All of l2718's Comments + Replies

l2718110

Harry is allowed to solve this problem any way YOU would solve it. If you can tell me exactly how to do something, Harry is allowed to think of it.

This is not quite phrased correctly. While I know less magic than the protagonist (having not attended Hogwarts for a year), I know far more physics and mathematics than he does. I am also privy to world-building knowledge that he isn't. For example, we know about major artefacts:

  • The Elder wand has been repeatedly featured in the fic, but neither Harry!Riddle not Voldemort!Riddle are aware of it yet.

We... (read more)

1CBHacking
Similarly, it would be seriously pushing it to rely on any scientific advances of the last (real-world) decade or so, unless there's a reason Harry would be able to at least semi-plausibly pre-discover them himself. Not that I can think of any of those which would help anyhow, but it's something to keep in mind. Future tech - even things we think we could perhaps do - is probably right out. Harry could conceivably transfigure something (his epidermis, for example; has anybody mentioned that yet?) into a material that we know exists or could exist, and can describe in atomic or sub-atomic detail, yet can't synthesize; an arbitrary isotope of an arbitrary element should probably be possible, for example. He can't use transfiguration to produce something with negative mass (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_mass), though... at least, I would assume not, even if the science he knows suggests that such a thing is theoretically possible.
l271800

Regarding Chekov's Elder Wand:

We have been repeatedly told about Dumbledore's "long dark wand" (Ch. 56,57,77,81,94,110), a "wand of dread power" (Ch. 77), which we know from Canon is the "terrible device" Grindelwald possessed (Ch. 77). In Azkaban (Ch. 57), Dumbledore confirmed this:

"Nonsense, my dear," the old wizard said cheerfully as he strode off yet again, waving as though in admonition his fifteen-inch wand of unidentifiable dark-grey wood, "I'm invincible."

Query: A key point in canon is the mast... (read more)

l271800

This.

You beat me to posting this quote.

Riddle Sr. doesn't care to rule magical Britain, and will use this to rid himself of his Voldemort persona. Eventually he can reap the fruit of whatever magical research Harry!Riddle Jr. does, as well as have interesting challenges with him. I'm highly confident he doesn't want to restart the wizarding war (which he couldn't make challenging for himself no matter how hard he tried).

Pure speculation: similar to cannon, Harry will survive Voldemort killing him by coming back from Limbo (possibly the Riddle Horcrux Network).

l271880

In Ch. 37, Quirrell explains how he found Harry:

"and no blood purist is likely to think of consulting a phone book"

Conditioned on Lord Voldmort being a blood purist, this is evidence for Quirrell not being Voldemort (probably the intended interpretation). In fact, this was evidence for Lord Voldemort not being a blood purist.

[anonymous]100

And if you've been paying attention to the Muggle world for the whole 20th century, a blood purist is exactly the sort of villain you'd think up.

l271800

Random search can be an effective strategy due to bounded rationality. As pointed elsewhere on this thread, the expected utility of a mixed strategy is not greater than the maximum utility of the pure strategies in its support. But determining the utility of the pure strategies may not be possible. For example, an ant cannot carry the neural machinery necessary to remember everything it has seen, or to use such information to determine with accuracy the most likely direction to food -- but it can carry sufficient neural machinery to perform a random walk.