Comment author: NancyLebovitz 01 June 2010 01:40:41PM *  12 points [-]

I'm reading MOR with considerable interest and enjoyment-- and recommending it-- but.....

There's a big emotional difference between HP and MOR. In the original, Harry has no friends or allies at the Dursley's. In MOR, his family life isn't great and he doesn't seem to have any friends or anyone he's expecting to miss, but he isn't under constant attack.

Part of the emotional hook in HP is that Harry is almost immediately in a circle of friends and acquires a family in the Weasleys.

In MOR, his best emotional connection is to McGonagle, but it's complicated by his intellectual dominance. None of his close friends from HP are worth being close to (or did I miss someone?). His nearest approach to a friend his own age is Draco, and that's very much complicated by Draco having been raised to be a sociopath, and by Harry's need to manage Draco.


Part of the charm of HP was that Hermione's memory, intelligence, and conscientiousness are presented as more valuable than annoying, though the annoyance for the other characters is still there. This is a rationalist feature of HP which seems to be lost in MOR-- Hermione is interested in getting things right for the sake of status.

Her delight at being in a Romance completely eclipsing the question of whether she likes Harry is depressing, but within the human range, I think.


QuirrelMort setting up the Harry's structured humiliation no doubt has plot reasons, but I can also model it as organizational hysteresis-- after Harry made such a strong power grab in re Snape, it's plausible that great efforts will be made to remind him that he's just a student.


I have a notion that it wasn't just his mother's sacrifice that saved Harry, it was also something he did, and his reflexive rage and need to win is hooked to what he did to survive when he was a baby.


is the training that Draco is getting from Lucius based in anything from the novels? The Dracos never impressed me. They just seemed to be rich and mean, and the Pure Blood campaign is weirdly abstract and idealistic compared to their temperaments. (Is there a reverse halo effect where all bad qualities accrete something which is considered to be bad? The Dracos are bullies, so of course it's reasonable to turn them into Nazis.) To my mind Slughorn is part of the real range of Slytherin possibilities.

Comment author: GeorgieChaos 03 July 2013 12:39:13AM -1 points [-]

The reverse halo effect you describe is called the horns effect.

Comment author: linkhyrule5 01 July 2013 07:35:11AM 3 points [-]

Because the old ancient wizard has reason to believe souls exist, which means that while it's probably possible to keep Hermione's body functioning, there's "a burst of something... too vast to be understood" that's just gone missing.

Mind, that doesn't stop someone from figuring out a way anyway. Harry certainly plans to. It just makes things significantly more difficult.

Comment author: GeorgieChaos 02 July 2013 07:11:26PM 0 points [-]

Old people, & people immersed in the traditional wisdom of old cultures, believe many things that have playtested as useful beliefs over a very long period. It doesn't follow from this that no dross creeps in.

Comment author: DanArmak 30 June 2013 06:02:22PM 15 points [-]

Wild Mass Guessing (that I don't believe in, but would be cool):

When Hermione fought Draco, and cast the Blood-Chilling charm on him with intent to kill, Hat-And-Cloak!Quirrell activated the spell to create a Horcrux of Hermione, which he can now use to blackmail Harry.

Comment author: GeorgieChaos 02 July 2013 06:45:29PM 1 point [-]

What I'm puzzled by is the paralell between the violent use of magical cooling against Draco & the preservative use of it on Hermione.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 05 April 2012 01:56:33AM *  3 points [-]

That's only a legal formality, though. Harry hates the wizard society and wouldn't use its laws against her, and he'd discourage others from acknowledging it.

He's just (ab)used the laws of wizarding society to get Hermione out. I can certainly imagine him using his position over her if it is useful for solving the next crisis he has to deal with.

Also, Harry has a dark side, it might also do things.

Comment author: GeorgieChaos 22 September 2012 10:54:34AM 1 point [-]

The laws of Wizarding society are, broadly speaking, insane. There is a vast gulf between twisting or breaking a rule that makes no sense and violating the trust of a friend like Hermione.

Comment author: 75th 15 May 2012 12:16:37AM *  2 points [-]

Interesting. I'm finding it hard to imagine what a "True Killing Curse" would do differently; the Standard Killing Curse seems to leave things pretty much good and dead. Perhaps it would kill Phoenixes permanently? Offing Fawkes would be a nice Yudkowskian punch in the gut. Or maybe it would kill all of the victim's horcruxes as well? But it'd be a drag if Eliezer introduced the Cvbarre ubepehk only to have Harry discover a shortcut that makes him not have to deal with it.

Comment author: GeorgieChaos 14 June 2012 08:13:26PM -1 points [-]

Circumventing Horcruxes would be one option, certainly. Harry has already thought how blindingly stupid it is that the killing curse must be cast using hate in order to work. If he were going to change anything about it I would imagine that that observation would feature.

Comment author: Merdinus 02 June 2012 06:37:59PM 0 points [-]

Who did you think it was trying to make the story more friendly to?

Comment author: GeorgieChaos 14 June 2012 05:06:50PM 1 point [-]

There are people in the world who can have their whole day ruined by the mention of rape. It's why we have things like trigger-warnings.

Comment author: Alsadius 30 April 2012 12:14:18PM 2 points [-]

What evidence do we have that Bones knows the truth of the matter? She knows that Dumbledore might be tempted to confess to Lucius in the trial scene, and after that the best link I've ever seen anyone draw between her and Narcissa is the "Somebody would burn for this!" from TSPE. The latter implies nothing, and the former doesn't require any special level of knowledge.

Comment author: GeorgieChaos 30 April 2012 04:28:36PM -1 points [-]

I was only thinking of the trial scene, I'm afraid.

Comment author: GeorgieChaos 30 April 2012 11:02:42AM -1 points [-]

You're correct, but I was responding to the whole statement:

I wouldn't want to rule out the possibility that Dumbledore deemed himself indispensable >and his soul's contiguousness dispensable to the war effort.

If our dear Headmaster murdered Narcissa because he thought his continued availability to Magical Britain was more important than avoiding that kind of atrocity, or keeping his soul whole then that means that he used the murder to protect himself from death, and in this context that means that he made a Horcrux.

This is, of course, all conjecture. We don't know for certain that Dumbledore himself did the deed, or that it went down the way that the surviving Malfoys believe it did. We do know that Dumbledore finds it useful for them to believe it, and we do know that he has studied how horcruxes are made as part of his Anti-Voldemort campaign, and we can be fairly sure that Madame Bones knows the truth of the matter of Narcissa's death

Comment author: GeorgieChaos 30 April 2012 11:05:23AM -1 points [-]

I do wonder whether the Source of Magic, or whatever it is that determines whether a Horcrux can be made, draws a distinction between deaths in combat, deaths accidentally caused and deaths deliberately and avoidably caused.

Comment author: pedanterrific 29 April 2012 06:18:00PM 0 points [-]

You said "this" as though it were a reference to "deemed his soul's contiguousness dispensable to the war effort", which just means "he was willing to commit murder". It's the murder that splits the soul, not the Horcruxing.

Comment author: GeorgieChaos 30 April 2012 11:02:42AM -1 points [-]

You're correct, but I was responding to the whole statement:

I wouldn't want to rule out the possibility that Dumbledore deemed himself indispensable >and his soul's contiguousness dispensable to the war effort.

If our dear Headmaster murdered Narcissa because he thought his continued availability to Magical Britain was more important than avoiding that kind of atrocity, or keeping his soul whole then that means that he used the murder to protect himself from death, and in this context that means that he made a Horcrux.

This is, of course, all conjecture. We don't know for certain that Dumbledore himself did the deed, or that it went down the way that the surviving Malfoys believe it did. We do know that Dumbledore finds it useful for them to believe it, and we do know that he has studied how horcruxes are made as part of his Anti-Voldemort campaign, and we can be fairly sure that Madame Bones knows the truth of the matter of Narcissa's death

Comment author: pedanterrific 28 April 2012 10:31:15PM 0 points [-]

I keep getting confused by people reading "murder" as "created a Horcrux", I really should have learned that lesson by now.

Comment author: GeorgieChaos 29 April 2012 06:13:31PM -1 points [-]

I hadn't previously seen any clear motive for Dumbledore to kill Narcissa. That he might have done so to help keep himself ready to defend Magical Britain at least provides a possible explanation.

Assuming that he did, in fact, do broadly what Draco said, anyhow.

Pedanterrific, I'm not conflating the two acts, merely observing that one may illuminate the other.

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