Let me set the stage first. For a bare minimum solution Hermoine has to be proven innocent so she can return to school without someone trying to kill her to score points for Malfoy. For an optimal solution Harry teaches his enemies that poking him with a stick is very dangerous, and manages to turn this to his advantage by harming an enemy. But in no way is any solution good enough if it doesn’t end up with Hermoine proven innocent to the world.
He has a time-turner, an invisibility cloak, possibly the blood debts of everyone who claimed to be imperiused, possibly the wands as evidence, a very analytical mind that is currently very open to ‘dark’ ideas, and multiple people of different skills/motivations that he can coerce or get to help him.
Lord Jugson is someone that really doesn’t seem to have much a point in the story so far. It makes the most sense to me as someone who is being built up just to be the scapegoat. “”It would be justice for his past crimes, and I’d only do it if Jugson made the first move. The point isn’t to make people scared of me as a wild card, after all. It’s to teach them that neutrals are perfectly safe from me, and poking me with a stick is incredibly dangerous.””
Also, The boy smiled, now with a touch of coldness again. “Okay, I’ll figure out some way to set it up so that it looks like Lord Jugson betrayed his own side.”
A big gaping hole like introducing the wands for evidence is far too obvious for Harry to pretend it doesn’t exist anymore, so that is avenue worth approaching. However Cloak and Hat is far too clever to have forgotten to doctor the wands, unless he deliberately wanted the wands to prove. It would also be just like Harry to use the enemies tactics against them, and so the idea of thwarting an evil plot based on false memory charms by using false memory charms to thwart it would be appealing.
For an optimal solution Harry teaches his enemies that poking him with a stick is very dangerous, and manages to turn this to his advantage by harming an enemy.
I’d just like to note that even then, Harry comes out the loser from this whole chain of events. Most importantly, he loses Draco as an ally, and suffers from knowing he hurt Draco’s relationship with this father. Less importantly, Hermione has been psychologically hurt (I’d say traumatized), and won’t get any personal redress. Finally, if Harry sets someone else up, he will lose the ability to expose the true culprit in the future, if he learns who that was, and so loses a powerful avenue of action against that culprit. The true culprit (or someone else) may even find proof of Harry framing Jugson, and then blackmail Harry with that proof.
The only way Harry could come out genuinely ahead is if he found and exposed the culprit, rather than frame a random enemy. Including scenarios where he could delay Hermione’s punishment, or cancel it using blood debts, so that he’d gain time to search out the real culprit.
I believe a major psychological reason for people proposing so many theories for Harry’s solution, some of them very impractical, is that they have an “intent to kill”; they don’t want to propose a solution that settles for second best, like yours. They want Harry to win.
Go ahead and read the rest of my plot, I would say Harry has the best possible win here beyond overthrowing the entire ministry and remaking the government in his image. At least from Harry’s perspective since he doesn’t know that the real best win would be exposing and vanquishing Quirrelmort.
I’m not saying your plot is bad, it might be the best possible. (Well, I personally don’t think so, but I’m not arguing for or against it in this comment.) I’m just pointing out why I think people try so hard to come up with plots that are wildly more improbable than even yours, but have better endings.
You know, if Pringlescan had just put “frame Lord Jugson” a confidence of ninety percent would still be excessive, but it wouldn’t be nearly as ridiculous as it currently is.
With a plan this complex there are many variables, so I just filled in my favorite guesses such as the person being framed, the order, etc.
Harry realizes the plan in that moment of desperation then gets the vote stopped to admit new evidence. He then presents to the court the testimony of George and Fred Weasley who say that during the night of the attempted murder they were out of their bed pulling a prank, when they saw Lord Jugson entering the Trophy room. They thought it was strange but since they were out of bed pulling a prank they didn’t want to tell anyone, until they realized that morning it could be connected. They then went straight to a Professor who brought them to the Wizengamot, and they repeat their testimony under veritaserum.
Lord Jugson claims they were false memory charmed, but Harry responds to this by saying that if you are so confident of it why not let us examine the last spells cast on your wand, and that of Hermoine’s and Draco’s? After all you have nothing to hide. Lord Jugson agrees and hands over his wand, and then priori incantum reveals to his shock that his wand has been used recently to do the imperius, obliviate and the false memory charm. Hermoine’s wand has been faked to use the Blood Chilling charm but Draco’s has no evidence of a duel past the army fight on it at all.
Harry explains that Lord Jugson in a fit of rage at Draco for losing to a mudblood and Hermoine for beating him made a plot to punish them both after the army fight. He disappeared after the fight, and remained in Hogwarts to imperius Draco to challenge Hermoine to a duel at midnight. Then he either simply stayed in Hogwarts until midnight, used a secret passage or apparated outside the wards and flew in a broomstick, or used the floo network to enter Hogwarts right before midnight. He made his way to the trophy room, stunned Draco and Hermoine as they entered, disillusioned them all, and took them outside of the wards of Hogwarts to do the obliviation and false memory charms returning them after the deed was done. Lord Jugson won’t have an alibi for the hours of 11:30 to 12:30 as everyone in his household would be asleep at the time.
He used Hermoine’s wand to cast spells simulating a duel followed by the blood chilling charm figuring that when Draco died he could prompt an investigation into her which would reveal the evidence on her wand combined with veritaserum to convict her. He obliviated Draco and false memory charmed him as well just in case Draco was discovered, but he didn’t bother to tamper with Draco’s wand figuring no one would have a reason to investigate it, and the wands show this.
Harry further explains that Lord Jugson decided that Draco had become too friendly to mudbloods and was no longer fit to be a leader of the blood purists. By killing him after his public showdown with Hermoine he could get rid of Draco, Hermoine AND set his own son up to assume leadership of the blood purists now that the Malfoy’s had no heir. After the plot ended he obliviated himself (if he isn’t an occlumens) to safely hide the plot forever. Lord Jugson is sentenced to Azkhaban, by Harry invoking Lord Malfoy’s blood debt to Harry to decide the sentencing, Hermoine is freed and the blood purists lose face politically for wanting to kill an innocent girl.
Basically the short answer is Harry used the time turner, invisibility cloak, and Quirrel to fake all of the evidence.
The long answer is, Harry waits until the end of the trial, goes back in time to the start of the trial and steals Lord Jugson’s wand out of his pocket. He then heads over to the magical law enforcement department in the Ministry which is of course around the wizengamot. Harry knows that Quirrel is probably being held there for questioning since he didn’t return to Hogwarts. Harry then steals the wand of Hermoine and Draco out of custody (or possibly heads over to St. Mungos to get Draco’s wand from him there if it is there instead) and then finds Quirrell.
Using the invisiblity cloak and the time turner Harry goes back in time further with the defense professor tampers with all the wands to fake the spells properly either by using some spell, or just brute force recasting all the spells in its history far enough back that the tampering can’t be detected. Harry then gets Fred and George to volunteer to be false memory charmed with the memory of Lord Jugson entering the Trophy room, and obliviated of the memory of volunteering. He then puppet masters it so that whichever Professor brings them to the trial shows up at exactly the right time. The defense professor returns him to the ministry, he replaces the wands of everyone involved a split second after they are taken in the first place and replaces the first Harry seconds after he goes back the first time.
Okay now some criticisms I have of my plan is that its hard to imagine why Lord Jugson wouldn’t remain disillusioned the entire time. However perhaps Fred and George could say they used their wardbreaker monocoles Dumbledore gave them which allowed them to see dislliusioned people.
Another thing is that Harry could theoretically go back in time and get Dumbledore or Snape to fake the evidence instead but I think it would be more likely for Quirrel to do it. Quirrel is probably ambivalent over whether Hermoine gets nailed or not but he would have a motivation. The first way Harry develops a deep hatred of the Ministry and wants to overthrow it as he intends. The second way Harry still develops the deep hatred of the Ministry but sees Quirrell as even more of a valuable ally/mentor. Quirrel did after all prevent Hermoine from getting killed by the wizarding world establishment which Quirrel wants to overthrow. Lord Jugson could have some alibi but thats unlikely. Stealing and replacing Lord Jugson’s wand could be tricky but certainly within Harry’s power. Same with finding and freeing Professor Quirrell.
Above all I like this plan because it ends up with the best possible ending for Harry out of any plan I’ve seen. He saves the girl, regains his friend, and vanquishes a powerful enemy. He also does in a way that doesn’t break the rest of the plot because things can go back to normal afterwards. The attacking Azkhban plan would completely destroy the rest of the in Hogwarts plots that have been set up, and freeing Hermoine on a technicality such as marrying her or trading in all of his Blood debts would still leave the magical world thinking Hermoine is a murderer and that Harry doesn’t give a shit that Hermoine is a murderer. It also has the irony of fighting fire with fire, using False memory charms to fake someone else using False memory charms.
Adding details to a story makes it seem more probable to humans (it fits together making a better story), when in fact every additional detail reduces the probability. malthrin linked this earlier, you should read: http://lesswrong.com/lw/jk/burdensome_details/
I think your scenario is a conjunction of unlikely events. I think the chance Harry will use a time turner in the solution is quite low, less than 10%, because the set up is such that he won’t have access to it until more than 6 hours have passed. I’ll give only a 50% chance that Harry will frame anyone at all, and if he does frame someone, I have no reason to believe that it will be Jugson—I’d say 50% of the time he’ll frame Dumbledore (just because it’s easy), with decreasing chances for Quirell, Snape, other professors, and finally Jugson occupies such a small bit of my probability mass here that it wouldn’t even occur to me.
Just these three items (time turner, frame, Jugson) reduce your scenario’s probability to something very small; I put 2% on predictionbook, but my true probability is probably much lower.
(ETA: I realized on a re-read that my usage of “frame” above is non-standard; I was thinking broadly of turning the blame onto someone, not just of retroactively planting evidence, to which I give a much lower probability.)
I’m sure I got many things wrong, the only thing I’m feeling pretty confident about is that Harry is going to frame someone else, and Lord Jugson looks like he has been being fattened up to be framed. The rest is just the story I came up with as most likely when figuring out how Harry could do it. I could be completely wrong, I could be right about the what and wrong about the how.
Hmm. It was foreshadowed that Harry might frame Jugson if the latter pokes him. And Jugson did come up a lot in the later chapters. I think it was Jugson that cried for Azkaban first, which could be taken as poking. “Jugson did it because Hermione bested his son, and wants to ‘replace’ Malfloy (Jugson’s is an ancient family)” sounds like something one might convince Lucius of, or at least make him highly suspicious. Sending Hermione to Azkaban would be convenient in the scenario, getting rid of a possible clue. Though if it was Jugson that asked for Azkaban, it might have been at Lucius’ bidding.
You’re right, of course, all the details make it seem likely, but there are in this thread lots of details for other conflicting possibilities, and I can’t quite see how Harry might actually do it. (All theories I’ve read don’t seem to actually work IMO.)
And I interpret Eliezer’s words as if we should be able to find at least Harry’s solution, and that the latter will work at least partially.
But Harry’s not aware that Jugson was watching in chapter 78.
I think it was Jugson that cried for Azkaban first, which could be taken as poking.
Good point, he’s described as having a scar in 78 as does the man who does the shouting in 80. However, Harry wouldn’t be able to identify him (unless he looks sufficiently like his son).
But given that, I’ll now agree that if Harry identifies Jugson, he might think of attempting a frame.
Let me set the stage first. For a bare minimum solution Hermoine has to be proven innocent so she can return to school without someone trying to kill her to score points for Malfoy. For an optimal solution Harry teaches his enemies that poking him with a stick is very dangerous, and manages to turn this to his advantage by harming an enemy. But in no way is any solution good enough if it doesn’t end up with Hermoine proven innocent to the world.
He has a time-turner, an invisibility cloak, possibly the blood debts of everyone who claimed to be imperiused, possibly the wands as evidence, a very analytical mind that is currently very open to ‘dark’ ideas, and multiple people of different skills/motivations that he can coerce or get to help him.
Lord Jugson is someone that really doesn’t seem to have much a point in the story so far. It makes the most sense to me as someone who is being built up just to be the scapegoat. “”It would be justice for his past crimes, and I’d only do it if Jugson made the first move. The point isn’t to make people scared of me as a wild card, after all. It’s to teach them that neutrals are perfectly safe from me, and poking me with a stick is incredibly dangerous.”” Also, The boy smiled, now with a touch of coldness again. “Okay, I’ll figure out some way to set it up so that it looks like Lord Jugson betrayed his own side.”
A big gaping hole like introducing the wands for evidence is far too obvious for Harry to pretend it doesn’t exist anymore, so that is avenue worth approaching. However Cloak and Hat is far too clever to have forgotten to doctor the wands, unless he deliberately wanted the wands to prove.
It would also be just like Harry to use the enemies tactics against them, and so the idea of thwarting an evil plot based on false memory charms by using false memory charms to thwart it would be appealing.
I’d just like to note that even then, Harry comes out the loser from this whole chain of events. Most importantly, he loses Draco as an ally, and suffers from knowing he hurt Draco’s relationship with this father. Less importantly, Hermione has been psychologically hurt (I’d say traumatized), and won’t get any personal redress. Finally, if Harry sets someone else up, he will lose the ability to expose the true culprit in the future, if he learns who that was, and so loses a powerful avenue of action against that culprit. The true culprit (or someone else) may even find proof of Harry framing Jugson, and then blackmail Harry with that proof.
The only way Harry could come out genuinely ahead is if he found and exposed the culprit, rather than frame a random enemy. Including scenarios where he could delay Hermione’s punishment, or cancel it using blood debts, so that he’d gain time to search out the real culprit.
I believe a major psychological reason for people proposing so many theories for Harry’s solution, some of them very impractical, is that they have an “intent to kill”; they don’t want to propose a solution that settles for second best, like yours. They want Harry to win.
Go ahead and read the rest of my plot, I would say Harry has the best possible win here beyond overthrowing the entire ministry and remaking the government in his image. At least from Harry’s perspective since he doesn’t know that the real best win would be exposing and vanquishing Quirrelmort.
I’m not saying your plot is bad, it might be the best possible. (Well, I personally don’t think so, but I’m not arguing for or against it in this comment.) I’m just pointing out why I think people try so hard to come up with plots that are wildly more improbable than even yours, but have better endings.
That sure is a lot of burdensome details.
You know, if Pringlescan had just put “frame Lord Jugson” a confidence of ninety percent would still be excessive, but it wouldn’t be nearly as ridiculous as it currently is.
With a plan this complex there are many variables, so I just filled in my favorite guesses such as the person being framed, the order, etc.
Harry realizes the plan in that moment of desperation then gets the vote stopped to admit new evidence. He then presents to the court the testimony of George and Fred Weasley who say that during the night of the attempted murder they were out of their bed pulling a prank, when they saw Lord Jugson entering the Trophy room. They thought it was strange but since they were out of bed pulling a prank they didn’t want to tell anyone, until they realized that morning it could be connected. They then went straight to a Professor who brought them to the Wizengamot, and they repeat their testimony under veritaserum.
Lord Jugson claims they were false memory charmed, but Harry responds to this by saying that if you are so confident of it why not let us examine the last spells cast on your wand, and that of Hermoine’s and Draco’s? After all you have nothing to hide. Lord Jugson agrees and hands over his wand, and then priori incantum reveals to his shock that his wand has been used recently to do the imperius, obliviate and the false memory charm. Hermoine’s wand has been faked to use the Blood Chilling charm but Draco’s has no evidence of a duel past the army fight on it at all.
Harry explains that Lord Jugson in a fit of rage at Draco for losing to a mudblood and Hermoine for beating him made a plot to punish them both after the army fight. He disappeared after the fight, and remained in Hogwarts to imperius Draco to challenge Hermoine to a duel at midnight. Then he either simply stayed in Hogwarts until midnight, used a secret passage or apparated outside the wards and flew in a broomstick, or used the floo network to enter Hogwarts right before midnight. He made his way to the trophy room, stunned Draco and Hermoine as they entered, disillusioned them all, and took them outside of the wards of Hogwarts to do the obliviation and false memory charms returning them after the deed was done. Lord Jugson won’t have an alibi for the hours of 11:30 to 12:30 as everyone in his household would be asleep at the time.
He used Hermoine’s wand to cast spells simulating a duel followed by the blood chilling charm figuring that when Draco died he could prompt an investigation into her which would reveal the evidence on her wand combined with veritaserum to convict her. He obliviated Draco and false memory charmed him as well just in case Draco was discovered, but he didn’t bother to tamper with Draco’s wand figuring no one would have a reason to investigate it, and the wands show this.
Harry further explains that Lord Jugson decided that Draco had become too friendly to mudbloods and was no longer fit to be a leader of the blood purists. By killing him after his public showdown with Hermoine he could get rid of Draco, Hermoine AND set his own son up to assume leadership of the blood purists now that the Malfoy’s had no heir. After the plot ended he obliviated himself (if he isn’t an occlumens) to safely hide the plot forever. Lord Jugson is sentenced to Azkhaban, by Harry invoking Lord Malfoy’s blood debt to Harry to decide the sentencing, Hermoine is freed and the blood purists lose face politically for wanting to kill an innocent girl.
In my next post I will explain how Harry did it.
Basically the short answer is Harry used the time turner, invisibility cloak, and Quirrel to fake all of the evidence.
The long answer is, Harry waits until the end of the trial, goes back in time to the start of the trial and steals Lord Jugson’s wand out of his pocket. He then heads over to the magical law enforcement department in the Ministry which is of course around the wizengamot. Harry knows that Quirrel is probably being held there for questioning since he didn’t return to Hogwarts. Harry then steals the wand of Hermoine and Draco out of custody (or possibly heads over to St. Mungos to get Draco’s wand from him there if it is there instead) and then finds Quirrell.
Using the invisiblity cloak and the time turner Harry goes back in time further with the defense professor tampers with all the wands to fake the spells properly either by using some spell, or just brute force recasting all the spells in its history far enough back that the tampering can’t be detected. Harry then gets Fred and George to volunteer to be false memory charmed with the memory of Lord Jugson entering the Trophy room, and obliviated of the memory of volunteering. He then puppet masters it so that whichever Professor brings them to the trial shows up at exactly the right time. The defense professor returns him to the ministry, he replaces the wands of everyone involved a split second after they are taken in the first place and replaces the first Harry seconds after he goes back the first time.
Okay now some criticisms I have of my plan is that its hard to imagine why Lord Jugson wouldn’t remain disillusioned the entire time. However perhaps Fred and George could say they used their wardbreaker monocoles Dumbledore gave them which allowed them to see dislliusioned people.
Another thing is that Harry could theoretically go back in time and get Dumbledore or Snape to fake the evidence instead but I think it would be more likely for Quirrel to do it. Quirrel is probably ambivalent over whether Hermoine gets nailed or not but he would have a motivation. The first way Harry develops a deep hatred of the Ministry and wants to overthrow it as he intends. The second way Harry still develops the deep hatred of the Ministry but sees Quirrell as even more of a valuable ally/mentor. Quirrel did after all prevent Hermoine from getting killed by the wizarding world establishment which Quirrel wants to overthrow. Lord Jugson could have some alibi but thats unlikely. Stealing and replacing Lord Jugson’s wand could be tricky but certainly within Harry’s power. Same with finding and freeing Professor Quirrell.
Above all I like this plan because it ends up with the best possible ending for Harry out of any plan I’ve seen. He saves the girl, regains his friend, and vanquishes a powerful enemy. He also does in a way that doesn’t break the rest of the plot because things can go back to normal afterwards. The attacking Azkhban plan would completely destroy the rest of the in Hogwarts plots that have been set up, and freeing Hermoine on a technicality such as marrying her or trading in all of his Blood debts would still leave the magical world thinking Hermoine is a murderer and that Harry doesn’t give a shit that Hermoine is a murderer. It also has the irony of fighting fire with fire, using False memory charms to fake someone else using False memory charms.
Adding details to a story makes it seem more probable to humans (it fits together making a better story), when in fact every additional detail reduces the probability. malthrin linked this earlier, you should read: http://lesswrong.com/lw/jk/burdensome_details/
I think your scenario is a conjunction of unlikely events. I think the chance Harry will use a time turner in the solution is quite low, less than 10%, because the set up is such that he won’t have access to it until more than 6 hours have passed. I’ll give only a 50% chance that Harry will frame anyone at all, and if he does frame someone, I have no reason to believe that it will be Jugson—I’d say 50% of the time he’ll frame Dumbledore (just because it’s easy), with decreasing chances for Quirell, Snape, other professors, and finally Jugson occupies such a small bit of my probability mass here that it wouldn’t even occur to me.
Just these three items (time turner, frame, Jugson) reduce your scenario’s probability to something very small; I put 2% on predictionbook, but my true probability is probably much lower.
(ETA: I realized on a re-read that my usage of “frame” above is non-standard; I was thinking broadly of turning the blame onto someone, not just of retroactively planting evidence, to which I give a much lower probability.)
I’m sure I got many things wrong, the only thing I’m feeling pretty confident about is that Harry is going to frame someone else, and Lord Jugson looks like he has been being fattened up to be framed. The rest is just the story I came up with as most likely when figuring out how Harry could do it. I could be completely wrong, I could be right about the what and wrong about the how.
Hmm. It was foreshadowed that Harry might frame Jugson if the latter pokes him. And Jugson did come up a lot in the later chapters. I think it was Jugson that cried for Azkaban first, which could be taken as poking. “Jugson did it because Hermione bested his son, and wants to ‘replace’ Malfloy (Jugson’s is an ancient family)” sounds like something one might convince Lucius of, or at least make him highly suspicious. Sending Hermione to Azkaban would be convenient in the scenario, getting rid of a possible clue. Though if it was Jugson that asked for Azkaban, it might have been at Lucius’ bidding.
You’re right, of course, all the details make it seem likely, but there are in this thread lots of details for other conflicting possibilities, and I can’t quite see how Harry might actually do it. (All theories I’ve read don’t seem to actually work IMO.)
And I interpret Eliezer’s words as if we should be able to find at least Harry’s solution, and that the latter will work at least partially.
But Harry’s not aware that Jugson was watching in chapter 78.
Good point, he’s described as having a scar in 78 as does the man who does the shouting in 80. However, Harry wouldn’t be able to identify him (unless he looks sufficiently like his son).
But given that, I’ll now agree that if Harry identifies Jugson, he might think of attempting a frame.