Here’s a secret in plain sight: if this story has a happy ending, then Harry has the power to destroy Quirrelmort’s brain, anytime they’re together.
First clue: the WRONG DON’T BAD IDEA messages when Harry tries to make contact with Quirrell. Assume that they mean just what they say—that something terrible will happen if Harry makes contact.
Second clue: the prophecy appears to say that Harry and Voldemort’s confrontation can only leave more or less one. Storytelling convention makes us think it’s a metaphor or foreseeing complex future actions. But maybe there’s just an already existing spell or condition, dating from the first encounter, that’s primed to cause Harry+Voldemort = boom.
There’s more. But just from these two clues alone, we can see that an available though seemingly extreme interpretation of data in the story is: “If Harry ever touches Quirrellmort, one or the other will be magically destroyed”.
Now the subtler clues.
Third clue: in the original canon, Harry had a piece of Voldemort’s soul in him, an accidentally created Horcrux, and the destruction of that piece of soul was a critical step in Voldemort’s death.
Fourth clue: in our world’s science, there’s no such observable thing as splitting souls, but there is such a thing as copying data, or duplicating a software neural network.
Fifth clue: Lucius thinks Harry is Voldemort.
Sixth clue: Harry has patterns of behavior in him that don’t at all resemble a loved little boy, but wholly fit Voldemort.
Seventh clue: the Sorting Hat said Harry didn’t have a separate mind under the Hat with him. It never said his own mind was normal.
Hypothesis:
In this universe, a “Horcrux” is a compressed or partial copy of your brain software.
Harry was accidentally imprinted with some of Voldemort’s brain software at their original encounter. Ever since, he’s been a child who knows how to think like Voldemort. Literally. (Harry’s dark side really is an alien thing, not as an actual person, but as a range of behaviors that didn’t come from his own past experiences but another’s.)
Further, in this universe, a Horcrux, or at least an unstable Horcrux like Harry, destructively decompresses/uploads itself back to its source mind when brought into contact with it.
In consequence, if ever Quirrellmort and Harry come sufficiently into physical/magical contact, Quirrellmort anticipates that Harry’s brain will turn into a vegetable as Harry-Voldemort destructively uploads itself into the “real” Quirrell-Voldemort, leaving behind a stronger and more complete Q+H-Voldemort.
This may require preparation on Quirrell’s part to go well. Or there may be other things involved that Quirrell hasn’t accounted for, such as the extent to which Harry has a (literal) mind of his own. Either way, there’s a fair likelihood, depending on author intent, that the contact will destroy Quirrellmort, not Harry.
So if the story has a happy ending, where even the protagonist gets to live, then we can express the hypothesis like this:
Harry can defeat Quirrellmort. He just has to give him a hug.
There’s a Care Bears Omake spawning in my brain now.
In consequence, if ever Quirrellmort and Harry come sufficiently into physical/magical contact, Quirrellmort anticipates that Harry’s brain will turn into a vegetable as Harry-Voldemort destructively uploads itself into the “real” Quirrell-Voldemort, leaving behind a stronger and more complete Q+H-Voldemort.
How about the other way—Quirrellmort uploads into Harry? Make Harry the Dark Lord, and then upload into him. Note that Voldemort has seemingly already uploaded into Quirrell.
“My… Lord… I went where you said to await you, but you did not come...
“Sshow her your face,” hissed the snake at Harry’s feet.
Harry cast back the hood of the Cloak of Invisibility.
“The scar...” muttered Bellatrix. “That child...”
“So they all still think,” said Harry’s voice, and gave a thin little chuckle. “You looked for me in the wrong place, Bella dear.”
Bella is not particularly surprised to find Voldemort in a new body. And while there are other explanations, having Harry masquerade as Voldemort does set the stage for him to do it for real. It also gets Bella on Harry’s side for later in the story, so that Harry has support from both sides, as seems to be the plan.
But think of the denouement of such a scheme. Voldemort takes over the body of Harry, who appears to have saved the world from Voldemort a second time as Voldemort uploads into Harry! He rules a grateful and loyal world, which he has saved from himself. Could anything be more delightful to a Dark Lord?
Harry’s objection to Quirrell’s “We Need a Dark Lord Speech” even foreshadows the plot, as he identified the Dark Lord Dictator as a single point of failure in Quirrell’s argument—the single point that in fact Quirrell planned on exploiting all along.
The first supposed loss to Harry was only part of the plan of creating a new and better host. The story line that Harry originally survived and Voldemort died because “mommy loved Harry, etc...” could not be more insipid. Much more believable that it was just a gambit of Voldemort, he laid low for a decade and came back as Harry became old enough to fulfill his role.
Also, the advanced power and intelligence of Harry makes sense as something bequeathed by Voldemort. But, much in keeping with EY’s concerns about AI, the created tool will instead rise up and squash it’s maker in the end.
Third clue: in the original canon, Harry had a piece of Voldemort’s soul in him, an accidentally created Horcrux, and the reunion of that piece with Voldemort was a critical step in Voldemort’s death.
The destruction of that piece was crucial. I don’t believe that it ever reunited with the rest of Voldemort’s soul.
Right, that’s not yet obvious. At least not to me!
We do know that Quirrellmort is consistently surprised by the extent to which Harry thinks like a nice person instead of a Dark Lord. So the “alien power” could be Harry’s having more of a mind of his own than Quirrellmort expects of a Horcrux.
The “alien power” could equally be that Harry can cast a 2.0 Patronus, and in general has access to certain kinds of feelings and thoughts (and their associated magics?) that Quirrelmort doesn’t.
Or I suppose it could be that Dad’s rock is in fact the Philosopher’s Stone.
I would be surprised if Harry’s knowledge of Muggle science, as such, was his edge over Voldemort. This Voldemort Horcruxed a spacecraft.
And I would be surprised if Harry’s “rationality” in the general sense was his edge. Quirrellmort seems plenty clear-thinking.
On the other hand, you’re right that Harry is much more of an experimentalist than Quirrellmort seems to be. Voldemort in this fic seems to be brilliantly efficient rather than brilliantly creative.
So perhaps Harry can defeat Voldemort through the power of experimentation. Not so much Science as The Scientific Method.
On the other hand, you’re right that Harry is much more of an experimentalist than Quirrellmort seems to be. Voldemort in this fic seems to be brilliantly efficient rather than brilliantly creative.
On the other hand, this Voldemort Horcruxed a spacecraft.
Horcruxing a spacecraft doesn’t strike me as brilliantly creative; it seems like an obvious thing to do if you’re familiar enough with muggle society to have heard about space exploration. Before reading HP:MoR, I had definitely considered what I would do if I ever had to hide one or more magical artifacts where nobody would find them, and the obvious choices were things like
Space, if you can manage it.
An undisclosed portion of a deep-sea trench, a few meters into the mud.
The concrete in a major public works project, like a large dam.
The bottom of a major public outhouse of epic proportions and smelliness.
I think that canon Voldemort was just holding the idiot ball on this one.
Far better to settle for obscurity. Horcrux a non-precious stone and dump it in a random desert. Anything that you yourself couldn’t guess at (specifically) if your clone was your enemy.
Why a stone? Wouldn’t a grain of sand work? You can cover air, sea, desert, and with magic even space. I wonder if you could horcrux a molecule...
I’m not sure what the size constraints are. All else being equal smaller does seem better. I’m also not sure what difference horcruxing something makes to the physical objects. They become near impossible to destroy, right? You might end up with the most seriously baddass helium molecule out there.
I’m also not sure what difference horcruxing something makes to the physical objects. They become near impossible to destroy, right?
MoR seems to imply that, but I’m not so sure about canon. From what I can tell, canon says that the horcrux itself (i.e., the attached piece of soul, not the “host” object) cannot be destroyed except by damage to the host that cannot be repaired magically. This would suggest that you can damage the horcruxed objects with even mundane methods, and they simply remain horcruxed as long as they could be repaired by magic.
The objects are not simply immutable (Ginny could write in the journal). On the other hand, the locket refused to open itself until the end—although that may have been a property of the (presumably magical) locket before being horcruxed.
Physical indestructibility would have potential, though. You could make a space-elevator out of ordinary string. (Though perhaps simpler protective magic would suffice for that.) Or stabilize stuff like unstable molecules, particles and micro-blackholes.
There’s nothing explicit saying you can’t do that in either canon or MoR, but as far as we know one needs to intentionally split one’s soul (the only given way is killing someone), and also perform some (unspecified) terrible ritual. It also seems to require a wizard of some ability. Seems like a hard thing to compel.
Horcruxing a spacecraft doesn’t strike me as brilliantly creative; it seems like an obvious thing to do if you’re familiar enough with muggle society to have heard about space exploration.
Creative enough to make himself unkillable. It’ll do. There is no need to get too creative in these things. Find a powerful or exploitable magic. Exploit it. A lot. Don’t mess around being clever.
Mind you in my books the fact that neither Harry nor Voldemort have ‘won’ already pretty much granted each of them an honorary idiot ball. Given their resources (magic!) and intellect they really should have.
The thought occurs: you know what would be really great? If Voldemort keeps abreast of cutting-edge physics journals and invented partial Transfiguration first, and just never told anyone about it.
Even if he didn’t, the fact remains that Quirrell knows Harry was able to cut through the wall of Azkaban somehow. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he figured it out purely through deduction.
I think that Harry’s “alien power” is still unclear for the same reason that readers resisted identifying MoR!Quirrell as Voldemort. The author has so much fun writing Quirrellmort-the-clever that he has great difficulty writing Quirrellmort-the-flawed.
The only flaw in Quirrellmort that the author’s actually shown is Quirrellmort’s nonbelief in goodness. The backstory suggests that Voldemort had serious problems beyond mere cynicism. But there’s a big difference between “the story asserts” and “the story demonstrates”.
(I’m using “flawed” here in the sense of “make choices that work out badly”, not “make choices that would make us readers uncomfortable.” That is, “flawed” as relevant to “power”, not “flawed” as relevant to “approval”.)
Although it’s possible that Quirrellmort is deliberately meant to be much more clearheaded than Voldemort.
Here’s a secret in plain sight: if this story has a happy ending, then Harry has the power to destroy Quirrelmort’s brain, anytime they’re together.
First clue: the WRONG DON’T BAD IDEA messages when Harry tries to make contact with Quirrell. Assume that they mean just what they say—that something terrible will happen if Harry makes contact.
Second clue: the prophecy appears to say that Harry and Voldemort’s confrontation can only leave more or less one. Storytelling convention makes us think it’s a metaphor or foreseeing complex future actions. But maybe there’s just an already existing spell or condition, dating from the first encounter, that’s primed to cause Harry+Voldemort = boom.
There’s more. But just from these two clues alone, we can see that an available though seemingly extreme interpretation of data in the story is: “If Harry ever touches Quirrellmort, one or the other will be magically destroyed”.
Now the subtler clues.
Third clue: in the original canon, Harry had a piece of Voldemort’s soul in him, an accidentally created Horcrux, and the destruction of that piece of soul was a critical step in Voldemort’s death.
Fourth clue: in our world’s science, there’s no such observable thing as splitting souls, but there is such a thing as copying data, or duplicating a software neural network.
Fifth clue: Lucius thinks Harry is Voldemort.
Sixth clue: Harry has patterns of behavior in him that don’t at all resemble a loved little boy, but wholly fit Voldemort.
Seventh clue: the Sorting Hat said Harry didn’t have a separate mind under the Hat with him. It never said his own mind was normal.
Hypothesis:
In this universe, a “Horcrux” is a compressed or partial copy of your brain software.
Harry was accidentally imprinted with some of Voldemort’s brain software at their original encounter. Ever since, he’s been a child who knows how to think like Voldemort. Literally. (Harry’s dark side really is an alien thing, not as an actual person, but as a range of behaviors that didn’t come from his own past experiences but another’s.)
Further, in this universe, a Horcrux, or at least an unstable Horcrux like Harry, destructively decompresses/uploads itself back to its source mind when brought into contact with it.
In consequence, if ever Quirrellmort and Harry come sufficiently into physical/magical contact, Quirrellmort anticipates that Harry’s brain will turn into a vegetable as Harry-Voldemort destructively uploads itself into the “real” Quirrell-Voldemort, leaving behind a stronger and more complete Q+H-Voldemort.
This may require preparation on Quirrell’s part to go well. Or there may be other things involved that Quirrell hasn’t accounted for, such as the extent to which Harry has a (literal) mind of his own. Either way, there’s a fair likelihood, depending on author intent, that the contact will destroy Quirrellmort, not Harry.
So if the story has a happy ending, where even the protagonist gets to live, then we can express the hypothesis like this:
Harry can defeat Quirrellmort. He just has to give him a hug.
There’s a Care Bears Omake spawning in my brain now.
How about the other way—Quirrellmort uploads into Harry? Make Harry the Dark Lord, and then upload into him.
Note that Voldemort has seemingly already uploaded into Quirrell.
Bella is not particularly surprised to find Voldemort in a new body. And while there are other explanations, having Harry masquerade as Voldemort does set the stage for him to do it for real. It also gets Bella on Harry’s side for later in the story, so that Harry has support from both sides, as seems to be the plan.
But think of the denouement of such a scheme. Voldemort takes over the body of Harry, who appears to have saved the world from Voldemort a second time as Voldemort uploads into Harry! He rules a grateful and loyal world, which he has saved from himself. Could anything be more delightful to a Dark Lord?
Harry’s objection to Quirrell’s “We Need a Dark Lord Speech” even foreshadows the plot, as he identified the Dark Lord Dictator as a single point of failure in Quirrell’s argument—the single point that in fact Quirrell planned on exploiting all along.
The first supposed loss to Harry was only part of the plan of creating a new and better host. The story line that Harry originally survived and Voldemort died because “mommy loved Harry, etc...” could not be more insipid. Much more believable that it was just a gambit of Voldemort, he laid low for a decade and came back as Harry became old enough to fulfill his role.
Also, the advanced power and intelligence of Harry makes sense as something bequeathed by Voldemort. But, much in keeping with EY’s concerns about AI, the created tool will instead rise up and squash it’s maker in the end.
So Harry is, in effect, an AI created by Voldemort, but one that developed an unintended value system and so turned on its creator?
Harry as Unfriendly AI. (Unfriendly from Voldemort’s point of view, anyway.) Nice.
The destruction of that piece was crucial. I don’t believe that it ever reunited with the rest of Voldemort’s soul.
This doesn’t account for “the power the dark lord knows not” does it, though?
Right, that’s not yet obvious. At least not to me!
We do know that Quirrellmort is consistently surprised by the extent to which Harry thinks like a nice person instead of a Dark Lord. So the “alien power” could be Harry’s having more of a mind of his own than Quirrellmort expects of a Horcrux.
The “alien power” could equally be that Harry can cast a 2.0 Patronus, and in general has access to certain kinds of feelings and thoughts (and their associated magics?) that Quirrelmort doesn’t.
Or I suppose it could be that Dad’s rock is in fact the Philosopher’s Stone.
… The Power the Dark Lord knows not is Science. I thought that was obvious.
I would be surprised if Harry’s knowledge of Muggle science, as such, was his edge over Voldemort. This Voldemort Horcruxed a spacecraft.
And I would be surprised if Harry’s “rationality” in the general sense was his edge. Quirrellmort seems plenty clear-thinking.
On the other hand, you’re right that Harry is much more of an experimentalist than Quirrellmort seems to be. Voldemort in this fic seems to be brilliantly efficient rather than brilliantly creative.
So perhaps Harry can defeat Voldemort through the power of experimentation. Not so much Science as The Scientific Method.
On the other hand, this Voldemort Horcruxed a spacecraft.
Horcruxing a spacecraft doesn’t strike me as brilliantly creative; it seems like an obvious thing to do if you’re familiar enough with muggle society to have heard about space exploration. Before reading HP:MoR, I had definitely considered what I would do if I ever had to hide one or more magical artifacts where nobody would find them, and the obvious choices were things like
Space, if you can manage it.
An undisclosed portion of a deep-sea trench, a few meters into the mud.
The concrete in a major public works project, like a large dam.
The bottom of a major public outhouse of epic proportions and smelliness.
I think that canon Voldemort was just holding the idiot ball on this one.
I like most of the ideas but this one strikes me as only a small step up from horcruxing the most famous artifacts:
That sounds like the plot for a Nicholas Cage movie or a Matthew Reilly book.
Far better to settle for obscurity. Horcrux a non-precious stone and dump it in a random desert. Anything that you yourself couldn’t guess at (specifically) if your clone was your enemy.
Why a stone? Wouldn’t a grain of sand work? You can cover air, sea, desert, and with magic even space. I wonder if you could horcrux a molecule...
I’m not sure what the size constraints are. All else being equal smaller does seem better. I’m also not sure what difference horcruxing something makes to the physical objects. They become near impossible to destroy, right? You might end up with the most seriously baddass helium molecule out there.
MoR seems to imply that, but I’m not so sure about canon. From what I can tell, canon says that the horcrux itself (i.e., the attached piece of soul, not the “host” object) cannot be destroyed except by damage to the host that cannot be repaired magically. This would suggest that you can damage the horcruxed objects with even mundane methods, and they simply remain horcruxed as long as they could be repaired by magic.
The objects are not simply immutable (Ginny could write in the journal). On the other hand, the locket refused to open itself until the end—although that may have been a property of the (presumably magical) locket before being horcruxed.
Physical indestructibility would have potential, though. You could make a space-elevator out of ordinary string. (Though perhaps simpler protective magic would suffice for that.) Or stabilize stuff like unstable molecules, particles and micro-blackholes.
I guess that’s one use to make of your soul!
“Associated Contractors for Magic Enterprises: We put soul in our public works!”
Nah, you’d do it with someone else’s soul. There are plenty of random enemies with souls you can literally tear apart and use as building materials.
I would seem to be left with a bunch of enemies that I can never fully kill.
Perhaps use willing servants (who get the benefit of a horcrux). Use the POW/enemies as targets for the servants to split their souls on.
There’s nothing explicit saying you can’t do that in either canon or MoR, but as far as we know one needs to intentionally split one’s soul (the only given way is killing someone), and also perform some (unspecified) terrible ritual. It also seems to require a wizard of some ability. Seems like a hard thing to compel.
Creative enough to make himself unkillable. It’ll do. There is no need to get too creative in these things. Find a powerful or exploitable magic. Exploit it. A lot. Don’t mess around being clever.
Mind you in my books the fact that neither Harry nor Voldemort have ‘won’ already pretty much granted each of them an honorary idiot ball. Given their resources (magic!) and intellect they really should have.
Horcruxing a spacecraft isn’t nearly the same thing as being able to do magics thought impossible by figuring out the general principles of magic.
The thought occurs: you know what would be really great? If Voldemort keeps abreast of cutting-edge physics journals and invented partial Transfiguration first, and just never told anyone about it.
Even if he didn’t, the fact remains that Quirrell knows Harry was able to cut through the wall of Azkaban somehow. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he figured it out purely through deduction.
I think that Harry’s “alien power” is still unclear for the same reason that readers resisted identifying MoR!Quirrell as Voldemort. The author has so much fun writing Quirrellmort-the-clever that he has great difficulty writing Quirrellmort-the-flawed.
The only flaw in Quirrellmort that the author’s actually shown is Quirrellmort’s nonbelief in goodness. The backstory suggests that Voldemort had serious problems beyond mere cynicism. But there’s a big difference between “the story asserts” and “the story demonstrates”.
(I’m using “flawed” here in the sense of “make choices that work out badly”, not “make choices that would make us readers uncomfortable.” That is, “flawed” as relevant to “power”, not “flawed” as relevant to “approval”.)
Although it’s possible that Quirrellmort is deliberately meant to be much more clearheaded than Voldemort.