Quirrell doesn’t seem to recognize that Harry would side with the non-magical side instead. (Harry has noted some peculiarities in Quirrell’s model of the world on several occasions, and [...] I suspect those peculiarities can be summarized as Quirrell failing to account for, for lack of a better word, “love.”)
Agree that Quirrell doesn’t recognize this; agree that Quirrell’s model is peculiar in failing to account for, for lack of a better word, “love”; disagree that the latter is the reason for the former. I don’t think Quirrell would be wrong in predicting that even many Muggleborns will join him.
I haven’t been following these threads enough to know whether it’s even worth spelling out the obvious theory of what the “power the Dark Lord knows not” is in the Verresverse, but it seems pretty clear that it’s neither “love” as in canon nor “science” as Harry suggests (and Snape disputes) in Ch. 86, but Harry’s belief that a good future can actually be made to happen (and is worth fighting for), i.e. an interstellar transhumanist rationalist ethical civilization that has left death behind. That may not sound like “power”, but it really is … not primarily because it means that Harry can cast the True Patronus charm and Voldemort cannot, but because it means that Harry can try and make an interstellar transhumanist rationalist civilization happen that has left death behind, and Quirrellmort—who wants to beat death, who wants to be safe from nuclear weapons, who hates being around pretty much everybody because he finds people hypocritical and stupid, who wants to go to the stars—can not.
Which is relevant here because this is deeply intervowen with Harry’s rock-solid morality:
No one knew quite how many wizards there were in the world. He’d done a few estimates with Hermione and come up with numbers in the rough range of a million.
But there were six billion Muggles.
If it came down to a final war...
Professor Quirrell had forgotten to ask Harry which side he would protect.
A scientific civilization, reaching outward, looking upward, knowing that its destiny was to grasp the stars.
And a magical civilization, slowly fading as knowledge was lost, still governed by a nobility that saw Muggles as not quite human.
It was a terribly sad feeling, but not one that held any hint of doubt.
I don’t think it can be usefully summarized into one punchy word (ETA: I don’t think hope is quite the right way to describe what Quirrellmort is missing that’s preventing him from creating and ruling over an intergalactic dark empire), but now that I thought for one minute about which one I would choose if I had to pick one, it would be one that doesn’t at first brush sound like it fits into that slot at all:
After thinking about this for a minute I have to confirm my first impression: This is nonsense. The Dark Lord knows craptons of ambition. Any definition of ‘ambition’ for which the Dark Lord does not know it is a ridiculous definition. And if we’re talking about Quirrellmort we’ve even heard him share his ambitions. Maybe he has somewhat less ambition than Harry but that’s not sufficient for the claim to be reasonable.
*shrugs* So my opinion is that when one ambition is so much greater that the other isn’t even distinguishable from zero unless you plot them on a log scale, it makes poetic sense to call the Dark Lord “not ambitious”, even though I of course agree that Quirrellmort is ambitious compared to the median human. But if you don’t agree that this is poetically appropriate, sure, fine.
(I’ll recall my disclaimer that I don’t actually think that it makes sense to use just a single word to describe the concept—seriously trying to do that strikes me as trying to make the discussion compliant with Dumbledorian thought-by-cliché.)
I agree with the concept above. Moreover, so does Quirrell:
I expect that you will grasp at any opportunity for advancement which falls into your hands. But there is no great ambition that you are driven to accomplish, and you will not make your opportunities.
Now, every model I’ve made of Quirrellmort’s prior actions do show him making his own opportunities, but the point remains—none of those opportunities (that I’ve modeled, predicted, or learned about) have aimed anywhere near any kind of genuine improvement of humanity in the way that Harry desires, not even fixing the flaws he himself observes. They’ve all just been about him achieving power.
This feels odd to type, but it feels as though Quirrellmort’s ambitions are...shallow.
Agree that Quirrell doesn’t recognize this; agree that Quirrell’s model is peculiar in failing to account for, for lack of a better word, “love”; disagree that the latter is the reason for the former. I don’t think Quirrell would be wrong in predicting that even many Muggleborns will join him.
I haven’t been following these threads enough to know whether it’s even worth spelling out the obvious theory of what the “power the Dark Lord knows not” is in the Verresverse, but it seems pretty clear that it’s neither “love” as in canon nor “science” as Harry suggests (and Snape disputes) in Ch. 86, but Harry’s belief that a good future can actually be made to happen (and is worth fighting for), i.e. an interstellar transhumanist rationalist ethical civilization that has left death behind. That may not sound like “power”, but it really is … not primarily because it means that Harry can cast the True Patronus charm and Voldemort cannot, but because it means that Harry can try and make an interstellar transhumanist rationalist civilization happen that has left death behind, and Quirrellmort—who wants to beat death, who wants to be safe from nuclear weapons, who hates being around pretty much everybody because he finds people hypocritical and stupid, who wants to go to the stars—can not.
Which is relevant here because this is deeply intervowen with Harry’s rock-solid morality:
(Ch. 35)
In other words, the power the Dark Lord knows not is hope.
I don’t think it can be usefully summarized into one punchy word (ETA: I don’t think hope is quite the right way to describe what Quirrellmort is missing that’s preventing him from creating and ruling over an intergalactic dark empire), but now that I thought for one minute about which one I would choose if I had to pick one, it would be one that doesn’t at first brush sound like it fits into that slot at all:
The power the Dark Lord knows not is ambition.
The power the Dark Lord Knows Not is optimism?
After thinking about this for a minute I have to confirm my first impression: This is nonsense. The Dark Lord knows craptons of ambition. Any definition of ‘ambition’ for which the Dark Lord does not know it is a ridiculous definition. And if we’re talking about Quirrellmort we’ve even heard him share his ambitions. Maybe he has somewhat less ambition than Harry but that’s not sufficient for the claim to be reasonable.
*shrugs* So my opinion is that when one ambition is so much greater that the other isn’t even distinguishable from zero unless you plot them on a log scale, it makes poetic sense to call the Dark Lord “not ambitious”, even though I of course agree that Quirrellmort is ambitious compared to the median human. But if you don’t agree that this is poetically appropriate, sure, fine.
(I’ll recall my disclaimer that I don’t actually think that it makes sense to use just a single word to describe the concept—seriously trying to do that strikes me as trying to make the discussion compliant with Dumbledorian thought-by-cliché.)
I agree with the concept above. Moreover, so does Quirrell:
Now, every model I’ve made of Quirrellmort’s prior actions do show him making his own opportunities, but the point remains—none of those opportunities (that I’ve modeled, predicted, or learned about) have aimed anywhere near any kind of genuine improvement of humanity in the way that Harry desires, not even fixing the flaws he himself observes. They’ve all just been about him achieving power.
This feels odd to type, but it feels as though Quirrellmort’s ambitions are...shallow.