If Harry does not manage to find the real culprit, then how does he save Hermione from having her wand broken?
Breakout/Direct Attack on the Wizengamot / Malfoy Manor
Transfigure a one-atom line of antimatter through the earth’s crust all the way to the Wizengamot or Malfoy Manor, and then a small bubble there. His wand is then touching the item to be transformed, and it will work.
Go to Azkaban and round up a few hundred dementors.
Stealth
Transferring the cloak of invisibility to her somehow.
Bringing Hermione under the aegis of a noble house
Transfigure a one-atom line of antimatter through the earth’s crust all the way to the Wizengamot or Malfoy Manor, and then a small bubble there. His wand is then touching the item to be transformed, and it will work.
Ten points to Slytherin for creativity. Minus ten bajillion points for holy shit, are you suicidal?!
That’s just 15 joules per cubic meter of rock, until you get to the bomb. Not even detectable. I wonder, however, how the magic source is going to do turning energy back into matter afterwards.
Why would the magic source do that? Wouldn’t the antimatter just react with the surrounding matter and turn into energy under the laws of physics, and stay that way?
Cube root(number of atoms in a 1m^3 cube of silicon(simplification)=number of atoms in a one atom line, assuming that the atoms were arranged in an cubic crystal(simplification). Mass-energy of those atoms, times two (for complete destruction) and then subtract for the particles that do not decay immediately (I had to look that up, I think I got about 5/6th remaining)
How would blowing up Malfoy Manor help Harry anyway? He’d be hurting Draco, who loves his father, and the court case brought by Draco against Hermione would go forward.
I’m sure Harry wouldn’t want to extirpate the whole House, which includes Draco. Just killing Lord Malfoy (and any servants who happened to be near) is enough collateral damage that Harry wouldn’t seriously consider it if Hermione isn’t facing outright death herself.
Besides, I’m pretty sure there are other branches of the Malfoys that would inherit the title. Draco mentioned an uncle or some other relative not in the line of succession who used to visit him at least a few years ago.
Hermione is much more important, but HP would prefer a plan that did not inherently make Draco his enemy. I don’t think it is much of a stretch to think exposing Malfoy Manor to anti-matter would make Draco become an enemy.
Harry could offer to pay Lucius Malfoy something in restitution. It couldn’t just be money or an incredible favor. As the original ‘Taboo Tradeoffs’ paper mentions, people only get more angry when you try to do that. Harry would need an accurate model of Lucius suspecting him as Harrymort and be able to trade him something that Harrymort would consider sacred.
Trade his invisibility cloak to Lucius for Hermione’s freedom. Make sure to play up that it is 1/3rd of the Deathly Hallows and thus something Harrymort considers sacred/invaluable.
Trade Lucius a blood debt from the House of Potter.
Make an unbreakable vow to protect Draco or otherwise help Lucius (or some other ritual).
(Assuming Roger Bacon’s diary is indeed the diary Horcrux and Harry manages to discover that) Trade Lucius a piece of Voldemort’s soul as apology.
None of the trades seem particularly smart or likely, but Harry might consider a few of them if he got really desperate. They seem to be of sufficient value to Lucius (or rather, to Harry’s model of Lucius’ model of Harrymort) to prove that Harry is genuinely sorry and be worth Hermione’s life/magic/future.
He consults professor Quirrell, accuses him of setting this all up to rob him of friends, and demands that he free Hermione in order to prove his innocence and good-will.
Quirrell disappears, reappears, and informs Harry that Lucius had a change of heart and is dropping all charges.
Stealth—not only he must transfer cloak to Hermione—he must also get Hermione out of court, and she must be in cloak at all times to prevent tracking magic, and Harry must have the cloak with himself, when Dumbledore will want to see it, when tracking magic will stop working (and there’s spell that detects if cloak is nearby).
One way to do this—duplicate cloak using time turner for the moment Dumbledore will want to check it.
Scheme:
Harry takes cloak, mokesking pouch, and time turner with himself to the court
Harry waits for Hermione to disappear
Harry puts his mokeskin poach under the table or somewhere and not look at it
Hermione disappears
Dumbledore try to track Hermione and fails—so he checks if cloak is near—it is, so he asks Harry about it—Harry shows cloak to Dumbledore and it’s empty
Harry goes back wearing cloak just before the moment Hemrione should disappear, takes the mokeskin poach that he left under the table, somehow makes everybody look elsewhere and put Hermione into his own mokeskin poach which he keeps under the duplicated cloak (may need to use potion or sth that will turn Hermione into animal or thing or sth that he can put into poach—like with Quirrell as a snake).
Harry in the past waits for Dumbledore to check the cloak that Harry in the present has with himself, waits for everybody to
get out, and somehow passes the poach back to himself without looking at himself. Harry in the present puts poach into the cloak.
Possible failures—Dumbledore can keep the cloak, making it impossible to hide Hermione after the time turner is used up. I think Dumbledore won’t do this—he didn’t wanted to keep cloak to himself, he wants Harry to have cloak just in case, and even if he see throught this plot, he can let it slip, because he probably don’t want Hermione to have wand snapped. But it’s one failure mode.
Also Harry must be prepared to “prove” he didn’t used up his TimeTurner, like he did after Azkaban Breaking.
How would Harry even get to the trial in the first place? Dumbledore won’t let him leave Hogwarts, and if he did, why should the Wizengamot admit him to the proceedings unless e.g. Dumbledore requested it? And why would D. do that unless he expected Harry to succeed in helping Hermione escape? But if D. wanted Hermione to escape illegally (possible but unlikely IMO), he could surely arrange that himself without Harry’s help and presence. (Maybe he’d borrow the cloak...)
“Harry had used up all six hours from his Time-Turner, and there were still no clues, and he had to go to sleep now if he wanted to be functional at Hermione’s trial the next day.”
I assumed this means Harry will be at trial. Probably as a witness?
Transfigure a one-atom line of antimatter through the earth’s crust all the way to the Wizengamot or Malfoy Manor, and then a small bubble there. His wand is then touching the item to be transformed, and it will work.
Items aren’t held in stasis while in mid-transfiguration as far as I am aware.
Items aren’t held in stasis while in mid-transfiguration as far as I am aware.
It took me a while to figure out what you meant by this. I’m pretty sure, from the descriptions we’ve been given, that while transfiguration requires some time spent concentrating, the actual change happens instantaneously at the end- if you’re interrupted before you finish, nothing happens.
You know, you’re right. I was going off the demonstration of partial Transfiguration:
And a few minutes later, Harry was strapped into the safety chair and resting his wand against a metal ball—one that, based on his current test scores, should have been too large for him to Transfigure in less than thirty minutes.
And a few minutes after that, Minerva was leaning against the wall, feeling faint.
There was a small patch of glass on the ball where Harry’s wand had rested.
Which seemed to me to indicate that the glass didn’t appear until a few minutes after he started the transfiguration. And the bit where Harry cuts through Azkaban’s interior wall seems to make somewhat less sense if it’s gradual- the motor oil would just drip out, for instance.
But the fact that Goyle could recognize the cauldrons before the transfiguration was done pretty conclusively rules the idea out. Oops.
The transfiguration idea is very clever, but I suspect that the Wizengamot and Malfoy Manor would both have powerful defenses which would block harmful transfigurations. It also isn’t clear what the range is on transfiguration.
Go to Azkaban and round up a few hundred dementors.
Harry would never use dementors as his army.
Bringing Hermione under the aegis of a noble house
Adoption or marriage
Problem one, Dumbledore is Harry’s legal guardian and would need to approve such acts. Problem two, there is then a blood debt from House Potter to House Malfoy, so maybe Harry has his wand snapped instead of Hermione, and how is that any better?
I’m assuming that the evidentiary standards are higher for conflicts between noble houses
I’m getting the sense there isn’t an evidentiary standard at all, not in any case. Each side argues their case and presents whatever evidence they like, and then the Wizengamot votes whatever the hell they feel like, nonwithstanding evidence to the contrary. Remember what Draco told Potter back at the train station: the Malfoys can get out of any accusations before the Wizengamot, like a non-noble accusing Draco of rape, simply because they’ve got the votes. Or the case with clearing Hagrid of blame: Quirrel said it would go ahead “because Lucius would have no reason to oppose it” (my words).
If it were that easy, Lucius couldn’t contest Dumbledore politically. I suppose the Wizengamot would have to rule to adjudicate by combat, and they won’t in an apparently clearcut murder attempt case.
Fate/Stay Night comes up in MoR as the franchise whose Fuyuki City trips up Quirrel in the interrogation*; the ‘Heaven’s Feel’ route is one possible plot in the FSN franchise. Plot summary, ref is probably to evil-Sakura’s ‘army of shadows’, which matches up well with Dementors.
* I looked it up, and Quirrel’s visit there in 1983 or whatever would have coincided with the birth of a few minor characters but nothing else important in the FSN universe, as far as I could tell.
If Harry does not manage to find the real culprit, then how does he save Hermione from having her wand broken?
Breakout/Direct Attack on the Wizengamot / Malfoy Manor
Transfigure a one-atom line of antimatter through the earth’s crust all the way to the Wizengamot or Malfoy Manor, and then a small bubble there. His wand is then touching the item to be transformed, and it will work.
Go to Azkaban and round up a few hundred dementors.
Stealth
Transferring the cloak of invisibility to her somehow.
Bringing Hermione under the aegis of a noble house
Adoption or marriage
Ten points to Slytherin for creativity. Minus ten bajillion points for holy shit, are you suicidal?!
That’s just 15 joules per cubic meter of rock, until you get to the bomb. Not even detectable. I wonder, however, how the magic source is going to do turning energy back into matter afterwards.
Damn. Why are people not blowing things up with antimatter all the time?
Ignorance, high transfiguration skill level required, magical safeguards in place, possibly.
Makes sense. We could probably also build a power plant powered by transfigured antimatter.
Why would the magic source do that? Wouldn’t the antimatter just react with the surrounding matter and turn into energy under the laws of physics, and stay that way?
How did you get 15J, by the way?
Cube root(number of atoms in a 1m^3 cube of silicon(simplification)=number of atoms in a one atom line, assuming that the atoms were arranged in an cubic crystal(simplification). Mass-energy of those atoms, times two (for complete destruction) and then subtract for the particles that do not decay immediately (I had to look that up, I think I got about 5/6th remaining)
How would blowing up Malfoy Manor help Harry anyway? He’d be hurting Draco, who loves his father, and the court case brought by Draco against Hermione would go forward.
Are we sure of that? The trial might vanish if the House of Malfoy is extirpated.
I’m sure Harry wouldn’t want to extirpate the whole House, which includes Draco. Just killing Lord Malfoy (and any servants who happened to be near) is enough collateral damage that Harry wouldn’t seriously consider it if Hermione isn’t facing outright death herself.
Besides, I’m pretty sure there are other branches of the Malfoys that would inherit the title. Draco mentioned an uncle or some other relative not in the line of succession who used to visit him at least a few years ago.
Even better- That uncle will likely want the title, so Harry just needs to bargain with him.
“If you get the title, you’ll drop all charges, right?”
Won’t save Slytherin, which is one of HP’s goals.
I’m guessing that currently Hermione factors about 50 times more in Harry’s utility function than the whole of Slytherin House put together.
Hermione is much more important, but HP would prefer a plan that did not inherently make Draco his enemy. I don’t think it is much of a stretch to think exposing Malfoy Manor to anti-matter would make Draco become an enemy.
Only because she’s in more and more immediate danger. It might be possible to build another plot to help Slytherin later, but Hermione needs help now.
Bribery, Trade, or Begging
Harry could offer to pay Lucius Malfoy something in restitution. It couldn’t just be money or an incredible favor. As the original ‘Taboo Tradeoffs’ paper mentions, people only get more angry when you try to do that. Harry would need an accurate model of Lucius suspecting him as Harrymort and be able to trade him something that Harrymort would consider sacred.
Trade his invisibility cloak to Lucius for Hermione’s freedom. Make sure to play up that it is 1/3rd of the Deathly Hallows and thus something Harrymort considers sacred/invaluable.
Trade Lucius a blood debt from the House of Potter.
Make an unbreakable vow to protect Draco or otherwise help Lucius (or some other ritual).
(Assuming Roger Bacon’s diary is indeed the diary Horcrux and Harry manages to discover that) Trade Lucius a piece of Voldemort’s soul as apology.
None of the trades seem particularly smart or likely, but Harry might consider a few of them if he got really desperate. They seem to be of sufficient value to Lucius (or rather, to Harry’s model of Lucius’ model of Harrymort) to prove that Harry is genuinely sorry and be worth Hermione’s life/magic/future.
He consults professor Quirrell, accuses him of setting this all up to rob him of friends, and demands that he free Hermione in order to prove his innocence and good-will.
Quirrell disappears, reappears, and informs Harry that Lucius had a change of heart and is dropping all charges.
Stealth—not only he must transfer cloak to Hermione—he must also get Hermione out of court, and she must be in cloak at all times to prevent tracking magic, and Harry must have the cloak with himself, when Dumbledore will want to see it, when tracking magic will stop working (and there’s spell that detects if cloak is nearby).
One way to do this—duplicate cloak using time turner for the moment Dumbledore will want to check it.
Scheme:
Harry takes cloak, mokesking pouch, and time turner with himself to the court
Harry waits for Hermione to disappear
Harry puts his mokeskin poach under the table or somewhere and not look at it
Hermione disappears
Dumbledore try to track Hermione and fails—so he checks if cloak is near—it is, so he asks Harry about it—Harry shows cloak to Dumbledore and it’s empty
Harry goes back wearing cloak just before the moment Hemrione should disappear, takes the mokeskin poach that he left under the table, somehow makes everybody look elsewhere and put Hermione into his own mokeskin poach which he keeps under the duplicated cloak (may need to use potion or sth that will turn Hermione into animal or thing or sth that he can put into poach—like with Quirrell as a snake).
Harry in the past waits for Dumbledore to check the cloak that Harry in the present has with himself, waits for everybody to get out, and somehow passes the poach back to himself without looking at himself. Harry in the present puts poach into the cloak.
Possible failures—Dumbledore can keep the cloak, making it impossible to hide Hermione after the time turner is used up. I think Dumbledore won’t do this—he didn’t wanted to keep cloak to himself, he wants Harry to have cloak just in case, and even if he see throught this plot, he can let it slip, because he probably don’t want Hermione to have wand snapped. But it’s one failure mode.
Also Harry must be prepared to “prove” he didn’t used up his TimeTurner, like he did after Azkaban Breaking.
I probbly missed something, and this won’t work.
How would Harry even get to the trial in the first place? Dumbledore won’t let him leave Hogwarts, and if he did, why should the Wizengamot admit him to the proceedings unless e.g. Dumbledore requested it? And why would D. do that unless he expected Harry to succeed in helping Hermione escape? But if D. wanted Hermione to escape illegally (possible but unlikely IMO), he could surely arrange that himself without Harry’s help and presence. (Maybe he’d borrow the cloak...)
“Harry had used up all six hours from his Time-Turner, and there were still no clues, and he had to go to sleep now if he wanted to be functional at Hermione’s trial the next day.”
I assumed this means Harry will be at trial. Probably as a witness?
He could only be a character witness, at most. Not very relevant to the trial at hand.
Maybe Dumbledore will just bring him in as a spectator, and wouldn’t have to ask anyone’s permission. We don’t know what the rules for that are.
He is a member of a noble house. He is probably entitled to observe, even if his age prevents him from taking his seat.
Items aren’t held in stasis while in mid-transfiguration as far as I am aware.
I’m not sure he even needs a line anyway.
Ok, do the same with a radioactive substance- it won’t do anything until enough has been transfigured to go critical.
It took me a while to figure out what you meant by this. I’m pretty sure, from the descriptions we’ve been given, that while transfiguration requires some time spent concentrating, the actual change happens instantaneously at the end- if you’re interrupted before you finish, nothing happens.
As an airborne scout, Goyle was able to report what HJPEV & Blaise were in the process of transfiguring during the battle in chapter 78.
Is that less than conclusive evidence that the transformation is gradual?
You know, you’re right. I was going off the demonstration of partial Transfiguration:
Which seemed to me to indicate that the glass didn’t appear until a few minutes after he started the transfiguration. And the bit where Harry cuts through Azkaban’s interior wall seems to make somewhat less sense if it’s gradual- the motor oil would just drip out, for instance.
But the fact that Goyle could recognize the cauldrons before the transfiguration was done pretty conclusively rules the idea out. Oops.
The transfiguration idea is very clever, but I suspect that the Wizengamot and Malfoy Manor would both have powerful defenses which would block harmful transfigurations. It also isn’t clear what the range is on transfiguration.
Harry would never use dementors as his army.
Problem one, Dumbledore is Harry’s legal guardian and would need to approve such acts. Problem two, there is then a blood debt from House Potter to House Malfoy, so maybe Harry has his wand snapped instead of Hermione, and how is that any better?
I’m assuming that the evidentiary standards are higher for conflicts between noble houses. I could also imagine a trial by combat alternative.
As much as I’d love it, there’s no chance of a trial by combat. “If we did it your way, Kingslayer, you’d win. We’re not doing it your way.”
I’m getting the sense there isn’t an evidentiary standard at all, not in any case. Each side argues their case and presents whatever evidence they like, and then the Wizengamot votes whatever the hell they feel like, nonwithstanding evidence to the contrary. Remember what Draco told Potter back at the train station: the Malfoys can get out of any accusations before the Wizengamot, like a non-noble accusing Draco of rape, simply because they’ve got the votes. Or the case with clearing Hagrid of blame: Quirrel said it would go ahead “because Lucius would have no reason to oppose it” (my words).
What, Lord (Harry) Potter against Lord Lucius Malfoy? What a fine trial by combat that would be.
No, they’d be allowed champions, and Dumbledore would win.
If it were that easy, Lucius couldn’t contest Dumbledore politically. I suppose the Wizengamot would have to rule to adjudicate by combat, and they won’t in an apparently clearcut murder attempt case.
Well, for underage wizards, they get a champion, obviously. Dumbledore or Quirrel, I’d assume.
Before the Heaven’s Feel arc, you mean.
Can somebody dereference “Heaven’s Feel arc” for those of us who aren’t familiar with it?
Fate/Stay Night comes up in MoR as the franchise whose Fuyuki City trips up Quirrel in the interrogation*; the ‘Heaven’s Feel’ route is one possible plot in the FSN franchise. Plot summary, ref is probably to evil-Sakura’s ‘army of shadows’, which matches up well with Dementors.
* I looked it up, and Quirrel’s visit there in 1983 or whatever would have coincided with the birth of a few minor characters but nothing else important in the FSN universe, as far as I could tell.