Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, March 2015, chapter 120

I'm struck with Dumbledore's ruthlessness

Actually I think he was just following his own advice:

While survives any remnant of our kind, that piece is yet in play, though the stars should die in heaven. [...] Know the value of all your other pieces, and play to win.

All things considered I think it was the most compassionate choice he could have made.

I'm struck with Dumbledore's ruthlessness.

Pretend to kill someone to keep your enemies in line, but really just stash them away to be used as a trump card again later, whether as a hostage or a way to reconcile with your enemy. That's good.

I'm not sure I'd call Dumbledore "ruthless" just for this. While there might very well have been pragmatic benefits to hiding Narcissa instead of actually killing her that Dumbledore took into account, that's not at all incompatible with a simple desire to not cause an unnecessary death.

I don't believe that that will be the case.

Paraphrased to make the point, here's what McGonagall is about to say.

"Narcissa Malfoy, we abducted you and imprisoned you for a decade. In your absence, your child and husband grew up in anguish, missing you every heartbeat. Stop sobbing."

"Anyway, cool story, your husband and everyone you were close with just died. It totally wasn't us, we double swear. So you aren't worth anything as a hostage anymore, and, heck, someone's got to take care of this kid. By the by, your kidnapper died too, and we are renaming this date, when your husband died, to DumbelDay, in honor of his courage and kindness and wisdom. Everyone's going to be immortal, and we are now post scarcity, something to do with transfiguration, try to keep up, so you aren't rich, and this is what you'll be known for as long as the stars shine."

"Oh, did we say 'everyone', sorry, my bad, everyone but the muggles. Turns out that while Blood Purity gets bullet we DO need to discriminate against the muggleborn, they can't be trusted or something. Anyway, got to go."

It seems possible to me that she will not be sympathetic to anything Dumbledore & Co. believe after her experience. Probably will kill herself, maybe take Draco too.

That's an excellent point. Dumbledore really was playing a very deep game.

Or is she. She doesn't seem to have found her Muggle existence very meaningful. Now that she's presumably going back to the real "first world", her rightful place, to reunite with what's left of her family, I see it as at the very least a possibility that she'll look back at it with contempt, and resentment for whoever removed her from her real life.

Of course that's just speculation, depending on what kind of a person she is - I imagine diferent people in her position would have wildly different reactions to something like this.

I'm not sure how much influence Narcissa's going to have on him, since Draco's already 12. Maybe if Narcissa eschews blood purism and actively tries to teach Draco, perhaps, but I think she's going to be busy running around screaming "BLECH! ECH! POISON MUGGLE LIPS!" for a while if she had any blood purist inclinations before the memory charm.

I've ordered the book. I don't think it's particularly unusual for people to go silent when they've offered two unattractive alternatives, though.

Also, whether Harry intended it or not, he gave two separate choices: whether Harry should stay away entirely, and whether Harry should be a friend that does not manipulate or risk harming Draco ever again. At least to some extent, Draco's refusal to respond reflects a disjoint answer to both questions, and has invited Harry to remain a friend that may manipulate or harm Draco for his own good.

This is a spoiler blocking-paragraph for the new comments sidebar.

Time enough for such a decision after Draco had been reunited with his mother for a while. That talk, and that decision, could have waited til the start of the next school year, and Draco could have been given more time to make the decision.

They can try again later.

I agree.

Because Harry's conscience pains him, he'll ask the 12 year old Draco to make a hugely life altering decision when he's in shock and hopeless about the future, and give him half an hour to do so, then hide that decision from him so that he can neither recant nor even know that he ever had such a choice, or made such a decision.

And how is that not manipulative or kinda a lie?!

Isn't Harry saying this to Draco after Draco has been obliviated? Draco has no idea what Harry's talking about.

Right, presumably the spell seals memories, but the associated emotions manage to color the actions, hence "Draco ignored him". This would not be surprising, given that conscious memories are mostly System 2, while emotions are mostly System 1. The memory sealing spell only interrupts the conscious retrieval pathways. .

I hoped for Draco saying "I need more time. Lock me up somewhere safe if you have to, but I need time to process this."

I dunno, the best way to carry on his Malfoy tradition would be to thank the Boy-Who-Lived profusely, smile falsely and carry on. For emphasis he should claim he was only Imperiused into pretending to love his father, callback to Lucius -> Voldemort. Harry isn't dumb enough to trust him no matter what he says, might as well spit in his eye one last time.

Well I guess eventually the right memories will come back to her. Although I guess Draco can't have been more than a few months old when she "died".

There's callous, and then there's that. There's really no good way to say "sorry I killed your dad", but Harry's approach goes past "understandably lame" and into "monumentally clueless".

Here's how this sort of thing works, Harry: you are allowed any number of apologies and expressions of regret, but no more than one short excuse, which had better be a good one. You are not allowed to witter on about necessity and morality and political convenience. If Draco had called you out in the middle of that speech -- and I mean not just "said you're a jerk" called out, but "formal duel" called out -- I would have thought it understandable.

Mr. Counsel might have been Bartemius Crouch Jr.

For what it's worth, I too thought Mr. White was Lucius before seeing everyone else convinced it was Counsel. It seemed more in line with canon, and "white" evokes Lucius's awesome white hair. On the other hand, Harry could be mistaken, and using codenames that seem to indicate who the person behind is when they in fact bear no relation sounds like a thing Voldie would do.

If he let Draco choose the red pill without obliviation, then Draco might tell Narcissa or other people, and the secret of Harry Potter would leak. He's asking for obliviation for security, and it's important enough that he needs to obliviate Draco even if he honestly chooses to stay Harry's friend and keep his secret.

Draco's not stupid. I don't know how much of the circumstances around the graveyard scene are going to become public, but enough information has already been released to paint a picture of Mysterious Circumstances involving Hermione and Quirrell (and the dead). Knowing that, if Harry -- a kid with an uncanny talent for showing up in the center of Mysterious Circumstances, and with close links to both Hermione and Quirrell -- shows up and tells you he has a horrible secret that will make you hate him, is it that hard to put the pieces together even without hearing the secret explicitly? Not conclusively, of course, but enough for strong suspicion?

That would be just one more manipulation,,,

He'd be happy to find out that there really is an afterlife, although it doesn't sound like that good of one. He'd probably try to get as many people into Death's domain before they're supposed to die as possible.

This is a different, McG mentions the existince of a reversible memory charm to seal away but not lose memories to Hermione after she gets back from her trial. Which I now realize was foreshadowing this.

Her memories were sealed in a way that was intentionally undoable. This may not be possible with Voldemort.

I hadn't realized that there was such an easy way to bring back lost memories. More reason to put that emerald ring into the Mirror, ASAP.

I took it to mean that Dumbledore had used a reversible memory charm on Narcissa, knowing they might want her back once Harry had defeated Voldemort, or, more practically, they could use her as a "last weapon to be used against House Malfoy" by holding her hostage.

I think Obliviate is still permanent for all practical purposes, so the same couldn't be done for Voldemort.

[edited iteratively]

Well, it may be only very easy when someone has set up the charm to do so. It seems like that's the sort of thing Dumbledore would do given the circumstances.

Some long time ago he told Draco that Hermione was his enemy.

I wonder if the lies Draco remembers are of the Feynman said he didn't take the door kind.

There was that whole "You just used a Muggle dark ritual to permanently sacrifice your ability to believe in blood purism" bit.

Oh. Dumbledore must have memory-charmed Lucius.

Why? Wouldn't Lucius just believe Narcissa was burned alive like everyone else did without any further intervention?

Huh? No. The young Draco looks like what she remembers his father looking like. She hasn't seen Draco since he was a little child.