Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality Endgame Thread

[pita]

For those of you who don't know HPMOR go to hpmor.com and read it.

UNMARKED SPOILERS BELOW YARR

So I totally called about three things in the big reveal. I am awesome. This story is better. No idea how it will end. Anyone thoughts? Thinkings? Mind stuff? I don't imagine Dumbledore beating Voldy in a duel because it would be at least mildly anticlimactic... I would expect a partial transfiguration to come into it but no idea how...

[Landis963]

First off, which 3 things did you call? Also, the backwards text is: "ish ow not yourfaceb ut your coh erent extrap olated volition." In that vein, then, this is a trap for Quirrellmort, which only works in this way if someone with Tom Riddle's active consciousness happens to extract the Stone. The trap would work in different ways for other people, obviously, but if the intentions of the taker are honorable, it would be child's play to con them into giving the Stone back.

EDIT: I mean to say the "Dumbledore" in the mirror is an illusion, which Harry can't alert Quirrellmort to because of the stipulations that Quirrellmort forced Harry to agree to.

[Lethologica]

I wouldn't assign confidence above 70% to the claim that the cliffhanger Dumbledore is an illusion. Hiding in the Mirror is consistent with Riddle's earlier claim that he couldn't find Dumbledore:

So I looked... to see what people of significance... were not at the game... and I saw the Headmaster missing... but for all my magic can tell me... he could be in another... realm of existence...
Anyone care to speculate on the implications of AI, given the message on the back of the mirror?

EDIT: Also, after chapter 104, it occurred to me that Professor McGonagall was wrong about Madame Malkin: (http://hpmor.com/chapter/5) You-Know-Who himself did walk into her shop, and she did much more than simply turn a hair.

[Douglas]

If I'm interpreting chapter 111 right:
it appears Harry has inadvertently dealt a catastrophic blow to Voldemort by giving normally sound advice. I think Voldie's real purpose in doing the troll and unicorn thing was, as per Harry's earlier advice, testing his self-improvements by giving them to another person first. His improved horcrux should not be exempt from such testing*, of course, so he went on to make a horcrux for Hermione too.

And then discovered that making an improved horcrux for someone other than himself renders all of his own improved horcruxes inert. It's not clear whether the one immortal limit is per world or per caster, but as Voldemort is the caster here it doesn't matter in this case.

One plausible theory someone on the xkcd forum came up with is that the improved horcrux ritual puts the subject's spirit in an alternate reality (or something along those lines), and "Two different spirits cannot exist in the same world". Putting Hermione's spirit into his horcrux-world displaced his own.

* Sure, it's already been tested by Voldemort's own death, but the update that lets his spirit roam freely has not been tested.

[Lethologica]

Called the easy part--that this was a setup--but not the reasons or the outcome. Oh well.

What does come next? What does Voldemort intend that requires playing to the crowd?

Also, 99% confident that's Bellatrix's arm.

[Eldariel]

Well; if it wasn't obvious from when he had Shirou's "superhero"-speech (or "line of thinking" or whatever) in one of the chapters, all the skullmasks and the general thematics remind me of how much he's borrowing from FSN. Also, my own hypothesis for why Voldy was fortifying Hermione so was that he intended to use Hermione's body; that'd of course ensure Harry would never raise a hand against him as well. However, I suppose he doesn't feel the need.

[Lethologica]

Well; if it wasn't obvious from when he had Shirou's "superhero"-speech (or "line of thinking" or whatever) in one of the chapters, all the skullmasks and the general thematics remind me of how much he's borrowing from FSN. Also, my own hypothesis for why Voldy was fortifying Hermione so was that he intended to use Hermione's body; that'd of course ensure Harry would never raise a hand against him as well. However, I suppose he doesn't feel the need.
Whoa, that's literally exactly what I predicted as well. (http://lesswrong.com/lw/lry/harry_potter_and_the_methods_of_rationality/c188) (I was talked out of it, though, hence the retraction.) Now I prefer the "he was testing methods of immortality before using them on himself as a parallel to his previous failure to do so and also as his first attempt at using 'nice' thinking" hypothesis.

[Rater202]

Well, Harry's boned.

[Landis963]

Well, Harry's boned.

Harry's been boned since Quirrell talked him into going after the Stone with him. With that said, however, apparently there is a solution. The catch? We the audience need to think of it before Tuesday.

[Seerow]

So I stopped reading this a while ago, can anybody more familiar with it help me figure out where I left off, so I don't have to spend hours going through it?

Last thing I remember was a visit to Azkaban.

[Rater202]

So I stopped reading this a while ago, can anybody more familiar with it help me figure out where I left off, so I don't have to spend hours going through it?

Last thing I remember was a visit to Azkaban.

I think that was "Stanford Prison Experiment" but it might be wise to start from an arc or two before that to catch up.

[Lethologica]

Yeah, at least the Dementor arc is necessary buildup for TSPE.

So, how will Harry convince Voldemort to let him out of the box? To be honest, I haven't a clue.

[Douglas]

Harry's been boned since Quirrell talked him into going after the Stone with him. With that said, however, apparently there is a solution. The catch? We the audience need to think of it before Tuesday.
I came up with a possible solution. I posted it in a review on fanfiction.net, copy and pasting here:
With 36 Death Eaters and Lord Voldemort all watching closely, ready to fire, it is not plausible that they might all miss or all react slowly. In order to win, Harry must reach his winning state before any of them even realize they should be taking action. Whatever Harry does, he must avoid triggering their response before his action is complete. That rules out movement or non-Parseltongue speech.

Harry has two tools available to him: Parseltongue dialogue with Lord Voldemort, and his wand. He cannot speak to any Death Eaters without triggering them. Speaking with Lord Voldemort will achieve results only by furthering Voldemort's goals in some way. Whatever side gains might be made, this seems suboptimal.

Harry's wand is pointed downward, and moving it will trigger the Death Eaters. Speaking the words of any spell will also trigger them. Anything he does with it must be wordless magic and must work with the wand pointing down. There is one form of wordless magic Harry has already mastered - Free Transfiguration. More than that, Harry has developed it beyond any other wizard by mastering Partial Transfiguration. I can think of no other wordless magic Harry knows, so this seems his only option.

Transfiguration is constrained by needing the wand to point at or touch (I'm not quite sure which) the object to be Transfigured. Harry's wand is pointing at the ground and touching the air. But if this requirement were direct and absolute, Transfiguring anything wider than the wand itself (or thicker than a surface film, if touch is the requirement) would be impossible. Discarding the notion of "objects", as Harry had to do to master Partial Transfiguration, the atoms to be Transfigured must be pointed at/touched by the wand or in contact with other atoms being Transfigured. It seems reasonable, then, that Harry can Transfigure any contiguous volume of atoms that connects with his wand. I note here that Harry tried and failed before to Transfigure air, but that was before developing Partial Transfiguration - that attempt was still limited by the conventional notions about whole objects, and he has never revisited it.

Transfiguration is also constrained by needing to know and understand what you're trying to Transfigure something into, and by the volume of what you are Transfiguring - more volume takes more time and magical power, both of which are in short supply for Harry. Harry's Transfiguration needs to defeat 37 opponents, and it must do so with something of exceedingly low volume. Defense does not seem viable. The offensive option that comes to mind with such a constraint is a cutting edge - provided you retain sufficient strength, smaller is actually better for that. What's thin and really strong and something Harry has Transfigured (or at least overseen the Transfiguration of) before? Buckytubes.

Transfigure a net of buckytubes already in place over every Death Eater and Lord Voldemort, a net form of the classic monomolecular whip. For good measure, place it over their wands too. Its weight might be insufficient to make it cut just lying there, so it needs a way to apply tension to make sure. Physically pulling on it both would trigger the Death Eaters and risk some of the threads flying into Harry, so that's a bad idea. But Harry established back in the same experiment session as the original buckytube transformation that you can make something exert force by Transfiguring its size/length. So, after the net is placed, Transfigure it shorter/smaller to make it slice through everything. Do the wands first to prevent any dying discharges. Oh, and the gun. Don't forget the gun.

The result: Harry stands stock still, not seeming to do anything. Moments later, the gun and every Death Eater's wand simultaneously fall into tiny pieces, and a moment after that the people holding them turn into Ludicrous Gibs. The Death Eaters are all dead. Lord Voldemort is forced back into a disembodied spirit. The only live bodies present for him to inhabit are Harry (not an option due to magical resonance) and Hermione (likely also having resonance due to Harry's Patronus being involved in raising her, but also off limits by Voldemort's own decision).

Voldemort will be back, certainly, but it will take him time to find and possess someone and make appropriate preparations for another confrontation. In the mean time, all his stuff is left behind. End the Transfiguration to avoid accidentally slicing Harry himself. Grab the Philosopher's Stone, the magic pouch, Hermione, the Time Turner, Invisibility Cloak, clothes, and whatever else seems useful, and use the final hour on the Time Turner to make a secure escape and buy extra time for your own preparations. Go back to Hogwarts, find another student with a Time Turner willing to take a message, and arrange for the extra arrivals Voldemort had not expected outside the hallway to the Stone.

After that I'd consider looking for a way to free Snape from Voldemort's Imperius charm (but wait until after Voldemort's left with past-Harry in tow to implement it, of course), contact Moody, and in general start rallying every useful ally available, keeping the constraint of not disrupting the Quidditch match in mind.

Note, btw, this quote from way way back in chapter 1:

Beneath the moonlight glints a tiny fragment of silver, a fraction of a line...

(black robes, falling)

...blood spills out in litres, and someone screams a word.

[NichG]

Suggested line of thought towards a solution:


First off, I think that any solution which involves violent action on Harry's part either subtle or overt is going to fail. It's already been shown in recent chapters that Voldemort is prepared for that. Also, on a meta-game level, based on the context of this challenge any solution that actually works isn't going to have random factors which those proposing the challenge won't be able to have some ability to predict. So e.g. anything with 'does he notice it or not?', 'does he move fast enough or not?', etc isn't going to be the answer.

So we're left with using communication to either change Voldemort's plans, or to at least get him to create a situation where the above unknowns become absolutely known. I'll aim at the first, since the second seems unlikely given that Voldemort is very good at making and detecting hostile deceptions. For the first, we know through Voldemort's own statements that his long-term goals did not involve Harry's death originally, but that the prophecy took precedence. So we need to change his approach to the prophecy.

Therefore I'd propose: instead of asking what Harry knows, ask what Voldemort does not know, then ask which of those things will change his actions given his stated goals and values once it becomes known. Then determine if we can figure out enough about those things with current data in order to make an attempt.

The primary topic then would be 'What is the nature of Prophecy?' - e.g. how does it work? This is of primary relevance to what Voldemort is currently trying to do, so addressing it has a high chance of changing his plans.

I think we can move a step beyond this and ask 'How does information transfer in time work in HPMOR?'. There are some relevant things related to this mystery:
- Function of Comed-tea
- "Don't mess with time!" message when Harry was setting up an experiment on self-consistency-based computation with his Time Turner.
- Why did Atlantis disappear? Some comments were made about it being edited out of time, but the source is unknown to us.
- What was the intended original function of the Mirror? Given that the prophecy is about ending the world, and the Mirror is said to be the exact opposite of that, this seems relevant.
-- Secondary question: Why was work on the Mirror in the heyday of Atlantis so un-motivated?

Given all of this information, I'd propose the following:

Atlantis had access to time travel/time loop/etc things. As part of this, Atlantis quickly realized that time must be self-consistent; non-self-consistent patterns do not come about. Furthermore, if time travel made non-self-consistent events inevitable, then time travel itself would be excluded existing. Therefore, in any universe with time travel and self-consistency requirements, there must be mechanisms to ensure that there is never an irreconcilable event. However, there is nothing bounding these mechanisms to not be catastrophic on the personal scale. Someone could have an aneurysm upon coming up with the idea to create a paradox, an asteroid could have been slightly perturbed by events in its initial formation such that it lands on their city at that moment, etc.

One solution to this is to make time travel necessary in order to not have a paradox. There are solutions like this in special relativity with wormholes, for example. But this seems dangerous since if you screw up, the nearest self-consistent solution could be very bad for you. You're basically betting that the universe can't find an easier way to deal with the situation you've created than the solution you want.

Another way to buffer against this would be to create escape valves, specified failure points where its easy for the universe to create self-consistency by locking away the potentially inconsistent loops. This is probably what the Mirror is intended to do. When someone looks in the mirror, it extrapolates the universe forward based on that moment and displays it. The perfection of the mirror creates an ambiguity: one side is real, the other is just an attempt at reality. If one side contains a time loop which cannot be resolved, the other side was the real one, and vice versa. So every time someone looks into the Mirror, its creating a bit of a save point for the universe to reset and resolve inconsistencies. However, it's also something more than that - it provides a way for information to flow into the universe from an inconsistent timeline. Horcruxes seem to be a way to convert a person into information, and then convert information back into a person. This is probably what happened with Atlantis being removed from time but wizards still being around - the remaining wizards were refugees who realized that the existence of the Mirror wouldn't necessarily protect their own personal existence from such an event.

This would explain part of why construction of the Mirror was so lackluster - in some sense, its not hard to figure out that the creation of escape valves would be an inevitable consequence of time travel, so people had a bit of bystander effect going on. That is to say, they knew that someone would take care of it, so it didn't need to be them.

The question then is, what does this have to do with Prophecy? Based on Voldemort's recent conversation, Prophecies always manipulate events in order to make themselves come true - you don't end up with Prophecies that are meaningless. That means that Prophecy is probably also a form of escape valve. A Prophecy is generated when without the Prophecy, an unresovable time loop would be created. There's also an interesting question about why Prophecies always come true, rather than possibly resolving in a way that renders the Prophecy false. This may simply be that for Prophecies to be effective, they must be believed; so if Prophecies could be broken then they'd lose the power to correct future potentially inconsistent scenarios because people would ignore them. That itself may nucleate future inconsistencies, which would tend to restrict things into favoring universes in which Prophecies come true. There could also be something more severe at work, along the lines of an Unbreakable Vow applied to the constructions which generate and transmit Prophecies.

We can go further along this line, but this start is probably enough to convince Voldemort to think more carefully before trying to kill Harry to resolve the Prophecy. Because if it turns out that forcing a Prophecy to become false causes an inconsistency, that means that everything since they looked into the Mirror will turn out to be the false universe. That means that the real universe would be the one in which Dumbledore froze things in time. So, game over for both of them at the least, and possibly game over for the world depending on how Dumbledore's time freezing spell worked.

This doesn't immediately give a better solution, but it at least suggests that killing Harry right now might actually cause the prophecy to come true in a bad way. Which should be enough to qualify for the conditions of the challenge. We need to be a bit careful to make it so that Harry's initial words take the form of telling Voldemort about one of his powers, so that Voldemort doesn't consider it a trick and pre-emptively kill Harry. Something like 'I have an understanding of the workings of time and prophecy from experiments with Time-Turners, Comed-tea, that you don't know about' might be sufficient.

Anyhow, we can go a bit past there too. For the broader situation, they need to find a way to either sustain ambiguity so that either world could be true, or resolve the Prophecy conclusively. Given the hypothetical way that the Mirror works, Harry ending the world on the other side of the mirror may be sufficient to resolve his role. This will be a hard argument to make, because Voldemort previously tried to resolve a Prophecy conclusively and it didn't go well. It would be better to avoid this branch entirely and propose an alternate solution. It's also possible that Voldemort would simply Horcrux the mirror or something along those lines, which would remove Harry's negotiating power.

That's about all I've got.

[pita]

I came up with a possible solution. I posted it in a review on fanfiction.net, copy and pasting here:
With 36 Death Eaters and Lord Voldemort all watching closely, ready to fire, it is not plausible that they might all miss or all react slowly. In order to win, Harry must reach his winning state before any of them even realize they should be taking action. Whatever Harry does, he must avoid triggering their response before his action is complete. That rules out movement or non-Parseltongue speech.

Harry has two tools available to him: Parseltongue dialogue with Lord Voldemort, and his wand. He cannot speak to any Death Eaters without triggering them. Speaking with Lord Voldemort will achieve results only by furthering Voldemort's goals in some way. Whatever side gains might be made, this seems suboptimal.

Harry's wand is pointed downward, and moving it will trigger the Death Eaters. Speaking the words of any spell will also trigger them. Anything he does with it must be wordless magic and must work with the wand pointing down. There is one form of wordless magic Harry has already mastered - Free Transfiguration. More than that, Harry has developed it beyond any other wizard by mastering Partial Transfiguration. I can think of no other wordless magic Harry knows, so this seems his only option.

Transfiguration is constrained by needing the wand to point at or touch (I'm not quite sure which) the object to be Transfigured. Harry's wand is pointing at the ground and touching the air. But if this requirement were direct and absolute, Transfiguring anything wider than the wand itself (or thicker than a surface film, if touch is the requirement) would be impossible. Discarding the notion of "objects", as Harry had to do to master Partial Transfiguration, the atoms to be Transfigured must be pointed at/touched by the wand or in contact with other atoms being Transfigured. It seems reasonable, then, that Harry can Transfigure any contiguous volume of atoms that connects with his wand. I note here that Harry tried and failed before to Transfigure air, but that was before developing Partial Transfiguration - that attempt was still limited by the conventional notions about whole objects, and he has never revisited it.

Transfiguration is also constrained by needing to know and understand what you're trying to Transfigure something into, and by the volume of what you are Transfiguring - more volume takes more time and magical power, both of which are in short supply for Harry. Harry's Transfiguration needs to defeat 37 opponents, and it must do so with something of exceedingly low volume. Defense does not seem viable. The offensive option that comes to mind with such a constraint is a cutting edge - provided you retain sufficient strength, smaller is actually better for that. What's thin and really strong and something Harry has Transfigured (or at least overseen the Transfiguration of) before? Buckytubes.

Transfigure a net of buckytubes already in place over every Death Eater and Lord Voldemort, a net form of the classic monomolecular whip. For good measure, place it over their wands too. Its weight might be insufficient to make it cut just lying there, so it needs a way to apply tension to make sure. Physically pulling on it both would trigger the Death Eaters and risk some of the threads flying into Harry, so that's a bad idea. But Harry established back in the same experiment session as the original buckytube transformation that you can make something exert force by Transfiguring its size/length. So, after the net is placed, Transfigure it shorter/smaller to make it slice through everything. Do the wands first to prevent any dying discharges. Oh, and the gun. Don't forget the gun.

The result: Harry stands stock still, not seeming to do anything. Moments later, the gun and every Death Eater's wand simultaneously fall into tiny pieces, and a moment after that the people holding them turn into Ludicrous Gibs. The Death Eaters are all dead. Lord Voldemort is forced back into a disembodied spirit. The only live bodies present for him to inhabit are Harry (not an option due to magical resonance) and Hermione (likely also having resonance due to Harry's Patronus being involved in raising her, but also off limits by Voldemort's own decision).

Voldemort will be back, certainly, but it will take him time to find and possess someone and make appropriate preparations for another confrontation. In the mean time, all his stuff is left behind. End the Transfiguration to avoid accidentally slicing Harry himself. Grab the Philosopher's Stone, the magic pouch, Hermione, the Time Turner, Invisibility Cloak, clothes, and whatever else seems useful, and use the final hour on the Time Turner to make a secure escape and buy extra time for your own preparations. Go back to Hogwarts, find another student with a Time Turner willing to take a message, and arrange for the extra arrivals Voldemort had not expected outside the hallway to the Stone.

After that I'd consider looking for a way to free Snape from Voldemort's Imperius charm (but wait until after Voldemort's left with past-Harry in tow to implement it, of course), contact Moody, and in general start rallying every useful ally available, keeping the constraint of not disrupting the Quidditch match in mind.


I really hope that he goes with this. I'll be honest.
Having it end with Harry's death and Voldemort's victory would be an irritating anticlimax, especially the way he's leaving it up to readers to figure out how Harry can do what he needs to do.

EDIT- Accidentally quoted instead of spoiler'd

[Landis963]

I really hope that he goes with this. I'll be honest.
Having it end with Harry's death and Voldemort's victory would be an irritating anticlimax, especially the way he's leaving it up to readers to figure out how Harry can do what he needs to do.

EDIT- Accidentally quoted instead of spoiler'd

As long as it works within the constraints as intended (and, naturally, as EY envisions them) it should be a candidate.

[Douglas]

I really hope that he goes with this. I'll be honest.
Having it end with Harry's death and Voldemort's victory would be an irritating anticlimax, especially the way he's leaving it up to readers to figure out how Harry can do what he needs to do.

EDIT- Accidentally quoted instead of spoiler'd
One aspect of this idea I really like, besides it resulting in outright victory in the current confrontation, is that even after it's done Voldemort will likely* still have no idea how Harry did it.
It will seem like Harry somehow cast a wordless wandless no-aiming-required mass Severing Charm that, backed only by the power of a first-year who isn't really exerting himself, simultaneously and fatally defeated the defenses of 36 Death Eaters plus Voldemort, who likely all have defensive charms on themselves or their clothes specifically to stop or weaken offensive magic cast on them. The very idea of that is ludicrous, yet without knowledge of Partial Transfiguration and/or buckytubes no other idea is likely to come to mind.

* unless Voldemort somehow, in the dark of night, manages to see the microscopically thin filaments that he's not looking for or expecting in the first place.

[Foeofthelance]

What amuses me most about most of the response I have seen to the question is that everyone (in my admittedly small circle of acquaintances aware of the story) seems to be focusing on the immediate. "How can Harry get out of the box?" Of course, Yudkowsky (sp?) has encouraged this line of thinking by nearly phrasing the situation in exactly that way at the end of his list of rules. The problem is that this isn't the "AI in a Box" thought experiment I keep seeing people treat it as. The key difference is that Harry didn't start in the box. So the question shouldn't be, "What can Harry do to get out of being surrounded by 36 Death Eaters and a full powered Voldemort?" but, "What did Harry do to prepare himself for being surrounded by 36 Death Eaters and a full powered Voldemort?"

Granted, at that point the entire thing sort of falls apart, but eh. :smalltongue:

[Douglas]

So the question shouldn't be, "What can Harry do to get out of being surrounded by 36 Death Eaters and a full powered Voldemort?" but, "What did Harry do to prepare himself for being surrounded by 36 Death Eaters and a full powered Voldemort?"
There has not been the slightest hint that Harry has even thought about, much less actually made, any such preparations. As such, it would be rather difficult to reveal them now without making it an ass-pull of the highest caliber. Further, I really doubt Yudkowsky would present a challenge like this with that big a red herring in it.

Meanwhile, pretty much every element of my idea for an on-the-spot victory has been hinted at or foreshadowed in some way before, even going back as far as the beginning of chapter 1 (the three lines in italics after the disclaimer).

[Foeofthelance]

There has not been the slightest hint that Harry has even thought about, much less actually made, any such preparations. As such, it would be rather difficult to reveal them now without making it an ass-pull of the highest caliber. Further, I really doubt Yudkowsky would present a challenge like this with that big a red herring in it.

Meanwhile, pretty much every element of my idea for an on-the-spot victory has been hinted at or foreshadowed in some way before, even going back as far as the beginning of chapter 1 (the three lines in italics after the disclaimer).

Except one of Harry's major things during the intro to the story is his enthusiasm for preparing for things. And the whole reason Hermione "failed" DADA was because she wasn't "prepared". Half of Voldemort's character strength is how over prepared he his. Personally, its less believable that Harry wouldn't have a contingency in mind for "Surrounded by enemies and armed only with my wand" than it is for him to have a predetermined plan needing minor adaptation. As for being absolutely ridiculous? Of course! But then Yudkowsky has made up so much out of whole cloth in the last few chapters to get us to this point that it wouldn't be any less believable.

This isn't intended as a criticism of your plan; its a fine plan as far as things go, and yes, there is plenty of base material to build it on. It was more of an amused observation at how quickly people were willing to limit themselves by adherence to non-existent "facts". Now, I don't know whether the author intended for it to be a red herring or not. On one hand, from what I've been able to find out the whole Box Trap thing is a pretty big deal for Yudkowsky, and he might think he has portrayed it better than he has. On the other, making false assumptions based on misinterpreting statements is also something the story has been keen to warn about multiple times, so the misdirection could very well be deliberate. Either way, we're starting from a situation where Harry is both aware of the box and has been forced into it, rather than having started from inside of it. That allows him the chance to have prepared for it, even if those plans can fail.

[Rater202]

Isn't the entire reason that Harry can partially transfigure because he's realized that the "facts" of transfiguration are so much horse manure?

Could be a hint that the rules of the test are not factual.

[Lethologica]

If you go to LessWrong, it seems like everyone and his cousin has postulated some partial transfiguration insta-win plan for the reasons Douglas stated, so it's not like Douglas is alone in thinking thus. Also, attempts to verbally dissuade Voldemort from his present course are hampered by Harry's incomplete knowledge of the prophecy, and Voldemort isn't talking. On the other hand, since everyone else has already suggested partial transfiguration insta-win plans, we should consider other approaches in order to *cough* avert the path leading to the sad ending along every possible point of intervention. :smallwink:

Two resources haven't been mentioned yet in this thread. First, Harry still has his glasses--that's the only source of prepared shenanigans within reach at present. Problem: We know Harry prepared two sustained Transfigurations, which are now known to be Hermione's body and his father's rock, so it's unlikely that we can slip a third past the radar. From chapter 104: "Harry had refreshed the Transfigurations he was maintaining, both the tiny jewel in the ring on his hand and the other one..." But if some Charm could be released wordlessly (or with a single syllable) from the glasses, that would be useful. Second, Harry has some measure of wordless wandless control over his Patronus, as evidenced in chapter 81 when he had a tangible effect on the Dementor without casting the Patronus spell. If he can wordlessly bring forth the Patronus light, it may be good for blinding people in the near-darkness, buying Harry precious seconds to act more freely than he can at present.

I'm really taken with NichG's line of reasoning, though I don't know how to assign a confidence to it. It seems Voldemort would have to be >95% confident that it isn't the case in order for that suggestion to fail. However, one note of confusion presents itself: if the point of divergence is when Dumbledore freezes one side of the Mirror, then neither universe can fulfill the prophecy once Voldemort kills Harry. The divergence point would have to be earlier, either when Confunded Voldemort first looks into the Mirror, or when the Confundus wears off.

EDIT: I have to say, this idea is freaking brilliant. (http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/lsp/harry_potter_and_the_methods_of_rationality/c23m) Persuade Voldemort to let Harry sacrifice his life destroying the Dementors in Azkaban.

[Seerow]

Okay so, I went to check out the Prison experiment as suggested... realized it was more than halfway back, and was told to go another arc or two back which would have taken me to chapter 40ish or so... so of course in the end I just went to the start and read from there.

Only to realize two things:
1) I had forgotten almost everything about those earlier chapters
2) I had actually read up through the point of Hermione's trial, but not up to the point of her death.

So I was actually significantly further in than I had thought, but wound up reading everything anyway. Whelp. (btw anyone know what the total wordcount of this fic is? Given the amount of time invested it seems like it is comparable to two large novels. Somewhere in the 600-800k word range, but I may have been reading slower on my computer than I do with a normal book)

And of course I finished 12 hours after the deadline for useful speculation. Whelpx2.


For what it's worth I like Douglas' suggestion best out of what I've read.

I also highly suspect that Harry's prophesized destroying of the universe has to do entirely with his rejection of death. Sending Harry to go take out Azkaban as the big finale I suspect would result in the destruction of the universe, with us finding out at the very last minute that the existence of Dementors, and Death itself, is a necessary part of the universe. The dementors were earlier referred to as tears in the universe, my suspicion is that they work much like Seers for time, only for another aspect. Harry going on his crusade against them destroys everything.

[Lethologica]

Looks like EY also likes Douglas' solution best.

Isn't transfigured Voldemort going to die? But I suppose Harry can bring him back to life with access to the Stone, so it's not as big a deal as it might have been, say, 10 chapters ago.

[Douglas]

115
It appears Harry intends to keep the survival of Voldemort Tom Riddle a secret. Can't say I really blame him, the world at large would not react rationally to the news that someone still living used to be Voldemort. I suspect he also intends to keep the Stone secret.

I'm not really clear on what made-up scenario Harry is trying to present the appearance of, here. Something to downplay his own involvement, I think, but a full "everybody dies, no live victor" (with Harry as a bystander) thing seems hard to make plausible. Hmm... Voldemort raises Hermione using who-knows-what Dark ritual, in order to use her to accomplish who-knows-what other Dark ritual. It's Voldemort, people will readily believe nearly any Dark ritual idea you come up with involving him, and tales of impossible achievements are commonplace for him. No one will question how he did it, they'll just accept that Voldemort is capable of impossible things. This finally stooped Darker than his Death Eaters were willing to follow, especially after 10 years of living in normal society with him absent, and they rebelled en masse. He responded by lopping off all their heads (it's Voldemort, of course he can make sharper cuts than anyone's ever seen before, 36 at once, no one will question it), but Quirrel was able to take advantage of the distraction (in combination with whatever Death Eater efforts got through) to blow him up. The combined simultaneous attack of 37 adult wizards, capped with the demonstrated power of the supremely competent Professor Quirrel, is enough to plausibly overcome even Voldemort. The hands remained because they were too close to Hermione and everyone was trying to save her. Quirrel, already deathly ill, then expired from the effort.

I expect Moody and Snape, at the least, will call him on it and insist on getting the real story, but they'll be willing to do so in private and keep it secret. The problem of the Horcruxes may even convince them that Harry's solution for Voldemort is the best, since killing him is not actually possible.

I wonder how quickly Harry is going to get his bones enchanted as broomsticks.:smallamused: That secret, at least, is already revealed and trivial to implement, and I can't imagine Harry passing it up.

[Seerow]

Well talk about timing. Apparently the chapters went up almost instantly after I finished reading 113.


I actually think what Harry is aiming to present is something far simpler than what Douglas describes. Rather than a showdown between Voldy, Death Eaters, and Quirrel, he is attempting to set up Hermione as the heroine, The-Girl-Who-Lives-Again.

That said, I wouldn't mind Douglas's solution, and it does seem like something Harry would do for Malfoy's sake. After all, Draco's father almost certainly died there, at Harry's hands. Harry might want to somehow spin it as Lucius and the other deatheaters dying in a heroic redemption for their family's reputations.

[Lethologica]

Speculation 1: Hermione is being set up to take the credit for Voldemort's death in parallel to how Harry got credit for V's last death, going some way towards explaining her various immortalities should that become an issue. (Are the troll and unicorn bodies still there?) This should also take care of anything related to the attempted murder trial, as significant portions of the Wizengamot will file Hermione under Hero in their mental model of the universe and leave it at that. (EDIT: Ninja'd.)
Speculation 2: Voldemort has been set up as the person who offed the Death Eaters to fuel some unspeakable ritual involving Hermione.
Speculation 3: Little effort has been made to disguise the connection between Quirrell and Voldemort, probably because Harry intends to bring Dumbledore back and Dumbledore knows Quirrell ~ Voldemort. Still, with different bodies next to each other, people might conclude Quirrell =/= Voldemort, and perhaps Dumbledore could be persuaded to keep silent.
Speculation 4: Speaking of Dumbledore, Harry still has to figure out what the Mirror is.

[Landis963]

Faking prophecies, Harry? :smallamused: Pretty sneaky.

[Seerow]

Faking prophecies, Harry? :smallamused: Pretty sneaky.

He's not faking a prophecy. That was my first thought as well, but he knows enough about how prophecies work to know that what he's doing is nothing like a prophecy. Far more likely is he's cashing in on that resonance/link between him and Voldemort, so he can explain that from the second Voldemort came back to life, he could see everything Voldemort saw, in real time.

Coincidentally we know that the link actually could work like that in canon, so we can presume either some sort of precedence or nobody in the world knowing enough to call him a liar. We also know that most Wizards are perfectly willing to accept "It was Magic" as an explanation for whatever happened.

The big loophole I see is how is Harry supposed to know Dumbledore is gone? If the ability to see what was happening started the moment he started shouting, he wouldn't know anything about Dumbledore's time trap. Then again, "It was Magic"

[holygroundj]

Because of this thread, I found out about the hpmor website. I have to say this is the only fan fic I've ever read through. i though this whole story was amazing.

I learned that I am not rational at all. While I sometimes am envious of how both HP and HG act, I'm not always.

I think the biggest revelation to me was when HP attacked MM and said something to the effect of you follow the script because of what you think the picture in your head of your disciplinary would do. More eloquently, but still. I know I would have difficultly letting go of what truths I maintain.

It's interesting to go back and read the reviews for 113; to see how other people thought it should have happened.

[Eldariel]

He's not faking a prophecy. That was my first thought as well, but he knows enough about how prophecies work to know that what he's doing is nothing like a prophecy. Far more likely is he's cashing in on that resonance/link between him and Voldemort, so he can explain that from the second Voldemort came back to life, he could see everything Voldemort saw, in real time.

Coincidentally we know that the link actually could work like that in canon, so we can presume either some sort of precedence or nobody in the world knowing enough to call him a liar. We also know that most Wizards are perfectly willing to accept "It was Magic" as an explanation for whatever happened.

The big loophole I see is how is Harry supposed to know Dumbledore is gone? If the ability to see what was happening started the moment he started shouting, he wouldn't know anything about Dumbledore's time trap. Then again, "It was Magic"

Well, the other Wizards will probably not be aware of the temporal order of the events so just because Dumbly had been temporarily trapped before "Voldy resurrected" doesn't mean they know this was actually the sequence of events. That said, this feels goddamn hamfisted and straight-up poorly acted on Harry's part. That's not how MoR!Harry usually describes events and the fact that he wrote Hermione as an active returner is straight-up pointless. He himself "killed" the Dark Lord passively but nobody knew the events and it didn't do a thing to diminish his fame anyways. He could've easily just said Hermione returned and the Dark Lord ashened or something and that would've worked just as well; this was kind of an asspull.

[Landis963]

Well, the other Wizards will probably not be aware of the temporal order of the events so just because Dumbly had been temporarily trapped before "Voldy resurrected" doesn't mean they know this was actually the sequence of events. That said, this feels goddamn hamfisted and straight-up poorly acted on Harry's part. That's not how MoR!Harry usually describes events and the fact that he wrote Hermione as an active returner is straight-up pointless. He himself "killed" the Dark Lord passively but nobody knew the events and it didn't do a thing to diminish his fame anyways. He could've easily just said Hermione returned and the Dark Lord ashened or something and that would've worked just as well; this was kind of an asspull.

He had to make it look good, and when hitherto unknown magics are involved, that involves ham. Besides, better to start the rumor mill working in the right direction.


Don't worry about the story's goofiness. A sensible one would have had us all in the cooler.

[Douglas]

So, let's see if I've got Harry's story right: Voldemort, not yet fully returned, summoned all his Death Eaters. He killed them all as sacrifices to fuel a ritual that would complete his return. He had Hermione's body to be used for some unknown purpose (it's Voldemort, no one will question the idea of an obscure or even completely original Dark Ritual). It turns out the ritual Voldemort used allows anyone dead nearby (excluding sacrifices, of course) to return, and Voldemort hadn't realized this ahead of time. Thus, Voldemort was caught by complete surprise by a living Hermione. Quirrel, meanwhile, had been on to him and intervened at this point. Voldemort presumably focused his attention on Quirrel as the greater threat, and Hermione blew him up (or distracted him so Quirrel could pull off a mutual kill) before Voldemort could turn his full attention back to her.

And Harry saw all this, plus some of Voldemort's thoughts including the realization of the ritual unexpectedly bringing back Hermione, via mental connection through his scar.

Seems legit.:smallamused:

Snape is going to know with certainty that this is bull****, and Moody should strongly suspect it. Both of them have enough respect for Harry to at least wait for privacy before demanding the truth, though, and will likely agree to keeping it secret.

[holygroundj]

So Dumbledore was really in the mirror. And all the non rationalists swallowed the story, and honestly, why wouldn't they? Unless you were there, it's no more unrealistic than hearing about what happens with books 1-6.

I'm really interested in seeing what happens to draco. They never said his father was there before, although I assumed he was. To have the death be blamed on Riddle, but for harry to know the truth? What will he do?

[Sliver]

So Dumbledore was really in the mirror. And all the non rationalists swallowed the story, and honestly, why wouldn't they? Unless you were there, it's no more unrealistic than hearing about what happens with books 1-6.

I'm really interested in seeing what happens to draco. They never said his father was there before, although I assumed he was. To have the death be blamed on Riddle, but for harry to know the truth? What will he do?

An interesting theory that I rather liked is that Harry got trapped in the mirror and Dumbledore didn't actually manage to save him, with everything Harry experienced after that point is an illusion.

Of course, it is rather similar to another theory that I read about the original HP series, in that Harry is actually insane and all of his adventures are imagined, and become more dark and complicated as he grows into his teenage years.

[Eldariel]

An interesting theory that I rather liked is that Harry got trapped in the mirror and Dumbledore didn't actually manage to save him, with everything Harry experienced after that point is an illusion.

Of course, it is rather similar to another theory that I read about the original HP series, in that Harry is actually insane and all of his adventures are imagined, and become more dark and complicated as he grows into his teenage years.

This is a fairly common theory for basically every series ever, though the trope namer is the Pokémon anime theory of it all being Ash dreaming in a coma. It's quite possible to fit most series into the mold.

[Mutant Sheep]

Odd eulogy, but it fits the general air of them not really knowing what happened. Still waiting on the auror's investigation, and if anyone time turned to observe, or, as my personal theory is, Lucius faked his death by sending someone polyjuiced or some other passable disguise, and told Draco to act accordingly. But this is supposedly weeks later, so I don't know. Would be awful late for Mad Eye to come by and go "Give me the Real Story, Potter". He would have done that the moment he heard, not after a funeral. Moody doesn't give time to grieve.

Hermoine still being out of it seems odd, but it is completely untried revival magic. She could be a vegetable/comatose forever as far as we know.

[Douglas]

Hermoine still being out of it seems odd, but it is completely untried revival magic. She could be a vegetable/comatose forever as far as we know.
St. Mungo's has officially declared Hermione sound in both body and mind, as per McGonagall's announcement last chapter.

[Aotrs Commander]

I have to say, my general impression is It Was Better At the Start. It was really funny and genera-savvy, (his Dumbledore was hilarious) and then interesting and still quite funny... And then not funny at all and not so interesting. I will see it through to the end, because I'm still invested, but overall, I'm not a fan of the last arc or two, personally. Still, on the other hand, he's been doing it for five years and it's going to a conclusion which is a HUGE point in its favour. And it's not BAD by any means, it's just not as good as I think it used to be.

[Eldariel]

Again keeping in theme with borrowing heavily from Fate, Voldy did turn out to be very close to Kirei Kotomine. He tries so very hard to be good but finds out he just doesn't feel a thing and ultimately decides he likes it better the other way around (though of course, Voldy is taken a step further; not even drawing enjoyment from pain and suffering).

[Kd7sov]

I have to say, my general impression is It Was Better At the Start. It was really funny and genera-savvy, (his Dumbledore was hilarious) and then interesting and still quite funny... And then not funny at all and not so interesting. I will see it through to the end, because I'm still invested, but overall, I'm not a fan of the last arc or two, personally. Still, on the other hand, he's been doing it for five years and it's going to a conclusion which is a HUGE point in its favour. And it's not BAD by any means, it's just not as good as I think it used to be.

That's been pretty much my position for some time now. In one of my rereads I noticed I stopped enjoying the story around the time of the Azkaban trip, and at one point actually wished we were following Neville instead of Harry. It was never specifically unpleasant to read, but the main reasons I've kept at it are that notifications keep showing up in my inbox and that I've known he was heading for a conclusion. (And, relatedly, that I wanted to know what kind of conclusion it would be; even without the new reveal of oodles of horcruces, I was not remotely sure it would be possible to beat Voldy.)

[Douglas]

I wrote a short epilogue segment, imagining how a certain future event might go. This would take place probably a few years in the future.

Harry sat on the floor in a rather bare room, watching patiently. There wasn't even a door to interrupt the plain stone of the room's walls, there were no furnishings, and Harry himself had only his clothes to keep him company. That, and the room's other occupant, he supposed.

Harry could dimly sense the wards placed on the room. Wards against Apparition, portkeys, Transfiguration, time travel, and many more. Every method of escape he could imagine - and he had an impressively creative imagination - was warded against. Even if he'd had his wand he wasn't sure he'd be able to escape, and his wand was held quite securely somewhere else. And even with all that, he still wasn't entirely certain it would be enough - Harry was not the one these wards needed to contain.

Harry looked over to the young man sleeping on the floor about five feet away, lit by the soothing white light that seemed to come from nowhere, and was pleasantly surprised to finally see signs of stirring. Slowly, the man sat up, shaking his head. He looked around in apparent confusion, putting a hand to his forehead. He slowly turned a full circle, examining the room's borders, complete with a look at the ceiling and floor, before stopping to focus on Harry. "What... Who... Where...," he mumbled uncertainly.

"Correct me if I'm wrong," Harry began. "You are Tom Riddle. You remember nearly nothing of your past, of the world, of your identity. Perhaps a few moments from childhood, but no more. You know a great deal of magic, both theory and practice, much of it Dark. You do not know how you gained such knowledge. And you do not know how you came to be here, but are beginning to suspect unpleasant things even as I speak."

Tom paused a moment before answering. "That seems accurate. In all points."

"Somewhere in the repository of magical knowledge in your mind, there should be a certain fact about Parseltongue. Feel free to test it, if you like." Harry abruptly switched to speaking in snake-like hisses. "Intend to explain all these to you, leave out nothing, speak only truth. First require promise you will listen. Some unpleasant. Listen to all before acting."

Another few moments passed as Tom considered the statement, likely analyzing it for loopholes. Tom nodded, "Will listen."

"I have had a great deal of time to consider this day; what I would say to you. I considered hiding certain things, but ultimately discarded the idea. You are too curious, too suspicious, and too clever for such deception to hold indefinitely, and I cannot risk the harm to trust such a discovery would cause. I will, therefore, reveal the most damning of my secrets myself, right now. My name is Harry Potter, and the reason you have so few memories is that I erased all the rest myself."

Tom sat back, crossing his arms and staring intently at Harry.

"You were once the Dark Lord Voldemort, the most feared terror of the magical world. You have the capacity to follow that path again, if you choose. I will oppose you, if you do, but even I do not know the full extent of your knowledge and abilities. I expect you have already guessed that I stopped you, that your advanced Horcrux spell prevented killing you, and that I destroyed your memories both to get around that and in hopes of some day learning what you know of magic. This is correct, but incomplete."

"Voldemort once told me that his great joy in life, his height of happiness, was in killing idiots. I cannot deny the idea of killing idiots has a certain appeal to it, but I ask you this: think, and imagine what the satisfaction of such an act would feel like. How long the feeling would last, and how deeply. Then tell me, do you truly think there is no joy greater than that? And do you truly want to follow a path where that is your greatest joy?"

"I offer you a different path. It is a path Voldemort would have considered naive, even foolish. He even tried it once himself, and found no satisfaction in it. I will not hide such information from you, for I desire your trust and trust must be earned. It is, for lack of a better term, the path of Light; the path of the hero. And I imagine you have now come to a rather cynical conclusion about my motives."

"I will address that in turn, but what should concern you most is the consequences for yourself. Voldemort himself agreed that the greatest lack in his life was a true peer. Every person he ever encountered was a sadly predictable stupid moron compared to himself, and consequently he felt alone in a world he could not figure out how to be part of. And that, I believe, is why the path of Light felt empty to him."

"The appreciation of others for his actions seemed to him to be a meaningless honor bestowed by the uncomprehending. A social ritual the idiots go through without understanding the reasons for it. I cannot honestly say that he was entirely wrong about that. There are a great many people in the world who go through the motions of society out of habit, without significant thought or understanding. But there are exceptions, and those rare shining jewels of people make all the difference."

"Now, in your new life, I will be your peer. Even Voldemort acknowledged that I lacked only time to match him, and I have had time since then. More than that, if you accept I will be your friend. I will introduce you to others who have the capacity to at least stay within shouting distance of you, and may likewise become your friends. Even more than a peer, friends are something Voldemort never had. And they, more than anything, are the true source of happiness on the path of Light."

"Perhaps, in time, you may even learn to value the hordes of idiots for themselves, as I have, and your happiness will be greater for it. It will not be easy for you. Even without Voldemort's memories, your mind has his habits of thought, and he long ago learned to never value anyone but himself. But think back to those few memories that remain, to how you felt then, and ask yourself if reclaiming those feelings of happiness is worth an effort. And before you ask, those truly are your memories, neither I nor anyone else has implanted false memories in you."

"As for my motives, I admit gaining the utility of your magical knowledge and a powerful ally are part of it, along with vanquishing an enemy, but I truly consider those the lesser reasons for my offer. I value the world and all the people in it, and turning you to the path of Light will benefit the world greatly; but far more personally, gaining a friend and peer will be an ongoing source of happiness for me indefinitely, happiness great enough to risk much for."

"So, there it is. I destroyed the man you once were, but I now offer to be your true friend and teach you to be happier than he ever was. It will be difficult. It may take years. It will require you to go against long ingrained habits. But I believe we will both be far better off for it. Offer is genuine, have hidden nothing, told only truth."

"And what happens if I refuse?," Tom asked.

"Then we will have to find some other way to deal with you. We cannot risk a Dark Lord as dangerous as Voldemort rising again. We might Obliviate you again and try again, but the ethics of that are rather questionable, and revealing having done it would make subsequent attempts harder while hiding it would be a trust-harming secret you could uncover. Have not done so yet. Is first conversation."

"You may think it over and ask questions if you wish. I am prepared to be patient."

Tom sat motionless for several minutes, deep in thought. When he raised his head again, it was to say two words in Parseltongue: "I accept."

[Foeofthelance]

I have to say, my general impression is It Was Better At the Start. It was really funny and genera-savvy, (his Dumbledore was hilarious) and then interesting and still quite funny... And then not funny at all and not so interesting. I will see it through to the end, because I'm still invested, but overall, I'm not a fan of the last arc or two, personally. Still, on the other hand, he's been doing it for five years and it's going to a conclusion which is a HUGE point in its favour. And it's not BAD by any means, it's just not as good as I think it used to be.

I get the same feeling, and for me its a little more obvious why. The first half was, "What happens if someone with a dangerous amount of knowledge got into Hogwarts?" and has fun poking holes in all the little things that can become insanely broken with that knowledge. The second half is more like a badly railroaded campaign, where half the canon of the setting starts getting ejected just because the GM doesn't like it or feels that it somehow interferes with slapping the players upside the head with the chosen moral being demonstrated by the GMPCs.

[Lethologica]

It's easier to break than to build. First half breaks the Potterverse in creative and hilarious ways. Second half tries to build a drama from the wreckage.

I love that Dumbledore really was responsible for everything bad that has ever happened to Harry, though.

[Rater202]

I kinda want to know what the significance of Dumbledore Smashing Harry's pet rock had to do with anything else.

And it wasn't everything Bad in Harry's life-Dumbles did do things that resulted in 1. Petunia and Lilly loving each other as sisters again, which led to 2. Petunia not settling for Vernon and hooking up with a scientist, which combined with 1 leeds to 3. Harry growing up in a loving and nurturing environment where he is encouraged to learn and think-the exact opposite of Canon Harry.

Canon Harry is surprisingly intelligent for a malnourished and abused orphan who was discouraged against asking questions and may or may not have had to intentionally dumb himself down to avoid doing better than his dumb-ass cousin i forget but it's been in like all the fanfics so lets go with that.

All of those are things that can have an adverse effect on one's intellectual development and one's acquisition of knowledge.

Canon Harry could have been a strait O genius if he was in an environment that supported him.

MOR Harry is that intelligence potential in an nurturing environment combined with the half remembered thought patterns of what Tom Riddle could have become if he wasn't an evil sociopath.

I'd imagine that that is a good thing, and it happened because of Dumbles.

[Foeofthelance]

It's easier to break than to build. First half breaks the Potterverse in creative and hilarious ways. Second half tries to build a drama from the wreckage.


Sort of? I mean, fine, I get the fact that if Dumbledore had acted like Dumbledore in canon, then they never would have gotten the stone, and so that required Dumbledore not being Dumbledore. But the bit where Nicolas Flamel turns out to be an evil transsexual lesbian? Or the recent reveal about

Sirius having forced Peter to look like Sirius, so that it was really Pettigrew trapped in Azkaban

which seems to occur for no real reason I can think of. At first it would appear that its just to clean up the issue involving the Marauder's Map, except that then leaves out the fact that there was a powerful, shape shifting Death Eater running around for 11 years that everyone thought was dead, but who...just didn't do anything? It would have been easier to just not mention it in the first place.

[Rater202]

The thing with the Maruader's map wasBoth Harry Potter and Quirnius Quirrel reading as "Tom Riddle"

[Foeofthelance]

The thing with the Maruader's map wasBoth Harry Potter and Quirnius Quirrel reading as "Tom Riddle"

Er, I was thinking about the canon plot hole. The one where Ron went to bed with Peter Pettigrew every night for the better part of three years. Having Sirius fake Peter's death so that Peter can take his place in Azkaban cleans that up, while opening up a couple of brand new ones, such as how an animagus suddenly gets the ability to transform other people without using Polyjuice, where this extremely capable mass murderer has been for the last decade, etc.

[Rater202]

I do believe that today's chapter established that This version of Sirius had a Twin.

Obviously the Twin is the death eater while the real Sirius has been laying low, most likely in a foreign country, since "he's" in Azkaban with no chance of clearing his name and he has very little left to live for back in England.

As for the canon plot hole, well, ho often are the Twins going to be looking at the own common room or boy's dormitory? They're probably be checking to see if a prefect or teacher is on the way to their pranking location, or to see if anybody is around one of the secret passage ways.

[The_Snark]

... where this extremely capable mass murderer has been for the last decade...

Already hinted at, as it happens.


"You find me amusing, Mr. Grim?"

"Apologies, Master," said the robed figure who had laughed, his wand perfectly level upon where Harry stood. "I was glad to hear you had dispatched Dumbledore. I fled from Britain in cowardly fear of him, having lost faith in your return."

Note the telling nickname. He thought Voldemort was dead and gone, so he fled the country completely, leaving a captured double (Pettigrew) in place so that nobody would bother looking for him. Whatever he was up to, it probably involved keeping a low profile someplace completely unrelated to Britain - no sense going to that much trouble to establish an alibi and then drawing attention to oneself.

[Foeofthelance]

I do believe that today's chapter established that This version of Sirius had a Twin.

Obviously the Twin is the death eater while the real Sirius has been laying low, most likely in a foreign country, since "he's" in Azkaban with no chance of clearing his name and he has very little left to live for back in England.

As for the canon plot hole, well, ho often are the Twins going to be looking at the own common room or boy's dormitory? They're probably be checking to see if a prefect or teacher is on the way to their pranking location, or to see if anybody is around one of the secret passage ways.

That would actually open up even more questions, I think. I thought the twin thing was just wild guessing.


Already hinted at, as it happens.



Note the telling nickname. He thought Voldemort was dead and gone, so he fled the country completely, leaving the double in place so that nobody would bother looking for him. Whatever he was up to, it probably involved keeping a low profile someplace completely unrelated to Britain.

Ah, now that I did miss. Still doesn't fix my issues with the change, though.

[Lethologica]

And it wasn't everything Bad in Harry's life-Dumbles did do things that resulted in 1. Petunia and Lilly loving each other as sisters again, which led to 2. Petunia not settling for Vernon and hooking up with a scientist, which combined with 1 leeds to 3. Harry growing up in a loving and nurturing environment where he is encouraged to learn and think-the exact opposite of Canon Harry.
I didn't say Dumbledore wasn't responsible for any of the good things that happened to Harry. But Dumbledore claimed to be responsible for everything bad that had happened to Harry, back in chapter 17, and this is clearly the full explanation of that claim.


Sort of? I mean, fine, I get the fact that if Dumbledore had acted like Dumbledore in canon, then they never would have gotten the stone, and so that required Dumbledore not being Dumbledore. But the bit where Nicolas Flamel turns out to be an evil transsexual lesbian? Or the recent reveal about

Sirius having forced Peter to look like Sirius, so that it was really Pettigrew trapped in Azkaban

which seems to occur for no real reason I can think of. At first it would appear that its just to clean up the issue involving the Marauder's Map, except that then leaves out the fact that there was a powerful, shape shifting Death Eater running around for 11 years that everyone thought was dead, but who...just didn't do anything? It would have been easier to just not mention it in the first place.
That reveal is exactly what I'm talking about. First half--HPMOR breaks canon in a creative and hilarious way by mercilessly mocking the canonical crazy Black/Pettigrew story. Second half--EY realizes he can't just leave it out entirely and invents a new crazy Black/Pettigrew story.

(It was foreshadowed, by the by--swing back through the Azkaban arc and look for "I'm not serious, I'm not serious".)

[Foeofthelance]

I didn't say Dumbledore wasn't responsible for any of the good things that happened to Harry. But Dumbledore claimed to be responsible for everything bad that had happened to Harry, back in chapter 17, and this is clearly the full explanation of that claim.


That reveal is exactly what I'm talking about. First half--HPMOR breaks canon in a creative and hilarious way by mercilessly mocking the canonical crazy Black/Pettigrew story. Second half--EY realizes he can't just leave it out entirely and invents a new crazy Black/Pettigrew story.

(It was foreshadowed, by the by--swing back through the Azkaban arc and look for "I'm not serious, I'm not serious".)

Yeah, but that's the thing. I'm rereading the story, and it gets mentioned way back at the beginning that Scabbers is dead. So he's changing things to fix something that's already fixed? And why? "Scabbers is dead" makes for a better solution to the plothole than not. And Pettigrew either having suicided or died as a rat in some noodle incident or been the one to hide for ten years makes more sense than Sirius, at least judging from their canon depictions. And since they don't get characterized here, then those are what we're thinking of first, and...gah, just makes my head hurt. And worse, it ends up distracting from the plot elements he crafts independently, weakening the entire thing further.

[Lethologica]

Yeah, but that's the thing. I'm rereading the story, and it gets mentioned way back at the beginning that Scabbers is dead. So he's changing things to fix something that's already fixed? And why? "Scabbers is dead" makes for a better solution to the plothole than not. And Pettigrew either having suicided or died as a rat in some noodle incident or been the one to hide for ten years makes more sense than Sirius, at least judging from their canon depictions. And since they don't get characterized here, then those are what we're thinking of first, and...gah, just makes my head hurt. And worse, it ends up distracting from the plot elements he crafts independently, weakening the entire thing further.
Sorry, let me rephrase--EY decides he can't just leave it out entirely, invents a new thing, and it ends up weakening the story because it isn't neatly woven into the other narratives. Thereby fitting the pattern I described.

[NichG]

I kinda want to know what the significance of Dumbledore Smashing Harry's pet rock had to do with anything else.


Early on, Harry mentions that he doesn't want a familiar because he and pets don't get along. He jokes that he had a pet rock, and it died. So somehow it was about shutting down access to Hedwig. I guess not having a familiar meant that Harry was more dependent on others for communication, buying things, etc. I don't know the specific bad end that it would have prevented however.

[Hazuki]

That's been pretty much my position for some time now. In one of my rereads I noticed I stopped enjoying the story around the time of the Azkaban trip, and at one point actually wished we were following Neville instead of Harry. It was never specifically unpleasant to read, but the main reasons I've kept at it are that notifications keep showing up in my inbox and that I've known he was heading for a conclusion. (And, relatedly, that I wanted to know what kind of conclusion it would be; even without the new reveal of oodles of horcruces, I was not remotely sure it would be possible to beat Voldy.)I stopped enjoying the story at some point around the first ten chapters, but kept reading because the actual writing is good and the premise remained interesting. Harry was so unlikable that I got angry after every chapter, but the ten or so chapters focusing on Hermoine as a protagonist were a welcome relief. And I couldn't help but feel like the author was trying to shove his opinions down my throat, through Harry.


But the bit where Nicolas Flamel turns out to be an evil transsexual lesbian? Or the recent reveal about

Sirius having forced Peter to look like Sirius, so that it was really Pettigrew trapped in Azkaban

which seems to occur for no real reason I can think of. At first it would appear that its just to clean up the issue involving the Marauder's Map, except that then leaves out the fact that there was a powerful, shape shifting Death Eater running around for 11 years that everyone thought was dead, but who...just didn't do anything? It would have been easier to just not mention it in the first place.It's not that ridiculous. Flanel turned out to be an evil lady. Taking male form for strategic purposes doesn't make her transexual, and since she asked Baba Yaga to take the form of a man, she's not a lesbian.

I agree with the complaint about Sirius' true fate, though, and the many other needless jabs at things the author doesn't like. Like making the murdered unicorns into characters from My Little Pony, which was more distracting than anything.

[Foeofthelance]

It's not that ridiculous. Flanel turned out to be an evil lady. Taking male form for strategic purposes doesn't make her transexual, and since she asked Baba Yaga to take the form of a man, she's not a lesbian.

I agree with the complaint about Sirius' true fate, though, and the many other needless jabs at things the author doesn't like. Like making the murdered unicorns into characters from My Little Pony, which was more distracting than anything.

Ok, but what was the point? Why change Flamel at all? The only thing it accomplished was to stuff needless exposition into already overstuffed scenes, and, possibly, make Dumbledore look more like a tool for having been suckered into the conspiracy. The story doesn't gain anything from it; Harry was already anti-Flamel due to Flamel's position that the Stone needed to be tucked away somewhere rather than openly used to improve people's lives. There's no point to justifying Voldemort's off-screen murder, considering all the other murders, tortures, and wanton cruelty he's copped to. Its as cumbersome as making Sirius Evil All Along.

[holygroundj]

But was he really "suckered"? Granted, we don't know if dumbledore knew of Flamel's "true" nature, but it's conceivable that Dumbledore truly believed that the philosopher's stone played a vital part in defeating voldemort and that the mirror was one of his best hopes. Or that it was vital to a prophecy.

Also, please note that not everyone who reads the story is a rationalist (like me: I'm not at all). By calling into question the nature of Flamel, it allowed me to see clearly how selfish cannon flamel was. It never occured to me to share that wealth. And then I thought, as you ask, why change him at all?

I guess to answer the question: If he was a good guy, why didn't he help people live forever?

[Rater202]

I agree with the complaint about Sirius' true fate, though, and the many other needless jabs at things the author doesn't like. Like making the murdered unicorns into characters from My Little Pony, which was more distracting than anything.

I don't think it was necessarily a jab-if anything, it made the whole thing much more disturbing.

A Unicorn is supposed to be a creature so pure and innocent that to slay one for any reason is to bring a curse upon you. Yet reading in canon, with the unicorns, even as a child it didn't feel that evil.

In MOR, it felt super evil and left me feeling very disturbed.

I think it was a good choice, showing Tom as evil, while also showing just how much like Tom Harry was when he considered being alive worth the terrible curse.

[holygroundj]

So, I'm re-reading the story, and I just laughed out loud.

118/9 spoilers:

A newspaper flew through the air and hit Harry's fingers, and he unfolded it.

SLOSHED SEER SPILLS SECRETS:
DARK LORD TO RETURN,
WED DRACO MALFOY

"It's free," said the vendor, "for you, I mean -"

"No," Harry said, "I was going to buy one anyway."

The vendor took the coins, and Harry read on.

"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?"

[Douglas]

Interesting.
It appears Dumbledore faked his revenge on Draco's mother, producing all the appropriate evidence of brutal torture and murder to make an implied credible threat, but actually giving her Programmed Amnesia set to reverse the memory wipe when the threat is no longer needed. This could make Draco a lot more welcoming of Dumbledore when Harry eventually brings him back, and greatly ease the possibility of getting Draco to truly turn good. He may never be ready to accept the full truth, though.

[Aotrs Commander]

Interesting.
It appears Dumbledore faked his revenge on Draco's mother, producing all the appropriate evidence of brutal torture and murder to make an implied credible threat, but actually giving her Programmed Amnesia set to reverse the memory wipe when the threat is no longer needed. This could make Draco a lot more welcoming of Dumbledore when Harry eventually brings him back, and greatly ease the possibility of getting Draco to truly turn good. He may never be ready to accept the full truth, though.

Oh yeah, I'd completely forgotten about all that and was a bit half-confused about those sections. Makes sense now!



Edit:
Actually, I think that rather brought it back, in my eyes, the last section felt more like the story at what I considered its prime. A very satisfactory conclusion, I think.

Also because Sparkling Unicorn Princess Herminone is hilariously awesome on SO Many levels...

[Kd7sov]

I have two significant thoughts related to the last chapter.

First: Does anyone have any idea what thing "more obscure than Tolkien" is being quoted? Literally the only results Google gives me are this specific chapter of MoR.

"Yet there are no penalties for withdrawal from the Art except the knowledge that the Universe will die a little faster because of energy lost." That's your answer, Hermione: that's what happens when someone ceases to be a hero. Perhaps not quite as literally as in this case, but the pattern's there.

[Lethologica]

I have two significant thoughts related to the last chapter.

First: Does anyone have any idea what thing "more obscure than Tolkien" is being quoted? Literally the only results Google gives me are this specific chapter of MoR.

"Yet there are no penalties for withdrawal from the Art except the knowledge that the Universe will die a little faster because of energy lost." That's your answer, Hermione: that's what happens when someone ceases to be a hero. Perhaps not quite as literally as in this case, but the pattern's there.
The "more obscure" quote is from a short story by EY called "The Bayesian Conspiracy." (http://pastebin.com/DUyRXDiF)

[Douglas]

...and Azkaban never knew what hit it. Literally. I'm imagining Hermione stalking the halls, wearing the Invisibility Cloak with an Improved Patronus walking in front of her, destroying every Dementor in sight. And then she takes a bazooka to the physical structure just for good measure.:smallbiggrin: Would make a good post-credits teaser scene in a movie version of the story.

A very touching and well done ending, I think, and I have no doubt whatsoever that Hermione will accept the mission to Azkaban and perform it flawlessly.

[pendell]

I haven't been following this for awhile. So is that it? Story's done?

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Seerow]

I haven't been following this for awhile. So is that it? Story's done?

Respectfully,

Brian P.

Yep, story's done.