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My prediction doesn't seem to have paid off in anything but karma, so I'm wondering how Eliezer's clue about Harry seeing the members of the Wizingamot as player characters has played out or if we're going to see something of the sort in future chapters.
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Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 13, chapter 81
The problem is that he did not - he treated them as a passive audience without any consideration of how they view him. So now some of them have reached the same conclusion as Lucius, and think he is a case of bodysnatching. Possession is a real possibility in the universe he inhabits, and he is showing all the signs. That is quite likely to get him killed by people with the best of intentions. At best, I am expecting kidnapping attempts aimed at extracting voldemort from his host. Also, Harry really should listen to Malfoy. Scaring Lucius is not a good idea.
Right, Lucius is no longer the only powerful and intelligent wizard who thinks that Harry is Voldemort. If any of the others are inclined towards the public good they are probably now plotting his demise. This does not count as a win.
Lucius.. Probably thinks that the entire point of this ploy was to increase the legend of "the boy who lived" and is kicking himself for playing into it. On the other hand, he did get compensated very well.
Other likely consequences: Hermonie is going to read his note as soon as she gets back on something resembling an even footing, simply to find out how he did that.
Lucius might share his reasoning with his son. This seems likely, in fact.
The money are minor As long as the option of trading with muggles occurs to you, any wizard could raise that sort of cash.
Quirrell and Voldemort are personas designed to play different roles. You are looking for different urges, but there are instead different purposes behind these roles, that call for different behaviors, with any urges controlled too reliably to manifest if contrary to the purpose.
Ch. 79 (Dumbledore):
But Voldemort was more Slytherin than Salazar, grasping at every opportunity.
Ch. 61 (Dumbledore):
It is too clever and too impossible, which was ever Voldemort's signature since the days he was known as Tom Riddle. Anyone who wished to forge that signature must needs be as cunning as Voldemort himself to do so.
Ch. 63 (Quirrell):
To an actor or spy or politician, the limit of his own diameter is the limit of who he can pretend to be, the limit of which face he may wear as a mask. But for such as you and I, anyone we can imagine, we can be, in reality and not pretense.
Quirrell is not Voldemort, Quirrell is Riddle, just as Voldemort is Riddle.
The simplest reason is that Quirrelmort is simply not in a position to indulge any sadistic impulses the way Voldemort was. He spends hours each day conked out completely, and he has no powerbase to retreat to. Overt malice of the kind Voldemort practiced would very rapidly earn him an adavra. There are quite a few other possible reasons - for one thing, Tom Riddle is not running on the same wetware anymore, and his original brain might have been miswired in a way that did not carry over, or heck, the original Quirrel could have been very calm and unflappable, so now Quirrelmort just cannot get a good temper tantrum going no matter how hard he tries.
Do we know that the Wizengamot's records are public knowledge, and that he can say whatever he wants while speaking before the Wizengamot? I assume they at least have some procedure to close discussion against a speaker's will.
They dont need to be public - a roomful of aristocrats are exceedingly unlikely to submit to collective obliviation, and there are enough people and enough factions present that anything they all hear is not going to stay secret.
There are tradeoffs here - he can spill the beans on the dementors and the true patronus and probably come out with his reputation strengthened if he plays it right, - Patronus the dementor in the room out of existance, and then letting the wizengamot "compel" an explanation out of him would be wieved as the wizengamot shooting itself in the foot, so that leaves hims smelling like roses. Escalating the strategy of "Tell the wizengamot things they dont want to know" beyond that is going to make him very unpopular very quickly, as the wizarding world is very heavily committed to information control, but it is an option.
If his explanation about the nature of the patronus was believed, the active patronuses should dispel. So if he demonstrated and convincingly explained his patronus and chose not to destroy the dementor he would be the sole person in the room with control over the creature.
EDIT: The trouble is, that even if he manages to control the Wizengamot in this way, he can only control them for so long, as they remain in the room.
So he probably would have to rely on their status and/or 'Most Ancient Tradition' keeping them from fleeing the room or calling in reinforcements, while he threatens to release the dementor and/or the information.
(Note that he wouldn't have to reveal his dementor-destroying ability this way, just his 'perfect shield'.)
That would antagonize the wizengamot very, very badly. Not a good long term strategy, even if you intend to dissolve it. Destroying it, explaining, and letting them work through the logical implications on their own suffices. If most people lose the ability to halt dementors at all, and a few people gain the ability to destroy them outright, they are no longer usable tools of enforcement, and disposing of them all together becomes quite urgent.
The trouble is that from the typical wizard's perspective this doesn't work- they're much more likely to irattionally dismiss it as the babblings of a desperate child.
He can open by patronusing the dementor present into oblivion, after that, everything he says will be at least thought about, and once considered, you cannot unknow any of this stuff except by obliterating yourself.
I just realized something. The wizarding world has a strong Taboo against the free sharing of information. Harry has an entire hieracy of explosive insights he can read into the wizengamots records untill they let Hermonie go to get him to shut up Okay, this actually needs him to bluff about having a fallback that publishes if he perishes, but consider:
If he tells them about the true patronus and the true nature of dementors, the regular patronus stops working. This destroys askaban.Not enough?
If he explains the silver / gold arbritage scheme the economy of the wizardry world goes vonky for a while. Not enough?
He can explain the fundemental principle behind alchemy with great clarity.
And so on.
I wasn't that happy with that plan to begin with, but the more I've thought about it, the more I've started to like the elegant simplicity of it. He'd get tremendous political turmoil, and possibly throw suspicion on himself with respect to the Bellatrix breakout, but he can still deny that, and they've got another suspect anyway. At the same time, he has a chance to sink Azkaban in one shot. I'm calling this one the Damn The Torpedoes Option.
In his place though, I wouldn't necessarily encourage them to find out how I did it (he can resist veritaserum and leglimency,) but I'd tell them that it's already too late for them to stop the dissemination of the spell, thus rendering dementors and azkaban obsolete.
Bluffing would be dangerous - if he doesnt actually publish the information, killing him makes the problem go away. And if he commits to "Tell the world, make dementors useless" Then the wizengamot entire are simply more information pathways, and are in fact far better ones than just about anyone else he could tell because it is much harder to obliviate them than Jane Q Wizard,.
Just because they don't expect her to be able to accomplish much with it doesn't mean that they wouldn't stop it as a matter of policy. You don't let a character witness walk up and hand anything to a prisoner on the stands without clearance.
A whole lot of plans proposed here seem to rely on the assumption that Harry can treat the Wizengamot as a captive audience who'll humor any attempt he makes to sway them or prove his points. The Wizengamot is a highly authoritarian court of law, and Harry is a first year student. They have little incentive to humor him about anything.
The blunt force way to play it is to just expecto patronum the dementor into oblivion and go "Would you like me to explain how I did that"? They would almost certainly make him do so, veritas serum, legimens and the whole nine yards. And once they know, they are fucked. I dont think the wizengamot would go for collective obliviation of the events of the trial, so once the cat is out of the bag, its not going back in.
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If you're Lucius at this point, how the hell do you now update your "Harry is Voldie" hypothesis?
On the one one hand, he just paid 100K galleons to save a mud blood girl. On the other hand, he spooked a dementor. On the other other hand, while that feat may be impressive, it's certainly not anything the Dark Lord had been known to do previously. And is he consprasizing with Dumbledore, or against him?
Probably a very confusing time to be the Lord of Malfoy.
It makes a great deal of sense as a purely political ploy. Harry just greatly strengthened the legend of the boy who lived, and since that is the result, Lucius is likely to suspect that it was also the intent.