From chapter 38, when Harry buys the Quibbler:
"Gosh," Harry said half a minute later, "you get a seer smashed on six slugs of Scotch and she spills all sorts of secret stuff. I mean, who'd have thought that Sirius Black and Peter Pettigrew were secretly the same person?"
EDIT: Then,
"And I'm secretly sixty-five years old."
Which is also true, because of Voldemort inside him. Which leaves....
"And I'm betrothed to Hermione Granger, and Bellatrix Black, and Luna Lovegood, and oh yes, Draco Malfoy too..."
Man, that's beautiful. What does Bellatrix Black want most, that Harry can offer?
She wants Tom Riddle to love her.
That is probably what Eliezer was referring to as the epilogue stomping all over everything.
I want canon Harry/Hermione/Draco/Luna. :<
Note that using the stone for human transfigureation, he can perform sex changes.
Boy-who-lived gets Draco Malfoy pregnant?
I did find that reference quite amusing. I had assumed Harry was being sarcastic in chapter 6:
Professor McGonagall pointed toward a shop that looked as if it had been made from flesh instead of bricks and covered in fur instead of paint. "Small pets are permitted at Hogwarts - you could get an owl to send letters, for example -"
"Can I pay a Knut or something and rent an owl when I need to send mail?"
"Yes," said Professor McGonagall.
"Then I think emphatically no."
Professor McGonagall nodded, as though ticking off a point. "Might I ask why not?"
"I had a pet rock once. It died."
I had assumed Harry was being sarcastic in chapter 6:
Nah, in chapter 33 we have Harry irrationally worried that Hermione is dying rather than just Somnium-ed:
Could've been her last breath escaping.
Oh be quiet. Why are you being so paranoid-protective, anyway?
Er, first real friend we've ever had in our whole life? Hey, remember what happened to our pet rock?
Would you SHUT UP about that worthless lump of rubble, it wasn't even alive let alone sentient, that is like the most pathetic childhood trauma ever -
(Which had me in stitches.)
Two quotes that are scary together:
"There can only be one king upon the chessboard. There can only be one piece whose value is beyond price. That piece is not the world, it is the world's peoples, wizard and Muggle alike, goblins and house-elves and all." - Albus Dumbledore
"I shall not... by any act of mine... destroy the world... I shall take no chances... in not destroying the world..." - Harry Potter
Harry is unfriendly. When it comes time for harry to choose between saving all the people and a small chance at saving the world, you will all learn to regret helping him get out of the box.
I think there is evidence that "magic" has natural language processing and is capable of taking context and intent into account. I don't know that Harry wouldn't be unable to interpret distorting the world as killing everyone. Particularly dice the person he gave the vow to was particularly concerned about and motivated by the death of people (or at least of one specific person).
In the text, they made it clear that the vow was based on the meaning of the words and not the words itself. V said that it was important that everyone understood the meaning.
Harry would not consider star lifting or terraforming or the creation of a virtual world at the expense of the actual one to be 'destroying the world'. He would considering 'destroying the world' to mean 'the ending of all life' or somesuch.
So you mean that Voldie screwed it up AGAIN when he tried to mess with a prophecy? Man, some people are simply not meant to hear prophecies.
On the other hand, the Vow did not change Harry's terminal goals. While he may not work to undermine the Vow itself, it is possible that before coming to the horrible realization that he has to protect the world above its people, he lets enough slip to other so that they may find a way to remove the Vow (or put him back in a box). Also, the Vow has some loopholes:
...That I shall not... by any act of mine... destroy the world... I shall take no chances... in not destroying the world... if my >hand is forced... I may take the course... of lesser destruction over greater destruction... unless it seems to me that this >Vow itself... leads to the world's end... and the friend... in whom I have confided honestly... agrees that this is so. By my >own free will... If a good agent ever learns the full text of the Vow, they can use the loophole to make a dead man's switch and destroy the world if a significant fraction of its people are gone. Also "it seems that this Vow itself leads to the world's end" would probably be true if Harry
As further evidence that the vow blocks killing all the people consider this.
The vow blocks Harry from telling muggels about magic and starting mass healing. At the time it blocks him the ideas he thought of were transfiguring nuclear weapons and plagues that could replicate before the transfiguration wore off. Neither of those poses any danger to "the world" but they pose great danger to the worlds people. Harry doesn't think of up quarks until after he has already been blocked. So the vow seems to be interpreted as killing everyone being the end of the world. Which is quite possibly how Harry understood it.
"There's no way in hell or double hell- " - Mad Eye Moody
See! Double hell is real. Its where double witches go, twice.
Minerva's hand passed over one of those objects, the one with golden wibblers, her eyes closing briefly.
Heh. From Chapter 17:
Oh, the little fiddly things?" said Dumbledore. "They came with the Headmaster's office and I have absolutely no idea what most of them do. Although this dial with the eight hands counts the number of, let's call them sneezes, by left-handed witches within the borders of France, you would not believe how much work it took to nail that down. And this one with the golden wibblers is my own invention and Minerva is never, ever going to figure out what it's doing."
Wizards seem to be overly skeptical of the information that they get from their magical detection spells, an analogue to what some muggle scientists call algorithm aversion. (As evidenced by the current confusion about Hermione's nature, and the lack of response when the wards previously identified The Defense Professor as her killer.)
This means that scheming wizards who want their plots to go undiscovered don't need to trick the magical detection spells, they just need to pursue strange enough plots so that other wizards won't believe what the detection spells tell them. Which makes Voldemort's creative uses of magic analogous to Dumbledore's ploy of pretending to be crazy.
Wizards seem to be overly skeptical of the information that they get from their magical detection spells, an analogue to what some muggle scientists call algorithm aversion. (As evidenced by the current confusion about Hermione's nature, and the lack of response when the wards previously identified The Defense Professor as her killer.)
When a magical detection spell says that a human is really a unicorn, is it likelier that the spell is accurate or that whatever Dark ritual fueled Hermione's resurrection has residual effects that interfere with the usual function of said detection spell?
I don't see why they're still worried about Bellatrix, it looks like she's been rendered mostly 'armless.
Harry has to some extent undone the work of Merlin. Merlin's interdict ensures that the most powerful magics slowly die out of the world as wizards and witches die with their secrets. Harry's scheme for immortality in the magical world puts a stop to the losses, and allows magical knowledge to be kept as it is re-discovered, however slowly. Previously the loss rate exceeded the discovery rate. I think that is about to be reversed. And the Interdict of Merlin was put in place to avoid a prophesied destruction of the world.
Ch. 80
And when (the legend continues) the Seers continued to foretell that not enough had yet been done to prevent the end of the world and its magic, then (the story goes) Merlin sacrificed his life, and his wizardry, and his time, to lay in force the Interdict of Merlin.
But then, Dumbledore seemed to think, after listening to all the prophecies, that the end of the world was inevitable, and that the optimal goal was not about preventing it.
Hum, did Harry suddenly forget about Time-Turners ? Or is he afraid what will happen if people "abuses" from them with the Stone ?
The Stone takes 234 seconds. That's 86400/234 = 369 people/day if you have "normal" 24 hours a day. But if you have 30 hours a day, as you do with a Time-Turner, it's actually 461 people you can heal each day.
For it was said once that you might need to raise your hand against your mentor, the one who made you, who you loved; it was said that you might be my downfall.
Indeed. Harry raised his hand against his mentor, the one who made him, the one he loved (‘Harry was in love. It would be a three-way wedding: him, the Time-Turner, and Professor Quirrell’), and was the cause of Dumbledore's downfall. Only, Dumbledore did not realize that he and Harry's mentor does not need to be the same person.
But didn't he note in the confrontation in the Defense Against the Dark Arts class that Harry had chosen Quirrell as his Wise Old Wizard?
"“Harry… you must realize that if you choose this man as your teacher and your friend, your first mentor, then one way or another you will lose him, and the manner in which you lose him may or may not allow you to ever get him back.”"
Dumbledore's comment in his note just don't seem congruent with this comment earlier on, and it's this comment and not the note which seems congruent with reality.
Excellent chapter! The last few were a bit short, but this one more than made up for it!
I really hadn't seen the twist with Dumbledore coming. I am really, really, really glad that Dumbledore turns out to be sane after all. I really liked Eliezer's take on Dumbledore. I was convinced he was much saner than most people believed, but I couldn't figure out what game he was playing either.
The reference to Harry's pet rock was brilliant. This story clearly has been planned out long in advance.
Harry, hurry up and read the instructions Voldie left you. You know, find out what dark sacrifice is needed before you make plans to revive Hermione yet again. If it requires a human sacrifice you might consider pacing the dementors out.
I think "Britpicking" is the appropriate term, but "crap" is an incongruous word for Moody to keep using the way he does. "Crap" as an interjection is a very American-sounding usage.
Prediction: people who aren't Harry can use the stone once every 216 seconds (3:36).
(The idea being that the rule is "400 times a day" and Harry has a 26hr day.)
For me, this has been the best chapter since the spade of updates in the last few weeks began. I mean, the one weekend where we needed to solve the Final Exam was the most gripping and exciting part for me. However, once that ended, especially with it only being a mere moment in canon, I felt as though the rest of the pieces fell into place as we would have expected. This chapter really struck me as thematic of earlier chapters, the ones which really drew me into this story, like the first time Harry imagined defeating death and killed a Dementor.
I'm glad I had zero idea about there being some kind of internet-controversy about feminism in HPMOR. I hate internet-controversies.
But its not an aggregate pattern in EY's work specifically. Harry has to be the main character, its in the title of the story. If any main character is going to die, its going to be a sidekick.
Part of the reason for fridging female characters in general could be that they don't play an active role in the story, but in HPMOR Hermione was playing a major part.
A second reason is that people care more about women than about men - that's why reports of disasters are often phrased "X died, including Y women and children". But this is sexist against men.
In short, if Hermione had served no purpose except to generate emotions in Harry, then I could see your point. But she played a major role, if anything being more independent than in canon.
Hm, any particular reason, if Harry is already discussing other vulnerable info like having a transfigured Voldemort, he won't fess up to the part where Quirrel was Voldemort and that he won single-handedly?
I gotta say, I've been wanting to know what intelligent people like Moody and Amelia made of Harry's derp story, and hoping that it wouldn't turn out that "Eliezer wants us to believe that everyone in Magical Britain really is that stupid" - and I got precisely what I wished for. Great!
Hm, any particular reason, if Harry is already discussing other vulnerable info like having a transfigured Voldemort, he won't fess up to the part where Quirrel was Voldemort and that he won single-handedly?
Harry's upper hand relies on the idea that Dumbledore knew exactly what he was doing, and them that Dumbledore hired Voldemort to teach children for a year would undermine that.
Incidentally, my P(Dumbledore knew about Quirrelmort) just went way up this chapter.
Dumbledore knew about Quirrelmort
Ugh, I hope not. The closer a story gets to "actually, everyone knew everything all the time, it was all just acting all along and the audience was being lied to and otherwise misled constantly" the more pointless such a story becomes in retrospect. The tricks and maneuvers that impressed you at the time, the emotional reactions that used to engage you (like Dumbledore's surprise at seeing Quirrel before the Mirror) all turn out meaningless.
(Can you tell I didn't like Ender's Shadow all that much?)
The more I come back to this story, the more I like him, and I had felt he was well written to begin with. There are moments I find not just believable but moving, like after Harry rejects his phoenix:
I truly do not know if it was the right thing, or the wrong thing. If I knew, Harry, I would have spoken. But I -" Dumbledore's voice broke, then. "I am nothing but a foolish young boy who has become a foolish old man, and I have no wisdom."
It always stops me when I get to that part.
And there were ones that were moving in a not-sad way, like his talking about all the Tolkien copies he's received and how he treasures them. I remember that bringing a real smile to my face.
I would like you to nominate HPMOR for Best Novel in the 2016 Hugos.
Hey gwern, you scared?
Not in the least. As the endgame plays out, I'm more certain than ever I'll win my bet against it winning a Hugo for Best Novel.
To have a chance of winning, MoR needed two things:
The ending is pretty good but not fantastic, and one of the few professionals openly praising it, David Brin, has cooled a bit on it (in part because he's a lazy reader and in favor of his own much more stupid ending, true, but cooled nonetheless), so it has been doing neither and, as it uses up chapter after chapter, sealing its fate. Should've taken my offer to sell the bet at a discount.
I'm not convinced that winning the Best Novel takes professional support, but I'm interested in your argument.
My guess is that HPMOR isn't going to win-- it isn't obvious that it will be permitted as a nominee. It's a work of fan fiction that doesn't have the original author's permission, and that's made some fans I've talked with nervous.
Other than that, we don't know yet what the rest of the field looks like.
My guess is that if HPMOR wins, it will be because a substantial number of people who wouldn't normally vote for the Hugos vote for it.
Hopefully the apparent time limit on the Philosopher's Stone isn't going to get worse over time. Harry also hasn't considered that it may only be good for some finite number of permanent transfigurations. He's going to try to use it many more times than it probably has been used in a very long time.
It occurs to me that this limit means Flame could, in theory, have been using the stone flat out for five hundred years without anyone catching on. 56 million people died this year. If the stone was used to save as many of them as possible, at random, then with only moderate use of magic for coverup purposes compared to shit we already know the magical world is pulling of, that is just going to be utterly undetectable. "Here have a second chance at life. Also a magical compulsion to keep your mouth shut".
Mostly, resurrecting dead children. The population used to be lower, but kids also used to have piss-poor odds of making it to adult-hood. In terms of QALY, this would have been the best use, and if a child goes missing from a sickbed only to wander into the kitchen feeling chipper and fine, noone would even think twice.
A time limit of 3:54 does seem too arbitrary to be hard-coded.
3:54 is 234 seconds, which is exactly 1/400 of 26 hours, which happens to be Harry's extended sleep cycle. I have no idea if this is significant, but just throwing it out there.
It's also almost exactly 368 and 2/9 uses per siderial day, the actual period of rotation of the earth without reference to the sun.
It would've been exactly that figure about 5,300 years ago.
Aww, so Dumbledore was the one who told Harry to look for Hermione on the train in chapter 6 :)
Alastor Moody went to Minerva's right and sat down.
…
Amelia Bones sat down in a chair, taking Minerva's right. Mad-Eye Moody took the chair to her own right.
Oops!
I'm not sure if it's appropriate to also discuss the authors notes, but one solution to Eliezers writing obstacles is to publish under a pseudonym. Or why might that not qualify?
"In that extremity, I went into the Department of Mysteries and I invoked a password which had never been spoken in the history of the Line of Merlin Unbroken, did a thing forbidden and yet not utterly forbidden."
So, this is the single change that makes this story an AU?
There seem to be much more changes, even that is probably the most important one.
Time Turners don't work the same (in canon, there is no hard limit on 6 hours, it just becomes exponentially dangerous if you try that), the Sirius Black/Pettigrew thing doesn't turn out the same at all, the Free Transfiguration stuff doesn't seem to work the same, ...
And as others mentioned, Voldemort is much more competent.
So, this is the single change that makes this story an AU?
I was thinking along those lines as well, but at that point in time Voldemort was already significantly different from canon.
It seems like the single change (aside from aspects of how magic works) is that Voldemort is more competent, which forces his enemies to level up and go to more extreme measures. Looking at every prophecy is one of those extreme responses, which then triggered a bunch of other changes relative to canon.
I can't remember, what was respectively in the Phoenix's Price and Phoenix's Fate rooms. I though both were passwords for the broken wands and similar things, but the narration implies otherwise. I also wonder what will be in the Phoenix's Egg room. It can't be prophecies (which could otherwise be the obvious choice), and I don't think Dumbledore had the foresight to store frozen brains of wizards who died so that Harry could resurrect them.
Wait a moment. I just realize that Voldemort has been made into a gem meant to contain his soul. He has been made into soul gem. Goddamn it Eliezer.
I find it funny that Dumbledore's efforts to subvert prophecies for his own ends resulted in something directly opposed to his claimed values. I wonder if that's a direct attribute of prophecy, or just coincidence, or both.
One bit that feels unsatisfying is the complete underreaction to Harry's "oh btw Voldemort's alive, here, I brought him with me."
So instead I Obliviated most of his memories, then Transfigured him into this." Harry raised his hand, and silently pointed to the emerald on his ring.
Splat. Boing. Splat. Splat.
"Huh," Moody said, leaning back in his chair. "Minerva and I will be putting some alarms and enchantments on that ring of yours, son, if you don't mind.
I immediately thought of a scene in the Eye of the World:
...It was hi
Here is my prediction about the end of the story
Always 'he will end the world', not 'he will end life'. Even when it was said that you would tear apart the very stars in heaven, it was not said that you would tear apart the people.
Harry will cause the Singularity, transforming all people (and later all matter in the Universe) into a kind of immortal meta-human mind, similar to Multivax or Celestia. He probably even knows the first story as it appeared in 1956.
Eliezer is going for broke on the requests here. Well, this is the chapter do it! I find myself wishing that I knew somebody famous, just so I could be responding to his pleas. Let's save the world, people!
I think Harry should start requiring unbreakable vows for people using transfiguration. He also should hurry with colonizing other planets and moons, in case someone does transfigure something they shouldn't.
Transfiguration will get more powerful once they have some interesting material science classes. Having mass limits isn't much of a problem when you start transfiguring stuff into super-light nanotube-reinforced titanium nantorusses.
Responding to various people who have suggested that if the vow had some particular meaning: Harry might think of ways to get out of it or to get around it: This is not a thing-that-Harry-Potter-Would-Do. The only reason for trying to get out the vow would be in order to allow for the possibility of risking the destruction of the world (whatever this means), and the vow prevents Harry from allowing this risk. So it would directly prevent any attempts by Harry to get out of the vow, including attempts to get others to set up a dead man's switch or whatever.
This also implies that his Vow did in effect modify his terminal goals, as some have already suggested.
Adding to my previous prediction comment:
Predictions: (I'll have to score them all after the epilogue is released, but hey, it means we get an epilogue.)
The "phoenix’s egg" password will (directly or indirectly) allow Harry to find Narcissa Malfoy. 70%
The Line of Merlin feeds information to its rightful holder when they’re holding it. 60%
At least one Legilimency conversation occurred during Chapter 119. 90%
Speculations:
What happens if Harry casts the True Patronus through the Elder Wand? Given that it’s a Deathly Hallow that raises the priors of...
How does Harry think Hermione will figure out how to cast the true patronus? She needs to figure out that dementors are magical manifestations of death, which Voldemort / Dumbledore / loads of smart wizards seem not to have done. Did he tell her, is is he planning on telling her, or something else?
Ok, so the Vow is definitely still in play and has not been resolved trivially. My estimation that the ending is going to be awesome has increased. I was a little worried for a few chapters.
Amelia paused. "There's a possibility that Augustus Rookwood left a ghost -"
"Exorcise it before anyone talks to it," Harry said, conscious of the sudden hammering of his heart.
"Yes, sir," the old witch said dryly. "I shall disrupt the soul's anchoring a little, and none shall be the wiser when it fails to materialize. The second matter is that there was a still-living human arm found among the Dark Lord's things -"
This seems like Amelia misplaying her cards for no good reason. I would expect her first to ask Harry...
I read Harry's suggestion not to investigate, and her responding smirk, as indicating that's it's already tacitly understood that the good guys actually killed the death eaters somehow. This room seems likely to be pretty ok with that, maybe except McGonagall.
Keep in mind that Amelia herself is a powerful witch, and thus "you are not meant to know" is kinda-sorta expected in those circles, and a most valid excuse for basically anything weird or unexplainable.
Giving your life so that your student has a chance to turn the world into what you'd want it to be... I cannot imagine a better fate for a mentor. And potentially being revived to see the fruits of yours and his labor, what a bonus! If only Harry wasn't so rush and not irreversibly destroyed his teacher's identity without first thinking 5 minutes about it.
I've been wondering how much deception Harry can get away with.... considering that the universe is one thing.
Any bets until his whole fake version of Voldemort's death gets revealed?
All this being said, great chapter, great novel. I expect it will be nominated for best novel for the Hugo, and then things will get interesting.
The Author's Note mention of the delayed epilogue (combined with some of the foreshadowing in HPMOR) feels to me like an invitation to write the obvious continuation fic Harry Potter and the Methods of Self-Modification, set between the ending of HPMOR and the epilogue. Does anyone else find this the obvious continuation?
I'm also not sure if writing the fic would actually be a good idea; anyone want to help me evaluate it?
If anyone can put me in touch with J. K. Rowlng
Spell her name right, and she'll be more receptive? (I'm sure that this will be fixed soon.)
This is a new thread to discuss Eliezer Yudkowsky’s Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality and anything related to it. This thread is intended for discussing chapter 119.
Plans for next chapter release:
There is a site dedicated to the story at hpmor.com, which is now the place to go to find the authors notes and all sorts of other goodies. AdeleneDawner has kept an archive of Author’s Notes. (This goes up to the notes for chapter 76, and is now not updating. The authors notes from chapter 77 onwards are on hpmor.com.)