Only works if Quirrell knows where to start looking to begin with. Actually, it is fun to speculate on whether this sense of doom obeys the inverse squared law or something else. Options:
there is a conserved "doom charge" which repels another one like it: you get inverse squared for the force of repulsion.
there is a "doom radiation" affecting a "doom detector": simple inverse for the discomfort level. Something like a "doom magic" source.
Quirrell has a doom charge and Harry is a doom dipole: this would be 1/r^3, but it does not really work since the sense of doom is not directional
Quirrell has a doom charge and Harry gets a "doom induction", forming a doom dipole whose strength depends on Quirrell's doom field strength: 1/r^4. This breaks the symmetry between the two, however.
Both H and Q get doom induction from each other: 1/r^6. This is way too steep to fit the experimental data, as it would feel more like a "doom wall".
There is a dissipating doom charge (because the doom charge carrier "doomon" is massive, or because of the ambient magic vacuum polarization): exponential (Yukawa) decay.
1 or 2 are probably the only likely options, with 2 less likely, both because of the need for the doom source and because simple inverse decays too slowly to fit the description.
I was going to say that it appears that their connection is not symmetrical, because Quirrell was able to track down Harry during the troll event. Further research seemed to reduce this likelihood, however.
Quirrell started burning through the substance of Hogwarts once he realized that Harry had found the troll. He didn't know that the two had met until he read Harry's emotions. That he did not realize that they were getting closer before means that he wasn't tracking both the troll and Harry. I was going to say that it appears clear that Quirrell was tra...
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 95. The previous thread has passed 300 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, 21, 22, 23, 24.
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