I think Harry already failed his bargaining attempt vs. Lucius, so for flow of story reasons I don’t think he’s going to call in his life debt, although that makes the most sense of the theories I’ve seen so far.
I think Harry will bargain with the dementor. “Dementor, if you and your ilk allow this girl to enter Azkaban, I will come and destroy you all. If you refuse to let her enter, I will permit your species to continue to exist.” This could be a taboo tradeoff; Harry is trading his sacred value of anti-death-ness to save Hermione.
I think this theory fits in with the story a little better, but it seems less likely to work. It also has a pretty bad failure mode; the dementor ignores Harry because everyone else in the room expects it to, and Harry has to get Fawkes to take him to Azkaban to make good on his threat. (Does Harry know that Phoenix travel is a fast way in? If not, he can probably guess so.)
I was never comfortable with dementors being that impressionable. Harry was able to threaten a dozen of them in Azkaban, and sure, he expected it to succeed; but afterward, that dozen returned back to the main body of hundreds of dementors, all of which then refused to assist dozens of aurors, who would have expected them to. I would argue for at least rudimentary intelligence on the part of the creatures.
I think Harry already failed his bargaining attempt vs. Lucius, so for flow of story reasons I don’t think he’s going to call in his life debt, although that makes the most sense of the theories I’ve seen so far.
I think Harry will bargain with the dementor. “Dementor, if you and your ilk allow this girl to enter Azkaban, I will come and destroy you all. If you refuse to let her enter, I will permit your species to continue to exist.” This could be a taboo tradeoff; Harry is trading his sacred value of anti-death-ness to save Hermione.
I think this theory fits in with the story a little better, but it seems less likely to work. It also has a pretty bad failure mode; the dementor ignores Harry because everyone else in the room expects it to, and Harry has to get Fawkes to take him to Azkaban to make good on his threat. (Does Harry know that Phoenix travel is a fast way in? If not, he can probably guess so.)
I was never comfortable with dementors being that impressionable. Harry was able to threaten a dozen of them in Azkaban, and sure, he expected it to succeed; but afterward, that dozen returned back to the main body of hundreds of dementors, all of which then refused to assist dozens of aurors, who would have expected them to. I would argue for at least rudimentary intelligence on the part of the creatures.
Good point. Makes my idea more likely to succeed.