Short detour back to chapter 79, to look closely at the night’s events:
At midnight, Draco and Hermine meet for the duel. (Let’s assume they did have a duel, because implanting very believable (but still false) memories into both of their brains would take about twice the time of the duel and would thus be unnecessary work.)
Let’s assume that the duell takes about 15 to 20 minutes, so it’s now 12:20am.
Enter Mister X. Mister X stuns Draco, implants false memories (< 1 min) into Hermione’s brain of her doing the Blood-Cooling Charm, and finally performs the Blood-Cooling Charm on Draco in a way to make sure he survives for >6 hours.
Mister X is back in his room at 12:30am and needs to wait 6 hours (plus epsilon) until all traces leading to him have vanished.
And guess what:
At 6:33am, Quirinus Quirrell had Flooed St. Mungo’s from his office for immediate pickup of Draco Malfoy.
Some Bayesian updating on P(Quirrell did it | Quirrell found Draco at 6:33am) tells us that this increases the probability of “Quirrell did it” by a quite noticeable amount.
OTOH, I’m not sure whether it would be okay to just do the math, without taking into account the possibility that Eliezer chose that time deliberately to steer us in a certain direction. Any thoughts on that?
My model of EY says that he would want the evidence he gave us to point to the true culprit—more evidence ought to make finding who did it easier, not harder. If EY chose that time deliberately to point at Quirrell, it’s further evidence that Quirrell did it.
And his comment to the effect that he doesn’t intentionally mislead readers, made about 4 hours after this one, implies that it may have been in reference to the above hypothesis.
More specifically, from my model of EY: If some information, rationally interpreted, is (internal to the story) evidence for a hypothesis, then this is good evidence (external to the story) that EY intends this hypothesis to be true. And if some information, interpreted according to a common bias, is (internal to the story) evidence for a hypothesis, then this is good evidence (external to the story) that EY intends this hypothesis to be false. Not only is he not trying to trick us, after all; he’s trying to teach us rationality skills. So he can put in red herrings; we just shouldn’t fall for them!
This is contingent on whether the duel would last for 15-20 minutes. To my (admittedly leaky) memory, we haven’t seen a proper duel in MoR yet, and I don’t believe that any duel in canon lasted for that long either.
Even if the duel lasted only a few minutes and everything was over by, say, 12:10 or 12:20, that would mean Quirrel only waited six hours and 13-23 minutes, depending. Could even be deliberate—an attempt to throw suspicion off himself by making the timing not quite perfect.
On the other hand, if I take “he’s only three minutes late” as evidence that he did it, and “he’s more than three minutes late” as evidence that he did it, I’m violating a principle of rationality.
On the other hand, if I take “he’s only three minutes late” as evidence that he did it, and “he’s more than three minutes late” as evidence that he did it, I’m violating a principle of rationality.
If you take “he’s just a few minutes late” as strong evidence that he did it, “he’s quite a while late” as weak evidence that he did it and “he’s early” as very strong evidence that he did not do it, this violation disappears.
I just thought of something else, too, that could explain why it took so long if the duel were short.
Suppose Hermione won relatively quickly, at around 12:05. H&C obliviates and memory-charms her, taking as much time as the duel he makes her remember, which could be several minutes. Then he has to do the same to Draco. At this point, it’s around 12:15 or so, and the memory of casting the BCC would make it more like 12:16. Then H&C casts the charm himself and realizes he doesn’t recall what time it is exactly. Decides to go with 12:30 because overshooting is way better than undershooting here and he thinks he’ll be safe with 12:30, especially if he doesn’t have much time before he goes zombie or something and can’t just check the clock.
(Anyone notice that Quirrellmort seems to be living Life: The Interesting Parts Version?)
Even if the duel lasted only a few minutes and everything was over by, say, 12:10 or 12:20, that would mean Quirrel only waited six hours and 13-23 minutes, depending. Could even be deliberate—an attempt to throw suspicion off himself by making the timing not quite perfect.
If by “not quite perfect” you mean “suspiciously close after the point that made observation with a Time Turner impossible”, then yes, it’s not quite perfect.
Dumbledore probably wanted Europe ruined, it was probably part of their plan together, he only attacked Grindelwald after his puppet failed him. And that big flashy duel wasn’t real, there’s no way two wizards would be so exactly matched that they’d fight for twenty whole hours until one of them fell over from exhaustion, that was just Dumbledore making it look more spectacular.
I don’t mean to argue that it is clear that the duel lasted that long in MoR, but I doubt that Rowling would have that plot in mind. Also, from TVTropes:
It’s strongly implied that Grindelwald was using the Holocaust to fuel some Dark ritual. Dumbledore mentioned that he was literally invincible while his Muggle allies were still making blood sacrifices for him, and they had to be stopped before he could be defeated. So yes, in those months where the wizarding world claimed Dumbledore was “waiting for the most dramatic moment,” he was actually stopping the Holocaust.
Short detour back to chapter 79, to look closely at the night’s events:
At midnight, Draco and Hermine meet for the duel. (Let’s assume they did have a duel, because implanting very believable (but still false) memories into both of their brains would take about twice the time of the duel and would thus be unnecessary work.) Let’s assume that the duell takes about 15 to 20 minutes, so it’s now 12:20am. Enter Mister X. Mister X stuns Draco, implants false memories (< 1 min) into Hermione’s brain of her doing the Blood-Cooling Charm, and finally performs the Blood-Cooling Charm on Draco in a way to make sure he survives for >6 hours. Mister X is back in his room at 12:30am and needs to wait 6 hours (plus epsilon) until all traces leading to him have vanished.
And guess what:
Some Bayesian updating on P(Quirrell did it | Quirrell found Draco at 6:33am) tells us that this increases the probability of “Quirrell did it” by a quite noticeable amount.
OTOH, I’m not sure whether it would be okay to just do the math, without taking into account the possibility that Eliezer chose that time deliberately to steer us in a certain direction. Any thoughts on that?
My model of EY says that he would want the evidence he gave us to point to the true culprit—more evidence ought to make finding who did it easier, not harder. If EY chose that time deliberately to point at Quirrell, it’s further evidence that Quirrell did it.
And his comment to the effect that he doesn’t intentionally mislead readers, made about 4 hours after this one, implies that it may have been in reference to the above hypothesis.
More specifically, from my model of EY: If some information, rationally interpreted, is (internal to the story) evidence for a hypothesis, then this is good evidence (external to the story) that EY intends this hypothesis to be true. And if some information, interpreted according to a common bias, is (internal to the story) evidence for a hypothesis, then this is good evidence (external to the story) that EY intends this hypothesis to be false. Not only is he not trying to trick us, after all; he’s trying to teach us rationality skills. So he can put in red herrings; we just shouldn’t fall for them!
This is contingent on whether the duel would last for 15-20 minutes. To my (admittedly leaky) memory, we haven’t seen a proper duel in MoR yet, and I don’t believe that any duel in canon lasted for that long either.
Even if the duel lasted only a few minutes and everything was over by, say, 12:10 or 12:20, that would mean Quirrel only waited six hours and 13-23 minutes, depending. Could even be deliberate—an attempt to throw suspicion off himself by making the timing not quite perfect.
On the other hand, if I take “he’s only three minutes late” as evidence that he did it, and “he’s more than three minutes late” as evidence that he did it, I’m violating a principle of rationality.
I think he had something to do with it anyway.
If you take “he’s just a few minutes late” as strong evidence that he did it, “he’s quite a while late” as weak evidence that he did it and “he’s early” as very strong evidence that he did not do it, this violation disappears.
Good point, thanks.
I just thought of something else, too, that could explain why it took so long if the duel were short.
Suppose Hermione won relatively quickly, at around 12:05. H&C obliviates and memory-charms her, taking as much time as the duel he makes her remember, which could be several minutes. Then he has to do the same to Draco. At this point, it’s around 12:15 or so, and the memory of casting the BCC would make it more like 12:16. Then H&C casts the charm himself and realizes he doesn’t recall what time it is exactly. Decides to go with 12:30 because overshooting is way better than undershooting here and he thinks he’ll be safe with 12:30, especially if he doesn’t have much time before he goes zombie or something and can’t just check the clock.
(Anyone notice that Quirrellmort seems to be living Life: The Interesting Parts Version?)
If by “not quite perfect” you mean “suspiciously close after the point that made observation with a Time Turner impossible”, then yes, it’s not quite perfect.
One wonders whether it was possible to cast the Blood-Chilling Charm such that it would take seven and a half hours to get Draco to death’s door.
The duel between Dumbledore and Grindelwald in canon lasted three hours, according to the Harry Potter wiki.
Draco in Chapter 47.
I don’t mean to argue that it is clear that the duel lasted that long in MoR, but I doubt that Rowling would have that plot in mind. Also, from TVTropes: