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UnclGhost comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 25, chapter 96 - Less Wrong Discussion

6 Post author: NancyLebovitz 25 July 2013 04:36AM

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Comment author: solipsist 25 July 2013 04:42:14PM 17 points [-]

Just spelling out that we have a much better idea now what the first lines of the book mean:

Beneath the moonlight glints a tiny fragment of silver, a fraction of a line...

(black robes, falling)

...blood spills out in litres, and someone screams a word.

The silver likely refers to:

Neither of them noticed the tall stone worn as though from a thousand years of age, upon it a line within a circle within a triangle glowing ever so faintly silver, like the light which had shone from Harry's wand, invisible at that distance beneath the still-bright Sun.

Comment author: UnclGhost 29 July 2013 03:54:22AM *  6 points [-]

Interesting. Some of the things that have been described as silver or silvery so far:

  • The Patronus charm (particularly the True Patronus)
  • The Deathly Hallows symbol in this chapter
  • The stars in space
  • The Invisibility Cloak (in canon, at least)

All of these seem to have in common that they represent some sort of resistance to death or indifference (usually represented by coldness, like the vacuum of space or Harry's dark side). This has probably already been pointed out a lot, but I predict that whatever is glinting silver in the prologue represents something similar, even if it's something else entirely (e.g. a dagger, the Sword of Gryffindor, etc.)

Edit: also, as someone pointed out earlier, the Philosopher's Stone now turns metals into silver as well as gold (see Hedonic Awareness).

Comment author: Romashka 12 December 2014 01:37:00PM 1 point [-]

...and Harry Potter. By Draco Malffoy, no less.

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