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MarkusRamikin comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, January 2015, chapter 103 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Comments (173)
I wonder what, in Harry's model of the world, has been going on with Bellatrix all this time, and why he never inquired about her.
It seems like a serious blind spot given that Harry has to expect Quirrell to die sooner or later and take the information with him into his grave.
It's not like this is the only serious blind spot he has regarding Quirrell, though, is it?
My current theory seems almost obvious, after I coincidentally decided to reread HPMOR myself shortly after rereading Chamber of Secrets with my daughter:
Early in Chamber of Secrets, a Death Eater gives Tom Riddle's horcrux, a nearly-indestructable magical diary, to Ginny. One of the powers that diary has is to take partial control of her as she reads it intently over the coming year, and one of the ways that control manifests itself is to make it difficult for her to even think about what's going on with the diary or the blind spots it's creating in her mind.
Early in HPMOR, a Death Eater (who is probably Tom Riddle) gives a nearly-indestructible magical diary to Harry. Harry clearly wants to read it intently, but we never see what happens when he tries, and later (because he'd need to learn Latin first? really??) he hardly even thinks about it, or about a couple other obvious blind spots in his mind, again.
I suspect that Quirrelmort was handing Harrymort a horcrux as yet another way to try to turn him to the dark side, and although that didn't work, even temporarily clouding Harry's better judgement about a few key topics is a decent secondary benefit.
It's not really a blind spot against Quirrell. If what Quirrell says it's true and Quirrell dies soon, it's important information to acquire from him.
There no time pressure to read the diary. There's time pressure to get information from Quirrell. It requires an environment where Quirrell can cast the spells against eavesdropping.
"The Voldemort-and-dementor-victimized lady who we sent to a healer is being healed, but healing doubly-demented people takes a long time" would be a reasonable guess from Harry's perspective.
Guessing instead of just asking Quirrell seems less reasonable, though.
Even if healing her takes time it's worthwhile for Harry to learn about her location and contact details to follow up after Quirrell's death.