I'm wondering whether Harry believes himself to be a threat to the world at this point in time. This would be a plausible reason for him to be setting Hermione up to take the credit for killing Voldiemort.

I kind of wish I had a better visual imagination or spatial awareness. I tend to have trouble keeping track of the environment in novels. As such, even after going back to the story, I'm not entirely sure where exactly Harry is.

The reason I bring this up is that we are told, explicitly, that the Death Eaters will kill Harry if he stops pointing his wand toward the floor.

But 1 G gravity is FAST, and they might be too surprised to react in time if Harry suddenly falls THROUGH the floor. Which may or may not be an option available to him, depending on his location, by using partial transfiguration to turn a thin section of the floor around him into sand.

Sorry if it's been clarified before, but do we know who the Weasley twins got to Reverse Memory Charm Rita Skeeter?

Posted-

This is a two step solution. The first part succeeds or fails deterministically. If the first part fails the fallback comes into play and that succeeds or fails probabilistically, so you may need to generate a pseudo random number to evaluate this proposal.

Part 1: this part uses partial transfiguration and his newly practiced skills from the 6th year textbook.

Harry must transfigure something touching his wand, so the object transfigured is a small patch of skin touching his wand. He will probably lose that bit of skin when the transfiguration wears off, but this should be acceptable and non fatal.

The object he transfigures the skin into is as follows: A minimally thin thread (maybe a carbon nanotube) going down to the ground, the the thread continues along the ground to the time turner. It then goes through the space in the hinge / snap of the shell into the interior of the shell (the thread may have to get very thin to accomplish this, but the case is described as snapping into place in chapter 18, so it is not truely seamless). Once inside the time turner shell the thread splits into two strands one wraps around the inside of the shell, thickens to be sturdy and attaches itself to the inside by transfiguring sticky bits. The other wraps around the time turner itself thickens up and then attaches itself by transfiguring some sticky bits. Lastly various rods or threads extend to push / pull the inner ring vs the outer ring. Since we know that you can transfigure against tensions this will allow Harry to rotate the time turner inside its shell without the outside of the shell moving (we know from Azkaban that this works). Once the time turned has been turned, Harry will jump back in time by one hour since the time turner is being held by Harry's hand and turned by his hand (the thread is a part of Harry's finger that's been transfigured). Once Harry is alone in the graveyard an hour in the past he has escaped the immediate danger and has time to plan.

Advantages of this plan are that it involves no visible motion of any kind. Partial transfiguration is wordless, and his hand is already touching his wand. The thread is too small / thin to see, and the macro part of the transfiguration happens inside the time turner's shell where it is not visible. The evidence in the book this far is that transfiguration time is gated by the volume of the target, this is a low volume transfiguration so it should be quick. The other advantage of this plan is that it's non interactive. It doesn't involve talking with anyone, penetrating shields or otherwise rely on interactions working out a particular way.

Fallback plan - part 2: if for some reason the above doesn't work (and it should work, but it's always good to have a plan B) Harry should decide that now is the time to free the prisoners of Azkaban, and in his innermost emotional core reach out to the Phoenixs of the world asking them to teleport him to Azkaban.

Harry turned down his choice so he will never be master of a Phoenix like Dumbledore was, but a Phoenix might still help him. Faux helped Hermione when she wanted to be a hero even though he wasn't eligible to give someone a choice at the time. So we have evidence that a Phoenix is capable of helping someone outside of that context. We also know that a Phoenix can remotely detect the intent to help a problem or even the strong consideration of helping. So a Phoenix would be capable of detecting Harry's choice to free the prisoners, and it would be capable of teleporting him there, and it might want to.

So then the question is, will a Phoenix want to help, so far we've seen 2 and both birds seemed interested in the Azkaban problem, but it's probably a biased sample.

Let N be the number of in universe Phoenixs. The author knows or can estimate this number as the creator of te universe, I've got no clue. Let P be the probability that a given Phoenix would decide to help Harry save the prisoners by teleporting him to Azkaban. Again the writer knows this number better than me, but I think the textual evidence suggest it's non zero. Then the chance of success is (1-(1-P)^n) since it's an or relationship, fail is the AND condition of each and every Phoenix individually choosing not to help. If the author has not previously determined value functions for each and every Phoenix then the best way to evaluate if this plan succeeds is to use God knowledge to estimate P and N and then generate a random number.

I note that although the long term life expectancy of someone teleported to the heart of Azkaban may not be great, it would technically meet the exam passing condition of evading immediate death. That said, step 2 is mostly a last ditch effort that relies on some luck, if it were my life, I would be relying on part 1 to save me.

"You see, while we're having our nice little chat, someone out there might be building another Harry right now, and that one isn't even bound by an Unbreakable Vow. Prophecy happens, everyone dies. I offer you the end of the world on your terms. Are you really sure you wish to terminate me?"

Could he really laugh off such an accusation made in Parseltongue? If Voldemort thinks Harry is sincere but mistaken, Harry should follow up by noting that his hidden ambition was key to Patronus 2.0, the fundamental law of potions (probably known to V but discovering at age 11 is impressive even for a RIddle), and partial transfiguration, revealing as little as possible but as much as necessary.

Eliezer gave a hint of the solution in chapter 5:

"You triumphed over the Dark Lord by being more awful than he was, and survived the Killing Curse by being more terrible than Death."

I've been wondering for a while now: can you say Ththiss ssentensce iss a lie! in Parseltongue?

Posted on ff.net: Harry realizes that his true power the Dark Lord knows not is his ambition to master the fundamentals of magic, in contrast with how proud of himself Voldemort was for developing one original ritual. Harry cannot explain this to Voldemort-that would go against his Vow. However, he can drop some very juicy teasers in Parseltongue; in particular, he can imply that his secret holds the cure to Voldemort's ennui. It might go something like (in Parseltongue):

"Though you are ambitiouss, you have no ambition. That iss true power Dark Lord knowss not-my ambition. I could purssue ssafely, but cannot trusst you will, sso cannot tell. Do not think can devisse ssafe hint in time I am given. Keep me alive, and perhapss ssomeday I can sshare-maybe I create ssafe hint, maybe I ssee change in you, or come to believe it besst that you know. Or kill me, and learn how long killing idiotss sstayss interessting. Conditionss for creating another like me may not be as ssimple as you think"

Here's another object-level tactic I haven't seen mentioned yet. (Assume LV will not just kill Harry for speaking of non-magical powers. I have a way of increasing the likelihood of this assumption being true)

Harry could explain the Power of Expected Utility Calculations and subtly attempt a Pascal's Mugging on LV, convincing him that LV can't possibly assign a probability of less than one in twenty that killing Harry will indeed avert the prophecy, or for that matter cause it, and that the rational action to take is to not kill Harry. He can present it as a "power" to stop the timer and buy a life, regardless of if LV accepts the conclusion, since it is a valuable tool for the future and was probably not in the books Harry gave him to read.

Harry can also explain the Power of Bayesian Probability Updates, both to buy a life and to provide a framework within which to argue that the probability that LV killing Harry backfires is much higher than he previously expected. If the Mugging alone doesn't work, then Harry can combine this with EV calculations to construct a valid argument that LV shouldn't kill him.

I'm starting to develop a way to chain this with some other arguments and strategies into a cohesive strategy and I'm starting to feel pretty good about it. Thoughts?