The color blue might be a throw away line, except this story has obliviation puzzles. The author needs to give the reader constraints on obvliviation to enable the reader solve the puzzles, which is why I think the line is a Chekhov’s gun.
In case it is not clear, the grandparent post quotes oblivation puzzles found in the text from chapters 88-90, e.g. this one from chapter 90:
“Dumbledore wasn’t being very cooperative, and in any case this was several minutes after the critical location within Time
“Harry,” the Headmaster whispered, laying his hand on Harry’s shoulder. He had vanished from where he was standing over the Weasley twins and come into existence beside Harry; George Weasley had discontinously teleported from where he was sitting to be kneeling next to his brother’s side, and Fred was now lying straight with his eyes open and wincing as he breathed. “Harry, you must go from this place.”
Note the missing period after “Time”. The story I laid out above explains how those obliviations could have been caused by Harry himself on April 16th. I admit that mechanism isn’t terribly likely (I suspect either the Big Bad or Harry in a later chapter). Nevertheless, it demonstrates the sorts of stunts Harry may pull later given the color constraint.
EDIT: The forgotten todo item is from Chapter 12.
To-do 1. Research mind-alteration charms so you can test the Comed-Tea and see whether you actually did figure out a path to omnipotence. Actually, just research every kind of mind magic you can find. Mind is the foundation of our power as humans, any kind of magic that affects it is the most important sort of magic there is.
EDIT 2: I totally misread your post :-). Here’s the line in question:
Harry had been studying Memory Charms, these last couple of weeks—though he couldn’t have helped cast the spells, unless he was willing to exhaust himself almost completely, and for some reason they wanted an Auror to lose every single life memory involving the color blue.
Harry has learned to obliviate, therefore he will obliviate someone. I can see the blunt instrument interpretation, but the subtle knife interpretation would be allowed by more plot lines so I think it is more likely.
The color blue might be a throw away line, except this story has obliviation puzzles. The author needs to give the reader constraints on obvliviation to enable the reader solve the puzzles, which is why I think the line is a Chekhov’s gun.
In case it is not clear, the grandparent post quotes oblivation puzzles found in the text from chapters 88-90, e.g. this one from chapter 90:
Note the missing period after “Time”. The story I laid out above explains how those obliviations could have been caused by Harry himself on April 16th. I admit that mechanism isn’t terribly likely (I suspect either the Big Bad or Harry in a later chapter). Nevertheless, it demonstrates the sorts of stunts Harry may pull later given the color constraint.
EDIT: The forgotten todo item is from Chapter 12.
EDIT 2: I totally misread your post :-). Here’s the line in question:
Harry has learned to obliviate, therefore he will obliviate someone. I can see the blunt instrument interpretation, but the subtle knife interpretation would be allowed by more plot lines so I think it is more likely.