Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 28, chapter 99-101

"Tell me, son of Lily, do the Muggles in their wisdom say that soon the skies will be empty?"

Interesting tie-in to:

"HE IS HERE. THE ONE WHO WILL TEAR APART THE VERY STARS IN HEAVEN. HE IS HERE. HE IS THE END OF THE WORLD."

So the centaur and Trelawney seem to be reading from the same playbook. Any guesses to who the centaur approached sixteen years ago and what lines he crossed? Seems like a plausible time to be Lily, no? Could possibly be the payoff to this from Chapter 1:

"...And I begged her to use some of that magic on me so that I could be pretty too, even if I couldn’t have her magic, at least I could be pretty.”
Tears were gathering in Petunia’s eyes.
“And Lily would tell me no, and make up the most ridiculous excuses, like the world would end if she were nice to her sister, or a centaur told her not to – the most ridiculous things, and I hated her for it."

Premise: Quirrell plays the game one level higher than Harry Potter.

Observation: This entire incident is uncharacteristically sloppy. Why were the unicorn corpses found? Why was Quirrell discovered?

Observation: Harry Potter is now really pissed off that herds of unicorns to slay aren't standard procedure for stable-izing people with life threatening injuries. He has just been given another "if only" to fixate on. It has been brought to his attention in ways that wouldn't trip his "why am I being told this" sense.

Father had told Draco that to fathom a strange plot, one technique was to look at what ended up happening, assume it was the intended result, and ask who benefited.

Hypothesis: Reminding Harry that there were ways the wizarding world could have saved Hermione was the primary effect. Possible secondary effects may include impressing on Harry just how ridiculously powerful he is. Perhaps implanting the desire to save Quirrell into Harry's mind? Quirrell may not actually need the blood right now, though I suspect it doesn't hurt.

I know Harry is just a kid, but his reaction towards unicorns don't seem very rational to me. Remember, Harry became vegetarian for a while when he was afraid animals could be sentient. And now, he speaks about massively killing unicorns, magical creatures whose sentient status isn't very clear (like with phoenix), for a "temporary" stop of death at a cost of "permanent side-effects", without inquiring how temporary temporary is, what are those side-effects, and how sentient unicorns are. Without measuring those three parameters, there is no way to know if utility(killing unicorns in St Mungo) is positive or negative.

Why did Quirrell allow the unicorn corpses to be found? Why didn't he dispose of the corpse by making it disappear, instead of trying to pass it off as a predator? Would anyone notice if a unicorn vanished without leaving a corpse? ( I suppose they might, since they're medically valuable, but since unicorns are known not to have predators the predated corpse is hardly a good cover, as we saw. Vanishing the corpse would have made it take longer to notice.)

Anyway, this is one of the few times we see Quirrell's plot clearly failing without anyone actually acting to thwart him. Is it plausible that he was actually unable to kill and drink a unicorn without anyone immediately noticing?

A nausea was in his stomach, a churning sensation that, looking back in memory, seemed both like and unlike a sense of guilt, as though it had the sensations but not quite all of the emotion.

Heh, so Quirrell doesn't know what guilt feels like.

Centaur spears can block many spells, but no one tries to block if they see that the spell is a certain shade of green. For this purpose it is useful to know some green stunning hexes.

This reminds me, if you can make a homing version of the stunning spell, can you make a homing version of the killing curse? Sounds like that would be useful.

The chapter endings for 100 and 101 are a little odd. They stop very abruptly, specially 101. Usually you would get an extra sentence or paragraph to give the chapter a sense of closure.

The reason Quirell and Harry cannot interact magically is supposed to be so Quirrell cannot read harry's mind, memory charm him, confound him, or outright imperio him. But this feels a little weak to me. What's stopping Quirrell from threatening, bribing, tricking, imperiousing, etc... a third party to do it on his behalf?

Nothing specifically to do with these chapters, but it's only just occurred to me: Is it supposed to be significant that the initials of Potter-Evans-Verres are also the start of "Peverell" (indeed, you can get more if you take a few more letters of "Verres")? It seems a rather superficial observation, but "Verres" is a really unusual surname and it would be nice to have an explanation for why Eliezer chose it.

This isn't a particularly bad thing, but I must say, chapter 100 was perhaps the most self indulgent this story has had yet.

Lets talk about chapter 99.

Chapter 99 was there for a reason. I think the most likely reason is to emphasize the 10 days later. Chapter 98 was April 20, and chapter 100 was May 13. For some reason EY wants the first attack to happen on April 30. This could be because QQ only needs to drink the blood every couple weeks. However, why not just make the first unicorn found on May 12 and have no chapter 99? This would make more sense. I would expect the forest to be searched immediately afterwords. This is empathized further in chapter 100:

Draco nodded; he distantly remembered hearing something along those lines a couple of weeks ago, toward the end of April.

Maybe the goal with this is to give some character a full 2 weeks to research unicorns or make a plan.

Other theories for chapter 99:

He wanted the reveal of the unicorn to fall under the Roles sequence for some reason.

He wanted to build suspense. (But then I would expect him to have posted 99 on Sunday and 100 on Wed.)

He wants chapter 99 to be written in passive voice to hide the identity of the person who "found" the unicorn.

The Severing Charm wouldn't bring down a tree, so he'd started partially Transfiguring cross-sections through the wood.

Quirell saw that. Partial transfiguration is not the power the dark lord knows not.

Reddit discussion of chp 99-101, which includes a few words from the author.

Eliezer: I got the math joke.

Explanation and implementation (spoiler if you haven't spotted the joke yet): http://tinyurl.com/hpmor100mathjoke

(But this only covers the first half of the joke; I had not heard of the second half before!)

You had to try to live the other person's entire life inside your own head, at least if you wanted to create the False Memories with less than a sixteen-to-one slowdown as you separately crafted sixteen major tracks of memory

Was this by any change a reference to Permutation City? That was 17× slowdown, but that could be explained by taking the ratio of real+simulated time. But I do not get the "sixteen major tracks of memory" then.

Far fetched, I know...

It seems the entire race of centaurs have taken something of a hit - in the books, they were perfectly aware that their divination was based on one's state of mind and could easily be applied to the patterns perceived in, for example, twisting smoke from a campfire.

I wouldn't mind much - Eliezer may not even have known or remembered that - except that this is not a new lesson for the readers, and it seems a missed opportunity to talk about pattern-matching, maybe tie it in with some of the other stuff about subconscious knowledge or desires in that scene.

I'm torn between vaguely hoping Eliezer will decide to change this, and uncertainty as to whether he even reads these comments. Heck, why should he? I certainly can't write anything like HPMOR, why would he expect to get a useful suggestion from such a comment? (And it doesn't help I'm signalling incompetence with typos from this darn phone, props to TobyBartels and others for reminding me to fix them.)

We know Quirrel can't directly influence Harry with magic, but Bellatrix was broken out of Azkaban long ago and barely mentioned since. Has anyone noticed if harry is particularly more irrational/credulous in the chapters after this than he was before? Because Harry knows Quirrel can't mind-rape him he might be less suspicious than he should be of his mind being bent by Bellatrix to be less suspicious of Quirrel.

Not sure what to make of Harry's willingness to go to any length to preserve Quirrel. Immediate emotional reaction to the death of a 'friend'? Or change in underlying morality?

Not a fan of Twilight Sparkle dying.

Sooo... Quirrel knows a stunning hex that looks like Avadra Kevadra?

Then, back in Azkaban, facing that auror, when Quirrel used Avadra Kevadra in an attempt to force the auror to dodge, and Harry stopped it with his patronus...

...why did Quirrel not use the green stunner, unless Quirrel actually wanted to kill the auror?

And how long will it be until Harry asks that question?

Unrelated to the latest chapters:

Inspired by RomeoStevens's comment in this thread, I am going over HPMOR, summarizing each chapter in a haiku. Tell me what you think:

Chapter 1:

Unexpected truth

Must still be updated on

Yes, magic is real

Chapter 2:

A show of magic

Tales of bitten teachers

The saga begins

Chapter 3:

Diagon alley

A peek into a new world

Stories of the past

Chapter 4:

Metal currency!

No real financial system

To speak of at all

Harry thinks every death is a horrible tragedy. So, wouldn't he want to bring back everyone in the past as well? Make their deaths "not happen"? So he goes back in time to Atlantis, to arrange a self consistent history where no one has in fact died, but only seemed to die, much as he suggested Dumbledore do for Hermione's death.

One of the first lessons was ComedTea, and thinking about causality going backward in time. There's people like Harry and BDumbledore thinking about history as a story. There's the ridiculous levels of foreshadowing we see. History looks like a story because it is one, written by Harry. There was more powerful magic in the past because future Harry took those powers back in time with him.

There's even the foreshadowing of Harry going back in time to play a trick on himself.

"Ssalutations from Sslytherin to Sslytherin."

Discussion on HPMOR (along with other Potterverse topics) on the blog Crooked Timber.

I found it interesting because Crooked Timber is a (very good by the way) mainstream-liberal-academia blog, and I got a sense of "worlds colliding" by reading the opinions of their commenters on LW and its more niche subculture.

Who is Sirius? Fudge!

• It is well known that Sirius was replaced before he went to prison (the repeated "I'm not serious", the phoenix screaming particularly loudly at one particular door)
• Fudge was present at the capture of Sirius, and made Sirius go to Azkaban without a trial- which means Fudge needs to keep the person in Sirius's body locked up for some reason.
• Sirius can switch bodies somehow (Someone who looks like Sirius enough to fool everyone else is in prison)
• Fudge is under the thumb of the Malfoys- why? He's using them for support, but there has to be a reason why they can dominate him completely- and being able to expose him as a death eater does that.
• Harry predicts that Evil!Pettigrew would be with the Malfoys- or in the caribbean? Why not predict the caribbean first? Because Evil!Sirius is with the Malfoys.
• Meta-dramatic point: Harry has never talked to Fudge. Every time he has a chance to talk to him, like during Harry Potter Day, he hasn't- even during the trial, Fudge never says anything.

Oof, this was a punch to the gut of a chapter. I've gone from "Harry, Wake Up!" to a sort of baffled expectation.

What on earth is up with you, Harry? You are usually so clearsighted! Are you still grieving for Hermione? What possible ethical system justifies the decisions of this chapter?

A speech about the power of truth, then a cover up. Punishment for Filch and Hagrid, but mercy for the centaur and Quirrel.

Feh, this is just what the entry describes as refusing to process something I've already processed. There's an easy description for what's going on here, for treasuring some grievances and renouncing others. Harry is doing exactly what Snape told him Lilly did. He is being shallow, and I hope he's able to change.

I have an alternative explanation for Harry's Dark Side: Harry's mother is narcissistic, impressed by education, and not particularly smart.

"by far the simplest explanation for this unverbalizable fear of yours is just the fear of losing your fantasy of greatness, of disappointing the people who believe in you" (ch. 77) is textbook thinking for a child of a narcissistic parent. The child feels perpetually ignored because the narcissistic parent needs validation from the child's accomplishments but refuses to actually listen to the child. Thus, the child is spurred to ever greater heights of intellectual achievement by the parent's need for more status and withholding of love.

"The black rage began to drain away, as it dawned on him that...his family wasn't in danger" (ch. 5) suggests that Harry's Dark Side is Harry desperately trying to stay close to his family.

Typically, children of narcissistic parents inherit either narcissistic or people-pleasing traits. Comparing Harry’s personality to these traits (google “Children of narcissistic parents”, 1st link) shows that Harry has textbook narcissist traits:

Grandiose sense of self-importance? Check. He wants to “optimize” the entire Universe

Obsessed with himself? Check. He appears to only care about people who are smarter or more powerful than him -- people who can help him. He also has contempt for most students and their interests (Quidditch, etc.)

Goals are selfish? Check. Harry claims to want to save everyone, but in practice he tries to increase his own power most quickly. The saving-Hermione thing is still selfish because Harry sees Hermione in the same way he sees his mother -- weak in many ways and bound by emotions and convention, but someone Harry must impress. “It’s disrespectful to her, to think someone could only like her in that way” (ch. 91) makes sense in that a child would be disgusted by Oedipal implications. If Harry’s mother was not narcissistic, then Harry would not have worked so hard to impress Hermione and would have been less disgusted by the thought of being sexually attracted to her.

Troubles with normal relationships? Check. Harry is playing high-stakes mind games with those he is closest to (Quirrell, Draco, Hermione, Dumbeldore), which is emphatically not normal friend behavior. Harry has contempt for nearly everyone else, and is currently hiding alone under an invisibility cloak.

Becomes furious if criticized? Check. When Snape mocked Harry in Potions class, Harry tried to destroy Snape’s career. Quirrell explained, “When it looked like you might lose, you unsheathed your claws, heedless of the danger. You escalated, and then you escalated again.” (Ch. 19)

Has fantasies of unbound success, power, intelligence, etc.? Check. Harry wants to conquer the entire Universe with the power of his intelligence.

Believes that he is special and should only be around other high-status people? Check. Harry avoids average students when possible, and certainly does not hang out with them for fun. A possible exception is Harry’s army, but minimal text is devoted to Harry instructing them, while much text explains how powerful (in battle) and high-status the students in the army have become. In Harry’s mind, the army is a tool to use and an opportunity to show off, not an opportunity to give back and help friends improve their skills for their own sake.

Requires extreme admiration for everything? Check. Harry takes anything less than admiration for his brilliance as an insult, and responds by striving for new levels of intellectual achievement and arrogance, until the others recognize his dominance. Quirrell’s lesson on how to lose described how to avoid making powerful enemies, not how to empathize and care for others -- the insatiable need for admiration is merely delayed and repressed, not corrected.

Feels entitled - has unreasonable expectations of special treatment? Check. Harry requires subservience from the school administration, and special magic items such as the time-turner. “McGonagall said, "but I do have a very special something else to give you. I see that I have greatly wronged you in my thoughts, Mr. Potter...this is an item which is ordinarily lent only to children who have already shown themselves to be highly responsible” (Ch. 14).

Takes advantage of others to further his own need? Check. "I only used you in ways that made you stronger. That's what it means to be used by a friend." (Ch. 97)

Does not recognize the feelings of others? Check. “Er, can I take it from this that you have been through puberty?" (Ch. 87)

Envious or believes they are envied? Check. Quirrell said to Harry, “You have everything now that I wanted then. All that I know of human nature says that I should hate you. And yet I do not. It is a very strange thing.” (Ch. 74)

Behaves arrogantly? Check. “Minerva's body swayed with the force of that blow, with the sheer raw lese majeste. Even Severus looked shocked.” (Ch. 19) I can’t think offhand of a single instance when Harry is not arrogant.

"The Drama of the Gifted Child" by Dr. Alice Miller (Google for the .pdf) spells out what a child raised by one narcissistic parent and one distant parent typically looks like. It looks a lot like H.J.P.E.V.

I can relate personally -- my mother drove me to extreme academic success so she could feel good about herself. I succeeded, then (99th percentile on standardized tests, attended a prestigous and excellent college that I will not name here) but it harmed my ability to relate to people, to distinguish my actual dreams from my mother’s grandiosity/insecurity, and to succeed academically once I had surpassed my mother’s ability to judge progress. When I first found HPMOR I was overjoyed that I was not alone in my arrogance and hope for immortality. It’s only recently that I realized why that is, and what that cost. “Every time I call on it... it uses up my childhood.” (Ch. 91). Suffice it to say that I studied obsessively for years.

I thought about spoiler-warning this to avoid memetic hazard, but apparently on this site “that which can be destroyed by the truth should be”.

Strength of will is demanded for the cursed fire not to turn upon you and consume you;

Narcissa?

So, I am mildly amused that Eliezer appears to have killed off Alicorn.

Also, that the second unicorn appears to be Twilight Sparkle.

(And thirdly, the not-very-hidden Twilight reference.)

Didn't get the proof-theoretic joke until I looked it up, unfortunately, but it was rather amusing once I did.

And finally: I think Quirrell just got himself added to the "to be resurrected" list...

Quirrell:

This truly dangerous wizard shall perhaps be bent on some project of which he anticipates great renown, and the certain prospect of losing that renown and living out his life in obscurity will seem to him more vivid, more aversive, than the unknown prospect of destroying his country.

The Sorting Hat:

“You know—you aren’t letting yourself think it, but in some quiet corner of your mind you know just exactly what you aren’t thinking—you know that by far the simplest explanation for this unverbalizable fear of yours is just the fear of losing your fantasy of greatness, of disappointing the people who believe in you, of turning out to be pretty much ordinary, of flashing and fading like so many other child prodigies...”

I assume the centaur tried to kill Harry because he prophesied that "the skies will soon be empty" because of Harry. Based on what we know about Harry, the skies could be "emptied" because of Dyson spheres or star-lifting.

Although, if you look at it that way, it would still take thousands of years before the skies appeared "empty," since we're getting light from thousands of years ago. I'm not sure if a centaur would use "soon" in this sense, so perhaps Eliezer has something different in mind.

I've already forgotten why, but I wound up wondering how Quirrell confronting Grendelwald might go in HPMoR. I can't think of a reason it would happen, but it'd doubtless be entertaining, if canon is anything to go by.

(In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Voldemort goes to Normengard to interrogate Grendelwald over that device Dumbledore mentioned. Grendelwald believes from the moment he detects Voldemort's approach that he's probably going to die, and still deceives and verbally belittles Voldy, until he laughs at the Avada Kedavra aimed at him. Not being a complete idiot, Voldemort saw through Grendelwald's lies, but it was still fun to read. Our current Defense Professor would, if he wanted that same information, be likely to come up with it without visiting the previous dark lord, and Grendelwald's attitude would likely lose its effect on him, but "Have you come to kill me lollollol" ... eh, a smart interrogator would probably resort to torture instead. Which I guess means Grendelwald is a perfect Occlumens, for all the good that does.)

Harry's blindness to Quirrel being pretty obviously bad news at this point is definitely something I'd like to see explained. I know that as the reader I get to see things more clearly than Harry does, but when you start thinking painfully murdering magical creatures to preserve your life for a short amount of time is fine if the person doing it is someone you like, something is going wrong there! I am fully expecting at this point to understand that Harry's thinking on Quirrel is being deliberately suppressed. After all, Harry's meant to be fundamentally curious about magic... why has he not investigated what could cause the anti-magic effect?

Harry can obliviate people well enough to make them "lose every single life memory involving the color blue". This is a Big Deal. It allows for things like:

O-

October

After walking Herminone to Broomstick class, Harry wandered alone about the upper hallways of Hogwartz pondering Neville's rememberal. He must have forgotten about something important, but w-

Ow!

A Green Elephant appeared out of nowhere and struck Harry's head. It was a stuffed animal, the type you might buy for a small child, if the child's favorite color were Eerily Glowing Green. Harry removed an index card pinned to the elephant's side.

Forget something? Jog your memory at the north-northwest stacks of the main Hogwarts library, letter M.

Yours,

You

p.s. Don't think about the green elephant! (smirk)

Harry rubbed his temple. It was at times like these that Harry wished he had less affinity for cryptic clues and assaulting people with glowing megafauna.

Less than 5 minutes of search at the library Harry and found the next hint: a fluorescent green post-it labeled "Elephant" on the book Mind Magic: A Modern Approach.

Harry kicked himself. Well, that solved the mystery of the glowing rememberal. He had forgotten a task he had assigned himself his first day at Hogwarts:

Todo 1̶2: Research every kind of mind magic you can find. Mind is the foundation of our power as humans, any kind of magic that affects it is the most important sort of magic there is.

Harry opened the book at a green elephant-shaped bookmark and read.

The unpracticed wizard can manage only coarser obliviatons, such as removing every single life memory involving fish or the colour blue.

...Or every life memory involving Green Elephants, Harry thought. So that's what he was up to with the elephant. Harry had ensured that every memory he made while learning obliviation would be tagged with a obvious marker. If Harry ever needed to plead ignorance of mind magic in the future, he could obliviate all his life green-elephant memories (be prepared!). Alright, new plan. He would study obliviation in secret, always thinking about a green elephant when doing so.

A grinning Harry wandered out of the library and into the Weasley twins.

"Harry! We got you a present." said Fred or George.

"You'll never guess what it is."

Harry put a finger on his cheek "Is it...A glowing green elephant?"

April 16th, 1992.

2:34 PM

Harry slowed the broomstick to a halt in midair of a hallway, his wand already coming into his hand, the driving will to protect Hermione Granger rising to the front of his mind like a sun of silver fire and flowing down his arm as he cried

"EXPECTO PATRONUM!"

and the blazing white humanoid burst into existence like a nova, the Weasley twins' voices crying aloud in shock.

"Tell Hermione Granger - that there's a troll loose in Hogwarts - it could be hunting for her - she needs to get into direct sunlight, now!"

The silver figure turned as though it was departing, and then -

A floating green elephant appeared

Harry's Patronus raced out of the room. It took forty agonizing seconds before the silvery figure returned, opened it's mouth and said .

An invisible voice shouted "EXPECTO PATRONUM!".

A second true Patronus appeared next to the floating green elephant.

The invisible voice instructed "Send the following message to me: 'Hermione Granger says,'" the invisible voice rose in pitch in a poor imitation of Hermione, "AHHHHHHHHH!"

The floating green elephant disappeared.

"Merlin's underpants," breathed Fred or George.

Battle with the troll:

One hand held a tremendous stone club as long and as wide as an adult human, and the other hand held a green elephant and

...

The troll snorted and spun around to face them, dropping a green elephant and

into the red pool that had spread out beneath its feet, raising its club high.

Aftermath:

Harry told Dumbldore about the , though he knew later he would be unable to process the memory later.

...

But Harry didn't see anything helpful he could do using spells in his lexicon, Dumbledore wasn't being very cooperative, and in any case this was several minutes after the critical location within Time and Harry's green elephant weilding, time-traveling double would be more chronologically equipped.

Dumbledore walked to Harry's side, George moved to keel next to his brother, and Fred lay supine.

Why had future Harry shown him the Green Elephant?

"Harry," the Headmaster whispered, laying his hand on Harry's shoulder. "Harry, you must go from this place"

Harry sat outside the infirmary storeroom clutching his time-turner. He could go back; he could save her. But not yet.

Think of a green elephant

He knew too much. He could't go back now -- the information carried in his mind would strech time too far.

Think of a green elephant

There was only one way left. Harry turned his wand on himself, his fingers forming the motion he had practiced all year.

Think of a green elephant

In a flash, his mind would race his memories of a Green Elephant and wipe them out forever.

Harry drew his breath.

-bliviate

Just to check: Chapter 100 is the scene foreshadowed in the opening quote, right?

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

(Unicorn blood)

(black robes, falling)

(The aurors and McGonagall falling from their brooms)

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

...this doesn't quite fit, unless I'm picturing the scene wrong.

Edit: Uncertainty. Based on replies, I'm now leaning against this being the foreshadowed scene.

It seems like a stretch but is there any chance

Imps as can't be seen or heard or remembered, even while they're eatin' yer face.

is a shout out to

But just because you're paranoid doesn't mean that there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face.

from the Dresden files?

Also could the spell Quirell used to destroy Hogwarts walls in earlier chapters be used to dungeon bypass the third floor corridor by going through the back of the room with the mirror of desire Erised>

I'm a bit bothered by Dumbledore's behavior in 101. He's supposed to be at least reasonably wise and reasonably cunning, with a dead brother and a room full of gravestones. He knows all about prioritizing people's lives. He's just had the first student fatality in 50 years, and now he almost had a second. So how could he possibly have taken Filch's side?

Sorry if these questions are stupid, but with the long pauses betwen the chapters I find it difficult to remember what exactly happened.

1) What exactly is the puzzle we are trying to solve?

If I remember correctly, Eliezer wanted us to solve something before the story is finished. Which pretty much means now or never. I just don't know what exactly is the question. (Yeah, knowing the question is half of knowing the answer.) Who is Voldemort? Seems obvious that it's Quirrell. What should Harry do? What exactly is happening? What are the motivations of the main characters in the story? Who killed Narcissa Malfoy? Do we have a list of unanswered questions? How likely it is that answering them will provide a new view of the story, and will uncover some new possible strategy for Harry?

2) Does Dumbledore know or suspect that Quirrell = Voldemort?

I am not sure. At some moment it seems to me that yes: Dumbledore expects that Quirrell will cause some problems (e.g. when bringing a dementor). At some moments it seems to me that no: Dumbledore explains Harry that Voldemort should be killed without mercy at the first opportunity... and yet does nothing against Quirrell. I am specifically condused about the part (after Draco was attacked) when Dumbledore took the map and asked about "Tom Riddle". What did he know at that moment?

Also, I am disappointed that Dumbledore plays an idiot so successfully, that Harry actually treats him like an idiot. Thus two people who have best chance at defeating Voldermort, have trouble communicating.

Quirrell may have some blind sports about humans, but he is good at disrupting communication channels.

The silver from the begging of HPMOR seems unicorn blood. Eliezer said:

V’yy fgngr bhgevtug gung ng gur raq bs gur fgbel Urezvbar pbzrf onpx nf na nyvpbea cevaprff.

Tvira havpbea oybbq vf nobhg ceriragvat qrngu, jr unir gur vaterqvragf sbe n zntvp evghny.

Tvira gur cebcurpvrf gung evghny vf cebonoyl tbvat gb unir n punapr bs qrfgeblvat gur jbeyq. V guvax vg cebonoyl qbrf.

My theory about HPMOR and what is going on.

"Voldemort's final avenue is to seduce a victim and drain the life from them over a long period; in which case Voldemort would be weak compared to his former power."

But raw power is nothing compared to intellect and Harry Potter seems like the best possible candidate for resurrecting this way.

• Quirrell and Harry both have a dark side, and dark sides are parts of Volondemort soul. They are horcruxes basically.

• Quirrell's dark side took control over good old Quirinus Quirrell. He is in the same condition Harry was when he was under dementation.

• Quirrell is trying to push Harry to his dark side. He tried dementation, he tried to take all Harry's money and friends away, he killed Hermione. And he gave Harry his diary to "seduce a victim and drain the life from them over a long period".

What we will see next? Quirrell doesn't have much time so he will act now.

I think Quirrell will kill Dumbledore and provoke Harry to fight against Death itself. They need a Dumbledore wand + resurrection stone + Harry's cloak + magic resonance + some Quirrell's and Harry's wisdom. And I don't think that we will see happy ending. There will be a disaster.

If plan fails then Voldy has a golden plate on Voyager as a backup horcrux.

p.s. Apologize for my English :)

I think Harry might have been the one to secure Hermione's body. He managed to convince McGonagall to remove the restrictions on his time turner. He probably used the time turner right after he was allowed to be by himself in the room with Hermione's body. That would have given himself more time to think and act. He was also checking his wristwatch a lot, especially when he had to leave the room, and when he had interruptions.

In the scene where he convinces Dumbledore and the others that he doesn't have Hermione's body, we don't get very far inside Harry's head. It shows what he says and does, but not his thoughts. Also, he doesn't spend a lot of time speculating about where Hermione's body went, in later chapters.

I'm not sure where he would have put it though. Could he get out of Hogwarts to take her body elsewhere? Or is there a suitable place in the Hogwarts grounds where he could stash it? Would he have to keep visiting the body to renew the spell on her body to keep it cold, or could he figure out a muggle way to cool it, or a different magic way that didn't need to be renewed?

For what reason does Harry think Quirrell is applying false memory charms to everyone? What's wrong with what they saw?

I'm just curious how Hagrid felt about his own role in Hermione's death. I'd wondered if I'd see evidence that he thought about it.

Perhaps his personal hero Dumbledore persuaded him it's none of his fault and that he'd acted reasonably.

Nice double (well, one and a half) cameo for alicorn, under different names.

an overlarge metal blade whose edge did not gleam beneath the moonlight; a gleaming edge, Harry had once read, was the sign of a dull blade

Of course, the real reason that it's not gleaming is that Eliezer once read that!

Is the unicorn who was "not white, but pale blue, or appearing so beneath the moon and sky," with a mane that was "green-black but with a sheen like pearls," and a cutie mark which is "a small white shape like a starburst, a center surrounded by eight straight rays" Alicorn's ponysona?

Hey guys, I have a couple of mutually exclusive theories:

• If I understand correctly, the author thinks that a body can be "repaired" after death. So he believes that Hermione can be resurrected by nanobots or engineered microorganisms, or some advanced muggle device like that. And we know that he can't just transfigure some water into nanobots and make them do their job, and them just let them turn into water, or take them out. In the case he couldn't sustain the bots until they finish, then he can make a molecular 3d printer, purify some silicon using partial transfiguration and make the bots in the 3d printer.

It's a no brainer really, we know he has her body and is up to something. She will one way or another return back to life. Another implied thing is that humans have souls, and once a soul it's gone it cannot be brought back. BUT that's not what we see actually. What if the real deal was the neurons, and that surge of magic coming out of her so to speak was actually the veil at the Departement of Misteries obtaining an imperfect copy of someone's consciousness? What if that veil is just a failed try by the atlantians, Merlin, or whoeevr at, say, the magical version mind uploading? Like when people simulate neuronal networks on their computers and think "just if I had a map of the synapses in a brain I could simulate it". Right, you may get something resembling consciousness. But it wouldn't capture the subtleties of the millions of chemical reactions ocurring in a particular neuron. Like people resurrected with the stone, or proffessor Binns. People who cannot learn new things, who really don not function as normal human beings.

Harry said something like "magic in hpmor works intent-based". BUT what if that's limited by whoever programmed "intent" in magic? Say, the atlantians. It can do just as well as they could at their time. Maybe they roughly understood how the brain works, but didn't understand enough of the neuron's internal mechanism. Maybe whoever programmed "reparo" built in certain things in it, like a complete enough feature set for everyday's work, but left things out that were algorithmically too complex, like fixing cloth. Maybe the creator of the resurrection stone/veil set (the vail stores the data, the stone let's you get it back) didn't know how neurons exactly worked, and couln't simulate them properly with magic or make the neurons alive again. I think the atlanians had science, and maybe that's exactly why they perished, and that's the reason they could program so many spells, they knew the algorithms.

What if the universe is just a lisp-like interpreter, and runs the earth as software? Someone discovered how to execute an eval from within, and everything is data, so they just self-modified the code to include different functions which are activated when someone with a particular genetic code says some random words with the "intents" of the wizard as parameters. But their sciece wasn't that advanced actually. The muggle world could have discovered magic a while ago if it wasn't for that genetic lock which someone along the way put to monopolize magic. And that's where Harry comes in. He has the algorithms (or can write them with his scientific knowledge), and he can mess with the source code. And that's what Quirrel is trying to stop (I don't know why though). He doesn't want Harry to know about spell creating, and Mcgonagal doesn't realize why he advises her not to let Harry have access to that, she thinks it's just because they are being "responsible adults" and children just are not meant to have access to that.

• Mayby souls actually do exist, and when you use the resurrection stone you are actually bringing back the spirit, but as it doesn't have a body anymore it cannot function in this realm of reality. So he will get her spirit back, fix her body in the usual scientific ways (see above) and join the two with the elder's wand.

• He brings her back somehow (duh) but I still don't know how.

• He is going to surprise us all and take a dramatic deathist approach. Actually Dumbledore is right, Hermione now just belongs to another realm and is gone forever from this world. Harry's attempts end up in failure, or he actually somehow brings her back but she is in zombie-mode and wants to go back to heaven, just as Rowling wold have liked (very unlikely given the author of the fic).

EDIT: Thanks, I thought line braks would be kept, but it seems like I need an extra new line every paragraph.

Why everybody believes that centaur wanted to kill Harry ? It rather seems like centaur was disarming him. And it is even possible, he was under imperius curse (from Quirrel) while disarming Harry. He seemed to be surprised about what he was doing (looked up with widened eyes) and he apologised. I believe Quirrel just wanted to interrupt the conversation between Harry and Centaur.

I have some thoughts about the HPMOR story going forward, various clues I've noticed, and speculation.

Avada Kedavra

I am intrigued by the possibility that Avada Kedavra might be used for prolonging life.

What if, when Lily Potter started to cast it, she was not casting it on Voldemort, but on Harry? Avada Kedavra involves a complete preference for death over life in the mind of the caster. What if she had a complete preference for life over death in regard to Harry, and so was attempting to protect him with the spell? What if it partially worked, and that's why Harry lived?

I think it is plausible, considering it appears the Potters were doing research into immortality.

Dementor-defeating thoughts

I also wonder if the way Harry thinks about things in order to defeat dementors will be challenged at all. His present dementor-defeating point of view fits in very well with how whoever made all of the spells and summoned dementors might think (though taking the opposite stance). It still seems like the Aristotelian logic of how the broomsticks move to me, not something more correct like Newton's laws of motion. If you look at it more closely, what would it actually mean to defeat death? While a person is alive, the cells in that person's body die and are replaced all the time. The only examples that I am aware of, of cells that don't die on time, are in cancer tumors. Death is a part of biological systems in a way that isn't acknowledged by Harry's dementor-defeating thoughts, or at least that is my impression of it. It seems odd to me, given that in so many other areas of the story, details about how the world works are important (like in partial transfiguration.)

Not that I want to see Harry lose the power to defeat dementors, or give up the quest to help humans have long healthy lives, or give up the quest to save Hermione if he can, unlikely as bringing someone back from the dead (or cryogenic storage?) seems. But it would be nice if he was a little more correct while defeating dementors. And if that more correct understanding gave him better powers (like it has done in other areas of the story.)

Prophecy

My thoughts when I saw the bit of the prophecy "HE IS HERE. THE ONE WHO WILL TEAR APART THE VERY STARS IN HEAVEN. HE IS HERE. HE IS THE END OF THE WORLD." were along the lines of "Cool! Harry's going to figure out how to make fusion practical." Not something like "Harry's going to blow up our sun."

I hope the prophecy involves something awesome like Harry figuring out how to make fusion power sources practical, and doesn't involve lots of destruction and death.

Although, re-reading it, I suppose I've glossed over the end of the world part of it. Hmm.

A few other clues

I think Quirrell knows how to make a dementor, but might not realize it. In Chapter 74: "Even so, the most terrible ritual known to me demands only a rope which has hanged a man and a sword which has slain a woman; and that for a ritual which promised to summon Death itself - though what is truly meant by that I do not know and do not care to discover, since it was also said that the counterspell to dismiss Death had been lost."

Also, at one point Dumbledore mentioned that one of Voldemort's methods of seeking immortality required doing something "in coldest blood". Perhaps that is more literal than Dumbledore realizes, and that's why Draco had a blood-cooling charm cast on him. Though, I'm not sure what evidence there was of the blood-cooling charm besides Hermione's presumably fake memories and Quirrell's testimony, so perhaps something else happened at that time.

Quirrell

“Ordinary folk do not do as much, for those they call friends.” The voice sounded more distant now, abstracted. “Not even for those they say they love. Their companions die, and they do not go in search of power to resurrect them.”

Self pity because people someone didn't come to look for a way to resurrect him?

Huh, add unicorn blood and the Silvery Slytherins to the list of silver anti-death things.

Rot13 for being partly based on a author's note Eliezer has recommended people not read:

Abg fher ubj gb gnxr guvf hcqngr vagb nppbhag jura svthevat cebonovyvgl Urezvbar ernyyl qbrf pbzr onpx nf na "nyvpbea cevaprff." Ba gur bar unaq, ersrerapr gb "nyvpbea" frrzf gb or frggvat gung hc. Ba gur bgure unaq, V'z univat n uneqre gvzr cnefvat "havpbea ubea cevaprff" guna "jvatrq havpbea cevaprff." Ba gur guveq unaq, guvf.

Probably a stupid question, but wasn't Draco was out of the picture already?