Why is HPMOR’s Quirrellmort so much less violent than HPMOR’s Voldemort?
HPMOR paints a Voldemort fixated on punishing his inferiors, a Voldemort who never used persuasion or inspiration when he could rely on suffering.
Voldemort amused himself by inducing in Bellatrix a love so knowingly one-sided that it was not a happy thought for her.
Quirrell asserts Voldemort slaughtered an entire monastery rather than simply impersonate an appropriate student.
Voldemort’s rule was so coercive and terrorizing that Lucius Malfoy finds it best to claim he was not merely deceived or misled but forced to obey him.
If Harry’s “dark” thoughts under the Dementor’s influence represent Voldemort’s mind accurately, Voldemort’s reflex inclination was to punish or kill anyone who didn’t slavishly obey.
Yet Quirrellmort, for all that he talks cynically and is prepared to kill or memory-charm, prefers not to punish when he can benignly persuade or inspire.
Quirrell is verbally much less insulting than an army drill sergeant, let alone how Snape treated students.
The “Quirrell point” system is all about achieving rewards, not avoiding punishments.
Quirrell’s entire plan revolves around patient impersonation and feigned subordination—the kind of behavior that the old Voldemort allegedly refused at the monastery.
Quirrell is explicitly disapproving about the old Voldemort’s approach to persuasion.
We’ve been in Quirrell’s head when Harry and Dumbledore weren’t around, yet his violent acts have always been to “eliminate my enemy”, not to “instill fear of me in my intended lackey.” The author’s had 70+ chapters to show Quirrell or even H+C tormenting a hireling of his with no one else around, and neither has done so.
In HPMOR, Voldemort was grandiose, cynical, and punitive. Quirrellmort is grandiose, cynical, but not punitive. We see him kill to remove danger, but we don’t see him torment to instill subordinates’ fear of him. Why the change? Options:
1: Maybe Quirrellmort is still as punishment-oriented as old Voldemort, but the author doesn’t want to show us that ugly side of him quite yet. But if Quirrell doesn’t deserve our sympathy, isn’t it a good idea to make us lose it? Or if the author wants to hold off on admitting Quirrell is Voldemort until the last moment, why not have H+C be the punisher instead of Quirrell?
2: Maybe Voldemort had bad publicity; he was ruthless with enemies, but it’s only propaganda that he abused his own people. But Bella and Dementor!Harry are both private evidence that Voldemort was abusive.
3: Maybe Quirrellmort has realized the practical downsides of being punitive with those under your authority, and no longer uses those tactics. But if he could figure he was wrong about such a huge part of his leadership style, why is he so deaf to all the other ways he could be wrong about what to expect from people? Where did that open-mindedness go?
4: Maybe Quirrellmort doesn’t have Voldemort’s abusive impulses, because Horcrux!Harry is holding onto them. But why would Quirrellmort not believe in terrifying his subordinates anymore, when he still believes that nobody has any reliable kindness or loyalty? It’s cynicism as much as anger that inspires rule-by-fear, and Quirrellmort has full cynicism.
Of those four, my bet is on Horcrux!Harry, but even that doesn’t quite make sense to me. Why’d you change, Quirrellmort?
You’re forgetting that Tom Riddle actually did study at the monastery before he destroyed it to deny that training to his enemies.
Voldemort is especially violent and comes off as stupid, but he’s just one of Tom Riddle’s characters, and if you consider their actions as a whole they’re smarter than they appear, on purpose.
There is a classic trick that card counting teams use to avoid detection. If one person shows up, and bets conservatively until the cards are in their favor, and then immediately starts making huge bets, then it is obvious that they are a card counter and the casino can throw them out. But, if that one person betting conservatively simply leaves the table once he thinks the deck is in his favor, and then someone else comes in wearing a loud Hawaiian shirt and acting like a “wild and crazy” risk-lover, then it just looks like someone risk-averse has been replaced with someone risk loving, and neither looks like they’re counting cards.
You’re forgetting that Tom Riddle actually did study at the monastery before he destroyed it to deny that training to his enemies.
Do we know this? If I recall correctly, all we know is that Quirrelmort says that Quirrel learned there and Voldemort didn’t. So as far as I can tell it’s an open question whether it was pre-possessed Quirrel who studied there, or Voldemort (or neither).
Hypothesis 1: Voldemort both stupidly destroyed a school (instead of coming back later in disguise to learn the martial art) and stupidly allowed the tale to spread (letting people know he neither knew the martial art nor was able to control his temper).
Hypothesis 2: Voldemort was smart enough to learn the martial art from the school, combined vengeance for the humiliation he experienced with sound strategy in destroying it afterwards, and then spread misinformation to his enemies that would cause them to underestimate both his abilities and his self-control.
You can construct intermediate hypotheses, but #2 sounds a lot more like MoR!Voldemort to me than #1.
I think you’re right that Hypothesis 2 is more likely than H1. However, both assume that some tale (true or false) about Voldemort visiting the school has been circulated in wizard Britain. But as far as we know, that tale is told for the first time in Quirrell’s class. As always, Quirrell is our only source:
“The Dark Lord was foolish to wish that story retold. It did not show his strength, but rather an exploitable weakness” (ch 19).
Of course, if this is the first time the story is told, people may wonder how Quirrell knows. But this is the same chapter in which Quirrell rather blatantly lies and claims to have been a Slytherin, when he (Quirrell, not Voldemort) in fact wasn’t.
Yes, that’s one of the intermediate hypotheses. Call it 1.5 --
Hypothesis 1.5: Voldemort stupidly destroyed a school (instead of coming back later in disguise to learn the martial art), but was smart enough to not spread the tale. Then as Quirrel, he spread misinformation to his enemies that would cause them to underestimate both Voldemort’s abilities (now that he’s learned the martial art from Quirrel) and his self-control (Quirrelmort having more than the old Voldemort).
It works with what we “know”, but still seems to me to be too Canon!Voldemort and not enough MoR!Voldemort for my taste.
“Indeed,” said Professor Quirrell. “So while there’s no point in asking any of you, it would not surprise me in the slightest if there were a student or two in my classes who harbored ambitions of being the next Dark Lord. After all, I wanted to be the next Dark Lord when I was a young Slytherin” (ch 19).
But during the interrogation we get this:
After some further leafing through parchments, carried out in silence, the Auror spoke again. “Born the 26th of September, 1955, to Quondia Quirrell, of an acknowledged tryst with Lirinus Lumblung...” intoned the Auror. “Sorted into Ravenclaw… (ch 79)
I think JoshuaZ meant we don’t know for sure that Scrimgeour wasn’t lying to trip Quirrell up, the way he did with the Fuyuki thing. (The fact that canonically Quirrell was in Ravenclaw argues against this, but it doesn’t seem a sure thing.)
I think that’s fully compatible with either possibility. If Voldemort studied there, then he would have reason to destroy it; to not “leave the source of his power lying around”. But if, on the other hand, he didn’t study there (because he was refused), then he would again have a reason to not leave a source of power lying around. (If I can’t have it, no one can.)
Well, I suppose the other alternative is of course that Quirrel madethe whole thing up. But if he was telling the truth I don’t see any other explanation that makes much sense.
Quirrell and Voldemort are personas designed to play different roles. You are looking for different urges, but there are instead different purposes behind these roles, that call for different behaviors, with any urges controlled too reliably to manifest if contrary to the purpose.
Ch. 79 (Dumbledore):
But Voldemort was more Slytherin than Salazar, grasping at every opportunity.
Ch. 61 (Dumbledore):
It is too clever and too impossible, which was ever Voldemort’s signature since the days he was known as Tom Riddle. Anyone who wished to forge that signature must needs be as cunning as Voldemort himself to do so.
Ch. 63 (Quirrell):
To an actor or spy or politician, the limit of his own diameter is the limit of who he can pretend to be, the limit of which face he may wear as a mask. But for such as you and I, anyone we can imagine, we can be, in reality and not pretense.
Quirrell is not Voldemort, Quirrell is Riddle, just as Voldemort is Riddle.
The simplest reason is that Quirrelmort is simply not in a position to indulge any sadistic impulses the way Voldemort was. He spends hours each day conked out completely, and he has no powerbase to retreat to. Overt malice of the kind Voldemort practiced would very rapidly earn him an adavra.
There are quite a few other possible reasons—for one thing, Tom Riddle is not running on the same wetware anymore, and his original brain might have been miswired in a way that did not carry over, or heck, the original Quirrel could have been very calm and unflappable, so now Quirrelmort just cannot get a good temper tantrum going no matter how hard he tries.
True, he doesn’t have the power base to openly attack anyone and everyone in the wizarding world. But Quirrell is a wizard with power dwarfing all others except Dumbledore. He could indulge as much sadism as he wants on random people in spots across the globe. If he has the appetite, he could do it.
And with obliviate, he could probably arrange to have Minerva as his sex slave with minimal risk.
Mostly true. The bayesian evidence from that is weak. However, I do think that if he did do this sort of thing, he would be less likely to raise the topic in the first place. Well, unless he’s playing one level above me, in which case it would point in the direction of guilt, or he is just messing with my brain, Arrggghhhh!!
Anyway, it doesn’t seem to fit Professor Quirrell style. (Though like Harry, I am beginning to wonder if this whole “style” business mean anything.)
I like the idea that “Voldemort” was very consciously a role; that fits the Occlumens speech Quirrell gives to Harry.
But still, which is more plausible? That Voldemort’s violence was an optimal choice for the situation? Or that Voldemort was stupidly violent?
Quirrell uses the monastery story to argue Voldemort was stupidly violent, which at minimum implies Voldemort had a reputation consistent with stupid levels of violence. Dementor!Harry, which I read as a representation of Voldemort, thinks
The response to annoyance was killing.
which is about as stupidly violent as it gets.
Let’s put it this way: if Voldemort’s violence level was rationally chosen, the author’s worked really hard to disguise that fact.
The chapter emphasizes that it’s a separate personality system that’s running Harry at that point (which doesn’t prove it’s Voldemort, but is suggestive). E.g.:
that’s not Harry--
You know. About his dark side.
Although it’s not absolutely definitive; Dumbledore’s line in reply is
But this is beyond even that.
which argues for “he’s damaged” as you suggest rather than “he’s alien [and Voldemort]” as I’m suggesting.
Probably not optimal if he could go back and redo from start. But sometimes “good enough” is good enough. Shifting tactics in the middle of a war, to the extent of completely changing your public persona, when a lot of the loyalty of your followers (and the fear that keeps bystanders uninvolved) depends intimately on your existing persona, would not be easy at all.
Because he failed as Voldemort, updated his model of the world, and is trying a different approach as Quirrell.
It seems to me this is the point of the monastery story: being gratuitously violent may have earned Voldemort status, but it did not get him what he actually wanted. MoR!Voldemort is more rational than canon!Voldemort, so he noticed this fact.
He failed due to whatever happened ten years ago with Harry. We don’t even have a good theory yet, IMO, of what that was (and the canon options are misleading).
Apart from that—a day before that—he had not failed at all. His old-style abusive tactics were keeping the Death Eaters in line and were successfully terrorizing the populace, and he was winning the war using those tactics.
However, those tactics may be inappropriate to his current position as Quirrel, because he doesn’t have any real minions or subordinates, just a few people he manipulates without their knowledge.
4: Maybe Quirrellmort doesn’t have Voldemort’s abusive impulses, because Horcrux!Harry is holding onto them.
I was thinking the same thing. It goes with the “make Harry the Dark Lord and then upload into him” theory. I’d spin it a little differently, though. It’s not that he just tortures for fun, but that he is completely indifferent to the suffering of others. So torture is useful if it serves a witty joke, or gains him a nickel. It goes with Harry’s intent to kill, and his “Heroic” consequentialist morality. His job is to “get the job done”. Also, the demented Harry wasn’t proposing to torture people for the glee of their pain, he was just proposing that the death of the annoyers would “get the job done” in removing annoyances.
It’s unclear to me that any of the stories of Voldemort’s “surplus evil”, reveling in sadism, are necessarily true. They all happened offstage. Further, it’s unclear that he was even totally indifferent to the suffering he caused. Just as I think Dumbledore took “credit” for burning Narcissa to seem more ruthless to his enemies, might not Voldemort have done similarly all along, to spread terror? That he was quite ruthless in waging war, I have little doubt. But the reports of surplus evil are just stories. Did Draco actually see Voldemort have Bellatrix crucio herself? Did anyone? Did Voldemort actually kill the dojo? How did they verify that the skin on the wall was actually of that guy? Even if it was, how does anyone know what order the skinning and killing took place in? Do we even know that the snake in the chamber of secrets is dead?
So maybe Voldemort hasn’t changed at all as Quirrell.
Whether it’s Lucius, Malfoy, or Voldemort, EY doesn’t seem to deal in black and white. For any human, he doesn’t. For Death, yes, but humans, no. No one is the bad guy in their own story.
Quirrell asserts Voldemort slaughtered an entire monastery rather than simply impersonate an appropriate student.
I think we were supposed to read that as:
Riddle attended as an appropriate student, and then came back as Voldemort to indulge in some fun retribution (and possibly to keep others from learning his secrets)
Why is everyone 100% convinced that Voldemort is Quirrell?
In my read through I would have given that outcome a very low probability because it seems too obvious and the authour explicitly makes fun of it in one of the first few chapters.
The trick is to ignore personality. Never mind how calm or mean someone seems. Just ask: which characters show actions and knowledge that are distinctive to Voldemort?
In canon, Quirrell could not touch Harry because he was Voldemort. In the fic, Harry and Quirrell also cannot touch.
In canon, a Horcruxed object becomes especially long-lived and durable, and the maker of the Horcrux tries to hide it or get it out of others’ reach. In the fic, Quirrell tells Harry he enchanted the Voyager 2 space probe to make it super-durable, and talks to Harry about where to lose objects so they’d never be found.
Voldemort knew how he behaved with Bellatrix Black, and is almost the only person with strong reason to rescue her. Quirrell knows and tells Harry how to behave with Bellatrix Black, and persuades Harry to rescue her.
Dumbledore identifies the Bellatrix rescue as bearing the style of Voldemort. Quirrell designed the Bellatrix rescue.
Dumbledore identifies the Hermione frame as having been done by Voldemort. Quirrell was the one who found the bodies, and is the only wizard in Hogwarts we know to be a post-Voldemort newcomer to Dumbledore’s acquaintance.
“Quirrell” admits to the interrogating Auror that he is an imposter.
It’s easy to miss because we don’t think that a personality like Voldemort could turn so calm and un-sadistic as Quirrell. In fact that’s the whole background to my post above—that it’s weird how much MoR!Quirrell’s leadership style differs from MoR!Voldemort’s. How could be so dumb in the past and so clearheaded now?
But once you allow for the possibility of a personality change, or an incredible Occlumens-style personality disguise, Quirrell is the overwhelming candidate. Just watch knowledge and action, not attitude.
If X happened, then X must have deserved to happen. In this case, if Voldemort failed, then our bias is to assume all Voldemort’s choices must have been bad ones, and all of Voldemort’s enemies’ choices must have been good ones.
However, this is complicated when looking at a deliberately told story, because storytellers choose stories for being what they feel are representative cases of true things. In other words, just as there’s a difference between you picking a card at random and me choosing a card and handing it to you, there’s a difference between you looking at a random failed politician, and me choosing to tell you a story about a particular failed politician.
Thus, the original Harry Potter story represents Rowling’s views about what matters, not a random selection from actual events, and so too HPMOR represents EY’s views about what matters, not a random variation on the original story.
None of which means hindsight bias isn’t an issue—but the storyteller’s bias, or accurate judgment, is also an issue.
In this case, peculiarly, hindsight bias might be more likely than average, because the author of the story is trying to illustrate the challenges and methods of being rational.
I thought hindsight bias was specifically about believing something was higher probability than it really was simply because it did in fact happen.
I suppose what I mean is the collection of biases which causes people to choose interpretations of their past actions that reflecting favorably upon them.
I don’t think HPMOR!Quirrell is Voldemort. canon!Quirrell has Voldemort’s face on the back of his head (concealed by a turban). HPMOR!Quirrell does not. His head is visibly bare, although I recall there’s something a bit odd about the appearance of the back of his head, perhaps as if something had been removed. This has to be a sign of something. I’m guessing that Quirrell does have or has had a piece of Voldemort in him, but it’s read-only, not executable. Quirrell is in charge of himself, and is on the side of light, but his exposure to Voldemort’s innermost thoughts and memories has given him a coldly accurate appreciation of what actually works.
Warning: this is supposed to be a secret. (Check the rot13 rules in the body of the post.) Only click if you’re sure you want to know: jung gur nhgube fnvq ba gur znggre.
I wasn’t aware of that, so I’ll just say that my own speculation, whether right or wrong, was based on nothing more than the text so far. Quirrell must have some sort of relationship with Voldemort, but doesn’t have V’s face attached, and appears to be intimately acquainted with evil but does not actually do evil things (suspending judgement for the moment on the matter of extracting Bellatrix).
The monastery, Bellatrix, and Dementor!Harry evidences of Voldemort’s violent behavior cited above are original creations in HPMOR. HPMOR doesn’t just ignore canon!Voldemort’s punishment fixation; it reaffirms it.
Quirrell had older students beat up Voldemort’s enemy during class. He squashed a reporter who mildly annoyed him, cast the Killing Curse at an Auror and probably arranged to put Hermione in danger of Azkaban.
Now if Voldemort were supposed to be stupid, this would still represent a change. But all of his most competent opponents say the opposite, that he seemed frighteningly intelligent. And all the old instances of violence, IIRC, served a forward-thinking purpose in addition to hurting people. (At least if you accept my interpretation of the way he treated Bella.)
Why is HPMOR’s Quirrellmort so much less violent than HPMOR’s Voldemort?
HPMOR paints a Voldemort fixated on punishing his inferiors, a Voldemort who never used persuasion or inspiration when he could rely on suffering.
Voldemort amused himself by inducing in Bellatrix a love so knowingly one-sided that it was not a happy thought for her.
Quirrell asserts Voldemort slaughtered an entire monastery rather than simply impersonate an appropriate student.
Voldemort’s rule was so coercive and terrorizing that Lucius Malfoy finds it best to claim he was not merely deceived or misled but forced to obey him.
If Harry’s “dark” thoughts under the Dementor’s influence represent Voldemort’s mind accurately, Voldemort’s reflex inclination was to punish or kill anyone who didn’t slavishly obey.
Yet Quirrellmort, for all that he talks cynically and is prepared to kill or memory-charm, prefers not to punish when he can benignly persuade or inspire.
Quirrell is verbally much less insulting than an army drill sergeant, let alone how Snape treated students.
The “Quirrell point” system is all about achieving rewards, not avoiding punishments.
Quirrell’s entire plan revolves around patient impersonation and feigned subordination—the kind of behavior that the old Voldemort allegedly refused at the monastery.
Quirrell is explicitly disapproving about the old Voldemort’s approach to persuasion.
We’ve been in Quirrell’s head when Harry and Dumbledore weren’t around, yet his violent acts have always been to “eliminate my enemy”, not to “instill fear of me in my intended lackey.” The author’s had 70+ chapters to show Quirrell or even H+C tormenting a hireling of his with no one else around, and neither has done so.
In HPMOR, Voldemort was grandiose, cynical, and punitive. Quirrellmort is grandiose, cynical, but not punitive. We see him kill to remove danger, but we don’t see him torment to instill subordinates’ fear of him. Why the change? Options:
1: Maybe Quirrellmort is still as punishment-oriented as old Voldemort, but the author doesn’t want to show us that ugly side of him quite yet. But if Quirrell doesn’t deserve our sympathy, isn’t it a good idea to make us lose it? Or if the author wants to hold off on admitting Quirrell is Voldemort until the last moment, why not have H+C be the punisher instead of Quirrell?
2: Maybe Voldemort had bad publicity; he was ruthless with enemies, but it’s only propaganda that he abused his own people. But Bella and Dementor!Harry are both private evidence that Voldemort was abusive.
3: Maybe Quirrellmort has realized the practical downsides of being punitive with those under your authority, and no longer uses those tactics. But if he could figure he was wrong about such a huge part of his leadership style, why is he so deaf to all the other ways he could be wrong about what to expect from people? Where did that open-mindedness go?
4: Maybe Quirrellmort doesn’t have Voldemort’s abusive impulses, because Horcrux!Harry is holding onto them. But why would Quirrellmort not believe in terrifying his subordinates anymore, when he still believes that nobody has any reliable kindness or loyalty? It’s cynicism as much as anger that inspires rule-by-fear, and Quirrellmort has full cynicism.
Of those four, my bet is on Horcrux!Harry, but even that doesn’t quite make sense to me. Why’d you change, Quirrellmort?
You’re forgetting that Tom Riddle actually did study at the monastery before he destroyed it to deny that training to his enemies.
Voldemort is especially violent and comes off as stupid, but he’s just one of Tom Riddle’s characters, and if you consider their actions as a whole they’re smarter than they appear, on purpose.
There is a classic trick that card counting teams use to avoid detection. If one person shows up, and bets conservatively until the cards are in their favor, and then immediately starts making huge bets, then it is obvious that they are a card counter and the casino can throw them out. But, if that one person betting conservatively simply leaves the table once he thinks the deck is in his favor, and then someone else comes in wearing a loud Hawaiian shirt and acting like a “wild and crazy” risk-lover, then it just looks like someone risk-averse has been replaced with someone risk loving, and neither looks like they’re counting cards.
Do we have any way of knowing if that story told by Quirrell was true?
Do we know this? If I recall correctly, all we know is that Quirrelmort says that Quirrel learned there and Voldemort didn’t. So as far as I can tell it’s an open question whether it was pre-possessed Quirrel who studied there, or Voldemort (or neither).
Hypothesis 1: Voldemort both stupidly destroyed a school (instead of coming back later in disguise to learn the martial art) and stupidly allowed the tale to spread (letting people know he neither knew the martial art nor was able to control his temper).
Hypothesis 2: Voldemort was smart enough to learn the martial art from the school, combined vengeance for the humiliation he experienced with sound strategy in destroying it afterwards, and then spread misinformation to his enemies that would cause them to underestimate both his abilities and his self-control.
You can construct intermediate hypotheses, but #2 sounds a lot more like MoR!Voldemort to me than #1.
I think you’re right that Hypothesis 2 is more likely than H1. However, both assume that some tale (true or false) about Voldemort visiting the school has been circulated in wizard Britain. But as far as we know, that tale is told for the first time in Quirrell’s class. As always, Quirrell is our only source:
Of course, if this is the first time the story is told, people may wonder how Quirrell knows. But this is the same chapter in which Quirrell rather blatantly lies and claims to have been a Slytherin, when he (Quirrell, not Voldemort) in fact wasn’t.
Yes, that’s one of the intermediate hypotheses. Call it 1.5 --
Hypothesis 1.5: Voldemort stupidly destroyed a school (instead of coming back later in disguise to learn the martial art), but was smart enough to not spread the tale. Then as Quirrel, he spread misinformation to his enemies that would cause them to underestimate both Voldemort’s abilities (now that he’s learned the martial art from Quirrel) and his self-control (Quirrelmort having more than the old Voldemort).
It works with what we “know”, but still seems to me to be too Canon!Voldemort and not enough MoR!Voldemort for my taste.
Sorry, how do we know this?
This came up in one of the previous threads:
But during the interrogation we get this:
I think JoshuaZ meant we don’t know for sure that Scrimgeour wasn’t lying to trip Quirrell up, the way he did with the Fuyuki thing. (The fact that canonically Quirrell was in Ravenclaw argues against this, but it doesn’t seem a sure thing.)
I’ll go with Quirrellmort forgot he was supposed to be Quirrell for a second, and instead was just being honest.
My first thought when reading that was that they were simply falsified records.
Implied in Chapter 49, Prior Information, when Harry and Quirrell are discussing Slytherin’s monster:
I think that’s fully compatible with either possibility. If Voldemort studied there, then he would have reason to destroy it; to not “leave the source of his power lying around”. But if, on the other hand, he didn’t study there (because he was refused), then he would again have a reason to not leave a source of power lying around. (If I can’t have it, no one can.)
The other hint is that
Well, I suppose the other alternative is of course that Quirrel madethe whole thing up. But if he was telling the truth I don’t see any other explanation that makes much sense.
Quirrell and Voldemort are personas designed to play different roles. You are looking for different urges, but there are instead different purposes behind these roles, that call for different behaviors, with any urges controlled too reliably to manifest if contrary to the purpose.
Ch. 79 (Dumbledore):
Ch. 61 (Dumbledore):
Ch. 63 (Quirrell):
Quirrell is not Voldemort, Quirrell is Riddle, just as Voldemort is Riddle.
The simplest reason is that Quirrelmort is simply not in a position to indulge any sadistic impulses the way Voldemort was. He spends hours each day conked out completely, and he has no powerbase to retreat to. Overt malice of the kind Voldemort practiced would very rapidly earn him an adavra. There are quite a few other possible reasons—for one thing, Tom Riddle is not running on the same wetware anymore, and his original brain might have been miswired in a way that did not carry over, or heck, the original Quirrel could have been very calm and unflappable, so now Quirrelmort just cannot get a good temper tantrum going no matter how hard he tries.
True, he doesn’t have the power base to openly attack anyone and everyone in the wizarding world. But Quirrell is a wizard with power dwarfing all others except Dumbledore. He could indulge as much sadism as he wants on random people in spots across the globe. If he has the appetite, he could do it.
And with obliviate, he could probably arrange to have Minerva as his sex slave with minimal risk.
(Chapter 70)
Well, that’s what he would say either way, isn’t it? (Not that I believe he would, the motive seems too human, but it’s the principle of the thing.)
Mostly true. The bayesian evidence from that is weak. However, I do think that if he did do this sort of thing, he would be less likely to raise the topic in the first place. Well, unless he’s playing one level above me, in which case it would point in the direction of guilt, or he is just messing with my brain, Arrggghhhh!!
Anyway, it doesn’t seem to fit Professor Quirrell style. (Though like Harry, I am beginning to wonder if this whole “style” business mean anything.)
I like the idea that “Voldemort” was very consciously a role; that fits the Occlumens speech Quirrell gives to Harry.
But still, which is more plausible? That Voldemort’s violence was an optimal choice for the situation? Or that Voldemort was stupidly violent?
Quirrell uses the monastery story to argue Voldemort was stupidly violent, which at minimum implies Voldemort had a reputation consistent with stupid levels of violence. Dementor!Harry, which I read as a representation of Voldemort, thinks
which is about as stupidly violent as it gets.
Let’s put it this way: if Voldemort’s violence level was rationally chosen, the author’s worked really hard to disguise that fact.
I believe Dementor!Harry was just damaged by the Dementor, producing both grotesquely negative motivations and poor impulse control.
The chapter emphasizes that it’s a separate personality system that’s running Harry at that point (which doesn’t prove it’s Voldemort, but is suggestive). E.g.:
Although it’s not absolutely definitive; Dumbledore’s line in reply is
which argues for “he’s damaged” as you suggest rather than “he’s alien [and Voldemort]” as I’m suggesting.
Look at results, though. Until whatever it was happened ten years ago, Voldemort was winning the war with those tactics.
Modulo Harry, those tactics were good enough – no doubt about that. But were they optimal?
Probably not optimal if he could go back and redo from start. But sometimes “good enough” is good enough. Shifting tactics in the middle of a war, to the extent of completely changing your public persona, when a lot of the loyalty of your followers (and the fear that keeps bystanders uninvolved) depends intimately on your existing persona, would not be easy at all.
Because he failed as Voldemort, updated his model of the world, and is trying a different approach as Quirrell.
It seems to me this is the point of the monastery story: being gratuitously violent may have earned Voldemort status, but it did not get him what he actually wanted. MoR!Voldemort is more rational than canon!Voldemort, so he noticed this fact.
He failed due to whatever happened ten years ago with Harry. We don’t even have a good theory yet, IMO, of what that was (and the canon options are misleading).
Apart from that—a day before that—he had not failed at all. His old-style abusive tactics were keeping the Death Eaters in line and were successfully terrorizing the populace, and he was winning the war using those tactics.
However, those tactics may be inappropriate to his current position as Quirrel, because he doesn’t have any real minions or subordinates, just a few people he manipulates without their knowledge.
Did he fail or, on learning of the prophecy, pretend to lose?
I was thinking the same thing. It goes with the “make Harry the Dark Lord and then upload into him” theory. I’d spin it a little differently, though. It’s not that he just tortures for fun, but that he is completely indifferent to the suffering of others. So torture is useful if it serves a witty joke, or gains him a nickel. It goes with Harry’s intent to kill, and his “Heroic” consequentialist morality. His job is to “get the job done”. Also, the demented Harry wasn’t proposing to torture people for the glee of their pain, he was just proposing that the death of the annoyers would “get the job done” in removing annoyances.
It’s unclear to me that any of the stories of Voldemort’s “surplus evil”, reveling in sadism, are necessarily true. They all happened offstage. Further, it’s unclear that he was even totally indifferent to the suffering he caused. Just as I think Dumbledore took “credit” for burning Narcissa to seem more ruthless to his enemies, might not Voldemort have done similarly all along, to spread terror? That he was quite ruthless in waging war, I have little doubt. But the reports of surplus evil are just stories. Did Draco actually see Voldemort have Bellatrix crucio herself? Did anyone? Did Voldemort actually kill the dojo? How did they verify that the skin on the wall was actually of that guy? Even if it was, how does anyone know what order the skinning and killing took place in? Do we even know that the snake in the chamber of secrets is dead?
So maybe Voldemort hasn’t changed at all as Quirrell.
Whether it’s Lucius, Malfoy, or Voldemort, EY doesn’t seem to deal in black and white. For any human, he doesn’t. For Death, yes, but humans, no. No one is the bad guy in their own story.
What Vladimir_Nesov said. Notably:
I think we were supposed to read that as:
Riddle attended as an appropriate student, and then came back as Voldemort to indulge in some fun retribution (and possibly to keep others from learning his secrets)
Why is everyone 100% convinced that Voldemort is Quirrell?
In my read through I would have given that outcome a very low probability because it seems too obvious and the authour explicitly makes fun of it in one of the first few chapters.
The trick is to ignore personality. Never mind how calm or mean someone seems. Just ask: which characters show actions and knowledge that are distinctive to Voldemort?
In canon, Quirrell could not touch Harry because he was Voldemort. In the fic, Harry and Quirrell also cannot touch.
In canon, a Horcruxed object becomes especially long-lived and durable, and the maker of the Horcrux tries to hide it or get it out of others’ reach. In the fic, Quirrell tells Harry he enchanted the Voyager 2 space probe to make it super-durable, and talks to Harry about where to lose objects so they’d never be found.
Voldemort knew how he behaved with Bellatrix Black, and is almost the only person with strong reason to rescue her. Quirrell knows and tells Harry how to behave with Bellatrix Black, and persuades Harry to rescue her.
Dumbledore identifies the Bellatrix rescue as bearing the style of Voldemort. Quirrell designed the Bellatrix rescue.
Dumbledore identifies the Hermione frame as having been done by Voldemort. Quirrell was the one who found the bodies, and is the only wizard in Hogwarts we know to be a post-Voldemort newcomer to Dumbledore’s acquaintance.
“Quirrell” admits to the interrogating Auror that he is an imposter.
It’s easy to miss because we don’t think that a personality like Voldemort could turn so calm and un-sadistic as Quirrell. In fact that’s the whole background to my post above—that it’s weird how much MoR!Quirrell’s leadership style differs from MoR!Voldemort’s. How could be so dumb in the past and so clearheaded now?
But once you allow for the possibility of a personality change, or an incredible Occlumens-style personality disguise, Quirrell is the overwhelming candidate. Just watch knowledge and action, not attitude.
past voldemort seeming dumb should also clearly be at least partially the effect of the winner’s narrative. (is there some name for this?)
Hindsight bias.
If X happened, then X must have deserved to happen. In this case, if Voldemort failed, then our bias is to assume all Voldemort’s choices must have been bad ones, and all of Voldemort’s enemies’ choices must have been good ones.
However, this is complicated when looking at a deliberately told story, because storytellers choose stories for being what they feel are representative cases of true things. In other words, just as there’s a difference between you picking a card at random and me choosing a card and handing it to you, there’s a difference between you looking at a random failed politician, and me choosing to tell you a story about a particular failed politician.
Thus, the original Harry Potter story represents Rowling’s views about what matters, not a random selection from actual events, and so too HPMOR represents EY’s views about what matters, not a random variation on the original story.
None of which means hindsight bias isn’t an issue—but the storyteller’s bias, or accurate judgment, is also an issue.
In this case, peculiarly, hindsight bias might be more likely than average, because the author of the story is trying to illustrate the challenges and methods of being rational.
I thought hindsight bias was specifically about believing something was higher probability than it really was simply because it did in fact happen.
I suppose what I mean is the collection of biases which causes people to choose interpretations of their past actions that reflecting favorably upon them.
Naq gurer’f gur snpg gung Ryvrmre fnlf fb. (Edit: as pedanterrific says below.)
The answer to this question is a secret, don’t decode unless you’re sure you want to know:
Gur nhgube fnvq fb.
I don’t think HPMOR!Quirrell is Voldemort. canon!Quirrell has Voldemort’s face on the back of his head (concealed by a turban). HPMOR!Quirrell does not. His head is visibly bare, although I recall there’s something a bit odd about the appearance of the back of his head, perhaps as if something had been removed. This has to be a sign of something. I’m guessing that Quirrell does have or has had a piece of Voldemort in him, but it’s read-only, not executable. Quirrell is in charge of himself, and is on the side of light, but his exposure to Voldemort’s innermost thoughts and memories has given him a coldly accurate appreciation of what actually works.
You know the facts now, of course, but your idea is still a good one and doesn’t deserve a negative karma score. Upvoted.
EY himself already said as much in the notes, so I think this topic is settled.
Can someone quote what EY has said on this matter? There are some conflicting interpretations going.
Warning: this is supposed to be a secret. (Check the rot13 rules in the body of the post.) Only click if you’re sure you want to know: jung gur nhgube fnvq ba gur znggre.
I wasn’t aware of that, so I’ll just say that my own speculation, whether right or wrong, was based on nothing more than the text so far. Quirrell must have some sort of relationship with Voldemort, but doesn’t have V’s face attached, and appears to be intimately acquainted with evil but does not actually do evil things (suspending judgement for the moment on the matter of extracting Bellatrix).
Or maybe it’s just a departure from the original story? This Voldemort doesn’t have much in common with the canon one.
The monastery, Bellatrix, and Dementor!Harry evidences of Voldemort’s violent behavior cited above are original creations in HPMOR. HPMOR doesn’t just ignore canon!Voldemort’s punishment fixation; it reaffirms it.
There should be a reason.
Quirrell had older students beat up Voldemort’s enemy during class. He squashed a reporter who mildly annoyed him, cast the Killing Curse at an Auror and probably arranged to put Hermione in danger of Azkaban.
Now if Voldemort were supposed to be stupid, this would still represent a change. But all of his most competent opponents say the opposite, that he seemed frighteningly intelligent. And all the old instances of violence, IIRC, served a forward-thinking purpose in addition to hurting people. (At least if you accept my interpretation of the way he treated Bella.)
Rita probably felt terror and was anguished before Quirrell crushed her.
Harry was not only beaten, but made to believe that he deserved to be beaten, that he needed it.
Maybe Riddle just got subtle.