemort. The Quirrelmort theory posits one less extremely powerful wizard. Hermione was killed by a troll. In canon, that is Quirrel's signature. Quirrel is voldemort in canon.
Am I missing anything?
Quirrel in Methods has pretty much stated that he's trying to mold Harry into a dark lord. That requires Harry to be alive and is significantly more likely if he doesn't have Hermione's moral influence.
And then there's Snape... who knows what evil lurks into the hearts of men?
That's funny.
The "soulsplosion," in Hermione's death, was extremely hard to miss. But it was notably absent in a previous wizarding death we supposedly witnessed: Harry's mother's death. This has provided some unexpected confirmatory evidence for an old pet theory of mine: that Harry's memory of his parents' death was faked. I can only assume someone else brought a similar theory up around here before, so I won't go into too much detail.
If it were a false memory, though, why would the soulsplosion be missing? Well, we get an answer for that in Chapter 86: some things can't be adequately faked in false memories. If whoever created the false memory had included a false wizard's death, Harry might have wondered what exactly the strange light show was; if he had researched it, he might have realized that what he remembered was faked. But Harry had never seen a wizard die before; an omitted soulsplosion would therefore arouse no suspicions, whereas a faked one might. Hence there was none.
There is no reason to believe the burst of magical energy happens in every magical death. It could be something that only happens under particular circumstances, or for particular types of wizards/witches. For example, the killing curse might kill people too quickly for them to understand that they are dying.
Another possibility is that it can only be perceived under certain circumstances.
I might accept that if it weren't for the fact that I have plenty of other good reasons to suspect that particular memory. This piece of evidence, like any other, isn't conclusive. But it certainly helps. (Also, all of your qualifiers incur some complexity penalty, particularly "types of wizards.")
Or the Killing Curse destroys the soul (as does the Dementor's Kiss), whereas bleeding to death merely releases it from the body.
A test: Are there any ghosts of people killed by Avada Kedavra? Ghosts are noted as being only echoes of the dead person — but if they are echoes formed by the release of an intact soul, then there would not be one for anyone killed in a way that consumes the soul, such as Avada Kedavra or the Dementor's Kiss.
(I can't think of any in canon. The four House Ghosts were all killed by mundane means, and Moaning Myrtle by a basilisk's stare.)
Do the temporary ghosts of resurrection stone and "priori incantatem" count for you ?
That could only work if "permanent" ghosts are really made from souls (Dumbledore hypothesis), but the temporary ghosts are made from memories (HJPEV hypothesis). While it's not impossible to have both mechanism, Occam's razor gives it a low prior, I would more suspect the same mechanism behind both.