The wording wasn't "personal safety and security of possessions" Whoever wrote this in-universe was being very silly.
The limit is blood and anything which is hers. That's not limited to physical objects, but covers things like her life, her liberty, and, yes, her job. For the students, it's a very secure wording - she really can't hurt them. Heck, if I was her, I'd feel obliged to ask students at the start of term to freely give up their ignorance, tough maybe that is implied in a contract of teaching.
Edit: She can tell it she gives the new teacher the job freely for the duration. That way it isn't a taking. It doesn't alter the contract, it alters the situation. Similarly, just on a practical level, I am betting the marriage to Perenelle was a declaration of joining in front of the goblet. "All that is mine I freely share with her" sort of thing.
Fair enough. I understand your theory now, and it seems consistent with the evidence. But why do you have 90% confidence that Voldemort's reading is wrong?
Also, if you're taking the contract completely literally, then Baba Yaga can harm students all she likes, as long as she doesn't shed any blood. A powerful Dark Lady should easily have the spell arsenal and creativity. In fact, if killing a student doesn't count as "taking" their life (which works on a poetic reading, but not on a practical one - a person's life is who they are, not something separate from them which can be taken), then "there is indeed a certain useful spell which solves the problem" quite nicely.
New long chapter! Since I expect its discussion to generate more than 160 comments (which would push the previous thread over the 500 comment limit) before the next chapter is posted, here is a new thread.
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 108
(and chapter 109, once it comes out on Monday).EDIT: There have now been two separate calls for having one thread per chapter, along with a poll in this thread. If the poll in this thread indicates a majority preference for one thread per chapter by Monday, I will edit this post to make it for chapter 108 only. In that case a new thread for chapter 109 should be posted by whoever gets a chance and wants to after the chapter is released.
EDIT 2: The poll indicates a large majority (currently 78%) in favor of one thread per chapter. This post has been edited accordingly.
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: