Ch. 79 After the aurors come get Hermione for the attempted murder of Draco, Harry is in the Headmaster's office:

Severus seemed as passionless as ever, sitting in a small cushioned chair beside the Headmaster's desk. The old wizard stood terrible and upright by the still-burning fireplace, robed in black like a starless night, radiating power and dismay. All her own thoughts were of utter confusion and horror. Harry Potter sat on a wooden stool with his fingers gripping the seat, and his eyes were fury and freezing ice.

After a lengthy discussion of the case, Harry leaves:

Even as Harry Potter left the room for his own investigations...

But there is no reason to believe he left Hogwarts. Dumbledore then retrieves the Weasley twins from Divination class and gets their map:

The old wizard smoothed the map, bent over it, and whispered, "Find Tom Riddle."

I'd previously assumed that no information came of this, because the Defense Professor was being detained at the DMLE at the time, but Dumbledore almost certainly saw the map report Harry as Tom Riddle.

And then one year Baba Yaga agreed to teach Battle Magic at Hogwarts, under an old and respected truce." Professor Quirrell looked... angry, a look such as Harry had rarely seen on him. "But she was not trusted, and so there was invoked a curse.

And although Perenelle was new-come into the beauty of her youth, her heart was already blacker than Baba Yaga's own -"

Ah, yes, Perenelle, the beautiful and covetous. Perenelle seduced the Dark Lady over the months, with gentle touches and flirtations and the shy pretense of innocence. The Dark Lady's heart was captured, and they became lovers. And then one night Perenelle whispered how she had heard of Baba Yaga's shape-changing power and how this thought had enflamed her desires; thus Perenelle swayed Baba Yaga to come to her with the Stone in hand, to assume many guises in a single night, for their pleasures. Among other forms Perenelle bid Baba Yaga take the form of a man; and they lay together in the fashion of a man and a woman.

Does anyone else think this reads like Quirrel has an awful lot of emotional connection to and personal memories about this story, almost as if it were Baba Yaga speaking about herself in the 3... (read more)

"There's something that would make you happier than that," Harry said, his voice breaking again. "There has to be."

Muggle research in the 2010s has revealed much about what actually makes people happy, and how often people are deceived. The best way to find out is with one of those mood-tracking cell phone apps, which eliminate the biases of memory. Quirrell doesn't have that, but as an approximation, I searched the PDF for the word "smile", which appears 310 times in chapters 1-106, and the word "enjoy", which appears 32 times. What did I find?

“Do you know,” the Defense Professor said in soft reflective tones, “there are those who have tried to soften my darker moods, and those who have indeed participated in brightening my day, but you are the first person ever to succeed in doing it deliberately?”

Interacting with Harry makes Quirrell happy. Moreso than killing idiots. Moreso than teaching Battle Magic. Killing him would be a grave mistake.

... Huh.

The power that the Dark Lord knows not... might end up being love after all.

Quirrel says:

the fact is that Miss Greengrass was not supposed to arrive in that corridor for several hours. I am not sure why her party arrived in Mr. Malfoy's company, and had Mr. Nott arrived seemingly alone, events would have played out less farcically.

That seems very important, so why didn't he ask any of them why they arrived early? It looks like a blatant mistake on his part.

Hmm. My probability that Hermione will be recreated as an alicorn princess is now over 75%:

Indeed, now that you have pointed it out, I have just now thought of some nice things I can do this very day, to further my agenda.

It seems unlikely that Voldemort thinks that humans are the optimal creatures to be (that's flowing with the status quo, which he does not do). It might be best to be, say, both a Wizard and a Troll, or a Wizard and a Dragon, or a Wizard and some new optimized thing. But why try this out on himself first, when it could go horribly wrong, when he could try it out on Hermione?

I wonder if the final room is not visible on the Marauder's Map because it's warded or because the room you enter is determined by whether/how the potion is flawed.

As a veteran Potion's professor, Snape would be able to predict very accurately the way a first year would screw up such a fiddly task. Screw it up in the right way, see an innocuous final room with a little "Well done, don't spoil it!" from the Headmaster. Execute it perfectly and trigger... what exactly?

QQ has Harry's wand, so how is Harry going to get out of this mess? One of my theories is wandlessmagic. The existence of wandless magic at all is evidence the wand isn't strictly needed.

This makes sense if you buy that a wizard is pulling levers on the source of magic rather than actually enacting the spell

From Chapter 25

If magic had been like that, a big complex adaptation with lots of necessary genes, then a wizard mating with a Muggle would have resulted in a child with only half those parts and half the machine wouldn't do much. And so there would have been no Muggleborns, ever. Even if all the pieces had individually gotten into the Muggle gene pool, they'd never reassemble all in one place to form a wizard.

...

So however your genes made you a wizard, it wasn't by containing the blueprints for complicated machinery. That was the other reason Harry had guessed the Mendelian pattern would be there. If magical genes weren't complicated, why would there be more than one?

And yet magic itself seemed pretty complicated. A door-locking spell would prevent the door from opening and prevent you from Transfiguring the hinges and resist Finite Incantatem and Alohomora. Many elements al

Hmm... some thoughts occur to me:

Firstly, he hasn't used any of the muggle equipment Fred and George got him yet has he? But Quirrell's got his pouch.

Secondly, this may not come as a surprise but he is likely to succeed since "HE IS HERE. THE ONE WHO WILL DESTROY THE VERY STARS IN HEAVEN" this could refer to Quirell, true, but I far expect it to refer to HJPEV due to the timing. Also note that Quirell says something about prophecies in ch. 108, but I can't find the quote.

Third: obligatory wacky theory that his father's rock is the Stone of Permanency. Stones == rocks, and he was given it by Dumbledore after all. And Harry's magic interferes with Quirrell's so it might shield the magic trace.

Fourthly: this is my first post on LessWrong, nice to meetcha!

I wanted it to be an anagram of my name, but that would only have worked if I'd conveniently been given the middle name of 'Marvolo', and then it would have been a stretch. Our actual middle name is Morfin, if you're curious.

Morfin is a Riddle family name, so we can probably rule out Eliezer choosing it for its anagrams. Nevertheless, might as well have some fun:

Tom Morfin Riddle

• Mini from toddler
• Firm doom tendril
• Mind meld for riot
• Mind for time lord
• Dirt mod of Merlin
• MOR died from lint
• Mr. Flirted in Doom

What else?

... Hm.

This isn't the chain of logic I followed - for the sake of authenticity I'll put that at the end, but -

Isn't a little... strange, that artifacts designed and destined to defeat death transfer primarily by death?

I mean, even aside from the "kill the previous owner and take their stuff" method, the other option - inheriting it - is also heavily tied to death, as powerful artifacts like these are unlikely to be permanently given away until the original owner has no further use of it.

Backing away from plot for a minute - if you don't expect to manage to destroy death yourself, you should really program your powerful artifacts to seek out the most effective owners, anyway. Inheritance is very unreliable, and murder is entirely counterproductive - both would be backup selectors to anyone designing such a thing. So what's the primary determinant?

I think we've seen it. The prophecy stone, that responded to Harry's oath to end death, engraved with the symbol of the Deathly Hallows, and completely unmentioned since - if I were going to design such a thing, gifting the Hallows to someone who had sworn an honest oath against death would be a good start, particularly if I cou... (read more)

So by the way, has anyone notice that Eliezer did something even more impossible? Not only was Harry saved from certain death at the hands of a hoard of Yaoi fangirls by Voldemort and it wasn't crack, but Voldemort was the one who responsible for the whole thing and it still isn't crack.

Voldemort making random rocks into horcruxs? One day someone steps on the wrong rock and turns into LORD VOLDEMORT! I hate it when that happens.

I must say, the thought of Voldie kicking himself (well, wanting to, but he couldn't because no legs) while spending nine years as a disembodied spirit in the Voyager Plaque was extremely amusing.

I also loved the fact that his Voldemort persona was designed to be a stupid Dark Lord that would last weeks at most and ended up being way too strong for Magical Britain.

So, why did Quirrell offer Hermione to leave before killing her?

META: I'd like to suggest having a separate thread for each publication. These attract far more interest than any other threads, and after the first 24 hours the top comments are set and there's little new discussion.

There aren't very many threads posted in discussion these days, so it's not like there is other good content that will be crowded out by one new thread every 1-3 days.

Quirrel has not confiscated Harry's ring with his father rock, which has been transfigured by Harry, in the setting. We've seen Quirrel's magic fluctuate out of control when touching Harry's, both in Azkaban and in his telling of the night at Godric's Hollow. We've seen Quirrel take care in the Azkaban escape to not even let Harry touch something that Quirrel has transfigured.

It is possible, if Harry simply touches Quirrel with the gem on his ring that Quirrel will be forced to once again throw away his wand and transform into a snake. It would affect Harry too, but Harry seemed less affected than Quirrel in Azkaban for whatever reason (because magic is stronger around Quirrel?)

Even if this avenue would destroy Harry, self-sacrifice is among my contenders for a "power the Dark Lord knows not".

There is also the "other" transfiguration, the one that's not the ring. Anyone have guesses as to what this is?

I just realizied that the trap for voldie might well be Baba Yaga's hairbrush.

It follows from the curse on the defense position.

Because I just realized that I think it was an accident, and happened because Voldemort moved the goblet of fire out of Baba Yaga's reach.

Theory: Voldemort is wrong about the Baba Yaga. She faked her death and ran off with her new wife. This part I am quite confident about. 70% probability? Most of the remainder is that her death was accidental and the reason Perenelle has spent centuries accumulating lore is that she wants her back. Yes, Im assigning under 10% likelyhood to the chance that Voldemort read this story right.

Anyway, given "Baba Yaga is not dead". A thought occurred to me. "Did they remember to terminate her employment? Could they in fact even do so without being whammied by the goblet?" The answers to which is obviously "No." Unfortunately worded contract is unfortunate, Baba Yaga has magical tenure despite slacking on her job for going on 6 centuries.

This was all well and good as long as the goblet was somewhere Baba could get at it. - Telling the goblet to lay of a new teacher every couple of decades isn't m... (read more)

I decided to collect the stuff about these recent updates that confuse me, and when added together two were in the shape of a theory!

"Dumbledore was quite correct," Professor Quirrell said, shaking his head as though in wonderment. "He was also an utter fool to leave the Hogwarts Map in the possession of those two idiots. I had an unpleasant shock after I recovered the Map; it showed my name and yours correctly! The Weasley idiots had thought it a mere malfunction, especially after you received your Cloak and your Time-Turner. If Dumbledore had kept the Map himself - if the Weasleys had ever spoken of it to Dumbledore - but they did not, thankfully."

Even Quirrell is confused! Wow!

So... Dumbledore did know all along, just like cannon, and sent the map to the twins for plausible deniability. He can get away with that because he doesn't mind when people think him a fool. And he really needs Querrellmort to think of him as ignorant so he will play the role perfectly... well Voldemort said he could play chess.

In the last thread roystgnr wrote

Harry figures out Quirrell's identity almost immediately after Snape casts some sort of "Dispel Magical Confusion&qu

So far the update schedule seems to follow the Fibonacci sequence.