Since HP erased all or nearly all LV/QQ's memories, how is it different from actually killing him?

Wheels in the mountainous and wooded parts of the americas would've not had terribly much of a point without draft animals or long level paths.

Harry literally obliviated everything in his memory, which would presumably include knowledge of any anti-obliviation counter measures

LV would anticipate this, so he should have something set up that will explain it all over to him again, automatically. Compare Fiona in Harry Potter and the Natural 20; LV could have done what she did, and she used no magic (and no Muggle technology more advanced than audiocassette recordings).

Quirrell, chapter 65:

“You are kidnapped from Hogwartss to public location, many witnesssess, wardss keep out protectorss. Dark Lord announcess that he hass at long lasst regained physical form, after wandering as sspirit for yearss; ssayss that he hass gained sstill greater power, not even you can sstop him now. Offerss to let you duel. You casst guardian Charm, Dark Lord laughss at you, ssayss he iss not life-eater. Casstss Killing Cursse at you, you block, watcherss ssee Dark Lord explode -"

With Dumbledore out of the way, Harry becomes the unrivaled leader of the light side, which could make him quasi-king of magical Britain with some maneuvring. His power only increases as he gets older. Voldemort!Riddle enjoys watching Harry!Riddle do all the work, while he goes on a multi-decade vacation on a nice beach in the Caribbean.

The End.

I never said bin Laden shows "moral deprivation"

Nor have I claimed that you said so. I claimed that you advocate that freedom of the west (or moral deprivation from Bin Ladin's perspective) is sufficient for Bin Ladin waging war against the US. That's what I understand "They attacked us because they hate our freedom" to mean.

The jizya isn't just a tax, it is an integral part of the system of subordination and degradation of the dhimmi. The point is to make the dhimmi "feel subdued" -

From your perspective the point is to make the dhimmi feel subdued, but I don't think you have shown that's the point in that particular passage.

Re:context, I can only suggest that you look at the Harris quote in context.

The point I was making is that you quote without providing context. It's quite easy to quote without naming sources in a way that allows you to make them appear worse than they are.

If we are playing that game, than Harris was advocating that it's okay for the US to kill Aghans outside of what's tradtionally allowed by interantional law while other people do think that international law is important.

My interpretation of that was extremely different: that Harry got riddled when he was a baby, in Godric's Hollow.

In canon, Ginny reads the diary a lot and this enables Riddle to take her over when he wants to. When he does, she's basically a puppet: it's (fully aware) Riddle scrawling on walls and summoning basilisks, and Ginny's completely unaware of it; afterwards, Ginny is basically her normal self again, with no memory of what Riddle did while operating her body.

There's no sign in HPMOR of anything like that happening to Harry. The Harry whom QQ addresses as "Tom Riddle" has (so far as we can tell) psychological continuity with the Harry we've been following through the previous hundred-plus chapters. There's no sign of "absences" like Ginny had. After being addressed as "Tom Riddle" (and, again, with no indication of any personality changes or anything) Harry resolves explicitly that he is going to do whatever he can to stop QQ. So if we are supposed to understand that the diary had some major effect on Harry, it has to have done it in a way that doesn't "mirror canon" much at all.

What I think is being described here is something more like a personality-upload from Voldemort to baby-Harry, so that what remained in Godric's Hollow that day was (at least according to Voldemort's plans) Tom Riddle implanted in baby-Harry.

(What I can't work out is whether we're supposed to understand that it went wrong, with the Riddle personality getting kinda isolated, like grit in a pearl, as Harry's "dark side", or that it worked exactly as planned and the Harry we see now is what you get when Tom Riddle's mind grows up in baby-Harry's brain, raised by his adoptive parents. I'm not even sure what the latter means exactly. Perhaps the idea is something like this: after the upload, what we get is more or less the same as what we'd have got if baby-Riddle had been raised in Harry's place, but Riddle's adult memories are also stashed away for later use and the latter are the "dark side".)

[EDITED several hours after posting to fix an embarrassing word-omission. I don't think the sense was ever unclear.]

There were many interlocking pieces of evidence already pointing to the truth of Q == V (I think readers were actually chastising Harry for not figuring it out earlier at some point); the perfect timing of this particular incident was simply the part that happened to break Harry's voluntary suspension of disbelief enough for him to actually start trying to piece it all together.

Hm.

So, as we approach the end of the fic, there's one question left that looks really hard.

Let's try to solve it!

...but in all seriousness: I expect Harry to solve Death before the end of the fic - it's too central to both Harry's current motive and thus the current plot arc, and Eliezer's motives in writing this fic, to avoid, even putting aside the conspicuous Peverell prophecy.

There is not enough time left for Harry to do this by learning some secret art or by putting his own spin on an existing spell. Therefore, this problem should be soluble with what Harry has on hand.

For now, I will treat Quirrelmort and Dumbledore (come on, you don't honestly think he's going to be absent for the big climactic duel of words and ideals, do you?) as resources - never mind how Harry convinces them for now.

• Between Dumbledore and Quirrel, essentially any existing spell. This is known to be insufficient for the task.
• Dumbledore has the Elder Wand. Harry has the Invisibility Cloak. Quirrel is highly implied to have the Stone of Resurrection. All three Hallows are gathered, and Harry seems to have activated something in that prophecy stone.
• The Patronus 2.0.
• The Killing Curse 2.0. Harry is never going to hate someone enough to want them dead, but I could imagine him being sufficiently angry with Quirrel to consciously put him outside of his monkeysphere - aka, not care/be indifferent to his death.
• Partial Transfiguration
• The secret to creating new potions.
  • The secret to creating new spells could probably be taught to him in the remaining time, too.
• Hermione's corpse (probably.)
• The Philosopher's Stone, which appears to be some sort of conceptual anti-Death tool already. (Gold being the least reactive metal and thus the longest-lived in its original state, though that begs the question "why not xenon." Maybe because xenon is a gas and thus will mix/lose its form?)
• A Time Turner. Harry can only go back one or two more hours today, but he can send information back another six as long as he figures out the plan now.
• Minions. Lesath Lestrange in particular.
• A large, probably ordinary rock.

Am I missing any resources?

It seems like a serious blind spot given that Harry has to expect Quirrell to die sooner or later and take the information with him into his grave.

The same critical concept in two different disciplines:

"Of several responses made to the same situation, those which are accompanied or closely followed by satisfaction to the animal will, other things being equal, be more firmly connected with the situation, so that, when it recurs, they will be more likely to recur; those which are accompanied or closely followed by discomfort to the animal will, other things being equal, have their connections with that situation weakened, so that, when it recurs, they will be less likely to occur. The greater the satisfaction or discomfort, the greater the strengthening or weakening of the bond." - Edward Thorndike's Law of Effect, Animal Intelligence: Experimental Studies, 1911

"Public services are never better performed than when their reward comes in consequence of their being performed, and is proportioned to the diligence employed in performing them." - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776