Prediction 1: Hermione will soon harrow Azkaban.
Why wouldn’t she? She’s all but immortal, now.
Prediction 2: Time-travel and memory-charm shenanigans incoming.
Evidence:
Harry weirdly ignored the missing recognition code on LV’s forged message.
Cedric considered in Harry’s plans, and his Time-Turner mentioned, then seemingly forgotten.
Death-Eaters all dead, but no faces observed.
Flamel asserted dead, but we didn’t see it, and LV explicitly didn’t kill him personally.
Dumbledore thinks in stories, yet we’re supposed to believe he’s surprised when the villain reveals he’s captured the hero and his equipment (Harry and the Cloak), just like villains always catch heroes and take their stuff near the end (see: Frodo Baggins, Luke Skywalker).
Hermione has been asleep the whole time, neither giving nor receiving information.
Questions:
did Harry tell Cedric to do certain things before Harry left? Did Harry tell Cedric to Obliviate Harry afterward so Harry could play his part convincingly? What did Harry most likely tell Cedric to do?
who will do the Time-Turning, Hermione, Cedric, or Harry?
who will be saved? Obvious candidates include Flamel, Dumbledore, Lucius Malfoy, maybe all the anonymous Death-Eaters.
if you were Hermione and had a Time-Turner and the Stone and the Cloak and six hours to save everybody but Voldemort, Quirrell and Macnair, how would you do it? (Do you need the help of someone who can Obliviate well? Do you need partial Transfiguration?)
The Cedric situation hints strongly at information control, maybe to deal with the six-hour limit on Time-Turners.
if you were Hermione and had a Time-Turner and the Stone and the Cloak and six hours to save everybody but Voldemort, Quirrell and Macnair, how would you do it?
Being Hermione makes this harder. There’s a way to do it: find a morgue, transfigure the bodies into simulacra of the Death Eaters, give permanency with the Stone, raise them as Inferi, then use Horcrux 1.0 castings with a respawning Hermione as fuel to copy the original Death Eaters’ mind-states. But Hermione doesn’t have the power, doesn’t know that kind of Dark magic, and has way too many ethical scruples; and we don’t know the Horcrux enchantment in enough detail to know that it’s exploitable in that way. (You don’t need the Horcruces to fool physical examination, but I assume Voldemort has some way of sensing people’s minds or magic.)
It also might not account for everything it needs to, given that Harry feels what I assume to be their deaths on-page. That could be the Horcrux enchantment dissipating, though.
Or, a simpler solution: travel back six hours, Obliviate Voldemort while he’s on the toilet (he could probably resist Imperius at full power), Imperius him to do everything Harry remembers that involves personal agency except summon his mooks, then false-memory-charm Harry into thinking thirty-six Death Eaters were present when they weren’t. Take office as Hogwarts’ first Professor of Retconjuration.
Harry weirdly ignored the missing recognition code on LV’s forged message.
This is not how (Harry’s) recognition code works. It is used to identify exact(ish) copies of himself because he is the only one—barring magical mental shenanigans—that can immediately recognize it. Writing it down on a piece of paper and then giving that piece of paper to someone else would defeat the purpose entirely.
But knowing that Harry is “be prepared” so much that he prepared a recognition code when he didn’t think he would ever use it, and then had been nearly a year with a time-turner, and knowning about Oblivatiate, it’s quite surprising that he didn’t device a recognition code to recognize a message sent either by a future self to his past self (time-turner) or from his past self to his future self (Obliviate).
The cryptographic solution to this problem is to publicize related codes derived in such a way that the possessor of the secret code can recognize the derivation, but bystanders can’t use them to rederive the secret code.
It’s probably a bit much to expect Harry to use that in its strong form—most of the relevant math was known in 1991, but it only rose to prominence with the Internet, and it’s quite laborious by hand—but there’s probably a similar ad-hoc scheme he can use that’d provide reasonably strong authentication against a bunch of cryptographically naive wizards.
The niave protocol, any time you get a note, you come up with a random password. That password has to be on the bottom of the note. If the password has even a few bits of entropy, relative to outsiders, this will work. (Memory charms or time turners can get around this, but its still a good precaution)
The fact that he uses prime factorization as his test for “can use you time turner to solve computationally hard problems” is evidence that he did know about prime number based cryptography, not strong evidence, but evidence still, since the prime-based crypto is the most common reason people are interested in having fast ways to factor primes.
How much security could one expect from a mental PRNG? Simple, RNGs go back many decades so Harry could use it easily if he knew of them and thought of the application, mathematically breakable but only with knowledge of the algorithms & more samples than Harry realistically ever needs...
Does it need to be pure mental ? In some cases yes, but if he has time to carefully write himself a note, he probably has time to roll dices or write number on pieces of paper, fold them, mix them, and draw one at random. Or take a random book and look at a random letter of a random page (using some correction algorithm to deal with the difference of letter frequency).
For all practical uses x’=(x*8+1) mod 49 is a simple PRNG that can be executed mentally easily. If you seed it with the next best number you see it gives suitably random numbers for every-day purposes (and when no dice are available). Note that this is taken from TAoCP by Knuth. I use it for fair choices and mental story telling.
It’s not hard to generate random numbers in your head in real life. Generate 5 or 6 “random” numbers from 0 to X-1, add them, and take the result mod X.
I don’t like things which use apparatuses because they introduce a dependency (and since this scheme is for use in extreme/unusual circumstances, it’s especially likely that Harry would not have leisure time or access to his pouch) and they make part of the process observable, hence, easier to realize the existence of & reverse-engineer.
A fully mental PRNG is doable under all circumstances in under a second and is unobservable except via Legilimency (which if it isn’t blocked, means one is screwed anyway since one can just be False-memory-charmed into remembering having done the verification*).
Huh? Hermione is a rule follower. She wouldn’t destroy Azkaban if she had a button she could press that would do so. Also she can’t kill even one Dementor, or even cast a patronus to prevent one from killing her.
Prediction 2:
Don’t think so, remaining story too short for such shenanigans.
She started as a rules follower. Then Self-Actualisation happened.
That first-year witch stood there with all tears and anger bottled, her face still, nothing changing of her outward appearance, while something slowly broke inside her, she could feel it breaking.
[...]
“And,” her voice said, “if you want to break school rules or something, you can ask me about it, I promise I won’t just say no.”
Hermione is a rule follower. She wouldn’t destroy Azkaban if she had a button she could press that would do so.
She also knows exactly what it’s like to be an innocent sentenced to Azkaban for a crime they didn’t commit, and how easy it is for such a thing to happen. You can’t go through an experience like that without re-evaluating some things about how you see the world.
Also she can’t kill even one Dementor, or even cast a patronus to prevent one from killing her.
The point of the above post, I believe, is that there is nothing stopping her from learning to cast Patronus 2.0, at which point it’s plausible that the infinite unicorn blood would replenish her life-force so killing Dementors wouldn’t end up draining it all.
It’s not entirely clear how Hermione’s troll/unicorn stuff interacts with the depletion of life-force necessary to fuel the Patronus. That said, she has a Horcrux, so at the end of the day it doesn’t really matter. And if Harry can eventually destroy Azkaban, Hermione certainly can.
I’m skeptical. If dementors really do destroy your soul then having a horcrux may not be helpful against them. I’m a fan of taking V’s wand down to the pit, in fact.
No magic burst at death would be one prediction to check, though not conclusive. You could test it with Horcrux 2.0, though no one has had the opportunity to do that before now. The fact that Voldemort has expressed uncertainty about whether he is capable of surviving dementors, and that he is relying upon escaping from Quirrel’s body in time to survive dementors points in the direction of him believing that a dementor might be capable of taking out him and his whole horcrux network in one shot.
None of that is conclusive, but it’s all suggestive and supports the popular version of what dementors do.
The thing about magic burst is that Dementors drain the target’s magic anyway. It’s entirely plausible that if a Dementor kills you, it sucks away your magic in the process, or at least enough of it to prevent a magic burst.
Prediction 1: Hermione will soon harrow Azkaban. Why wouldn’t she? She’s all but immortal, now.
Prediction 2: Time-travel and memory-charm shenanigans incoming. Evidence:
Harry weirdly ignored the missing recognition code on LV’s forged message.
Cedric considered in Harry’s plans, and his Time-Turner mentioned, then seemingly forgotten.
Death-Eaters all dead, but no faces observed.
Flamel asserted dead, but we didn’t see it, and LV explicitly didn’t kill him personally.
Dumbledore thinks in stories, yet we’re supposed to believe he’s surprised when the villain reveals he’s captured the hero and his equipment (Harry and the Cloak), just like villains always catch heroes and take their stuff near the end (see: Frodo Baggins, Luke Skywalker).
Hermione has been asleep the whole time, neither giving nor receiving information.
Questions:
did Harry tell Cedric to do certain things before Harry left? Did Harry tell Cedric to Obliviate Harry afterward so Harry could play his part convincingly? What did Harry most likely tell Cedric to do?
who will do the Time-Turning, Hermione, Cedric, or Harry?
who will be saved? Obvious candidates include Flamel, Dumbledore, Lucius Malfoy, maybe all the anonymous Death-Eaters.
if you were Hermione and had a Time-Turner and the Stone and the Cloak and six hours to save everybody but Voldemort, Quirrell and Macnair, how would you do it? (Do you need the help of someone who can Obliviate well? Do you need partial Transfiguration?)
The Cedric situation hints strongly at information control, maybe to deal with the six-hour limit on Time-Turners.
Being Hermione makes this harder. There’s a way to do it: find a morgue, transfigure the bodies into simulacra of the Death Eaters, give permanency with the Stone, raise them as Inferi, then use Horcrux 1.0 castings with a respawning Hermione as fuel to copy the original Death Eaters’ mind-states. But Hermione doesn’t have the power, doesn’t know that kind of Dark magic, and has way too many ethical scruples; and we don’t know the Horcrux enchantment in enough detail to know that it’s exploitable in that way. (You don’t need the Horcruces to fool physical examination, but I assume Voldemort has some way of sensing people’s minds or magic.)
It also might not account for everything it needs to, given that Harry feels what I assume to be their deaths on-page. That could be the Horcrux enchantment dissipating, though.
Or, a simpler solution: travel back six hours, Obliviate Voldemort while he’s on the toilet (he could probably resist Imperius at full power), Imperius him to do everything Harry remembers that involves personal agency except summon his mooks, then false-memory-charm Harry into thinking thirty-six Death Eaters were present when they weren’t. Take office as Hogwarts’ first Professor of Retconjuration.
This is not how (Harry’s) recognition code works. It is used to identify exact(ish) copies of himself because he is the only one—barring magical mental shenanigans—that can immediately recognize it. Writing it down on a piece of paper and then giving that piece of paper to someone else would defeat the purpose entirely.
The “potato” code, yes.
But knowing that Harry is “be prepared” so much that he prepared a recognition code when he didn’t think he would ever use it, and then had been nearly a year with a time-turner, and knowning about Oblivatiate, it’s quite surprising that he didn’t device a recognition code to recognize a message sent either by a future self to his past self (time-turner) or from his past self to his future self (Obliviate).
The cryptographic solution to this problem is to publicize related codes derived in such a way that the possessor of the secret code can recognize the derivation, but bystanders can’t use them to rederive the secret code.
It’s probably a bit much to expect Harry to use that in its strong form—most of the relevant math was known in 1991, but it only rose to prominence with the Internet, and it’s quite laborious by hand—but there’s probably a similar ad-hoc scheme he can use that’d provide reasonably strong authentication against a bunch of cryptographically naive wizards.
The niave protocol, any time you get a note, you come up with a random password. That password has to be on the bottom of the note. If the password has even a few bits of entropy, relative to outsiders, this will work. (Memory charms or time turners can get around this, but its still a good precaution)
The fact that he uses prime factorization as his test for “can use you time turner to solve computationally hard problems” is evidence that he did know about prime number based cryptography, not strong evidence, but evidence still, since the prime-based crypto is the most common reason people are interested in having fast ways to factor primes.
How much security could one expect from a mental PRNG? Simple, RNGs go back many decades so Harry could use it easily if he knew of them and thought of the application, mathematically breakable but only with knowledge of the algorithms & more samples than Harry realistically ever needs...
Does it need to be pure mental ? In some cases yes, but if he has time to carefully write himself a note, he probably has time to roll dices or write number on pieces of paper, fold them, mix them, and draw one at random. Or take a random book and look at a random letter of a random page (using some correction algorithm to deal with the difference of letter frequency).
For all practical uses x’=(x*8+1) mod 49 is a simple PRNG that can be executed mentally easily. If you seed it with the next best number you see it gives suitably random numbers for every-day purposes (and when no dice are available). Note that this is taken from TAoCP by Knuth. I use it for fair choices and mental story telling.
It’s not hard to generate random numbers in your head in real life. Generate 5 or 6 “random” numbers from 0 to X-1, add them, and take the result mod X.
I don’t like things which use apparatuses because they introduce a dependency (and since this scheme is for use in extreme/unusual circumstances, it’s especially likely that Harry would not have leisure time or access to his pouch) and they make part of the process observable, hence, easier to realize the existence of & reverse-engineer.
A fully mental PRNG is doable under all circumstances in under a second and is unobservable except via Legilimency (which if it isn’t blocked, means one is screwed anyway since one can just be False-memory-charmed into remembering having done the verification*).
* Kripkenstein would approve!
Prediction 1:
Huh? Hermione is a rule follower. She wouldn’t destroy Azkaban if she had a button she could press that would do so. Also she can’t kill even one Dementor, or even cast a patronus to prevent one from killing her.
Prediction 2:
Don’t think so, remaining story too short for such shenanigans.
She started as a rules follower. Then Self-Actualisation happened.
She also knows exactly what it’s like to be an innocent sentenced to Azkaban for a crime they didn’t commit, and how easy it is for such a thing to happen. You can’t go through an experience like that without re-evaluating some things about how you see the world.
The point of the above post, I believe, is that there is nothing stopping her from learning to cast Patronus 2.0, at which point it’s plausible that the infinite unicorn blood would replenish her life-force so killing Dementors wouldn’t end up draining it all.
It’s not entirely clear how Hermione’s troll/unicorn stuff interacts with the depletion of life-force necessary to fuel the Patronus. That said, she has a Horcrux, so at the end of the day it doesn’t really matter. And if Harry can eventually destroy Azkaban, Hermione certainly can.
I’m skeptical. If dementors really do destroy your soul then having a horcrux may not be helpful against them. I’m a fan of taking V’s wand down to the pit, in fact.
If Dementors really do destroy your soul, how would anyone know?
No magic burst at death would be one prediction to check, though not conclusive. You could test it with Horcrux 2.0, though no one has had the opportunity to do that before now. The fact that Voldemort has expressed uncertainty about whether he is capable of surviving dementors, and that he is relying upon escaping from Quirrel’s body in time to survive dementors points in the direction of him believing that a dementor might be capable of taking out him and his whole horcrux network in one shot.
None of that is conclusive, but it’s all suggestive and supports the popular version of what dementors do.
The thing about magic burst is that Dementors drain the target’s magic anyway. It’s entirely plausible that if a Dementor kills you, it sucks away your magic in the process, or at least enough of it to prevent a magic burst.