Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 26, chapter 97
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 97. The previous thread is at nearly 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, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25.
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Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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 (501)
I'm confused: why does the amount owed to the Malfoys seem to keep changing? I read first 58,203, then 100,000, then 40,000 Galleons.
This was a delightful chapter. I very much look forward to the next one.
Observations from Chapter 98:
I certainly don't expect Harry to be going on a Horcrux hunt in the final arc, though. That took one giant book in canon--that after two had already been destroyed in two separate preceeding books--so I'm counting it unlikely that Voldemort gets wiped out by the end, barring epilogs (including "leaving the Pioneer Plaque alone" endings). But from the looks of it, Voldemort is about to get what he wanted anyway, so the more important questions are whether Harry gets what he wants, and how many stars get torn apart in the process. And how steep the escalation curve for this arc will be; it almost has to escalate as quickly as things did from 87 to 88. All of which is to say "Give me three chapters for Christmas plz". (Which, of course, is internet for "Very good, Author! Have a (secretly IQ-boosting) cookie!")
Why did Harry admit he had a pen he could use? He wasted his advantageous bargaining position. Perhaps poison.
Also, Harry seems to have lost a lot in this chapter. All he's gotten out of Malfoy
but Lucius already wanted Draco to be King! On top of that, Harry has given away much information:
and Draco can attest to these under Veritaserum!
They actually agreed that if Dumbledore gets removed because of Harry, then Draco Malfoy will take power when he comes of age. This replaces a strong position for Lucius with something less predictable.
Erm, he also got 40,000 Galleons.
But not in a particularly interesting way
He got Lucius Malfoy to give him a huge sum of money in exchange for admitting something true at no cost to himself, and gained goodwill from Lucius in the process (which set up for his subsequent conditional alliance), and probably left Lucius feeling he'd got the better side of the deal. All in a matter of minutes.
Personally, I find that somewhat more interesting than half a chapter of watching Harry mess about with economics.
A trifling amount of money by muggle standards, even if he didn't have the arbitrage trick, or the ability to make arbitrarily large amounts of money using the time-turner on FX markets.
He gets it NOW. without having to run a risky feedback scheme between gringots and the muggle economy with only 100 galleons of seed money.
I would wager that neither of those methods would actually work. We know that quirrel, snape, and other very intelligent wizards know both about the muggle world and about time turners. An idea about Arbitrage harry had within a few days of finding out about the ENTIRE wizarding world is extremely unlikely to have never been thought of. Harry is able to come up with new techniques and things no wizard would come up with but things like partial transfiguration took him days and are extremely non-obvious. Plans to make millions upon millions of dollars are something people have all the time.
Another important concern: Be careful what you call a "trifling" amount of money. You can get a LOT MORE done with a hundred thousand dollars than you can with zero dollars. You can hire bodyguards, you can rent a house, you can buy equipment, there are a vast world of things you can do that are prohibitively expensive without needing to be bill gates. We talk about vast amounts a lot when we're talking effective altruism and existential risk ending but Harry's not fighting to end hunger, he's simply fighting a relatively small-scale war.
He doesn't have to explain where the money came from, and the tricks you named require starting capital.
It was also unclear to me that Harry could take enough gold from the wizard economy to wind up with 100,000 galleons (even in sickles) without someone noticing and perhaps interfering. And that ignores the problem of leaving Hogwarts.
Technically speaking, Draco can only attest that Harry claimed those things. (Harry’s an Occlumens, and the way Occlumency works in MoR implies that an Occlumens is very good at lying. So he can plausibly claim that he lied to his enemies.)
I don’t remember, does Eliezer allow unbreakable vows, or are those nerfed in MoR like Felix Felicis? Because I’m pretty sure even an Occlumens can’t lie if he vows to say the truth without suffering the penalty.
IIRC unbreakable vows require some large, permanent sacrifice of magical power and as such are fairly rare in HPMoR.
You’re right, I remember now.
Hmm, it still sounds like they should be used more often. If you’re falsely accused and about to be condemned to Azkhaban, wouldn’t you sacrifice a portion on of your magic if it could compel your accuser to confess? As corrupt as the Wizengamot is, it should still happen on occasion.
If Draco speaks under Versitaserum that Harry successfully manipulated him into disbelieving in blood puritythat's not something that Lucius wants to happen.
He got Lucius to agree to proposed next steps which we don't know about and secured an alliance with House Malfoy.
Also, when he added the bit about exonerating House Malfoy, he showed Lucious one wording, then wrote down his original wording. He might have changed something important, and Lucius might not have noticed.
That seems like exactly the sort of thing Lucius Malfoy would be sure to notice, and even if it weren't, it wouldn't be worth the risk.
Giving away the information that you're NOT voldemort is actually pretty useful when you're trying to cooperate with people
So, would someone explain to me the exonerate/indemnify subplot? I don't understand the drama over the wording first being "indemnify" and then later changing to "exonerate" even after Harry makes it sound like Malfoy was pulling a fast one by suggesting "exonerate".
EDIT: I misread the relevant sentence. Harry originally wrote "exonerate", not "indemnify." It seems likely writing the latter would have given Malfoy room to claim compensation at a later date.
I don't know why everyone is making this so complicated. Basically, the two words have opposite meanings. In context, "exonerate" means "absolve of", "indemnify" means "secure against". So in the original contract, the clause gets Harry off the hook, while Lucius' suggestion would change the meaning to have Harry still liable. He's just trying his luck because Harry is 11 and might not know big words.
Harry's not on the hook. The wording of the document is "exonerate House Malfoy of any involvement in Hermione Granger's death". Nobody's suggesting Harry should be exonerated of anything; this clause benefits the Malfoys only, and presumably "indemnify" would benefit them more.
Off the hook for the debt, in exchange for the exoneration. Indemnification would just replace Harry's debt with another form of debt.
Exonerate means hold not responsible for. Indemnify mean cover all costs incurred in relation to. So Lucious was trying to trick Harry in to covering any costs incurred by the Malfoy family in relation to this case. Harry obviously wants no part of LM's legal fees.
Theoretically, indemnity implies compensation which makes the person indemnified as well-off as they would have been before the harm occurred. At the least, this change could have later been construed as a debt owed to Malfoy from Potter.
The word is "exonerate" in Potter's prepared text, Malfoy suggests "indemnify" as if it's a legal term that means the same thing, Potter rejects this and stays with "exonerate".
There's probably something tricky Malfoy could do with "indemnify", but looking up their definitions it's not obvious to me:
Unless I am badly mistaken, indemnify would mean that Harry has to pay etc. if e.g. Dumbledore decides to demand recompense of his own. (Note that Dumbledore may well have similar power over her as he has over Harry himself.)
This is obviously much worse than just giving up his own claim ("exonerate").
Indemnify applies to future evidence as well, and possibly to future actions.
It's not quite that confusing: Malfoy suggests "indemnify" rather than "exonerate", and Harry refuses, and in the end it is kept "exonerate".
I'm not sure what the difference between the two means. I think in Muggle law the term "indemnify" suggests some sort of monetary compensation, while "exonerate" does not, but this doesn't quite make sense. I don't think it will be relevant to the plot, however. Just a minor detail to show us that Harry did his homework.
Malfoy Manor exuded all the subtlety of a Baroque castle, overstuffed with the trappings of power, filled to the brim with trinkets, tapestries and timeless artifacts. It seemed excessive even in the dark of night, with only some of the item galleries illuminated.
Harry didn't care for any of them. Politics, let Draco deal with all this signalling nonsense.
Yet Draco was absent, it was only him and Lucius Malfoy, his unlikely new ally, planning and plotting over minutiae, phrasings, contracts.
Laying a foundation for the next decades of Magical Britain, a blueprint for a saner Magical world, even?
That didn't help in devising the statement to be read in the Wizengamot, at least not after the first few hours. Harry couldn't help but think that Lucius enjoyed being the superior mind for once, and dragged it out just to non-so-subtly remind Harry how out of his element he truly was.
They had already used the Time Turner to its fullest effects, working in the Witching Hours of the morning, to get the most out of the Borrowed Time. As far as Dumbledore was concerned, Harry was soundly sleeping in the Ravenclaw quarters.
Muffled sounds were coming from outside Malfoy's private study, in which they worked. At least they startled Harry back into wakefulness. He turned to Lucius. "You should've given Crabbe or Goyle a break, we're in one of the most secure places in Magical Britain, and you let them stand guard in front of your room?"
The door burst open. "I said no interruptions!" a clearly irked Lord Malfoy barked at his underling, seemingly annoyed at displaying this breach of etiquette in front of Harry Potter. He turned rigid as he picked up on the slumped over Crabbe lying lifelessly in the corridor, and on the wand Goyle was levelling. "What - ?" Malfoy's reflexes were fast, his cane springing to life in his hands, its eyes radiating with ruby fire.
Harry's own wand was in his hands quicker than he himself would have expected, a sudden rush of adrenaline firing him up. He was ready to support whatever stronger magic Malfoy would choose, silently cursing that he didn't bring any of his own new devices, too mindful that their detection would have caused the as-yet fragile alliance to crumble.
A bright shield sprang up around Malfoy, encompassing only himself. Which each pulse of his cane's flaming eyes, a new shimmering layer seemed to be added to the already daylight-bright protective bubble. At least that shows where your priorities lie, dear ally. Harry thought, as he noticed that Goyle's wand wasn't pointed at his master. It was pointed at Harry Potter, who suddenly twitched, his arms -- wand in hand -- pointing at the floor, unable to move.
I don't have much time, I can't aim, I need to do *something.*
Help. He needed to get help. From the only one who might be able to cross most of the mansion's wards, who would still instantly spring into action to help the wayward hero and who had the power to help.
EXPECTO PATRONUM! Harry thought, pouring all his energy into the thought, thinking of the ring with Hermione's remains which he left safely in his trunk in the Ravenclaw quarters, security by obscurity. Thinking of her coming back to life, amongst the last ever to have died.
For a terrible second, nothing happened. Then it was like a new sun blazing into existence right in Malfoy's study, as the humanoid made of starlight appeared between him and Goyle, who could not but flinch back. Harry felt the invisible strings weaken, and managed to mumble through clenched teeth. "Get Dumbledore here, tell him he is our only hope." The light winked out.
"Well, that ssshould make eventsss more interesssting. I had it planned out of courssse, but thisss particular branch was mossstly a tangent."
Harry instantly recognized the voice, and a fraction later realized it was spoken in Parseltongue, as the enormous snake -- as Professor Quirrell, Harry's mentor, his ancient wizard! -- slithered towards the door frame, oblivious of the crumbled heap that was Crabbe. Into the study stepped Quirrell's human form.
"Thank you, Lucius, for providing me with your very own weapons, ready to be Imperius'ed. How very thoughtful. I may have had a hard time constraining Harry Potter otherwise, our magic ... is, well, not meant to coexist in the same world. You may say our magics are two sides of a coin."
Lucius had gone pale through the shield.
"Or, you might say", Quirrell continued, "Two sides of the same coin". The Defense Professor pressed his wand -- which had appeared in his hand effortlessly -- against his forearm as Lucius let out a whelp of pain, gripping his arm to his chest, nearly dropping his cane.
"That was a good charade, hiding your mark. You know your binding to me went deeper than that. Would you like to know just how deep our ... bond ... truly goes?"
Malfoy was staring transfixed at Quirrell, his cane quivering, as if he had suddenly lost his confidence in all those barriers.
"I am running out of time, I give you this one chance. You know what I can do, you know how little I care about your trinket. Remove all your barriers immediately, bow to me, bow to your Lord, to your God, to me, Voldemort!"
There was a deadly silence in the room. Quirrell -- Voldemort? -- Quirrell apparently did not see the need to add anything, Harry couldn't speak -- could barely think! -- Lucius might as well be a deer staring into a truck's headlights, his eyes flickering back and forth between his cane, Quirrell standing there with a seemingly relaxed poise, and the hearth. The hearth across the room, it could as well have been on another floor, impossibly far away.
The cane cluttered to the floor, Lucius Malfoy's forehead followed immediately as he prostrated himself on the floor, voice quavering. "Forgive me, my Lord, for I have sinned. I am yours, now and forever, I will prove my loyal - "
There was a flash, Harry didn't see Quirrell so much as move his lips, yet Lord Malfoy, of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Malfoy, became part of history himself, his detached head plopping on the floor, looking -- surprised. Harry felt his patronus slipping beyond his grasp as he was looking at the ruins of his plans rolling across the study, leaving a trail of blood. I hope it delivered the message! I have to buy time, somehow.
"I hate this role, it was necessary right then, but I really hoped to never adopt it again." Quirrell wasn't missing a beat, switching his attention to Harry.
"I know you can't speak, and there's nothing much to be said. Nothing to make a difference. Suffice it to say, yes, I used to play that comically evil character 'Lord Voldemort', yes I did kill your parents, an exit strategy was needed when noone rallied behind my Monroe alter-ego, not even the Goblins. Noone questions death-by-innocent-infant, not even Dumbledore. So no, I'm not sorry for that, it was for the greater good. For differing values of good, I suppose", he added, musingly.
"I suspect you're wondering where Dumbledore is, well, he must have met my anti-Phoenix ward by now. Improved by your very own methods of rationality, if you can believe it. Thank you for that. The ward may have killed a lesser wizard, but with him, you never know. In any case, it may be best if we do not tarry."
Quirrell stepped towards Harry, a determined look on his face, staying well clear of the path that Harry's wand was pointing. Where it was pointing. Harry's mind was racing. It was pointing at nothing in particular, it was just pointing at air. Pointing at air! It's a dumb idea a part of Harry thought, but it was his only idea. This may well prove to be a Pyrrhic victory; pro: you'll surprise him, con: you'll surprise him by killing yourself, probably.
Still, it was the last, best hope for victory -- any kind of victory -- that Harry had, a trump card he doubted Quirrell suspected. There was a glow emanating from his wand at Harry transfigured the air into nerve gas. Quirrell remained unaffected and a bubble head charm sprang up near instantly around Harry's head, but Goyle's head violently jerked backwards, his control wavering. Harry still couldn't move, but yet again the strings relented, ever so slightly. It was enough. I may not be able to touch Quirrell -- but my patronus might. Let's start our own version of the Big Bang, those were Harry's thoughts as he pictured Hermione coming back to life, "Expectopatronum!" once again bursting from his lips as fast as he could speak, as the glowing humanoid threateningly stepped towards Quirrell.
"Haaaaaaarryyyyy." It was Hermione's voice. It was impossible. The voice emanated from a walking husk, a corpse stumbling into the now crowded study. It was Hermione.
"I found your 'secret' 'ring', made her an Inferius, bound her to my will. She'll never live again. Watch!"
Events seemed to happen simultaneously, Quirrell twitched his wand, Hermione's tortured remains melting into a puddle on the floor, seeping between the wooden boards, Harry's glowing human reaching for Quirrell, a sense of doom heavily protruding upon the room. The patronus shattered into shards of lights that bounced harmlessly off the floor, missing Quirrell, as Harry processed his words, the reality of the deed done.
"I suspect that was the last patronus you'll ever cast, and right at the nick of time, too. We may finally be compatible enough. For what's it worth, I'll let you know that I am David Monroe, at least to a higher degree than any of my other sockpuppets. Much more so than I am evil Voldemort, the character I conjured up to unite the sheep. I'll make up a more convincing caricature this time. And, as I promised, you will rule Magical Britain. Those galaxies, too, in time."
David Monroe closed the gap between them. "At least, your body will." His head was touching his wand, his wand touching, impossibly touching, Harry's temple.
"Mens eo ipso imago infiniti est quo eius capax est!" [*The mind is the image of the Infinite, in that it is capable of it and can contain it.]
There was a splash as Goyle exploded as a magical vortex between Harry and Quirrell's empty shell tossed them like dolls to different corners of the room, splattered in blood.
Then, for a time, there was silence, apart from a young boy, heavily breathing.
The study's small window was ripped outward, taking most of the wall with it. A dishevelled Dumbledore appeared in the opening, eyes frantically scanning the room.
The-Boy-Who-Will-Live-Forever sat up.
"The danger is passed, Albus. The lingering illness is over at last. Voldemort is gone. I killed him."
The headmaster, looking all his long years, opened his mouth as if to speak, only to suddenly cough, as if sniffing something in the air. His grim wand twitched towards his own head, no that's not right, his hand did so. His wand had fallen out of his fingers which were flexing and unflexing uncontrollably, dropped on the floor. Dumbledore looked at his hand that had deserted him, a bewildered look on his face.
The boy watched dispassionately. "As I'm killing you now. Or rather, as Harry is killing you now."
There was a lot of work to be done, he thought as he picked up his new wand.
Harry has been reading his Jaynes, keeping a "something else" alternative hypothesis.
It occurs to me to wonder if Dementors=death can be tested experimentally by bringing a dementor into the Hall of Prophecy. Of course, if the Dementor isn't attacked by orbs about death, that could mean that there aren't any death-prophecies, they only react to Death rather than a single wound in the world, or something else; but if a dementor does run into a prophecy that is about death, that would determine that the hall recognizes them as death for the purposes of prophecies.
(Alternatively: if prophecies about something different, such as fear / depression / whatever show up, that'd be pretty strong evidence against.)
I think the orbs only come to people (things that think, and can make decisions), and it’s not clear Dementors pass that test. (In particular, Harry leans against that hypothesis. He’s certainly not infallible, but he’s basically the best expert on the subject whose thoughts we have access to.)
Otherwise prophecies mentioning things like life, wands and clothes would attack everyone.
I do not know if this is widespread, but I've always been confused by how Legilimency is used. I thought it was used only to read minds, and again, in this chapter, it is mentioned that Dumbledore Legilimensed Hermione as though this explained something. Reading this explained it for me.
I like that Harry's gloves have come off, and he's planning on making full use of transfiguration as a weapon. About time.
Lot's of Quirrellness coming out.
Honestly, I'm more worried about this. See the Ethical Injunction mini-Sequence.
There are options now available to him that genuinely are more powerful, but... even Harry makes mistakes, and even Harry falls prey to overconfidence sometimes.
I've never been impressed by the Ethical Injunction business. It seems a "get out of unpleasant implications of my explicit moral claims free" card.
Not really. Ethical Injunctions really mean "design an AI to do this, but don't do it yourself because you're probably wrong."
It's entirely possible to create a problem involving an epistemic state a human can't hold: see Pascal's Muggle.
Lol
It's a real thing. Look it up. It's basically the symmetric problem to Pascal's Mugger.
In a slightly eccentric sense of the word "real".
As in "well-known idea, not specific to myself."
Counterpoint: it appears that Harry is now serious about using Transfiguration as a weapon. However, he has not recently been considering very much else, meaning that he has fewer backups than perhaps he should, in the case where someone counters his Transfigurations (e.g. with good shields, or casting finite on Harry before a fight).
Hmm...a few thoughts.
I'd always read this series as Rationalist propoganda, and this chapter doesn't really work in that light.
Dumbledore, I'd figured, represented the world's Conventional Wisdom. Benevolent, on the whole, deranged, absolutely, and far more powerful than Harry could ever be. Harry and Co. can no more overcome him than the LW's readership can defeat the billions of non-rationalists.
With that interpretation in mind I didn't really doubt that Dumbledore could ever be guilty of something, but figured Harry would have to let him off the hook. People with good intentions do bad things but you can't go all Steerpike, ya know? I sort of figured that this was confirmed in Harry's speech to McGonagall about blaming Voldemort vs. himself. Heroic responsibility means save even those who have erred (and I can't really conceive of Dumbledore/humanity being judged to have sinned save by error).
But now we have Harry teaming up with Lucius and Draco, ostensibly to take down Dumbledore. I figured Draco represented your smart friend that you are trying to get to be a rationalist, and Lucius their peer structure. Inducting them into the Conspiracy shouldn't allow you to overcome the deranged and benevolent Majority.
I suspect that Harry is securing their agreement to investigate Dumbledore while, himself, believing Dumbledore will be shown to be free of malice. Basically the blood purity science experiment all over again. I figure his goal here is to bring them into alliance, just as he says to Draco. Once the Malfoys abandon Blood Purity there is no reason they can't be allies to the Dumbeldore power structure, save for both side's past sins. Harry is drawing Lucius and Draco into investigating one of these sings in the hopes of effectively explaining it away, which coupled with their renunciation of Blood Purity as a doctrine should allow the formation of an alliance.
Also, I'd like to add that its hilarious to watch all the characters try and figure out who HARRY's enemy is. They've been listening to Dumbledore's 'Life Is A Story' pitch a bit too much. If someone tries to have a girl sent to a hell dungeon and then has her eaten by a troll they don't like her. They aren't trying to impede the Hero's Quest by Sundering his Fellowship, they are acting out their animus. I predict that Hermione's framing and murder were about her, not Harry.
Thanks for reading this long comment
Seems likely to me that tearing this down will be the climax of the Roles chapters. Dumbledore is the big character we have left who hasn't had a 'meeting' with Harry. And all throughout the story - referencing Gandalf and LotR, "that's not his style" - Dumbledore has been about playing a role in a story.
Also, revealing Dumbledore's secrets is one of the big elements of Rowlings' book 7, and one of the things HP:MoR would have to deal with to resolve all the canon plots in Harry's first year.
"The first meeting:
...
...Harry found himself, still in his pajamas, facing Albus Dumbledore..."
Facepalm, of course. I was thinking there would be a meeting along the lines of the previous private conferences - pretending to be wise in particular. Didn't actually get around to checking which meetings had happened versus which characters I'd expect.
I think you are reading into it a bit too deeply, and making analogies where analogies aren't. It's a story, so read it as such. I am not convinced that, say, Lucius is meant to represent Draco's peer structure any more than the amount which he is part of Draco's peer structure in-universe (being his father).
Oh and one more thing: For Dumbledore's 'Life Is A Story' pitch, think a level up. The character's don't know it, and they probably never will, they are just that, when all else is stripped away. In the end, at the highest level, their life is a story. Ponder that for a while...
Is there a list of currently remaining mysteries/Chekhov's guns/loose ends somewhere? Like, what happened to Hermione's body, what happened to Beatrix Black, who H&C is, who has the marauder map... And maybe a list of solved mysteries, too.
I'm currently rereading and annotating and will provide such a list when I am finished.
There is at least one list on Reddit.
Of course, Harry is really missing something; and he should be noticing his confusion about this. It's a failing that he isn't. For some reason, he seems very resistant to the idea that Voldemort was actually smart. I wonder if Harry's going to realize what he's missing before the big final battle in which the villain monologues his secret plan.
I think the things that's missing is that we or Harry don't know Voldemorts goals.
It is hard for me to tell if this is that there is a big secret plan or more lampshading of problems with the original source material.
I used to think like this, but recently I've updated into seeing everything as potential foreshadowing.
What was the reason Lucius Malfoy thought of?
That she is Bellatrix Black? That... doesn't quite make sense...
Bellatrix black, I assume.
For those of you confused by this comment: I believe Manfred assumes Lucius suspected that Hermione was replaced by a polyjuiced Bellatrix Black. Lucius implies that he believes Harry to be a de-powered Voldemort in their discussion at the train station, and also believes Harry to be behind the rescue of Bellatrix from Azkaban. If you rescued your powerful minion, you would want to keep her close about you for your own protection and to accomplish tasks beyond your magical abilities. Hermione Granger is known to associate with Harry Potter, so she would be the ideal candidate for someone to replace with Bellatrix.
That Voldemort is her father, and her muggle background a lie. "Secretly a pureblood" really is a very credible explanation if you actually believe in blood purism.
And Bellatrix Black is her mother?
But why would they place her in custody of Muggles, instead of purebloods?
None of the theories suggested thus far explain the last part of the quote:
The way I see it, Lucius could have been thinking one of two things (originally, before Hermione's death) to say that:
Killing Hermione would also kill Harrymort (e.g. Hermione is some quasi-Horcrux Lucius may have heard of).
Hermione would certainly survive anything that Harrymort survives (e.g. Hermione also has all the magic skill of Voldemort).
In the Bellatrix theory I'd interpret that as meaning that Lucius seriously doubts that Harry would survive something that manages to off Bellatrix. But I acknowledge that the phrase sounds like it means something more than that.
I'm only coming up with Hermione having perhaps been replaced by a certain escapee.
Perhaps that Hermione is also Voldemort in the same way HJPEV is Voldemort (since, Horcrux or not, that seems the likely explanation for Harry's power and bloodthirst)?
Unlike Harry, Hermione has no past link to Voldemort. And, if you're unaware of how Horcruxes work, it would seem much more likely that Voldemort's spirit is possessing some one person, rather than two.
I really liked this chapter. I've always liked the HPMOR version of Draco, and now I like the HPMOR version of Lucius as well. It's fun to watch smart competent people being awesome at each other.
I wish the chapters with girls in them could be like this too.
I think this is the heart of feminist complaints about this story. Yes, the female characters are honest, and levelheaded, and moral, and quite a bit more realistic than male characters. Yes, the male characters have massive, gaping flaws in their character, and if you tried to have a conversation with them in the real world they would appear unbearably pompous. Yes, clever repartee does not replace genuine kindness. I agree with all that.
But the thing is, this fic (on its surface) doesn't value kindness and morality nearly as much as suave, articulate word-poker and beautifully intricate schemes and counter-schemes and "I know that you know that I know..." insanity. I think you're going to get people accusing you of sexism even if you provide your female characters with traits that are valued and truly matter in the real world, as long as you still hold back the traits that are valued in-story.
In the original Harry Potter, Hermione was quite a bit more immature in her first year than in HPMOR - but the backbone of HP was bold derring-do and wandsmanship and remembering the right spell, and she (and McGonagall and Ginny) was essential in that environment. Intricate conversations and ingenious plots like this are the backbone of HPMOR, and we don't see any women involved there. That's what people are complaining about, I think.
I predict that if Hermione's death had come at the end of a long, complicated plot/investigation carried out by her, there would be far fewer complaints. As it is, she did not win anything other than Harry's increased resolve - didn't reveal any schemes, didn't execute any of her own, didn't discover any MacGuffins (as far as I know).
Harry says:
You learn goodness from Hermione, and how to kill things efficiently from Quirrell. Who do you think is being valued here?
What the fic values above all else is a love and respect for life. Even the child who wants a sparkly throne and minions feels that way. Especially that child. All the various high powered smarty pantsing is entertainment and eye candy, not the core values of the fan fic. Not by a wide margin.
These "I'm offended" isms seem to be a very effective way to entirely miss the point of what someone else is saying, as you root about for the offensive kernel. It's a fine hobby. You need never fail; find a difference and spin it negatively. Ta da! I'm offended! Whee! What fun!
Maybe I should try it. I suppose I could get my undies in a bunch over the misandrism in HPMOR, since as even you say
Huff huff huff. Stomp stomp stomp. I'm so offended.
Hmmm, just didn't work for me. I'm not offended, and don't want to be. Instead of getting huffy about how wonderful Hermione is portrayed relative to males in the story, I'd rather just love the Hermione character even though she doesn't have the same genitalia that I do. Imagine that.
I think it's sad that people are trapped in this ideology, looking for ways to be offended, casting a pall over everything they see.
This tends to be my default preference...
This may not have been put in the most diplomatic way possible, but I think the last sentence has merit. My first reaction upon reading the chapter was "wow, Harry did a masterful job of manipulating the hell out of the Malfoys" (not that the manipulation will be to the Malfoy's detriment, but that's beside the point). Then I find out that people are impressed with the competence of Lucius Malfoy and therefore sexism? I suppose it was good that Lucius wasn't blinded by irrational hatred or greed, but that's an awfully low bar to be setting for characters that impress you. He walked in with one plan that Harry saw through in a second.
I anticipate a few possibly short scenes where Harry does basically the same thing and manipulates Bones and Madam Longbottom into supporting him as well. If this scene is being held as evidence of sexism, the laws of evidence tell me those scenes should be held as evidence against, but somehow I don't see it happening that way.
That said, if other people can see what they're looking for then so can I, but that's my take.
Heads I'm offended. Tails I'm offended. As we used to say at the college poker game "Muahahahaha, I can't lose!"
Actually, the law is that the average scene that isn't Harry manipulating Lucius must be evidence against sexism, not that any such scene is evidence against sexism. Many of the possible scenes in the set {Harry doesn't manipulate Lucius} are sexist.
I think you misunderstood. I wasn't claiming to be offended myself, I was trying to get at the cause of people's emotional reactions. Whether or not you believe those emotions are justified, they are almost always triggered by something.
I also specified that HPMOR values wit and scheming on its surface - that is, the scheming is what provides almost all the entertainment value and keeps people in their chairs long enough to hear the deeper ideology. What do we want from characters in a story at their most basic level? We want to have fun watching them. That's why most people read stories, and it's why most people read HPMOR. And the ones who are the most fun to watch are the male characters.
I didn't claim this was intentional, nor that it was wrong, just that it was probably the cause of feminist complaints. It was in part an answer to "But the female characters are good people". Being a good person is not always the same as being good in the story. In Disney movies, you have to be a wide-eyed dreamer. In Tarantino movies you have to be a stone-cold killing machine. In HPMOR (and Death Note) you have to be a hyperintelligent byzantine plotter. And then comes the ideology.
Vanishingly low-confidence idea: Hermione realized that the Philosopher's Stone is hidden at Hogwarts, went to retrieve it, and somehow in there the troll got loose.
Evidence against: canonically, the stone troll and the bathroom troll were distinct, Snape went to guard the third floor corridor, the troll was pretty deep within the gauntlet in canon, meaning that if it was placed similarly in methods, something complicated happened off screen, and Dumbledore's wards over the corridor would doubtless have alerted him. And it wouldn't be much of a victory for Hermione, since the stone's actual canon protection was the mirror of Erised charmed to give the stone only to someone who wanted it, but not to use it, and Hermione was seeking the stone to help pay off Harry's debt.
Evidence for: In Chamber of Secrets, Hermione manages to convey information in spite of being petrified, which would probably have been found sooner had Harry/Ron been more observant. And even then, she managed to get petrified rather than killed, since she knew what to expect. And in Philosopher's Stone, she was the one who figured out the stone was at Hogwarts (though, admitedly this wouldn't have been as likely without Hagrid's extremely loose tongue, but in MoR she was researching the stone last we saw of her).
So yeah, I could see Hermione having accomplished something off screen between chapter 87 and 89, but for now I'll keep my confidence of this happening below 50% barring stronger evidence.
The character who seems to be the best response to this, and whom I hope we will see again shortly, is Amelia Bones. She seems to kick just as much ass as Moody, without the significant aid of a literally all-seeing eye. Watching her Azkaban defense was quite impressive, and I hope that the hints of "Bones" in this chapter mean we'll see her in action again, and not just as a potential signatory.
I would have loved to read a counterfactual HPMOR with Bones in the role of McGonagall (or McGonagall with the personality of Bones). It's true that her personality makes more sense in an Auror than a teacher, and that means we don't get to see her very much. But then again, virtually every major male authority figure in Hogwarts looks like he should belong in an elite war chamber rather than a classroom. Seriously, what are these people doing running a boarding school?
On the topic of illogical career paths, Bones has a real job that requires being a very good auror, rather than being an errand-boy for Dumbledore, as Moody seems to be.
And as for "what are these people doing running a boarding school", they run a school based on reward and (mostly) punishment, rather than the growth of their pupils; they teach a rigid curriculum that seems to have remained unchanged for centuries, in spite of advances in both the magical and muggle worlds; and they socially condition people into narrow roles, largely defined by negative attitudes towards others, based solely on the House a piece of fabric sorts them into.
Source?
To be fair, that's more support than Muggles give students choosing a major in college.
As a point of accuracy, it's been stated a couple of times that Hogwarts is meant to follow the Ministry-mandated curriculum, so this one is not entirely "these people"'s fault.
Thanks for the correction.
Hogwarts is the entire British magical education system (with the exception of some private tutors). Controlling education is not optional for people who want to control a country. The fact that education is all centralized the most powerful fortress just makes it even more important to control.
Do we know this for a fact?
Objections:
Going to Hogwarts is prestigious, meaning there must be lower-status options available.
Hogwarts regularly hires apparently British replacement teachers, most of them with at least the appearance of educational experience. It is improbable that said experience comes exclusively from abroad or from being a private tutor.
There are too few pupils at Hogwarts to account for the entire underage wizarding population, given the size of the overall wizarding population and assuming the majority of wizards' children are also wizards (not to mention having to factor in Muggleborns).
It seems improbable that the booming school equipment business of Diagon Alley survives on one school's worth of customers, especially if most of them only shop once a year.
If most of the population of magical Britain have been through the same school, we would expect an extremely high degree of social interconnectedness, with most people knowing everyone of the same age at least by sight. There's no evidence of this.
On the other hand,
It is implied that letters coming on one's 11th birthday can only come from Hogwarts.
If one is expelled from Hogwarts, one is forbidden from practising further magic altogether.
No other British schools, or pupils or graduates thereof, are ever mentioned in canon that I can remember.
It doesn't seem too implausible for them to have a law saying something along the lines of "a person who has been expelled from one magical school may not be admitted to any other magical school".
It didn't seem to me there were so much school equipment business. If you look at the shops Harry went to the first year, it's a dress shop, a book shop, a wand shop, a potion ingredient shop, a broomstick shop, a pet shop, ... none of them sound dedicated to school equipment. They probably have a lot of school equipment in stock/display during august, like supermarkets do here too, but continue selling their goods to adult wizards the rest of the time.
The rest of your objections do hold, but I just fold it into "canon HP isn't very consistent" suspension of disbelief... of course, it makes things tougher for EY when he's making a consistent version of it. But that's part of what makes HPMOR funny/interesting.
Canon is fairly clear that Hogwarts is the only game in Britain. It also leads to glaring inconsistencies in scale which you just pointed out. (Rowling originally said that Hogwarts had about 700 students, and then fans started pointing out that that was wildly inconsistent with the school as she described it. And even that's too small to make things really work).
But the evidence, from HP7 (page 210 of my first-run American hardback copy):
Lupin is talking about Voldemort's takeover of Wizarding society, to Harry and the others.
"Most wizards" in Britain were educated at Hogwarts, and the exceptions were homeschooled or sent abroad. It's really hard to read that to imply that there's another British wizarding school anywhere.
I took the implication from reading the books that Rowling had different ideas at different times whether there were intended to be multiple schools of magic in Britain or not. It was referred to in the beginning as the "best" school in Britain, but by the end of the series, the Voldemort-run Ministry instituted mandatory Hogwarts attendance for all youth, and a character remarked that parents had at least had the option of homeschooling their children before.
The Magical economy generally doesn't seem to make a lot of sense. In canon it seems like every witch/wizard works for the Ministry, Hogwarts, or for a small restaurant or shop. I think wizards can pretty much conjure every basic material into existence except food and gold. That does leave an interesting question of where magical Britain is getting its food and gold from. There might be some witch/wizard farmers out there that we never hear about, or they could be just stealing food from muggles. Maybe the ministry sanctions some small scale trade between the magic/muggle world?
Draco seems to believe that Hogwarts is an impregnable fortress, a secure base for whatever power Dumbledore wants to project. Headmaster of Hogwarts appears to be a title awarded by the Wizengamot, which also elects the Chief Warlock, and Draco regards it as a significant increment to the power of the Chief Warlock. Its function as a boarding school may be secondary and incidental. :)
Hogwarts is more like a university than most boarding schools.
Two things made me confused in this chapter.
First, the false dichotomy: it is obviously unlikely for Lucius to not know that Draco was framed, and yet kill Hermione - it presumes two people capable of evading and manipulating Hogwart's wards - but why is it unlikely for him to have not known, and also not been responsible for killing her?
(A caveat is that whatever the answer is, it needs to make sense from the perspective of a random person reading the Daily Prophet.)
The second: what is Harry's plot with the pen, or alternatively with whatever's happening as Lucius signs the paper? What is he really up to here?
The pen is dirty; the dirt, now on Lucius's hands is something lethal, transfigured. Harry can of course just wash his own hands.
In canon, Thief's Downfall undoes transfigurations.
Do you have an example of this happening?
Ron's disguise in the book 7 Gringrotts break-in was a transfiguration (as contrasted to the polyjuice used by Hermoine), and explicitly removed by Thief's Downfall. It's not clear that Rational!Harry's transfiguration operates by the same rules as conventional ones, and could have been stored in some way to protect against exposure, but this provides both narrative and practical evidence against the theory.
I expect that point of the pen is to demonstrate to Lord Malfoy that a) Harry is a man of his word, and thus his words are worth examining, and b) Harry is a man of /exactly/ his word, and thus worth respecting.
Thank you!
It occurs to me that for a normal person "his words are worth examining" and "worth respecting" would be the other way round in that sentence.
That is not at all sane; the same dirt would be equally lethal to Harry, and Draco, and anyone else the pen or those people's hands encounter.
Harry washes his hands as soon as he leaves the room (or even cuts off his hand!) and then undoes the transfiguration before Lucius has a chance to do the same.
That would be stupid. Come on.
My trouble with this theory is not that the dirt is lethal - after all, Harry has already decided Lucius's life is forfeit the moment he ceases to cooperate and that could happen at any time, contract or not contract, signing just means Lucius doesn't die soon - but rather that it seems like an extremely risky booby trap which could blow up (literally) the moment someone casts a finite-incantatem (which could happen anywhere by anyone for any reason), and it's actually more than a little suspicious if the ultra-high-security Gringotts meeting room where everyone is supposedly disarmed didn't involve a precaution like eliminating any transfigurations...
Thief's Downfall probably does this.
You know, I'm suddenly starting to see why goblins aren't allowed wands.
Compare what we've seen of Gringotts and Hogwarts security, given that the latter arguably contains the more valuable resource.
IIRC, there is such a thing as "goblin nations", meaning they've managed to preserve national sovereignty despite being being as inferior in magic to their oppressors as the Native Americans were in technology. And despite starting a number of wars (the Goblin Rebellions) against said oppressors.
They hold exclusive control over Britain's only bank, and this goes unquestioned by the general public.
They can already legally hire wizards to do magic for them (cf. Bill Weasley, Curse-Breaker for Gringotts).
The fact that spellcasting is an enormous force multiplier in battle (free teleportation, perfect camouflage, armour-piercing hexes...) may be the only reason why they're not already the master race.
So that's interesting.
Bar yvar tbg erzbirq sebz gur svp:
I figured that referred to him changing the wording of the contract, from exonerated.
That line confused me - I think we were expected to draw a lot of subtle inferences to figure out why it would make sense in this context.
On a side note, it is really jarring not to know everything Harry knows this late in the game. I always just read the third-person point of view as a matter of convenience, and accepted that we were fully immersed into the head of the current speaker. This distant outsiders' perspective ("I've done some research", "I have a plan") is making it really hard for me to draw conclusions.
It's also showing me just how much I relied on Harry running me through all the steps of some ridiculously complicated deduction. I wonder - does having a character who is both very intelligent and very honest mean that the reader has to be significantly less intelligent and active to follow along?
The point is not what he knew then, but what he knows now. If he didn't kill Hermione, someone else did. Whatever would motivate someone to kill Hermione is very likely to motivate them to frame her and get her sent to Azkaban, and require the same ability to evade the Hogwarts wards. So if Lucius did not kill Hermione, this is strong evidence that she was framed. Contrapositively, if Lucius still denies that Hermione was framed, that is a tacit admission that he probably killed her.
My favorite line in this chapter.
Did you notice that from Quirrel's perspective, that's exactly what he has done to/with Harry? Killing Hermione had the effect of hardening Harry's resolve, and removing some of his scrupels. For Quirrel that's "stronger".
And not just obvious current scruples. Hermione is an external scruple-generator for Harry.
Why?
Because of what OtherHandle said, basically. Yes, it can be a dangerous and self-serving attitude that you use merely to rationalize your abuse of another person, but I also find there to be something refreshingly honest about it, at least if you're open about it (which Harry admittedly wasn't).
Reading that line caused me and a friend to have a very pleasant conversation of the ways in which we are going to use each other for our mutual benefit in the future. :)
I don't know about the parent, but personally I liked this line because it debunks the cached thought that "using" someone is always wrong. Humans use one another all the time for all sorts of things, from a grad student using his mentor to advance his career to an overworked executive using her goofy laid-back friends to keep her blood pressure down. People tend to only consider one very narrow and destructive meaning of the word "use", and then come to the conclusion that you can't have a genuine caring relationship with someone if you pursue it for personal benefit. The grad student can still admire and love his mentor even though the main point of that relationship is so he can get a PhD. If you do care about the person, you'd try to arrange it so that your use will help them too.
That's one reading, I guess. Another reading is that this is the kind of line you might use to justify the narrow and destructive kind of using to yourself. Seems a little dangerous is all.
That's true, and in this context it doesn't seem like Harry was being entirely fair. I liked that line better the first time around, when Harry applied it to how Quirrell used him. He was wrong, but I thought it was interesting that he chose to view it in that light.
Which calls back to this bit in Chapter 51:
I'm concerned if, this late in the game, Harry's only reason for suspecting the Defense Professor is "just because he's the Defense Professor." It would seem that he has way too many excellent reasons to suspect Quirrell no matter what his title. The sense of doom. The fact that he was able to cast Avada Kedavra on a random guard. The fact that he carried Harry off on a disastrous plot to free Bellatrix Black. The fact that he happened to be there on time to save Draco's life when the wards were disabled. The fact that he is one of only a handful of wizards with the ability to disable Hogwarts' wards. The impassioned speech advocating benevolent fascism. The fact that no one knows who he really is and Harry can think of at least three different identities he's taken on. The weird zombie mode that seems to roughly correlate with Bad Things happening. The excessively harsh and sometimes downright abusive way he runs his class. The lack of empathy and inability to accept or even understand love.
My question is, do you think Harry has realized all this and is really strongly suspecting Quirrell for other reasons, and he only told Lucius that the only reason was the curse on the Defense Professor's position? Or do you think Harry is still reluctant to seriously entertain the possibility that it was Quirrell?
You left out "The wards explicitly say that the Defense Professor killed Hermione."
I mean, it is quite literally spelled out. I'm completely baffled at how both readers and characters are not promoting Quirrell to the top of the suspects list by a mile.
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.
Quirrell aka Baba Yaga aka Voldemort is Harry's biological mother. (James Potter is his father.) That would explain their similarities better than the hypothetical brain surgery / horcrux thing.
Boy-Who-Lived Gets Draco Malfoy Pregnant
That's interesting. Baba Yaga, traveling through time by uploading her mind into host after host, decides to make a more compatible host, and produces a child to be her next host.
My position for a while is that Quirrell is grooming Harry to be his next host, and who better for the Dark Lord to move into, than the Boy Savior as he defeats the Dark Lord?
Though as Quirrell, presumably "he" could have fathered Harry through Lily. However, it kind of fits the story of that Munroe guy that Harry is actually a replacement baby left behind when the Potter family was exterminated. That would be the 2nd Old House that was killed off and left with a single replacement survivor.
But the thing is, if uploading is an integral part of the story, he's already committed to that complication, and so it adds little further complexity to say that he uploaded some chunk of himself to Harry, and a biological explanation becomes superfluous.
Probably just pattern matching on it, and Quirrell is ridiculously powerful, but he was the one to notice and stun 100+ females summoning Harry to the ground.
And note Quirrell's comment:
He thinks he should have anticipated the actions of young girls taking actions based in romance. That's about the last context a grown man expects to be able to anticipate events.
Pattern matching as well, but the pattern matches quite a lot.
You make really good points. The 'laws' of storytelling go against it, though, in the sense that with only 3 mentions, Baba Yaga being important would be unsatisfying. In any case, if this were true there must be other things on top of it that are more meaningful (i.e. Quirrel is Voldie who is BY, or whatever...)
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.
You mean Dumbledore says that the wards say that the Defense Professor killed Hermione. We would have to trust both Dumbledore and the wards for that. But you are right, it leaves only Dumbledore and Quirrel as plausible suspects.
This only narrows Harry's list to 'The Defense Professor and people who could rig the wards to say the Defense Professor killed her.' Dumbles is easily on that list.
Yes, but "The Defense Professor" and "anyone else who can rig the wards" shouldn't have the same probability in his mind. What with all the rest of Quirrell's strange behavior and the curse on the position, "The Defense Professor" should be allotted a massive probability, with a comparatively smaller piece left for "whoever else has the ability to do this." He should be suspect number one by far.
For that, I'd point to undermind's comment that this is only what Harry wants the Malfoys to know.
There might also be an element of Harry's art as a rationalist being forgotten when he needs it most.
Harry has been suspicious of Quirrell for a long time.
Considering that (as of this comment) the story says that he only said that to avoid attracting attention to Quirrell, I'd go with option 1.
Harry's reason given to the Malfoys for suspecting Quirrell is "just because he's the defense professor." I'm sure he knows all of this other evidence as well, and would consider it appropriately if actually given a chance to sit down and consider the possibilities (though he might be rather distracted by Draco's Dumbledore hypothesis).
Given his extraordinary caution when meeting Quirrell in the woods earlier, he is at least willing to seriously entertain the possibility.
Not to mention this, even before the troll:
I thought that he just didn't want to talk to Quirrell at the time and wanted to continue his walk alone for another hour.
Aside from that, he also prepares to use his Time-Turner to "flee upon an instant's notice"; furthermore, after the starlight spell wears off, Harry's first thought is to guard against an attack from the Defense Professor while Harry is temporarily blinded.
So... Draco in Leather Pants? Or Draco as Leather Pants? Awesome.
Well, Slytherin and Ravenclaw may both "win" the house cup now. But how is this going to result in the removal of the Snitch? A security measure?
And how is it going to be credited to a cunning plot by the Defense Professor, when he had no part in the current initiative?
A true Slytherin never reveals the secrets of how he did it. The fact that he made the promise, and then the outcome happened, will be sufficient.
If he's the one who attacked Hermione and framed her, it could be said that he was planning for Hogwarts uniting itself. In fact, seeing his previous speech where he wanted Magical Britain to unite under a dictatorship, it would perfect sense for him to do so.
What steps has Harry taken to investigate the characters of those killed by Voldemort? You'd think that he'd kill/order killed, in particular, people that he did not care to have around in his future realm, once he took power. I'm assuming that the Dark Mark comes with its own self-destruct switch, so he does not have make sure any Death Eater dies. People killed by Death Eaters in self defence do not count.
This might explain why, for example, he did not kill Dumbledore, or any of the truly awesome people in the OOTP (Moody, et al), because he knew that they would be reasonable subjects.
Quirrell, Dumbledore, Snape, Harry, and (increasingly) Draco have something in common. They are all creepy. These characters are intentionally inauthentic - acting as though they posses the specific beliefs, preferences, and abilities that they want others to attribute to them.
I feel unusually strong revulsion about this kind of deception - more than toward someone hiding their faults to manage their appearance, much more than toward someone being tactful and withholding or biasing sensitive claims to avoid conflict.
When I try to unpack "creepy", my mind suggests it has components of outrage at violations of close interpersonal social norms, distrust of unfamiliar thought patterns, fear of people with motivations that need to be hidden, and a special kind of disgust related to fears of idols, photographs, glassy eyed dolls, humanoid robots, and other simulacra. - the disgust toward an exemplar that doesn't fall clearly in or out of the human-mind category, toward a soul that has been captured in the depiction of a face and deprived of its intelligence and agency.
Are very intelligent people generally creepy like that? If I were a standard deviation smarter, would my peer group consist of people strategically concealing their identities and mutually modelling their mutual modelling up to the nth order of meta? Or is that inauthenticity just an abnormal personality type that doesn't correlate much with intelligence, but does fit nicely into a rationalist literary drama?
Conscious control over social presentation is a learned skill; it doesn't come in the same box with intelligence or rationality, although either or both might make it easier to pick up. I suspect it's prominent in Methods mainly because it serves the particular type of wheels-within-wheels plotting that Eliezer seems fond of.
We could have a conversation at this point about whether constructed social presentation is unethical or "creepy", but I don't think it'd get us anywhere. Some people have the squick response, some don't.
(Incidentally, I don't feel like Snape's got this in-story. He's certainly got a facade, but it's the sort you build semi-involuntarily when you hate parts of yourself and desperately want to hide them, not the kind you consciously build to optimize social outcomes. Harry does have it, but shouldn't have had the opportunity to develop it; it may be part of his Mysterious Dark Side/possible Harrymort package.)
For Snape, I was specifically thinking of the scene in Dumbledore's office where Harry reveals that he knows about the prophecy and Snape reacts without hesitation as though he hadn't heard of it. Snape was also a double agent during the war, and continues to maintain close relationships with Dumbledore and Lucius Malfoy. His actions do seem crude, awkward, uncontrolled or mostly defensive in other scenes such as in the bullying arc or his conversation with Quirrell in the forbidden forest in Chapter 77. But then, one can act with false impulsiveness too.
I suppose the characters are in a cold war and in the shadow of a hot war. That circumstance makes "offensive" deception in one's social presentation more useful.
They're also in an environment where creating an artificial persona is not merely useful, but a fundamental survival tactic: each of these characters would be dead by now if they were not Occlumens (and Lord Mafloy is an Occlumens, see chapter 47), which requires the person to also juggle a separate and highly artificial persona.
And of course, McGonagall acts similarly, even though her reaction is not similarly perfect, possibly because she's not a perfect Occlumens (and had just dealt with a full day of Rationalist!Harry).
There's some correlation between IQ and various measures of social awareness, despite the stereotype to the opposite, but it is a learned ability and many experts either don't learn it, or harness it to different ends. Feymann's writings on public speaking and instruction suggest that he, for one example, was highly aware of how he made his words and how his public face appeared. At the same time, I'm not sure how much of that was foresight and how much was later introspection -- and artificially controlling the flow of a Congressional inquiry may be less 'creepy' than artificially controlling the flow of information to an eleven-year-old.
((Yudkowsky's style may be part of the issue, as well. As in /Three Worlds Collide/ and /Sword of Good/, character dialogue, even from 'normal' characters, comes across as artificial at times. That more than the complexity of thought may trigger the creepy vibe.))
As a sidenote, intelligent people may seem creepy to the general population even if they don't try to deceive anyone. The mere fact of being more intelligent makes them more difficult to model for the average person. Then, when their actions violate the (wrong) model, the author of the model may feel deceived. The basic human irrationality: "if things don't work according to my model, the problem is not with my model but somewhere else".
Another contributing factor may be the illusion of transparency, when the more intelligent person thinks they made their intentions obvious to the people around them, but the average people don't get the message, and then they are surprised when the intelligent person does the (unclearly) announced thing.
EDIT: Even the rational thing of "changing your opinion when faced with evidence in the opposite direction" may feel like a dishonesty to a person not used to this. ("Yesterday you believed X, and today you believe non-X; were you lying to me?")
I've traditionally avoided seeming 'creepy' by blatantly violating various unimportant norms early in relationships. People don't like feeling deceived, and they don't like it when they are shown to be wrong after assembling a model. The trick is to make it clear from the outset that 'this person is extremely hard to model', or 'this person doesn't fit into any of my prefab models'. That way they don't get irritated about being wrong, they just assume it's par for the course.
Examples of norm violation:
I am male and maintain a prominent 3 foot long braid which I often wrap around my neck
I make childish faces at people and things
My default vocabulary is apparently pretty exotic
I don't flinch and easily participate in sexual topics when they come up
I squeeze in comments about how the human race is going to fix this 'death' problem whenever I can
When asked occupation, I say that I started as an engineer, then started a video game company (wtf?)
When asked belief (common in the US), I state 'true nihilist/atheist' and that I'm quite possibly the least spiritual person they will ever meet
All this stuff combined generally jams up people's predictors to the point where they give up on being correct, which largely fixes the creepy problem. Most people have stuff like this available, the trick is to emphasize and export the pieces which generate the most conflict with existing models.
Be aware that there's also 'sexually creepy', which is a whole different ball of wax. Openness and being comfortable with sexual topics helps tremendously. It's also a very good idea to focus your attention and eyes on faces, not reproductive hardware, when you interact with someone.
I don't quite understand: why is Draco so upset in this chapter? Is it because he's playing the role his father expects of him? It's not like he obtained any new information about what Harry was trying to do since the Self Actualization chapters. He already knew that he was being manipulated to give up blood purity. So what's the issue?
Up until then, he thought Harry accidentally took his belief in blood purism from him, along with his ability to become a faithful Death Eater. Now Lord Malfoy has told him that no such belief-sacrificing rituals exist, and Draco realizes that it was no accident and not everything that Harry taught Draco about how the world works (existence of Scientific Rituals) was true.
What a clusterfuck. I love it. Reminds me of how Sam Hughes made his heroine summon a demon into her bed, explaining that stories are more interesting when characters don't have perfect reasoning.
Link: http://qntm.org/daemons
If Harry Potter already had the contract written before going into Gringotts, how did Moody's eye not see it? I suppose it is possible that Moody's eye cannot see into the folded space of Harry's pouch, but Harry has no reason to assume as much, and is smart enough not to take the risk. And whether or not Moody can see into folded pouch-space, this line makes no sense at all: "Moody paused as his Eye caught sight of the second half of the document as Harry Potter slowly, as though reluctantly, began to unfold the top upward." Moody's eye can easily see through mere paper. Why would he be able to see only the unfolded portion of the document?
This chapter would make a lot more sense if Harry committed the wording of the contract to memory beforehand and wrote it down at the meeting, and if McGonagall or Dumbledore was escorting Harry, not Moody.
Does the eye of Vance have infinite zoom or does it just see in all direction through all objects? I can't read small print that's on a piece of paper 8 feet away from me even if I have a clear view of it.
But it would make him suspicious to see Harry carrying paper (with words already written on it - he may carry paper around as a matter of course)
It's even worse than this; Harry did not have his pouch as he went in.
A plausible response is that Harry wrote it out during the waiting period before the Malfoys entered.
Wait, even if he did write it in the meeting room, can't the Eye of Vance see through walls?
Now I want to know what exactly the limit of Moody's superpower is. How far can the Eye see in every direction? How many barriers can it see through? How far can it "zoom", if at all? To what resolution? Can the Eye read fine print from 1000 feet away?
Why does he advertise it? Why not hide it behind an eyepatch, as a secret advantage in a fight?
You miss the point - he is still hiding it. The eye provides full 360-degree vision at all times, but few people know this, so he maintains an appearance of some level of vigilance.
This means that anyone who sees him respond quickly to a threat (i.e. evidence of vigilance) will have an immediate explanation of how he was able to do so (being vigilant), and not look beyond it to find out the extent of his abilities.
Quite well thought out, really.
He does hide it. In the part in the graveyard where he is talking to Snape while they are poisoning Riddle Sr's grave, he keeps spinning around, despite the fact that the eye lets him see 360 degrees regardless of where it is pointing.
If he's escorting Potter around, everyone KNOWS he'd be on high alert, so they expect to see the thing whizzing around. Then they expect that when it isn't whizzing around, it means he can't see behind him.
And when they try to exploit that, that's how he catches them.
It's somewhat like the reason the Dark Mark isn't always invisible. People will look for a weakness to exploit, so before they find one you should provide them with a fake one.
(If the Dark Mark were invisible and Moody wore an eyepatch, you'd just look for a different avenue of attack.)
It seems to already be widely known among magical Britain what his noble phantasm is. (Curiously, this didn't seem to be the case in canon -- the Eye doesn't even have a name there -- but Moody is still not sufficiently cautious about it there.)
If Dumbledore is Harry's legal guardian and can overrule him, should Harry's 11-year-old signature be worth anything to Lord Malfoy?
Possibly he still has the power of the Scion of the Ancient and Noble House of Potter.
Dumbledore may be able to overrule the contract, but that would do little to stop the political effects of Harry's statement that Lucius did not kill Hermione. Since it would also reinstate the debt, it doesn't seem like a net benefit to Dumbledore.
I think for the time being Malfoy wants this to happen and chose to accept Harry's right to enter an agreement...but if something goes wrong, I wouldn't put it past Lucius to spin this into an invalid contract due to Harry's age. Or maybe Harry has done so many crazily adult things so far this actually feels perfectly normal, not only to the readers, but the characters.
A very good point.
Then again, if Dumbledore contests it, we might just end up with another round of
After all, Lord Malfoy has already secured the Wizengamot's support in the matter of the blood debt and his right to deal with it as he sees fit. Nor is it likely to defy Harry's attempt to pronounce House Malfoy innocent of Hermione's murder.
And nor is Dumbledore likely to argue before the Wizengamot that House Malfoy is not innocent.
Like hell you did. Mad-Eye Moody just told you not to. But it sure is a game-theoretical advantage to convince the other player that the conditions of the deal cannot be renegotiated at all, and that it's now or never.
Similarly, what a convenient excuse to expose the muggle-hater to a small example of muggle technology just as you're trying to make him realize there may be a lot more to muggles than he thought.
That's close enough to a promise. Besides, Dumbledore could have made him promise more explicitly off-screen and this is just Moody doing the same independently or reiterating it.
That's not a promise. It's not even agreement.
This is quite possible. However, it does not sound like Moody's reiterating. And I find it improbable that Dumbledore included the "don't touch a pen" clause (that's more Moody's style), but no other clause, and then Moody independently, coincidentally added that clause and no other clause.
A: "<statement>. [<suggestion/imperative to behave accordingly>] Do you understand?" B: "I understand."
I claim that in normal human communication that type of exchange is viewed as B accepting what A says, unless B somehow signals explicit disagreement. Then, if B knows this, and assumes that A thinks likes this, and only explicitly affirms understanding while withholding knowledge of their disagreement, B is at the very least deceiving A.
Of course Moody should know to be more paranoid in what he forbids Harry from doing. Especially with him having witnessed Harry showing cunning and paranoia on a level he finds promising.
Thank you for pointing out these subtle clevernesses.
I doubt Lucius was very impressed with a "muggle quill".
But if Harry keeps it up about the wealth of the Muggle world, I wonder if the Malfoys won't end up setting their sights on Muggles and their resources. I'm imagining a "what have I done" on Harry's part when that happens.
I think Harry would laugh all the way to 10 Downing Street, as he allies with sixty million people who agree with him on human rights and have at least a notion of science, security, and total war, even though most of them, of course, aren't trained in it. Notice his remark about "[Muggle lawyers] would think yours are cute". Harry may be mistaken, but I think he believes that for Lucius to tangle with Muggle Britain would be the last mistake House Malfoy ever made.
Lord Malfoy wouldn't bother with Muggle lawyers, he'd use magic and take what he wants. Remember, he doesn't see Muggles as people. The only ones who could stop him from doing anything he wanted would be other magic-users.
The point about lawyers is just that Harry sees the wizard world as rather quaint and old-fashioned; Lucius is a big frog in a very tiny pond. Let the Masquerade be broken in any serious way, and within a year or two Muggle Britain will have produced anti-curse body armour (possibly made of tinfoil) and guns that will reliably break a wizard's shields. In other words, it's not just wizard lawyers that are cute; wizard soldiers are also fundamentally non-serious. This may not be actually true, but I think it is what Harry believes.
By the way, in the Rowling-verse, the Prime Minister is supposed to know about the Ministry of Magic; he's the one official point of contact between Muggles and wizards. I wonder if that's also true in the canonical version?
Did you just upgrade HPMoR to canon, and downgrade the Rowling-verse to non-canon? Bwa-ha-ha!
I've done that with Luminosity and Radiance over the four Twilight books (and I've only read the latter because of the former), and will probably do that with MoR once it's actually complete.
For purposes of HP:MoR, yes. Canon is relative.
It's not body armor and such that matters. It's control. Wizards have mind magic. They can alter memories and control people. That would let them act through agents who already possess muggle resources, and who already understand (and can explain whenever necessary) the strengths of the muggle world.
At the end of the day, if wizards seriously get interested in the muggle world, and muggles in the wizard world (not that they should get the chance, if the Malfoys are smart), and both learn about each others' strengths, wizards will still be the ones with the edge.
Hence my mention of anti-curse body armour made of tinfoil. :)
Body armor only protects against weak curses like Somnium that are standard first year hexes. Stupefy, which is castable by first years, is not blocked by armor.
I think you are rather missing my point, here. The body armour that Muggle Britain would invent would not be the kind available to Harry as a desperate improvisation. In a year or two, after a crash research program, Muggle Britain would understand how magic works, what materials block it, and would mass-produce the resulting body armour that does block curses up to and including Avada Kedavra. It would be based on tinfoil because everyone knows that tinfoil hats block the government's mind-controlling rays.
Iunno. Screwing with the Muggle economy in non-legitimate ways would be genuinely hard on the scales the Malfoys would want to do it on. There might be some high-effort methods - insider trading based on reading the minds of CEOs, for example - but barring just Imperius'ing Bill Gates into giving you all his money (which would be widely publicized) there's only so much they can do.
I think. I've given this all of five seconds of thought, there might be something creative (okay, there is something creative) they can do.
Imperius Bill Gates and a number of other wealthy people to give you 1% of their money.
The thing about wealthy people is that they have accountants. Also, their assets are generally in the stock of companies they own, which means that they'd have to sell shares, which in turn triggers reams of insider-trading paperwork and income tax audits. You'd do better to do Time-Turner work on the LSE.
Now, how did I miss that possibility?
Harry's stinking rich anytime he wants, then.
Apparate into secure bank vaults and take all their gold. That's all a wizard wants at first, gold, not Muggle money.