The case for thinking seriously about Partial Transfiguration:

1) Partial transfiguration is wordless, but wanded.

2) it's a power Riddle doesn't know as per the prophecy.

3) Harry still holding his wand is a Chekov's Gun for a wanded spell such as transfiguration.

4) Yes, that does seems too obvious, but I don't think Eliezer wants to end the story here so he wouldn't want an extremely subtle puzzle.

5) The only evidence against is that Quirrell might have ripped it from Hermione's mind...but he wouldn't know what to look for, would he? And Dumbledore may well have obliviated it away.

Constraints

1) Only very small amounts of matter can be transfigured

2) The want must not be raised, so Harry must transfigure the ground he's pointing at. No transfiguring people's bodies or anything fancy. The air can also be transfigured.

3) Outright explosives will kill Harry as well, so you can't just make a small patch of antimatter or airborne lethal toxin unless you can find a way to shield Harry.

So, guys - any ideas as to what thimbleful of tiny molecules, placed in the earth a few feet away from Harry, can save him?

EDIT: The case against partial transfiguration as a solution

1) Too obvious

2) Harry holding the wand not Chekov's gun. Riddle is aware that he aught to have disarmed Harry. Not disarming Harry means that somehow Riddle has contingency plans or even actively wants Harry to use the wand.

3) Any combat oriented action almost certainly involves death, regardless of head starts and discreteness, even if we manage to take down Riddle's current body.

Transfiguration requires the caster's wand to touch the target. However, Harry's understanding of partial transfiguration was based on his understanding of the underlying quantum field nature of reality. This means that Harry's wand is touching everything all at once. He should be able to Transfigure anything in the area that he wants, and based on the Azkaban sequence, he could think or speak while doing so.

Here's my idea, which I've posted as a review on FF.net. Harry has advanced transfiguration. The Philosopher's Stone can make transfiguration permanent. Harry can bring life to dead things. This is very close to Harry being able to create copies of himself, which would surely be attractive to Harry. The question, then, is; when did Harry first realize this capacity?The possibility of creating a body double might very well have been enough to have persuaded Dumbledore to let Harry use the Philosopher's stone, which he seems to have access to. Or Harry might have procured the stone himself, which he seems able to, intellectually. It's just a matter of procuring a confundus charm. The current Harry could have been memory-charmed into believing he was the original Harry and this ruse may have gone on for quite some time (though reviving Hermione would have made it obvious that he had this power, and I'm not sure if Harry would have demured to do so if he thought he could. I suspect he'd have to be persuaded by someone else.) It might help in explaining why Harry could attack Voldemort, since Voldemort's curse bound only Tom Riddles "descended from him", and the current double would have been "descended" from Harry.

In this case our Harry could be destroyed and another Harry would still live (and could even play off his surviving destruction as a type of magic, snapping his fingers.) Similarly, could Harry sacrifice one of his doubles to create a horcrux and then inhabit a spare transfigured body, laying in stasis somewhere (like his bag of holding?) This seems a bit dark for Harry, but maybe possible.

I'm not sure what the limitations on this type of duplication magic would be. Perhaps multiple Harrys would need to be created 'from hit points' and even if one Harry could make another they might each be weaker or draw on the original Harry's HPs. But an army of Harry Potters striding over the hill wouldn't be a bad solution to this problem. Chaos Army of One. etc.

Lets see..

Notes: EY didn't say that noone was aware of what was happening, just that anyone who would help Harry think he is at the game. Given the prophecy about Harry, this has disturbing implications.

Anyway: Obstacles: 39 minions in not-defensively enchanted blacks. One dark lord who can't use magic on you, but who can shoot your ass, An absolute prohibition on moves that could escalate to world threatening levels.

Assets: Naked pasty english lad. Wand. Parseltongue.

.. You know, normally in this sort of situation I'd recommend talking. Parseltongue is far and away the most potent tool he has, because he can tell Voldemort true things, and Voldemort will not be able to scoff at him.

But the problem is, the only things Harry could tell him that would make him delay killing him are things Voldemort should not be told, even at the cost of his life.

So combat it is.

Sigh. This is going to hurt.

Cant partially transfigure air, but wands are not indivisible objects, so he still has a small amount of material to work with, at least once.

Partially transfigure the tip of the wand into photons. The kind of flash of light that leaves burns. Everyone is looking at you - And now they are all blind. Possibly also on fire. Do it with the center of the tip so that you are in the shadow cast by the wand - but expect a hospital stay. And a need for a new wand. Primarily, the point is that this will attract attention. Most likely, timeturned attention. So if you do this, there is now a reason for someone to rescue you a faction of a second after the initial flash. .. Which shouldn't actually even be necessary. If I read Voldemort correctly, he will bail if actually hurt. Certainly since he has already extracted the wow...

HP should ask LV whether his robes are black and blue or gold and white.

Has the 26-hour day been explained yet?

I am actually reluctant to think of ways for HP to escape, because I am kind of rooting for LV in this fic. Sure, he is ruthless and stuff, but he seems to be way less dangerous than Harry, who is prophesied to destroy the world. LV just hates stupid people. Plus he has all but made Hermione immortal, and she the only voice of reason in the story. And he likes gazing at stars, and is against nuclear weapons. A competent ruler is such a rarity. As kings go, he would be considered cute.

ROT 13ed Final Exam suggestion:

Va Cnefyrgbathr "Jung cebonovyvgl qb lbh nffvta gb gur cbffvovyvgl gung V nz fhssvpvragyl Gbz Evqqyr gung V jvyy or pbcvrq vagb lbhe Ubepehk argjbex?"

I am the only one quite upset about this and thinking it's mean from Eliezer ? There are at least three kind of reasons that makes me upset :

1. It breaches an implicit contract between readers and authors. Especially when it's such a long work, each reader has invested literally hundred of hours to get to this point. Asking us to do something to get the real ending, that's already written, at this point is a kind of blackmail. And the only long-term answer to blackmail, as Dumbledore explained in HPMOR, is to not comply.

2. What purpose does it serve, apart doing harm ? The purposes of HPMOR, in my understanding, are : 1. Bring awareness (and therefore, among other things, money/donations) to MIRI/CFAR. 2. Show people that rationality is awesome so they'll read more about it (ie, the Sequences, books, ...) and therefore "raise the sanity waterline". This undermines 1. by pissing off part of the reader base and making the story suboptimal, and this greatly undermines 2. if the super-rational Harry still fails.

3. It's not a fair nor fun game at all, because there is so much we don't know about the laws of the settings, so we are reduced to blind guesses. We don't know how fast can Harry transfigure things. We don't know what he can transfigure (antimatter, monofilament, ...). We don't know what's in the moleskin pouch. We don't if he can transfigure while holding a normal conversation in Parseltongue. We don't know if Voldemort can detect him doing transfiguration. And so on. It's like having to devise a plan in a RPG without the stats of your character, without the (numeric) effect of spells/abilites, and without the ability to ask the DM "could my character do X ?". There are many times in HPMOR when things I didn't think should work did work, and otherwise, and it's fine, it's Eliezer's world, he sets the rules. But then, he can't ask us to blind guess a solution to a very hard problem where we don't know the rules of the world.

Disappointing. It appears as though Eliezer wrote himself into a corner, and is now looking for help from the readers...

Pessimistic Assumptions Thread

"Excuse me, I should not have asked that of you, Mr. Potter, I forgot that you are blessed with an unusually pessimistic imagination -"

– Ch. 15

Sometimes people called Moody 'paranoid'.

Moody always told them to survive a hundred years of hunting Dark Wizards and then get back to him about that.

Mad-Eye Moody had once worked out how long it had taken him, in retrospect, to achieve what he now considered a decent level of caution - weighed up how much experience it had taken him to get good instead of lucky - and had begun to suspect that most people died before they got there. Moody had once expressed this thought to Lyall, who had done some ciphering and figuring, and told him that a typical Dark Wizard hunter would die, on average, eight and a half times along the way to becoming 'paranoid'. This explained a great deal, assuming Lyall wasn't lying.

Yesterday, Albus Dumbledore had told Mad-Eye Moody that the Dark Lord had used unspeakable dark arts to survive the death of his body, and was now awake and abroad, seeking to regain his power and begin the Wizarding War anew.

Someone else might have reacted with incredulity.

– Ch. 63

Under standard literary convention... the enemy wasn't supposed to look over what you'd done, sabotage the magic items you'd handed out, and then send out a troll rendered undetectable by some means the heroes couldn't figure out even after the fact, so that you might as well have not defended yourself at all. In a book, the point-of-view usually stayed on the main characters. Having the enemy just bypass all the protagonists' work, as a result of planning and actions taken out of literary sight, would be a diabolus ex machina, and dramatically unsatisfying.

But in real life the enemy would think that they were the main character, and they would also be clever, and think things through in advance, even if you didn't see them do it. That was why everything about this felt so disjointed, with parts unexplained and seemingly inexplicable.

– Ch. 94

"You may think that a grade of Dreadful... is not fair. That Miss Granger was faced with a test... for which her lessons... had not prepared her. That she was not told... that the exam was coming on that day."

The Defense Professor drew in a shaking breath.

"Such is realism," said Professor Quirrell.

– Ch. 103

Recalling finewbs's coordinated saturation bombing strategy, if the goal is to maximize the total best-guess probability of the set of scenarios covered by at least one solution, this means crafting and posting diverse solutions which handle as wide a diversity of conjunctions of pessimistic assumptions as possible. This would be helped by having a list of pessimistic assumptions.

(It also may be helped by having a reasonable source of probabilities of scenarios, such as HPMOR predictions on PredictionBook. Also: in an adversarial context, the truth of pessimistic assumptions is correlated.)

Its possible that the solution will have multiple steps, such as:

1) Stall for time by giving information on useful powers

2) Demand that vow requires Hermione is awakened so Harry can discuss the probability of him ending the world.

3) Hermione causes a distraction by slitting her wrists and running round shouting "Look at me! I'm bleeding silver blood everywhere but I'm not dying! How can it be?"

4) Harry triggers resonance cascade

5) Harry transfigures weapon

6) Harry kills everyone

7) Harry, badly wounded, drinks Hermione's unicorn blood to save him from death, killing Hermione in the process

8) Hermione comes back from the dead because of the Horocrux

9) Hermione uses the philosophers stone to permanently transfigure them both into unicorns

10) HPMOR turns into Harry Potter/MLP:FiM crossover fanfiction

Now, my question is this: does one review have to get every step absolutely correct? Or is it ok if ten reviews each get one step correct? What if a review starts "first stall for time - many other people have submitted excellent ideas for this, which I shall defer to."?

Thought some more, and I have some ideas.

One of the realizations I think I had is that magic recognizes divisions where there are none. PT being the prime example, but also the ability of armor to block spells. PT relies on removing the caster's understanding of divisions; what if there is a way to add divisions? If Harry can convince himself that his skin is not part of himself, will it block spells the way thick leather does?

Conversely, are there other divisions that open possibilities if removed? Like between people and the ground, or people and people?

Most thinking I'm reading about uses PT to create a weapon with which to attack, but attack is not the goal. Escape is. Means of escape fall into a few categories, I think: Figuring out something like Apparition on the spot, quantum tunnelling, or Newtonian. Right now I'm just going to think about "newtonian" - It's just as ridiculous for transfiguration to not include velocity as it is for it to only effect "discrete" objects. Can Harry simply add enough velocity to himself to escape? (Adding acceralation doesn't work, as enough to escape fast enough probably squishes him)

Here are crazier things:

• There's good proper acausality in this universe. Coma-tea, time-turners, and the Stars spell. What's going on there? Is there some way to use that?

• At first, there is evidence that changes to the body and brain effect the mind. But, there's also a pile of evidence that, under circumstances, it doesn't - Horcurxes, and both resurrections. What if Harry can detach his life/magic from his body?

If you have any remotely good idea, post it as a fanfiction.net review. The currently extant ones are awful. Most don't even make sense.

Harry's assets:

• Glasses - probably a distraction, but could be just about any nonhuman object, transfigured.
• Cedric - probably in the mokeskin pouch, not easily accessible, probably only useful as a human shield, which is not Harry's style
• Invisibility cloak - might be able to block the Killing Curse, useful in general, Harry is the Master of this Deathly Hallow, it's plausible but unlikely that he'd be able to Call it without words or gestures.
• Voldemort's bargain - Voldemort has promised in Parseltongue to protect one person for each power Voldemort knows not that Harry names.
• Partial transfiguration - both a Power Voldemort Knows Not and a tactical tool
• Wand
• Harry's own flesh (which he can use for partial transfiguration)
• The air
• The death eaters (including their robes, their bones, etc.)
• Sirius ("Mr Grim")
• Stuporfy

Foreshadowing / prior hints of resources:

• Thick/heavy enough physical objects can block curses aside from the Killing Curse
• Resonance between Harry's and Voldemort's magic more likely to harm/incapacitate Voldemort than Harry
• Harry was instructed by Voldemort to cast Mahasu on any student in the classroom, chose himself. Foreshadows choosing to use promise of protection on himself?
• Antimatter was mentioned earlier, Voldemort may not know enough about it yet.
• Hermione transfigures a Buckytube
• Use of Muggle devices
• Harry's prior weakness is that he doesn't ask others for help
• Harry decided to accept the idea that the air can't be transfigured before he figured out the insight necessary to do partial transfiguration, this could be wrong, the air as well as his flesh could be transfigurable
• Prophecy about tearing apart the very stars (meaning Sirius and Bellatrix and Draco?)

Harry had to remove his left shoe, and take off the toe-ring that was his emergency portkey if someone kidnapped him and took him outside the wards of Hogwarts (and didn't put up anti-Apparition, anti-portkey, anti-phoenix, and anti-time-looping wards, which Severus had warned Harry that any inner-circle Death Eater would certainly do).

That seems to rule out apparition, portkeys, phoenixes, and time looping, so transfiguring a time turner into his hands is out, as is trying to get into a Phoenix frame of mind to summon Fawkes or another phoenix to send a message, or using his portkey.

"There are desks which are heavy enough to be fatal if dropped from a great height. There are chairs with metal legs that could impale someone if driven hard enough. The air in this classroom would be deadly by its absence, since people die in vacuum, and it can serve as a carrier for poison gases."

Harry had to stop briefly for breath, and into that pause Professor Quirrell said:

"That's three. You need ten. The rest of the class thinks that you've already used up the whole contents of the classroom."

"Ha! The floor can be removed to create a spike pit to fall into, the ceiling can be collapsed on someone, the walls can serve as raw material for Transfiguration into any number of deadly things - knives, say."

"That's six. But surely you're scraping the bottom of the barrel now?"

"I haven't even started! Just look at all the people! Having a Gryffindor attack the enemy is an ordinary use, of course -"

"I will not count that one."

"- but their blood can also be used to drown someone. Ravenclaws are known for their brains, but their internal organs could be sold on the black market for enough money to hire an assassin. Slytherins aren't just useful as assassins, they can also be thrown at sufficient velocity to crush an enemy. And Hufflepuffs, in addition to being hard workers, also contain bones that can be removed, sharpened, and used to stab someone."

By now the rest of the class was staring at Harry in some horror. Even the Slytherins looked shocked.

"That's ten, though I'm being generous in counting the Ravenclaw one. Now, for extra credit, one Quirrell point for each use of objects in this room which you have not yet named." Professor Quirrell favored Harry with a companionable smile. "The rest of your class thinks you are in trouble now, since you've named everything except the targets and you have no idea what may be done with those."

"Bah! I've named all the people, but not my robes, which can be used to suffocate an enemy if wrapped around their head enough times, or Hermione Granger's robes, which can be torn into strips and tied into a rope and used to hang someone, or Draco Malfoy's robes, which can be used to start a fire -"

"Three points," said Professor Quirrell, "no more clothing now."

"My wand can be pushed into an enemy's brain through their eye socket" and someone made a horrified, strangling sound.

"Four points, no more wands."

"My wristwatch could suffocate someone if jammed down their throat -"

"Five points, and enough."

"Hmph," Harry said. "Ten Quirrell points to one House point, right? You should have let me keep going until I'd won the House Cup, I haven't even started yet on the unaccustomed uses of everything I've got in my pockets" or the mokeskin pouch itself and he couldn't talk about the Time-Turner or the invisibility cloak but there had to be something he could say about those red spheres...

This vaguely suggests a few options:

• Harry could improvise a dark ritual to sacrifice some of his internal organs to "hire an assassin" (counting on some sort of magical healing afterwards).
• Susan Bones might also be in the pouch ("Hufflepuff [...] Bones"). Note that the real Susan Bones was not with the other students who encountered Snape in the corridor.
• Harry likely knows of some efficient poisonous gases, if he can hold his breath for long enough he can simply transfigure part of himself into one of these and wait for the Death Eaters to drop.
• Harry could somehow try to cast a spell on Voldemort to invoke the resonance, push him in a direction that disrupts the semicircle of Death Eaters.
• Harry could transfigure the air around him into a thick physical barrier that blocks everything except the Killing Curse.

Ignoring the gasps rising from behind him, Harry crossed the radius of the Patronuses, strode to a single pace from Death. Its unhindered fear burst around him like a whirlpool, like stepping next to the sucking drain of some huge bathtub emptying out its water; but with the false Patronuses no longer obscuring the level on which they interacted, Harry could reach the Dementor even as it could reach him. Harry looked straight into the pulling vacuum and -

the Earth among the stars

all his triumph at saving Hermione

someday the reality of which you are a shadow will cease to exist

Harry took all the silver emotion that fueled his Patronus Charm and shoved it at the Dementor; and expected Death's shadow to flee from him -

• and as Harry did that, he flung his hands up and shouted "BOO!"

The void retreated sharply away from Harry until it came up against the dark stone behind.

Harry can sort of wandlessly wordlessly cast something like a Patronus, he could try to do something like this to Voldemort.

Beneath the moonlight glints a tiny fragment of silver, a fraction of a line... (black robes, falling) ...blood spills out in litres, and someone screams a word.

This strongly suggests a Buckytube monofilament whipped around to decapitate all the Death Eaters. This is the most plausible solution, and it's somewhat compatible with the other Partial Transfiguration option, which is to tell Voldemort about it in exchange for protecting Harry's life (and to buy time). This is also compatible with Harry's glasses being a transfigured shield (or transfigured charmed magical shield, in either case there's no reason someone couldn't have just magically LASIK-ed his vision), which would give him a defense against any non-Killing Curse spells that go his way from anyone he doesn't immediately kill. Then he lunges for (or accios) the pouch and cloak, retrieving Hufflepuff (Susan) Bones and Cedric, to help him fight the remaining Death Eaters (or go for help). Then he casts a Patronus to get McGonagall (and insists she not disrupt the game).

Ah, better yet - the glasses should be his broomstick. Or his broomstick AND a shield. AND a gas mask. Fit together (since glasses are composite objects anyway).

OK, so here's the attack plan, to tear apart Voldemort's plan at every possible point of intervention:

1) While transfiguring a long buckytube monofilament out of his own flesh, tell Voldemort about partial transfiguration, demand that Harry himself be saved in return.

2) Wordlessly cast the Patronus at Voldemort to try to throw him off balance - as a bonus, if he manages a worldess wandless corporeal Patronus it can do step 5 early, OR possibly block a Killing Curse (not sure).

3) Whip the buckytube around to slice through a bunch of Death Eaters. Simultaneously, wordlessly wandlessly finite incantatem the glasses to detransfigure his broomstick.

4) Fly to (or accio while dodging curses) the pouch, extract Susan and Cedric, put on the cloak. They know from battle class that they should lift the sleep spell on their ally Hermione. (Harry shouldn't since it would be an interaction with Voldemort's magic that would be more likely to harm Harry than Voldemort.)

5) Cast a Patronus to get help from McGonagall (who can use her time turner so as not to disrupt the game), telling her to bring every competent battle mage she can get.

6) Cast Stuporfy at Voldemort to try and trigger the magical resonance, then fly straight at him to give him a hug.

Question for EY:

In the chapter, you wrote:

If a viable solution is posted before 12:01AM Pacific Time (8:01AM UTC) on Tuesday, March 2nd, 2015, the story will continue.

Does this mean that the reader-suggested solution will in fact be used, or will the story simply continue with the solution you originally had in mind?

If you can think of any trick that I have missed in being sure that Harry Potter's threat is ended, speak now and I shall reward you handsomely... speak now, in Merlin's name!"

Voldemort forgot a very basic ”trick”: disarming Harry first.

At the end of chapter 112, we wondered about that, too. It turns out that Harry needed to have the wand to perform the vow. With that out of the way … why does Harry still have his wand? Is this just because Eliezer wants to make sure that Harry still has a way out? Or is there some in-universe reason for Voldemort to allow this?

Just finished reading. Wow! This story is so bleak. I suspect Voldemort just "identity raped" Harry into becoming an Unfriendly Intelligence? Or at least a grossly grossly suboptimal one. Harry himself seems to be dead.

I'm going to call him HarryPrime now, because I think the mind contained in Riddle2/Harry's body before and after this horror was perpetrated should probably not be modeled as "the same person" as just prior to it.

HarryPrime is based on Harry (sort of like an uploaded and modified human simulation is based on a human) but not the same, because he has been imbued with a mission that he must implacably pursue, that has Harry's identity (and that of the still unconscious(!) and never interviewed(!) Hermione) woven into it as part of its motivational structure, in a sort of twist on coherent extraplotated volition.

"if we knew more, thought faster, were more the people we wished we were, had grown up farther together"

Versus how "old Harry" and "revived Hermione" were "#included" into the motivational structure of HarryPrime:

Unless this very Vow itself is somehow leading into the destruction of the world, in which case, Harry Potter, you must ignore it in that particular regard. You will not trust yourself alone in making such a determination, you must confide honestly and fully in your trusted friend, and see if that one agrees. Such is this Vow's meaning and intent. It forces only such acts as Harry Potter might choose himself, having learned that he is a prophesied instrument of destruction.

My estimate of Voldemort's intelligence just dropped substantially. He is well trained and in the fullness of his power, but he isn't wise... at all. I'd been modeling him as relatively sane, because of past characterization, but I didn't predict this at all.

(There are way better ways to get a hypothetical HarryPrime to "not do things" than giving him a mission as an unstoppable risk mitigation robot. If course, prophesy means self consistent time travel is happening in the story, and self consistent time travel nearly always means that at least some characters will be emotionally or intellectually blinded to certain facts (so that they do the things that bring about the now-inevitable future) unless they are explicitly relying on self consistency to get an outcome they actively desire, so I guess Voldemort's foolishness is artistically forgivable :-P

Also, still going meta on the story, this is a kind of beautiful way to "spend" the series... bringing it back to AI risk mitigation themes in such a powerfully first person way. "You [the reader identifying with the protagonist] have now been turned by magic into an X-risk mitigation robot!")

Prediction: It makes sense now why Riddle2/HarryPrime will tear apart the stars in heaven. They represent small but real risks. He has basically been identity raped into becoming a sort of Pierson's Pupeeteer (from Larry Niven's universe) on behalf of Earth rather than on behalf of himself, and in Niven's stories the puppeteer's evolved cowardice (because they evolved from herd animals, and are ruled by "the hindmost" rather than a "leader") forced them into minor planetary engineering.

As explained in Le Wik:

"In short, we found that a sun was a liability rather than an asset. We moved our world to a tenth of a light year's distance, keeping the primary only as an anchor. We needed the farming worlds and it would have been dangerous to let our world wander randomly through space. Otherwise we would not have needed a sun at all.

"We had brought suitable worlds from nearby systems, increasing our agricultural worlds to four, and setting them in a Kemplerer Rosette."

Prediction: HarryPrime's first line will be better than any in the LW thread where people talked about the one sentence ai box experiment. Eliezer read that long ago and has thought a lot about the general subject.

Something I'm still not sure about is what exactly HarryPrime will be aiming for. I think that's where Eliezer retains some play in his control over whether the ending is very short and bleak or longer and less bleak.

Voldemort kept talking about "destruction of the world" and "destroying the world" and so on. He didn't say the planet had to have to have people on it, but he might not have been talking about the planet. "The world" in normal speech often seems to mean in practice something like "the social world of the humans who are salient to us". Like in the USA people will often talk about "no one in the world does X" but there are people in other countries who do, and if someone points this out they will be accused of quibbling. Similarly, we tend to talk about "saving the earth" and it doesn't really mean the mantle or the core, it primarily means the biosphere and the economy and humans and stuff.

From my perspective, this was the key flaw of the intent:

But all Harry Potter's foolishness, all his recklessness, all his grandiose schemes and good intentions - he shall not risk them leading to disaster! He shall not gamble with the Earth's fate!

The literal text appears to be:

I shall not by any act of mine destroy the world. I shall take no chances in not destroying the world. If my hand is forced, I may take the course of lesser destruction over greater destruction unless it seems to me that this Vow itself leads to the world's end, and the friend in whom I have confided honestly [ie Hermione] agrees that this is so.

And then the errata and full intention was:

You will swear, Harry Potter, not to destroy the world, to take no risks when it comes to not destroying the world.

This Vow may not force you into any positive action, on account of that, this Vow does not force your hand to any stupidity... We must be cautious that this Vow itself does not bring that prophecy about.

We dare not let this Vow force Harry Potter to stand idly after some disaster is already set in motion by his hand, because he must take some lesser risk if he tries to stop it.

Nor must the Vow force him to choose a risk of truly vast destruction, over a certainty of lesser destruction.

But all Harry Potter's foolishness, all his recklessness, all his grandiose schemes and good intentions - he shall not risk them leading to disaster!

He shall not gamble with the Earth's fate!

No researches that might lead to catastrophe! No unbinding of seals, no opening of gates!

Unless this very Vow itself is somehow leading into the destruction of the world, in which case, Harry Potter, you must ignore it in that particular regard.

You will not trust yourself alone in making such a determination, you must confide honestly and fully in your trusted friend, and see if that one agrees.

In the shorter and sadder ending, I think it is likely that HarryPrime will escape, but not really care about people, and become an optimizing preservation agent of the mere planet. Thus Harry might escape the box and then start removing threats to the physical integrity of the earth's biosphere.

Also the "trusted friend" stuff is dangerous if Hermione doesn't wake up with a healthy normal mind. In canon, resurrection tended to create copies of what the resurrector remembered of a person, not the person themselves.

In the less sad ending I hope/think that HarryPrime will retain substantial overlap with the original Harry, Hermione will be somewhat OK, and the oath will only cause HarryPrime to be constrained in limited and reasonably positive ways. Maybe he will be risk averse. Maybe he will tear apart the stars because they represent a danger to the earth. Maybe he will exterminate every alien in the galaxy that could pose a threat to the earth. Maybe he will constrain the free will of every human on earth to not allow them to put the earth at risk... but he will still sorta be "the old Harry" while doing so.

(Not a serious suggestion)

Using the Axiom of Choice and partial transfiguration, Harry divides himself into two exact copies, one of which is killed by the Death Eaters and the other of which escapes.

"Having made the Unbreakable Vow, it is impossible for me to engage in motivated reasoning which would put the world at risk, while it is entirely possible for you to do so. I am convinced that you are more likely to fulfill the prophecy by killing me than by letting me live. Since my reasoning is not and cannot be motivated in such a way as to put the world at risk, while yours can be, it is more likely that I am right, and it would be to your advantage not to kill me."

Posted-

This is a two step solution. The first part succeeds or fails deterministically. If the first part fails the fallback comes into play and that succeeds or fails probabilistically, so you may need to generate a pseudo random number to evaluate this proposal.

Part 1: this part uses partial transfiguration and his newly practiced skills from the 6th year textbook.

Harry must transfigure something touching his wand, so the object transfigured is a small patch of skin touching his wand. He will probably lose that bit of skin when the transfiguration wears off, but this should be acceptable and non fatal.

The object he transfigures the skin into is as follows: A minimally thin thread (maybe a carbon nanotube) going down to the ground, the the thread continues along the ground to the time turner. It then goes through the space in the hinge / snap of the shell into the interior of the shell (the thread may have to get very thin to accomplish this, but the case is described as snapping into place in chapter 18, so it is not truely seamless). Once inside the time turner shell the thread splits into two strands one wraps around the inside of the shell, thickens to be sturdy and attaches itself to the inside by transfiguring sticky bits. The other wraps around the time turner itself thickens up and then attaches itself by transfiguring some sticky bits. Lastly various rods or threads extend to push / pull the inner ring vs the outer ring. Since we know that you can transfigure against tensions this will allow Harry to rotate the time turner inside its shell without the outside of the shell moving (we know from Azkaban that this works). Once the time turned has been turned, Harry will jump back in time by one hour since the time turner is being held by Harry's hand and turned by his hand (the thread is a part of Harry's finger that's been transfigured). Once Harry is alone in the graveyard an hour in the past he has escaped the immediate danger and has time to plan.

Advantages of this plan are that it involves no visible motion of any kind. Partial transfiguration is wordless, and his hand is already touching his wand. The thread is too small / thin to see, and the macro part of the transfiguration happens inside the time turner's shell where it is not visible. The evidence in the book this far is that transfiguration time is gated by the volume of the target, this is a low volume transfiguration so it should be quick. The other advantage of this plan is that it's non interactive. It doesn't involve talking with anyone, penetrating shields or otherwise rely on interactions working out a particular way.

Fallback plan - part 2: if for some reason the above doesn't work (and it should work, but it's always good to have a plan B) Harry should decide that now is the time to free the prisoners of Azkaban, and in his innermost emotional core reach out to the Phoenixs of the world asking them to teleport him to Azkaban.

Harry turned down his choice so he will never be master of a Phoenix like Dumbledore was, but a Phoenix might still help him. Faux helped Hermione when she wanted to be a hero even though he wasn't eligible to give someone a choice at the time. So we have evidence that a Phoenix is capable of helping someone outside of that context. We also know that a Phoenix can remotely detect the intent to help a problem or even the strong consideration of helping. So a Phoenix would be capable of detecting Harry's choice to free the prisoners, and it would be capable of teleporting him there, and it might want to.

So then the question is, will a Phoenix want to help, so far we've seen 2 and both birds seemed interested in the Azkaban problem, but it's probably a biased sample.

Let N be the number of in universe Phoenixs. The author knows or can estimate this number as the creator of te universe, I've got no clue. Let P be the probability that a given Phoenix would decide to help Harry save the prisoners by teleporting him to Azkaban. Again the writer knows this number better than me, but I think the textual evidence suggest it's non zero. Then the chance of success is (1-(1-P)^n) since it's an or relationship, fail is the AND condition of each and every Phoenix individually choosing not to help. If the author has not previously determined value functions for each and every Phoenix then the best way to evaluate if this plan succeeds is to use God knowledge to estimate P and N and then generate a random number.

I note that although the long term life expectancy of someone teleported to the heart of Azkaban may not be great, it would technically meet the exam passing condition of evading immediate death. That said, step 2 is mostly a last ditch effort that relies on some luck, if it were my life, I would be relying on part 1 to save me.

Posted on ff.net: Harry realizes that his true power the Dark Lord knows not is his ambition to master the fundamentals of magic, in contrast with how proud of himself Voldemort was for developing one original ritual. Harry cannot explain this to Voldemort-that would go against his Vow. However, he can drop some very juicy teasers in Parseltongue; in particular, he can imply that his secret holds the cure to Voldemort's ennui. It might go something like (in Parseltongue):

"Though you are ambitiouss, you have no ambition. That iss true power Dark Lord knowss not-my ambition. I could purssue ssafely, but cannot trusst you will, sso cannot tell. Do not think can devisse ssafe hint in time I am given. Keep me alive, and perhapss ssomeday I can sshare-maybe I create ssafe hint, maybe I ssee change in you, or come to believe it besst that you know. Or kill me, and learn how long killing idiotss sstayss interessting. Conditionss for creating another like me may not be as ssimple as you think"

Here's another object-level tactic I haven't seen mentioned yet. (Assume LV will not just kill Harry for speaking of non-magical powers. I have a way of increasing the likelihood of this assumption being true)

Harry could explain the Power of Expected Utility Calculations and subtly attempt a Pascal's Mugging on LV, convincing him that LV can't possibly assign a probability of less than one in twenty that killing Harry will indeed avert the prophecy, or for that matter cause it, and that the rational action to take is to not kill Harry. He can present it as a "power" to stop the timer and buy a life, regardless of if LV accepts the conclusion, since it is a valuable tool for the future and was probably not in the books Harry gave him to read.

Harry can also explain the Power of Bayesian Probability Updates, both to buy a life and to provide a framework within which to argue that the probability that LV killing Harry backfires is much higher than he previously expected. If the Mugging alone doesn't work, then Harry can combine this with EV calculations to construct a valid argument that LV shouldn't kill him.

I'm starting to develop a way to chain this with some other arguments and strategies into a cohesive strategy and I'm starting to feel pretty good about it. Thoughts?

I make the following prediction : the transfiguration exercise of ch. 104 foreshadows the possibility of safely transfiguring a certain kind of explosive, that relies on containing several components that will explode upon contact. The ch. 104 exercise tells us that containment chambers can be formed first, and their contents afterwards, such that the bomb will not accidentally explode during transfiguration.

I regard fighting as futile (can't speak magic without death eaters attacking, can't cast worldess magic without Voldemort sensing through resonance and shooting). Harry must lose.

Voldemort is only killing him because of the prophecy. Harry should ask to hear the prophecy, so that if he is ever reborn somehow he can avoid it. Voldemort will probably tell him, hard to think how giving information about the destruction of the world to Harry could hurt it, since he's taken the Vow and now can only threaten the world through ignorance.

Once Harry hears the prophecy he can point out that there is no reason (beyond the coincidental timing) to think that he is the person referred to in it. If Voldemort agrees, and no longer NEEDS Harry's death, then Harry offers to earn his life by serving Voldemort with another Unbreakable Vow insuring his loyalty.

Harry, if not the World-Ender, would be super-valuable to Voldemort as: 1. False opposition figure to lure in and betray opponents 2. World-Safety-Vowed Science Czar in the new regime, in charge of monitoring Muggle and Wizard breakthroughs and making certain they don't interfere with the earth's new role as Voldemort's idiot-hunting range. 3. Bodyguard vs. Dementors

If Voldemort accepts, Harry goes through with this, and becomes the Dark Lord's Vowed servant, thereby surviving this crisis. As for the future? Perhaps the horse will learn to sing.

Here is my stab at a solution (already posted at ffnet):

First Harry tells V. that Dementors are death, Patronuses work by not thinking about death and the true Patronus works by using a diferent mindstate which V. probably cannot attain (without specifics). Second Harry states that as long as Dementors are around every person including V have in each moment a small but finite probability to be kissed by one. Over an indefinite timeframe the aggregate probaility that V. is kissed approaches one. How this would interact with V's Horkruxes is unclear but he may easily suffer a fate worse than death. Therfore he should keep Harry around at least until the dementors are dealt with.

Then he points out that given what he knows about the ambiguity of prophecies the prophecy V. heard has probably not clearly identified that Harry and not V. is the threat. Thus V. killing Harry might easily doom the world. This is especially likely as V. is not bound by the vow. Thus V. should keep Harry around to guard against his own mistakes and probably take a similar vow. He himself may offer more vows to further Vs goals in exchange for V. vowing to further Harry's goals and so on. This should be beneficial for even a purely selfish V. who wants the world to survive.

In case V. is not convinced by his above offer of cooperation Harry uses the time they are talking to prepare for an attack on V. and the Death Eaters using partial transfiguration: Thinking about venues for attack he first thinks about transfiguring an invisible nanoweapon such as a monofilament knife to decapitate the death eaters. Though he quickly realizes that that will not work since no known material including carbonanotubes is stiff enough to form an invisible blade of several meters length. Independently acting nanobots are out too, because he lacks time and knoledge to design one let alone test them for safety and efficiency. Then he realizes he does not need them, because partial transfiguration can do everything a nanobot could and even more.

He points his wand to a patch of skin on his leg and starts to transfigure the stratum corneum. An invisible bundle of carbonanotubes extends from his skin to the ground branches out to each death eater running up their robes and into their necks. (They do not feel this, since the bundle of tubes has a crossection of only 50 nm. Pain or touch receptors would not pick that up.) Another branch extends to the Dark Lord, but Harry does not dare touch him with his construct fearing the resonance. Instead he builds a small tower form the ground using carbonanotubes in a pattern resembling the Eiffel Tower extending right into the muzzle of his gun (Beneath the moonlight glints a tiny fragment of silver, a fraction of a line...). He seals the muzzle with a thin sheet of carbonanotubes and fills the barrel with nitroglycerine contained by a second thin sheet of carbonanotubes just before the bullet. All of this is very low volume and quickly transfigured.

If the Dark Lord refuses cooperation he snaps his fingers and immeadetly extends the tube in each of the death eaters neck to severe the brainstem from the spinal cord, the language center from the brain (to prevent wordless, wandless magic) and the neck from the body (black robes, falling). To make sure that everything is properly seperated he turns his entire construct (except for the part in Vs gun) into pressurised air (...blood spills out in litres,...). Now the Dark Lord either surenders or fires his gun. ...and Harry screams a word: "rennervate" and points at Hermione to wake her up. Hermione stunns V. Even if V. fired he should not die immeadetly except if part of the gun passed through his brain. Hermione transfigures V. into a small stone to prevent him from dying and thus from coming back. Afterwards they transfigure the Death Eaters for eventual revival.

I wrote multiple redundant plans, because I genuinely think Harry should be able to convince V. to cooperate for purely selfish reasons. But even if V. is not only rational and selfish but "For the Evulz" Evil and thus refuses, the transfiguration attack should secure Harrys victory.

I would execute a magical script programmed in advance. You think about script's number and it implements many magical actions for example paralising anyone except Harry faster than anyone makes a move or even understands anything.

I'm so confused about the wand. Why does Harry still have the wand? Obviously Voldemort should have demanded that Harry drop the wand before giving him 60 seconds to speak.

Also,question. Do our suggestions need to be posted on fanfiction.net, or does this thread count?

"You needed worthy opponentss,"

Harry needs to lose. He needs to drop his wand, kneel down, and say in Parseltongue, "I loosssse." Quirrel has already set up several tests that Harry has failed by refusing to lose. By proving that he can indeed lose, instead of continuing to escalate the conflict until the stars themselves are at risk, he may be able to pass LVs final test.

V's giving his gun to one of his followers (who are blood purists, not muggle technology experts, and probably haven't ever fired a gun) suggests that he is still unable to "raise hand or wand against" Harry, for whatever reason.

If Harry can cause himself to appear to be V, the Death Eaters will presumably be confused enough to give him time to act (given that V cannot disable Harry himself). Harry can then use magical resonance to cause V to turn into a snake and/or explode, convincing the Death Eaters that he is really V.

The hole in this plan is that I can't think of a way for Harry to pull it off. He doesn't have any wordless, wandless illusion magic, unless I'm overlooking something, and transfiguration would be too slow. Any suggestions or objections?

Might get around to posting a solution. Here's the direction I'm headed:

I think I have a reasonable timetable that can be found in this post. I figure there's at most an hour and a half left until Harry leaves the Quiddich game. I don't expect the cavalry to save the day, but it imposes a time restriction.

Cedric is a wild card here. If he were to accompany Harry then we probably would have learned of it by now. Otherwise, he may have been asked to raise the alarm should Harry fail to return in a timely manner, so I think it's safe to suppose that the time restriction is tight.

If Voldemort can be given a reason to keep Harry alive beyond the 90-minute mark, he'll have to change venue and resume the conversation in another place. Possible topics of discussion are partial transfiguration, Patronus 2.0, and the dangers of meddling with prophecies. Bonus points for invoking the Unbreakable Vow to get Voldemort to awaken Hermione.

Second possibility is to escape. Harry does have that portkey after all. Voldemort did mention having some of his own wards in the area, but the Death Eaters were able to apparate in just fine and Harry, being Tom Riddle, may be able to bypass them as well. The problem is that the reader doesn't know exactly where that portkey is. It may require access to Harry's bag. That means he has to arrange a diversion without getting blown to bits or else has to go back to the talking plan.

Third possibility is to defeat the Death Eaters and Voldemort. I've seen a number of suggestions along the lines of partial transfiguration. I'm inclined to reject this possibility. It has been established in canon that a good Legilimens can detect someone forming a spell in his mind. I don't know that Harry can concentrate on a complex transfiguration while carrying on a conversation and blocking Voldemort from his mind.

Now regarding Dumbledore. There's a reason why he chose to spare Harry knowing that he'd end up in Voldemort's hands. There's something afoot here but I can't place my finger on it. I also wonder whether Dumbledore can leave the mirror. Phoenixes were rumored to come from the mirror and Dumbledore does have one of those...

I have noticed many descriptors of the time, sky and moon in the story recently. I think they might be a clue.

At the Quidditch match:

• "June in Scotland meant plenty of daylight; sunset wasn't until ten."

• "As the sun set and Harry started using Lumos to read his books"

• "And as the stars began to come out"

• "Harry glanced at his watch - eleven-oh-four at night. Harry was now reading a sixth-year Transfiguration textbook; or rather he'd weighted the book open, illuminated by a Muggle glowstick,"

At the graveyard:

• "The moon above was over three-quarters full, already seeming bright with night not fully fallen."

• "gleaming darkly beneath the fading twilight sky"

• "A tall form rested upon the altar, and even in the dimming twilight it looked too pale."

• "Red eyes gleamed beneath the fading twilight,"

• "on a twilight-lit stone altar."

• "The twilight sky had dimmed further"

• "but the moonlight was too faint for certainty"

• "Harry saw by the moonlight that they all now lay in another heap by the altar"

• "The gibbous moon riding higher in the cloudless sky, the stars and wash of the Milky Way visible in all their majesty within the darkness"

If it is fully dark, it must be well past 10pm, as the text says the sun sets at 10pm. Harry left the quidditch match shortly after 11.04pm to prepare for his quest, so he could be missed or quidditch-disrupting-events could happen any time after that. Despite this, we are assured the cavalry is not coming. If it were past 11pm, what else would have to be true to know that the cavalry isn't coming?

So I did some research.

Moonlight chart

Definitions of 'shades' of twilight as shown in chart

To my surprise, my research indicates that the night never gets to 'astronomical twilight' in Scotland on the night of June 13-14. The sun sets for several hours, but doesn't go more than 12 degrees below the horizon. The sun needs to go more than 18 degrees below the horizon for the silhouette of the horizon to disappear and to be able to see the fainter stars with the naked eye.

Given all the focus on images of the stars in this story, I expect Harry, Voldemort and Eliezer to notice the difference between "the stars and wash of the Milky Way visible in all their majesty within the darkness" and the dimmer stars being missing because it is not dark enough. What does this indicate?

Are they not in Scotland? Are they not in June? Is that the real sky? Are they playing out some astronomy fan's wish fulfillment in the mirror? (Harry is already very confused that Hermione was resurrected.)

Harry's interest in astronomy enables him to notice that it shouldn't be this dark - it won't have been for some days or weeks now. Can he test any of the above without getting in too much more trouble?

This may also be a genuine mistake, my reading too much into things, a spell Voldemort cast for the ambience, or something else, but I thought it worth considering. Any thoughts?

Can we each propose a non-transfiguration solution? Even if it's just a rough idea. I feel like we're getting stuck on transfiguration, and a bunch of those require very precise handling of things 10 feet away (such as death eaters) or significantly big things (Harry's body parts). Hermione struggled to get the stunning hex right on the first try, and I feel Eliezer will categorize "transfigure this very precise, remote thing" as a "new magical power".

Ssome livess I have already promissed you, but otherss I did not. . . For each unknown power you tell me how to masster, or other ssecret you tell me that I desire to know, you may name one more of thosse to insstead be protected and honored under my reign. Thiss alsso I promisse and intend to keep.

Is Harry permitted to name himself as a person to be protected? It doesn't seem to say that he cannot. I believe partial transfiguration would buy him a life. It's an unsatisfying solution, as it only saves Harry. But then again, the exam only requires Harry to survive.

Eliezer gave a hint of the solution in chapter 5:

"You triumphed over the Dark Lord by being more awful than he was, and survived the Killing Curse by being more terrible than Death."

I remembered I have a PredictionBook account that I registered some years ago and forgot about, so I might as well get started with this whole "calibration" business.

The true solution will hinge on truly convincing Voldemort to let Harry out of the box (i.e. no “brute force” transfiguration solutions where talking is just a distraction): 95%

The true solution involves time travel: 50%

The true solution relies on Partial Transfiguration: 80% (this isn't in contradiction with #1 - it can involve Partial Transfiguration (e.g. as a threat, or a demonstration, or distraction), it just won't be the lynchpin of the entire plan)

Conditional on EY accepting a viable fan solution, it will be different to what will actually happen in the story: 75%

Voldemort has promised in Parseltongue:

"For each unknown power you tell me how to masster, or other ssecret you tell me that I desire to know, you may name one more of thosse to insstead be protected and honored under my reign."

1) If Harry was able to give Voldemort an infinite number of powers, through the use of recursion or some mathematical trick or something - some way that Magic Itself will consider to be a large/infinite number of separate but related powers, and

2) If Harry was able to enunciate in some way an infinite number of beings which would Voldemort would then be required to spare, which would include all of the inhabitants of the earth (even future ones?).

Then Voldemort will be tricked into having promised to spare every human.

3) If there is some Magical reason why Voldemort would be constrained to keep his promise, (even though he feels he had been tricked), then Voldemort might be rendered unable to harm anyone.

I dont know if this is at all useful, but it was an idea I had which I haven't seen posted by anyone yet. (Thought I havent looked around at everything).

Harry can do a lot of things, but V already knows many of them. His strongest options are things he's sure V has no idea he can do, like the swerving hex he used on Moody.

EDIT: His strongest options for ways to outwit LV, not things to tell LV to save friends.

There are all sorts of ways to fight using partial transfiguration. Many of the obvious ones mentioned so far are too slow (tunneling through the ground, nerve gas), suicidal (micro black holes, antimatter, unununium, critical mass of enriched uranium, nitroglycerin, etc.) or too complicated.

only a fool would attempt a plot that was as complicated as possible, the real limit was two.

On the other hand, Dumbledore took the shotgun approach to plotting. Let's take the best of both worlds.

Then the obvious answer is chain lightning! Transfigure the air into ions in a path connecting the Death Eater's necks, including LV. This will likely go unnoticed since air is invisible. It might take a few seconds, but Harry can stall in Parseltongue. Then transfigure a cross section of the middle Death Eater's spinal cord into pure electrons. You should be able to generate considerable voltage with minimal mass/volume/time. Repeat for the other Death Eaters. This gives us the possible instantaneous effects of:

• Blinding flash/deafening thunder
• Concussive shock
• Electrocution
• Combustion
• Death

To all present Death Eaters simultaneously, while not killing Harry outright, plus

• Paralysis
• Death

To the targeted middle Death Eater. Suffering even one of these effects will disable the other Death Eaters long enough to repeat the procedure. The initial strike will reinforce the ion channels, Harry won't have to rebuild them.

Of course I'm assuming partial transfiguration doesn't require Harry to actually aim his wand at the target, but is limited in size. I'm also assuming he can transfigure air, which is not clear from the story so far, as others have mentioned. But really, air is just atoms like everything else. A partial transfiguration should work. Aim should not be required. Contact should not be required. Just partially transfigure a ray of air into air in the intended direction, and terminating with the intended effect.

I expect that the collective effect of 'everyone with more urgent life issues stays out of the effort' shifts the probabilities very little

Perhaps, but it shifts the ability of some of us to participate much more.

We've been waiting months for the latest round of chapters - giving the "final" a couple of weeks would have been more fun for me.

For the best experience, if you have not already been following Internet conversations about recent chapters, I suggest not doing so, trying to complete this exam on your own, not looking at other reviews, and waiting for Ch. 114 to see how you did.

If we wish to win, and not merely play the role of students getting a grade, we will of course collaborate.

It's strange how the student role seems to last and last and last beyond school. I see people doing it at work all the time. Though it's hard to blame them, in an institutional culture where others see your grade on the quiz as more important than getting things done. It's really odd being somewhere that asking someone who knows is considered cheating on your quiz, instead of being productive.

I posted a longer form of this as a review / solution. Here's a condensed version:

Partial Transfiguration works through a deep understanding of physics. It allows Harry to to create any physically valid state of the universe, as long as he can hold it in his mind.

What this means is that you don't need to Transfigure a gun in order to fire a bullet. You can just Transfigure a bullet in the state of having been fired.

This is what the ability to Transfigure any physically valid configuration really means. You don't need to make a bulky laser weapon. Just make a laser pulse: an arbitrary amount of high-energy photons, aimed in the right direction. Instead of a shaped explosive charge, make a shaped explosion. Instead of antimatter, make gamma rays. Instead of a black hole, dangerous to everybody near it, make a bunch of gravitons and aim them at your enemy.

So given all that, how should Harry kill his enemies?

Lasers are messy weapons. Even black robes are reflective in some wavelengths. Use too much energy and you'll get a fireball back in your face. Release the energy too quickly and it will create an explosion instead of steadily boiling away your target.

Kinetic energy is safer. Transfigure a set of diamond missiles-in-flight, one aimed at each Death Eaters and one also for Voldemort, who is conveniently floating behind them. Giving them a speed of, oh, 0.005c should do nicely. They should be as large as possible - in order to leave large holes - but, since the difficulty and length of Transfiguration scales with the size of the target form, they will be flat and thin: head-sized and a millimeter thick, lying on the ground in front of Harry until the moment when, Transfiguration completed, they instantaneously acquire the forward velocity (and some angular momentum) that will have them impacting the Death Eaters' masks a few microseconds later. The slight layer of air turned into plasma carried in front of them will serve as a nice bonus.

Transfiguring the ground in front of Harry, if possible, is the best solution. Lacking that, pieces of Harry's legs will serve. Since Transfiguration can change the size and mass of the subject, the resulting wounds need not be deep.

If Transfiguration scales with the diameter of the target form, rather than its volume, we will reluctantly use much smaller bullets. A thousand diamond squares, one centimeter across and a millimeter thick, will form a sheet 31 centimeters on a side: much smaller than a car battery. An average of 26 .40 caliber bullets per head should be sufficient to the task.

Another possible solution path:

"There iss already in motion a power which will desstroy world if left unchecked. [entropy] If you kill me, trap me, incapacitate me, or otherwisse hinder me, I will be unable to take necesssary possitive actionss to try to sstop it and ssave world. Am sstill bound by vowss, will not take any action I think will make desstruction worsse or more likely."

Working backwards is a standard strategy for solving puzzles like this. Let's imagine Harry having gotten out of the predicament. How does the situation look? Where is Harry? Where is Voldemort? Where is Hermione?

Here is my tentative submission to FF.net. Please comment.

I decline to help Harry out of the box.

Harry no longer has Harry-values; he has unbreakable-vow-values. He is smart, and he will do whatever he can to "not destroy the world." In the process maximizing the probability of "not destroying the world," he will likely destroy the world.

If you would allow me, I would like to appeal to Voldemort's rationality and cast Avada Kedavra on Harry before he says or does anything.

I do not think I will be able to stop other people from getting Harry out of the box. I expected people to believe me when I tried to explain why we should not let Harry out of the box. They did not. It was frustrating. You have taught me a valuable lesson about what it is like to be an FAI researcher. Thank you.

EDIT: I have posted it.

I have a way of escaping that uses an item that has been established.

A: In the interest of keeping it simple the thing the most obvious answer for something Harry can do that he in theory could teach Voldermort/keep him talking is partial transfiguration.

B: Once Harry tells Voldermort that he can partially transfigure things, Voldermort will want to know the words/motions. Harry can say that he can teach Voldermort (he can't teach him how to cast a Patronus due to Voldermort's lack of love and he can't teach him how not to fear the death the way Harry does, but Harry CAN teach Voldermort how to see the world made up of component atoms given enough time) but it would be easier to teach while doing/give him a visible example of how it works as he teaches (not a lie, it would be possible to teach without doing, but Parseltongue allows for lies of omission) this can open the door to at the very least get the orders moved from “Kill him if he tries to cast a spell” to “lets see you do it while I stand behind/off to the side/under heavy shields” while Voldermort watches Harry try to partially transfigure something, or at least keep Voldermort listening longer than the first 60 seconds, and how he reacts to the knowledge will determine what options are open to us next.

C: Once Harry brings up the point he can also suggest to Voldermort that he might want to dismiss any of the Death Eaters who he does not want to have present while Harry explains/demonstrates the nature of this power. Because while he can speak only in Parseltongue, he'll still have to be showing it off in front of everyone Voldermort wants present. Voldermort is probably much too smart to actually fall for this, and lead to him dismissing any of the Death Eaters, but spelling it out can buy Harry a few more seconds/Voldermort might decide to dismiss one or two of his followers, there is no downside to doing it.

D: Harry explains in Parseltongue that he show the power of partial transfiguration by changing the glasses he is wearing, which he will take off, and hold in one hand, while he holds the wand in the other.

E: Harry will transfigure half of the glasses into half of a playing card.

F: As soon as the transfiguration is complete and around the same time Lord Voldermort possibly starting to recognizes the king of hearts, Harry will bite down on the card with his teeth, and pull with the hand that held it, ripping it in half.

Yes I know it was said that he was supposed to have a Toe-Ring as a Harry's "Emergency Portkey", but that's helpful the same way that the Chamber on the third floor was helpful at keeping people out. It's meant to look more helpful/threatening than it really is.

Given that Harry is wearing a ring just like that one, with Hermonine's body in it instead, where is Harry's "Emergency Portkey"? Well wouldn't the perfect place to have one, be something he'd never be without, something that he'd always have within hands reach, something he could finger and caress and adjust without drawing too much attention?

Say the glasses on his face...

G: As it has not been previously established within the story what Harry has done with the playing card deck he got from “Santa Claus” it is not impossible or against the rules to suggest that Harry transfigured the king of hearts into a pair of glasses. He is saving himself via efforts that he had taken in advance that do not directly contradict anything we have previously been shown (the equivalent of an extended flashback scene in Leverage which shows far more happen than the initial version of the scene we saw for the first time)

H: Likewise it has never been ruled that a portkey looses its powers if it is transfigured into some other form than the one it had in the first place.

I: It is reasonable to assume that with his life depending upon it, Harry can tear a card apart faster than the time it will take for Voldermort to realize what is happening, give the order to attack, or cast a spell himself (even non-verbally) and have the spell cross the distance between himself and Harry, likewise he can do it fast enough that he can at least avoid being fatally shot by Voldermort.

J: As they have walked several miles they are clearly outside the grounds of Hogwarts, so its wards are not in play. Given that the Death Eaters were able to apparate to the graveyard rather than flying there on broomsticks, it is safe to assume that the graveyard had not previously been warded to prevent people from apparating to or from it before they did.

There is nothing in the story describing Voldermort or any of the others warding it afterwards. The wards that Voldermort mentions are clearly of an anti-time turning verity since he mentions the six hour limit so they'd be anti-time turner, but clearly anti-time turning can't be the same thing as anti-aparating because you can Phoenix into Azkabhan but not time turner inside it, or apparate inside it.

Likewise it is unlikely that the place was set up previously before they arrived to let you have a one way apparation (in but not out, assuming such a thing is possible with apparation we see it requires a magical artifact or a phoenix to get into Azkhaban there may be no such thing as a one way apparation ward), because magic that powerful would end up getting noticed which is what Voldermort doesn't want to happen since he needed the site of his ritual to not stand out.

So we have not had it directly spelled out that apparition and by effect portkeys can't be used to leave the garveyard and we have some fair evidence that it could be possible With that in mind, tearing up the card should cause Harry to be taken “somewhere in London”, and the old saying “Anywhere is better than here” doubtlessly applies at the moment.

K: Not only will he be somewhere else, but unless Voldermort was lying in a situation he would have no reason to lie in, and possesses powers dealing with portkey location determination that haven't shown up anywhere else in the story (nobody in cannon Potter or this Potter is shown to be able to tell where a portkey will take someone just by studying it) it is logical to assume that if Harry tears the card up, then Voldermort can not simply apparate right after Harry, and instead will have to start searching London for him.

L: While Voldermort starts to look for him Harry can cast a Patronus to get help from others, and start using partial transfiguration to make whatever materials he expects to need.

At the very least, by this point he has surely avoided “immediate death”. While meeting the following rules.

Harry must succeed via his own efforts. The cavalry is not coming. Everyone who might want to help Harry thinks he is at a Quidditch game.

This solution requires no “cavalry” the outside help Harry has been given (the king of hearts) is already well established.

Harry may only use capabilities the story has already shown him to have; he cannot develop wordless wandless Legilimency in the next 60 seconds.

Harry's ability to partially transfigure objects is well established already within this story.

Voldemort is evil and cannot be persuaded to be good; the Dark Lord's utility function cannot be changed by talking to him.

This is not an issue as the solution involves Harry escaping from Voldermort, and doing so simply by obeying his orders until the very last moment.

Harry raises his wand or speaks in anything except Parseltongue, the Death Eaters will fire on him immediately.

Harry can partially transfigure his glasses back into half a playing card without raising his wand by taking off his glasses and holding them lower to the ground, it is not unreasonable for him to also say that this skill requires intense concentration in Parseltongue (because it does) which is why he will be slightly hunched over examining the glasses very carefully as he works on them. This will have the effect of getting Harry's teeth closer to the edge of the card so he can bite and tear more quickly.

If the simplest timeline is otherwise one where Harry dies -if Harry cannot reach his Time-Turner without Time-Turned help -then the Time-Turner will not come into play.

Though time travel could without question be useful in the immediate future (for a given definition of “future”) this plan does not require any monkeying about with timelines to work, Harry can have taken this precaution at any point in time since he showed Voldermort the card itself back in chapter 65.

It is impossible to tell lies in Parseltongue.

Everything Harry needs to say in Parseltongue is truthful.

1:Harry knows how to partially transfigure.

2:Harry could teach Voldermort how to do it.

3:Voldermort should send away any Death Eaters he does not wish to see the process being done slowly and carefully before their eyes as opposed to being used quickly in battle.

4: Harry will show off the skill by partially transfiguring his glasses which he will hold in one hand, while he holds his wand in the other.

Given that there is no rule 7: “Harry is not allowed to have taken any precautions we did not see him take on screen/in writing” this by following steps A through L Harry can arrive naked “somewhere in London” naked with half of his glasses and his wand, but alive.

Can anyone see a way to improve this plan/ any obvious flaw?

Harry could start by saying "Not sssure if I should ssspeak. Mussst asssk friend firssst." He will won at least fime, at best an ally.

Can people who have posted their solutions to FFN state as much in their comments so we don't have to wade through the FFN reviews?

One bit of information that I haven't seen anyone bring up before, is about the original prophecy (the Harry vs. Voldemort one).

Voldemort claims it is already fulfilled. But in an earlier chapter Snape claims that as the one for whom the original prophecy was meant, he will know when it is fulfilled, and it hasn't yet. So assuming Snape isn't either lying or mistaken (and Dumbledore is also present, bringing down the chance of Snape being mistaken), then that particular prophecy is still in effect.

Snape makes another very important claim in that passage. He claims that the 'Power the dark lord knows not' is not just a power that the Dark Lord doesn't know, but one he can't know. He explicitly rules out Harry's knowledge of muggle science as this power.

As far as I can tell, this pretty much leaves 3 candidates for "Power the dark lord knows not" - Love, as per canon. Unlikely since it hasn't been brought up, and unlike in canon probably doesn't have any special powers. - Partial transfiguration. Not sure thought if this is a power that the dark lord can't learn. Presumable if he studied muggle science enough, he'd be able to learn it - The patronus 2.0 & dementor scaring ability. This is absolutely a power Voldemort will never be able to learn, and thus in my book the best candidate. Assuming of course Snape isn't full of shit.

I don't see any immediate way to translate this bit of information into an action to escape Harry's predicament. But hopefully others can do something with this. It's probably relevant, and nobody seems to be talking about it. Especially since the prophecy implies that 'the power the dark lord knows not' is key to defeating him.

Maybe Harry is wearing transfigured 'goggles that make everything you look at green' (which he has seen on his trip to buy school things), and can cast light of just the right intensity and wavelengths to heat Death Eaters up without burning himself?

EY has previously stated that HJPEV is only knows some of the content of the Sequences, because if he knew all of it he'd be too powerful to write an interesting story around. EY has also stated that Harry is now allowed to come into his full power as a rationalist, presumably meaning he can deduce anything remaining in the Sequences.

So, what things are in the Sequences that Harry hasn't yet invoked? The answer may lie there.

Edit: TL;DR I made equivalent problem. It is sufficient and necessary. Prove: p(H causes destruction | H is Alive) < p(H causes destruction | H is Dead)

I have exams so I don't have enough time to do the whole process, as it should be done. I wanted to donate my thoughts and hope for someone else to do the job.

If you remember, we are not supposed to give solutions at once, we should talk about problem first. This includes gathering fair knowledge about all the mechanisms mentioned.

I see some people listed available objects, which could be used in open combat. Which is exactly what we should do, given that the problem is how to fight them. The problem is, however, not how to win the fight.

Now, I have to admit i haven't thought about the whole problem (I am not facing 37 Deathe-Eaters, true, but I am facing 3 exams next week), I focused on two things: Harry's mind, and Voldy's mind. I will deduce if Harry will actually try to defend himself.

These are my thoughts:

• Voldy (V) wants to stop the prophesy. Prophesy says Harry will cause great destruction.
• Harry (H) cannot change V's utility function.
• V's utility function has high preference for this world not being destroyed.
• V tried to maximize this function. (He showed he is quite "rational" up until now)

This is part where I imagined myself being V.

"H will cause great destruction. There is greater probability of him causing destruction, than his death causing destruction. Therefore i have to kill him. I just resurrected Hermione, so, someone can resurrect H. I have to stop that, so i will destroy his remnants."

• H did the whole Unbreakable Vow thing => he is now practically the only human who has no options when it comes to destroying the world.

• H's utility function is practically the same as V's utility function now. (Both V and H prefer world over H)

• "There is a prophesy i will destroy the world. I don't want to cause destruction. Is probability ("i cause destruction" if "I am alive") greater than ("I cause destruction" if "I am dead")? Whatever probability is lower, i will do that. "* (He can't chose anymore, he sacrificed it

  H would not try to live if that would lead to greater probability of mass destruction. He would prefer himself dead over alive. (If he is rational he would do that, because his utility function is such.)

Now, let's see compare pA = p(H causes destruction | H is Alive) and pD = pp(H causes destruction | H is Dead)

Vow ensures that if there is even a minor risk of H's next step creating destruction, he would have to interrogate that risk, and avoid it if there really is such a possibility. With regard to this and H's cleverness, he could cause something destructive much easier while absent than while present. =>
pD>pA

Since I don't see EY killing Harry or being inconsistent, pD is probably indeed greater, whether or not my deduction has flaws.

On this deduction depends whether or not H will actually do something to defend himself. If he will defend himself, he might as well communicate all this to V and he will let him go, because V prefers no destruction over destruction.

Edit: formatting.

Observation: If the purpose of this exercise is to run an AI box experiment, with EY as gatekeeper and the internet hivemind as the AI, then the ability to speak in parseltongue is problematic: It appears to make the game easier for the AI, thereby preventing the results from being generalized to a standard AI box experiment.

So why did Eliezer include the parseltongue constraint?

Maybe parseltongue is meant to introduce the concept of provability in a way that everyone can understand. To speak in parseltongue in real life, you just speak in logic statements and supply a proof with any statement you make. It seems reasonable (modulo computational complexity and provability concerns) for an AI to be able and/or required to supply proofs in an AI box experiment and parseltongue enables that in version of the game in the story.

I don't understand the constraint to speak only in parseltongue. Is that there to force us to focus on a solution set that is somehow of interest for friendly AI research?

Assuming there is a viable plan to disable all opposition Harry can just state this fact in parseltongue and buy time with that. The dark side of Harry surely can come up with one along the lines of partial transfiguration threads of say Iridium ("Beneath the moonlight glints a tiny fragment of silver"..."). Enough approaches that seem conceivable have already been posted.

Actually he has to state this before executing it because that reduces the risk of the intervention as required per the vow. On the other hand he cannot protect earth when dead so he actually has to choose fighting over dying.

Thus his first sentence migt be something like:

"I have a meansss to disssable all opposssition and cause your retreat or death. I mussst use it to protect the world if you do not reduce the risk of my death."

I have read several reviews on fanfiction.net, and posts here, that say Harry will transfigure a very thin knife out of the tip of his wand and cut off all the Death Eaters' heads, perhaps while distracting Voldemort with words. While that could happen, I think it would be better for Harry to go for their arms. No arm means no mark, and no pointing wands, but is much easier to survive, especially with magic medicine and the Philosopher's Stone <i>right there!</i>. Actually, Harry could transmute enough phosphorus to burn so bright as to blind everyone behind him that he cannot see and aim at, and cut off the arms of everyone else for maximum survivability. Hmm, he'd have to permanant the phosphorus transfiguration anyways, though, since he doesn't want any bits of inhaled smoke to turn into wood inside people's cells. Sheeze this is complicated...

And it makes Wizarding wars as deadly-scorched-earth as Muggle wars. This has been a theme of the story, so it works that way too. If I can't think of any more improvements and I don't see any suggestions here I'll post this on fanfiction.net tomorrow morning.

I don't want Draco to lose his daddy by his best friend...

1) Cancel the Transfiguration on his father's rock, use it as a physical shield to block Death Eater attacks.

2) Patronus 2.0 to block Voldemort's attacks - we only know for a fact that it blocks Avada Kedavra, but it is an instance of Harry's magic, which seems to interact poorly with any of Voldemort's magic. If he's got sufficient control, put the Patronus coincident with Voldemort's body - at minimum it'll prevent him from doing too much with magic, and with luck it'll actuaolly cause some sort of resonance that disables Voldemort.

Those two together buy him a few seconds, but no more. After that, frankly, I'm not sure - my best guess is that he'll Accio his pouch and pull out some kind of Muggle gadget, but we already know Voldemort can trump that by ripping the items away. (Unless one of them's a hand grenade, and Voldy doesn't notice? Unlikely...). If he can hold the items long enough to Time-Turn, he can summon some help, presumably pre-mirror Dumbledore. That said, I'm not sure how much that will help.

For a rather out-there option, he is Tom Riddle, and has some of Voldemort's memories. Can the Death Eaters be convinced to change teams? Unlikely, but not specifically prohibited.

Harry hisses "You have missinterpreted prophecy, to your great peril, becausse of power I have, but you know not. Yess, you are sstudying sscience, but, honesstly, you are yearss behind me. It may be that thiss power you know not iss ssomething I have at thiss sspecific time, that you will not know for too many yearss hence.

Before I explain, remember my Vow, and know my honesst intention not to desstroy the world, Vow or no. Now, do you know why I would tear apart the very sstarss? Do you know how? Not to desstroy the world, but to ssave it from whatever threatss require more energy to extinguissh than exisstss in thiss entire ssolar ssystem. There are more thingss in heaven and earth, Dark Lord, than are dreamt of in your philossophy.

I would usse sstar lifting to do it ssafely. In a way, I really would end the world to ssave it, ssince once humanss are out of the cradle, sspread through... er, let uss ssay 'heaven' in Parsseltongue, to mean well beyond thiss planet, why not add the masss of the Earth itsself to the sstuff of the sstarss, to yield that much more energy? And sso, if you avert thiss prophecy, there iss sseriouss rissk you doom yoursself! Are you willing to take that chance?

And why were you the one to hear thiss prophecy, Dark Lord? Why are you the one to causse it or avert it? What iss your abssolute advantage? Not in killing. Killing is eassy. Thiss iss your blind sspot cossting you much more in expected value than lasst time if you do not lissten.

You are the one becausse you have come clossesst by far, ass far ass I know, to true immortality, though thiss project iss not yet complete, elsse prophecy would not concern you to degree it obvioussly doess. Usseful sstar lifting will take time; much more than ussual lifesspan.

Ssupposse you heard thiss prophecy becausse you are to sshare thiss advantage with me, and together we will tear apart the very sstarss in 'heaven' to prevent ssomething actually bad! Ssomething we both may know nothing of yet, though I already have guesssess; and you know thiss project iss likely to go fasster with me than without me. Your lack of complete immortality meanss time may not be on your sside.

All I have ssaid iss my honesst besst esstimate. If you do not trusst my viewss, let uss wake girl-child friend, ass sshe alsso knowss more of sscience than you. No offence. And becausse I have told you of sstar lifting, that you clearly knew not of, at thiss time when it matterss mosst - conssider the sserioussnesss of your error if I had tried esscaping - you will protect and honor deputy sschoolmissstresss, with the undersstanding that your reign hass already begun. Now what iss the resst of the prophecy?"

Harry puts it together mainly from clues in the three most recent chapters and Chapter 86.

Edited to add: if you're reading this, Eliezer, please see this comment below for the Appendix.

Best answers I've heard or devised so far:

1. Leonhart's suggestion below. Probably the best rhetorical move Harry could possibly make.

2. Harry's portkey is transfigured into a tiny chip implanted under his own skin. It would be totally in character for him to do that.

3. If he has the range, transfigure long, thin tendrils that overlap with Voldemort and the death eaters' spinal cords at the neck level. Thin so that he doesn't have to work with as much mass/volume.

4. Transfigure the air around him into a carbon nanotube shell, buying himself time for another spell.

Here is my best attempt at a delaying tactic, after sleeping on it. Please tear apart/suggest better ways in which LV might tear apart, to replace the poor placeholder responses he has here.

--

"Agree that I musst die, if it ssavess world. But thiss iss not besst way to kill me. Ssee how you can benefit more, given your goalss."

"Explain."

"Believe power you know not doess refer to power to desstroy life-eaterss. Life-eaterss will find you eventually, teacher. Know you. Will hunt you down, ssomeday. Eat all of you, all of world and magic, in the end."

"Sso you will give that magic to me, now."

"You can never reach needed sstate of mind - incompatible with deadly indifference. Sschoolmasster could never casst - incompatible with acceptance of death. Majority cannot casst, and in the tessting, sstandard defence againsst life-eaterss iss ssacrificed. Will weaken your alliess greatly, should I randomly try to teach."

"What do you proposse, then?"

"Take me to life-eater prisson. Allow me to pour out my life and magic there, eradicate them wholly. How I wisshed to do sso, during the resscue! You called me back, then."

"..."

"Many advantagess to you in thiss. Can decimate your final enemy, wipe out their greatesst colony, certainly buy you yearss. Removess them before Wizengamot'ss death throess can releasse them againsst you. Freess your remaining alliess, ass thosse here failed to do. And I am utterly desstroyed - can leave no ghosst behind me. Nothing to fuel ssecret devices of Sschoolmasster's. Presumably, reduced rissk that your great creation will recognisse my spirit - for I doubt you have tessted that."

"You will not desstroy all of them, and sso I will have to find another ssolution anyway."

"Ssolution iss girl-child. Sshe iss closse to learning sspell, and now immortal. My death could drive her to hunt life-eaterss forever; thiss iss not beyond your sskillss at manipulation. You know sshe wantss to be a hero."