Oh, Death was never enemy of ours!
We laughed at him, we leagued with him, old chum.
No soldier's paid to kick against His powers.
We laughed, -knowing that better men would come,
And greater wars: when each proud fighter brags
He wars on Death, for lives; not men, for flags.
Several years of poor commoners are not worth weakening alliances with great houses
For most people, probably not, but having the support of the masses might be more valuable for a house that is either not a major player among the existing alliances, or not going to win any friends anyway (such as Malfoy).
Hardly the most important thing in the chapter, but I was delighted to see a moratorium on house points.
I'm just imagining the professors' frustration: "Well done, <student>, and five points for AAAAGHHH CURSE YOU HARRY!"
Well, this chapter is just full of delicious puns, apart from the entire plot advancement thing.
Auxiliary Protective Special Committee.
APSC
Absurdly Powerful Student Council.
Daphne worried that Draco would be skinned and turned into Leather Pants.
Draco returns "at the turn of the tide" wearing white (silver) robes. He's Draco the White.. err.. Silver.
Considering the short length of the chapter, and combined with the call forward to Book V's Ministerial Education Decrees, that's a good number of references.
The real question is where does it go from here.
Where it goes from here: If the enemy actually wants to defeat this coalition, nothing happens. This is a temporary alliance against an outside threat, and if said threat goes away, the alliance will probably collapse of its own accord. (It may bring some lasting changes to the leadership of Hogwarts, but people will chafe against the strict security, and old and new grudges will emerge, and the coalition will break.)
If the enemy has been breeding Harry/Draco as the future leader of Magical Britain (much more likely), they will continue to attack or otherwise be active, probably conceding many victories to the new Kids' Coalition.
it was the reason for the old tradition of the Noble families synchronizing the birth of their heirs, to put them in the same year of Hogwarts, if they could
This is a nice solution to "magical Britain is much too small for Hogwarts to be this big" and "why is everyone important in Harry's class?". Go cicadas!
It reads like a very forced solution - there would be significant gains to one noble house going against the tradition, so their heir could have several years of Hogwarts students rally behind them - and also kind of impossible to implement, given that we don't know much about their birth control methods, and the Noble Houses are unlikely to all marry at the same time etc.
That said, the HP universe which Eliezer took on as his setting is full of such bugs, and this is a reasonable patch.
I wonder if this will somehow play into Quirrell's plot to have both Ravenclaw and Slytherin win the house cup.
Yes, obviously. Even in the unlikely event this wasn't all planned by Quirrell with his talk of unity, and role in the Hermione Affair, it is now really easy for him to accomplish this goal.
In a previous story, EY posted the penultimate chapter along with an ultimatum: You will earn a Bad Ending by doing nothing, and a Good Ending by guessing, following the internal logic of the story, what the correct solution to this problem is.
The problem could be solved by combining a revelation in the latest chapter with information from an infodump in the first chapter, explaining how space travel worked in universe.
It was in fact solved, and he posted both endings.
This is the danger, that he may do the same thing here, and we must be ready to solve the problem.
I doubt it will be much of an issue however, the raw processing power we have to work with here is much higher, since HPMOR is much more popular than Three Worlds Collide.
I also doubt it will be an issue. But it will be fun. And I'm wondering if we could try to get a head start...
So, speculation for what Harry wants the twins to buy for him. After thinking about this for 5 minutes by the clock, this is what I came up with:
1) A nuclear device (foreshadowed, one of the few things Quirrel fears, useful as a bargaining chip/MAD)
2) Some other form of muggle weapon (superset of #1)
3) Some muggle tech that can speed up Hermione's resurrection process if the main plan fails
4) Related to #3 - ingredients for a magical ritual/potion which will resurrect Hermione if the main plan fails (foreshadowed)
Don't forget Space Stuff.
War. With children.
I fear the consequences if we don't solve this.
Edit: I'm serious:
This was actually intended as a dry run for a later, serious “Solve this or the story ends sadly” puzzle
I agree that it's important and has serious consequences, but what is the puzzle?
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Did the survey.
Results: I'm better at estimating continental populations than I had thought; I am frustrated by single-option questions in many cases (e.g. domain of study, nothing for significantly-reduced-meat-intake-but-not-strict-vegetarian, interdependent causes of global catastrophe) and questions that are too huge to be well-formulated, let alone reasonably answer (supernatural/simulation/God).
Also the question about aliens made me unaccountably sad: even if I retroactively adjust my estimates of intelligent alien life upwards (which I would never do), I have to face the incredibly low probability that they're in the Milky way.