Snape is, in fact, fanatically anti-bullying.

Good point. I have no idea what Snape is thinking (to be honest I glaze over at Snape parts). I guess he is anti-bullying except when done by people he likes to people he doesn't like?

That makes sense. Additionally, it seemed to me as if the volley of spells hit snape before his sheilds had even formed completely.

Rianne appeared in the previous chapter when Snape offered her fifty Galleons for something that, much to her dismay, was probably not sex.

As for Snape's goal, maybe the Head of Slytherin House has his own, in-character plan to restore Slytherin's reputation?

What Hermione really needs is Something to Protect- her own autonomy isn't big enough.

If you want to figure out the James' Rock thing yourself, you should probably stop reading now.

I read this in ch58

Luckily - well, not luckily, luck had nothing to do with it - conscientiously, Harry had practiced Transfiguration for an extra hour every day, to the point where he was ahead of even Hermione in that one class; he'd practiced partial Transfiguration to the point where his thoughts had begun taking the true universe for granted, so that it required only slightly more effort to keep its timeless quantum nature in mind, even as he kept a firm mental separation between the concept of Form and the concept of substance.

And the problem with that art having become so routine...

...was that Harry could think about other things while he was doing it.

and (putting my contrarian nature to good use) thought, the other reason he was good at it was, he concentrated on maintaining his transfigured ring stone all the time. Then I realized that's all thanks to Dumbledore and I started to wonder if it was intentional. In search of clues I reread ch17, specifically the part where Harry got the rock, and then went on to read the Lily's potion book part because it seemed related. That's when I realized I fell for some deliberate obfuscation, as I came away with the impression that Lily was asking questions and mysteriously receiving answers in her potion book. Realizing it was not the case, most of the rest was seen in a flash.

Just as Dumbledore challenged Lily with strange potion-related questions in order to get her to do extra research, possibly directing her to books and topics where she learned something extra about stuff, thus becoming exceptional at potions (which is canon fact), so too did he present Harry with a challenge, expecting him to find the obvious solution of maintained transfiguration in order to follow the advice of a wise old wizard.

Why would he do that? In Ch28 McGonagall seems to think this feat of Dumbledore impressive:

He had used Transfiguration in combat and he was still alive.

Now, how would you do this? Why, by having the ability to concentrate on transfiguration while paying attention to something else (such as the back and forth of a duel). Sounds familiar? To do this, being able to concentrate on transfiguration without conscious attention is indispensable. Dumbledore simply started building up his pet hero early, since, you understand,

Transfiguration must be learned and practiced at a young age in order to maximize your adult ability.

(McGonagall, Ch15)

I mention all this now because Ch67 gave me the impression it will come to light soon. Could be wrong about that.

If I think of Harry as a real person in a real situation, I basically agree with you.

Indeed, I asked the question a couple of months ago of whether the rational thing to do would be to stop Harry then, before it was too late, though I had a different mechanism for his corruption in mind. Mechanism aside, it was pretty clear at that point that he had placed himself firmly on the isolate's path; we're just reading about his first stumbling steps on that path now.

But the thing is, Harry is the main character in a rationalist bildungsroman, and we've already seen that literary tropes have power in his world.

And given the author's stated-at-length beliefs about the relationship between rationality and moral behavior, I expect that -- whether it's true of the real world or not -- a constraining principle of this bildungsroman will be that a sufficiently powerful optimizer can preserve morality (in the human sense) given an adequate commitment to rationality, even in the absence of social entanglement.

And the related (and true in the real world) general principle that social entanglement works just as well to enforce immoral-but-conventional ideas as for moral ones (and is therefore unreliable as a moral guide) has already appeared several times.

In other words: I agree with you that in the real world social entanglement is a more reliable path to morality than individual rationality, at least for the overwhelming majority of people. But HP:MOR would derail a good deal of its literary thrust if Harry adopted that route.

In still other words: what you are championing here is the Hufflepuff yoga, and I agree with you that it's a reliable way to avoid singular evil (though it makes one more vulnerable to certain kinds of collective evil). Dumbledore champions the Gryffindor yoga, which canon!Harry practices but MOR!Harry rejects. Quirrel champions the Slytherin yoga, about which much has been written.

But MOR!Harry is a Ravenclaw.

If there should be an error, this should be decided by the author, not chance. Having a character make an error where they shouldn't is equally an author's error as having a character not make an error where they should.

And this is a situation where it's reasonable either way. Noting that Eliezer has a tendency to err on the side of making his characters too rational, except where necessary for the plot, rather than the other way around, I can guess that Eliezer probably intended that Harry not make an error.

However, Harry making an error here actually increases the verissimilitude to me; now that I know about it. It makes the plot-relevant errors seem less "idiot ball"* and more "Harry makes errors occasionally, whether the plot requires it or not"

*(in the sense of "this person needs to make a mistake in this scene for the story to go the way I want")

You can't improve the result by injecting randomness.

You can if the alternative is worse than random (ie. a character only making mistakes when the plot requires it)*

*and the only reason I believe this was a random mistake is that I suspect Eliezer of having that flaw. So, if Eliezer lacks that flaw, I expect that this was intentional.

Chapter 62-63:

It bugs me that Harry instantly dismissed the idea that Voldemort was behind the Azkaban breakout, without considering the possibility that Voldemort might be in some way behind Quirrell.

Ironically, he lacks the necessary information that would falsely exonerate Quirrell (i.e, that the most direct Voldemort-centered plan would go directly to the ritual rather than to the healer).