Comment author: atorm 10 March 2015 02:07:07PM 0 points [-]

WTF was Harry forgetting when he grabbed the Remembrall?

Comment author: Phigment 10 March 2015 02:39:16PM 5 points [-]

That he is Tom Riddle.

A whole lifetime's worth of stuff, which is repressed and forgotten by Tom Riddle Jr.

Comment author: skeptical_lurker 03 March 2015 07:55:50PM 1 point [-]

Well, I don't know how shields work in this setting, but one possibility is that shields do not let anything magical through, which would stop transfigured materials. Shields do stop bullets, so... is it a matter of speed? Do shields stop fast things like bullets, but let slow things such as knives through?

If carbon nanotubes work, then wizards who are not familer with the latest muggle science could still stab each other with very thin (to the point of near invisibility) diamond blades.

Comment author: Phigment 03 March 2015 08:01:05PM 8 points [-]

The slow nanowire penetrates the shield.

Comment author: Subbak 03 March 2015 07:43:14PM 2 points [-]

We know for a fact that the Hogwarts wards do not raise an alarm when they should, because they did not detect Draco being under a Blood-Cooling Charm. And we also know that Voldie had a better idea regarding those wards (whether he actually had said wards in place around Draco is debatable, but still, he had the idea).

So I think it's extremely probable that the wards he has to detect his own death are more efficient than the Hogwarts wards, and he's currently riding Bella's body and kicking himself for once more not having just used Avada Kedavra.

Comment author: Phigment 03 March 2015 07:56:26PM 3 points [-]

Or he and Bella are kicking back on a beach in the Caribbean, drinking alcohol from coconuts and murdering anyone who plays loud music nearby or fails to clean up after their dogs.

Rematch in twenty years.

Comment author: [deleted] 03 March 2015 06:11:11PM 18 points [-]

I'm so disappointed that the Partial Transfiguration faction turned out to be correct.

Comment author: Phigment 03 March 2015 07:24:07PM 13 points [-]

Yeah, this is one of those solutions that, had I been writing, I would have ruled as not actually workable. Takes too long, Voldemort or a Death Eater sees the threads and breaks them on general principles, nanotubes don't actually have enough tensile strength to reasonably slice up everybody at once consistently, and so forth. I pretty much filed any tactical violence plan under "not practical".

Still, not my story. It's not out of keeping with the rest of the stuff in HPMOR.

High odds that Voldemort escaped. He's been extraordinarily hammy this whole time, and he called all the Death Eaters together, killed or crippled a few, and then explained his evil scheme to the hero before giving him a countdown to his inevitable death, while leaving him armed. It seems very plausible that Tom Riddle was tired of Lord Voldemort, and decided to retire him via dramatic massacre. Why make his new body a snaky freak-show, after all?

On the pedantic nitpicker trivia side of things, you don't have a tank of "oxyacetelene". An oxy-acetylene rig uses a tank of oxygen, and a tank of acetylene. But Harry is probably not a welder, and neither are the Weasely twins, so nobody involved was equipped to notice the problem.

Comment author: skeptical_lurker 25 February 2015 10:13:56PM *  0 points [-]

I seem to remember that in Azkaban his shields were invisible.

Comment author: Phigment 25 February 2015 10:59:41PM 3 points [-]

I don't recall invisible shields, but it's certainly plausible.

We've also seen him just flatly stop curse bolts in midair and then flick them away, without apparent shielding or obvious effort. He's got defense options like Smaug has gold coins.

If killing him was easy, someone would have done it before. Even though he had horcruxes, it's telling that he never actually had to respawn from one until he tried juggling dynamite and blew his own self up.

Comment author: Ander 25 February 2015 09:38:35PM 7 points [-]

I think that attempting to shoot him there wasnt giving an intelligent enemy very much credit. It would only work if the stupid mistakes that Voldemort was making were real, and not a ruse. Given that Harry possibly has only one chance (because Voldemort promised in parseltongue not to try to harm Harry unless he tried to harm him first), taking the first opportunity that presents itself, which might be a trick to get Voldemort out of that promise, is probably unwise.

Comment author: Phigment 25 February 2015 10:02:54PM 4 points [-]

Wise sort of went on vacation when Harry elected to oppose the invincible dark lord instead of volunteering to be his most favored flunky.

Voldemort is capable of making stupid mistakes; he admitted that with his whole discussion of being trapped for years without a body. But he doesn't make stupid mistakes very frequently. So, if you believe he's making a stupid mistake, you should try to take advantage, because you may not see another one.

Comment author: skeptical_lurker 25 February 2015 09:43:03PM 0 points [-]

Even if Volde really was hamming it up that badly as to shout that he was mortal again, he would presumably have shields up which would stop bullets.

Comment author: Phigment 25 February 2015 09:57:17PM 4 points [-]

Harry has literally been watching the current body Voldemort is inhabiting for the entire time that body has existed. He has seen every spell cast while Voldemort has been using it.

Either Voldemort has not raised shields (which he typically did not do as Quirrell) or he's capable of casting shielding spells which Harry cannot detect either the casting or ongoing effects of even in the midst of extended close observation. And if it's the latter, we're back to "in order to have a shot at beating someone, you have to assume he's theoretically beatable and act accordingly".

On the gripping hand, I'd more expect his new, permanently-transfigured body to just be naturally bulletproof, rather than conventionally shielded. But it's not helpful to believe he's actually thought of everything.

Comment author: Phigment 25 February 2015 09:24:57PM 11 points [-]

Attempting to shoot Voldemort was still the correct action for Harry to take, given his constraints.

Any opportunity to defeat Voldemort at this stage is going to be sudden and short-duration. If you pass up a potential victory shot because it's possibly some sort of misdirection, you'll likely pass up every potential shot at victory you might encounter.

Comment author: Alsadius 25 February 2015 08:43:49PM 0 points [-]

Is poison really a good attack against someone who holds the Philosopher's Stone?

Comment author: Phigment 25 February 2015 09:04:04PM 2 points [-]

Depends on the poison.

If it's something that prevents the poisoned person from noticing he has been poisoned, sure. Doesn't matter if you could fix the problem, if your brain has been prevented from realizing there IS a problem.

Alternately, if the "poison" is some sort of deleterious transfiguration effect upon the subject, which the stone will immediately make permanent, it would be hilarious. Snape, at least, thinks this way. Remember his attempt spike Voldemort's resurrection components with LSD?

Comment author: b_sen 25 February 2015 07:20:00PM 0 points [-]

True, but then Voldemort performed magical rituals on Hermione. I imagine that ritual magic would also count as magic interacting, although it's possible that it doesn't.

It's also possible that the Patronus is somehow protective from whatever Dark magic Voldemort just attempted (and needed to kill Quirrell for). Good point, in any case.

Comment author: Phigment 25 February 2015 07:30:42PM 1 point [-]

You're right, I would expect the troll and unicorn merges to have caused interaction. Hmm.

Seems, then, like the resonance is more a complication of doing unusual things with the horcrux ritual than a matter of Voldemort's magic affecting Harry, per se.

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