Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, February 2015, chapters 105-107
Two new short chapters! Since the next one is coming tomorrow and we know it'll be short, let's use one thread for both.
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 105 (and chapter 106, once it comes out tomorrow). EDIT: based on Alsadius' comment about thread creation for MOR chapters, let's also use this thread for chapter 107 (and future chapters until this nears 500 comments) unless someone objects to doing so. Given that this is the final arc we're talking about, thread titles should be updated to indicate chapters covered.
There is 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.)
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Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).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 (353)
So, Voldemort is explained, and in a way I find persuasive. I wasn't sure it was possible.
So. you know how Dumbledore thinks that Fred and George are kinda/sorta the heirs of Gryffindor?
I give them 90% odds of at least showing up.
Adding to my previous prediction comment:
Predictions:
Harry attempted to obtain a useful object (such as Snape’s wand) when he knocked Snape over in Chapter 106. 75%
The ritual which promises to summon Death itself (Chapter 74) summons a Dementor. 80%
The lost counterspell to dismiss whatever is summoned by the ritual involving "a rope which has hanged a man and a sword which has slain a woman" (Chapter 74) is the True Patronus Charm. 80%
Harry’s mental development has been significantly influenced by his body’s descent from the Potter line. This includes genetic effects, heritable magical effects, and interactions between such effects and his environment, but excludes purely environmental effects of being raised in the Verres-Evans household. 70% (In other words, suppose the following counterfactual: Voldemort came to believe that the prophecy referred to a different wizarding infant child who had been living in a similar environment up to that point (canonically Neville also fits the prophecy), attacked that household in order to perform whatever mind-altering magic he actually performed on the infant Harry on the other infant child, and leaves all blood relatives who would otherwise care for the child dead / insane / otherwise unable to do so. Suppose further that Dumbledore asks Petunia to adopt this infant, so this hypothetical other child is also raised in the Verres-Evans household. My prediction is that there would be some significant difference between this hypothetical child’s mental development and Harry’s mental development.)
The procedure Voldemort describes that "destroyed all but a remnant of Harry Potter" (Chapter 105) involved a Horcrux. 75%
Quirrell was enhancing Sprout’s and Susan’s magic in the battle in Chapter 104. 70%
Snape is still capable of somehow intervening in Voldemort’s plot, despite the bodily control spell Voldemort used. 50%
Speculations:
Snape may be an Occlumens. In Chapter 27, Harry recalls that "the book said that a successful Legilimens was extremely rare, rarer than a perfect Occlumens, because almost no one had enough mental discipline." Since Snape clearly has the discipline, the awareness of mind magics, the (at least outward) ability to pretend, and motivation to learn Occlumency (it would be extremely useful to someone in his position), he may well have become an Occlumens at some point.
Observations:
Quirrell is messing with Time. Recall Harry’s experiment with Time in Chapter 17, where he precommitted to an algorithm for recovering prime factors of a large number that relies on the stable-loop property of Time-Turners, but got the unexpected result of "DO NOT MESS WITH TIME" instead. His precommitment had failed to rule out the logical universe where he got "DO NOT MESS WITH TIME".
Quirrell is clearly relying on the stable-loop property of Time-Turners when he says "Oh, we have time. There would be a great uproar if we were discovered here, guarded by an Inferius. You did not act like you had heard of such an uproar at your Quidditch match, before you arrived in this time and spoke to Snape as you did." (Chapter 107) Leaning on this property to get what you want seems to be the definition of messing with Time, and also something we can expect Quirrell to be inclined towards based on his similarities with Harry.
Now suppose that Quirrell made the following precommitment in order to further lean on this property: "If my plot involving the boy known as Harry Potter succeeds in its objectives by 10:30 PM, I will then arrange for the note asking him to come to the forbidden corridor to be sent to him at such a time that he must use five spins of his Time-Turner. Otherwise, I will send no note to him." This precommitment appears to guarantee his success if Harry shows up, and in particular appears to rule out universes where Harry shows up and defeats Quirrell. But it doesn’t rule out logical universes where Harry shows up and defeats Quirrell because it doesn’t rule out logical universes that can be described by "Harry shows up, defeats Quirrell, and then arranges to have such a note sent to his past self for the purposes of paradox avoidance." So Quirrell just might wind up with a much nastier message not to mess with Time.
Particularly since Harry is just the sort of person who would send such a note. He knows not to mess with time!
Fortunately for Quirrell, I expect that he also knows this of Harry and so is not doing what you suggest in your last observation.
There's a theory going around about how it was Amelia Bones who killed Narcissa Malfoy, based on nothing more than the stray thought 'Someone would burn for this.' What she said to Dumbledore during Hermione's trial ('You know the answer you must give, Albus. It will not change for agonizing over it.') seems to be taken as further evidence.
sigh
Of course it was Voldemort who did it!
I think what most of you fail to realize is, the whole thing happened after Voldemort heard the prophecy from Snape. Dumbledore predictably ignored the blackmail, and would not have killed anyone like that in retaliation (he would never crack, no matter what), but was willing to falsely claim he did it - one lie to an enemy is a small price to ensure no further loss of life to blackmail attempts. This resulting in Malfoy hating Dumbledore was also predictable. His hate kept the conflict alive after Voldemort's planned disappearance. This kept the lines of battle predictable, set the stage for Voldy's planned return.
I don't recall seeing anyone state this, and I really hope someone did - it would suck to be the only person who could realize something simple like this.
I did mention this, along with some other guesses.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but there seem to be two separate challenges on the Potions room parchment: a simple one consistent with canon and the skills and abilities of the target audience, and a complex one requiring an hour or so of careful and precise work. Looks like Harry and Quirrelmort focus exclusively on the long formula, ignoring the puzzle.
On rereading the relevant part of Ch. 107, it appears that Harry has an idea he doesn't want to share shortly after the broomstick conversation. On a close reading, it appears that he manages to avoid the topic, first evading a request to answer a question in parseltongue by talking about Snape, then veering further off topic with dementors.
So did Harry manage to pull a fast one? Are the Effulgence instructions forged? If so, by whom? Is the duration of one hour significant for time-turning? What did I miss?
Ooooh. That may well be a challenge that behaves differently around people who were or weren't supposed to be there.
Perhaps solving the logic puzzle is sufficient to gain entry, and most students will either not think to flip the parchment over or get bored before they finish brewing the potion it describes. But Snape expects Voldemort to notice the lack of wards and decide to brew the potion, and accordingly has booby-trapped the potion in some manner that triggers upon its completion or after some time sufficient that he expects students to get bored first.
The duration may well also be significant for Time-Turning.
I think much of what we are being told about Parseltongue is a lie.
What we've been told: Parseltongue is the language of snakes. Because snakes cannot lie, Parselmouths also cannot lie in Parseltongue. Salazar Slytherin invoked the Parselmouth Curse on himself and his descendants to take advantage of this last fact by using it as a trust engine.
However, snakes have no spoken language. This is a fact established by Muggle science. So what is Parseltongue, really?
Parseltongue has four confirmed functions.
Note that 1,2 and 3 are thematically unrelated to 4 (given that one does not expect a snake to lie, and in any case can order it to speak the truth).
Suppose the wizard S (possibly Salazar, possibly not) creates a spell or ritual that makes one a Parselmouth. Is it likely that they create a magical user interface for controlling snakes, and then decide that it also needs to prevent the user from lying?
On the other hand, suppose S has created a perfect trust engine. They decide, as we know, not to make this information public, either in order to preserve an advantage for themselves and the allies whom they will teach the spell/ritual, or because they fear the chaos doing so would bring (every deceitful person would wish it destroyed, while everyone who fears being deceived would want it made universal), or both.
They then conceal the trust engine inside another, separate ritual, which grants the power to understand and command snakes. Even if such a ritual becomes known, people generally aren't bothered about the ability to command snakes (which are a low-status animal anyway). Nor will they see anything strange about Parselmouths using their speciality language to communicate securely with each other. If S is Salazar Slytherin, he also has perfect cover for why he'd want to create such a ritual because the snake is already his personal symbol - or perhaps he adopts that symbol after creating the ritual, giving himself and his descendants a plausible reason to be Parselmouths.
So why is the ritual known, according to Voldemort, as the Parselmouth Curse? There are no downsides to the power to understand and command snakes. But if S or one of their successors calls it a curse, that radically reduces the number of people who might seek to learn and use it.
P.S. One obvious argument for Parseltongue being a language is that being a snake animagus supposedly lets you speak it without being a Parselmouth. However, we don't actually have any evidence for this - Quirrell is a Parselmouth already, so his ability to speak Parseltongue in whatever form is not a test that behaves differently under different circumstances. His statement that a snake animagus is not the same as a Parselmouth only supports this observation.
The last line of 107 says:
Anybody care to guess what secrets will be revealed in the next chapter?
If Mr. Hat and Cloak turns out not to be Flamel, then Flamel is..... Hagrid? Filtch? Dumbledore? Ron? Unseen? If Hagrid had appeared in any scene not required by canon symmetry or Quirell's fake Parseltongue explanation then I would suspect him more. Dumbledore's fear of being a dark wizard would make sense, but he seems too young and had a family.
I am Ron Weasley(TM). :DD
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Nay, Tom Riddle was me!
Confirmed.
I just had another thought in relation to Harry's second transfigured object. I had thought as Quirrel did that Harry's second transfigured object was Hermione's body. (Though Harry successfullly fooled Quirrel into thinking the second object was the steel ring. It wan't, but we know he has something because of the mention of 'the other one' in Chapter 104.)
But just after Hermione's body dissappeared, they throroughly searched Harry's person and stuff for transfigured objects and finite incantatem-ed the lot. Perhaps Harry's second transfigured object is not Hermione, but something aquired more recently? I'm thinking of Cedric. Can a living body be transformed into something solid like a rock without deleterious effects?
The corpse could be transfigured into the necklace of the time-turner. This is such an incredibly stupid and dangerous idea that no-one would ever suspect Harry to do anything like this. Or he can transfigure Hermione into one chain link of the necklace (safer failure mode).
Are there any (known) size limits to the transfiguration? If not, there's plenty of room at the bottom...
Emphatically not, according to McGonagall. "In a few hours you would be sick, and in a day you would be dead".
Given that the only thing Harry seemed to manage to keep a secret from Quirrel is what he really transfigured Hermione into, I suspect Harry might have to win by using the trick he did with the Troll, but with Hermione instead of a rock.
Crazy hypothesis: he transfigured Hermione's body into a copy of himself, and sent the copy in his stead.
Realization: when Harry first encountered the dementor and saw his parents' murder, he noted that the neutral patterns of the memory shouldn't have even existed. Maybe that's because it's a false memory? I note this now because it removes constraints from what V might have actually done that day.
Yes, but who cast it? If V did it before the inability to cast spells on each other went into effect, would the memory still be there today?
The absence of a Horcrux ritual would support your theory, but V could have done that with some guy he burned to death after the memory ends.
Voldemort had plenty of minions.
Voldemort didn't have nearly as many minions after his apparent death, although I admit that there would be some possibilities still available.
It is very likely. Also from Chapter 3, when McGonagall told Harry about his parents' murder:
What kind of impressed me about "The Truth, part 1" was the reveal.
Consider: In most mystery novels, the reveal scene(s) is where the detective explains what the reader has been struggling to figure out since the start of the story. It provides a powerful "ah-ha!" moment if done right.
Here, everything Harry figures out is stuff the reader most likely already knew, thanks to meta-knowledge. We're watching him figure out what we'd been hoping he'd figure out for dozens of chapters. By all rights, it shouldn't provide that ah-ha feeling.
And yet... it does. I think the stream of consciousness really sells it. It helped me feel like I was inside Harry's head, living through that realization.
Hat and Cloak is Salazar's creature. He (it?) was put in the Chamber to be a counter to the second thing Merlin did when he laid the Interdict in force, namely biasing holders of time-displaced information toward simpler (non-catastrophic) loops - my best guess is, by creating random change in subject's mind which randoms into thoughts leading to paradox-free behavior; from this side of the 4th wall it can look like 'being stupid for the sake of plot'. (to clarify: the random thought is an extra degree of freedom by which the situation can be paradox-free without big complicated catastrophic coincidences)
HC's original job is to bring/send back future information and limit exposure of Heir. Kinda like what Millicent does, or Snape did with Rianne - you know, it's a difficult concept, needs good examples by the time it is explained. (for the record, this clicked for me during the 'Groundhog Day attack' which originally came before the 'Interlude with the Confessor' chapter - to me that chapter was a confirmation not a clue.)
Also: SNAPE KILLED DUMBLEDORE!!
The 'Harry = Tom Riddle' thing doesn't sit right with me. The whole point of teaching Harry, the point of going this slow now, is to get Harry to embrace his dark side for a successful takeover - and look, he already thinks of it as part of him, not a separate side. I predict the sense of doom will decrease, Harry will interpret it as 'Quirrell losing strength' and 'now is the time to be clever' when in reality it will be - well, either it's him getting closer to being taken over by his dark side, or it is directly faked by Q to be a false encouragement towards same.
The Defense Professor sent Harry the forged message after 11:04pm, but early enough that Harry was able to arrive at 6:49 with 1 hour left on his time turner. The time-turner has been confiscated, but this is still a big security hole.
Example possibility: Harry and Quirrel arrive at the mirror, and time-turned Harry is already there with Dumbledore, Moody, Madam Bones and a dementor, which had not been detected by present Harry because patronus 2.0 is out and shielding everyone from it. Quirrel can't apparate away in Hogwarts, patronus 2.0 stops any AK, and Dumbledore & friends can hold Voldemort off long enough for the dementor to start sucking face with Voldemort, who is particularly vulnerable. Harry retrieves his time-turner and goes back an hour to message Dumbledore via patronus and set this ambush up. Asking Harry to state whether he has betrayed him is of limited use here, since the betrayal can happen in the future but impact the present.
Why has The Defense Professor deliberately preserved an hour on Harry's time-turner? It must be significant to his plan.
I noticed that as well. However, at Azkahban QQ reserved an extra use of the time turner for the end and it proved necessary. He may just think that as a best practice for plotting one should leave an extra use of time turners in as margin of safety.
That's been bothering me ever since chapter 104 came out. It doesn't seem likely that Quirrel would have just missed that, so I see a couple possibilities:
1) Part of Quirrel's plan somehow requires Harry to use the time turner once, so by having Harry go back five hours he limits Harry's use of it as much as possible.
2) It's a trap. Leaving via time turner is an excellent escape mechanism, and Quirrel knows that Harry has a tendency to overuse it for that purpose. So if Harry does manage to do something unexpected, Quirrel's hoping he'll go for the time turner--only to find that it doesn't work.
Why doesn't it work? Because Quirrel wrote the note at 12:04, went back via his own time turner, and handed the note to the anonymous Hufflepuff*. Thus, if Harry were to activate his time turner for the sixth time at 7:00, it would fail in some fashion ("for you couldn't send information further back in time than six hours, not through any chain of Time-Turners" -- chapter 61).
This is a pretty narrow window, though. Quirrel would have to anticipate that Harry might immediately go back from 11:04 to 6:04 once he got the message, so Quirrel wouldn't have written the note any later than 12:04 (if he wrote it at 12:20, for example, and Harry tried to go back to 6:04, it would fail and he'd know something was up.)
Which means that the forbidden period can't end any later than 6:04, and the absolute earliest Harry would want to use the sixth turn would be 6:49 when the whole thing started. So there's a 15 minute period from 6:49 to 7:04 where Harry thinks he can use the time turner but can't. This would be fine if the whole process were to finish in 15 minutes, but that seems unlikely, especially with Quirrel dawdling in chapter 107.
*It's amusing to think that Quirrel went back to 11:04 to hand the note to the Hufflepuff, whose quote "I know you said not to talk to you, but -" would have, if he had not been interrupted by Harry, ended something like "but I don't see why you gave me a note to just hand back to you ten seconds later. Hey--the version of you that handed me the note is still right there under the bleachers, waving at me and smirking." But really, there's no reason Quirrel would have taken that risk when he could have just gone back further and handed the note to the Hufflepuff "earlier".
If I were Snape, I would use a gas. Something which becomes hazardous after a certain time. Or merely change the nitrogen/oxygen balance after a certain time.
Did I understand correctly, that the parchment contained 2 alternate instructions for dealing with the room enchanted by Snape ? One side of the parchment contained a comparatively short puzzle, similar to the canon HP, while the other side contained incredibly long and laborious recipe ? When a child or young student is given 2 alternate version of homework, one short and entertaing, while other a boring and laborious pain in the ass, which one do they normally choose ? Voldermort, however, does not believe in simple solutions, he tends to do overkills all the time. Maybe that was the distinguishing feature, which Harry wondered about ?
"... real-world security systems had the goal of distinguishing authorized from unauthorized personnel, which meant issuing challenges that behaved differently around people who were or weren't supposed to be there."
I do not retract, I just pressed the wrong button...
But, anyway, some people have hypothesis, that Voldermort plans for Harry to rule the world (as his copy). Quirrel says something like that in parseltongue during Azkaban arch. So some believe, he is showing Harry some of the most powerful spells in this chapter on purpose. That is also consistent with what is happening.
One of the ongoing patterns in HPMoR is how certain spells require people to believe certain things or to be in certain emotional states. Harry can perform partial transfiguration because he actually believes in timeless physics. Harry can cast Patronus 2.0 because of his beliefs about life and death. Avada Kedavara requires hate (or indifference).
I see no references to the conversation between McGonigal and Quirrell. "Professor Quirrell made a sharp gesture, as though to indicate a concept for which he had no words." McGonigal reacts. That there is a concept that these two characters know of, but have not actually explained to the reader. I expect this to play a part in the grand finale.
Almost everything related to Quirrell is related to death. There are simply too many instances to list exhaustively; this is just things that immediately come to mind. Voldemort was all about death during his reign; "mort" is in his name. He talks about stars dieing on multiple occasions. He brings the dementor to Hogwarts. He brings Harry to Azkaban. Hermione. Unicorns. The actual outcome of the conversation above that I linked to is that McGonigal whispers to Harry, "I had a sister once," and then leads to Harry going on his field trip with Lupin, which is about the Peverell brothers, which is about death. He has made his own wasting away prolonged and visible. Over the last few chapters, he has done certain things that would be counterproductive if his goal was to merely obtain the philosopher's stone.
My final prediction: Everything in the last few chapters which shows him being a sloppy carton villain is a ruse, is being done deliberately to manipulate Harry. Quirrell plays the game One Level Higher Than You. Quirrell's plot is to manipulate Harry into a certain mental state, which is directly related to the gesture he made to McGonigal, which is one of the major unresolved questions.
As to what end, there I am slightly hazy. My roommate believes that Methods is a retelling of The Sword of Good, and that Quirrell is at minimum the antivillian seeking positive utilitarian gains, possibly by vanquishing death. I think that's likely but am not confident enough to bet on it.
While we are at it, where are the Deathly Hollows? Quirrell took the Cloak of Invisibility. I presume that he has the Resurrection Stone if he's plotting something related to death. As far as I know, Dumbledore has the Elder Wand. Hey, didn't Quirrell say that he had a plan to defeat the Headmaster if he showed up?
I think Quirrell wants to teach Harry to give up.
First he does it explicitly, during the lesson. Okay, that is not really giving up; it's rather "pretending to lose, so you survive and have your revenge later". But even that is difficult for Harry. So maybe learning this lesson is just a first approximation towards really giving up?
And recently it seems like Quirrell is taking his time to break Harry psychologically, demonstrating his advantage by overpowered attacks, reminding him about all the hostages he can kill.
It seems as if Quirrell wants Harry to betray him. And then he would kill the hostages. And then he would tell Harry: "It's all your fault."
Which would be the opposite of what Hermione told Harry. But we already know that Quirrell is trying to push Harry in the opposite direction than Hermione would.
What is he trying to achieve by this? Maybe if Harry gives up, he will lose his ability to cast Patronus 2.0. Why is that important? Because it is the only spell that Harry knows and Quirrell does not; therefore the greatest danger to Quirrell?
Or maybe Quirrell wants Harry to snap and become an efficient ruthless killing machine just like him.
But quirell knows that Harry possesses the power which kills dementors, so it can't be related to prophecy from his perspective
'"he has power the Dark Lord knows not" could mean that the Dark Lord doesn't know that the power exists, or it could mean the Dark Lord doesn't know how to use the power. The prophecy didn't say 'he has power the Dark Lord knows not of.'
"like" doesn't really get to the point. There a reason he calls him Tom.
So far, Harry is able to describe how to be an efficient killing machine, but he didn't kill anyone yet. Didn't even try.
This isn't relevant to your comment here, but I was amused in the light of recent events by the following remark in that conversation:
Back on topic:
Maaaaybe. But in that conversation it seems to me as if the mental state he's referring to and gesturing at is something like "determination to do away with death by all means possible" and while Q might be bluffing when he indicates to anyone who'll listen that Harry's attempts are likely to have diastrous consequences, I'm more inclined to take him more or less at face value there.
Ch 107
Why not Avada Kedavra, which is the usual countercharm for anything with a brain?
Because, if you get within sight to aim, it will scare you and you will flinch away.
Also because it was (at least to my mind) funnier than if he'd said the counter-charm was AK and done what he usually does.
Prediction: the philosopher's stone is the resurrection stone. QQ said Flamel wasn't the true creator, and two stones with resurrectiony powers runs afoul of Occam. V can still do his best to make a true Hermione, but it'll really be his model of her.
This seems a bit improbable as Q most likely already has the Resurrection Stone (in chapter 40, Harry relays to Q Dumbledore's description of the Resurrection Stone, and Q immediately realises that there are things he urgently has to do -- the obvious interpretation being that he has in fact seen the Stone before, not knowing what it is, and is off to get hold of it).
Though, now I think about it, perhaps that obvious interpretation is a bit too obvious and we should conclude only that Q wanted Harry to think he knew where to find the Resurrection Stone. (But there's no indication that Harry drew any such conclusion.)
FWIW, this is a true fact in canon.
I thought it is at least reasonable to suspect that the stone from Chapter 96 might actually be the resurrection stone.
That's the right symbol, but in canon the Resurrection Stone is much smaller. I interpreted this as the Peverells' gravestone, enchanted to give a Peverell descendant the ‘Thrayen beyn’ quote upon making a suitable vow.
I feel the need to point out that the first three rooms can be beaten very quickly in the manner that a first-year might (assuming that flying over the chessboard is ok) and yet Quirrel only slows down for the room which takes an hour. It would only have taken a moment to summon the snitch-key, and since they don't have a perfect read on Snape, if the potions room might have been trappeded, then so might have the other rooms.
The other rooms were trapped, but Quirrel detected and disarmed the wards. In Snape's room, he detected no wards, and that's what makes him suspicious.
Snape has much better muggle lore than the average wizard. I'm guessing anyone trying to solve that room with violence will get a faceful of claymore mine or the equivalent. No wards detectable because the traps are not magic.
Snape is an asshole, but my model of him would not actually kill a first-year.
I doubt a first year would have any chance of brute-forcing their way through a fire door that normally requires such a ridiculously complex potion to nullify.
If Fiendfyre is the only way to force it, then I agree. But ‘anyone trying to solve that room with violence’ is pretty broad.
And if this is possible (I have no idea whether there is a 'detect claymore' spell) then the other rooms could have had claymores too.
Well, it's possible that all the rooms were designed by different professors with little to no cooperations so that one single breach would not compromise the security of the whole thing. If Snape wanted to put claymores in other rooms, he'd need to tell the other professors.
Misspelling of dieffenbachia.
Quirrell will be killed by Harry at the end -- but this is all a part of the plan.
Suppose that Quirrell is not the original Riddle, but is just another Riddle's copy. If Quirrell and Harry are both copies of the original Riddle, the original Riddle had no reason to prefer Quirrell's life to Harry's life.
The story about a good hero saving the world by defeating a horrible villain: he did not have to fake it. He could make it real, by letting two of his own copies fight against each other. Realistic hero Harry will be better than a fake hero; he will be more authentic; there will be no risk of discovering his secret in the future.
Just like Harry had a magically induced blind spot in his mind, also Quirrell can be manipulated. (Memory changes, imperius, unbreakable oath... there are many options.) This is why Quirrell does not kill Harry, why he teaches him things, any why he is making him angry at the end. This all is Quirrell's purpose; he is just a tool to prepare Harry for the role of king of the world. Quirrell is not optimizing for Quirrell; he is optimizing for Riddle.
So, this is what I imagine: First Riddle created his copy, Quirrell. Maybe with a specific purpose, maybe just as a backup copy. But later he was not satisfied with the outcome, when he realized that his new memories will not be preserved. So he later created another copy, Harry, killing himself in the process. Before that, he somehow magically commanded Quirrell to train Harry for the role of the king.
Quirrell may not be aware of this, because he was magically brainwashed. This is the power he knows not, the power that will cost him his life at the end. He is actually magically forbidden from killing Harry.
Not sure if the original Riddle was a sociopath (that would explain why he doesn't mind his two copies fighting to death against each other), or whether Quirrell's personality is another effect of the magic, preparing him to be the perfect villain.
Anyway, when Harry outsmarts and kills Quirrell at the end... this is exactly what Riddle has planned from the beginning. This was his plan for becoming a hero. (Maybe there will be a moment when the victorious Harry/Riddle will regain all original Riddle's memories. Or maybe not, because that could make him behave less authentically afterwards. Or maybe yes, because discovering that your favorite teacher was actually Lord Voldemort and defeating him is the most appropriate moment for a minor personality change.)
EDIT: Oh, now it's obvious what is in the mirror, any why Harry has to be there. The mirror contains Riddle's memories that are to be implanted in Harry soon. By the way, Dumbledore already knows many of these things, and has his own plans.
The challenge for this theory is squaring with ch. 102 Quirrell's Parseltongued dismissal of Horcruxes as "meaningless" and "not truly gainsaying death", and so on, and with Quirrell's more recent Parseltonged statement that he cannot be truly killed by any power known to him. I guess he's brainwashed into both these beliefs, with the latter being factually false?
Could have referred to generally known Horcrux 1.0, which is non-destructive. There could also be Horcrux 2.0, known only to Tom Riddle.
(There is no mention of Horcrux 2.0 in the story, but we already know that at least two spells have advanced versions: Patronus, Avada Kedavra, and now possibly Transfiguration. Also, if non-destructivity of the copy is the only problem, this problem seems relatively easy to fix once a person is aware of it. There is a technical problem of mixing your personality with the original personality, which you reduce by copying into a baby, and saving your memories. Then there is another technical problem of becoming a helpless baby, which you can solve by creating a non-destructive copy that will protect the baby, which also helps to overcome the Interdict of Merlin.)
Okay, this one is more serious. If horcrux is merely a copy, then this does not make sense: any number of copies can be killed. So either horcrux is not what Quirrell said, or there are other spells protecting Quirrell. (Also, "horcrux as a copy" would not explain how Quirrell is a spirit able to possess bodies, or how he can use the horcrux in the space, so there is obviously more than just copying.)
I'd bank on other spells; "meaningless" is a pretty strong dismissal, and I don't think it could apply to something that let you become a disembodied possessing spirit. The Pioneer horcrux might just be an evil surprise for another planet some day.
Probably not, space is incredibly empty.
The main danger, I would imagine, is that somebody searching for signs of extraterrestrial life [that is, extra-their-terra, not extra-our-terra] might actually seek it out. (Hopefully anyone with the technology to make such a search successful already knows about magic and can safeguard against it.)
Well, that raises the question how exactly does magic interact with aliens? Come to think of it how do hocruxes interact with Terran non-human sentients?
The first was said as a snake animagus, and it's not clear whether the inability to lie applies there too.
Of course! Why did no one realise this! When horcruxes are basically copying yourelf like an upload (cf. the work of Robin Hanson) then all of the standard theories apply; when you have many tasks to do, run copies of yourself to do them. What other Hansonian techniques could the horcruxes be used for?
I mean, Tom Riddle should be having an excellent life, whilst he's made a copy of himself to figure out how to run the world. Then that copy could be responsible setting up the above plan, and made two more copies.
This reminds me how it's said that Quirrell is inspired by Hanson. Not just his cynical explanations of human behaviour, but also his economics of copying minds. Neat.
Maybe Quirrel and Harry are just individual vectors in a massively parallel multiverse-spanning genetic algorithm, designed to produce the ultimate Tom Riddle.
This is a very interesting idea. What probability do you assign to it?
It is too complicated, and also my knowledge of HPMOR is suboptimal. (I forgot many parts, didn't read it again, and I have read other fanfics meanwhile. Also in the discussions about HPMOR I regularly read insights that I have completely missed.)
This also contradicts my theory, unless Quirrell is planning to yet give Harry a last-minute ultra-compressed lesson.
By the way, how much human education is necessary to overcome the Interdict of Merlin? Because the students still have to study the books, don't they? Could teachers just give 1% in speech and let them learn the remaining 99% from books? Could Quirrell give Harry the 1% of everything in this final lesson? His flaunting of overpowered magic could be an introduction to this lesson. Also he made sure they have enough time.
Okay, here are a few silly numbers:
Those all sounds like reasonable estimates: too bad. I was hoping to possibly make a few quick bucks out of a conjunction fallacy bet. But given that it is you I shouldn't be surprised that the actual calibration level looks pretty sane.
I guess my time spent at the CFAR workshop wasn't completely wasted. :D
This theory makes sense, but I'm not sure how it could be done in a narratively satisfying way. "Harry defeats Voldemort" is a lot better than "Voldemort wins, only Harry is Voldemort, so in a way Harry wins, but really there was no battle in the first place, and..."
A narratively satisfying ending could be Harry defeating Voldermort without getting Riddle's memories back. (But reader would be clearly told about the original Riddle's plan.)
Dumbledore probably expected this, so maybe he separated Riddle's memories into two separate heaps: the technical skills, and the values. Harry will take the first part, but refuse to take the second part. (Okay, this feels dumb: why would Dumbledore even provide the opportunity to take the second part?) Or Harry may use the Philosopher Stone to somehow protect his "self" from being overwritten by Riddle.
Dumbledore will provide the opportunity to take the second part iff he predicts that Harry wouldn't take it.
This theory is flipping epic. Wow.
By this reasoning, 2 Horcruxes is as many as 7.
This seems possible. (The other details, as always, seem to reduce the probability.)
I am confused about how Philosopher's stone could help with reviving Hermione. Does QQ mean to permanently transfigure her dead body into a living Hermione? But then, would it not mean that Harry could do it now, albeit temporarily? And, he wouldn't even need a body. He could then just temporarily transfigure any object into a living Hermione. Also, now that I think of it, he could transfigure himself a Feynman and a couple of Einsteins...
Transfiguring someone into existence just so they can die a few hours later would certainly be regarded as dark arts. If Harry ends the transfiguration on Hermione's dead body, they QQ can use it as a template, whereas it might not be possible to transfigure Feynman for the same reason you can't transfigure a lightsaber.
Hypothesis:
Quirrel will restore Hermione to life. He will also gain access to a Hermione template that he can use on inanimate matter to create more of her to threaten Harry with the torture of.
This doesn't even require him to have the stone. It would work perfectly well with temporary copies too.
Right now, Quirrel holds all the cards, certainly against Harry, and Dumbledoor has shown himself to be immune to blackmail.
But maybe later.
If this was feasible then all Dark Wizards would probably be using temporary clones of their minions to do their bidding instead of real minions.
There are three possibilities here:
1) It takes longer to clone someone than the transfigureation lasts, so by the time you have cloned their feet, their head has detransfigured. (This assumes that humans are so complex that you have to concentrate on one part of them at a time, like Harry's pencil.) In this case, cloning is useless.
2) It takes longer to clone someone than the transfigureation lasts, but the time-limit starts once the transfigureation is complete. In this case, cloning minions is still useful for increasing numbers before a battle, or for suicide missions, but the dark lord would also have to work out that the body needs to be kept cold (otherwise parts of it would die while you are transfiguring other parts) and then warmed and brought to life with a defibrillator. Its quite possible no-one would ever have thought of this, and had the skill and moral flexibility to implement it.
3) It takes less time to clone someone than the transfigureation lasts. In this case, the earth would quickly be overrun by self-replicating minions.
So (3) can be ruled out on empirical grounds.
It is still weird, though. Do we have any bounds on the relation between size of the object and time you can maintain the transfiguration. Harry can maintain (without contact) some transfigurations for a pretty long time, even with a large-ish object like a cauldron. Unless the time you can maintain a transfiguration decreases very fast with the size of the end object (Harry transfigured a unicorn and a big rock into something small and maintained it easily), there is no reason why Quirrel would not be able to create transfigured clones able to clone themselves. And we know that transfiguring an inanimate object into something living can easily be done for strong wizards, as McGonnagle proved early in the story with the desk into pig thing.
Did Harry ever give serious thought to whether his strong desire to never be responsible for a death actually makes sense when he's going to have to deal with violent situations?
Chapter 85. And arguably his scenes with Dumbledore regarding "the phoenix's price."
Well, it seems to be axiomatic. It's not a matter of "being responsible for a death" so much as "death is bad." Even in a violent situation, the ideal is to save everyone's life.
As he then says, though, if you can't save everyone, you have no right playing batman.
Realization: Not only is it suspicious that Harry finally makes the Quirrell=Voldemort connection almost immediately after Snape hits him with an anti-Confundus spell but the fact that Quirrell hasn't obliviated Harry yet is positive proof that he intends Harry to know that Q=V for the time being. For what purpose?
Quirrell can't safely cast spells on Harry.
Oops, he could just have Snape do it though or wake up someone else to do it.
.. It's possible Harry can't be obliviated. Salazar wanted his descendants to have a trust engine. Memory charms are a good way to break such an engine. So he may have taken steps to prevent that. Heck, Occlumency might suffice all on it's own to put a stop to that trick.
If Parseltongues couldn't be Obliviated, I would expect that to become something known in legend. Memory Charms get thrown around like candy, after all.
Do we know it isn't? I mean, you have a very good point, and I didn't think of that problem - it is really not a secret you could plausibly keep for a thousand years, even with flawless commitment to family loyalty, because sooner or later someone will try to obliviate one of you and get away both alive and with their memory intact.
But on the other hand, Parsel-tongue seems like the kind of thing that's going to just accumulate rumors about it's properties like it was coated in velcro. Picking out which of the properties attributed to that ability are actually real from all the baseless rumors might be quite difficult. Especially if there are other defenses against obliviate.
.. And if defenses are possible, they have to exist. About 3 seconds after someone told me about memory charms and obliviate, I'd personally make "Become Safe From That Shit" priority number one, They're skincrawlingly, mindwarpingly awful spells. The kind of thing where if there isn't any other counters, I'd move to mars to preclude the possibility.
Hm. Point. It really depends on how rare Parseltongues were - I'm pretty sure the only ones left are Voldemort and, well, Voldemort, but that might well be because Voldy killed them all. If they used to be "uncommons" rather than "rares", to use the CCG terms, then I'd expect the true legends to stand out much more than if nobody really knew much of anything.
In short, today either every wizard in Britain is a descendant of Salazar Slytherin or none is. It seems awfully convenient for Quirell to suddenly have a foolproof way to make Harry believe certain claims. It seems to me that the whole "snakes can't lie" thing would have been revealed when Quirell was trying to convince Harry he didn't want to kill Bahry in Azkaban. In fact, that would have shortened that particular discussion considerably, in a situation where time was essential.
It has already been established that ventriloquism and silencing charms exist and that Quirell can do silent and wandless spell casting, so the "two plus two" test could easily have been faked.
That's not how ancestry works.
First, generally speaking, exponentiation of ancestry breaks down rapidly (pedigree collapse), otherwise we arrive at the absurd conclusion that any living person has a trillion great-to-the-thirtieth-grandparents. In reality, go back far enough and ancestors start occupying many positions in the tree.
Second, obvious counterexample: suppose Salazar Slytherin marries and has one child, who marries and has one child, etc...and fifty generations later, there is still only one descendant of Salazar Slytherin per generation. This counterexample can be broadened; suppose the descendants of Salazar Slytherin's second child all died in the Black Plague. In short, it's not the case that a distant ancestor is either everyone's ancestor or no one's...not until you get to mitochondrial Eve and y-chromosomal Adam, anyway, but that's another story (and much older than 1000 years ago).
Actually, the exponentiation of ancestry proves that Salazar is the ancestor of everyone in Great Britain by the pigeonhole principle, except in your case where each of his descendants only has one child. That is an extreme outlier and not likely to happen, all things considered.
A recent paper shows that everyone who lived in Europe 1000 years ago is an ancestor of everyone living in Europe today (barring immigration of course):
Great Britain is a lot smaller than Europe as a whole, so it probably takes even less than 1000 years for this effect to work.
The pigeonhole principle doesn't say what you want it to. It guarantees that some ancestors will show up multiple times on everyone's trees; it does not guarantee or even suggest that every ancestor present on anyone's tree is present on everyone's trees.
That aside, it's not clear that the descendants of Salazar Slytherin would mix sufficiently with the rest of magical Britain in 1000 years of wizard generations (possibly longer than Muggle generations, given differing lifespans) for the paper's findings to apply. Running with general experimental assumptions is not effective for specific and extraordinary cases.
True, bu 1) GB as a country has lots of immigration, 2) there are those Asian wizards sporadically mentioned before. Maybe the martial arts master whom Voldemort killed was another of Salazar's grand(...)children, and the girl living 'where they don't get invitations to Hogwarts' is yet another one?
(Or maybe she's a resurrected, Obliviated and Time-turned Hermione. After all, Quirrell didn't say he will restore her to Harry, andsuch a resolution would, from Harry's point of view, equal the destruction of Hermione's self and so a sacrifice large enough... Though that would violate restrictions on Time-turners).
On the other hand, it seems redundant of them to have discussed the possibility of a dying wizard making an Unspeakable Vow, and an opportunity for it not arising before the end).
It's true that a family tree either dies out or grows exponentially, but 2 is not necessarily the relevant exponent.
If the expected number of children an average descendant of Slytherin has is N, after 33 generations we should expect to see N^33 heirs of Slytherin. (You should think that this manipulation is suspicious as well, but it can be justified mathematically in, say, the Galton-Watson model.) Taking N=1.25 gives us only around 1500 descendants after 1000 years. And this is, if anything, an overestimate that does not take any intermarriage into account.
Powers of 2 only become relevant if you're looking backwards from a specific person; for example, if you want to know whether two people have a common ancestor. In that respect, I (tentatively) believe the paper you link to.
One of us must be wrong; it can't both be the case that everyone 1000 years ago is an ancestor of everyone living today, and that the average person 1000 years ago only had 1500 descendants.
I think N is closer to two or higher; assuming the average person has two children, they will have four grandchildren on average, eight great-grandchildren on average, and so on. So there really should be 2^33 heirs, though not 2^33 unique heirs; many of those heirs are just different genealogical paths to the same people.
I think if N were below two, it would be below the replacement rate and the population would shrink over time.
Indeed, I doubt that everyone 1000 years ago is an ancestor of everyone living today. I expect that everyone 1000 years ago is an ancestor of everyone [Edit: at least within a geographical region], of no-one, or is atypical in some way (for example, I expect a family that is well-off to have a number of children sampled from a different distribution, which has no reason to have mean greater than 2).
You are right, though, that across the board N has to be greater than 2 or else the global population would shrink over time. Moreover, if (when we look at Slytherin's descendants specifically) N is 1 or less, we expect the Slytherin line to eventually die out. This leaves room for a line that neither dies out nor grows as quickly as population does overall.
Iirc, in canon, the Gaunt family (Voldemort's family) was the last living set of descendants of Salazar Slytherin, and they were very inbred by the time of the books, so it appears that JKR at least provided some workaround for this.
As for the reliability of Parseltongue, there's some precedent for it apparently serving as truth-enforcement. Chapter 49:
Professor Quirrell is known for his aversion to unnecessarily redundant conversation, so it seems likely here that he wants to be sure Harry is telling the truth. Later, in Chapter 66:
It would have helped Quirrell convince Harry in Azkaban, but it's possible he thought it would be more useful for Harry not to know yet how much information his unwittingly-true answers were giving Quirrell.
And might possibly have prompted Harry to insist on hearing about Bellatrix in Parselmouth.
Quirrell didn't reveal that he's a Parselmouth but instead went through the road of transforming in a snake that might not be bound by the Parselmouth truth saying bind.
I think this is strong evidence for Quirrell being bound by the same rules in animagus form. Discounted because he could have very easily been lying there.
The argument from number of descendants equally applies to the question "Why isn't every wizard in Britain, or none of them, a Parselmouth?" It does not make any particular feature of being a Parselmouth more likely.
.. I have a theory about that.
What is the number one piece of advice we give people about relationships? The one rule which is regarded as the key to success and happiness in romance?
Its honest communication.
Salazar's decendants can have a perfect, magically enforced, version of that. And all they have to do is marry their cousin. The family wasn't obsessed with blood purity at all, it is simply that after growing up in a household where harmony was routinely established via this glorious gift of Salazar, the very idea of intimacy with anyone that this could not be shared with was usually repugnant.
That's why Quirrel calls it a curse. It lead the entire clan down a path of inbreeding! Unintentional consequences are unintentional.
Canon!Salazar is a bloodpurist already. He and the other founders of Hogwarts have a big row about it- who should be able to attend Hogwarts? Only the pureblooded! Apparently this is the reason why he built the chamber of secrets in the first place... Awesome theory otherwise.
Perhaps — but in canon, Voldemort himself is not a pureblood. For that matter, his mother was not exactly raised to know how to have healthy relationships.
Riddle was born out of the near-final collapse of the bloodline. Grandparents were awful because of over 500 years of insularity and intermarriage. Mother whammies cute boy as escape tactic / because she's just seriously fucked up. But because his mother conceived him with someone not from the family, he ends up the first scion in, well, most likely centuries to be born with good health. Physically, anyway.
By all rights, Volde should be an inbred retard, not a genius dark lord.
That's not how inbreeding works, though... If one of your parents' family (in Voldie's case, his mother) has been inbred for generations but the other parents has a completely different gene pool, then you should be fine. Inbreeding just makes it more likely that you have two of the same recessive allelle (which is bad in many situations), but Voldie only got one of each from his mother.
That is only if all deleterious alleles are recessive. Though of course, we don't have any numbers and can imagine anything.
ETA: and a single recessive deleterious allele in the father's genome would have disproportionate consequences. Although there would be about 50% chance of getting it, humans carry lots of such stuff, so overall probability of weak (but at least viable) progeny should still be high enough.
Inbreeding just makes it more likely you get two of the same allele (with bad consequences if said allele is deleterious), it does not make it inherently more likely that any single allele you have is deleterious.
True. And a progressively large portion of progeny would die before procreating, exactly because of that. Maybe there would even be bottlenecks along the way.
Yet it seems to me that a squib (?) whom Merope chose could have a different set of heterozygous=hidden deleterious alleles, which in Merope's genome would not have been eliminated yet, but getting close to it.
Also, how on Earth was Slytherin's curse even inherited? It would be something outside of genes, since he didn't know about their existence. So the ability would be develop undiminished with blood 'dilution', which means a Parselmouth cannot be seen as evidence of pure-bloodedness, which would be a blow to Draco's belief in his father's ethics... And in Harry's belief in genes-only inheritance...
Now, if Salazar was secretly a woman, and only daughters would get to be Parselmouths, that would be another story...
I actually do understand genetics, but I forgot that Voldie had a muggle father. Been a long time since I read canon HP.
Unlike canon, Voldie's father in HPMoR could have lacked magical phenotype, but must have had one magic allele and at least some distant wizard/like ancestors, because of inheritance of magic in HPMOR (which is different from canon). If somebody sequenced the DNA of HPMoR version of Voldie's father, they would find the squib genetic make-up, not muggle.
That is just a side technical note, though. The father was probably sufficiently unrelated to the mother's family, which probably really helped with the inbreeding problems.
That's a mistake. The response should be to transfigure air into a very thin net of carbon nanotube that's invisible and that can be between him an Quirrell's gun. Transfiguration doesn't seem to need speaking if I remember right.
Is a sheet of carbon nanotube so thin that it's invisible actually going to stop a bullet? And even if it does, once Quirrell realizes what happened, what are the odds Harry can keep such a wall up for more than three tenths of a second?
Glass also manages to let light through. Carbon nanotubes are very strong. To make them invisible you just have to get the structure right and have big enough pores in the net for the wavelength of light to pass through.
The wall is Harry magic and as thus not able to be simply canceled by Quirrell. It also doesn't take that long to grab the time turner and activate it. Probably less than a second.
You cannot transfigure from air, hard physical limit. Harry tested this.
Can't you? If I recall correctly, Harry tried and failed before succeeding with Partial Transfiguration, while he was still thinking in the terms of atoms. Also, you could consider transfiguring air as a partial transfiguration unless it's within a closed system, since you can't think of air as a whole or defined object. So it stands to consideration that Harry might be able to do it using the model of timeless physics like he did to achieve partial transfiguration, since we have no proof that he tried again afterwards ( that I recall ). Still, this wouldn't be the best moment to try it.
Besides, could've just tried to levitate the gun or something towards the gun he could use as a shield, and run away or retrieve his invisibility cloak or used the spare turn on the time-turner... There are countless possibilities. Even if he did appear on the corridor one hour before, when only Snape was there, he could probably convince him of acting as he did towards him... Which would've opened the possibility of another Harry hidden somewhere ready to try to take down professor Quirrell, or rather a Harry who had already sent a messenger Patronus to Dumbledore so he could quietly and without disrupting the Quidditch match take down the very charming Defence professor. Actually, this could still happen if Harry somehow retrieves his time-turner, or even if Cedric is hidden in Harry's pouch and uses it ( though I'm not sure how this would turn out... )
What happens if he just bolts and tries to use the Time-Turner as soon as possible? He gets shot, obviously, or at least shot at; but wizards seem hard to kill by mundane means, bullet wounds usually aren't immediately fatal, and fast-moving targets in close quarters are hard to hit. I think he has a good chance of survival, maybe better than if he does what the legendary dark wizard wants.
On the other hand, if future Harry suddenly appeared, Time-Turned, in the forbidden corridor with serious wounds from Muggle weapons, I can't see that doing anything other than causing a massive stink. The fact that present him and the rest of the students got to the forbidden corridor without encountering a stink may count as evidence that it wouldn't work.
Good idea. Not enough time.
What could Harry use to get out of this pickle?
I've probably missed something, so feel free to add more in the replies.
Well, it doesn't take a Seer to tell us the best hope is with capabilities V doesn't know about. Other things could still play a part, but don't expect them to make the decisive difference.
What does that leave us? * Aspects of Harry's mind other than raw intelligence/creativity. In particular, V seems to have a hard time modeling goodness. * More accurate prophecy interpretation (Dark Lord is death) * Possibly control over dementors; V may not know the full extent, though he knows about the scaring and that Harry survived Azkaban. * Partial transfiguration. Dumbledore flagged this possibility way back, and I'm definitely calling Chekhov's Gun on the shaping exercises. The problem is how Harry will get to do any transfiguration. And in the event he does get a chance to do one "harmless" transfiguration, V can just ask him in Parseltongue if he's planning anything.
It's also possible V won't be able to fully predict Harry's intelligence because he's never faced a copy of himself before, but Moody is a pretty good practice opponent. In particular, having fought Mad-Eye means V won't be caught of guard by the extent of Harry's precautions.
I don't think its something he'll do alone.
Flamel + Dumbeldore aren't stupid. Especially Flamel's game plan is not known to us.
Snape may also have an unknown game plan.
Especially since Snape's loyalty to Dumbledore may be weaker now that Harry has talked to him about Lily.
As for the last possibility, he doesn't leave from the Quidditch game until around a quarter past 11, so that can't help him for another five hours or so.
True, but that doesn't mean it won't help him eventually, and he may be able to hold out for those five hours.
Or Draco might have ordered Crabbe and Goyle to come find him if he doesn't return, or set other backup plans in motion.
WMG time:
Quirrell is dying because he's Tranfigured himself. (I don't know why at this point.)
From Ch 79:
I think this is what is atrophying Quirrell's physical body.
I still think the illness is faked to give everyone a ready suspicion as to the nature of his inevitable failure as defense professor at the end of the year, rather than the true reason.
In that case I don't see the need for drinking unicorn blood.
Increasing the credibility of the fake, of course.
Only towards Harry who's probably not in a good position to spot a fake illness anyway.
On the other hand it adds exposure. Even with Harry it lead to the episode with the centaur.
Too much of the illness is verified by other people. Pomfrey, for example - I can't imagine Dumbledore would leave Quirrell alone with Pomfrey and then not check her for mind magic.
Well some of it is faked, but he didn't intend to get caught drinking Unicorns.
I just realized why some spells were causing Harry dread, apprehension, and anxiety in chapter 104. It's not because Professor Sprout is controlled by Professor Quirrell (which she is), since other spells of hers fail to trigger the effect and yet one of Tonk's spells does. It's because Quirell is using metamagic to influence the outcome of the battle! He empower's Sprout's brown bolt so that it tears through Professor Snape's shield, and he quickens her stunner so that Snape can't dodge. Then he empowers Tonk's spell to ensure that she will take out Sprout.
In retrospect, this makes perfect sense. There are too many people involved, and combat is inherently chaotic; there is simply no way Quirrell can predict exactly how the fight will go. But he can be there, using gentle nudges to actively steer it towards the small region in outcome-space that ranks high in his utility function, and hope that Harry Potter is too distracted by the battle to notice (which he was; his deduction that Quirrell is behind the plot never once mentions this fact). As a bonus, this explains how Sprout can defeat Snape, when normally we wouldn't expect her to stand a chance.
The entire point of that whole battle is to encourage Harry to commit his hidden resources (Lesath under the Cloak). The whole brawl is basically a show put on for Harry's benefit. Since Quirrell controls the time of Harry's coming to the scene, he could easily take out Snape himself and move him out of the way earlier. He didn't need to bring Sprout or manipulate others to come.
Since Quirrell neglected to ask Harry in Parseltongue whether he still has hidden resources Quirrell doesn't know about, it's still just about possible that Cedric Diggory, Time-Turned, is following them under the second Cloak. I hope he does.
Does anyone else get the feeling that these "payoff" chapters are less exciting to read than the "mystery" chapters were? This isn't meant to take a stab at Eliezer, I've noticed that in many written works. Ra and Fine Structure were also more fun when they were mysterious. Worm and Pact somehow manage to avoid that, maybe because they don't rely so heavily on mystery, and have fight scenes and character drama to compensate.
Fine Structure is a terrible example, if we're critiquing fiction in general. It literally is a smattering of high-concept puzzle pieces prior to the final two chapters.
Snape's big reveal in canon had a similar effect on me, since it was more or less solved by the readers ahead of time.
IIRC, at the end of The Dark Tower series King breaks the fourth wall and basically says: are you certain you want to read the ending? It will not be as good as you expect, so you might as well stop right here and savor the journey rather than being disappointed by the destination.
That isn't what 'breaking the fourth wall' means- it would be some element of a fictional universe engaging with or acknowledging reality.
I would also like to express my fiery and eternal hatred for the 'happy' ending he wrote. The final ending redeemed for me what was an irredeemable book.
Damn.
I had lost track of Ra until this comment implied that it was completed.
So I read the ending and was soundly disappointed. It had the same ending as an earlier short story of his.
Ah well. I guess it's time to write off sam512 for the foreseeable future.
When the final chapter of Ra was released, I also felt pretty disappointed, so I went back over the story, trying to figure out where it went wrong. I concluded that the turning point was Abstract War, and actually came up with an explanation of everything before Abstract War that made more sense to me than Sam's explanation. It was pretty fun! I've posted it on reddit here.
Well done! That makes a great deal more sense.
Same here, unfortunately, mostly because there haven't really been any surprising revelations so far. I'm holding out hope that Eliezer is going to pull something, though. (Well, not really "holding out hope". More like I'd be extremely surprised if he didn't have something up his sleeve.)
He has said that HPMOR is intended to be "solvable" and that at least one person worked out what was going on (no, I have no idea how much detail that implies) very early on. So I wouldn't be astonished to find that all the remaining Big Ideas have been guessed.
He also said that if someone guessed the entire plot, they'd "know" immediately. I don't think any reader has had a revelation like that yet (apart from the mystery reader who guessed it near the beginning).
It could be that EY is overestimating how "obvious" (for lack of a better word) everyone else will find something "obvious" to him.
That's possible, but (unless I'm misremembering) the one reader who did guess the plot said it seemed "obvious" to him/her as well, which is evidence in favor of it being obvious once you see it.
This could explain the reduced number of comments. As Alsadius pointed out, there used to be 500 comments per chapter, so it stands to logic that as the series advance more users figure it out and stop commenting so as not to spoil it.
These are also way shorter chapters.
Without even leaving a comment saying, "I've figured it out"?
You have a point, though there's no need to. I know I wouldn't, since I can't see what benefit would come from it. Specially if they figured it out between arcs (since there were no discussion threads active, or nearly none at least.) But probably at least a few would've said it and taking into account how many people would've needed to figure it out for that to account for the reduced number of comments, it's strong evidence against it. Sorry, I guess I didn't think it through too much.
From Chapter 88: Time Pressure, Part 1, before anyone knows about the troll yet:
Are there any other times that Quirrell is described making similar gestures? (Note that another time he apparently controls someone else--the centaur in Chapter 101--he doesn't do this, but that may be due to the centaur actually being dead as some have speculated.) [Edit for Ch. 106: Confirmed; the centaur and Fluffy became Infieri.]
Quirrel seems on the road to get the Philosopher's Stone. It's certainly possible that he will fail or Harry ( / time-turned Cedric Diggory) will manage to swipe it at the last minute. But with around 80k words left to go, there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of story left if Harry gets the stone in the next couple of chapters.
I draw your attention to a few quotes concerning the Philosopher's Stone:
So we have multiple mentions of the possibility of creating a Philosopher's Stone. We also have Quirrel's promise not to kill anyone within Hogwarts for a week. And Flamel may still be out there, with the knowledge of how he created the Stone in the first place.
All this leads to the possibility that Quirrel gets ahold of the current Philosopher's Stone, and Harry learns enough in seeing the stone in person to be able to recreate it using a combination of magic and technology.
You can't transfigure anything that doesn't exist yet, so just having a Stone doesn't mean an instant singularity. You can't just will a superwizard or an AI into existence. This leaves plenty of space for a war between two sides, both of which have permanent transfiguration at their disposal.
Given EY's noticeable penchant for echoing canon, I have a general guess as to what Quirrell's plans for the schoolmaster are...
Snape kills Dumbledore?
Yup.
Once you think of it, he couldn't leave that one out. There has to at least be a big nod, though the actual murder won't necessarily happen.
Well, don't be shy! We're all free to make predictions, as long as we don't rely on private or retracted information from EY.
Harry's commitment is quite weaksauce, and it was surprising that he wasn't called on it:
So he's free to call help as long as he expects to win the ensuing encounter. After which he could hand the Stone to a subdued Quirrell for just a moment, technically fulfilling that clause as well. Also, the "to no good end" qualifier? "Winning against Voldemort" certainly would count as a good end, cancelling that part as well.
Parseltongue doesn't produce binding promises. There no need to technically fulfill clauses. It doesn't function as a commitment device. It just makes someone talk frankly about his own intentions.
Harry can't provide any stronger commitment and is indeed sorry about his inability to provide a stronger commitment.
We have a bunch of Parseltongue statements from earlier in the fic. Who wants to go back and see if any of them were lies?
Fwiw, I am not convinced that Quirrel is definitely telling the truth there. For one, "Sslytherin not sstupid. Ssnake Animaguss not ssame as Parsselmouth. Would be huge flaw in sscheme."
He's human when he talks in Parselmouth, though, and chances are the whole Harry's-a-Parselmouth-because-Voldie-is deal is carried over from canon too.
Only now. The past statements were made as an animagus.
(Presumably because outing himself as a Parselmouth might have given the game away, but now Harry has already decided he's Voldemort so there's nothing to lose.)
Why does Quirrel need Harry's help to obtain the Stone? What can Harry do that can't be done by Quirrel, Sprout, Snape (who is now controlled by Quirrel), the other students present (who want to get the Stone but not to use it, bypassing the Mirror), Harry's Cloak and Time-Turner (now in Quirrel's possession), and every other resource Quirrel could have prepared (e.g. Bellatrix)?
Finally, why did Quirrel have to bargain for Harry's help, instead of having Sprout or Snape use Imperius on him?
I haven't seen any theory that explains this, but surely such a major plot point should have been hinted in advance.
ETA: Harry agrees with my interpretation that we're missing something:
I think this is all part of Quirrel's long game. Voldemort could have taken Magical Britain by force, but didn't. Why Voldemort, then? To be a scary villain and make people rally to "David Munroe". Why? Political power is one answer, and it has been much talked about in the story, but I'm not convinced. "Rule Magical Britain" seems too small. But Magical Britain is the site of Merlin's creations. It contains the Philosopher's Stone. It contains Nicolas Flamel and his lore. It contains the Department of Mysteries, the Ministry has control over time-turners, and so on. Tom Riddle has been playing a very long game to obtain magical power. He has the secrets of Slytherin. He isn't stopping there. Because of the Interdict of Merlin and the resulting decline of magic, old magic is powerful magic. This makes Flamel (Baba Yaga?) a huge, obvious, and dangerous target for Riddle. Dumbledore is as powerful as he is in large part because of what Flamel has shared with him. Riddle wants that power too, and force will probably not do the trick. What he needs is to inhabit a personality that Flamel and/or Dumbledore would support during a time of great need.
The Philosopher's Stone is a huge milestone on his journey to power, but it's not the end. I think Quirrel is setting up a narrative in which Harry destroys Voldemort/Quirrel, but Riddle actually ends up inhabiting Harry (or already does). "Voldemort" can, of course, be resurrected as a convenient antagonist at any time, creating a crisis that will induce Dumbledore to teach Harry all he knows. Dumbledore can be killed, in either that or a subsequent crisis, inducing Flamel to share with Harry even more than Dumbledore knew. And Harry, as leader of Magical Britain and potentially Head Warlock, etc., will have access to other powers as well.
So that's why Harry has to be along, and possibly why Quirrel has suddenly turned obviously villainous instead of just taking Harry up on his offer to help get the stone. Harry is part of the narrative; he has to be there so he can be the hero. Harry's remaining hour on his time-turner might be an intended part of this to make the whole thing plausible to Dumbledore and/or the rest of Magical Britain, who must believe in the end that Harry did actually best Voldemort in some clever way.
Does Flamel live in Britain? In real life, Flamel lived (and died) in France; I can't remember if either canon or MOR said anything about his moving to Britain, but the Wikia doesn't.
I didn't know that and I may have made a bad assumption about Flamel's location.
I think we've got Dumbledore to thank for this one, honestly.
CanonVoldemort went to every effort to kill Dumbledore, but it seems clear that RationalistVoldemort could have murdered him at leisure. He keeps Dumbledore around as a sort of Batman to his Joker. It puts the story where he taught him not to respond to hostage taking in perspective.
Despite his disdain, Voldemort has to recognize that Dumbledore's madness is occasionally an advantage. Since he elects not to kill Dumbledore, he has to compensate for it. I'd argue that he actually enjoys it on some level.
Thus, while all logic has Voldemort dead long ago (for all the reasons Harry/Quirrel discuss) Dumbledore leaps to the conclusion that Voldemort is alive and behind everything. That is, he leaps to the correct conclusion, for no reason.
Similarly, given a belief in the existence of Voldemort somewhere in the world, any other wizard would be searching diligently and inventively. Dumbledore, by contrast, sets up a trap that couldn't be more obvious if it was a box propped up by a stick. Quirrel openly mocks it earlier in the tale.
Its a trap that should never work, and yet, here we are, with Lord Volodemort entering the trap.
Harry is, to Voldemort's mind, mostly just a subset of his own abilities. Not as smart, shackled by stupid teachings, not as magically powerful. If the creator of the defenses was some kind of RivalVoldemort there would be no need whatsoever for him to bring the potentially traitorous Harry, but the defenses were designed by Dumbledore, and will be just as stupidsmart as you'd expect.
The traps set up by faculty are more or less just foreplay. They are set up by the Snapes of the world, just weaker and dumber versions of Voldemort. But Dumbledore's might be a whole other kettle of fish.
Perhaps, in order to reach the mirror you must pass a Dementor? Its a stretch to imagine him having a dementor in the school, but maybe its trapped somehow so it can't kill students?
Maybe you have to persuade a phoenix to bring the mirror? Or casting the spell to get to it requires your life energy so that if you don't have a phoenix giving you strength you'll die in the process.
Perhaps its as simple as the magical equivalent of a rock that only Dumbledore is strong enough to life. Or it is just keyed to only open for Harry Potter, because Dumbledore irrationally believes that Harry will be the next Great Hero.
The edges of Voldemort's abilities, those minor tricks and habits that Harry has that Voldemort hasn't deigned to acquire yet, might be the key to Dumbledore's final barrier. Its worth bringing Harry along for that.
Beyond that, I think there is a bit of Steerpike syndrome here. Voldemort is probably, on some level, lonely, and Harry/Tom is useful as a sop to this.
Univat ernq 108, V srry fhcre cebhq bs guvf thrff.
Spoilers for Chapter 108 should be in rot13 in the thread on Chapters 105–107. (At least, I think that's the rule, and I support such a rule. For now, I am having the good sense to not scroll up.)
Edit: Thanks!
I don't think Dumbledore does shit for no reason. I think he knows more than he can let on, so he acts on what he knows but doesn't provide the real justification because it would compromise his sources and methods. He probably has extensive access to prophecies, which are the only way we know about that information can travel back more than 6 hours. Dumbledore has done some very long range things, like "your father's rock", and the hint to Lily about thestral blood. This is a guy who has access to many more relevant prophecies than we have seen. He at least has bugged Trelawney's bedside, and he may have sorted out better access than that. Plus, by being someone who is very powerful and extensively engages with, interprets, and acts upon prophecy, he becomes a relevant actor that prophecies tend to come to. Dumbledore is an excellent tool for prophecy, and vice versa.
Reference for Steerpike syndrome please?
The Gormenghast books are more or less about a castle full of what I'd call anti-rationalists. They are entirely ruled by customs passed down from prehistory, and are generally incapable of change or improvement.
Enter Steerpike, villain of the piece and scullery boy. He is, I guess I 'd call it awake, and strives to improve his lot rather than being content with what his birth dooms him to. He is resisted at every turn by the denizen's bloody minded traditionalism (Spoilers: at one point he murders the 90 year old Master of Rituals, hoping to take his place, only for his 70 year old apprentice to come creeping out of the Room of Abiding where he has been waiting for this moment his entire life.)
Steerpike ultimately descends into terrorism out of more or less pure frustration. There's an incident where his evil works are discovered, but he feels relief more than anything else, since he no longer has to pretend to swallow their dogmas. I see shades of him in Voldemort's expressed deep loathing of the ordinary folks. I think he's delighted to have Harry to talk to, despite being his enemy.
Thanks. Gormenghast is one thing that I found in my Google search, but the description that I read of Steerpike didn't highlight loneliness as a character trait.
It's a reference to the Gormenghast trilogy, of which one of the main characters is an isolated teenager named Steerpike.
I started reading the first book, but stopped about 20% of the way in (may have been less, it's been a while since then), because I found it stupefyingly boring. Does that trilogy get any better later on ?
If you find it boring it's probably not for you. I enjoy the language, the descriptions and so on. It's the same as my recommendation for LOTR. I liked it a lot but I don't think everyone should. I find both pleasant to read even when nothing is really happening in the story.
Oddly enough I really like LOTR as well as The Silmarillion... So maybe I should give this Gormenghast thing another shot, I don't know.
I think the difference between LOTR/Simlarillion and Gormenghast is that Tolkien's books contain well-crafted language and descriptions of scenery that are punctuated by moments of sheer epic overload; whereas Gormenghast contains the former but not the latter.
But again, I haven't made it that far into it, so I could be wrong.
One theory voiced on the HPMOR subreddit is that Quirrell wants to use the stone to permanently transfigure himself into Harry.
That doesn't explain why he needs the real Harry to obtain the Stone.
He wouldn't need Harry to obtain the stone. He'd need Harry as a model.
But then why go through all the trouble of first trying to convince, and then coercing, Harry to cooperate in retrieving the Stone? He can just go get the Stone by himself, and then tackle Harry later. Or stun Harry and take his body along.
Why do the complex plot that got Harry to come there at the same time as Quirrel, potentially disrupting his maneuvers against Snape, and risk Harry's interference while obtaining the Stone?
I was too flat about that statement. It was more of a guess what they were thinking. Making more ideas up - If he retrieves the stone, then Dumbledore will be on-site very quickly. Evidence will point to Quirrell, and Harry will become inaccessible.
He needs Harry there the moment he gets the stone so he can already be Harry by the time Dumbledore shows up.
That still doesn't explain why he needs Harry to cooperate in obtaining the Stone. Even if it's more convenient to have Harry walking along, rather than towing his stunned body, Quirrel went to a lot of trouble to secure Harry's explicit help. He actually bargained and traded promises with him.
Which also leads me to ask: why couldn't Quirrel just make Sprout or Snape mind-control Harry using Imperius? Why did he have to bargain with him?
In canon, Harry is very good at resisting Imperius, even when cast by Voldemort himself.
In canon, Harry has also resisted even scarier magic cast by Voldemort.
Good point. Although there's also whatever mind control spell Quirrel just used on Snape:
Which Google informs me is a quotation from Horace meaning '[puppet-]wires that others pull'.
Still, I agree it might be too hard to control Harry on short notice using intermediaries.
Based on Harry apparently still feeling the aura of doom when Sprout was casting spells while Imperiused in Ch. 104, it's likely that casting spells on Harry through someone else is subject to the same problems that doing it directly causes. I guess he could still use more mundane means like a tranquilizer dart and some kind of gurney, but it would be difficult to accomplish without either touching or using magic on Harry in the process.
That's a plausible answer as to why he couldn't make Sprout or Snape cast Imperius on Harry. But it doesn't explain why he seems to need Harry's active help.
He could just put Harry into a small, nonmagical cage or box, and float the box along, without his magic ever touching Harry directly. Or he could stuff Harry into the pouch, like Harry did to him in the Azkaban arc. (Granted, Harry can't turn into a snake.) If he needed Harry to be stunned for the duration, he could have told Harry to stun himself, threatening to torture the other students if he didn't.
I just made a mental connection - probably a stupid one. The pouch's capacity was recently expanded and Cedric has yet to make an appearence...
The last sentence was not said in parseltongue. Could it be that Quirrell used English because it is a lie, and he believes that there is something that Harry could do to win?
Parseltongue is limited, and perhaps Quirrell felt the need to use big words like impetuous and contemplating.
Quirrell doesn't know whether Harry can do something he didn't think of.