All of Edgehopper's Comments + Replies

Let me give you some more immediately useful advice: a recommendation. The New York Diamond Center at 65 Broadway (ignore the big-sounding name, it's a small shop with an expert salesman) is where I bought both my engagement ring and our wedding bands. The salesman will provide useful and professional advice about the relationship between price, size, and quality. Importantly, he sells loose diamonds and orders the settings separately. You will get the GIA certificate from him for any diamond you buy. And then you also have your seller already picked ... (read more)

It's actually fairly explicit in the Torah, specifically in Numbers chapter 35. The Mosaic code there established cities of refuge to which killers were to be allowed to travel and be judged, where they would be free of revenge from those wronged until the priests decided whether their offense was murder, manslaughter, negligence, or accident, and imposed the appropriate penalty.

Since time loops are stable, no reason not to try. Even if Mr. Counsel is Lucius, the most stable time loop is that Lucius doesn't believe the Patronus and gets killed anyway, and then Harry can at least truthfully tell Draco he tried.

2Astazha
So, I don't know how these stable time loops are supposed to work. My working model is that they function by trial and error, that time iterates through a universe until it encounters paradox, at which point it returns to pre-paradox, inserts some change into the world through prophecy or whatever, and tries again. This continues until a stable timeline is found, with an unknown number of them being discarded/destroyed. It appears from within that things worked on the first pass, but they did not. Our viewpoint never follows into one of those dead ends, but they exist(ed). If the world really works that way, Harry would be potentially throwing his victory away by forcing a paradox. Time would have to reset to before the paradox and insert a change into the world to ensure a different outcome. He may or not be victorious in that new timeline. Harry dying was already a high probability and it would certainly resolve things to Time's satisfaction. His best chance of securing his immediate past as part of the real and continuing world would be to make sure this timeline remains self-consistent. (Plus, he's prophesied to destroy the stars and creating a time-paradox seems like a really obvious possible way to do that.) The only other possibility I can think of for these apparently stable timelines is that the whole universe is pre-determined and no one has any free will at all. I read something from EY about universes with time travel and he seemed to be in support of this second possibility. Any other possibilities for how this would work?
4TobyBartels
A fair point (and upvoted), but since Harry will still have killed Lucius if he fails, it'd still be best to try to hide the whole thing from Draco. But yes, try (since he doesn't know for sure who Counsel is), and tell Draco that he tried if Draco figures it out, but don't tell him otherwise.

I was wondering if one of the things Harry would do with his extra hour was a Patronused message to Lucius to "Stay where you are, remain silent, do not respond to the Dark Mark, for one hour, if you want to live." Or even better, a message to Draco to send that message to Lucius, except Draco is probably still sleeping off Harry's stunner.

In any case, under the circumstances, Harry might be able to trade the whole sad story, including confirmation of Dumbledore's ordered killing of Narcissa (now that Dumbledore is gone) for Draco's forgiveness.

8Astazha
Warning Lucius would risk paradox, particularly since Mr. Counsel was probably Lucius.

Because it's hard to be seen as on the light side when you decapitate 38 adult wizards in an instant? Fame is harmful, not helpful, to Harry's goals. Better to make it look like Voldemort managed to cause a magical backfire that killed all his minions in a failed ritual involving Hermione. To go back to the Azkaban chapters, the perfect crime is the one that is declared a tragic accident and closed.

0Velorien
Is that true? Harry wishes to reform or replace the government of Magical Britain, and being the hero who defeated Voldemort twice would make that a lot easier (as Voldemort himself acknowledged). Turning Hermione into the Girl-Who-Lived dilutes that effect, and also brings all his fame-related problems down upon her.

I like this, and you can resolve "HE IS THE END OF THE WORLD" by combining the rule that prophecies are meant to be heard by those they affect and to cause their consequences, and that to Voldemort, his death is the end of his world. So HE IS THE END OF THE WORLD is true for Voldemort, because Harry's killing power can be the end of Voldemort's world.

Combine this quote, partial transfiguration as the power Voldemort knows not (both true and foreshadowed by Dumbledore's reaction when Harry first revealed it), the previous weaponization of partial transfiguration when Harry transfigured a cross-section of the troll's brain into acid, the shaping exercises as a Chekov's Gun, and another Chekov's gun being Harry's resolution to drop the Batman "no killing" stance if the enemy killed again.

Harry wordlessly transfigures an atomic-thickness line of material from the tip of his wand through his cloth... (read more)