Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 22, chapter 93

On the other hand, I'd forgotten how disappointed I was in HermioneMOR compared to canon Hermione.

I think this is because canon!Hermione plays the voice of reason and maturity to the childish Harry and Ron, whereas HPMOR!Hermione in some ways serves the opposite role, being a real (and thus immature and limited) eleven-year old girl next to super prodigy Harry and trained-to-perfection Draco. Seen in that light, the extent to which she does manage to keep up is actually pretty amazing.

I found 93 incredibly refreshing-- it was good to see so much cooperation, good will, and clear communication after a tremendous amount of earned and unearned mistrust.

Also, good to see Harry see it, and maybe correct his not entirely accurate assessment of other people.

I'd forgotten how disappointed I was in HermioneMOR compared to canon Hermione.

Really? I like this one so much better. Her only real failing I see is her preoccupation with feeling inferior to Harry, which should be irrelevant regardless and is inaccurate besides.

HPMOR kinda feels off because canonically, Hermione is unambiguously the most competent person in Harry's year, and has a good chance of growing up to be the most competent person in the 'verse. Harry is kept at the center of the story by his magical connection to Voldemort. In HPMOR, in contrast, Harry is kept at the center of the story by competence and drive. It's going to be very hard to do that without it feeling like Hermione is getting shafted.

That said, Hermione's death was an excellent decision from a storytelling perspective. Death is a major theme of both canon and HPMOR, but in canon Harry the most important deaths in Harry's life are those of his parents, who he had no memories of.

Eliezer has said that Hermione hasn't been powered up as much as other characters because she was already so great in canon. This is one voice who hasn't had any issues with Eliezer's handling of Hermione.

my first thought was HGMOR would be delightful, and it wouldn't take bending canon nearly as much. It's a lot easier for me to imagine canon Hermione taking an interest in theory of how to think better than canon Harry.

It's been a while since I've read cannon, but isn't this almost exactly what happens in cannon? HGMoR sounds like it'd just be cannon written with JKR following around HG instead of HP (which, admittedly, would be rather interesting)

but all rewards are subject to Goodhart's Law. I expect to see people doing a lot of ill-thought-out somethings because the reward structure is too simplified.

Well, since the reward structure isn't explicit, and we expect McGonagoll to get much smarter on a much smaller timescale than opportunities to earn a reward by "disobeying McGonagoll according to your own judgement."

I believe Snape's "Sunk Costs" hangup is also alluded to in Ch 91:

"Do you intend to declare that your life is now a ruin and that there is nothing left for you but vengeance?"

"No. I still have -" The boy cut himself off.

"Then there is very little advice that I can give you," said Severus Snape.

at some point Dumbledore tells Harry that Snape is one of his most valuable allies.

I can't help suspecting that what you're actually thinking of is this:

My beloved son:

I would say that you have been so fortunate as to meet someone who enjoys the intimate confidence of our friend and valuable ally, Severus Snape.

in chapter 7, which of course was written not by Dumbledore but by Lucius Malfoy.

2 is very interesting. Nice job noticing that detail on sunk costs

I think it's a bit absurd to call something a "fridging" when the character in question has been around for 90 chapters and had their own major story arc, etc. That's really getting away from the spirit of what the "women in fridges" idea is complaining about (ie women who only serve to die in order to motivate the male characters).

Yet Hermione and McGonnagal are essentially as flawed as they were in the original text.

Amelia Bones, Susan Bones, Daphne Greengrass, Padme Patil (and even more minor characters like Hannah Abbot and Tracey Davis) are all significantly stronger and more relevant characters in this one than they ever were in the Harry Potter series.

If you compare ratio of the genders of relevant characters, HPMOR is better than the original Harry Potter ever was. You say Hermione is as flawed as in the original but you forget that it was Ron who was completely downgraded to peripheral status.

And as Velorien said, fridging is defined by its narrative purpose, and we don't know its narrative purpose yet.

Sorry, how are Hermione and McGonagall, "essentially as flawed as they were in the original text", exactly? I always saw their characters as being a step up from their original descriptions, and it's clear that the difficulties that Eliezer is having them overcome are not random things that no other characters have, but rather, the sorts of problems with thinking we see in the real world. Hermione and McGonagall have made more progress over the book than many of the other characters. You can point out that this means they started out weaker, but there are clear, justifiable reasons for this, and not simply downgrading all the females.

You have to acknowledge the backgrounds of these characters.

Moody? Dark Wizard hunter for a hundred years. You can't expect McGonagall to be able to compete with that. Quirrell? In order for the story to work, we needed a villain that would be a match for the upgraded Harry, so it's obvious why he would need to be seriously ramped up. Dumbledore? After defeating Grindlewald, he had to wage the war against Voldemort for ten years, so his character needed to be the sort that could realistically withstand that pressure.

While I can't pretend to know exactly what Eliezer meant, I suspect these sorts of things are what he was referring to when he said canon was constraining him. If you're going to turn the PotterVerse into a world that makes sense, with actual cause and effect, you need Dumbledore to plausibly be able to have accomplished what he did, and unfortunately canon does not give him a strong backstory for a character like McGonagall. At least, not a backstory as strong as these other characters have, like Moody or Dumbledore.

If you're going to go out and call HPMOR problematic, and say it fails at a feminist reading, you need to at least understand why the story is like this.

I'm not even going to go into the fridging comment.

Yet Hermione and McGonnogal are essentially as flawed as they were in the original text.

Hermione is the most admirable character in HPMOR, and it looks like McGonagal could soon join her at the top. If their portrayal is an affront to feminism, it's feminism that has the problem, not HPMOR.

I have seen many things in many years, and I'm pretty sure I 'grok the substance' of the feminist complaints. The problem is twofold:

1) Feminists pattern match for feminist issues, so they sometimes find issues even where issues don't actually exist, and

2) feminists have integrated feminism into their identity.

The end result is that even minor perceived issues can directly affect their identity, resulting in offense. It is not a good combination, making discourse difficult and littering the discussion landscape with hot-button triggers. It's a common political pattern - similar logic holds for many different 'righteous belief' systems.

Regarding your comment, "We can enjoy problematic things even while acknowledging they're problematic.", I personally feel that's more than a little unfair. In this case at least, the audience that finds it problematic is at best a vocal minority.

Perhaps "We can enjoy things that some people find problematic, while acknowledging that those people find those things problematic." While a less potent soundbite, I find it more appropriate.

Or perhaps even, "Some people will always find certain things problematic. That doesn't mean that it's anybody else's problem."

Disclaimer: I am thoroughly enjoying HPMOR. That said, I just don't think Eliezer is quite grokking the substance of feminist complaints.

I agree, but I don't think you're quite groking his responses either. His main point is that it's an exercise in futility to apply critical theory to an incomplete work, in particular one that claims to be more complicated than Death Note; for all we know HG asked AD to help him fake her own death, or maybe she's been outsmarting everyone from behind the scenes all long. (Though I admit that both of these are unlikely, they would be within the level of "where did that come from?" that EY's already done)

I think you are missing at least one of his key arguments. A fridging is defined by its purpose, that a female character died for the sake of a male character's development. And you can't judge an event's purpose within the story until you have the full thing in front of you and can see all of that event's effects, short- and long-term.

I think it would be prudent to wait until the story is completed to make those kinds of judgements. We simply do not know the intention yet.

What if Hermione dying was NOT to motivate Harry?

What if she died because it was her Destiny? She went to do battle with the troll, because it was her duty to die and be reborn as something greater than she was? It wasn't Harry's fault because she chose to be struck down, and will become even more powerful than we could possibly imagine?

If it's all part of her plan, will you retract the critique?

I cried for real for the first time in years, and it made me very confused/uncomfortable with my feelings.

But that relies on Dumbledore forgetting to check the ring, and since Dumbledore is very clever, that's a very big gamble for Harry to make. If he's going to carry around Hermione's transfigured corpse on his person, he should at least have it as something completely innocuous, like a button.

Chapter 93, just after Harry has spent two minutes with Hermione; McGonagall seeing Hermione

the upper body waxy and doll-like

And in chapter 53,

a small doll

Becomes

a fresh corpse

In fact, perhaps Harry replaced the body, and them someone else stole a copy.

Just a thought.

Snape. Yes, I am still on about the oxygenating potion. Exotica in bottles is what he does, and heck, he even uses "put a stopper in death" as an example of what a master potioner can do.

Good catch.

Alicorn is the author of Luminosity, the rationalist Twilight fanfic, right? Could it be that this is to imply Hermione comes back as a vampire?

[ducks from rotten tomatoes]

I wish I'd listened to the little voice telling me not to finish reading the comment.

ETA: not because it was bad, but because now I'm going to wonder if she comes back as an alicorn. I listened to EY's warning and didn't finish his rant. I should have followed the same course here.

It didn't happen. She's just a unicorn noble, not an alicorn princess.

... or metaphorically...

Someone needs to write a Friendship is Optimal crossover.

Nicholas Flamel, who is already known to change identities frequently, is the obvious candidate.

(And Flamel could also be Quirrell; Of the canon characters, there are four people likely to be as powerful as MoR Quirrell is: Dumbledore, Grindelwald, Voldemort, and Flamel. He's not Dumbledore; Grindelwald is probably still in Nurmengard; Voldemort is a distinct possibility, but that-one-infamous-post-we-all-know-about is, in my opinion, more likely to be a red herring than truth; Flamel is most likely. If Quirrell were not Flamel, Harry would be correct in assuming that Quirrell would kidnap Flamel if the stone were genuine. Lack of access to the elixir of life would also explain Quirrell's illness and the accelerated aging that Harry observed when Quirrell was in the infirmary. It also explains why Flamel knows that the Stone is hidden in Hogwarts. And if Quirrel/Flamel is female, that would explain how an attacker managed to intercept Hermione in the girls-only staircase. This theory also explains Eliezer's hints that a future story development will make it obvious that he is in no way shortchanging the female gender.)

I suspect that, if Flamel is Quirrell, the presence of the stone at Hogwarts is some elaborate trap to draw out Voldemort, whom Flamel may believe resides in, or is, Harry.

Edit 5/11/2014 (Spoilers up to Chapter 101): Dhveeryy unf abj orra frra qevaxvat havpbea oybbq, gur nqirefr rssrpgf bs juvpu ner fgngrq va pnaba gb or artngrq ol gur Ryvkve bs Yvsr. Synzry jbhyq or bar bs gur srj crbcyr jubz jr pna or pbasvqrag jbhyq or fher rabhtu bs guvf cebcregl bs gur ryvkve gb org uvf urnygu ba vg. Ubjrire, Dhveeryy unf nyfb orra fubja gb unir n yvax gb Uneel'f zvaq, n yvax juvpu Ibyqrzbeg cbffrffrq va pnaba naq sbe juvpu V pna vzntvar ab cynhfvoyr ernfba sbe Synzry gb unir. Gur onynapr bs rivqrapr va snibe bs zl traqresyvccrq-Synzry-Dhveeryy gurbel vf abj zhpu qvzvavfurq.

I'm pretty sure the exception is McGonagall taking over Hagrid's role, in addition to her canon role.

Another possibility is that Amelia Bones replaces Barty Crouch as the plot relevant hardcore anti-deatheater government official

Well, we don't have a child villain to replace Draco. I keep hoping Tracey will discover her ambition, and that it's to be something other than a running gag. Dumbledore nudged Hermione into becoming a true warrior of the Light. Quirrell got the Darke Lady with an E. He can't be happy with that.

The exception could conceivably be Blaise Zabini. From the TV tropes article titled "Ambiguous Gender" -

Harry Potter's Blaise Zabini got a single mention in book one, which sparked years of furious debate over his or her gender. Fan Fiction summaries often stated Boy!Blaise or Girl!Blaise, each with their own set of conventions and fanon personalities. (Boy!Blaise was often suave and Italian, Girl!Blaise often red-haired.)

It was not revealed until the sixth book that Blaise was male. While Eliezer chose to keep him male, he likely had the option to chose given the character's very uncertain past.

If I had to guess, I'd say Quirrell. He's a person of very many identities; there's no reason that the first one necessarily was male. The only problem with that is that Dumbledore still seems to think Voldemort was Tom Riddle (see Chapter 79) but as Voldemort is said to have changed twice in his career as a Dark Lord (after murdering the House of Monroe, and after the last Monroe vanished) it's possible that he was replaced and Dumbledore didn't notice.

Last time I saw this conversation go round, fannish consensus was that the exception is Tonks.

Here's hoping its Dorothy Evans-Verres.

One of the central conceits of HPMOR is that, basically, everyone in the wizarding world except Harry and Riddle/Voldemort/Munroe/Quirrell are stupid.

One of the central conceits is that the viewpoint character, Harry, comes across as believing that everyone who has not earned his respect is stupid. But it is not really in the interests of most wizards to prove the full extent of their magical or reasoning abilities to every judgmental 11-year-old who comes along.

(I commented on this back in December.)

It's interesting that chapter93 is mostly Harry being shown that he is not, in fact, the only sane person in the world; his parents, the other students, and especially Minerva Macgonnagle all completely put his Slytherin side in its place. (That's the nice reading, anyway; Dumbledore and Quirrell's interpretations are worrysome.)

Or else "cannot exist in the same cauldron", which I like to take rather literally (hence my "Big Potion" theory which tears apart the stars not as a side effect but as an ingredient, and fails if quirrel interacts with its creation.)

It's a prophecy: information about the future. Maybe it's simply saying that either one could win, but there's no possible future where both exist (except for a remnant). Any "why" is a just-so story for human consumption; the raw prophecied fact is simply that fork in the road.

I really like the idea of "the very stars in heaven" referring to the Black family for several reasons. For one, Sirius has been alluded to several times, but has not shown up yet. "He is coming" and "He is here" don't really seem like they could apply to Harry or Quirrell or anyone else we've actually seen at Hogwarts so far. The question of what happened to Sirius and Pettigrew in this reality is one of several dangling plot threads I expect the author to wrap up before ending the story, and Eliezer doesn't have many chapters left in which to do it. It seems likely this happens at the same time he answers what really happened in Godric's Hollow on October 31, 1981; and perhaps leads to Harry's final break with Quirrell. There are a couple of other dangling plot threads that could be wrapped up here too: why did the Remembrall light up, and what about Bellatrix?

Secondly, although Harry's clearly interested in the source of magic and the nature of reality, the story becomes too much of a Monty Haul if he really does achieve star-destroying omnipotence. Stories about omnipotent beings just aren't very much fun (insert citations to several hundred Marvel Comics storylines of the last 30 years) and I think Eliezer is just too good an author to fall prey to that.

On the other hand the story has huge amounts of interest and foreshadowing around matters of time: ComedTea where the future causes the past, time turners, prophecies, timeless quantum mechanics, timeless decision theory (used repeatedly by Harry but not identified as such by name) and I've probably forgotten one or two. I expect Harry to at least try something funny involving time to save Hermione. And if it works I expect we're going to realize we should have seen it coming. However I will be very disappointed if it's nothing more than a deus ex machina resurrection like Superman II.

I took that part of the first prophecy as being about death and transhumanism (or some related idea). I'm not sure exactly how that maps onto Harry and Voldemort without relying on metaphors, though.

"Ward" almost certainly refers to the spells McGonagall cast to protect herself and Harry from public view.

Ack, several people complained about this. I've edited Ch. 93 to make it clearer (update should propagate shortly). The ward is Prof. McGonagall's vision-blurrer.

Yes, I flagged this too. I also considered the possibility that it's a typo, and should be "word", in which case it refers to "NO" or "forever". Spell checkers wouldn't catch it, and I know in my own writing I'm more likely to substitute a wrong word that I've used recently.

I feel the complete opposite. I want to read the serial story of "Ender Wiggin goes to Hogwarts" and his repeated elaborate schemes of awesomeness. I'm disappointed that it looks like this fic could end soon.

I guess different readers see things very differently, because I thought that McGonagall was a total badass in this chapter.

When someone makes a major mistake, based on an accumulation of errors from years of acting on a distorted version of their values, it takes a high-level rationalist and an impressive level of control and insight to be able to acknowledge their mistake, clearly see the values that were distorted, and set a new course that repudiates their old ways and appropriately takes their values into account. To be able to do that within a few hours, publicly, when they learned of their mistake through a vicious, personal, inappropriate chewing-out, seems like it might require one of those rumored double rationalists.

Or, if you must view it as a Harry vs. McGonagall conflict, McGonagall kicks his ass. In precisely the way that he needed to have his ass kicked.

Minerva McGonagall, having submissively accepted her character assassination at the hands of Harry Potter, now submits herself for public humiliation and complete self-abnegation

I don't see it like that at all -- I saw McGonagall:

1. Trying bravely to take blame away from Harry because, in her words, if she didn't, he would have no one to say those horrible things to, and

2. Bravely taking a public stand for her principles, trying to turn over a new leaf (or as she put it, "trying to do better")

At least, those are pretty clearly how she sees herself in those situations, not as submitting to Harry.

(I interpret the discussion about House points as simply meaning she 1. doesn't care about the points to anybody but the Weasley twins, and 2. is trying to be more inclusive and trusting of her students.)

It's funny that you see McGonagall's changing her mind as a flaw, not a strength.

I do think it's a bit odd that he holds criticism of the work at this point to be categorically unfair, since he seems perfectly happy to accept praise.

This isn't accurate. He says that: if, in the event that your criticism is untrue, he is still unable to defend himself; then it is unfair to make that criticism.

I don't think the chapter was supposed to be a slam-dunk answer. I thought it was supposed to be the beginning of an example (implied to be an extended process of character development) showing how reading an incomplete story can mislead you on specific points. I'm somewhat torn about this, because if everything the author writes leads you to one conclusion, he doesn't get to complain when you believe it. This holds true even if the work is already finished, because he doesn't get to make people finish reading. But I do tentatively expect later chapters to change the current anti-feminist message.

Quite possibly Eliezer did miss something. For example, female billionaire J.K. Rowling said, "Hermione is a caricature of what I was when I was 11". Eliezer used her characters and world to (correctly) argue for his philosophy and against hers. He has frequently snarked at her. He made some readers ask why he was making her caricature sillier in the S.P.H.E.W. arc, and so inferior to his own altered stand-in. I don't know if he's thought these events through. Nor do I know what it would mean to miss this, as an author.

At the same time, I think I completely disagree about the treatment of McGonagall in this chapter. Harry is the one giving a factually incorrect apology. And I do think she'll show more competence after this, subject to the constraint of being in a story where children save/end the world. (TV Tropes link removed for your protection.)

EY seems to believe that Chapter 93 is going to be some kind of slam-dunk answer to critics

My thoughts exactly. When I read the chapter, I really didn't see why EY was so damn proud about it in that regard.

I do think it's a bit odd that he holds criticism of the work at this point to be categorically unfair, since he seems perfectly happy to accept praise.

In an early author's note that has since been removed (the one that pbasvezrq Dhveeryy vf gur ningne bs Ibyqrzbeg), EY mentioned having to be meak about accepting praise prior to revealing that there is a certain spell on the Pioneer Plaque, which seems somewhat similar to (if weaker than) what he said in the rant, about the criticism not being wholely warranted until people see where the story winds up. At the same time, he opened the rant by stating that if people overwhelmingly missed the point, it reflects on his skill as an author. (Also from the redacted author's notes are counterpoints to this, where he shows exasperation that people fail at understanding things like "No, I do not, in fact, advocate what the villain does".)

I believe it was stated that those notes were redacted because it was pointed out to him that readers like to self-handycap their analysis of the story for sake of suspense (aka why there are still loads of people convinced Quirrell != Voldemort), or restrict their understanding to that of the viewpoint character, etc. With this in mind, he's kinda had to deal with it from all sides: praise/criticism/speculation/etc are all littered with people missing something crutial, and he seems to have given up on pointing this out at some point in the middle of the fic, at least until the shitstorm that spawned around these last few chapters.

Nitpick: Harry's dad's name is Michael, not James (James is his biological father).

But that requires more than 3 things to happen.

I think MoR!Voldemort is probably better-intentioned than canon!Voldemort (not that that would be hard; the latter is a cardboard-cutout evil-for-its-own-sake villain) but I don't think well-intentioned people who want to make the world a paradise act like MoR!Voldemort seems to have acted. (Unless, perhaps, that were truly the only way to bring about the good outcome, but really, how credible is that?)

Assuming Quirrell is Voldemort, this is badly at odds with what appear to be his constant attempts to encourage greater cynicism in Harry, to the point of taking away the people who serve as his anchors to the rest of humanity.

Even forgetting his attempts to shape Harry into a copy of his pessimistic self, his behaviour over the course of the story simply does not match that of a person who believes that paradise is possible.

The fact that he wants her to seal the room suggests [...] the body is gone

At the end of chapter 91, McGonagall looks into the room and sees (something that looks sufficiently like) Hermione's body. So whatever's meant to have happened by that point, it isn't that Harry has just taken it away without any measures to make it look as if he hasn't.

One interpretation would be [...]

Another, which I find more plausible, is that Eliezer was just making a joke, the whole point of which is that he isn't revealing anything.

(I don't think it's completely impossible that he did mean something by it, but I wouldn't give that more than 5% probability.)

I'm going to go out on a limb and assume laughter is the appropriate reaction. It's a joke.

... Unicorn blood is known to be useful in life extension.

Alternatively, Harry sadly fails at resurrection and memorializes her in the wildly successful edutainment cartoon My Little Pony: Rationality is Magic.

Just a small note: If you plan to be reusing your "type 3"-style numberings regarding types of foreshadowing, I suggest that you not only include a link to your old comment, but also edit the old comment to make it have clear "type 1: " "type 2: " "type 3: " headings at the relevant paragraphs in question, because I barely had the patience to read through that whole thing too -- it'd be much better if I knew where in the comment to look at.

On reflection, I've shifted my probability estimates around, so here's the short version of my comment.

And forgive me, but I hate rot13, so please don't read this comment if you haven't read the original novels and don't want to be spoiled for them.

I am certain - the human sort of certainty, where you can still change your mind - that the euthanasia metaphor from Book 6 will be recapitulated in some way in HPMOR. I am strongly confident that Dumbledore is suffering from plain old age-related cognitive decline and that it won't be dealt with metaphorically. I'm expecting Grindelwald to show up in a villain's cape at some point. I have a clue, not crushing evidence, but telling, that Dumbledore will be involved in his return. I think these things fit together neatly in any case - he wants assistance, and someone wants to volunteer. I don't have a better candidate at present. We'll see.

BTW, the post says that spoilers from the original canon don't need to be in rot13.

Of course, the attacker could also have chosen to kill Draco slowly in order for the ward circumventions to go unnoticed...

I wouldn't infer from this that the culprit was necessarily different, since after all in the case of the attack on Draco, the intent was to frame Hermione, and thus the methods used should not have involved anything Hermione herself was not capable of.

Regard Phoenix-travel, in STPE it is explicitly mentioned that the wards of Azkaban allow it as one of a few fast ways in, but also that there is no fast way out. Makes sense in respect to the priors of phoenix-companions: usually good, usually heroic, but not immune to coercion.

The points you noticed confused me as well. My (very strong) gut reaction was that obviously Dumbledore is behind it all - he is the one with most control about the wards, and he is the one who gives both the readers and the participants of the meeting the information tha the wards point to the Defense professor as culprit. Also, the line about the heir triggered a mental alarm.

As I said, this was a gut reaction, and it has been quite some time since I read the rest of the story - this is just based on chapters 90 to 94, and the general impression I got from the story so far that this Dumbledore is definitely very different from canon Dumbledore.

1. in-cannon? some do suspect him. however, there MIGHT be something in the curse on the profession. Either way, whoever IS behind the attack has got to be laughing at their brilliance.
2. :shrugs:

3. dumbledore walks through other people's wards like they're water. Quirrel pretends that simply sneezing is enough for him to dispell an incomming hex at one point. hacking into the hogwarts wards might be possible if one of these were to take their time and nobody was upgrading the wards.

4. MoR Azkaban prohibits pheonix-travel OUT, just not in. I think that anti-phoenix wards are probably one of the more difficult ones to cast, and not all wizards think that way even in MoR. but any dark wizard that thinks to have them cast can probably get them cast.

5. If the culprit is trying to cut harry off of his support structure, then [neville leaves hogwarts] looks much the same as [neville gets killed] from the culprit's perspective.

I hadn't caught 4, but it's a very good point.

5 - If Harry's enemy aims to isolate him, then Neville is no longer a target if he isn't Harry's companion anymore. It does seem odd that Neville is the only student whose safety people are worrying about, though.

Regarding 1), Dumbledore says he sent instruments back in time to examine the fight. Presumably he verified the troll was not Quirrel. (Even though the instruments may have been tricked, he might not believe it likely.)

They didn't single out Quirrell.

The wards of Hogwarts record that no foreign creature has entered, and that it was the Defense Professor who killed Hermione Granger.

"We're meant to conclude that the enemy has control of what the wards tell us. But that's actually something the enemy can only do with difficulty, or under special conditions; they're trying to create a false appearance of omnipotence."

.....

The old witch's eyebrows rose. "How did he identify you to the Hogwarts wards, then?"

A slight smile. "The Headmaster drew a circle, and told Hogwarts that he who stood within was the Defense Professor.

At first I thought he had a house-elf there, or his original body in some form (though snakes have no legs). Now I figure at least one of the N Defense Professors was a shrunken troll. (I just checked, and Lethifolds don't have legs either.)

Because Quirrell's going to claim he's been framed.

I can't wait to see Hermione resurrected as the first p-zombie.

How would we ever find out she was a Philosophical Zombie?

Read a chapter explicitly labeled as Hermione's POV, and have the chapter be blank?

Everyone is aware of Eliezer's P-Zombie Apocalypse film script, right? http://lesswrong.com/lw/pn/zombies_the_movie/

I tend to doubt that. It sounds to me like the author (Yudkowsky) is simply going to heroic efforts to rule out all possible lines of attack that readers are coming up with here so he can instead take the story where he wants it go.

Magic in the canon HPVerse is ridiculously powerful and illogical. Almost every spell is at least a plot device if not an outright deus ex machina. Thus Yudkowsky has to go to equally ridiculous lengths to prevent Harry from Munchkining his way out of every situation, this one included. The lengths to which he is going here suggest to me that the author really, really wants Hermione to stay dead, not that Dumbledore is lying. (FYI, I don't find this Dumbledore that different from canon. I just think he's more nuanced because Harry is a lot wiser and smarter in this version, and thus interacts with Dumbledore differently. The only adult who feels out of canon character to me is Snape.)

Point your thoughts to how Harry's going to get the body back and revive her. Not if, how. (Eliezer believes in cryonics.)

Doesn't seem all that silly to me.

But if it is silly, then Harry just found out Dumbledore is humoring him.