A lot of people think that Voldemort was going too easy on Harry, making this a “Coil vs. Taylor in the burning building” violation of suspension-of-disbelief for some of them. I am considering rewriting 113 with the following changes:
Most Death Eaters are watching the surrounding area, not Harry; Voldemort’s primary hypothesis for how Time might thwart him involves outside interference.
Voldemort tells Harry to point his wand outward and downward at the ground, then has a Death Eater paralyze Harry (except heart/lungs/mouth/eyes) in that position before the unbreakable Vow. This would also require a retroedit to 15 or 28 to make it clear that Transfiguration does not require an exact finger position on the wand.
This was actually my original assumption as to why Voldemort let Harry keep his wand, and I was surprised it didn’t come into play. Adding a line to the effect of “demonstrate some spell” would solve pretty much every problem raised by the readers, and as such, this is by far my favorite solution proposed so far. Upvoted enthusiastically.
This is by far my favorite change that seems probably-acceptable-to-eliezer.
I’d have preferred if the winning stroke included (at least in the “talking to buy time” section) something that addressed learning to lose, or keeping secrets, or their different mental-frameworks that enable different powers. But I assume Eliezer’s less willing to retcon that sort of thing.
The big problem is that he left Harry his wand. If he uses more precautions against Harry, but still keeps leaving Harry his wand, then that makes the fact that he left Harry his wand less realistic, not more. So I actually think that you should go the other way with it—have him be less paranoid about Harry. Because otherwise you’re making the inconsistency even worse. He’s being cautious and paranoid enough to strip Harry’s clothes from him, but leaves the wand in Harry’s hand for one moment longer than he has to? It makes more sense if he has the Death Eaters throw a bunch of Finites at him to check for residual traps left by Dumbledore, and for that to be where he sees most of the threat coming from.
Voldemort’s not only being paranoid enough to strip Harry’s clothes from him, he’s being careful and cautious enough to remove an object Harry Transfigured without letting their magics interact. That kind of attitude is jarringly inconsistent with leaving Harry his wand for no apparent reason.
Luke_A_Somers already suggested adding a reason for Harry to have his wand. I think that adding such a reason combined with changes that increase our estimate of Voldemort’s estimate of P(Time will try to thwart Voldemort’s attempt to avert the prophecy through something other than Harry | Time will try to thwart Voldemort’s attempt to avert the prophecy) would make things seem much more consistent; leaving Harry his clothes and having some (not necessarily most) of the Death Eaters looking outwards would both help with the latter.
The reason I suggest increasing readers’ estimates of Voldemort’s estimate of P(Time will try to thwart Voldemort’s attempt to avert the prophecy through something other than Harry | Time will try to thwart Voldemort’s attempt to avert the prophecy) rather than just making Voldemort less paranoid overall in this situation is to avoid worsening the Villain Ball complaints; shifting his paranoia partly elsewhere allows him to be the sharp antagonist we’re expecting while suggesting that he’s confident the precautions he takes are sufficient to neutralize Harry as a threat (which allows Harry to win). That confidence isn’t out of place for his character—even though he’s read Muggle books, it’s entirely plausible that he hasn’t integrated that knowledge well enough to start questioning what he knows as the limits of magic (and thereby come to think of partial Transfiguration, or more generally realize that Harry might question those limits and succeed in discovering something he can wordlessly cast without pointing his wand).
The particular changes I mentioned also have the side benefit of not really affecting the major proposed solutions to the Final Exam. If you do change it, I think a historical version should be preserved for correspondence with the Collective Intelligence’s effort.
Having the Death Eaters look around makes sense, but the paralysis seems contrived to me. It’s a very specific level of intelligence between what he have now and just having Mr. Grim cast Expelliarmus. I think it is more realistic for Voldemort to have dismissed the threat than for him to have considered it and decided that paralyzing Harry was the best solution.
Don’t be too hasty, whatever you end up deciding! It’s only been a day. A lot of people put a lot of thought into solving this problem, and it makes sense that their attitudes about whether the problem was too easy, or too hard, or whether they solved guessed the author’s solution, or whether it’s unrealistic, would be emotionally enhanced by the effort they spent.
Take a week, take a month, talk to people you trust.
As AlexanderWales says, the biggest flaw is the wand. If you add a line about harry being left holding his wand so that Voldemort can impose further unbreakable vows if he sees fit, or he has it left in case he needs to demonstrate any secret knowledge (along the lines of Patronus 2.0), Voldemort goes from holding the Idiot Ball to just making a mistake. He’s trading off Harry possibly doing something impossible with his wand vs a far likelier benefit.
The biggest problem for me is that when I imagine myself reading these events and Voldemort going, “A nice try but I can sense whatever transfiguration trick it is that you’re using. Thank you, that will take me some time to perfect in my eternity,” I don’t feel surprised.
Throwing additional stipulations and conditions into the situation doesn’t change the fact that the way in which Voldemort loses is not convincing.
It doesn’t feel like Harry earned the win because I can just as easily imagine Voldemort laughing at Harry’s childish tricks and killing him. For the finale to truly be satisfying, there has to be a specific, pre-established reason why Voldemort was unable to defend against Harry’s tactics and, at least in my mind, this was not the case.
Simply being unaware of partial transfiguration doesn’t cut it. This is a person who casts nearly thirty charms to discuss sensitive information in Mary’s room and recognizes the value of ambush and surprise attacks. Yet in his final moment of securing his eternity is unable to sense transfigured material winding its way around himself and his followers. Material transfigured by person he has a known magical resonance with.
It simply does not feel reasonable for Voldemort to lose like this, no matter how many addendums are added to justify his behavior in these final chapters.
I admit I did forget about that specific incident.
However, Dumbledore going cell to cell in Azkaban and Lord Voldemort attempting to subvert a prophecy predicting the end of the world in a fixed, controlled location seem like two very different things from a reader perspective.
It is also implied that Dumbledore did sense Harry’s magic - at least on some level.
...the strongest had only as much magic left as a first-year child.
But he dismisses this because he is looking for a wizard strong enough to break into Azkaban and free Bellatrix Black. Lord Voldemort on the other hand, should be immediately and unconditionally suspicious of any and all magic he senses from Harry Potter.
An excellent point. I was going to say that Dumbledore was also unable to detect Harry’s horror at Hermione’s injuries “through the link that existed between the two of them, the resonance in their magic,” nor did he feel “the boy exterminate his enemy in seconds.” But on inspection this doesn’t actually say he could feel the spells Harry was using. And Harry’s scar does not appear to react to e.g the repair of Hermione’s body or the summons for the Death Eaters. The doom-sense could have a lot to do with both the strength of the magic and the degree to which it inherently clashes with the senser’s inclinations or goals.
The doom-sense could have a lot to do with both the strength of the magic and the degree to which it inherently clashes with the senser’s inclinations or goals.
To me, it seemed that it scaled with their current mindsets and actions, with stronger being the more they contrasted.
Consider how strongly it was felt when Harry’s “anti-death-ness” was particularly strong (e.g. after Harry killed his first Dementor) or when Voldemort’s desecration of death was higher than normal (e.g. when he makes Inferi).
Inversely, look at weak the feeling is when their current mindsets are not so opposed (e.g. when Quirrell was in zombie-mode in ch 49, because he practically lacked a mind at those times).
Though, the zombie-mode in ch 26 was still fairly strong, which could imply that zombie-mode isn’t as big of a determinant as I initially suspected. It might well be another piece of evidence towards the importance mindset, however, as that ride ends with Quirrell leaving to “set something into motion,” which is certainly ominous coming from Lord Voldemort and may well have been something Harry was inherently set against. I don’t remember if we found/figured out what he was doing there.
Taking this into account, the lack of doom-sense during the transfiguration would simply be there not being much of a mindset left.
Though I fear I may have strayed from the original thrust of your post.
I think the only thing that would satisfy me is a legitimate excuse for Voldemort to leave Harry armed. Anything short of that, you may as well leave it as-is for historical reasons.
I’m going to repost something I wrote in another bit of the discussion:
if people reason about V as an optimization process rather than a character, they will never be satisfied by V losing a duel because V is defined by his duel-winning property. So the only winning move is not to play, but there are satisfying ways for that to happen.
V has established that he is willing to try to intervene at every possible point when it comes to breaking the prophecy. So he would paralyze Harry, and take Harry’s wand from him, and destroy Harry’s wand. Especially in the context of V asking Harry to share secrets V doesn’t have.
It seems to me the simplest place to intervene is the characterization of V. Have Harry, during one of his bleak “how the heck am I going to defeat V” moments (or possibly at the start of 114), remember what gattsuru talks about here. V is sharp but limited; Harry can use those limits against him. Then Harry surprising V makes more sense, and every idea Harry uses could explicitly be linked to one of V’s weaknesses. (For example, Stuporfy works because V disdains dueling.)
Even then, I do not think it will work fully, and some readers will only be satisfied by a ‘mutual victory’ ending. I have in mind an ending that would work for that that I’ll write up when I have time for fiction (tonight?), but it requires more changes earlier and may not match at all your goals for the fic.
(Incidentally, if I were in V’s position and knew about Time-Turners, those could be used to add a further layer of security. I would precommit to Time-Turning back an hour and asking Harry to reveal his secrets in the presence of my original version iff Harry in fact revealed his secrets to the future copy of me that appeared and then died quietly; otherwise I would kill him immediately. This might violate the “use Time-Turners for arbitrary computation” rule, but I don’t think so; it seems closer to asking Flitwick to rescue past-you, or the original Time-Turner prank, or a minor modification of it could move it into that class.)
Incidentally, if I were in V’s position and knew about Time-Turners
I realized this morning that I should be clearer: obviously, V knows that Time-Turners exist. But does he know enough about their function to know exactly how the information-backpropagation prevention works, and which loops you can reliably create, and which ones you can’t? That seems like the sort of thing that would require extensive experimentation that he may or may not have done.
V has established that he is willing to try to intervene at every possible point when it comes to breaking the prophecy. So he would paralyze Harry, and take Harry’s wand from him, and destroy Harry’s wand. Especially in the context of V asking Harry to share secrets V doesn’t have.
And intervening with the prophecy is about removing Harry as a threat.
He only let Harry speak because he wanted his secrets. Got greedy and overconfident. Fine.
But I see no reason Harry needs to have his wand to have that chat. Paralyzing him would be another precaution, but that would be secondary to taking his wand—without his wand, he’s a very smart little boy.
If an edit could be found to justify letting Harry keep his wand, I think that would do it for me.
Hmmmm. On EY’s new scenario, would magical paralysis automatically wear off if the person who cast the spell dies? Does Voldemort need his wand to leave his body? Seems a pretty hard row to hoe for even just a paralyzed Harry, to keep Voldemort from leaving his body or otherwise escaping.
What I’m uncertain about is what was going through Voldemort’s mind at the time. I have no idea what he was thinking when he let Harry keep his wand, and so for me, that part kind of fell flat, especially when it turned out there was no explanation other than, “He was overconfident”… which sounds like an explanation, but isn’t one, not really. It’s just like saying “magic” or “phlogiston”. How does the mokeskin pouch work? “Magic!” What causes fire? “Phlogiston!” Why did Voldemort let Harry keep his wand? “Overconfidence!” For me, that just isn’t specific enough of an explanation to actually allow me to make predictions. My model of Voldemort can’t receive “overconfidence” as an argument and spit out the action “let Harry keep his wand”; the argument isn’t well-specified enough. How was he overconfident? What was his exact train of thought? As Harry put it in 108:
“It was, but...” Harry said. “Um. The laws governing what constitutes a good explanation don’t talk about plausible excuses you hear afterward. They talk about the probabilities we assign in advance. That’s why science makes people do advance predictions, instead of trusting explanations people come up with afterward. And I wouldn’t have predicted in advance for you to follow Snape and show up like that. Even if I’d known in advance that you could put a trace on Snape’s wand, I wouldn’t have expected you to do it and follow him just then. Since your explanation didn’t make me feel like I would have predicted the outcome in advance, it remained an improbability. I started to wonder if Sprout’s mastermind might have arranged for you to show up, too. And then I realised the note to myself hadn’t really come from future-me, and that gave it away completely.”
Since the explanation “overconfidence” didn’t make me feel like I would have predicted Voldemort’s actions in advance, it remained an improbability.
I’m not suggesting for you to add a scene from Voldemort’s point of view into Chapter 113 or something—that would be a jarring shift in perspective, IMO. (Although it would be nice if you could somehow give a hint at Voldemort’s motives—I particularly liked Luke_A_Somers’ suggestion.) That being said, I am curious: what was your model of Voldemort thinking when you had him let Harry keep his wand? If not too inconvenient, could you elaborate on what you were modeling Voldemort’s thoughts as?
If you want to make the scenario more realistic then put more time pressure on Voldemort or put him under more cognitive stress some other way. The hardest part for Voldemort is solving this problem in a short time span and NOT coming up with a solution that foils Harry. The reason experienced soldiers/gamers with little to no intelligence still win against highly intelligent combatants with no experience is that TIME matters when you’re limited to a single human’s processing power. In virtually every combat situation one is forced to make decisions faster than one can search the solution space. Only experience compensates for this deficit to any measurable degree. In this situation there are several aspects that Voldemort does not have experience with. If he must spends his cognitive resources considering these aspects and cannot draw from experience it makes mistakes much more likely.
I’d like that slightly more, but such minor changes barely address the issue. Also, I am already suspecting that the way in which Harry will unparalyze himself after his improbable PT rampage is just going to involve some other unlikely feet.
I voted for the change, but I don’t feel these are crucial changes… I think a clearer problem is that it is not obvious, until Harry actually does it, that he could cast Transfiguration on his own wand. Or cast spells on his wand in general, it’s a bit like a gun shooting at itself.
I say more on this and propose an easy solution here. Chances are you’ve seen it and didn’t agree, but saying just in case.
Please don’t change it. It’s more than awesome enough as it is. Even if I did expect partial transfiguration to have some role, using the wand itself as raw material was tremendously surprising. For many people it will look too easy, but only with the benefit of hindsight.
Edited to add: some previous chapter should be modified to establish that transfiguration is indeed wordless.
For many people it will look too easy, but only with the benefit of hindsight.
Only with the benefit of hindsight? I bet 3 people that the solution won’t involve PT, 2 of them within hour(s) of chapter 113 coming out, as it was the most obvious (while impausible for some) solution for many people. Specifically transfiguring the tip of wand/leg/earth/air into nanowires was mentioned by so many people within minutes of posting the chapter.. There was no hindsight involved.
For what it’s worth, I felt that Taylor’s survival was much more believable than Harry’s. Maybe that’s because I knew in advance that Taylor’s problems would not stop with defeating Coil? :-)
The climax and the reader reaction to it have been slightly better than I was expecting. I would certainly not complain about improvements, but there are probably better marginal returns elsewhere.
Instead of “having a Death Eater paralyze Harry”, I suggest that Voldemort paralyzes Harry himself before the Death Eaters arrive by throwing a trapped Knut at him with Petrificus Totalis set on it to trigger or something.
Then Voldemort, just before the Vow, asks one of the Death Eaters to partially remove the paralysis just from Harry’s head.
This looks all the way simpler. A paralysis is good from Voldemort’s perspective, but if it is good to have it would be good to have from the start—so as to be in better control of the situation rather than depend solely on the abilities of the Death Eaters -- and don’t tell me that Voldemort couldn’t have found indirect ways to inflict a variety of magical effect on Harry the moment he realized his magic couldn’t touch him directly.
EDIT TO ADD: Ugh, no, that solution I just suggested (trapped Knut with paralysis spell) has the problem of leaving Harry paralyzed afterwards, while the paralysis spell would be dissolved at the Death Eater’s death...
don’t tell me that Voldemort couldn’t have found indirect ways to inflict a variety of magical effect on Harry the moment he realized his magic couldn’t touch him directly.
Experimenting with different ways to use magic indirectly carries a risk, that it’s not indirect enough for the effect to trigger. Voldemort might not want to take that risk.
Just checking, does the last option mean that the text shouldn’t be updated by reddit suggestions? That’s what I meant when I clicked it. The two should’ve been created separately.
My main problem with this whole thing is that LV doesn’t get the death eaters to cast shields, most notably shields against material objects, which we know are a thing from the mirror saga. Obviously the resonance is a concern, hence the death eaters cast the shields, but there is no way that LV doesn’t think that Harry is going to try something, he takes practically no precautions at all.
A lot of people think that Voldemort was going too easy on Harry, making this a “Coil vs. Taylor in the burning building” violation of suspension-of-disbelief for some of them. I am considering rewriting 113 with the following changes:
Most Death Eaters are watching the surrounding area, not Harry; Voldemort’s primary hypothesis for how Time might thwart him involves outside interference.
Voldemort tells Harry to point his wand outward and downward at the ground, then has a Death Eater paralyze Harry (except heart/lungs/mouth/eyes) in that position before the unbreakable Vow. This would also require a retroedit to 15 or 28 to make it clear that Transfiguration does not require an exact finger position on the wand.
[pollid:840]
I would add a reason for Harry to have the wand.
Like, instead of, “You will not raise your wand”, “You will only raise your wand when and how I permit it. Do not demonstrate a spell unless ordered.”
That would imply that Voldemort was open to the possibility that Harry might demonstrate something, which would require arming him.
This was actually my original assumption as to why Voldemort let Harry keep his wand, and I was surprised it didn’t come into play. Adding a line to the effect of “demonstrate some spell” would solve pretty much every problem raised by the readers, and as such, this is by far my favorite solution proposed so far. Upvoted enthusiastically.
Your phrasing makes it also look like a plausible mistake for someone in a new situation with little time to consider things.
I’m not sure what you mean here.
Edited phrasing to make it more clear....
I was aiming for it to be a mistake that someone could make even in a relatively familiar situation with ample time to consider.
This is by far my favorite change that seems probably-acceptable-to-eliezer.
I’d have preferred if the winning stroke included (at least in the “talking to buy time” section) something that addressed learning to lose, or keeping secrets, or their different mental-frameworks that enable different powers. But I assume Eliezer’s less willing to retcon that sort of thing.
The big problem is that he left Harry his wand. If he uses more precautions against Harry, but still keeps leaving Harry his wand, then that makes the fact that he left Harry his wand less realistic, not more. So I actually think that you should go the other way with it—have him be less paranoid about Harry. Because otherwise you’re making the inconsistency even worse. He’s being cautious and paranoid enough to strip Harry’s clothes from him, but leaves the wand in Harry’s hand for one moment longer than he has to? It makes more sense if he has the Death Eaters throw a bunch of Finites at him to check for residual traps left by Dumbledore, and for that to be where he sees most of the threat coming from.
This.
Voldemort’s not only being paranoid enough to strip Harry’s clothes from him, he’s being careful and cautious enough to remove an object Harry Transfigured without letting their magics interact. That kind of attitude is jarringly inconsistent with leaving Harry his wand for no apparent reason.
Luke_A_Somers already suggested adding a reason for Harry to have his wand. I think that adding such a reason combined with changes that increase our estimate of Voldemort’s estimate of P(Time will try to thwart Voldemort’s attempt to avert the prophecy through something other than Harry | Time will try to thwart Voldemort’s attempt to avert the prophecy) would make things seem much more consistent; leaving Harry his clothes and having some (not necessarily most) of the Death Eaters looking outwards would both help with the latter.
The reason I suggest increasing readers’ estimates of Voldemort’s estimate of P(Time will try to thwart Voldemort’s attempt to avert the prophecy through something other than Harry | Time will try to thwart Voldemort’s attempt to avert the prophecy) rather than just making Voldemort less paranoid overall in this situation is to avoid worsening the Villain Ball complaints; shifting his paranoia partly elsewhere allows him to be the sharp antagonist we’re expecting while suggesting that he’s confident the precautions he takes are sufficient to neutralize Harry as a threat (which allows Harry to win). That confidence isn’t out of place for his character—even though he’s read Muggle books, it’s entirely plausible that he hasn’t integrated that knowledge well enough to start questioning what he knows as the limits of magic (and thereby come to think of partial Transfiguration, or more generally realize that Harry might question those limits and succeed in discovering something he can wordlessly cast without pointing his wand).
The particular changes I mentioned also have the side benefit of not really affecting the major proposed solutions to the Final Exam. If you do change it, I think a historical version should be preserved for correspondence with the Collective Intelligence’s effort.
Having the Death Eaters look around makes sense, but the paralysis seems contrived to me. It’s a very specific level of intelligence between what he have now and just having Mr. Grim cast Expelliarmus. I think it is more realistic for Voldemort to have dismissed the threat than for him to have considered it and decided that paralyzing Harry was the best solution.
Don’t be too hasty, whatever you end up deciding! It’s only been a day. A lot of people put a lot of thought into solving this problem, and it makes sense that their attitudes about whether the problem was too easy, or too hard, or whether they solved guessed the author’s solution, or whether it’s unrealistic, would be emotionally enhanced by the effort they spent.
Take a week, take a month, talk to people you trust.
As AlexanderWales says, the biggest flaw is the wand. If you add a line about harry being left holding his wand so that Voldemort can impose further unbreakable vows if he sees fit, or he has it left in case he needs to demonstrate any secret knowledge (along the lines of Patronus 2.0), Voldemort goes from holding the Idiot Ball to just making a mistake. He’s trading off Harry possibly doing something impossible with his wand vs a far likelier benefit.
Long time lurker, signing up just to be able to vote for the harder version. Turns out I start out with 0 karma and am not allowed to vote. Oh well.
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The biggest problem for me is that when I imagine myself reading these events and Voldemort going, “A nice try but I can sense whatever transfiguration trick it is that you’re using. Thank you, that will take me some time to perfect in my eternity,” I don’t feel surprised.
Throwing additional stipulations and conditions into the situation doesn’t change the fact that the way in which Voldemort loses is not convincing.
It doesn’t feel like Harry earned the win because I can just as easily imagine Voldemort laughing at Harry’s childish tricks and killing him. For the finale to truly be satisfying, there has to be a specific, pre-established reason why Voldemort was unable to defend against Harry’s tactics and, at least in my mind, this was not the case.
Simply being unaware of partial transfiguration doesn’t cut it. This is a person who casts nearly thirty charms to discuss sensitive information in Mary’s room and recognizes the value of ambush and surprise attacks. Yet in his final moment of securing his eternity is unable to sense transfigured material winding its way around himself and his followers. Material transfigured by person he has a known magical resonance with.
It simply does not feel reasonable for Voldemort to lose like this, no matter how many addendums are added to justify his behavior in these final chapters.
I do remark that Dumbledore was unable to detect Harry doing an ongoing Transfiguration while he looked into Harry’s prison cell in Azkaban.
I admit I did forget about that specific incident.
However, Dumbledore going cell to cell in Azkaban and Lord Voldemort attempting to subvert a prophecy predicting the end of the world in a fixed, controlled location seem like two very different things from a reader perspective.
It is also implied that Dumbledore did sense Harry’s magic - at least on some level.
But he dismisses this because he is looking for a wizard strong enough to break into Azkaban and free Bellatrix Black. Lord Voldemort on the other hand, should be immediately and unconditionally suspicious of any and all magic he senses from Harry Potter.
That’s Dumbledore reading Harry’s mana level, not sensing whether Harry is casting spells.
An excellent point. I was going to say that Dumbledore was also unable to detect Harry’s horror at Hermione’s injuries “through the link that existed between the two of them, the resonance in their magic,” nor did he feel “the boy exterminate his enemy in seconds.” But on inspection this doesn’t actually say he could feel the spells Harry was using. And Harry’s scar does not appear to react to e.g the repair of Hermione’s body or the summons for the Death Eaters. The doom-sense could have a lot to do with both the strength of the magic and the degree to which it inherently clashes with the senser’s inclinations or goals.
To me, it seemed that it scaled with their current mindsets and actions, with stronger being the more they contrasted.
Consider how strongly it was felt when Harry’s “anti-death-ness” was particularly strong (e.g. after Harry killed his first Dementor) or when Voldemort’s desecration of death was higher than normal (e.g. when he makes Inferi).
Inversely, look at weak the feeling is when their current mindsets are not so opposed (e.g. when Quirrell was in zombie-mode in ch 49, because he practically lacked a mind at those times). Though, the zombie-mode in ch 26 was still fairly strong, which could imply that zombie-mode isn’t as big of a determinant as I initially suspected. It might well be another piece of evidence towards the importance mindset, however, as that ride ends with Quirrell leaving to “set something into motion,” which is certainly ominous coming from Lord Voldemort and may well have been something Harry was inherently set against. I don’t remember if we found/figured out what he was doing there.
Taking this into account, the lack of doom-sense during the transfiguration would simply be there not being much of a mindset left.
Though I fear I may have strayed from the original thrust of your post.
I think the only thing that would satisfy me is a legitimate excuse for Voldemort to leave Harry armed. Anything short of that, you may as well leave it as-is for historical reasons.
I’m going to repost something I wrote in another bit of the discussion:
V has established that he is willing to try to intervene at every possible point when it comes to breaking the prophecy. So he would paralyze Harry, and take Harry’s wand from him, and destroy Harry’s wand. Especially in the context of V asking Harry to share secrets V doesn’t have.
It seems to me the simplest place to intervene is the characterization of V. Have Harry, during one of his bleak “how the heck am I going to defeat V” moments (or possibly at the start of 114), remember what gattsuru talks about here. V is sharp but limited; Harry can use those limits against him. Then Harry surprising V makes more sense, and every idea Harry uses could explicitly be linked to one of V’s weaknesses. (For example, Stuporfy works because V disdains dueling.)
Even then, I do not think it will work fully, and some readers will only be satisfied by a ‘mutual victory’ ending. I have in mind an ending that would work for that that I’ll write up when I have time for fiction (tonight?), but it requires more changes earlier and may not match at all your goals for the fic.
(Incidentally, if I were in V’s position and knew about Time-Turners, those could be used to add a further layer of security. I would precommit to Time-Turning back an hour and asking Harry to reveal his secrets in the presence of my original version iff Harry in fact revealed his secrets to the future copy of me that appeared and then died quietly; otherwise I would kill him immediately. This might violate the “use Time-Turners for arbitrary computation” rule, but I don’t think so; it seems closer to asking Flitwick to rescue past-you, or the original Time-Turner prank, or a minor modification of it could move it into that class.)
I realized this morning that I should be clearer: obviously, V knows that Time-Turners exist. But does he know enough about their function to know exactly how the information-backpropagation prevention works, and which loops you can reliably create, and which ones you can’t? That seems like the sort of thing that would require extensive experimentation that he may or may not have done.
And intervening with the prophecy is about removing Harry as a threat.
He only let Harry speak because he wanted his secrets. Got greedy and overconfident. Fine.
But I see no reason Harry needs to have his wand to have that chat. Paralyzing him would be another precaution, but that would be secondary to taking his wand—without his wand, he’s a very smart little boy.
If an edit could be found to justify letting Harry keep his wand, I think that would do it for me.
Hmmmm. On EY’s new scenario, would magical paralysis automatically wear off if the person who cast the spell dies? Does Voldemort need his wand to leave his body? Seems a pretty hard row to hoe for even just a paralyzed Harry, to keep Voldemort from leaving his body or otherwise escaping.
What I’m uncertain about is what was going through Voldemort’s mind at the time. I have no idea what he was thinking when he let Harry keep his wand, and so for me, that part kind of fell flat, especially when it turned out there was no explanation other than, “He was overconfident”… which sounds like an explanation, but isn’t one, not really. It’s just like saying “magic” or “phlogiston”. How does the mokeskin pouch work? “Magic!” What causes fire? “Phlogiston!” Why did Voldemort let Harry keep his wand? “Overconfidence!” For me, that just isn’t specific enough of an explanation to actually allow me to make predictions. My model of Voldemort can’t receive “overconfidence” as an argument and spit out the action “let Harry keep his wand”; the argument isn’t well-specified enough. How was he overconfident? What was his exact train of thought? As Harry put it in 108:
Since the explanation “overconfidence” didn’t make me feel like I would have predicted Voldemort’s actions in advance, it remained an improbability.
I’m not suggesting for you to add a scene from Voldemort’s point of view into Chapter 113 or something—that would be a jarring shift in perspective, IMO. (Although it would be nice if you could somehow give a hint at Voldemort’s motives—I particularly liked Luke_A_Somers’ suggestion.) That being said, I am curious: what was your model of Voldemort thinking when you had him let Harry keep his wand? If not too inconvenient, could you elaborate on what you were modeling Voldemort’s thoughts as?
If you want to make the scenario more realistic then put more time pressure on Voldemort or put him under more cognitive stress some other way. The hardest part for Voldemort is solving this problem in a short time span and NOT coming up with a solution that foils Harry. The reason experienced soldiers/gamers with little to no intelligence still win against highly intelligent combatants with no experience is that TIME matters when you’re limited to a single human’s processing power. In virtually every combat situation one is forced to make decisions faster than one can search the solution space. Only experience compensates for this deficit to any measurable degree. In this situation there are several aspects that Voldemort does not have experience with. If he must spends his cognitive resources considering these aspects and cannot draw from experience it makes mistakes much more likely.
I’d like that slightly more, but such minor changes barely address the issue. Also, I am already suspecting that the way in which Harry will unparalyze himself after his improbable PT rampage is just going to involve some other unlikely feet.
I voted for the change, but I don’t feel these are crucial changes… I think a clearer problem is that it is not obvious, until Harry actually does it, that he could cast Transfiguration on his own wand. Or cast spells on his wand in general, it’s a bit like a gun shooting at itself.
I say more on this and propose an easy solution here. Chances are you’ve seen it and didn’t agree, but saying just in case.
I would’ve had him transfigure a sliver of one of his fingernails, unless it has to be touching the tip of the wand.
Yeah, that would work too, as long as it had been established earlier in the story that it doesn’t have to be the tip.
Please don’t change it. It’s more than awesome enough as it is. Even if I did expect partial transfiguration to have some role, using the wand itself as raw material was tremendously surprising. For many people it will look too easy, but only with the benefit of hindsight.
Edited to add: some previous chapter should be modified to establish that transfiguration is indeed wordless.
Edited to add: I’m stupid. Chapter 15 says it is.
Only with the benefit of hindsight? I bet 3 people that the solution won’t involve PT, 2 of them within hour(s) of chapter 113 coming out, as it was the most obvious (while impausible for some) solution for many people. Specifically transfiguring the tip of wand/leg/earth/air into nanowires was mentioned by so many people within minutes of posting the chapter.. There was no hindsight involved.
The solution was actually posted to reddit after chapter 112, before there was a final exam at all.
For what it’s worth, I felt that Taylor’s survival was much more believable than Harry’s. Maybe that’s because I knew in advance that Taylor’s problems would not stop with defeating Coil? :-)
The climax and the reader reaction to it have been slightly better than I was expecting. I would certainly not complain about improvements, but there are probably better marginal returns elsewhere.
Instead of “having a Death Eater paralyze Harry”, I suggest that Voldemort paralyzes Harry himself before the Death Eaters arrive by throwing a trapped Knut at him with Petrificus Totalis set on it to trigger or something.
Then Voldemort, just before the Vow, asks one of the Death Eaters to partially remove the paralysis just from Harry’s head.
This looks all the way simpler. A paralysis is good from Voldemort’s perspective, but if it is good to have it would be good to have from the start—so as to be in better control of the situation rather than depend solely on the abilities of the Death Eaters -- and don’t tell me that Voldemort couldn’t have found indirect ways to inflict a variety of magical effect on Harry the moment he realized his magic couldn’t touch him directly.
EDIT TO ADD: Ugh, no, that solution I just suggested (trapped Knut with paralysis spell) has the problem of leaving Harry paralyzed afterwards, while the paralysis spell would be dissolved at the Death Eater’s death...
Experimenting with different ways to use magic indirectly carries a risk, that it’s not indirect enough for the effect to trigger. Voldemort might not want to take that risk.
Just checking, does the last option mean that the text shouldn’t be updated by reddit suggestions? That’s what I meant when I clicked it. The two should’ve been created separately.
My main problem with this whole thing is that LV doesn’t get the death eaters to cast shields, most notably shields against material objects, which we know are a thing from the mirror saga. Obviously the resonance is a concern, hence the death eaters cast the shields, but there is no way that LV doesn’t think that Harry is going to try something, he takes practically no precautions at all.
Meaning?