Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, February 2015, chapter 108

Eliezer and I are now part of the literary canon.

At least, we're both taught in the English department at Princeton. Anne Jamison's course, "Fanfiction: Transformative works from Shakespeare to Sherlock", will cover Eliezer's Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality on March 2, and one of my short stories, "The Magician and the Detective", on March 4.

Ch. 79 After the aurors come get Hermione for the attempted murder of Draco, Harry is in the Headmaster's office:

Severus seemed as passionless as ever, sitting in a small cushioned chair beside the Headmaster's desk. The old wizard stood terrible and upright by the still-burning fireplace, robed in black like a starless night, radiating power and dismay. All her own thoughts were of utter confusion and horror. Harry Potter sat on a wooden stool with his fingers gripping the seat, and his eyes were fury and freezing ice.

After a lengthy discussion of the case, Harry leaves:

Even as Harry Potter left the room for his own investigations...

But there is no reason to believe he left Hogwarts. Dumbledore then retrieves the Weasley twins from Divination class and gets their map:

The old wizard smoothed the map, bent over it, and whispered, "Find Tom Riddle."

I'd previously assumed that no information came of this, because the Defense Professor was being detained at the DMLE at the time, but Dumbledore almost certainly saw the map report Harry as Tom Riddle.

And then one year Baba Yaga agreed to teach Battle Magic at Hogwarts, under an old and respected truce." Professor Quirrell looked... angry, a look such as Harry had rarely seen on him. "But she was not trusted, and so there was invoked a curse.

And although Perenelle was new-come into the beauty of her youth, her heart was already blacker than Baba Yaga's own -"

Ah, yes, Perenelle, the beautiful and covetous. Perenelle seduced the Dark Lady over the months, with gentle touches and flirtations and the shy pretense of innocence. The Dark Lady's heart was captured, and they became lovers. And then one night Perenelle whispered how she had heard of Baba Yaga's shape-changing power and how this thought had enflamed her desires; thus Perenelle swayed Baba Yaga to come to her with the Stone in hand, to assume many guises in a single night, for their pleasures. Among other forms Perenelle bid Baba Yaga take the form of a man; and they lay together in the fashion of a man and a woman.

Does anyone else think this reads like Quirrel has an awful lot of emotional connection to and personal memories about this story, almost as if it were Baba Yaga speaking about herself in the 3rd person? Could Riddle or Quirrel have come across a Baba Yaga horcrux? The resurrection stone, perhaps? Earlier than that? Why would Perenelle share these secrets? How would anyone know these details if Baba Yaga was dead and Perenelle had not shared them? No one else would have been present for those private moments.

And what are the odds that a Dark Lady like Baba Yaga did not have a horcrux?

In Ch. 70 Quirrel makes a point during the S.P.H.E.W. confrontation with the headmaster that Dark Ladies are also underrepresented, and that few could name one except Baba Yaga. Self-reference?

She would probably need to be faking the map labelling her (and Harry?) as Tom Riddle, but a sorceress as powerful as Baba Yaga combined with the secrets of Salazar, who created the Hogwarts security system in the first place, could probably accomplish that.

Notice what Quirrel does and doesn't say in parseltongue:

"None of it iss known to me to be falsse," said Professor Quirrell. "Telling a tale implies filling in certain gaps; I was not present to observe when Perenelle seduced Baba Yaga. The bassicss sshould be mosstly correct, I think."

"There's something that would make you happier than that," Harry said, his voice breaking again. "There has to be."

Muggle research in the 2010s has revealed much about what actually makes people happy, and how often people are deceived. The best way to find out is with one of those mood-tracking cell phone apps, which eliminate the biases of memory. Quirrell doesn't have that, but as an approximation, I searched the PDF for the word "smile", which appears 310 times in chapters 1-106, and the word "enjoy", which appears 32 times. What did I find?

“Do you know,” the Defense Professor said in soft reflective tones, “there are those who have tried to soften my darker moods, and those who have indeed participated in brightening my day, but you are the first person ever to succeed in doing it deliberately?”

Interacting with Harry makes Quirrell happy. Moreso than killing idiots. Moreso than teaching Battle Magic. Killing him would be a grave mistake.

... Huh.

The power that the Dark Lord knows not... might end up being love after all.

Quirrel says:

the fact is that Miss Greengrass was not supposed to arrive in that corridor for several hours. I am not sure why her party arrived in Mr. Malfoy's company, and had Mr. Nott arrived seemingly alone, events would have played out less farcically.

That seems very important, so why didn't he ask any of them why they arrived early? It looks like a blatant mistake on his part.

Hmm. My probability that Hermione will be recreated as an alicorn princess is now over 75%:

Indeed, now that you have pointed it out, I have just now thought of some nice things I can do this very day, to further my agenda.

It seems unlikely that Voldemort thinks that humans are the optimal creatures to be (that's flowing with the status quo, which he does not do). It might be best to be, say, both a Wizard and a Troll, or a Wizard and a Dragon, or a Wizard and some new optimized thing. But why try this out on himself first, when it could go horribly wrong, when he could try it out on Hermione?

I wonder if the final room is not visible on the Marauder's Map because it's warded or because the room you enter is determined by whether/how the potion is flawed.

As a veteran Potion's professor, Snape would be able to predict very accurately the way a first year would screw up such a fiddly task. Screw it up in the right way, see an innocuous final room with a little "Well done, don't spoil it!" from the Headmaster. Execute it perfectly and trigger... what exactly?

QQ has Harry's wand, so how is Harry going to get out of this mess? One of my theories is wandlessmagic. The existence of wandless magic at all is evidence the wand isn't strictly needed.

This makes sense if you buy that a wizard is pulling levers on the source of magic rather than actually enacting the spell

From Chapter 25

If magic had been like that, a big complex adaptation with lots of necessary genes, then a wizard mating with a Muggle would have resulted in a child with only half those parts and half the machine wouldn't do much. And so there would have been no Muggleborns, ever. Even if all the pieces had individually gotten into the Muggle gene pool, they'd never reassemble all in one place to form a wizard.

...

So however your genes made you a wizard, it wasn't by containing the blueprints for complicated machinery. That was the other reason Harry had guessed the Mendelian pattern would be there. If magical genes weren't complicated, why would there be more than one?

And yet magic itself seemed pretty complicated. A door-locking spell would prevent the door from opening and prevent you from Transfiguring the hinges and resist Finite Incantatem and Alohomora. Many elements all pointing in the same direction: you could call that goal-orientation, or in simpler language, purposefulness.

There were only two known causes of purposeful complexity. Natural selection, which produced things like butterflies. And intelligent engineering, which produced things like cars.

Magic didn't seem like something that had self-replicated into existence. Spells were purposefully complicated, but not, like a butterfly, complicated for the purpose of making copies of themselves. Spells were complicated for the purpose of serving their user, like a car.

Some intelligent engineer, then, had created the Source of Magic, and told it to pay attention to a particular DNA marker.

...

The line of reasoning continued: Atlantis had been an isolated civilization that had somehow brought into being the Source of Magic, and told it to serve only people with the Atlantean genetic marker, the blood of Atlantis.

And by similar logic: The words a wizard spoke, the wand movements, those weren't complicated enough of themselves to build up the spell effects from scratch - not the way that the three billion base pairs of human DNA actually were complicated enough to build a human body from scratch, not the way that computer programs took up thousands of bytes of data.

So the words and wand movements were just triggers, levers pulled on some hidden and more complex machine. Buttons, not blueprints.

Since wandless magic exists, we know that you can push those buttons without a wand. You can make the source of magic do what you want without a wand. Harry has been told that wandless magic is harder or that it requires more power, or various other excuses for it not to be taught until later. But, I suspect that is just a conceptual limitation, that you don't actually need the power to do it. My evidence for this is the accidental magic that children use when stressed. Under stress children can perform magics that seem extremely powerful (well over the power level of kids their age) and they can do it without wands.

from chapter 13

Now Professor Sprout was giving Harry a sceptical look. "I suppose this boy hit himself with two pies, then." "He didn't use his wand!" blurted one of the young Hufflepuffs. "I don't know how he did it either, he just snapped his fingers and there was pie!" ... "Prior Incantato," said Sprout. She frowned. "That's odd, your wand doesn't seem to have been used at all." Harry shrugged. "It hasn't, actually, I only got my wand and schoolbooks a few days ago." Sprout nodded. "Then we have a clear case of accidental magic from a boy who felt threatened. And the rules plainly state that you are not to be held responsible.

Now in this case, we know that it wasn't accidental magic. But Sprout, a Hogwarts professor and presumably an expert in dealing with wizard children thinks this is perfectly plausible. She thinks Harry could create, not just transfigure, but create two pies ex nihilo and then levitate them at high speeds towards a bully. (brief aside consider the amount of energy in two pies)

in chapter78

Mr. and Mrs. Davis were shaking as they stood up from the comfortable chairs of the faculty Quidditch box; they couldn't quite clutch each other while walking, but they held hands tightly, pretending hard to be invisible. If they'd been children young enough for accidental magic they probably would've spontaneously Disillusioned themselves.

We've been told elsewhere that disillusioning is very high powered magic. After the dementor incident, QQ notes, that Snape is probably powerful enough to disillusion himself. From context, this is notable and its assumed that many adult wizards are not able to do it. But the above quote from 78 says that children CAN do this if they have the right frame of mind.

"Accidental" magic gives children a way to press the buttons on the source of magic without wands, incantations or movements, and it gives them a way to press the buttons for spells that are otherwise far above their power level. If Harry promotes this problem / subject to his attention, then he may discover a way to deliberately use "accidental" magic. And once he had that, he would have a vast toolkit at his disposal.

Hmm... some thoughts occur to me:

Firstly, he hasn't used any of the muggle equipment Fred and George got him yet has he? But Quirrell's got his pouch.

Secondly, this may not come as a surprise but he is likely to succeed since "HE IS HERE. THE ONE WHO WILL DESTROY THE VERY STARS IN HEAVEN" this could refer to Quirell, true, but I far expect it to refer to HJPEV due to the timing. Also note that Quirell says something about prophecies in ch. 108, but I can't find the quote.

Third: obligatory wacky theory that his father's rock is the Stone of Permanency. Stones == rocks, and he was given it by Dumbledore after all. And Harry's magic interferes with Quirrell's so it might shield the magic trace.

Fourthly: this is my first post on LessWrong, nice to meetcha!

Old jokes from chapter 79:

"You are making highly questionable assumptions," the Defense Professor said with an edged voice. "What makes you think I did not steal his body outright using incredibly Dark magic?"

And also

"I suggest," the Auror said, "that you take this seriously, Mr. Whoever-You-Are."

He's Mr. You-Know-Who.

I wanted it to be an anagram of my name, but that would only have worked if I'd conveniently been given the middle name of 'Marvolo', and then it would have been a stretch. Our actual middle name is Morfin, if you're curious.

Morfin is a Riddle family name, so we can probably rule out Eliezer choosing it for its anagrams. Nevertheless, might as well have some fun:

Tom Morfin Riddle

• Mini from toddler
• Firm doom tendril
• Mind meld for riot
• Mind for time lord
• Dirt mod of Merlin
• MOR died from lint
• Mr. Flirted in Doom

What else?

... Hm.

This isn't the chain of logic I followed - for the sake of authenticity I'll put that at the end, but -

Isn't a little... strange, that artifacts designed and destined to defeat death transfer primarily by death?

I mean, even aside from the "kill the previous owner and take their stuff" method, the other option - inheriting it - is also heavily tied to death, as powerful artifacts like these are unlikely to be permanently given away until the original owner has no further use of it.

Backing away from plot for a minute - if you don't expect to manage to destroy death yourself, you should really program your powerful artifacts to seek out the most effective owners, anyway. Inheritance is very unreliable, and murder is entirely counterproductive - both would be backup selectors to anyone designing such a thing. So what's the primary determinant?

I think we've seen it. The prophecy stone, that responded to Harry's oath to end death, engraved with the symbol of the Deathly Hallows, and completely unmentioned since - if I were going to design such a thing, gifting the Hallows to someone who had sworn an honest oath against death would be a good start, particularly if I could somehow tie it into True Patronus capability (as the silvery light suggests.)

If that's the case, then Harry has a stronger claim on the Hallows than their current physical possessors. Most importantly, this includes the Resurrection Stone. Further, magic seems to register HJPEV as "Tom Riddle" - at any rate, the ancient Hogwarts wards do. So unless magic has multiple names for Harry Potter, then HJPEV may really count as the same person as Voldemort - in which case he would have access to his Horcrux network. Voldemort may even have anticipated this - but since literally nobody knows both the existence and the significance of that glowing stone, he can't anticipate losing control over the Stone.

So, predictions:

Harry is the Master of Death, in the sense of being the primary magical owner of all three Hallows - 75%.

HJPEV counts as Tom Riddle, to the point that on death, the Horcrux network will attempt to update based on him. - 60%.

Links go to PredictionBook pages.

(My actual chain of logic started from noticing that I was confused about the Death prophecy - since I didn't really see how the Hallows would play much of a part in the climax of the story - which lead to the realization that the prophecy might reassign ownership of the Hallows.)

So by the way, has anyone notice that Eliezer did something even more impossible? Not only was Harry saved from certain death at the hands of a hoard of Yaoi fangirls by Voldemort and it wasn't crack, but Voldemort was the one who responsible for the whole thing and it still isn't crack.

he was an annoyance from my year in Slytherin

How odd. You think the Order would've mentioned that Riddle and Monroe were in the same year at school.

Voldemort making random rocks into horcruxs? One day someone steps on the wrong rock and turns into LORD VOLDEMORT! I hate it when that happens.

I must say, the thought of Voldie kicking himself (well, wanting to, but he couldn't because no legs) while spending nine years as a disembodied spirit in the Voyager Plaque was extremely amusing.

I also loved the fact that his Voldemort persona was designed to be a stupid Dark Lord that would last weeks at most and ended up being way too strong for Magical Britain.

So, why did Quirrell offer Hermione to leave before killing her?

META: I'd like to suggest having a separate thread for each publication. These attract far more interest than any other threads, and after the first 24 hours the top comments are set and there's little new discussion.

There aren't very many threads posted in discussion these days, so it's not like there is other good content that will be crowded out by one new thread every 1-3 days.

Quirrel has not confiscated Harry's ring with his father rock, which has been transfigured by Harry, in the setting. We've seen Quirrel's magic fluctuate out of control when touching Harry's, both in Azkaban and in his telling of the night at Godric's Hollow. We've seen Quirrel take care in the Azkaban escape to not even let Harry touch something that Quirrel has transfigured.

It is possible, if Harry simply touches Quirrel with the gem on his ring that Quirrel will be forced to once again throw away his wand and transform into a snake. It would affect Harry too, but Harry seemed less affected than Quirrel in Azkaban for whatever reason (because magic is stronger around Quirrel?)

Even if this avenue would destroy Harry, self-sacrifice is among my contenders for a "power the Dark Lord knows not".

There is also the "other" transfiguration, the one that's not the ring. Anyone have guesses as to what this is?

I just realizied that the trap for voldie might well be Baba Yaga's hairbrush.

It follows from the curse on the defense position.

Because I just realized that I think it was an accident, and happened because Voldemort moved the goblet of fire out of Baba Yaga's reach.

Theory: Voldemort is wrong about the Baba Yaga. She faked her death and ran off with her new wife. This part I am quite confident about. 70% probability? Most of the remainder is that her death was accidental and the reason Perenelle has spent centuries accumulating lore is that she wants her back. Yes, Im assigning under 10% likelyhood to the chance that Voldemort read this story right.

Anyway, given "Baba Yaga is not dead". A thought occurred to me. "Did they remember to terminate her employment? Could they in fact even do so without being whammied by the goblet?" The answers to which is obviously "No." Unfortunately worded contract is unfortunate, Baba Yaga has magical tenure despite slacking on her job for going on 6 centuries.

This was all well and good as long as the goblet was somewhere Baba could get at it. - Telling the goblet to lay of a new teacher every couple of decades isn't much of an imposition. But then Voldemort stole the darn thing! and it has been striking down everyone that looked to move from the status of "Temp" to actually taking over her job. Because the job is hers.

.. This also implies she is still keyed into the wards. And still unable to harm any student of hogwarts. If that holds for graduates too, it neatly explains why she never directly opposes most dark lords - they are hogwarts graduates, and would invoke the contract if she fought them.

I decided to collect the stuff about these recent updates that confuse me, and when added together two were in the shape of a theory!

"Dumbledore was quite correct," Professor Quirrell said, shaking his head as though in wonderment. "He was also an utter fool to leave the Hogwarts Map in the possession of those two idiots. I had an unpleasant shock after I recovered the Map; it showed my name and yours correctly! The Weasley idiots had thought it a mere malfunction, especially after you received your Cloak and your Time-Turner. If Dumbledore had kept the Map himself - if the Weasleys had ever spoken of it to Dumbledore - but they did not, thankfully."

Even Quirrell is confused! Wow!

So... Dumbledore did know all along, just like cannon, and sent the map to the twins for plausible deniability. He can get away with that because he doesn't mind when people think him a fool. And he really needs Querrellmort to think of him as ignorant so he will play the role perfectly... well Voldemort said he could play chess.

In the last thread roystgnr wrote

Harry figures out Quirrell's identity almost immediately after Snape casts some sort of "Dispel Magical Confusion", yet the only character who would have the knowledge and incentive to magically confuse Harry about this is Quirrell himself, who seems to be incapable of directly using magic on Harry or Harry's magic.

That is totally something I wouldn't have figured out on my own. Well, the first part. I had just put that up to Harry not wanting to see ill of his friend, but magical obfuscation makes sense too. Oh, but someone else had the knowledge if the first theory is right. Someone who used Legilimancy on Harry in chapter 19 and that's just when Harry found out about it!

So far the update schedule seems to follow the Fibonacci sequence.

Is Quirrel aware of all the people whom he can possess via his True Horcruxes? Can he possess any one of them at will, without the original body dying?

This may explain the fact that he occasionally leaves his host body. We thought it was to inhabit his other horcruxes, particularly the Voyager one, but it may be to possess other people.

ETA: apparently the answer is yes:

Professor Quirrell smiled slightly. "I had many years earlier considered making [the Resurrection Stone] a horcrux, but decided against it at the time, since I realized that the ring had magic of unknown nature... ah, such ironies does life play upon us. But I digress. You, boy, you brought that about, you freed my spirit to fly where it pleases and seduce the most opportune victim, by being too casual with your secrets."

That was absolutely awesome. This story is really very well written. So much exposition, and it just all made perfect sense. And it was even somehow brought back far more in line with the original novel than I thought possible.

And I guess the '"Power the dark lord knows not" really is love, which is kinda awesome.

It's still kind of obvious how to defeat Voldemort though. Simply permanently disable him without killing him. Some magical prison, or a coma, or a permanent transfiguration into a stone. This is in fact so obvious that Voldemort himself should realize it as well. Maybe he just figures he is so far above Harry's power level that he has nothing to fear. Or he has some defenses against even this.

Another way to get rid of him: Destroy all his horcruxes on earth, then kill him. He'll live on on pioneer, but that's fine. You can pick him up again in 10000 years when humanity has progressed far beyond him, and can probably even cure him. Heck that'd even be a nice ending. A epilogue set 10,000 years from now, with Harry recovering the Pioneer 11 and curing Voldemort.

The sequel could then be a Harry / Voldemort slashfic where Harry and a redeemed Voldemort rule the galaxy as father and son.

But alas, I fear that Professor Riddle would not have found lasting happiness in Hogwarts."

"Why not? "

"Because I still would've been surrounded by idiots, and I wouldn't have been able to kill them," Professor Quirrell said mildly.

The solution seems obvious (albeit hard and dangerous): make the students smarter so they are no longer idiots.

In Ch. 37, Quirrell explains how he found Harry:

"and no blood purist is likely to think of consulting a phone book"

Conditioned on Lord Voldmort being a blood purist, this is evidence for Quirrell not being Voldemort (probably the intended interpretation). In fact, this was evidence for Lord Voldemort not being a blood purist.

What the hell? Making horcruxes for your friends doesn't actually test the invention. You also need to kill your friends and hope that the invention works. That doesn't sound so nice, does it? And we don't have a good explanation why Riddle missed this idea anymore.

I just read up to the point in chapter 108 where Voldemort refuses to answer the question about the immortality spell (and haven't read the comments here yet.) It occurred to me immediately that since this is question about the past -- assuming Voldemort has already cast the spell -- that he has broken his agreement, which means that Harry can now start executing plans to overcome him, and say "No" without lying when Voldemort asks if he has betrayed him.

When the Dumbledore sees himself on the Map in chapter 79, it initials his middle names:

When he was alone in the room, the old wizard looked down at the map, which had now written upon itself a fine line drawing of the Gryffindor dorms in which they stood, the small handwritten Albus P.W.B. Dumbledore the only name left therein.

But when it shows the Tom Riddles, it doesn't include the middle initial M.

This is probably just an oversight.

But my true epiphany came on a certain day when David Monroe was trying to get an entry permit for an Asian instructor in combat tactics, and a Ministry clerk denied it, smiling smugly.

Is this the same Asian combat instructor mentioned earlier, I wonder?

[META]

Is anyone in favor of going back to the old system of having one discussion thread per HPMOR chapter instead of the current system based on number of comments?

[pollid:825]

For the next few centuries the Goblet of Fire was used to oversee pointless inter-school tournaments, and then it resided in a disused chamber at Beauxbatons, until I finally stole it."

What did he do with it once he stole it?

So, if this were Pact, I would expect that Dumbledore has one of Voldemort's Horcruxes, and he can be possessed by Voldemort at will. Dumbledore would show up to save the day, and then the brief uptick in probability of success would be followed by a precipitous drop.

I am fairly confident this will not happen, but I'm noticing that most of my confidence seems to come from arguments that I am not confident in once I give them explicit form. For example, that seems too hard an antagonist for Harry, and he needs to have some chance of success, and EY seems against giving the protagonist the plot armor* that Wildbow gives them. But when I observe that this is an outside view argument that's reference class specific, HPMoR seems much closer to Worm or Pact than to other works of fiction, which says I should expect it to follow the same convention. Thoughts?

* Typically, Wildbow protagonists look like they're taking two steps back for every one step forward, but I see it more as "trading away parts of themselves / resources for success, and eventually getting to the end goal / end of the story." If you predict that they will eventually win but it will be the most Pyrrhic victory possible (over the long haul), I think you have a good shot at getting all the details right.

One has to wonder about the "masters" of the Horcruxes Are the two Tom Riddles masters of their individual Horcruxes, or are they joint masters to both? In HPMOR, time turners are locked to a single individual. Then can Voldemort use Harry's time turner? My guess will be "no" for literary reasons.

Voldemort mastered the resurrection stone by defeating death. For Harry to master it, he would have to defeat death, either through Patronus or by dying and getting resurrected.

Has it been previously established that no lying can take place when using parseltongue or is Harry's belief in this based solely on his inability to lie to Quirrell?

Harry and Quirrell are about to enter the room containing the Mirror of Erised (desire), which shows the viewer's deepest desire. It contains the philosopher's stone, and (Ch. 104)

Her notes said that something dangerous might happen if the Stone stays inside the mirror too long.

So, what is Harry's deepest desire? There are several candidates, but I think a strong contender is a Quirrell who isn't evil. Transfiguration can only create things that already exist. It is plausible that being seen in the mirror, modified as it is by the magic of the Stone, counts as existence for this purpose. So, Harry's win condition is: transfigure Quirrell into redeemed Quirrell. Due to the destructive interaction of their magics, this would require disabling Quirrell and then getting someone else to do the transfiguration.

Nobody seems to be asking the obvious question, after Tom and Harry's conversation: what happened to the Dark Lord Dick?

Did he try to turn the Muggle population against wizardkind through enchanted books that weakened False Memory Charms and Obliviation? Did the secret mind-controlling government eventually kill him? Inquiring minds want to know!

Prediction on destroying the Horcux network: we know that the Horcruxes are all connected to Voldemort. If you could locate one (and we know they are now distributed so anyone can stumble across and be possessed by them), perhaps you could use that Horcruxes's connection to the network to destroy or incapacitate it, then kill Voldemort. Locating all possible nodes to physically destroy is heavily implied to be infeasible even with magic. I give this 60% confidence.

Prediction on next chapter: Voldemort kills Harry and succeeds. After all, Harry just told Voldemort about giving Horcruxes to your friends and testing your Horcrux network. I imagine Voldemort is curious as to whether or not Harry, as a Tom Riddle, will be absorbed by the network. I give this 40% confidence.

Outcomes: A. Only the part of Harry that Voldemort imprinted is absorbed by the network. This consciousness is either reborn as a purely young Tom Riddle, or reabsorbed by Voldemort completely upon his next death.

B. Harry himself is absorbed into the network. I'm not sure about all the implications of this. Obviously, he could attempt possessing someone, but this seems mostly against his moral code (unless he thought he could prevent more suffering by doing so.) Or he could potentially mess with the Horcux network internally.

C. Another magical explosion occurs--we're still not entirely certain what caused Voldemort's Horcrux spell to backfire in the first place.

D. Harry, in fact, dies. A possible, if unsatisfying literary ending.

More questions. I'll just gather them here, instead of making a new comment for each one.

1) Making horcruxes for your friends doesn't actually test the horcrux spell, you also have to kill your friends. So it makes more sense to test on a minion, which doesn't require you to be nice in the first place. Why didn't Quirrell think of that?

2) Why did Quirrell offer Hermione to leave before killing her? The plot against Malfoy wouldn't be served by her departure, only by her death.

3) If magical resonance can kill, why didn't it kill or otherwise affect baby Harry?

4) If Quirrell's problem is that he's bored and doesn't see the fun in anything, why didn't he solve that problem long ago by using mind magic on himself?

5) In Ch. 107, why not just call mind-controlled Snape and ask him to explain what's up with his room? Eliezer has said that wouldn't work because Snape is a perfect Occlumens, but Quirrell don't need to read Snape's mind, just threaten him and demand the truth.

6) Why kill Hermione to plot against Lucius? What's so difficult about killing Lucius to begin with?

Edited to add:

7) If Riddle wished for magical Britain to become more competent, why did he kill Yermy Wibble?

A thought occurs: how do we know the Stone is actually at the end of the gauntlet? Is there anything to keep Dumbledore from setting up the traps as a decoy to flush out Voldemort while the real stone is elsewhere (and presumably under proper security)?

An allusion to the Passover ceremony? Why???

So who was Alexander Chernyshov? Wikipedia says:

Aleksandr Alekseyevich Chernyshov (Russian: Александр Андреевич Чернышeв; 21 August 1882 – 28 April 1940) was a Russian electrical engineer. He graduated from Saint Petersburg Polytechnical Institute in 1907, and worked there until the end of his life. His research consisted of radio engineering and high-voltage techniques. He won the Lenin Prize in 1930.

This doesn't seem particularly relevant, and also he died while Tom Riddle was a young boy. But it's a common name (as Google tells me). Did anyone catch the reference?

After reading the chapter I am dumbstruck by similarities between Professor and Dr. Manhattan. There might be a trope for this kind of character somewhere..

In some years, when I had become bored with ruling Britain and moved on to other things, I would arrange with the other Tom Riddle that he should appear to vanquish me, and he would rule over the Britain he had saved.

This is precisely the plan that Quirrel originally planned for Harry, have him pretend to defeat LV and set him up to rule the country.

This chapter may sort out something which got on my nerves earlier in the story-- the long sequence where Quirrell is Harry's only friend. I'm not saying that Harry should have known Quirrell was Voldemort (and I still think it might have been more interesting if Quirrell had been seriously bad news, but not Voldemort), but it seems to me that Harry liked and trusted Quirrell more than he should have. (Sorry, no details-- I'm going by memory.)

Now I think that Harry's desperate desire for an intellectual equal (which to some extent translates as someone who agrees with Harry on important issues) is somewhat a result of him being a Quirrell imprint.

I'm not clear on what being a Quirrell imprint means-- he doesn't have Quirrell's memories. He does have Quirrell's intelligence, and part of his temperament. It's interesting that a kind upbringing can have such a large effect, but I'm not sure this makes sense-- why wouldn't more of Quirrell's misanthropy have carried over?

Also, is it as plausible that death is really bad in the HPMOR universe as it is in ours? It might be true, but is it obviously true? The rules are really different with magic, and minds are much more important than in a universe where it's plausible that there's nothing but matter/energy.

"I cannot count how many times I have thought of that night, rehearsing my mistake, thinking of wiser things I should have done," said Professor Quirrell. "I later decided that I should have thrown my wand from my hand and changed into my Animagus form...

Though Harry was careful not to touch Quirrell's snake form in Azkaban, this quote implies to me that Animagus forms might be more resistant to the Riddles Doom effect. This might apply to Harry as well, should he ever be in his Animagus form.

So I [...] devised a new ritual based on new principles. I kept that ritual burning in my mind for years, perfecting it in imagination, pondering its meaning and making fine adjustments, waiting for the intention to stabilise. At last I dared to invoke my ritual, an invented sacrificial ritual, based on a principle untested by all known magic. And I lived, and yet live." The Defense Professor spoke with quiet triumph, as though the act itself was so great that no words could ever do it justice. "I still use the word 'horcrux', but only from sentiment. It is a new thing entirely, the greatest of all my creations."

Rituals require sacrifice. Conceivably, Riddle sacrificed his ability to love, or to care about others.

Is Snape being mind-controlled or truly in league with Quirrel (or pretending to be)?

From Ch. 77, Quirrell confronts Snape in a discussion that touches on Snape's loyalties and the 3rd floor corridor. It ends with this:

The Potions Master looked like he was about to choke on his own fury. "What do you want? "

"Nothing, really," said the Defense Professor, continuing to gaze at the forest ceiling. "I was only curious. I suppose I shall just watch and see where your plotting goes, and meanwhile I will say nothing to the Headmaster - so long as you are willing to do me a favor now and then, of course." A dry smile crossed the face. "You are dismissed for now, Severus Snape. Though I wouldn't mind having another little chat soon, if you're willing to speak with me honestly of where your loyalties lie. And I do mean honestly, not the false faces you've shown today. You might find you have more allies than you thought. Take some time to think it over, my friend."

Snape in canon is one hell of an occlumens. When Sprout is being controlled by Quirrel, she is described as blank-eyed:

Ch. 104:

At that the Herbology Professor turned to face not-Susan, her expression vacant, a new set of plant tentacles rising in the air behind her.

Ch. 105:

A blank-eyed Professor Sprout had now risen from the ground and was pointing her own wand at Harry.

Snape seems normal: Ch. 105:

The Defense Professor stepped back, and began to move his left fingers in the air as though manipulating a puppet on strings.

Professor Snape pushed himself up from the ground by smooth motions, and stood once more before the corridor door.

Ch. 106:

After a single step into Dumbledore's forbidden chamber, Harry shrieked and jumped back and collided with Professor Snape, sending the two of them down in a heap.

Professor Snape picked himself up and resumed standing in front of the door. His head tracked to look at Harry. "I am guarding this door at the Headmaster's orders," said Professor Snape in his usual sardonic tones. "Be off with you at once, or I shall deduct House Points."

I haven't re-read the fic in a while so this might be a stupid question, but does QQ know about Partial Transfiguration? I can't recall him being present/conscious at any point Harry uses it. That would be a power the Dark Lord knows not, right?

If Harry judged that whatever Quirrel was planning was X-risk level dangerous, he could try wandlessly Transfiguring a few micrograms of antimatter, destroying both of them (along with a large chunk of Scotland) in the process.

Apologies if someone else has suggested this before. I'm not going to read enough comments to find out. But why doesn't Harry just say in Parseltongue, "If you let me conquer the world, you will be more happy, and have more fun." Harry can totally deliver with his transhumanist future by uplifting normal people so they aren't "idiots" that bore Voldemort, and giving him the kind of rivals he wants to fight with. Like, worst case he has to leave a planet or whatever of shitty conditions where Voldemort personally fucks people up, because that's the only thing that will satisfy him. But it's still worth it for the improved chance to get the rest of the universe.

So far, the important spells get their detail work done. How does the improved horcrux work?

AFAICT all Q's claims of its total novelty are in human speech. It's possible but not certain that his previous Parseltongued comments horcruxes puts a lower bound on how similar they are. It certainly means he's confident his ritual is not the one the legends are about, but given that it ended up suiting the stories better than the weak horcrux, it's quite possible he unknowingly reinvented the true forgotten original. (speculation: this would explain the possible-but-improbable appearance of a sixth-year able to outsmart and kill Baba Yaga)

We know it was expected to make him a disembodied possessor spirit but in fact required the victim to touch an anchor, until augmented with the resurrection stone. We know it requires a murder. We know the user is conscious while residing in the anchors. We also know that the legends it resembles say that it works by tearing the soul.

I was somewhat surprised that V actually lost his body and had no ongoing role in limiting the tenure of Defense Professors. More importantly, I'm somewhat surprised he had no hand in the Stanislav Petrov affair in this timeline.

Does he think he saved the day some time around August 1991?

Or, if he really has a Limitus Professorium curse, did he also cast one before he left to prevent anyone from starting a nuclear exchange? ("Some curses are easier to cast when they bind yourself and others alike; Slytherin's Parselmouth curse is an example of such.")

If these are all false, then he sounds like he failed to update after Muggle civilization got through the Cold War alive.

The Dark Lady's heart was captured, and they became lovers. And then one night (...) they lay together in the fashion of a >man and a woman. But Perenelle had been a virgin until that night.

I get what is meant, but if they had been lovers for some time then I would say that Perenelle was not a virgin in any meaningful sense of the word. Of course, from an old-fashioned point of view she might have been, but this sentence is not accompanied by a modifier expressing the change in values as the next one is.

I have a cunning plan:

What constraints are Harry working under?

The deadman switch hostage killer cannot have go off because they are timeturned, and the deaths of hundreds of students would surely cause a paradox by disrupting the match. Its possible that it sets a timer to go off after Harry jumps back in time, but then presuming that Harry knows exactly when he jumped back and Quirrel does not, Harry can then warn the teachers before the bomb goes off. At the end of the day, even if the hostages die, hundreds of lives are a small price to pay for stopping Voldemort.

If Quirrel dies, he will come back and torture Harry's parents. But presumably it will take Quirrel a little time to possess his new host. If the accessible Horocruxes are scattered throughout the world, then he will probably have to apperate back to the UK, which could take several jumps. Meanwhile, all Harry has to do is send his patronus to Dumbledoor, who can then Phoenix travel to Oxford, and should get there first, bringing Harry's parents back to the comparative safety of Hogwarts.

Quirrel cannot directly hurt Harry using magic, but he has a gun and the reflexes of a martial artist, plus he has the strength of an adult, so despite being ill he can probably overpower Harry if Harry managed to grab the gun.

Harry could transfigure a knife, but this wouldn't work, mostly because it would take some time, Voldemort would notice, and shoot him. So, a possible solution: transfigure a knife, but with the electrons swapped out for muons. Muons have higher mass, so the muon orbitals are far smaller than electron orbitals, so the material will be denser, and I think also stronger. Because of this, the blade can be made much thinner, and so easily concealed, perhaps to the extent of being invisible. The blade could be attached to Harry's wand, which could serve as a handle. It can penetrate Quirrel's shields, because his magic cannot interact with an object Harry has transfigured.

This still leaves the problem of fighting an immortal dark wizard with hundreds of Horocruxes. The next time Voldemort attacks, he will have got Bellatrix to cast shielding spells over him, which can stop any transfigured objects Harry throws at him. But by that time, Harry can have the order of the phoenix fighting at his side.

I imagine Volde attacking Hogwarts again and again, and everytime he is killed, possessing a new body and returning to the fight minutes later, while dead teachers and aurors stay dead (or do they, given the stone?) meanwhile, Harry desperately tries to think of a plan before the defenders are slowly worn down.