"Although wizards are advised to avoid being seen by their past selves. If you're attending two classes at the same time and you need to cross paths with yourself, for example, the first version of you should step aside and close his eyes at a known time - you have a watch already, good - so that the future you can pass. It's all there in the pamphlet."

"Ahahahaa. And what happens when someone ignores that advice?"

Professor McGonagall pursed her lips. "I understand that it can be quite disconcerting."

So what does happen when someone ignores that advice, on the assumption that history with time-travel is self-consistent in the way EY describes?

Yes, but that was when the tension was still high, because the story was incomplete. Now that it is complete, the desire for closure won't be as strong, and so it's questionable if any recursive stories will be spawned.

ETA: re: "something worth fighting for"

Amusingly, that's probably more true in MoR than in canon, even if our Harry would never phrase it that way (or speak to Ron if he didn't need to). Here Tom Riddle's a bored sociopath without any strong connections; the only thing he really cares about is self-preservation, and that's more adequately assured if he doesn't pick fights with major wizarding governments or do crazy things like set up alternate versions of himself to spar with. In canon he's basically just Snake Wizard Hitler, and Hitler had if nothing else the courage of his convictions.

I thought faster than Voldemort, even though he was older than me and smarter, because... because I had a reason to think. Voldemort had a drive to be immortal, he strongly preferred not to die, but that wasn't a positive desire, it was fear, and Voldemort made mistakes because of that fear. I think the power that Voldemort knew not... was that I had something to protect.

This looks like a false to facts rationalization by Harry.

Voldemort actually didn't know about the partial transfiguration, right? Neither was he likely to know about carbon nanotubes. He simply didn't have the data to anticipate Harry's move. (Though I'm among those who think Voldemort should have taken Harry's wand prior to their chit chat.) If anything, Voldemort lost because he was lazy and over confident, not because he was afraid and therefore thinking poorly while all wands were on Harry.

And shouldn't fear and threat prime Voldemort's "dark side" at least as well as Harry's?

Even without the enhancements, in real world terms Hermione was the most admirable character. Harry was a young boy with an old genius's brain patterns and an Oxford professor of science to raise him. Not really a fair benchmark to compare a 12 year old with.

She got better grades than Dumbledore did at her age, was beating the young Tom Riddle with a time turner in class, and beat Harry and Draco in the first battle, with neither a mysterious dark side nor military training. It was Hermione who knew more than than Draco and Harry how to properly make use of her army. It was Hermione who formed and led a band of Mighty Heroes.

It was Hermione who was fundamentally decent and had a moral rudder. A leader, brilliant, brave, and good. As long as she lived, it was clear that the future would belong to Hermione. No sparkling required.

Interesting. I'm waiting to go and reread all of HPMoR from the start once it is done.

But there may be a substantial issue here: once one has that sort of ending everything else in the story may feel trivial in comparison. To test this it might make sense to look at books with similar sort of endings that aren't written by transhumanists. Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End might one to look at. How did people feel about rereading it?

Hermione says that she has an answer to Quirrel's question: if he was horrible for walking away from his fight, are the people who never even lift a finger still worse. That got my interest, because I think that's a good question.

But insofar as I can understand, her answer is not on topic. What she says may be a useful thought in its own right, but not an answer to Quirrel's question. Or am I missing something? Does she have a worthwhile point that I am failing to see, and what is it?

Please subscribe to the notification email list at hpmor dot com, if you want to see the separate epilogue when it appears (not for months, at least)

Separate epilogue? Does EY mean the "shorter, sadder ending"? or an expansion of the one we got?

why, Professor Quirrell, why, the thought still stabbing sickness at Harry's heart

Minor point, but wouldn't it be better with "stabbed" rather than "stabbing"? It's a sentence fragment, and lacks a verb. Compare:

why, Professor Quirrell, why, something inside him asked for the hundedth time, the thought still stabbing sickness at Harry's heart

I hoped for more than one chapter of Hermione-ness because I like how EY portrays her, but Snape had also deserved a good ending.

We still get to hear what Hermione wanted to talk to Harry about before anyone else, right?