Comment author: MathMage 03 March 2015 07:55:50PM 0 points [-]

The Blood-Cooling Charm was invented for the story specifically to offer a means of murder that didn't set off the wards until the point of death; furthermore, if a professor (Quirrell) cast it, the wards wouldn't trigger anyway.

Comment author: Subbak 03 March 2015 08:14:10PM 3 points [-]

Well, yes, but it had to be believable that Hermione had cast it, therefore we can assume that it would not have triggered the wards even if Quirrel had not cast it.

Comment author: skeptical_lurker 03 March 2015 07:28:37PM *  10 points [-]

Raise shields on general principles! There could be Aurors with invisibility cloaks or disillusioned nearby, enemies could suddenly appear by phoenix or some other method, there could be muggleborns with sniper rifles hidden a km away, someone could have travelled back in time to plant a bomb, one of the Death Eaters could be a traitor...

Mad-eye Moody would be disappointed.

EVER VIGILANT!

Comment author: Subbak 03 March 2015 07:48:39PM 0 points [-]

Presumably shields let air through, so they probably also let nanotubes through.

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: 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: Benito 03 March 2015 07:20:31PM *  0 points [-]

Er, Taylor Hebert from Worm did that? Could you remind me of when that was?

Edit: I mean talked about drugs in a school.

Comment author: Subbak 03 March 2015 07:38:33PM 3 points [-]

As Weaver, she said something like "Drugs are awesome kids, but it's what comes after that really sucks. Being a supervillain is the same".

Comment author: Subbak 03 March 2015 07:36:58PM 2 points [-]

So I decided not too look at comments during the hunt. I then got a "solution", but decided to wait a bit for something better to post it. And then I did not have time to post it. Well, silly me...

Anyway, because I have not seen this discussed (but maybe it was and I missed it?), here's my take on defending yourself from most ways to kill you. Note that this would not have worked for Harry for various reasons (as I said, my solution was unsatisfying), but I still think it could be debated.

Fact 1: Killing Curses cannot be blocked by magic or material shields Fact 2: Killing Curses can be dodged Fact 3: Dark Wizards don't go around murdering people from far away by just casting Killing Curses in their general direction.

From this I deduce that it is very plausible that any legal target from a Killing Curse absorbs its entirety. Therefore, since it can kill anything with a brain, pulling a Skitter and coating your skin in a layer of insects should do the trick. Harry could transfigure himself a platinum armor (against bullets and similar things) and an armor of insects.

The main problem I see with this idea in the context of Chapter 113 is that any DE can just Finite Incantem Harry's Magic. So it's a strategy better suited to epic-level wizards who have stronger magic than first-years at Hogwarts. Also, I thought it was too ambitious a PT fro 60 seconds, but then Harry did manage to stall successfully.

Comment author: Benito 03 March 2015 07:20:31PM *  0 points [-]

Er, Taylor Hebert from Worm did that? Could you remind me of when that was?

Edit: I mean talked about drugs in a school.

Comment author: Subbak 03 March 2015 07:24:26PM 1 point [-]

I guess micro-managing the nanotubes isn't so different conceptually from micro-managing bugs carrying silk ropes...

Comment author: kilobug 24 February 2015 09:51:27AM -1 points [-]

My understanding is that "unbreakable" magic makes the object unable to change at macroscopic level, but doesn't prevent small alterations at microscopic level. And those small alterations at microscopic level, in case of a transfigured human, will lead to DNA damage and similar things. It's not known if the information encoded in the brain will resist or not - it's much higher level than DNA, so there is a good chance it would.

Comment author: Subbak 24 February 2015 12:54:11PM 1 point [-]

Another possibility if that "unbreakable" works fine on things that have very few moving parts, but if you try that on a human body then they become utterly incapable of changing. Their muscles don't flex, which means they can't breathe and their heart stops beating, and they die very quickly.

Comment author: Benito 23 February 2015 10:49:16PM 3 points [-]

Thing is, on that line, this would sorta become a simulation fic, and Yudkowsky said it wasn't that.

Comment author: Subbak 24 February 2015 12:43:12AM 0 points [-]

And changing the genre when the story is over 90% complete would be a questionable move.

Comment author: Vaniver 23 February 2015 08:27:23PM 6 points [-]

I'm not quite sure how to interpret the end of the chapter. Option 1 is that real!Dumbledore is within the mirror, option 2 is that Riddle!Dumbledore is within the mirror (and about to interact with Tom in the way Tom always wanted him to), option 3 is that real!Dumbledore is outside the mirror and Harry can see him reflected in it.

Comment author: Subbak 23 February 2015 09:27:15PM 1 point [-]

And now I feel stupid for not thinking of option 3. While it would be very amusing to have everyone fooled into forgetting that mirrors also reflect things (duh), there are convincing arguments for option 1, the main one being timing.

Comment author: UnclGhost 21 February 2015 02:33:46AM 1 point [-]

I wonder if he's just getting a new name for arbitrary reasons (like HPJEV, Bellatrix, etc.), for just this sort of anagram fun, or for some story-related significance to his mother naming him after her brother instead of her father?

Comment author: Subbak 23 February 2015 08:28:55PM 0 points [-]

Bella wasn't entirely arbitrary, it was to set up a joke when Harry thought Quirrel was talking about Sirius.

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