gwern comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 26, chapter 97 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Quirrell is Baba Yaga, a "she", and some "he" also in that circle is the Defense Professor. EDIT: The Troll is the Defense Professor.
" quote undying unquote Baba Yaga"
Quote hint unquote.
Gee, Baba Yaga's mind had the same effect on the Hat as Harry's. Do we hypothesize his brain being like anyone else's brain?
Yes, they'd be hard pressed to name a single Dark Lady besides Baba Yaga. Note how that doesn't say there weren't any, and indeed many. Maybe, let's say, the quote undying unquote Baba Yaga masquerading as other people? Do we know anyone else who masquerades as other people? Anyone else with a brain like Harry's?
There are 3 and only 3 mentions of Baba Yaga in the book so far, and they tie Harry, the Dark Lord, and Quirrell together.
Probably a good idea to pay close attention to what Quirrell says when he smiles to himself.
EDIT: Guess who else Harry is like?
Latest half baked idea. Harry is Quirrell. I'd been operating on the theory that Quirrell is preparing Harry to take over the world, and then take over Harry. He's actually already taken over Harry as a baby, and lived out a new life as Harry. There are multiple scense of Quirrell comparing events in his life to Harry's, with the implication that Harry's life is the new and improved one.
The whole "Sense of Doom" business is the potential coming together of one person in two time turned bodies in the same space time.
With the ridiculously rampant and specific foreshadowing, some kind of time turning solution seems likely. And causality back through time was already set up with the Comed-Tea incident
Here's a fascinating quote by Dumbledore about Fawkes:
And Harry is discovered as a baby next to the presumed immolated remains of Voldemort.
You make a better case for Quirrel=BY than anyone I've seen to date.
Reading the PDF and using the search function is very handy. 3 comments on BY doesn't take a lot of effort to analyze. I was surprised there were so few comments.
A harder piece of analysis would be to look at Quirrell's views on gender. Harder to search on.
But the SPHEW protests provide some interesting tidbits. First of all, that Quirrell is there at all. Of the faculty, it's predominantly the female faculty, and Quirrell doesn't seem your prototypical human rights protester. He even had a button.
Maybe Quirrell speaks with some authority about what women with power would do. EY has a habit of having his characters smile or laugh to themselves when they're think thing they're not entirely sharing with others.
So that Quirrell took Hermione seriously in ways that others didn't. He also awarded her "100 points for doing what's right". And he tried to get her out of Hogwarts before she died. He looks to be another character who values Hermione more than EY's "feminist" detractors.
The story Quirrell recounts here seems very much like the canon story of handsome muggle Tom Riddle's seduction by pureblood witch Merope Gaunt — the parents of Tom Riddle, Jr. aka Voldemort.
Twist: Quirrell is Voldemort's mother.
aka Baba Yaga
Very good catch. It lessens the support of that particular response to my thesis, but I still think the scene as a whole still does lend some support.
I think it's more that I never took the idea seriously enough to note the links between the Sorting Hat, Occlumency descriptions, etc all formed a reasonably persuasive picture.