"Your goal seems to be to achieve a desirable state of mind. Power and chaos don't seem to be terminal values to you. Muggles have made some progress in manipulating the mind. Perhaps this little thing called wireheading would interest you?"

I may be missing something here, but the way Voldemort is acting doesn't make sense to me. He's demonstrated that he thinks there's things Harry knows that he would like to learn. It also seems reasonable that he'd expect Harry to continue to learn useful things that Harry could teach Voldemort. So is giving Harry 60 seconds to do this really the most use he could get out of Harry? Indeed Voldemort might know this and be bluffing.

Playing this card may buy Harry time, maybe a lot of time. With this time, I see a variety of possible outs:

• Hopefully the muggles will develop FAI one day, which will have the power to finally destroy Voldemort. To increase the likelihood of this happening, I'd think that Harry a) has to communicate to the muggle scientists to keep this secret so Voldemort doesn't find out about it and stop it. And b) could try to distract Voldemort and lead him towards doubting the usefulness of muggle science. b) unfortunately diminishes the usefulness that Harry provides which may end up in Voldemort deciding to kill him, but this may not be a horrible outcome to Harry given the circumstances and his utility function.
• Make people more rational. It seems that Voldemort enjoys harming people because their stupidity frustrates him. There isn't anyone in the world who Voldemort thinks is actually smart, and thus there isn't someone he actually respects. Harry has been the closest thing to someone who matches his intelligence, and thus he has demonstrated some respect (in a way) for Harry, and has demonstrated deriving some happiness from mentoring Harry. Additionally, in a more general sense, he seems to take pleasure in making stupid people smarter. Perhaps Harry could accelerate the process of making society smarter. Maybe he could use a combination of magic and drugs to make people smarter. (as an alternative, maybe Harry could use the 60 seconds to propose that Voldemort tries making people smarter and seeing if that makes him happy)
• Continue to contemplate how magic really works. There seems to be incredibly potential power there, far beyond what Voldemort's current powers are. Harry already figured out partial transfiguration and how to kill death eaters at the age of 11(?) and within a year of figuring out that magic exists. Perhaps he'd continue to make discoveries like this and might eventually gain enough power to fight Voldemort. This very well may even happen quickly after one insight. Alternatively, maybe he could figure out the secrets of happiness and propose that Voldemort spends eternity in a magical version of wireheading (Voldie's terminal goal does seem to be happiness, not power or chaos). Granted, Voldemort probably is smart enough to monitor Harry to make sure there isn't anything useful that Harry knows that he doesn't. I'm not sure how to get around this. Making him think you're stupid would make him less likely to monitor you closely, but that also would make him not want to keep you around.

Sorry if it's been clarified before, but do we know who the Weasley twins got to Reverse Memory Charm Rita Skeeter?

I kind of wish I had a better visual imagination or spatial awareness. I tend to have trouble keeping track of the environment in novels. As such, even after going back to the story, I'm not entirely sure where exactly Harry is.

The reason I bring this up is that we are told, explicitly, that the Death Eaters will kill Harry if he stops pointing his wand toward the floor.

But 1 G gravity is FAST, and they might be too surprised to react in time if Harry suddenly falls THROUGH the floor. Which may or may not be an option available to him, depending on his location, by using partial transfiguration to turn a thin section of the floor around him into sand.

My apologies if I'm repeating anything that's already been said; I've been isolating myself from the online discussion to attempt the Final Exam by myself. So here's what I've got:

I'm pleased with myself for coming up with the first two solution classes I've listed (and vague ideas about the third, which I later separated into its own class) within 60 seconds, but I didn’t come up with the full Obvious Solution in that time. More work to do...

Solution Class 1: Transfiguration

We know that Harry can Transfigure acids nasty enough to instakill when used to replace a small cross-section of a brain, because this is what he did to the troll (Chapter 89). His ability to perform partial Transfiguration in general is by now well-established. We also know from Chapter 104 that Harry can control how a Transfiguring object approaches the completed Transfigured form, as demonstrated by him succeeding at the shaping exercises he was doing during the Quidditch game. McGonagall also establishes in Chapter 15 that free Transfiguration is wordless and requires no wand movements (only contact between the wand and some part of whatever is to be Transfigured), so Harry can perform a Transfiguration without drawing fire from the Death Eaters by speaking incantations or making wand movements. This solution class involves Harry evading immediate death by combining partial Transfiguration with shaping control to kill the Death Eaters without drawing their fire or killing himself in the process.

In order to kill the Death Eaters, he can use partial Transfiguration to Transfigure a thin cross-section of their brains, much like he did with the troll. However, he will want to choose a cross-section that has a very small total volume for each brain so that he can affect all 36 Death Eaters simultaneously and still make the Transfiguration quick enough to be done before they can react. Some vital part of the brain stem (say, the medulla oblongata) will do nicely. If he wanted to be sure, he could also take a slightly larger cross-section and sever some of the major arteries nearby (supplying assorted parts of the brain) as well.

However, he must choose a volume to Transfigure such that some part of it touches his wand. It is unclear if the requirement is that the volume touches the tip of his wand or merely any part, but either case is solvable.

If he can feel whether a Transfiguration takes or fails, as he has been able to for other spells (such as when he tried to Finite and Alohomora the door in Chapter 23 after Draco locked him in), then he may safely test whether partial Transfiguration allows him to Transfigure air (he didn’t test this since discovering partial Transfiguration) by attempting to Transfigure a tiny volume of air near his wand into something safe (like steel) and feeling whether it takes. Because of the small volume, this test should take less than 5 seconds, not be visible to others, and he should be able to do other things while he’s at it. If he can’t feel whether a Transfiguration takes or fails, he shouldn’t attempt this test and should assume he can’t do so.

If he knows he can partly Transfigure air, he can choose a volume consisting of thin lines of air from the tip of his wand to each Death Eater, further thin lines through each Death Eater’s armor and clothing leading from the air to the chosen cross-section of brain, and the chosen cross-section itself in each Death Eater. He could also choose a volume consisting of a thin line of air from his wand to the ground, and then proceed from the ground using Transfiguration of solids (in case, say, gaseous Transfiguration is harder). (This also opens up the option to quickly Transfigure objects out of the air that will kill the Death Eaters, such as very thin blades, but I don’t know any materials offhand that would have the required compressive strength to make a very thin blade that can nevertheless behead a Death Eater fast enough. Carbon nanotubes might just break, although Transfiguring against tension may help.)

If he doesn’t know he can partly Transfigure air, he can choose a volume composed of solid objects connecting his wand to the desired cross-section. If the volume must touch any part of his wand but does not have to touch the tip, he can choose a volume consisting of a thin line through one of his fingers (preferably the pinky finger just in case something goes wrong) touching the wand up his arm, then down the outside of his torso and leg to the ground, further thin lines through the ground to each Death Eater, yet further thin lines from the ground underneath each Death Eater through their shoes, socks, and bodies to the chosen cross-section of brain, and the chosen cross-section itself in each Death Eater. If the volume must touch the tip of his wand, he can either grasp his wand by the tip without raising it or start the volume with a thin line along the outside of his wand from the tip to one of his fingers, then proceed as above with a volume composed of solid objects. (Recall from Chapter 91 that his wand is robust against small chemical burns.)

Finally, he can use his shaping abilities to Transfigure the desired cross-sections of Death Eater brains into acid before the Transfiguration takes effect on the remainder of the volume, then choose not to complete the Transfiguration of the entire volume (thereby avoiding damage himself). As a further backup, he can also choose a multi-part target form such that the remainder of the volume is Transfigured into something harmless (possibly even exactly what it was before) just in case.

If he can figure out which Death Eater is Lucius (through the code names, perhaps?) he might choose to spare Lucius and hope for his aid.

(Partial) Solution Class 2: Self-Sacrifice

Harry might reason that Voldemort gaining power and taking over the world is a disaster already set in motion by his hand, because he didn’t sufficiently question Quirrell / refrain from showing Quirrell the Hallows symbol / tell Dumbledore about the sense of doom / tell the Order what really happened in the Azkaban breakout, etc. and Hermione would consider Voldemort’s reign a catastrophe. Under the Vow, this would allow him to take lesser risks in order to stop Voldemort or even deal major setbacks to Voldemort’s plan.

So Harry might be willing to risk his own life in order to discarnate Voldemort (and maybe kill the Death Eaters). He could try casting on Voldemort, but that seems stupid in comparison to using the partial Transfiguration attack with the addition of Transfiguring the ground under Voldemort into antimatter (or possibly other suitable explosives if he knows them well enough to Transfigure, but antimatter has the advantages of needing very little Transfigured mass and not leaving any debris that will revert). In order to be sure of discarnating Voldemort, Harry will probably have to let himself be caught in the blast radius; the hope would be that newly enhanced Hermione will survive and maybe become a Light Lady. Alternatively, if Harry has some reason to know that casting on Voldemort would kill (rather than just discarnate) him, that might be enough reason to cast on him despite drawing fire from the Death Eaters.

This is not a complete solution class because it doesn’t let Harry evade immediate death, but it still seems better than death on Voldemort’s terms.

Harry might also notice that the Unbreakable Vow is mind-altering magic and consider it strong enough that he is no longer the same person from before the vow. This might reset his phoenix eligibility, so he might survive anyway on the tiny off-chance that Voldemort and the Death Eaters didn’t put anti-phoenix wards up.

(remainder in child comment due to length limits)

"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."

Skip to the bottom for personal context on the following ideas: ALSO I RAN OUT OF ROOM ON THIS POST and the formatting is making my numbers and spacing look doofy.

Part A: Transfiguration bridges

1. Getting started: Partial transfiguration is the most immediately useful thing besides talking, and as I understand it requires wand contact. Harry transfigures a part of his own finger, on a contacting part of the wand blocked from view, and extends the transfiguration slightly to get access to his blood flow. The blood is transfigured into a channel with a covering of false wood on the back of his wand, held on by an exotic fractal surface maximizing van-der-walls forces (gecko tape). The blood faucet at the end of harry's wand is utilized to transfigure an amount of carbon nanotubes with considerable potential energy stored in hairpin folds. The unzippering of the hairpin folds are the (adiabatic) motive force to fire a relatively heavy lance of multiwalled crosslinked carbon nanotubes stippled in nested nanobuds (small appended buckyballs for friction with external objects and linking between layers) at the ground below voldemort's body. This forms a transfiguration beachhead at a desirable location.

2. The design of the beachhead: The transfiguration beachhead is first used to prepare harry's nuclear option. First, the beachhead would be anchored by growing a fractal network of bundled nanotubes off of a stiff taproot. A multi faceted disk tip of the taproot, with 3 degree facets stacked two high at slightly different angles, disguised with a matte finish the same color and pattern of the surrounding earth, with a bit of dirt on top, like a roof, forms a shape like the word's most covert pop-up sprinkler head. This is the basis of the transfiguration missile battery. Each facet contains a heavy nanotube lance backed by a hairpin CNT held in tension by nanotube zippers. To be clear, the nanotube zippers are fairly extreme nanotubes with nanobuds on them that interlock with nanobuds at regular intervals on the haripin CNTs. This device is unzipped in waves to minimize noise. It should be noted that this device deploying should make a faint, probably undetectable, hissing noise, as the tiny lances break the sound barrier. Voldemort's true form, however, has no external ears, meaning he can only localize sounds by phase and level difference. As Harry's hissing parselmouth and the firing battery are right below and in front of him, both sound sources exist on the same plane as equidistant to V's ears. Thus, the noise is not localized. Harry can fire his transfiguration volleys while vocalizing something with strong sibilance. (wouldn't it be funny if a parselmouth had a lisp?)

3. Voldy's turret: A bouquet of CNT zippered lances on top of the battery remain in reserve as an offering to Voldy. Part of the bouquet contains three dozen CNTs aimed at an angle that will not hit Voldy if fired directly at him. The angle should be as tight as possible (I'm not sure how high he's floating, but Harry would) for example, if Voldy is 5 meters up and presents a rough cross section no more than one meter in diameter, plus one third for error, gives a minimum angle of about 8 degrees, though 10 degrees would be OK in case voldy drops a few feet or does a broomstick crabwalk in the air or something. These lances are special in that they should be CNT loaded to go about 50 meters up in this case, or otherwise a good bit higher than voldy currently is. mounting this portion on a flex mounted head (like a pyramid with a CNT connection from the tip to the base of the beachhead) aimed by a set of tensioned CNT guy wires is also pretty key, as it allows harry to re-aim if voldy decides to fly around. Harry has demonstrated the ability to transfigure CNTs into shorter CNTs, even under tension, so this provides an aiming method. (The reason I'm not just having harry lengthen a set of fat CNTs instead of using the zipper hairpin springamabobs is I haven't been able to find enough information on how CNTs do under compression, it's likely someone here will know better to make a workable solution.)

Part B: The Nuclear option (No time shenanigans based survival)

1. The time it might take to get started: Based on the beach head being a bunch of similar parts of low mass arrayed many times, harry may be able to conceptualize and implement the growth in a matter of seconds. This is based on Harry's practice with the feather, growing out simple similar stages all at once. The springs, zippers, lances, harpoon batteries, facets, lattice structure, etc, are all simple components arranged relative to each other in very few ways. I consider it safe to assume that Harry has a level of concentration right now that makes the battles against the omnicidal AI at the end of Summer Wars look like geriatric speed chess. It might take less than ten seconds, depending on how fast the blood flows down harry's wand to start that initial jump to transfiguring dirt.

2. Some key calculations: Harry's rate of transfiguration based on one hour to transfigure a unicorn: ~ 8 KG per minute, or 133 grams/second, or 133 billionths of a gram per nanosecond.

Carbon nanotube calcs -

carbon double bond distance: 1.3 A single bond: 1.5A Hybrid Bond: 1.39A

The lattice is hexagonal, h = (√3)s gives the height of a single layer from flat-to-flat (the lengthwise, strong axis for a nanotube) on the hexagon, which is about 2.4A. There's an additional carbon bond to connect to the next carbon (I'm referencing cycloparaphenylene) so 3.6A per ring of six carbons is the length. 3.6A is really just a jerk way of saying .36nm, so multiplying things out to a full meter, gives me just under 2.78*10^9 layers of cycloparaphenylene equivalent carbons, which have 6n carbons, where n decides the aspect ratio. Aspect ratio is kind of arbitrary in this case, but I'm going to go with six, since everything else is a hexagon and that makes nesting really interesting.

So, going back to the beachhead, every facet has redundant pair of harpoons, they're spaced out at 3 degrees apart, they have a massive portion at the end so they have a bit of fling and stick capability, and the tethers are a good ten meters longer than they need to be, with intention to go in an arc over the death eaters and just have the strands drape over their shoulders and extended wand hands. 198 degrees of these things (66 facets) should be enough to sextuple-redundant drape most of the death eaters, with some margin for drift in flight. Additionally, 36 single shots for voldemort himself on the tilting turret. 198+36=234 total nanotubes. Interestingly, while I have the numbers up, thats .4ng per meter if they were all bundled together and totally smooth, but with the nanobuds from the hairpin zipper, I calculate it to be between .405 and .44ng, depending on how many hairpin bends are necessary to really whip everything where it needs to go. (harry might need to experiment with the nanoballistics, that's why there are triple volleys)

1. What makes this dangerous.

energy per kg of mass (E=mc^2) = ~90 petajoules or 22.5 megatons of tnt equivalent

If, using the feather principle and starting from the far tips, harry transfigures the carbon into anticarbon at around the rate that he transfigured that unicorn much earlier in the year, and it reacts with an equal amount of matter, harry will release: 1 kilogram / .4 nanograms = 2.5 trillion (2*90 petajoules) / 2.5 trillion = 72K joules

Now, this is spread across all strands. If we include voldy's turret with all strands fired, that's a little over 150 joules per strand per meter vaporized, which means each death eater has some 900 joules creeping up behind them, and voldy has 5400. Now, there's inverse square at work here, so however far the propagation is away reduces the heat significantly. This is particularly interesting because:

Sum of all Masses Per meter: >.4ng Harry's transfiguration speed: ~.133ng/ns light-nanosecond: 0.3 m

Harry's propagation rate is (hopefully) limited by lightspeed. He might be a smidge slower after that Hermione magic saving incident, but I expect all of the energy is going to arrive at once from the perspective of the death eater's backs, and it's going to involve gamma radiation, delivered by the relativistic antimatter det-cord they're wrapped in six different ways. Everyone, especially voldemort, is going to be riding the skin rocket to the center of the meat Z-pinch, except Harry, who will be very red and flying very backwards. I also expect this would wake Hermione, but I suspect she's just been playing possum this whole time.

_____CONTEXT_______

Okay, so first time commenter here on LW, and I have a LOT of content that I'd like to append to this top comment, figures I'd like to work out for refinement but I'd rather have more eyes on some of it than really polish all of it and put it out for scrutiny like an hour before the deadline.

I came in a bit late and spent most of yesterday evening piecing together a plan, or more specifically, a net steps in a plan on a whiteboard that resembled something like a CYOA map combined with a very deep and messy solomonoff induction network. It was incomprehensible. Trying to put it down in a comment form for EY to read left me feeling dread, horrible dread, which I ignored as best I could. Also, I wasn't exactly sure if my mess of solution modules was an acceptable way to compensate for imperfect information, or just a rule-breaking. I'm also having trouble re-reading to check for consistency, and I didn't really read the official canon past maybe the third book, and I was in elementary school then.. so know that I'm still making a best effort to do this on my own as per EY's suggestion, I just want to do so transparently so more people better equipped to solve the problem can cannibalize parts of my final solution into some dread machine of winning.

"You see, while we're having our nice little chat, someone out there might be building another Harry right now, and that one isn't even bound by an Unbreakable Vow. Prophecy happens, everyone dies. I offer you the end of the world on your terms. Are you really sure you wish to terminate 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.

Variant of a suggestion from Reddit: the original is to transfigure the Earth into gold for a nanosecond, along with a trail that reaches out to the Pioneer probes. The goal being to hit all horcruxes at once, and at the same time transfigure the death eaters and LV to kill them horcrux-less. This is supposed to 'work' because it's for a short amount of time.

Bearing in mind that the magic cost is dependant upon target size, I'd like to suggest another option: transfigure the cubic kilometre below them into a small diamond, or better yet, transfigure it into a slew of tiny bullets travelling at 0.1c and aimed everywhere except a cylinder centred on Harry. The target size (the bullets) is small, so this is feasible in a short time frame whilst causing mass disorientation as everyone suddenly is hit by 1g downwards acceleration and 0.1c bullets.

If I've misinterpreted the phrase target size, be aware that the opposite plan is also OP: simply transfigure the layer of dirt you're standing on (if that's what target means) into a 2km tall tower, then apparate.

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"

Let's see. First off, let's consider the problem as thoroughly as possible without proposing solutions. Harry is surrounded by Death Eaters with orders to fire should he move, speak in any language other than Parseltongue (and probably if he makes any sound other than a hiss), raise his wand, and presumably if he does anything else suspicious (such as casting a visible spell without raising his wand or speaking an incantation). Lord Voldemort will presumably order his death (and likely shoot at him) if he does not appear to be complying with the instructions to tell the Dark Lord as many secrets as possible.

Therefore, he needs a countermeasure that can be used without giving any sign until it's too late, or a way to convince the Dark Lord of his cooperation, either to the point of making his continued survival valuable to Riddle Sr., or to the point of buying enough time to use a countermeasure.

Cooperating, or at least plausibly faking cooperation should be fairly simple. He can explain his understanding of Dementors, telling Voldemort that his desire to keep it secret was to prevent an infohazard to conventional Patronus casters; as Voldemort is not one such he will not be harmed by the information. He can explain partial transfiguration-it's not likely a difficult concept for the Dark Lord to grasp, but it seems to be one he hasn't thought of. Buying time is not a problem.

More difficult is what to do while/after buying time. He either needs that countermeasure, or else a way to convince Lord Voldemort that he is worth more alive than dead. As Voldemort fears existential risk greatly, the main way to convince him would be to point out that Harry is not the only source of x-risk, and that he very well may now be a means of reducing it. Prophecies are spoken to those with the power to fulfill or avert them, the "tear apart the very stars in the heavens" prophecy was spoken to Voldemort, suggesting that he might be able to alter the future, and may well have already done so (resurrecting Hermione, binding Harry with the Vow). As such, Harry is no longer necessarily a universal threat. Furthermore, he's not THAT special. He's highly intelligent and a wizard; that's about the sum total of his unusual powers, and it's hardly that rare of a combination (rare enough that we've only heard of one/two Riddle-level intelligent wizards in the story, but if Voldemort plans to live forever, another one will surely arise in the absence of dire action taken to prevent it and/or a catastrophe).

As such, if Harry could have destroyed the stars, another wizard will likely emerge as a threat to do exactly that. For that matter, depending on the method of stellar annihilation, it might be possible for a Muggle to accomplish this as well, or for Muggle actions to end the world as we know it (nuclear weapons, anyone?). Therefore, Lord Voldemort must either drastically repress Mankind to reduce x-risk (and this seems likely to be deadly dull for him, consider his horrified reaction to the possibility of spending his eternity in a dead world-he may not care about humanity the way a normal person does, but he finds us amusing enough to be worth preserving to some extent; also consider that he valued having an equal/near equal enough to make a copy of himself and dragged out his war with Dumbledore far beyond the point he could have easily beaten him, so suppressing intelligence and creativity for fear of their misuse is likely to be repugnant to Voldemort), be destroyed/spend eternity in a dead world, or find an intelligent solution to avert x-risk without taking drastic actions that make the world boring. The last of these options is the only one that Lord Voldemort seems likely to consider acceptable, and Harry might be a useful asset in finding a solution.

Alternatively, he could point out that the prophecy might refer to some form of apotheosis, rather than calamity. Tearing apart the stars for energy/to prevent the loss of negentropy, which seems like a reasonable post-singularity plan. Voldemort is unlikely to want to take the risk, but both of these arguments together might sway him, or at least buy more time. Of course, this may well require hearing the prophecy to learn enough details to craft a convincing argument, but the incident with Firenze might give Harry enough information to start without learning any more from Voldemort.

This might at least avert Harry's immediate death, and thus is one potential solution to Eliezer's challenge. The other option is to find a countermeasure.

The Boy-Who-Lived is naked save for his wand and glasses. Preempting/evading/deterring the Death Eater's curses seems impossible without magic, with suggests that a countermeasure would involve the wand and/or glasses. By the time he speaks an incantation, he will be cursed, suggesting that we need wordless, invisible magic (at least invisible until it's too late!)

Transfiguration is wordless, and Harry can even reverse transfiguration without a wand. Do we see any other spells he's capable of casting without words? If not, we're probably looking at untransfiguring his glasses-air can't be transfigured, and his wand isn't touching anything else. Unless there's a range on transfiguration? He's only done it before on things his wand has been touching, but that doesn't make any sense-the effect isn't limited to a one molecule layer that's "actually touching" the wand, and when you look at the quantum structure of objects there isn't a hard line between "contact" and "not in contact" anyway! That would allow him to transfigure the ground his wand is pointing at. He'd need a weapon or device that was too small to be noticed-possibly nanites or nano-scale line? That could allow him to strike back at the Death Eaters and/or threaten to do so, and explaining secrets/arguing for his continued existence as an x-risk mitigator should give him enough time to do so.

Nanites might provide x-risk in their own right, which means that the Vow might not allow it, but if he could limit them enough (cannot replicate, or can't replicate beyond a few generations?) he might have a shot. Or transfigure the ground into a gas-Harry'd be affected too, but he only needs to avoid immediate death, and if he can get the Stone, otherwise-fatal transfiguration poisoning could be cured.

On the bright side, touching Voldemort with anything magical (and transfigured material should count!) will trigger the resonance, and the Death Eaters are nowhere nearly as formidable as their master. We don't know the exact rules on the resonance, but if the "stronger magic means stronger backlash" theory is correct Harry might be able to incapacitate Voldemort while remaining upright himself.

The main difficulty with this approach is that even though Harry might be able to trigger the resonance with a fairly innocuous gas (heck, just make a little more air!), the Death Eaters would presumably fire the moment their master was affected. Poisonous/soporific gas would work on the Eaters as well, but it would impact Harry too-is there a substance so fast-acting that he could simply hold his breath/keep exhaling while talking to Voldemort, and then everyone inhaling would be dropped? I don't know of any gas that fast-acting, but if one exists it might provide another solution.

To sum up:

Potential solutions that I can think of-

1. Convince Voldemort to keep Harry on as an x-risk mitigator.
2. Convince Voldemort that the prophecy refers to an apotheosis, rather than an apocalypse (seems unlike to work by itself, but might be useful in conjunction with 1.
3. Buy time with secrets/attempts to use 1 or 2; transfigure the ground into a weapon (gas, monofiliment line, nanites?) If the line is used, some form of guiding nanites may be required; alternatively, transfigure the line extending into Voldemort/the Death Eaters.
4. Untransfigure glasses. Do we know what was transfigured to make the glasses to begin with? Could it be a useful countermeasure?

Non-HPMOR related note-I found organizing my thoughts far easier while typing this than while trying to figure solutions out before. Has anyone else noticed a writing makes thinking easier effect, and could this be a useful technique?

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.

Okay, so far as I can see, this is a relatively new avenue of attack, but I haven't got a clear idea yet.

Firstly, assuming Harry can tell LV about some power he knows not (does simple knowledge count as a power? Harry could explain calculus or imaginary numbers real quick...), who do we save? One presumably banned option is to ask for Harry Potter (or Tom M. Riddle) to be saved. Who else is there? Obvious suggestions like Mad-Eye, McGonagall and others don't actually help Harry in his present situation as far as I can tell. Dumbledore?

Secondly, is there any traction in playing the fact that Harry Potter is... well, not the character we're calling Harry Potter? In Ch. 74 'Harry' actually summons Harry Potter (the fake ritual). I suppose the fact that Dr. Seuss wrote some of it means that it was indeed a fake ritual, so we'll call this this thread's crackpot theory. A similar theme is whether by being Tom Riddle, Harry can enter the horcrux system. I put very low odds on him being able to defeat LV from there, but he might be able to reincarnate in a more powerful wizard at least.

Thirdly, we have powers LV knows not. Partial transfiguration... well a number of suggestions have already been suggested involving this so I'll leave it. I will mention that the fact time-turners are safe seems to imply that anti-matter based ideas simply won't work for some unknown reason, but diamond bullets seem reasonable if you can find transfiguration material such as your own skin / Hufflepuff bones.

Any thoughts on this? How much of this (other than the horcrux thing) has already been mentioned?

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?

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.)

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."

Has the 26-hour day been explained yet?

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.

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.

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."

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."?

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.