… So, since this scene is obviously engineered by somebody (Harry arriving bare minutes too late, the wards not alerting Dumbledore, etc), I’m just going to go through the list of people who have shown the ability to plan such things.
a) Quirrel.
Unlikely.
The Defense Professor had felt the boy’s horror, through the link that existed between the two of them, the resonance in their magic; and he had realized that the boy had sought the troll and found it. The Defense Professor had tried to send an impulse to retreat, to don the Cloak of Invisibility and flee; but he’d never been able to influence the boy through the resonance, and hadn’t succeeded that time either.
He’d felt the boy give himself over fully to the killing intention. That was when the Defense Professor had begun burning through the substance of Hogwarts, trying to reach the battle in time.
This seems odd. Burning through Hogwarts is going to be a pretty big deal for him—he’s basically demonstrated either an instinctive Harry-dar (and a way of knowing what Harry is doing, as well), or else he knew where Hermione was all along. Both of which are rather suspicious. I have no doubt he’ll escape repercussions (Obliviating Trelawney comes to mind), but it still seems sloppy to incur them if he can avoid it.
This implies that this is simply not his plot: as he is already under suspicion and under watch, he loses nothing from a random walk that happens to put him near Hermione in case something goes wrong. And somehow, I am loathe to expect Quirrell to make a mistake while predicting the actions of another, even when that other is Harry Potter—especially when he knows that Harry has someone to defend and a killing instinct.
b) Dumbledore.
More likely, but still unlikely.
The obvious version of this plan includes Hermione dying—and for all that Dumbledore has morally greyed, I still can’t see him killing a twelve-year-old girl in cold blood. (To him, I imagine, leaving her to die is a completely different matter.)
The second most obvious version of this plan—faking Hermione’s death—has fewer problems, but is simply narratively unlikely. The biggest problem is Hermione’s death-scream; it’s a big dramatic moment, it’s incredibly personal to Hermione in a way I’m not sure Dumbledore could emulate, Harry feels it cling to Hogwarts for a moment...
It’s more likely than Quirrell (and certainly fits his style better—very complex and seemingly error-prone), but I’m still skeptical of ascribing any plan that pushes Harry away from the Light to Dumbledore.
c)
… We’re basically out of appearing characters. That said, there’s this rather interesting line...
“Lead it away, keep it off me,” said a voice.
Harry, feeling disassociated from himself? No; a few seconds later we have
“Fire and acid!” Harry shouted. “Use fire or acid!”
Disassociated-Harry shows up later, I think, but that first call doesn’t seem to be Harry’s.
So we’re looking for someone who has the manipulation ability of Quirrell and Dumbledore (but, preferably, not Quirrell or Dumbledore), already present at the scene (which means s/he knows exactly where Hermione would flee to and that Harry would follow), who doesn’t want to save Hermione’s life from Harry’s perspective.
… At this point, I’m making an intuitive leap. We’ve already been suspicious that a Peggy Sue will show up; we think we know that the timeline must be consistent; we know that Harry has just resolved (and been PROPHECY-ed) to rip apart reality to bring by Hermione...
I’m wondering if future Harry—as in, really future Harry, not time-turned plus-six-hours Harry but after-the-fic plus-thirty-years Harry—hasn’t shown up to pull a Chrono Trigger style rescue. We can ascribe essentially infinite competence to this Harry—by dint of living through this once (or more) times he can create the timeline he remembers, and is fully capable of a perfect illusion (for example, letting Hermione “die” and then catching her soul after it escapes, which by definition would satisfy any test Dumbledore et al could run.)
… there’s probably a few flaws in my logic (I noticed after typing this that I jumped straight to “future Harry” and came up with a rationalization for it), but I didn’t see anyone else proposing this, so I threw it up anyway.
Quirel has often stated his dislike of Harry holding back because of silly things like “morality” and “what others might think of him”.
As Draco said in an early chapter: when confronted with a complicated plot look at what ends up happening and assume it was the intended outcome. Harry went fully into his dark side, switched off his censors and killed the troll in about 5 seconds. Even if Harry stayed behind in the Great Hall and learned about Hermione’s death later it would still make him go to his dark side like never before. This benefits whatever Quirel’s plan is.
Secondly, Eliezer likes to foreshadow things in hpmor. How many times have we heard characters say something like: “always suspect the defense professor”? This alone hints at Quirel being the mastermind behind Big Evil Events.
Though with the new chapter, it strikes me that one of my bits of evidence (that Quirrell had been blasting through the walls of Hogwarts) may have been intended to be able to truthfully imply that he had cared enough for Hermione’s life to go blasting through Hogwarts, so I need to go update.
Harry, feeling disassociated from himself? No; a few seconds later we have
“Fire and acid!” Harry shouted. “Use fire or acid!”
Disassociated-Harry shows up later, I think, but that first call doesn’t seem to be Harry’s.
I think it is supposed to be Harry—before a voice said that, the text simply blanked out, refused to state what the troll held or the troll dropped. After the text explicitly states the state Hermione is in, then we get Harry’s statement about fire and acid.
It does, but I interpreted it as Harry having to wrestle himself back towards acknowledging the painful fact of Hermione’s injuries, as opposed to flinching away.
The Defense Professor had tried to send an impulse to retreat, to don the Cloak of Invisibility and flee; but he’d never been able to influence the boy through the resonance, and hadn’t succeeded that time either.
He’s previously stated that trying something that hasn’t worked in the past again, with no reason to believe it’d work this time, is stupid. It seems like he did this knowing it wouldn’t work, which raises the obvious question of why.
In general, the Defense Professor’s actions read as compensation to me—if this is his doing, it certainly wasn’t his plan. I have a very hard time coming up with reasons why one would want to be seen blasting through Hogwarts unnecessarily.
I’ll agree that his rush to the combat is almost certainly an attempt to keep Harry alive. Unnecessarily, but he had no way of knowing that. But the troll attack seems to almost certainly be the doing of the person who used Hermione to attack Draco, and it’s hard to believe that was anyone other than Quirrell.
I’m seeing a pretty sharp gap in planning style between the framing and the troll attack. “Brilliant first-year student attacks student with a possible grudge” is almost believable; “troll enchanted against sunlight kills first-year” can’t be anything other than a murder attempt. The latter is quite a bit more sloppy than the first.
Because the same tactic wouldn’t work again. And this time, he has Lucius Malfoy to pin it on.
Waitaminute...how exactly have we gotten this far without considering the possibility that Lucius did this? It seems tailored to the protections on Hermione more closely than he would usually be able to manage, but he’d know the Hogwarts wards as well as anyone who wasn’t Headmaster, and the “eating the feet first” bit could be coincidence. And plausible deniability plus brute force seems exactly like Lucius’ style.
I’ll agree that his rush to the combat is almost certainly an attempt to keep Harry alive.
The timing doesn’t make sense for this interpretation. We know Quirrell starts moving when he notices Harry’s intent to kill. But, Harry takes out the troll (and hence any threat to his life) several seconds later, and Quirrell notices this. However, he doesn’t seem to stop moving then; several seconds is hardly enough time to blow through much of Hogwarts. Instead, he seems to stop when Harry’s killing intent stops. This suggests, to me, that Quirrell was worried about this intent—perhaps that it wouldn’t stop when the troll was dead.
Hmmm.
How large is Hogwarts? It’s non-Euclidean, but it’s Euclidean enough for Quirrel to shortcut by blowing up walls in a quasi-straight line.
Given Quirrel’s rarely used but significant ability to blow stuff up, I think that once he reached steady state he could blow up several cubic meters of masonry per second for a good few meters per second rate of travel.
I’ll agree that his rush to the combat is almost certainly an attempt to keep Harry alive.
When going out of your way to turn a troll into an assassination tool, wouldn’t you also instal some explicit instructions NOT to harm Harry Potter or anyone else vital to your future plans? At the very least the troll was ordered (imperio-ed?) to ignore any other victims and go straight for Hermione since it let Filch go.
The fact that after killing his target the troll attacked anyone nearby makes me suspect Lucius, who has no reason to keep any Hogwarts student alive since his son is no longer there.
The troll didn’t ignore other victims—it ate Filch’s cat. Perhaps troll brains are too weak for Imperio to work perfectly(though ofc, Quirrell would know this...)
It ignored other humans, Filch was standing close enough to be spattered with his cat’s remains, there is no way he could have outrun the troll. He was alone and it’s stated that trolls go for isolated targets, the only reason the troll would have let him go is if it was commanded to.
I do retract my later claim that Lucius wouldn’t care about other Hogwarts students, it should have occurred to me he wouldn’t risk his allies’ children.
The fact that after killing his target the troll attacked anyone nearby makes me suspect Lucius, who has no reason to keep any Hogwarts student alive since his son is no longer there.
Between his blood purism, his many allies with children there, and how he de facto rules magical Britain, he has plenty of reason.
I don’t see any particular reason to believe that “lead it away, keep it off me” was anyone other than Hermione, and that she wasn’t being named yet for dramatic tension. (Or something like Harry’s inner narration temporarily refusing to accept that she was in danger.)
And we know Hermione was still capable of speech after that line because she tells Harry it wasn’t his fault. The time traveler theory is a possibility but I don’t see that line as indicating a lurking future Harry giving useless advice.
Yes, but why would she say “keep it off me” in that voice? I would be very, very impressed if Hermione managed anything other than a whisper or a scream in that state, unfortunately.
Also, it’s hardly useless advice. For starters, if we assume that Harry didn’t say anything, it probably caused F&G to give Harry enough time to act. It may also give future-Harry space to act; if he doesn’t have to worry about avoiding a troll without leaving evidence, he’ll probably have a lot easier time rescuing Hermione.
… So, since this scene is obviously engineered by somebody (Harry arriving bare minutes too late, the wards not alerting Dumbledore, etc), I’m just going to go through the list of people who have shown the ability to plan such things.
a) Quirrel.
Unlikely.
This seems odd. Burning through Hogwarts is going to be a pretty big deal for him—he’s basically demonstrated either an instinctive Harry-dar (and a way of knowing what Harry is doing, as well), or else he knew where Hermione was all along. Both of which are rather suspicious. I have no doubt he’ll escape repercussions (Obliviating Trelawney comes to mind), but it still seems sloppy to incur them if he can avoid it.
This implies that this is simply not his plot: as he is already under suspicion and under watch, he loses nothing from a random walk that happens to put him near Hermione in case something goes wrong. And somehow, I am loathe to expect Quirrell to make a mistake while predicting the actions of another, even when that other is Harry Potter—especially when he knows that Harry has someone to defend and a killing instinct.
b) Dumbledore.
More likely, but still unlikely.
The obvious version of this plan includes Hermione dying—and for all that Dumbledore has morally greyed, I still can’t see him killing a twelve-year-old girl in cold blood. (To him, I imagine, leaving her to die is a completely different matter.)
The second most obvious version of this plan—faking Hermione’s death—has fewer problems, but is simply narratively unlikely. The biggest problem is Hermione’s death-scream; it’s a big dramatic moment, it’s incredibly personal to Hermione in a way I’m not sure Dumbledore could emulate, Harry feels it cling to Hogwarts for a moment...
It’s more likely than Quirrell (and certainly fits his style better—very complex and seemingly error-prone), but I’m still skeptical of ascribing any plan that pushes Harry away from the Light to Dumbledore.
c)
… We’re basically out of appearing characters. That said, there’s this rather interesting line...
Harry, feeling disassociated from himself? No; a few seconds later we have
Disassociated-Harry shows up later, I think, but that first call doesn’t seem to be Harry’s.
So we’re looking for someone who has the manipulation ability of Quirrell and Dumbledore (but, preferably, not Quirrell or Dumbledore), already present at the scene (which means s/he knows exactly where Hermione would flee to and that Harry would follow), who doesn’t want to save Hermione’s life from Harry’s perspective.
… At this point, I’m making an intuitive leap. We’ve already been suspicious that a Peggy Sue will show up; we think we know that the timeline must be consistent; we know that Harry has just resolved (and been PROPHECY-ed) to rip apart reality to bring by Hermione...
I’m wondering if future Harry—as in, really future Harry, not time-turned plus-six-hours Harry but after-the-fic plus-thirty-years Harry—hasn’t shown up to pull a Chrono Trigger style rescue. We can ascribe essentially infinite competence to this Harry—by dint of living through this once (or more) times he can create the timeline he remembers, and is fully capable of a perfect illusion (for example, letting Hermione “die” and then catching her soul after it escapes, which by definition would satisfy any test Dumbledore et al could run.)
… there’s probably a few flaws in my logic (I noticed after typing this that I jumped straight to “future Harry” and came up with a rationalization for it), but I didn’t see anyone else proposing this, so I threw it up anyway.
*facepalm*
Care to elaborate? Quirrel’s involvement in this attack does not seem quite that intuitively obvious to me.
Quirel has often stated his dislike of Harry holding back because of silly things like “morality” and “what others might think of him”. As Draco said in an early chapter: when confronted with a complicated plot look at what ends up happening and assume it was the intended outcome. Harry went fully into his dark side, switched off his censors and killed the troll in about 5 seconds. Even if Harry stayed behind in the Great Hall and learned about Hermione’s death later it would still make him go to his dark side like never before. This benefits whatever Quirel’s plan is.
Secondly, Eliezer likes to foreshadow things in hpmor. How many times have we heard characters say something like: “always suspect the defense professor”? This alone hints at Quirel being the mastermind behind Big Evil Events.
Right, but he’s not the only suspect.
Though with the new chapter, it strikes me that one of my bits of evidence (that Quirrell had been blasting through the walls of Hogwarts) may have been intended to be able to truthfully imply that he had cared enough for Hermione’s life to go blasting through Hogwarts, so I need to go update.
I think it is supposed to be Harry—before a voice said that, the text simply blanked out, refused to state what the troll held or the troll dropped. After the text explicitly states the state Hermione is in, then we get Harry’s statement about fire and acid.
… Maybe. It still seems odd, though.
It does, but I interpreted it as Harry having to wrestle himself back towards acknowledging the painful fact of Hermione’s injuries, as opposed to flinching away.
Re Quirrell:
He’s previously stated that trying something that hasn’t worked in the past again, with no reason to believe it’d work this time, is stupid. It seems like he did this knowing it wouldn’t work, which raises the obvious question of why.
In general, the Defense Professor’s actions read as compensation to me—if this is his doing, it certainly wasn’t his plan. I have a very hard time coming up with reasons why one would want to be seen blasting through Hogwarts unnecessarily.
I’ll agree that his rush to the combat is almost certainly an attempt to keep Harry alive. Unnecessarily, but he had no way of knowing that. But the troll attack seems to almost certainly be the doing of the person who used Hermione to attack Draco, and it’s hard to believe that was anyone other than Quirrell.
Care to explain why?
I’m seeing a pretty sharp gap in planning style between the framing and the troll attack. “Brilliant first-year student attacks student with a possible grudge” is almost believable; “troll enchanted against sunlight kills first-year” can’t be anything other than a murder attempt. The latter is quite a bit more sloppy than the first.
Because the same tactic wouldn’t work again. And this time, he has Lucius Malfoy to pin it on.
Waitaminute...how exactly have we gotten this far without considering the possibility that Lucius did this? It seems tailored to the protections on Hermione more closely than he would usually be able to manage, but he’d know the Hogwarts wards as well as anyone who wasn’t Headmaster, and the “eating the feet first” bit could be coincidence. And plausible deniability plus brute force seems exactly like Lucius’ style.
The timing doesn’t make sense for this interpretation. We know Quirrell starts moving when he notices Harry’s intent to kill. But, Harry takes out the troll (and hence any threat to his life) several seconds later, and Quirrell notices this. However, he doesn’t seem to stop moving then; several seconds is hardly enough time to blow through much of Hogwarts. Instead, he seems to stop when Harry’s killing intent stops. This suggests, to me, that Quirrell was worried about this intent—perhaps that it wouldn’t stop when the troll was dead.
Hmmm. How large is Hogwarts? It’s non-Euclidean, but it’s Euclidean enough for Quirrel to shortcut by blowing up walls in a quasi-straight line.
Given Quirrel’s rarely used but significant ability to blow stuff up, I think that once he reached steady state he could blow up several cubic meters of masonry per second for a good few meters per second rate of travel.
Alternatively, Quirrel’s Potterdar gives him a direction sense that follows a geodesic.
When going out of your way to turn a troll into an assassination tool, wouldn’t you also instal some explicit instructions NOT to harm Harry Potter or anyone else vital to your future plans? At the very least the troll was ordered (imperio-ed?) to ignore any other victims and go straight for Hermione since it let Filch go. The fact that after killing his target the troll attacked anyone nearby makes me suspect Lucius, who has no reason to keep any Hogwarts student alive since his son is no longer there.
The troll didn’t ignore other victims—it ate Filch’s cat. Perhaps troll brains are too weak for Imperio to work perfectly(though ofc, Quirrell would know this...)
It ignored other humans, Filch was standing close enough to be spattered with his cat’s remains, there is no way he could have outrun the troll. He was alone and it’s stated that trolls go for isolated targets, the only reason the troll would have let him go is if it was commanded to.
I do retract my later claim that Lucius wouldn’t care about other Hogwarts students, it should have occurred to me he wouldn’t risk his allies’ children.
Between his blood purism, his many allies with children there, and how he de facto rules magical Britain, he has plenty of reason.
I don’t see any particular reason to believe that “lead it away, keep it off me” was anyone other than Hermione, and that she wasn’t being named yet for dramatic tension. (Or something like Harry’s inner narration temporarily refusing to accept that she was in danger.)
I thought it was intuitive that this was depersonalized Harry Potter. I’m confused by all the confusion about it.
Hermione was on the floor in … one piece, technically… at the time, and we have good reason to believe that that really was Hermione.
And we know Hermione was still capable of speech after that line because she tells Harry it wasn’t his fault. The time traveler theory is a possibility but I don’t see that line as indicating a lurking future Harry giving useless advice.
Yes, but why would she say “keep it off me” in that voice? I would be very, very impressed if Hermione managed anything other than a whisper or a scream in that state, unfortunately.
Also, it’s hardly useless advice. For starters, if we assume that Harry didn’t say anything, it probably caused F&G to give Harry enough time to act. It may also give future-Harry space to act; if he doesn’t have to worry about avoiding a troll without leaving evidence, he’ll probably have a lot easier time rescuing Hermione.
What voice, precisely? There is no narrative text going ’”Keep it off me”, loudly said a proud confident masculine voice”.
“Keep it off me,” as opposed to, iunno, “‘k-keep… it off me...,’ someone whispered”
About two minutes later Hermione was struggling to whisper “Not your fault,” so I don’t see her speaking audibly over a troll fight.
she first yells, then has some appendages eaten off… yeah, that would reduce your stamina and energy pretty quickly.
I kind of like the idea that in general, far-future harry is the main antagonist of the story.