There is no need for all of this to be plotted out in advance! In fact, I am pretty sure none of it was.
The wording on the binding is very much what I would expect someone to come up with if they wanted a binding to keep everyone involved safe, and had insufficient training in law and logic.
BY and Perenelle run off, and work out what happened when the replacement battle magic teacher is tragically struck by lighting, realize BY has stumbled into an absurdly broad defense and just keep it going while telling the goblet that they are giving each new teacher the position of her own free will.
Voldemort steals the goblet because he's a thieving magpie when it comes to artefacts of ancient power, and promptly new teachers of DADA start dropping like flies. He's credited with the curse, and not being an idiot just goes "Yup, that was me". It's not even weird that he doesnt make the connection - The teacher who held the job when he stole it should, if I am correct, have retired normally in his or her own time, so the curse starts quite a while after the theft.
A good bit of what is supporting this whole theory is that the DADA curse is ridiculusly powerful A Great Working. Thus, if it is a possible unintentional consequence of a Great Working which we know to have been preformed, well it likely is. This being more likely than two great workings being aimed at the same job. I mean, teaching at hogwarts is prestigious, but come on..
Hm.
On the one hand, this is a plausible enough theory, with few enough moving parts that I can legitimately assign it a non-negligible probability.
On the other... from a narrative perspective, this doesn't feel satisfying. It's a violation of Knox's First - we're bringing barely-mentioned and undeveloped characters in at the last minute and giving them primary roles in the plot.
Well, I suppose if the point is that Quirrell gets taken down by adults and Harry can solve Death in peace, that's valid...
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: