For me the most natural explanation of the dojo incident is that Quirrell/Voldemort pulled a Verbal Kint. The setup is just too similar to be accidental. If you haven’t seen The Usual Suspects (you should), that means ur vzcebivfrq gur fgbel ba gur fcbg gb znxr rirelbar srne uvz naq gb uhzvyvngr Uneel. I’ll be quite disappointed if Eliezer’s eventual explanation isn’t as good as this one.
That’s certainly possible, but we know Q/V does have elite martial arts skills, which he had to have learned somewhere, and studying at the world’s best dojo, followed by destroying it to make sure no one else ever got training as good, seems like an entirely plausible thing for a Dark Lord to do.
My understanding was that the story was true as stated: Voldemort showed up, destroyed the place, then calmed down and realized Quirrell now had the only remaining copy of the information he was looking for, so he set up some contingency to eventually put himself in Quirrell’s body with the martial-arts skills intact.
Is there any hint in MoR that Quirrel was already a total badass before Voldemort’s body-snatching job, as this interpretation would require (“I was a prodigy of Battle Magic even then [at the times of the dojo]”)?
I think ‘last surviving student of the greatest martial-arts teacher’ counts as a hint, yeah.
Why would Quirrel’s battle-magic skill, or lack thereof, be relevant in Voldemort’s choice of host? Magic is at least partly a function of the mind, and judging by the descriptions of zombie-like behavior when off-duty, the body-snatching didn’t do Quirrel’s mind any favors. Rather, the point would be to combine Voldemort’s lifetime of rationality and Battle Magic practice with Quirrel’s sixth-dan hand-to-hand combat skill, resulting in a single individual with two lifetimes’ worth of powers, without the expense and possible side-effects traditionally associated with magical life extension.
Speaking of which, isn’t there a prefabricated, ready-to-use Alchemist’s Stone somewhere on campus?
For me the most natural explanation of the dojo incident is that Quirrell/Voldemort pulled a Verbal Kint. The setup is just too similar to be accidental. If you haven’t seen The Usual Suspects (you should), that means ur vzcebivfrq gur fgbel ba gur fcbg gb znxr rirelbar srne uvz naq gb uhzvyvngr Uneel. I’ll be quite disappointed if Eliezer’s eventual explanation isn’t as good as this one.
That’s certainly possible, but we know Q/V does have elite martial arts skills, which he had to have learned somewhere, and studying at the world’s best dojo, followed by destroying it to make sure no one else ever got training as good, seems like an entirely plausible thing for a Dark Lord to do.
My understanding was that the story was true as stated: Voldemort showed up, destroyed the place, then calmed down and realized Quirrell now had the only remaining copy of the information he was looking for, so he set up some contingency to eventually put himself in Quirrell’s body with the martial-arts skills intact.
Is there any hint in MoR that Quirrel was already a total badass before Voldemort’s body-snatching job, as this interpretation would require (“I was a prodigy of Battle Magic even then [at the times of the dojo]”)?
I think ‘last surviving student of the greatest martial-arts teacher’ counts as a hint, yeah.
Why would Quirrel’s battle-magic skill, or lack thereof, be relevant in Voldemort’s choice of host? Magic is at least partly a function of the mind, and judging by the descriptions of zombie-like behavior when off-duty, the body-snatching didn’t do Quirrel’s mind any favors. Rather, the point would be to combine Voldemort’s lifetime of rationality and Battle Magic practice with Quirrel’s sixth-dan hand-to-hand combat skill, resulting in a single individual with two lifetimes’ worth of powers, without the expense and possible side-effects traditionally associated with magical life extension.
Speaking of which, isn’t there a prefabricated, ready-to-use Alchemist’s Stone somewhere on campus?
Philosopher’s Stone, or in the American version, Sorcerer’s Stone. Although it does belong to an alchemist.