If Hermione takes down Azkaban and survives, and does so without Harry seeming to take control, that would be more amazing to read than I can possibly express.
Also it would be a nice touch of realism: no one good person solves all the problems.
But there are three hard literary problems here:
the author has probably got another Azkaban answer in mind, based on Harry,
the author would have to prepare the ground for Hermione grokking the “Death ain’t inevitable” approach to Dementors,
it would be tricky to write a realistic Harry who, even from Harry and the reader’s POV, was “protecting Hermione’s back while she saves the day” as opposed to “rescuing Hermione”. The rearguard samurai who buys the hero time is a fiction staple, but it’s not a default role for Harry.
[Edit: ] as wedrifid wisely points out below, Hermione has to have a good reason to believe she has to take the lead, since Harry is demonstrably better at the average Confrontational Solution than she is.
If Hermione takes down Azkaban and survives, and does so without Harry seeming to take control, that would be more amazing to read than I can possibly express.
It would also reflect terribly on Hermione. She’d be an utter fool to attempt that kind of thing without using Harry’s brilliance and resourcefulness. Her influence over Harry is one of her most useful powers and killing stuff ingeniously (and surviving) is pretty much Harry’s specialty. It isn’t hers.
It’s one thing to insist on having your own team in a school battle-games. It’s quite another to waste the opportunity to accept aid (and in this case even leadership) from an ally in a situation that means the life and death of yourself and others. It’d be disgustingly immature, take ‘silliness’ to a whole new level and be completely irrational. Unless Hermione’s goal in attacking Azkaban really is more about her ego and signalling and not about the need for Azkaban to be attacked for some direct reason… and she had some reason to be completely confident that it wouldn’t kill her.
Yes, to make it plausible you do have to put Hermione in an impatient or infuriated state of mind, and Harry has to be out of contact. So, for example, suppose:
Harry is elsewhere, preparing his next move against Voldemort; and
Hermione gets dragged to Azkaban on a visit by someone intending to intimidate her, and she concludes it is just as monstrous as Harry thinks. (Actually, she’d probably be even less tolerant: Hermione is not a lesser-evil-excusing sort of person, once you jolt her out of her status-quo bias.)
You could argue that would be enough—Hermione is good at hard work and righteous indignation, and she and Harry could be arranged by the author to have discussed hypothetical Azkaban strategies beforehand. If you wanted added pressure on Hermione,
someone threatens her with death or, indeed, imprisonment within Azkaban.
In which case Hermione might rationally decide to “go out with a bang.”
The hardest part of this (in a literary sense) would be keeping Harry away from Hermione for the critical period.
But Hermione isn’t really rational, she’s just intelligent. I don’t think she can perform a feat of astounding rationality in this fic, as you are suggesting. Her idea of morality is flawed and naive. If I imagine her going to Azkaban and destroying it, it would be for decidedly uninspiring reasons to me, as a rationalist.
I am confused. What would you suggest as an example of an “inspiring reason” to go and destroy Azkaban, that does occur or could occur to Harry, that would not normally occur to Hermione?
But I’d disagree that it would reflect terribly on Hermione. It wouldn’t be optimal, but few people behave optimally. Lily’s futile attempt to save Harry was suboptimal, but I don’t think it reflected terribly on her.
Unfortunately, Hermoine’s particularly suboptimality is exactly this—trying to prove that she is as effective and powerful as Harry, and so not wanting Harry’s help. She should know better. And she does, in a sense, and better than Harry or Draco. She was the general who got her army to help do the planning for the battle. She could accept their help, and sought it out. But her Prodigy Superiority Complex is threatened by help from Harry.
This whole scenario is taking a grim turn in my mind. Hermione may sacrifice herself to destroy the dementors, only to have Harry see that the sacrifice was unnecessary, and could have been avoided if he updated the note he gave to her on dementors.
It wouldn’t necessarily reflect badly on her: if someone has to die to take down Azkaban,* and Harry needs to survive to achieve other important goals, then Hermione taking it down seems like a non-foolish solution to me.
*This is hinted at as being at least a strong possibility.
We’ve already gotten the scene where Harry decides he has something else to do besides killing dementors.
Harry has expressed that he’s sure Hermione could learn the True Patronus and wouldn’t be able to stop herself from destroying Azkaban. She already has the secret in a note from Harry. She’s been introduced to Fawkes. And she was led to her first bullies by flashes of gold and red.
He could have Harry taken to Azkaban, and Hermione break him out. That would be a bit too femi-cliched for my taste, but you never know.
Harry might be off somewhere, and Hermione will need to face the choice of going to Azkaban alone. She might face the choice believing that Harry is dead. EY has referred to Stephen Donaldson before. A “Lord Mhoram’s Victory” scenario could fit nicely. (Very moving scene from Donaldson, and perfectly in line with EY’s sense of life.) Along that line, maybe all the Dementors besiege Hogwarts (Harry and Dumbledore being elsewhere), slowly wearing down the defenses, and General Sunshine remembers the note from Harry, runs off to get it, and as she overcomes her fear of Dementors and resolves to fight them, she hears a great CAW! and is faced by a phoenix that transports her into the midst of the Dementors and she destroys them all.
I think the groundwork has been laid, and the plot turns aren’t so difficult. Hermione as taking McGonagal’s in mounting the defense of Hogwarts works for me.
Oh, good point, the author’s prepared for Hermione to take on Azkaban. The trick will be motive.
If Hermione harrows Azkaban for Harry’s sake, that’s Hermione the faithful NPC, not Hermione who has wishes and dreams of her own.
If Hermione harrows Azkaban because it’s the right thing to do, that will be pure awesome.
As you say, if Hermione believes Harry is dead, especially if she believes some other innocent is about to be sent to Azkaban, she could spring into action quite on her own.
I think you’ve convinced me 66% that Hermione, not Harry, takes on Azkaban.
What I don’t feel so confident of is that the author will manage to do this in a way that Hermione’s motive is “because it’s the right thing”. The gravitational pull of “Harry causes all interesting good things” is strong.
Avoiding the “Harry causes everything good” gravitational field isn’t an insoluble problem. But EY has a lot of other balls to juggle besides the harrowing of Azkaban.
″ You have courage enough for Gryffindor, said the calm voice of the
Sorting Hat in her memory, but you will do what is right in any House
I give you. You will learn, you will stand by your friends, in any House
you choose. So don’t be afraid, Hermione Granger, just decide where you
belong...”
“Why, no,” said Professor Quirrell. “I stopped trying to be a hero, and went off to do something else I found more pleasant.”
“But you don’t have to be a hero, Miss Granger,” said Professor Quirrell. “You can stop anytime you please.”
That idea… …had occurred to her before, several times over the last two days.
People become who they are meant to be, by doing what is right, Headmaster Dumbledore had told her.
Hermione Granger, I shall be less subtle than is usual for a mysterious old wizard, and tell you outright that you cannot imagine how badly things could go if the events surrounding Harry Potter turn to ill.
The most powerful wizard in the world had told her that, when he was talking about how important it was that she not stop being Harry’s friend.
Staying with Harry is not for Harry’s sake, it is the right thing to do. I think you’re over constraining the solution.
And I wouldn’t say that the harrowing of Azkaban is the point—it’s the destruction of the dementors. The continual torture provided by the dementors is what makes Azkaban an abomination.
Although wouldn’t it be strange to have someone else defeat Death besides Harry? He’s learned much more about death than he knew when he first cast the True Patronus, and he has the invisibility cloak.
A Hermione who risks all against Dementors “to help Harry” is not nearly as interesting to me as a Hermione who risks all against Dementors because they’re evil regardless of Harry.
We’ll all help our friends. Pick any evil person in history—they had friends. If they’re a political leader, they had lots of admirers.
The fic itself has Harry make the point that if you’re only interesting in helping an “us” and not a “them”, that’s a pretty weak sort of good that easily turns to evil.
I think in a fic so full of extraordinary characters, Hermione deserves to be extraordinary enough to do awesome things even for strangers, even when she doesn’t think her friends will benefit, because a world without dementors is just better.
I can well imagine Hermione getting a phoenix. Her potentially resulting self-sacrifice could well be a climactic point in the fic, in fact. Its effect on Harry would be interesting to see, too.
As a rule, “And what effect does this have on the protagonist?” is the most commonly answered question in narrative. That’s what being the protagonist means, really.
Ooh, Hermione versus Azkaban. I want that.
If Hermione takes down Azkaban and survives, and does so without Harry seeming to take control, that would be more amazing to read than I can possibly express.
Also it would be a nice touch of realism: no one good person solves all the problems.
But there are three hard literary problems here:
the author has probably got another Azkaban answer in mind, based on Harry,
the author would have to prepare the ground for Hermione grokking the “Death ain’t inevitable” approach to Dementors,
it would be tricky to write a realistic Harry who, even from Harry and the reader’s POV, was “protecting Hermione’s back while she saves the day” as opposed to “rescuing Hermione”. The rearguard samurai who buys the hero time is a fiction staple, but it’s not a default role for Harry.
[Edit: ] as wedrifid wisely points out below, Hermione has to have a good reason to believe she has to take the lead, since Harry is demonstrably better at the average Confrontational Solution than she is.
But if it happens I will be ever so happy.
It would also reflect terribly on Hermione. She’d be an utter fool to attempt that kind of thing without using Harry’s brilliance and resourcefulness. Her influence over Harry is one of her most useful powers and killing stuff ingeniously (and surviving) is pretty much Harry’s specialty. It isn’t hers.
It’s one thing to insist on having your own team in a school battle-games. It’s quite another to waste the opportunity to accept aid (and in this case even leadership) from an ally in a situation that means the life and death of yourself and others. It’d be disgustingly immature, take ‘silliness’ to a whole new level and be completely irrational. Unless Hermione’s goal in attacking Azkaban really is more about her ego and signalling and not about the need for Azkaban to be attacked for some direct reason… and she had some reason to be completely confident that it wouldn’t kill her.
No respect points for ego when it is at the expense of shut up and multiply.
Yes, to make it plausible you do have to put Hermione in an impatient or infuriated state of mind, and Harry has to be out of contact. So, for example, suppose:
Harry is elsewhere, preparing his next move against Voldemort; and
Hermione gets dragged to Azkaban on a visit by someone intending to intimidate her, and she concludes it is just as monstrous as Harry thinks. (Actually, she’d probably be even less tolerant: Hermione is not a lesser-evil-excusing sort of person, once you jolt her out of her status-quo bias.)
You could argue that would be enough—Hermione is good at hard work and righteous indignation, and she and Harry could be arranged by the author to have discussed hypothetical Azkaban strategies beforehand. If you wanted added pressure on Hermione,
someone threatens her with death or, indeed, imprisonment within Azkaban.
In which case Hermione might rationally decide to “go out with a bang.”
The hardest part of this (in a literary sense) would be keeping Harry away from Hermione for the critical period.
But Hermione isn’t really rational, she’s just intelligent. I don’t think she can perform a feat of astounding rationality in this fic, as you are suggesting. Her idea of morality is flawed and naive. If I imagine her going to Azkaban and destroying it, it would be for decidedly uninspiring reasons to me, as a rationalist.
I am confused. What would you suggest as an example of an “inspiring reason” to go and destroy Azkaban, that does occur or could occur to Harry, that would not normally occur to Hermione?
I go into more detail in the post below, but I only picture Hermione attacking the dementors under some kind of time pressure with Harry unavailable.
http://lesswrong.com/lw/g1q/harry_potter_and_the_methods_of_rationality/8441
But I’d disagree that it would reflect terribly on Hermione. It wouldn’t be optimal, but few people behave optimally. Lily’s futile attempt to save Harry was suboptimal, but I don’t think it reflected terribly on her.
Unfortunately, Hermoine’s particularly suboptimality is exactly this—trying to prove that she is as effective and powerful as Harry, and so not wanting Harry’s help. She should know better. And she does, in a sense, and better than Harry or Draco. She was the general who got her army to help do the planning for the battle. She could accept their help, and sought it out. But her Prodigy Superiority Complex is threatened by help from Harry.
This whole scenario is taking a grim turn in my mind. Hermione may sacrifice herself to destroy the dementors, only to have Harry see that the sacrifice was unnecessary, and could have been avoided if he updated the note he gave to her on dementors.
It wouldn’t necessarily reflect badly on her: if someone has to die to take down Azkaban,* and Harry needs to survive to achieve other important goals, then Hermione taking it down seems like a non-foolish solution to me.
*This is hinted at as being at least a strong possibility.
For the literary problems:
We’ve already gotten the scene where Harry decides he has something else to do besides killing dementors.
Harry has expressed that he’s sure Hermione could learn the True Patronus and wouldn’t be able to stop herself from destroying Azkaban. She already has the secret in a note from Harry. She’s been introduced to Fawkes. And she was led to her first bullies by flashes of gold and red.
He could have Harry taken to Azkaban, and Hermione break him out. That would be a bit too femi-cliched for my taste, but you never know.
Harry might be off somewhere, and Hermione will need to face the choice of going to Azkaban alone. She might face the choice believing that Harry is dead. EY has referred to Stephen Donaldson before. A “Lord Mhoram’s Victory” scenario could fit nicely. (Very moving scene from Donaldson, and perfectly in line with EY’s sense of life.) Along that line, maybe all the Dementors besiege Hogwarts (Harry and Dumbledore being elsewhere), slowly wearing down the defenses, and General Sunshine remembers the note from Harry, runs off to get it, and as she overcomes her fear of Dementors and resolves to fight them, she hears a great CAW! and is faced by a phoenix that transports her into the midst of the Dementors and she destroys them all.
I think the groundwork has been laid, and the plot turns aren’t so difficult. Hermione as taking McGonagal’s in mounting the defense of Hogwarts works for me.
Oh, good point, the author’s prepared for Hermione to take on Azkaban. The trick will be motive.
If Hermione harrows Azkaban for Harry’s sake, that’s Hermione the faithful NPC, not Hermione who has wishes and dreams of her own.
If Hermione harrows Azkaban because it’s the right thing to do, that will be pure awesome.
As you say, if Hermione believes Harry is dead, especially if she believes some other innocent is about to be sent to Azkaban, she could spring into action quite on her own.
I think you’ve convinced me 66% that Hermione, not Harry, takes on Azkaban.
What I don’t feel so confident of is that the author will manage to do this in a way that Hermione’s motive is “because it’s the right thing”. The gravitational pull of “Harry causes all interesting good things” is strong.
Avoiding the “Harry causes everything good” gravitational field isn’t an insoluble problem. But EY has a lot of other balls to juggle besides the harrowing of Azkaban.
Staying with Harry is not for Harry’s sake, it is the right thing to do. I think you’re over constraining the solution.
And I wouldn’t say that the harrowing of Azkaban is the point—it’s the destruction of the dementors. The continual torture provided by the dementors is what makes Azkaban an abomination.
Although wouldn’t it be strange to have someone else defeat Death besides Harry? He’s learned much more about death than he knew when he first cast the True Patronus, and he has the invisibility cloak.
A Hermione who risks all against Dementors “to help Harry” is not nearly as interesting to me as a Hermione who risks all against Dementors because they’re evil regardless of Harry.
We’ll all help our friends. Pick any evil person in history—they had friends. If they’re a political leader, they had lots of admirers.
The fic itself has Harry make the point that if you’re only interesting in helping an “us” and not a “them”, that’s a pretty weak sort of good that easily turns to evil.
I think in a fic so full of extraordinary characters, Hermione deserves to be extraordinary enough to do awesome things even for strangers, even when she doesn’t think her friends will benefit, because a world without dementors is just better.
I can well imagine Hermione getting a phoenix. Her potentially resulting self-sacrifice could well be a climactic point in the fic, in fact. Its effect on Harry would be interesting to see, too.
Just reading that makes me sad.
As a rule, “And what effect does this have on the protagonist?” is the most commonly answered question in narrative. That’s what being the protagonist means, really.