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MarkusRamikin comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, March 2015, chapter 116 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Am I missing something? Why is Harry inventing this silly story?
I bet Hermione is just going to love being the center of all the attention and scrutiny this will bring on her.
Why I think he's doing this :
so Draco doesn't know that Harry probably killed his father ; Harry values his friendship with Draco and doesn't want to lose it ;
so Harry doesn't have to tell everyone about his secrets (like partial transfiguration) ;
so they don't search for Harry for the transfigured Voldemort ;
so Harry doesn't have too many legal/political problems for actually killing dozens of people, including some very powerful ones ;
to give some credit and status to Hermione, which at this point Harry trusts more than himself to take the ethical decision (and not destroy the world) ;
to save the image of Quirrel, I think Harry still has emotional commitment to the character of Quirrel, even if it was just a mask, and doesn't want that image to be destroyed.
Preserving the image of Quirrell also helps in continuing to restore Slytherin, whereas outing him could damn the house to be forever ignoble or be removed completely
Howso? It is no revelation to anyone that Voldemort was a Slytherin.
Well, people are less likely to believe in an idea if an argument used in favor of it later turns out to be entirely false. For example, if I say "green jelly beans are slightly carcinogenic" and someone says "yes, also each one you eat has a 1/100 chance of killing you immediately", makes a lot of publicity about this, and months later it turns out that that statement was completely unfounded, then people will be less likely to believe me now. Even though they have very little new information compared to just me saying "green jelly beans are slightly carcinogenic".
So in this case we have people saying "Look, some Slytherins are good, see QQ!", and gaining some amount of support with that. QQ turning out to be Voldemort would not only defeat everything the argument did (which is not bad in and of itself, the argument was after all flawed), but also cause a backlash which would make Slytherin appear worse in comparison to before QQ was the Defense Professor.
Hm. While QQ was widely praised as being a great teacher, I don't think anyone missed the fact that he was radiating a constant aura of evil (before the fact that as the Defense Professor he was guaranteed to be evil by definition). I think his contribution to public perception would have been "some Slytherins are incredibly badass" rather than "some Slytherins are good".
I'm not sure if there was a general "antihero or villain?" buzz about QQ or if Harry was the only person who thought the former. Luckily, affirmatively making him a hero works either way.
Though, what was David Monroe's House?
Ch. 84:
Also:
Though we don't know for sure what McGonagal and the rest of the "confederacy" really believes.
One of this comment's third cousins says that Monroe was a Slytherin.
108:
And Quirrel was Ravenclaw.
Not in HPMOR.
Chapter 16:
Voldemort was in Slytherin and claimed to be Slytherin while impersonating QQ. The actual QQ was known to be Ravenclaw:
And Monroe was in Slytherin. That was a piece of intentionally leaked information so that the "smart" people could deduce that he was Monroe.
Yes in HPMOR
Chapter 79:
The disparity is one of the reasons that the Aurors are sure he's not actually Quirinus Quirrell.
But why is any of original!Quirrell's biographical information relevant to this discussion? Everyone who knew Quirrell the Defense Professor will remember him as a Slytherin.
She came back from the dead. Gonna be a lot of attention and scrutiny regardless.
If Hermione manages to fall for Harry's story, then she's going to love it much much better than she ever would have loved the truth about her resurrection. It's worth it.
Eh, she's going to be living a lie. If she finds out one day - I can easily see the Vow causing that, if nothing else - that'll be horrible.
And if she doesn't, that'll be another kind of horrible. Especially when Harry started as a "truth is sacred" guy, and I don't think that, for all his experience since then, he's done a complete reversal on that.
I imagine that Harry can tell her the truth in a few years, after they've saved the world, and she's learnt more, and there's just more distance from the event. But I don't know if she'll be fooled that long, or conversely if Harry will ever be willing to tell her. I'm more inclined to think that the Vow might prevent him from telling her, if he's worried that she won't be able to offer him good advice afterwards.
Hm... I'm going to go out on a bit of a limb here and predict that Harry will tell her quickly OR will want her to learn Occumency and expect to tell her quickly after she has. Confidence 70%.
edit: yay
It's a good question. As a perfect or near-perfect Occlumens, Harry could have come up with any story he wanted, if all he was trying to do was conceal certain facts (like partial transfiguration, what he really did to Voldemort, and the fact that he probably killed Lucius).