When did Harry learn Obliviate?

But it does not serve as a solution to say, for example, "Harry should persuade Voldemort to let him out of the box" if you can't yourself figure out how.

It's a shame that nobody's going along this line of thought. It would be cool to see a full, successful AI-Box experiment out there as a fanfiction.

(I'd do it myself, but my previous attempts at such have been.... eheh. Less than successful.)

which would have had... unpleasant effects on her mental health

I'm not saying that the alternative was good--just that the alternative was better.

there's a pretty sharp limit to how much you can count "going along with a hostage situation at gunpoint" as "meddling."

I am considering primarily the earlier mistakes Harry made with respect to Quirrell.

So, the next chapter.

1. Voldemort has some continued use for Harry. It could be personal (chess?), political (Light Lord?), magical (not sure?), theatrical (and now, my minions, I destroy the Boy Who Lived!), or some combination thereof.
2. For many of those uses, it makes sense to tell the Death Eaters to not harm Harry, while also demonstrating his dominance over Harry, since the Death Eaters run on dominance.
3. Harry has been repeatedly shown that Voldemort is better than he is at this game, and he won't have a chance for decades, and that his meddling routinely makes things worse (both Voldemort's plan around Hermione and Dumbledore's plan around Voldemort were ruined by his meddling). He could go quietly, or he could continue trying to win. As a piece of literature, I think I expect Harry to try to win; even when he can't come up with good plans / his mind refuses to think of things, he still goes with things that are mistakes rather than do nothing. As a piece of pedagogy, I'm not sure which to expect: persistence is a virtue, but so is not being a damn fool about it.

Before Harry shot at him, Voldemort was cursed to be unable to threaten Harry's immortality, and given the several times he's found himself getting wrong answers to questions previously, I don't think he was certain Harry would have betrayed him even with such a convenient que. So that covers anything that happens before Harry fires the gun.

After that point... I think he's trying to cover his bases. That he set up such a ploy to enable him to kill Harry means that he's likely at least going to try. But that's not the only Winning move, and it's a Winning move that prevents other Winning moves from being attempted.

"There are plots that must succeed, where you keep the core idea as simple as possible and take every precaution." "All thiss, all I have done, iss to ssmassh that desstiny at every point of intervention."

This is one of those plots. "Keep Harry Potter from destroying universe" does not allow duct tape, WD-40, and lesser wishes to attempt a do-over. Killing Harry is probably the most effective way to keep that from happening, if you can do it. The last time Vold tried to subvert or redirect a Prophecy by destroying most of a person involved, things went so badly he spent most of a decade as a howling disembodied spirit. It's not been explicitly stated that Prophecies act like Time Turners (aka DO NOT MESS WITH TIME/NO), but it's pretty strongly implied to result in something like Mage's Paradox or Continuum's Frag. Resurrecting Hermoine and giving aid to Harry Potter was something that had to be done before any Death Eaters were summoned and arrived, and was about the only such thing, and was disjoint enough from people directly related to the Prophecy as to be unlikely to result in Paradox/Frag.

Vold knows Harry's best friend as a pillar of restrictions. Even if we know her to be a threat to his plans, Vold knows that her death triggered Harry's transformation into The One Who Tears Stars and that this is more dangerous than even an immortal Hermoine.

((I think he forgot some of the matters he said earlier, though. The Parsletongue curse will probably strike soon since he promised neither he nor his would seek to ever harm Hermoine. I'm genuinely surprised that cutting curse here didn't already cause something horrible to happen to him.))

But that suggests that you can resurrect someone non-permanently without the Stone - and possibly keep them alive indefinitely by expending constant magic on it like Harry does with his father's rock.

Still no direct answer for whether or not we are in a Mirror!Verse. Confirmation that Voldemort is acting to prevent Harry from destroying the universe--But I find myself still confused as to what he wants to do with Harry that is more important than killing him immediately to protect the universe. I would think that possibility negates any benefit of keeping Harry around.

In useless trivia: the Death Eaters got those masks and cloaks on in a hurry. It suggests that the outfits are some sort of spell that can be quickly applied, if seconds after being summoned the Death Eaters can arrive in full regalia.

The Dark Lord pressed his wand to the flesh above the severed arm's elbow, and the fingers twitched, twitched like they were alive; by dim moonlight Harry saw a darker mark appear on that flesh, just above the elbow.

Seconds later the first hooded figure appeared inside the graveyard with the popping sound of an Apparition. A moment after that came another pop, and then another.

The hooded figures wore silver skull masks, and moonlight fled from the robes beneath them.

... So. That was a thing.

Let's see here. My current best guess for Voldy's extremely redundant anti-apocalypse plan looks something like this:

1) Kill Harry Potter. 2) Thoroughly kill Harry Potter with thirty-odd Death Eaters. 3) Have Harry Potter kill himself 4) Convince Harry Potter that if all else fails and he somehow manages to, I don't know, stab himself in the Resurrection Stone and set off a chain reaction that throws his other 108 Horcruxes into the Sun, he'll kill himself anyway 5) If he doesn't kill himself, ensure that Hermione Granger is around to keep him sane.

Taking a short break from trying to figure out just what is going on...how do y'all think Hermione would feel if, assuming no levels of deception, she woke up to this scene?

...

Seriously, EY? You split it up into two chapters just for that? -.-