All of glumph's Comments + Replies

glumph00

The silver outline blasted back into the world, and said in the strange outside version of Harry's own voice, "Hermione Granger says," the blazing figure's voice became higher-pitched, "AHHHHHHHHH!"

1Alsadius
I commented elsewhere that this is a major difficulty with trying to save her. Invisible Hermione would have to scream in the middle of combat to fake out the patronus, which is obviously an incredibly dangerous thing to do.
glumph50

Do Hermoine's parents even have the right to withdraw her? Harry's parents apparently do not have such a right:

Muggles had around the same legal standing as children or kittens: they were cute, so if you tortured them in public you could get arrested, but they weren’t people. Some reluctant provision had been made for recognizing the parents of Muggleborns as human in a limited sense, but Harry’s adoptive parents did not fall into that legal category (Chapter 26).

2cultureulterior
This quote in particular makes that point...
glumph00

We know that LL loves his mother, but does she love her son? Does she love anyone but Voldemort?

5DanArmak
She'd love her son if Voldermort wanted to make her love him. Seriously, this has got to be true just for subversion value.
0Raemon
And slide like a well oiled gazelle down things.
glumph20

This is the quote I had in mind, from Chapter 23 of HBP:

‘He [Voldemort] seems to have reserved the process of making Horcruxes for particularly significant deaths. You would certainly have been that. He believed that in killing you, he was destroying the danger the prophecy had outlined. He believed he was making himself invincible. I am sure that he was intending to make his final Horcrux with your death.

‘As we know, he failed. After an interval of some years, however, he used Nagini to kill an old Muggle man, and it might then have occurred to him to t

... (read more)
1pedanterrific
It's on the talk page. Link is broken, though.
glumph00

I thought that the Nagini horcrux was made via the killing of Frank Bryce. Don't have the book with me to check, though.

0Shmi
This being the 21st century, shall we make it up or look it up?
3Paulovsk
Thanks.
0[anonymous]
I don't understand why this was downvoted... the original source has been deleted but Glumph posted a link to an accurate copy of it.
glumph40

I'm assuming the 'past-Quirrell' that Quirrell tells Hermoine about in Chapter 84 is the 'young man' that Amelia Bones believes is now Quirrell. (Is this reasonable?)

If that's the case, then one way of understanding the situation is this: Riddle assumed two personas---Voldemort and Light Riddle---in order to experiment with different ways of acquiring power. He found that the Voldemort-path was much more preferable on account of the loyalty he could obtain via the Dark Mark. The Dark Mark was so effective that the loyalty he earned as Light Riddle seem... (read more)

2avichapman
It always seemed to me that 'light Riddle' was not Riddle, but Quirrell before he was possessed by Voldemort. Remember that he visited a dojo and learned to fight, Later Voldemort attempted to do the same and failed. There would be little point in coming back to learn again if he was the same person.
4pedanterrific
It's certainly what I immediately assumed. Not actually Riddle, but yeah. Amelia claims that Quirrell's Yule speech calling for a Mark of Britain / Light Mark "struck her as familiar", and was one of the clues that brought to mind the vanished Noble Hero. Or he could have been possessing the actual body of his former classmate.
glumph40

It can't be blocked by raw magic (Protego and similar) but what prevents Actio, Wingdarium Leviosa or Free Transfiguration to be used to create a physical barrier to block the spell?

Nothing. Indeed, Dumbledore blocks the killing curse in canon (Order of the Phoenix) by animating a statue to jump in front of it.

So if AK is in any way unblockable, it is unblockable only by magical means.

glumph80

The most promising option that remains, by my reading, is that there's nothing separate about the Horcrux contents for the Hat to key off of -- they effectively are Harry, or part of him.

That seems to be supported by this passage from Chapter 85:

Maybe because his dark side wasn't an imaginary voice like Hufflepuff; Harry might imagine his Hufflepuff part as wanting different things from himself, but his dark side wasn't like that. His "dark side", so far as Harry could tell, was a different way that Harry sometimes was. Right now, Harry was

... (read more)
1[anonymous]
It could be that horcruxes performed on things with brains are intensely unreliable -- so, instead of the brain being able to assert itself over any dumb matter it's bound to, like a book, it suddenly finds itself fighting for control with matter that has a 'soul' of its own. In this case, the horcrux gets trapped in the brain of an infant child, and you sort of split the difference - the horcrux is partially destroyed by years of being trapped in a baby brain, but leaves certain skills and intellect and preferences behind, integrated into Harry's brain. An alternative hypothesis is that the horcrux is inactive, or unconscious, in some form, and has been integrated into Harry's brain, and Quirrelmort has a plan that involves waking it up at some point in the future if Harry can't be pushed into his dark side by subtler means.
0Desrtopa
I'll note that that passage really doesn't shift any likelihood away from this explanation.
MixedNuts240

Voldemort's Killing Curse worked. Lily's son is dead. The sacrifice magic hurt Voldemort and created a new person in Harry's body from Voldemort's mind, who we've been reading about ever since. The hat doesn't notice this because it never met the previous Harry. Voldemort knows all this and is treating Harry as his mind-child.

glumph60

Va gur Nhgube'f Abgrf sbe Puncgref 39--40 (Cergraqvat gb Or Jvfr), Ryvrmre nccrnef gb or qryvorengryl inthr nf gb jurgure gur UCZBE havirefr unf na nsgreyvsr. Ng yrnfg, gung'f ubj V ernq guvf:

Vg'f na vagrerfgvat dhrfgvba nf gb jurgure Uneel vf orunivat nf n Syng Rnegu Ngurvfg jvgu erfcrpg gb uvf fxrcgvpvfz nobhg na nsgreyvsr. Gb or engvbany, lbh jnag gb unir gur fbeg bs zvaq gung, vs vg svaqf vgfrys va n jbeyq jvgu ab nsgreyvsr, qbrfa'g oryvrir va na nsgreyvsr, naq vs vg svaqf vgfrys va n jbeyq jvgu na nsgreyvsr, qbrf oryvrir va na nsgreyvsr. W. X. Ebjy

... (read more)
0[anonymous]
Lrf, ohg fbzrgvzrf gur rivqrapr ninvynoyr gb lbh vf zvfyrnqvat. V qba'g guvax gur rkvfgrag rivqrapr whfgvsvrf oryvrs va na nsgreyvsr, tvira gur xabjyrqtr ninvynoyr gb Uneel.
glumph00

Did anyone archive the April Fool's chapter from ff.net?

4ArisKatsaris
The April Fool's chapter was never in fanfiction.net, it was in a site made to look like like fanfiction.net, where it still is.
glumph00

Your name is your name, and no piece of paper can grant it or take it away.

If the world of HPMOR is some sort of simulation, as you claim, then this is true and significant; your name exists as a fixed value that can be referenced by a program like the Map. But if the world of HPMOR is more like our own, then to say "your name is your name" is pretty empty; like most everything else, there is an explanation of why your name is your name. In our world, what makes it true that we bear the names we do is not that we all have own values for the ... (read more)

2Bugmaster
I think these are two separate issues. One issue is concerned with the wizards' concept of names. The wizards who created the Map would seek to imbue it with whatever naming convention felt right to them. The other issue is concerned with how the HP:MoR universe works, and which resources the Map can tap in order to implement its functionality. These issues are somewhat related, but they aren't identical. We could very easily envision a world where names are stored on birth certificates, and yet the wizards still believe that, even if Mr. Harry Potter goes through life calling himself "Mr. Spoo", his name is still Harry Potter, because that's what his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Potter, called him. On the other hand, we could envision a world where names are stored in some underlying data structure in the simulation, and yet the wizards believe that what a person calls himself is more important than whatever name parents gave him. Or we could envision some combination of the two. That said, IMO no wizard would conceive of actually perusing the birth certificate database for anything; nor would he deliberately enchant a map to do anything of the sort. For all we know, wizards and witches don't even have any birth certificates. It's pretty likely that, even if they do have birth certificates, they don't have any centralized databases that store them; we never seen any wizard use one, IIRC, neither in canon nor in MoR. So, "how does the Map work ?" Well, it works the same way Harry's Mokeskin Pouch works: by magic.
glumph10

It's not clear. When Crouch is confessing everything under Veritaserum, he says that he saw his father entering the grounds on the Map, and so headed into the grounds to intercept him. He says something along the lines of "Then Potter came, and Krum", and it's ambiguous as to whether he sees them appear on the Map or if he sees them him person.

glumph00

Well, someone already did do it; now the question is whether we need part 13 before tomorrow night.

glumph30

That's just not how the Hogwarts founders would have thought about the problem.

That doesn't mean the Founders could do the impossible. Saying that "it just uses your name" might be true, but it doesn't tell us how it can use your name. There must be a way that it works (although it may very well be that there is no consistent way-that-it-works that can be extracted from the text). Compare this to another example in which the creator of an artifact "thought about the problem" differently:

Broomsticks had been invented during what

... (read more)
-1Bugmaster
My guess is that, in the world of HP:MoR, the Simulation Argument is true. Muggle science works within the boundaries of the simulation; magic operates directly on the underlying data structures, bypassing most of the Muggle-oriented interfaces by using debugging APIs. That's why it has rules that make some sort of sense, but that don't correspond to most laws of nature as Muggles understand them. Of course, the virtual machine that powers the "reality" of HP:MoR is fairly robust, which is why magic is relatively safe (i.e., you can't crash the whole of reality with a miscast Lumos), and also why magic is not all-powerful (those debugging APIs are still fairly limited).
0[anonymous]
To clarify, what I believe is that magic works in a top-down way, not a reductionist way. If you were writing a computer program, you would have to specify where the name comes from and what to do in marginal cases. But the Founders believed that each individual came with an XML-tag name attached to them, and the map just tries to figure out that name. I realize this is an incomplete theory because it doesn't explain what the map does in weird borderline cases (although I can make guesses). I am using this theory (which we can derive by comparing the map to Harry's pouch, and to broomsticks, and to Transfiguration) to reject hypotheses that involve a reductionist, computer-program approach to magic.
0linkhyrule5
The Founders may have been Truenamers, in which case each person who walked in would have a singular name attached to them.
glumph20

This feels implausible, but, given that Lucius seems to think that Harry is Voldemort, it would be tempting.

0AspiringKnitter
I couldn't swear to it, but I thought the map showed Krum in GoF.
glumph40

This theory, unlike the birth certificate one, can easily explain how the Map matches people with names. During the Sorting, McGonagall reads aloud a name, and the next person who puts on the Sorting Hat is assigned that name. (Assuming the Hat is hooked up to the security system, or vice versa.)

7pedanterrific
Actually, that's even better- we have a known mechanism by which (something that could be hooked up to) the Hogwarts wards can read minds to determine names. So it actually doesn't require some extraneous piece of paper or database or whatever, but on the other hand would only work on people who've been Sorted.
glumph60

Is it possible to obliviate yourself selectively so that you lose all knowledge of your own name?

In Quirrell's case, he may be a powerful enough Occulumens to prevent the Map from reading his mind and so learning his name (if your theory is correct).

glumph00

Quite right, I completely overlooked that.

However, this does raise an interesting and completely tangential question about the Map. How does it know everybody's name? What 'database' does it---or rather the enchantment that it is an interface for---make reference to?

An obvious answer would be birth certificates. It is not (too) unreasonable to suppose that wizards have them too, and that the Map is clever enough to map people to their birth certificates. I have no idea how it would do this, but in any case I don't think this can be how the Map works.

Fi... (read more)

3Bugmaster
From a Muggle point of view, maybe. From a Wizard point of view, that's probably the least obvious answer. Your name is your name, and no piece of paper can grant it or take it away. If I were to venture a guess, I'd say that a person's name would be something like "$givenName $familyName", such as "Harry Potter" or "Albus Dumbledore". The givenName is the name your parents gave you when you were a baby. The family name is the name of your Noble House ("Malfoy", "Potter", etc.), or simply the last name which your parents share ("Granger"). This is the naming convention that (as per my guess) wizards and witches have been using since the time of Merlin, so it's reasonable to assume that the creators of the Map imbued it with the same rules. As to the question, "yes, but how does the Map compute the values of givenName and familyName for any specific person", the answer is, "Magic".
[anonymous]140

This discussion reminds me of the "Bag of zahav" experiment of Chapter 6.

And therefore the answer is "Magic, Mr. Potter" and "It just uses your name." This doesn't predict much, but it allows us to eliminate obviously nonmagical hypotheses like a database that reads in names announced during Sorting. That's just not how the Hogwarts founders would have thought about the problem.

I guess that a baby that hasn't yet received a name would be known as "Mr. Potter" or "The Potter baby" or something equally vague.

3wgd
Other than the "external database" option, the only other sources of name information I can think of are: * The mind of the person being mapped * The mind of the person reading the map * A sort of consensus of how everyone in Hogwarts knows someone I feel that picking someone's name from their own mind seems the most elegant and consistent. It doesn't handle babies (Before the parents choose a name, can a baby even be said to have one? Babies would have to be special-cased regardless), but it does allow arbitrary people to be mapped (multiple strangers being indistinguishable from each other seems like a serious flaw in a security system) and requires no external registry. On the one hand, it seems like interrogating the mind of every human is vastly more complicated than just looking up the name in a database, but to the kind of epistemology which would seem obvious to a 9th-century witch or wizard I can see it being "obvious". (And to respond to your question about Pettigrew in the great-grandparent, I would assume that the map skips over animals entirely, which would probably include animagi. This would tend to lend a slight amount of weight to my "the map displays your name as you know it" theory, as if the names came from how everyone else around you knew you there would be no reason not to include pets.) If my theory is true, it raises an additional interesting question: Is it possible to obliviate yourself selectively so that you lose all knowledge of your own name? (Possibly storing the memories in a pensieve first so you can recover them later) And if so, is the map the only piece of the Hogwarts security system which might be impeded by this? A further idea: Professor Quirrel is shown to take a very loose approach to identity and names ("Identity does not mean, to such as us, what it means to other people.") Possibly Quirrelmort is the constant error, not because his name is wrong, but because he doesn't have a name attached to his marker at all.
4pedanterrific
Maybe it works by a registry of current and former students and faculty at Hogwarts, and people who are neither show up as "Intruder (number)" or something. In modern Wizarding Britain this would include basically everyone. I mean, if the Founders created the Map as part of the Hogwarts security system, they wouldn't have been all that concerned with putting a name on everyone who could possibly step foot on the grounds, they'd just want to be able to locate students and differentiate them from anyone else. I can't remember, did the Beauxbatons and Durmstrang delegations show up on the Map in GoF? Not that it really matters, the canon!Map and MoR!Map are different enough that it wouldn't be much evidence.
glumph70

Edit: I am wrong.

What will Quirrell display as on the Map? One would think that, if the Map read "VOLDEMORT", the Weasley twins would have figured it out. (There's an analogous, hilarious, inconsistency in canon; how did the twins never see Peter Pettigrew sleeping in Ron's bed?)

If Voldemort did steal Quirrell's body rather than use Polyjuice, he might just appear on the map as "Quirrell".

Anubhav140

(There's an analogous, hilarious, inconsistency in canon; how did the twins never see Peter Pettigrew sleeping in Ron's bed?)

What makes you think they didn't?

(The obvious answer to this inconsistency is that they had no reason to spy on their brother/the first-years' dorm, but... He used to be Percy's rat. They never spied on Percy? BS.)

It wouldn't read Voldemort in any case; Dumbledore expects, and I have no reason to expect otherwise, that Voldemort would show up as Tom Riddle.

The Twins' POV mentions two errors in the Map, one constant and one intermittent. If Quirinus Quirrell sometimes (maybe whenever he's out of zombie-mode) reads as Tom Riddle, that would be the intermittent one, and if Quirrell and Riddle were constantly superimposed, that would be the constant. The Twins wouldn't necessarily think this was extremely suspicious; if they looked it up, they'd find a Tom Riddle was He... (read more)

3Eugine_Nier
Possibly "Tom Riddle".
glumph90

This came up in one of the previous threads:

"Indeed," said Professor Quirrell. "So while there's no point in asking any of you, it would not surprise me in the slightest if there were a student or two in my classes who harbored ambitions of being the next Dark Lord. After all, I wanted to be the next Dark Lord when I was a young Slytherin" (ch 19).

But during the interrogation we get this:

After some further leafing through parchments, carried out in silence, the Auror spoke again. "Born the 26th of September, 1955, to Quondia

... (read more)
1buybuydandavis
I'll go with Quirrellmort forgot he was supposed to be Quirrell for a second, and instead was just being honest.
0bramflakes
My first thought when reading that was that they were simply falsified records.
6pedanterrific
I think JoshuaZ meant we don't know for sure that Scrimgeour wasn't lying to trip Quirrell up, the way he did with the Fuyuki thing. (The fact that canonically Quirrell was in Ravenclaw argues against this, but it doesn't seem a sure thing.)
glumph70

Well, considering Quirrell is in custody, it can't hurt to look elsewhere. If Dumbledore doesn't bring Quirrell under heavy interrogation of his own after he is released, then I will be confused.

2Bugmaster
Is he really ? It seems to me like he's merely enjoying some R&R. Once he's done relaxing, he will Obliviate (or possibly just annihilate) the Auror, get up from his chair, stretch, and warp out of that room to the next destination on his agenda.
8pedanterrific
So the question is, does Quirrell know that the Map exists / is possible? If he does, either he's already beaten it or he can't risk ever going back to Hogwarts. If not, he's about to get caught by Dumbledore in the seat of his power while weakened. I would be a little annoyed if Quirrell's circumvented the Map- it would be way more impressive if he arranged for the Great Quidditch Reform plus Ravenclaw and Slytherin winning the House Cup from outside Hogwarts.
glumph50

I think you're right that Hypothesis 2 is more likely than H1. However, both assume that some tale (true or false) about Voldemort visiting the school has been circulated in wizard Britain. But as far as we know, that tale is told for the first time in Quirrell's class. As always, Quirrell is our only source:

"The Dark Lord was foolish to wish that story retold. It did not show his strength, but rather an exploitable weakness" (ch 19).

Of course, if this is the first time the story is told, people may wonder how Quirrell knows. But this is ... (read more)

4see
Yes, that's one of the intermediate hypotheses. Call it 1.5 -- Hypothesis 1.5: Voldemort stupidly destroyed a school (instead of coming back later in disguise to learn the martial art), but was smart enough to not spread the tale. Then as Quirrel, he spread misinformation to his enemies that would cause them to underestimate both Voldemort's abilities (now that he's learned the martial art from Quirrel) and his self-control (Quirrelmort having more than the old Voldemort). It works with what we "know", but still seems to me to be too Canon!Voldemort and not enough MoR!Voldemort for my taste.
2JoshuaZ
Sorry, how do we know this?
glumph50

I think that's fully compatible with either possibility. If Voldemort studied there, then he would have reason to destroy it; to not "leave the source of his power lying around". But if, on the other hand, he didn't study there (because he was refused), then he would again have a reason to not leave a source of power lying around. (If I can't have it, no one can.)

glumph30

You're forgetting that Tom Riddle actually did study at the monastery before he destroyed it to deny that training to his enemies.

Do we know this? If I recall correctly, all we know is that Quirrelmort says that Quirrel learned there and Voldemort didn't. So as far as I can tell it's an open question whether it was pre-possessed Quirrel who studied there, or Voldemort (or neither).

see210

Hypothesis 1: Voldemort both stupidly destroyed a school (instead of coming back later in disguise to learn the martial art) and stupidly allowed the tale to spread (letting people know he neither knew the martial art nor was able to control his temper).

Hypothesis 2: Voldemort was smart enough to learn the martial art from the school, combined vengeance for the humiliation he experienced with sound strategy in destroying it afterwards, and then spread misinformation to his enemies that would cause them to underestimate both his abilities and his self-control.

You can construct intermediate hypotheses, but #2 sounds a lot more like MoR!Voldemort to me than #1.

Implied in Chapter 49, Prior Information, when Harry and Quirrell are discussing Slytherin's monster:

"Rule Twelve," Professor Quirrell said quietly. "Never leave the source of your power lying around where someone else can find it."

9pedanterrific
The other hint is that
1Benquo
Well, I suppose the other alternative is of course that Quirrel madethe whole thing up. But if he was telling the truth I don't see any other explanation that makes much sense.
glumph50

A current theory is that it contains the Philosophers stone, its certainly more important than just a rock.

It's certainly not the Philosopher's Stone. The only reason the stone isn't at the Ministry (or Gringotts) is that Hogwarts provides the absolutely best protection:

"I do not own it, that thing which Voldemort desires. It belongs to another, and is held here by his consent! I asked if it could be kept in the Department of Mysteries. But he would not permit that—he said it must be within the wards of Hogwarts, in the place of the Founders' pr

... (read more)
glumph10

That was actually called the Caterwauling Charm, though. There's another detection spell in DH: Hominem Revelio. The only known effects of this spell are (i) the 'swooping sensation' experienced by a detected person and (ii) the lack of any alarm when nobody is detected. It's likely, however, that there is no alarm even when persons are detected; when it's used against Harry, Ron, and Hermoine by Death Eaters there is no alarm mentioned in the text.

glumph00

You're right. I was thinking in terms of the difference between murder and attempted murder, when the important difference here is between murderous killing and non-murderous killing.

It still seems true that one's soul will only split in the case of successful murder.

glumph10

edited in response to the below

It's not only the intent behind attempted murder, but the successful execution of that intention:

“But how do you [create a Horcrux]?”

“By an act of evil — the supreme act of evil. By committing murder. Killing rips the soul apart. The wizard intent upon creating a Horcrux would use the damage to his advantage: He would encase the torn portion —” (HBP Ch 23)

It's possible that Snape's soul did split. When Snape and Dumbledore are discussing the plot to have Dumbledore killed, there's this exchange:

“If you don’t mind dying

... (read more)
2gRR
That's exactly the point - whether an act is a "murder" or a "mercy" depends on the intent of the person performing the act. Murder splits the soul, mercy doesn't. And only Snape alone knows which one he would do.
glumph40

In canon, at least, the Fudge/Umbridge faction of the Ministry embrace the alliance pretty wholeheartedly:

"Voldemort has returned," Dumbledore repeated. "If you accept that fact straightaway, Fudge, and take the necessary measures, we may still be able to save the situation. The first and most essential step is to remove Azkaban from the control of the dementors—"

"Preposterous!" shouted Fudge again. "Remove the dementors? I'd be kicked out of office for suggesting it! Half of us only feel safe in our beds at night because we know the dementors are standing guard at Azkaban!" (GoF Ch 36)

glumph20

I assumed Voldemort's soul was split because the Killing Curse hit him. How that caused his soul to split is a bit mysterious, I'll admit.

5pedanterrific
I'm pretty sure the latest Word of Rowling on the matter is "mumble mumble his soul was unstable or something, stop asking questions" (paraphrased).
glumph40

Even if that test is performed and it is proven that Hermoine's wand was not used to cast the Blood-Cooling/Chilling Charm, Lucius et al. will simply claim that Hermoine stole another student's wand before the duel.

5thescoundrel
Yes, but we have now found a thread that we can pull on to start establishing a true map. The truth is entangled- so then we find the student whose wand was stolen, or we start testing the wands of our prime suspects. At the very least, we have introduced an inconsistency in the story- when would Hermione have had the chance to steal a wand? Draco called this dual- are we to now believe that Hermione showed up believing she would be defeated and stole a wand in advance, so she could kill Draco? I don't know if this is enough to forestall the vote, but it certainly is an avenue curiously absent from Harry's thoughts, especially when he is so focused on trying to prove Hermione's innocence- if his Super Dark Side can find this in his memory, I find it hard to believe it would not be of use.
9pedanterrific
That seems like relevant information, though.
glumph50

all Harry needs is one clear contradiction or impossibility.

Except that the Wizengamot is stupid. They might not care that Hermoine's testimony is inconsistent, or they might put it down to bad memory.

glumph40

But nobody thinks Hermoine actually committed murder; the charge is attempted murder.

-1Joshua Hobbes
Yes, but she supposedly left Draco in the trophy room to die slowly. From her perspective, allegedly, it was murder.
glumph20

Indeed:

Slowly, Harry Potter sat back down again as Professor McGonagall pulled down with her grip on his wrist.

But by then he'd already declared war on the country of magical Britain, and the idea of other people calling him a Dark Lord no longer seemed important one way or another.

glumph20

While Dumbledore and Lucius and other major figures might be sane, I'm not sure if we're supposed to take the majority of the Wizengamot to be anything other than, in Harry's words, "stupid, corrupt, and evil."

4DanArmak
On the same kind of criteria, you might expect the majority of all wizards and indeed all humans to be stupid, corrupt, and evil-when-given-great-power. It's a Quirrel kind of thought. Which doesn't make it untrue.
0Percent_Carbon
Cool. I hope someone does it.
glumph100

c) The Ministry generally seems to be portrayed as fairly competent...

But I'm reminded of this exchange in Chapter 61:

Madam Bones's voice continued. "We brought in Arthur Weasley from Misuse of Muggle Artifacts—he knows more about Muggle artifacts than any wizard alive—and gave him the descriptions from the Aurors on the scene, and he cracked it. It was a Muggle artifact called a rocker, and they call it that because you'd have to be off your rocker to ride one. Just six years ago one of their rockers blew up, killed hundreds of Muggles in a flas

... (read more)
1Fergus_Mackinnon
Considering how much of a threat technology can pose when combined with magic, one or more factions may have deliberately placed an ignorant pureblood into the position in order to keep knowledge of muggle developments marginal.
glumph60

But since the audience's (extended) reaction includes voting to send Hermoine to Azkaban, how will changing her testimony help?

3aladner
If he could change part of the testimony to something demonstrably false, that no one else in the room knew at the time, he could prove that her mind had been compromised. Actually changing the memory would be a problem, and it doesn't seem like a likely solution to me, but it's still possible.
glumph130

If a new thread was necessary, it should have been created before the new chapter was posted. As it is there are already dozens of posts about Chapter 80 here; a new thread would split the discussion.

8Percent_Carbon
So, Tuesday? Say, at 5:00 pm Pacific?
glumph20

Maybe Hogsmeade kids are too poor to afford to go to Howgarts.

In canon, nobody is too poor to attend Hogwarts. When Riddle (Voldemort) is offered admission to Hogwarts, he tells Dumbledore that he has no money:

“That is easily remedied,” said Dumbledore, drawing a leather money-pouch from his pocket. “There is a fund at Hogwarts for those who require assistance to buy books and robes. You might have to buy some of your spellbooks and so on secondhand, but —” (274).

There's no mention of tuition, so I'm guessing that's free.

0drethelin
thanks! I guess that just leaves us with the theory that there were no Hogsmeade kids in Harry's interaction circle in the books?
0pedanterrific
Except you don't know what your animal is until after you take the potion.
glumph00

I'm not sure if the surrounding dialogue supports this:

Automatically, the mask of the innocent Harry said exactly what it would have said: “Are my parents in danger? Do they need to be moved here?”

“No,” said the old wizard’s voice. “I do not think so. The Death Eaters learned, toward the end of the war, not to attack the Order’s families. And if Voldemort is now acting without his former companions, he still knows that it is I who make the decisions for now, and he knows that I would give him nothing for any threat to your family. I have taught him that

... (read more)
5Alsadius
I'll admit, a big part of my reason for that belief is narrative causality - I would not find this evidence convincing in an open world, but in the context of a fictional story, it fits a little too neatly for coincidence. It's obvious that Harry is going to move out of Dumbledore's camp at some point - their worldviews differ too strongly - but this would make an absolutely beautiful cause for the split. And yes, "I don't give in to intimidation" is a good start for getting people to stop threatening you, but "...and if you try, I'll start intimidating your people and see how you like it" works much better. There's a reason nuclear deterrent involved having your own nukes, and not just saying "London can take it" writ large.
glumph60

Third clue: in the original canon, Harry had a piece of Voldemort's soul in him, an accidentally created Horcrux, and the reunion of that piece with Voldemort was a critical step in Voldemort's death.

The destruction of that piece was crucial. I don't believe that it ever reunited with the rest of Voldemort's soul.

glumph30

I propose that Dumbledore helped to fake Narcissa's death so she could join the light-side.

I'm not sure if Eliezer has read the sixth book, but Dumbledore makes this very offer to Draco:

"I can help you, Draco."

"No, you can't," said Malfoy, his wand shaking very badly indeed. "Nobody can. He told me to do it or he'd kill me. I've got no choice."

"He cannot kill you if you are already dead. Come over to the right side, Draco, and we can hide you more completely than you can possibly imagine." (HBP, 591)

Dumbledore... (read more)

glumph130

This was addressed in the previous thread:

The movie 'Groundhog Day' is about a man who relives the same day over and over again repeatedly. Because the day is reset, he is able to re-play each interaction with any person repeatedly until he can convince them of whatever he wants or work around them ...

In chapter 77, H&C performs a similar hack. He tries to convince her, then obliviates her memory and uses his gained information to convince her even more, etc. Instead of resetting the day, he is resetting her mind back again and again.

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