Isn’t there a simpler (and nicer) solution than Hermione-corpse-transfigured-to-ring, or Hermione-corpse-transfigured-to-gem-then-swapped? Both of these seem unduly complicated and ghoulish.
The nicer solution is that whatever Harry was doing between Hermione’s death and dinner-time, he has already succeeded.
Harry has somehow set up a time marker by which his future self can travel back to restore Hermione to life (or pass himself some sort of message back telling him how to do it) and she is already resurrected and out of here.
Presumably the plan also involved him selectively obliviating himself, so that he would retain the motivation to work out how to do the impossible in the future, while being quite relaxed about little details like the missing body.
An interesting question is how did he get round the 6 hour limit? Are there any hints in the story so far on the solution? Some thoughts:
Phoenix travel
Forcing a prophecy and deciphering it
The ritual described at the head of Chapter 1
Looping himself multiple times around the same 6 hours
Some variant on the factoring trick, to force himself to receive knowledge of a working resurrection spell which he will invent at a later date, or else create a paradox in the present. Only this time, he’s determined enough to make it work, and not be distracted by any “DON’T MESS WITH TIME” messages...
I don’t see Hermione be revived any time soon, for both story reasons and because Harry is unlikely to unravel the secrets of soul magic in mere hours, even with a time loop at his disposal.
More likely, Harry has found a reliable way to suspend her, and that would be the “he has already succeeded” you speak of.
I thought of a weird hack based on ambiguity about “information”. Here’s how it works:
In the present, you have a problem you need to solve but will only be able to solve a long time in the future.
Set up a random process to guess an answer and write it to a sheet of paper A.
Do something with the answer, then hide the paper somewhere safe where it won’t be disturbed until you later solve the problem properly.
Memory charm yourself to forget what was written to A.
Much later, solve the problem properly. Also learn the Imperius curse, and then Imperius yourself to do the following protocol. Cast all sorts of other advanced protection spells to prevent anyone or anything else interrupting the protocol.
At time T, you expect to receive a sheet of paper B with a correct answer to the problem. You then look in the place where you hid paper A and see if the answers match. If they match, you write “Success” on a third sheet of paper C. If they don’t match, you write “Fail” on paper C, add a completely different answer from either A or B to paper C, and put it in your pocket. If you don’t receive a paper B at all, then write “Fail” on paper C, add a random answer, and put it in your pocket. Memory charm yourself to forget what was written on A and B, and what you wrote on C.
At time T+1 hour, you look in your pocket and do the following. If you find a paper C starting with “Fail” then copy the rest of its contents to a paper B, and send it back in time one hour to yourself. If you have a paper C starting with “Success” then write down the correct answer to the problem on a sheet of paper B and send it back in time one hour to yourself.
It seems like the only consistent loop is where the guessed answer written on paper A matches the correct answer later written on to paper B. But since it’s “only a lucky guess”, it’s not strictly information about the future.
Would that work?
Well it didn’t work before because getting scared and writing “DON’T MESS WITH TIME” was also a stable loop. If you read the description carefully, Harry broke his own protocol.
This is why I suggested adding the Imperius, memory charms and other powerful protection spells to ensure the protocol is followed. If Azathoth appears in the middle of the protocol anyway then the protection spells weren’t strong enough !
There’s still the danger that the most likely stable loop is one where somebody breaks your protection spells. You need the probability of that to be much less than the probability of guessing the correct answer A.
Just a general rule of thumb. The time loop is a powerful optimization process with outcomes that are not intuitive to humans. It’s analogous to invoking evolution. If ‘the world is destroyed by an asteroid’ is the only stable outcome, then it seems that’s what you’re going to get.
Isn’t there a simpler (and nicer) solution than Hermione-corpse-transfigured-to-ring, or Hermione-corpse-transfigured-to-gem-then-swapped? Both of these seem unduly complicated and ghoulish.
The nicer solution is that whatever Harry was doing between Hermione’s death and dinner-time, he has already succeeded. Harry has somehow set up a time marker by which his future self can travel back to restore Hermione to life (or pass himself some sort of message back telling him how to do it) and she is already resurrected and out of here.
Presumably the plan also involved him selectively obliviating himself, so that he would retain the motivation to work out how to do the impossible in the future, while being quite relaxed about little details like the missing body.
An interesting question is how did he get round the 6 hour limit? Are there any hints in the story so far on the solution? Some thoughts:
Phoenix travel
Forcing a prophecy and deciphering it
The ritual described at the head of Chapter 1
Looping himself multiple times around the same 6 hours
Some variant on the factoring trick, to force himself to receive knowledge of a working resurrection spell which he will invent at a later date, or else create a paradox in the present. Only this time, he’s determined enough to make it work, and not be distracted by any “DON’T MESS WITH TIME” messages...
I don’t see Hermione be revived any time soon, for both story reasons and because Harry is unlikely to unravel the secrets of soul magic in mere hours, even with a time loop at his disposal.
More likely, Harry has found a reliable way to suspend her, and that would be the “he has already succeeded” you speak of.
Is there any chance that Harry has figured out how to hack time turners?
I thought of a weird hack based on ambiguity about “information”. Here’s how it works:
In the present, you have a problem you need to solve but will only be able to solve a long time in the future.
Set up a random process to guess an answer and write it to a sheet of paper A.
Do something with the answer, then hide the paper somewhere safe where it won’t be disturbed until you later solve the problem properly.
Memory charm yourself to forget what was written to A.
Much later, solve the problem properly. Also learn the Imperius curse, and then Imperius yourself to do the following protocol. Cast all sorts of other advanced protection spells to prevent anyone or anything else interrupting the protocol.
At time T, you expect to receive a sheet of paper B with a correct answer to the problem. You then look in the place where you hid paper A and see if the answers match. If they match, you write “Success” on a third sheet of paper C. If they don’t match, you write “Fail” on paper C, add a completely different answer from either A or B to paper C, and put it in your pocket. If you don’t receive a paper B at all, then write “Fail” on paper C, add a random answer, and put it in your pocket. Memory charm yourself to forget what was written on A and B, and what you wrote on C.
At time T+1 hour, you look in your pocket and do the following. If you find a paper C starting with “Fail” then copy the rest of its contents to a paper B, and send it back in time one hour to yourself. If you have a paper C starting with “Success” then write down the correct answer to the problem on a sheet of paper B and send it back in time one hour to yourself.
It seems like the only consistent loop is where the guessed answer written on paper A matches the correct answer later written on to paper B. But since it’s “only a lucky guess”, it’s not strictly information about the future. Would that work?
This doesn’t seem significantly different from the loop Harry already tried, that didn’t work. Don’t summon Azathoth.
Well it didn’t work before because getting scared and writing “DON’T MESS WITH TIME” was also a stable loop. If you read the description carefully, Harry broke his own protocol.
This is why I suggested adding the Imperius, memory charms and other powerful protection spells to ensure the protocol is followed. If Azathoth appears in the middle of the protocol anyway then the protection spells weren’t strong enough !
There’s still the danger that the most likely stable loop is one where somebody breaks your protection spells. You need the probability of that to be much less than the probability of guessing the correct answer A.
I’m not sure what you’re implying here. Is this just a general rule of thumb for rationalists?
Just a general rule of thumb. The time loop is a powerful optimization process with outcomes that are not intuitive to humans. It’s analogous to invoking evolution. If ‘the world is destroyed by an asteroid’ is the only stable outcome, then it seems that’s what you’re going to get.