All of orielwen's Comments + Replies

April now, is it? Then the next thing that's going to happen is that everyone except Harry goes home for Easter (Easter Sunday was 19 April in 1992, and they'll probably take most of the holiday before it rather than after it since it's so late that year) and Harry's parents come to visit him. That should be interesting. I hope he's told them he's not allowed to leave Hogwarts.

1Alex_Altair
I didn't think it was possible for muggles to enter Hogwarts. Isn't it invisible to them?
0Xachariah
In canon, there was no Easter/Spring break mentioned, merely Christmas and Summer. It's a shame, because the interaction between Harry and his parents while his parents visit Hogwarts would be amazing. I can't wait for summer vacation to come. Edit: Apparently I stand corrected. Good to know.

Maybe he's not forgetting, just trying to double-bluff Hermione by appearing suspicious.

Yes, I can tell you do, because you don't spell it 'vayse'.

0pedanterrific
Upvoted because I had to go back and reread to figure out what you were saying. ("I think of vase as normal and vahse as affected." I didn't even notice because I think of 'vayse' as normal as well.)

That's all true. And on re-reading, I'm going to go back to my original thought of Quirrel, with the emotional involvement being faked to keep Hermione's interest. Quirrel did, after all, speak up for her when all others were silent.

9pedanterrific
There's certainly evidence pointing that way: "the sibilant whisper" - "dry as dust" - "the high-pitched chuckle" , "What's your name?" "That is the riddle, young Ravenclaw" , and indeed "for now you have seen how the others stayed silent"... But while I could easily believe that Jeremy Jaffe is better at projecting false emotion than Hermione is at discerning it, I have a much harder time believing that He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, whose eyes blazed crimson like miniature suns, could forget the value of surface appearances.

I agree. It was so obvious to me that Hermione was being Obliviated that when I read the instruction at the start of the next chapter I went back to see what I could be missing. It didn't occur to me that peope might not be getting it. And that was when it had ellipses.

bad memories are definitely scars you get from death

That's backwards. I suppose experiencing the death of someone close to you could leave a mental scar in the form of a bad memory. But that's hardly the definition of a bad memory. Nor is a painful memory an inevitable outcome of someone's death.

There is that. But it's just occurred to me: if the person attacking Hermione is not Snape, then what's Snape been doing to make him late and quite exhausted in Chapter 77?

7pedanterrific
Well, what do we actually know about the sequence of events? Assuming that things are presented in chronological order seems a bit premature, especially in this fic. More specifically, of the Aftermaths last chapter we know that * Dumbledore+Harry began at 6pm (with an addendum at 9), * Quirrel+Snape was precisely at sunset, * Draco+Bulstrode was at some unknown time in the afternoon or evening, * Draco+Goyle was some unknown time after that, and * Hermione+Mr H&C was also unknown, but either before or after Draco+Bulstrode (since Millicent was present at the meeting Hermione was coming from.) As far as I know, we are given no indication at all when Interlude with the Confessor happens. It could be immediately after Snape gets back from the meeting with Quirrel, it could be immediately after Hermione is mindraped, it could be the next day for all we know. But even assuming the Aftermaths are in chronological order, and the Interlude does immediately follow on to the last Aftermath... Snape could have been, say, checking on the third-floor corridor to make sure Quirrel wasn't bluffing about having stolen and replaced the Stone. In fact, I would expect him to have done this anyway, whether or not he then put on a Hat and Cloak and serial-Obliviated a twelve year old girl. (Eugh.)
orielwen140

Chapter 76: "And that's why I can destroy Dementors and you can't," said the boy. "Because I believe that the darkness can be broken."

This is interesting, because it touches upon a thought I had about the Dementors back in Chapter 45. In canon, Dementors are manifestations not of death or even fear, but of despair. (I believe Rowling has said she drew upon her own experiences of depression.) That's why chocolate helps, why they generate feelings of hopelessness, why they take away happy memories and leave unhappy ones, and why their ult... (read more)

1MinibearRex
I don't know about chocolate, but bad memories are definitely scars you get from death. And what I suspect triggered the idea in Eliezer's mind to make Dementors be about death is the idea of the Dementor's kiss, because of the old metaphor "kiss of death".
HonoreDB130

I think what Harry says is heartfelt, but it's also a decent false trail to prevent Dumbledore from accidentally working out the secret and losing his ability to cast a Patronus.

Not that Dumbledore necessarily needs that. He's in a great position for doublethink: he can presumably use the Pensieve, label the memory "the secret of dementors and the Patronus charm," then Obliviate himself. Locking the basilisk away in a secret chamber, if you will.

I have Sirius down as an outsider for Hat-and-Cloak.

5MinibearRex
Sirius didn't seem to me to be quite intelligent enough for that. Harry makes a comment about Pettigrew being substantially smarter than Black. Additionally, there was this line: Mr. Hat and Cloak is apparently someone Hermione is familiar enough with to recognize at a quick glance.

Yes. I don't see Dumbledore in canon being so stupid as to fail to either ward his room against time-travel or recognise that that was how Harry got in.

8wedrifid
Come to think of it I can't see MoR!Dumbledore being so stupid as to not recognise it. Not only does MoRdore use timeturners heavily himself and strategically analyze time loops with Snape he has also seen (some of) what MoR!Harry has managed with them previously.

But we know Hermione didn't send herself a signal. Anything simple and quick enough to do unobtrusively (like biting her lip) would have been instantly noticeable to her on the second iteration.

2DaveX
We know Hermione didn't send herself a signal she could notice instantly on a second iteration. As of ch76, we do not know if she sent herself a signal not instantly noticable. You might not want to use a signal that could be detected by yourself during an obliviation event in order to make sure the signal isn't telegraphed to the obliviator. Harry might think that if one needed to signal obliviation, it might be best to detect it safely in the future, unless he thought he could make use of an instantly detectable signal and a tactical response would be worth risking interception. In Ch. 6 he risked interception of the signal (he told the potential obliviator McGonnagal about it) in order to forestall obliviation. I doubt that that tactic would work with Mr. Hat and Cloak/Ms. Veil/...

I wouldn't take at face value anything Quirrel says that's not in Parseltongue. And even then with a pinch of salt: it might be that it's simply harder to lie in such a non-human language rather than there being any actual magical constraint.

Fred and George didn't do it. They planted a story about Quirrel. Quirrel read the story and, seeking a way to get back at Skeeter, found out that Fred and George were trying to get back at Skeeter on Harry's behalf – but not that they had planted the story about Quirrel. So he offered to help them, and set everything up for Skeeter, then wiped their memory of everything they'd done to plant the story, which included the memory of planting the story about Quirrel.

1NihilCredo
I still can't see how publishing a stupid and incorrect story would have been reason enough to make people assume that Rita Skeeter had gone into hiding lest she faced Malfoy's punishments. Canon!Skeeter would hardly flinch at publishing bullshit stories, and I don't recall hints in MoR that that trait was different - hell, she says her paper regularly throws around empty accusations of Death-eating, which sounds like a much more dangerous thing to do for a publication than fake marriage tales.
5mstevens
Not convinced - Quirrel said he'd have trouble arranging a small portion of the evidence Skeeter saw. Obviously we don't have to believe that, but EY's general setup makes me think it's something Fred and George did.

Has this experiment been repeated since? On kids who weren't growing up in the near aftermath of a great war? It seems to me to be a bit of a stretch to take this as indicative of the nature of all humans everywhere at all times.

-2MugaSofer
Um ... all of human history? Does that count?
0PhDre
Would you argue that there is some attribute that is fundamentally different between children growing up in the post WWII era and today (or any other era for that matter)? My very anecdotal evidence is that once any sort of division into groups occurs, children act in a matter very similar to the Ratters and Eagles. There was a gifted and talented program at my elementary school, which consisted of students from across the county who were bussed into the school and took classes seperately from other students. At the graduation pool party, an innocent slash contest escalated into a full out fight between over.. I'd say approximately 40 students, some of whom inflicted relatively significant injuries. Of course, in group bias had always existed throughout the school years, but violence associated with in group bias isn't something that I feel would be atypical in children of different eras.