Fawkes (D’s phoenix) tries to alert Dumbledore to the “not serious” prisoner, for reasons that are not immediately clear.
Fawkes probably wants to help all the prisoners. That’s what phoenixes do, they act as anti-Dementors of sorts. Dumbledore probably dismissed it as just the phoenix picking up on the prisoner’s distress.
Dumbledore notes to Amelia Bones that there was an item hidden under a piece of cloth in Bellatrix’s cell, which he was leaving to the forensic aurors to investigate
We saw Quirrel put this there (and Harry saw him too). What could this item be? Any unexpected item would ruin the death-doll pretense.
My guess: a vial with traces of poison to make it look like someone sneaked in poison for Bella and she drank it. ETA: but we don’t know why Quirrel would do that; see discussion below.
My guess is that it is Felix Felicis, liquid luck. It’s golden, which matches the description, and it provides a reasonable false explanation for how the invaders were able to break Bella out of prison. It throws you on the trail of a master potion maker, instead of the truth.
It seems probable that Quirrelmort is himself a master potion maker, in addition to the rest of his skill set. He’s able to make the resurrection potion, after all, which is likely a difficult feat.
Poison was my initial theory as well, though I can’t really see the point of bothering.
That is, suppose the body is simply found with no flask of poison. How is that any worse, for anyone involved? Maybe there’s some kind of forensic autopsy they might perform on the body that they wouldn’t bother with given an obvious cause of death, but then why hide it?
There’s another theory over on tvtropes that it’s a Harry Polyjuice potion, since it’s established in canon that those are gold.
That at least makes some sense: even if someone sees Harry, they’ll conclude that it was actually someone Polyjuiced into looking like Harry.
suppose the body is simply found with no flask of poison. How is that any worse, for anyone involved?
I have no clear idea, either.
even if someone sees Harry, they’ll conclude that it was actually someone Polyjuiced into looking like Harry.
That makes no sense. If someone was pretending to be Harry, why would that someone leave the empty potion bottle in Bella’s cell? Why hide the bottle under cloth, but hide it poorly?
Though if I started out with that theory, I might be tempted to start justifying it, and think “Maybe it was going to take the intruder too long to get in and out, so s/he brought a second Polyjuice potion to take in the middle… and maybe s/he left the potion figuring it would give away the game if ‘Harry’ were caught with a Harry Polyjuice potion on ‘him’… and maybe s/he left it in Bellatrix’s cell because, um, because s/he couldn’t find a better place to hide it… in fact, maybe s/he really thought the cloth would hide it… and didn’t crush it because, um, s/he’s incredibly stupid… no, um, wait, because… um… give me a minute, I’ll come up with something.”
So, yeah, OK. The only way I would actually consider finding such a flask convincing would be if I were only thinking about the problem very superficially. Perhaps Quirrell is just counting on the investigators not being very careful thinkers. Lord knows the wizarding world is full of those.
Alternatively… if the potion were a Bellatrix Polyjuice potion, I might conclude that this is someone else’s corpse, and Bellatrix was never arrested in the first place, and whoever it was died shortly after being arrested, and expected the vial not to be noticed.
But why that conclusion is worth leading someone to, I don’t know. And why not just leave a different body to begin with? So, probably not.
So, OK, turn it around. What potion, if found by the Aurors near Bellatrix’s corpse, would lead them to a useful-to-Quirrell conclusion?
(shrug)
Of course, another possibility is that the flask wasn’t meant to be found… maybe it was actually well hidden, and Dumbledore is just awesome, and Q didn’t expect D to be involved. That would suggest the flask is performing some actual functional role… beats me what it could possibly be, though. Maybe it’s meant to explode upon being investigated, destroying “Bella’s body.”
Perhaps Quirrell is just counting on the investigators not being very careful thinkers. Lord knows the wizarding world is full of those.
But why leave the flask at all, then? It must be meant to make them think something else.
whoever it was died shortly after being arrested, and expected the vial not to be noticed.
Couldn’t be. Bella’s been there for twelve years—and they’ve been feeding her daily, they’d have noticed if she died “shortly after”. And the fake body doesn’t look ten years dead.
What potion, if found by the Aurors near Bellatrix’s corpse, would lead them to a useful-to-Quirrell conclusion?
Any potion being found stops the Aurors from thinking Bella just died in her cell in the ordinary way from Dementor exposure. (An event that would be no surprise at all, in her state.) A potion indicates outside involvement.
The Aurors would think: someone came from outside, gave Bella this potion-bottle, which is now mostly empty but recently contained something, and now Bella is dead. It certainly looks like poison.
The big mystery is that Harry knows it’s there, he must know what its part in the plan is, and yet he seems to think that the original plan was to make the Aurors think that Bella died from natural reasons...
Of course, another possibility is that the flask wasn’t meant to be found…
The description given of Quirrel concealing it makes it clear it wasn’t well hidden. In fact it was barely hidden at all—if a wizard is doing the hiding, “covered with a piece of cloth in the corner” isn’t that amazing. In fact it’s on the bed instead of being under it, so it clearly isn’t being hidden. The only way an investigator could believe someone was trying to hide it was if he believed that poor, mad, dying Bella was “hiding” it in her last moments.
edit: It occurred to me that making this post might have violated some necroposting rule that I’m unaware of. I’m not certain of the etiquette here; was this impolite? I just thought it made more sense for someone who reads this discussion for the first time to have a link to where it was continued.
A lot of forums have threads sorted by most recent post date, so that commenting on an old thread moves it to the top. That’s annoying, but Less Wrong’s software doesn’t do that, so commenting on old posts is fine.
ETA: but we don’t know why Quirrel would do that; see discussion below.
Misdirection? The scenario would go like this: ideally, Bella is found dead, and chucked out as just another Azkaban victim.
In the event anyone is suspicious and does some checking, the easiest thing to do would be to inspect the contents of the cell, immediately uncovering the poison. (If you were suspicious, it would take you a long time to work down the list of suspiciousness to ‘a genius wizard used an incredibly advanced spell to create an identical dead body’.)
Instantly, the investigating Auror’s mind deduces that someone good wanted Bella dead, and unable or unwilling to use the Killing Curse (stealth), used an alternative method (poison).
This is even wronger a theory than just being suspicious, and it’s completely contradictory to a escape theory (because the investigator has to postulate someone on the level above seeking to manipulate them before the presence of poison has an explanation), so it’s even less likely anyone will wonder whether it’s the real Bellatrix and check for the dummy.
Fawkes probably wants to help all the prisoners. That’s what phoenixes do, they act as anti-Dementors of sorts. Dumbledore probably dismissed it as just the phoenix picking up on the prisoner’s distress.
We saw Quirrel put this there (and Harry saw him too). What could this item be? Any unexpected item would ruin the death-doll pretense.
My guess: a vial with traces of poison to make it look like someone sneaked in poison for Bella and she drank it. ETA: but we don’t know why Quirrel would do that; see discussion below.
My guess is that it is Felix Felicis, liquid luck. It’s golden, which matches the description, and it provides a reasonable false explanation for how the invaders were able to break Bella out of prison. It throws you on the trail of a master potion maker, instead of the truth.
But wouldn’t actually using Felix Felicis be even more effective?
It seems probable that Quirrelmort is himself a master potion maker, in addition to the rest of his skill set. He’s able to make the resurrection potion, after all, which is likely a difficult feat.
Poison was my initial theory as well, though I can’t really see the point of bothering.
That is, suppose the body is simply found with no flask of poison. How is that any worse, for anyone involved? Maybe there’s some kind of forensic autopsy they might perform on the body that they wouldn’t bother with given an obvious cause of death, but then why hide it?
There’s another theory over on tvtropes that it’s a Harry Polyjuice potion, since it’s established in canon that those are gold.
That at least makes some sense: even if someone sees Harry, they’ll conclude that it was actually someone Polyjuiced into looking like Harry.
So I’m going with that.
I have no clear idea, either.
That makes no sense. If someone was pretending to be Harry, why would that someone leave the empty potion bottle in Bella’s cell? Why hide the bottle under cloth, but hide it poorly?
You’re right, of course.
Though if I started out with that theory, I might be tempted to start justifying it, and think “Maybe it was going to take the intruder too long to get in and out, so s/he brought a second Polyjuice potion to take in the middle… and maybe s/he left the potion figuring it would give away the game if ‘Harry’ were caught with a Harry Polyjuice potion on ‘him’… and maybe s/he left it in Bellatrix’s cell because, um, because s/he couldn’t find a better place to hide it… in fact, maybe s/he really thought the cloth would hide it… and didn’t crush it because, um, s/he’s incredibly stupid… no, um, wait, because… um… give me a minute, I’ll come up with something.”
So, yeah, OK. The only way I would actually consider finding such a flask convincing would be if I were only thinking about the problem very superficially. Perhaps Quirrell is just counting on the investigators not being very careful thinkers. Lord knows the wizarding world is full of those.
Alternatively… if the potion were a Bellatrix Polyjuice potion, I might conclude that this is someone else’s corpse, and Bellatrix was never arrested in the first place, and whoever it was died shortly after being arrested, and expected the vial not to be noticed.
But why that conclusion is worth leading someone to, I don’t know. And why not just leave a different body to begin with? So, probably not.
So, OK, turn it around. What potion, if found by the Aurors near Bellatrix’s corpse, would lead them to a useful-to-Quirrell conclusion?
(shrug)
Of course, another possibility is that the flask wasn’t meant to be found… maybe it was actually well hidden, and Dumbledore is just awesome, and Q didn’t expect D to be involved. That would suggest the flask is performing some actual functional role… beats me what it could possibly be, though. Maybe it’s meant to explode upon being investigated, destroying “Bella’s body.”
But why leave the flask at all, then? It must be meant to make them think something else.
Couldn’t be. Bella’s been there for twelve years—and they’ve been feeding her daily, they’d have noticed if she died “shortly after”. And the fake body doesn’t look ten years dead.
Any potion being found stops the Aurors from thinking Bella just died in her cell in the ordinary way from Dementor exposure. (An event that would be no surprise at all, in her state.) A potion indicates outside involvement.
The Aurors would think: someone came from outside, gave Bella this potion-bottle, which is now mostly empty but recently contained something, and now Bella is dead. It certainly looks like poison.
The big mystery is that Harry knows it’s there, he must know what its part in the plan is, and yet he seems to think that the original plan was to make the Aurors think that Bella died from natural reasons...
The description given of Quirrel concealing it makes it clear it wasn’t well hidden. In fact it was barely hidden at all—if a wizard is doing the hiding, “covered with a piece of cloth in the corner” isn’t that amazing. In fact it’s on the bed instead of being under it, so it clearly isn’t being hidden. The only way an investigator could believe someone was trying to hide it was if he believed that poor, mad, dying Bella was “hiding” it in her last moments.
I had a thought on this, and the page is closed, so to continue to follow this discussion, go here:
http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/364/harry_potter_and_the_methods_of_rationality/3bn6
edit: It occurred to me that making this post might have violated some necroposting rule that I’m unaware of. I’m not certain of the etiquette here; was this impolite? I just thought it made more sense for someone who reads this discussion for the first time to have a link to where it was continued.
In general commenting on old posts in encouraged; for indexed posts like this forward-linking is probably best.
Oh, truly? Thanks for the information, that’s significantly different from most of the places I’ve hung around in before.
A lot of forums have threads sorted by most recent post date, so that commenting on an old thread moves it to the top. That’s annoying, but Less Wrong’s software doesn’t do that, so commenting on old posts is fine.
Misdirection? The scenario would go like this: ideally, Bella is found dead, and chucked out as just another Azkaban victim.
In the event anyone is suspicious and does some checking, the easiest thing to do would be to inspect the contents of the cell, immediately uncovering the poison. (If you were suspicious, it would take you a long time to work down the list of suspiciousness to ‘a genius wizard used an incredibly advanced spell to create an identical dead body’.)
Instantly, the investigating Auror’s mind deduces that someone good wanted Bella dead, and unable or unwilling to use the Killing Curse (stealth), used an alternative method (poison).
This is even wronger a theory than just being suspicious, and it’s completely contradictory to a escape theory (because the investigator has to postulate someone on the level above seeking to manipulate them before the presence of poison has an explanation), so it’s even less likely anyone will wonder whether it’s the real Bellatrix and check for the dummy.