Nornagest comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, March 2015, chapter 116 - Less Wrong Discussion
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (302)
Prediction 1: Hermione will soon harrow Azkaban. Why wouldn't she? She's all but immortal, now.
Prediction 2: Time-travel and memory-charm shenanigans incoming. Evidence:
Harry weirdly ignored the missing recognition code on LV's forged message.
Cedric considered in Harry's plans, and his Time-Turner mentioned, then seemingly forgotten.
Death-Eaters all dead, but no faces observed.
Flamel asserted dead, but we didn't see it, and LV explicitly didn't kill him personally.
Dumbledore thinks in stories, yet we're supposed to believe he's surprised when the villain reveals he's captured the hero and his equipment (Harry and the Cloak), just like villains always catch heroes and take their stuff near the end (see: Frodo Baggins, Luke Skywalker).
Hermione has been asleep the whole time, neither giving nor receiving information.
Questions:
did Harry tell Cedric to do certain things before Harry left? Did Harry tell Cedric to Obliviate Harry afterward so Harry could play his part convincingly? What did Harry most likely tell Cedric to do?
who will do the Time-Turning, Hermione, Cedric, or Harry?
who will be saved? Obvious candidates include Flamel, Dumbledore, Lucius Malfoy, maybe all the anonymous Death-Eaters.
if you were Hermione and had a Time-Turner and the Stone and the Cloak and six hours to save everybody but Voldemort, Quirrell and Macnair, how would you do it? (Do you need the help of someone who can Obliviate well? Do you need partial Transfiguration?)
The Cedric situation hints strongly at information control, maybe to deal with the six-hour limit on Time-Turners.
Being Hermione makes this harder. There's a way to do it: find a morgue, transfigure the bodies into simulacra of the Death Eaters, give permanency with the Stone, raise them as Inferi, then use Horcrux 1.0 castings with a respawning Hermione as fuel to copy the original Death Eaters' mind-states. But Hermione doesn't have the power, doesn't know that kind of Dark magic, and has way too many ethical scruples; and we don't know the Horcrux enchantment in enough detail to know that it's exploitable in that way. (You don't need the Horcruces to fool physical examination, but I assume Voldemort has some way of sensing people's minds or magic.)
It also might not account for everything it needs to, given that Harry feels what I assume to be their deaths on-page. That could be the Horcrux enchantment dissipating, though.
Or, a simpler solution: travel back six hours, Obliviate Voldemort while he's on the toilet (he could probably resist Imperius at full power), Imperius him to do everything Harry remembers that involves personal agency except summon his mooks, then false-memory-charm Harry into thinking thirty-six Death Eaters were present when they weren't. Take office as Hogwarts' first Professor of Retconjuration.