The only reason not to free Bellatrix Black should be the danger of her attacking other people later on, and that’s the point on which he should seek reassurance from Quirrel (re: what they are going to do with her once freed).
Another reason is that (as pointed out elsewhere) there could be other people much more deserving of being freed; freeing Bellatrix or freeing her first might cost him the opportunity of freeing any of them in the near future.
And failing to free her at all may cost him the opportunity to save the world. Harry should have had some doubts as to whether he was ready for the mission.
Failing that, the other thing that has been bothering me for a while is why did Quirrel take Harry to save Bellatrix now? If Quirrel was pure Voldy he wouldn’t care about Bellatrix, he doesn’t love her. Saving her now, by taking a young idealistic boy on an important high-stress mission, doesn’t seem like a good plan. How much does an evil overlord value saving henchwomen, what risk is worth it?
I am not sure that Quirrel is pure Voldy. I’m half tempted to predict that Quirrel is Harry-grown-old-and-dark transported through time in some fashion. Hence the extreme inability to touch each other and the fact that Quirrel’s priors are too good. There is a fair amount of evidence against that (lack of patronus, for one). But it is a fun idea.
Saving her now, by taking a young idealistic boy on an important high-stress mission, doesn’t seem like a good plan.
Unless the primary purpose is to change Harry. Duping Harry into rescuing Bellatrix Black creates some pretty hefty blackmail- most importantly by Harry against himself. Harry can name the fallacies involved, but that’s no guarantee he can overcome them.
Remember, pretty much every action Quirrel has taken so far has been pedagogical. It seems far more likely that he’s grooming Harry than that he’s rebuilding his power base.
Wait, can you explain why lacking a patronus is evidence against Quirrel being a time-traveling Harry? He would have the same super-bright human patronus that Harry does, which would be a bit of a tip that he was Harry-from-the-future. So obviously he would pretend to not have one.
If he had a patronus he could have saved Bellatrix a long time ago, by himself or using a more reliable ally than Harry. He seemed to have been waiting for Harry, thus either he doesn’t have a patronus or he needed Harry to do this task for some other unknown reason.
I’m still confused. I think because I assume that saving Bellatrix was definitely not the point of the trip, and whatever the real point was, it specifically has to do with Harry so Quirrel’s patronus status is irrelevant with respect to the Azkaban trip. Couldn’t Quirrel always have used an ally in the plot? They wouldn’t even necessarily have to be willing or reliable on their own, or can’t you summon a patronus under the imperius curse?
Now I feel like I did when reading the chapter on the final army battle. I think I’m an n-1 player.
I got the impression that Harry’s patronus was special and strong for shielding against the Dementors, perhaps no others would have been strong enough to hide an escaped felon? Why hadn’t more people been broken out?
Okay if saving Bellatrix is not about saving Bellatrix, could whatever it was about have been done in a more controlled environment? Could Quirrell have hired some goons to play a part in some formative point of Harry’s education/ensnarement rather than taking a teen into a live fire situation.
What would have happened if Harry hadn’t been able to cast Patronus? Could Quirrell have taught the lesson/ got a hold on Harry in a different way? If so why hadn’t Quirrell got this hold as soon as he could have? It seemed that Harry’s Patronus was the trigger for the Azkaban mission (Quirrell suggests it just after he finds out about it, why does Quirrell need to get the hold now).
The only explanation that makes sense in the “azkaban is not about bellatrix” scenario is that Quirrell wanted it to fail all along… I see insufficient incentive for Quirrell for the positive outcome to offset the severe risk of it going wrong.
I’m also confused. None of the explanations for what is going on make sense. Quirrell’s motivation/identity seems the most under explained.
Interesting. I’m not sure whether or not it’s better at shielding, because we’re told that people break in to Azkaban to shield the inmates so that they might have regular non-nightmare dreams, or just a half-day of patronus time. So we know that just one typical patronus is strong enough to protect people from the worst effects of a Dementor for 12 hours.
I don’t think we know enough about the defenses of Azkaban to say at what point the typical rescue operation would fail. But when we’re witnessing the aurors in the command center, I find it interesting that only attempts to relieve the pain of being in Azkaban through patronus-presence are brought up (in the bit about bribes), not escape attempts. Perhaps it has to do with the “perfect crime” logic.
As to what the actual purpose was in this whole excursion, I have no idea.
I’m not sure intentional failure is the only explanation. It could be some weird bonding experience. Maybe Quirrel always dreamed of raiding wizarding prisons, pulling off bank heists, and taking over the world with his son. Chapter 55: “Adoption Papers”
I think from the duel that we can infer that Quirrel didn’t expect to lose, even in a one-sided fight against a team of aurors. He was just playing games when it was one-on-one. Maybe he used the killing curse because he was (overly) confident that Harry was committed to trusting him completely with regards to this mission and didn’t expect to be blocked.
Maybe chapter 55 will answer all of our questions. Ha. Haha.
Someone talked about the chapter being in “fantasy mode”. My first thought was that they were saying that the chapter might be a dream. This doesn’t seem to be what they meant, but the chapter is so odd in terms of the overall story that I don’t want to entirely exclude the hypothesis.
At that point, the hard thing is thinking of a way that it being a dream or other sort of hallucination wouldn’t be completely infuriating. I’m not sure if it “Harry has an enemy who’s attacking him in his dreams” would be good enough, though that would be a very Harryish nightmare. Maybe it’s his subconscious telling him that Quirrell isn’t entirely trustworthy.
I usually do not like dream episodes if they are not well hinted at. It often feels like a cheap excuse to blow everything up without hurting the status Q.
If it did turn out to be that I’d be annoyed since a) old Harry time traveling back has been done before and b) it would be such a stretch from the standard plot that making it turn out that way would strike me as too far removed from the original.
Ah, but how does he kill Voldemort? Your scenario doesn’t provide any power-up to go from irrational prisoner in Azkaban to Dark Lord-killer.
I suggest that before that, Harry remembers Quirrel’s story about the Chamber of Secrets, and regretfully kills the basilisk as well (to keep the time-loop stable). Indeed, a time-loop might explain how Quirrel found about it in the first place—the search procedure was simply to systematically investigate every old legend, and the Chamber was simply the one that panned out.
It depends how far back in time he is sent. He might have plenty of time to power up. Being fairly dead inside he might’ve got close to Voldemort and learnt his secrets, pretending to be an ally and then betrayed him.
I don’t endorse the future-Harry theory at all, but that said, I do think this would be a principled extrapolation… that is, it wouldn’t come out of nowhere, narratively.
We’ve already seen Harry experiment with time (and be warned not to). And we’ve seen, during Harry’s experiments with transmutation, that previously binding constraints on magic can be overcome by adopting a different model of what the magic is doing (1).
I’m no more an expert on the nature of time than I am on the nature of matter, but on the face of it a constraint like “6h/24h” seems as arbitrary as “whole objects only” (2).
So it stands to reason that a similar exercise of using a more accurate model of time could cause that constraint to evaporate (3), allowing Harry to develop an improved Time Turner with no practical upper limit on temporal range.
All of that said, Fermi’s Paradox as applied to time travel is a real problem. OTOH, if we’re willing to believe that “muggles” don’t notice the existence of wizards, I guess it’s not implausible that temporal natives don’t notice the existence of temporal tourists.
(1) One explanation is that by adopting a more accurate model of the manipulation being performed, one can discard constraints that were only ever consequences of the inaccuracies in one’s earlier model. (This seems the most likely explanation, given the author’s philosophical sensibilities.)
(2) Perhaps more, actually. There is a difference between how a cluster of iron atoms interacts with the other iron atoms in a chunk of iron, and how it interacts with the surrounding atmosphere, and that difference could fundamentally affect how transmutation works. It doesn’t in the MORverse, it seems, but it could have. Whereas I can’t think of any meaningful difference between a 6-hour displacement in time (“distimement”?) and a N-hour displacement for any N that is not a significant fraction of the age of the universe.
(3) That said, Harry would be well advised to take far more precautions than are currently available to him before experimenting. It may be that the 6-hour limit is actually a safety factor derived from the maximum distance over which the Turner can adjust the user’s spatial coordinates to keep them on the surface of the Earth, for example.
Then again, the same could be said of experimenting with transmutation… at the very least, understanding where the extra energy goes seems like a good safety precaution.
Then again again, I guess that sort of attitude is why I’m not a protagonist in heroic fiction.
Guvf nyfb rkcynvaf jul gur Qrzragbef unir n orrs jvgu Dhveery, ur unf gur znex bs fbzrbar jub rfpncrq Nmxnona.
I believe that the Dementors have a beef with Quirrell because (rot13) gur Qrzragbef ner Qrngu vapneangr naq Dhveeryy qrsvrq qrngu ol perngvat n ubepehk, abg gb zragvba qlvat naq abg fgnlvat qrnq. Gurl jnag gur cevmr gung’f orra qravrq gurz.
Reading some wikis tell me that Dementors didn’t have a problem with Voldy in canon, and that condition applies there. So either that is a deviation from canon, due to a change in the nature of Dementors or something else is going on.
I think the general issue is that the overarching setting is essentially the same or very close to the original even if the details have changed. That’s an implicit pact that Eliezer has essentially made with the readers.
For what it is worth, prior to the end of the series there was a fair bit speculation that either Voldemort or Dumbledore was really a time traveling Harry (this speculation seemed most prominent after book 4 before book 5 came out).
At a general meta-level I also doubt Eliezer will do anything like this because this is still to a large extent Eliezer’s vehicle for trying to illustrate concepts about rationality and that sort of plot line would seriously distract from such a goal.
“Acausal” and “(T/U)DT” aren’t magic words that, upon invoking them, suddenly make it rational to act like a good Samaritan and against your own goals and interests.
Heh. If you had seen the part of my post I eventually deleted, you would have been digging a trench. Fortunately I didn’t feel yet ready to put such a broad accusation forward with the necessary confidence.
Another reason is that (as pointed out elsewhere) there could be other people much more deserving of being freed; freeing Bellatrix or freeing her first might cost him the opportunity of freeing any of them in the near future.
And failing to free her at all may cost him the opportunity to save the world. Harry should have had some doubts as to whether he was ready for the mission.
Failing that, the other thing that has been bothering me for a while is why did Quirrel take Harry to save Bellatrix now? If Quirrel was pure Voldy he wouldn’t care about Bellatrix, he doesn’t love her. Saving her now, by taking a young idealistic boy on an important high-stress mission, doesn’t seem like a good plan. How much does an evil overlord value saving henchwomen, what risk is worth it?
I am not sure that Quirrel is pure Voldy. I’m half tempted to predict that Quirrel is Harry-grown-old-and-dark transported through time in some fashion. Hence the extreme inability to touch each other and the fact that Quirrel’s priors are too good. There is a fair amount of evidence against that (lack of patronus, for one). But it is a fun idea.
Unless the primary purpose is to change Harry. Duping Harry into rescuing Bellatrix Black creates some pretty hefty blackmail- most importantly by Harry against himself. Harry can name the fallacies involved, but that’s no guarantee he can overcome them.
Remember, pretty much every action Quirrel has taken so far has been pedagogical. It seems far more likely that he’s grooming Harry than that he’s rebuilding his power base.
Wait, can you explain why lacking a patronus is evidence against Quirrel being a time-traveling Harry? He would have the same super-bright human patronus that Harry does, which would be a bit of a tip that he was Harry-from-the-future. So obviously he would pretend to not have one.
Alternative idea: You only get one patronus. Harry’s got hit by AK, so now he can’t cast patronus anymore.
Shhh, if you’re not careful, patronuses will be sentient next. Is it ethical to dismiss a sentient patronus?
If he had a patronus he could have saved Bellatrix a long time ago, by himself or using a more reliable ally than Harry. He seemed to have been waiting for Harry, thus either he doesn’t have a patronus or he needed Harry to do this task for some other unknown reason.
I’m still confused. I think because I assume that saving Bellatrix was definitely not the point of the trip, and whatever the real point was, it specifically has to do with Harry so Quirrel’s patronus status is irrelevant with respect to the Azkaban trip. Couldn’t Quirrel always have used an ally in the plot? They wouldn’t even necessarily have to be willing or reliable on their own, or can’t you summon a patronus under the imperius curse?
Now I feel like I did when reading the chapter on the final army battle. I think I’m an n-1 player.
I got the impression that Harry’s patronus was special and strong for shielding against the Dementors, perhaps no others would have been strong enough to hide an escaped felon? Why hadn’t more people been broken out?
Okay if saving Bellatrix is not about saving Bellatrix, could whatever it was about have been done in a more controlled environment? Could Quirrell have hired some goons to play a part in some formative point of Harry’s education/ensnarement rather than taking a teen into a live fire situation.
What would have happened if Harry hadn’t been able to cast Patronus? Could Quirrell have taught the lesson/ got a hold on Harry in a different way? If so why hadn’t Quirrell got this hold as soon as he could have? It seemed that Harry’s Patronus was the trigger for the Azkaban mission (Quirrell suggests it just after he finds out about it, why does Quirrell need to get the hold now).
The only explanation that makes sense in the “azkaban is not about bellatrix” scenario is that Quirrell wanted it to fail all along… I see insufficient incentive for Quirrell for the positive outcome to offset the severe risk of it going wrong.
I’m also confused. None of the explanations for what is going on make sense. Quirrell’s motivation/identity seems the most under explained.
Interesting. I’m not sure whether or not it’s better at shielding, because we’re told that people break in to Azkaban to shield the inmates so that they might have regular non-nightmare dreams, or just a half-day of patronus time. So we know that just one typical patronus is strong enough to protect people from the worst effects of a Dementor for 12 hours.
I don’t think we know enough about the defenses of Azkaban to say at what point the typical rescue operation would fail. But when we’re witnessing the aurors in the command center, I find it interesting that only attempts to relieve the pain of being in Azkaban through patronus-presence are brought up (in the bit about bribes), not escape attempts. Perhaps it has to do with the “perfect crime” logic.
As to what the actual purpose was in this whole excursion, I have no idea.
I’m not sure intentional failure is the only explanation. It could be some weird bonding experience. Maybe Quirrel always dreamed of raiding wizarding prisons, pulling off bank heists, and taking over the world with his son. Chapter 55: “Adoption Papers”
I think from the duel that we can infer that Quirrel didn’t expect to lose, even in a one-sided fight against a team of aurors. He was just playing games when it was one-on-one. Maybe he used the killing curse because he was (overly) confident that Harry was committed to trusting him completely with regards to this mission and didn’t expect to be blocked.
Maybe chapter 55 will answer all of our questions. Ha. Haha.
Someone talked about the chapter being in “fantasy mode”. My first thought was that they were saying that the chapter might be a dream. This doesn’t seem to be what they meant, but the chapter is so odd in terms of the overall story that I don’t want to entirely exclude the hypothesis.
At that point, the hard thing is thinking of a way that it being a dream or other sort of hallucination wouldn’t be completely infuriating. I’m not sure if it “Harry has an enemy who’s attacking him in his dreams” would be good enough, though that would be a very Harryish nightmare. Maybe it’s his subconscious telling him that Quirrell isn’t entirely trustworthy.
I usually do not like dream episodes if they are not well hinted at. It often feels like a cheap excuse to blow everything up without hurting the status Q.
If it did turn out to be that I’d be annoyed since a) old Harry time traveling back has been done before and b) it would be such a stretch from the standard plot that making it turn out that way would strike me as too far removed from the original.
I think it could make a decent story. I’m not sure that it hasn’t strayed too far from canon anyway.
Sngr/Fgnl Cbggre
Nsgre guvf qronpyr, Uneel trgf pncgherq naq chg va Nmxunona sbe n ovg. Ur ybfrf nyy uvf unccl zrzbevrf naq gur novyvgl gb pnfg Cngebahf (vg vf n unccl zrzbel) naq fbzr bs uvf engvbanyvgl genvavat. Ur rira sbetrgf ur vf Uneel Cbggre (ur yvxrq orvat n obl jvgu qrfgval).
Urzvbar/Dhveery/Qenpb naq gur jrnfyrlf zbhag n erfphr, jvgu Urezvbar univat yrneag cngebahf sebz Uneel’f abgr.
Uneel vf nffhzrq gb or gur qnex ybeq, ol gur nhgubevgvrf, fb vf abg fnsr ng guvf gvzr, ur jbhyq or uhagrq qbja, fb vf genafcbegrq onpx va gvzr.
Gurer ur xvyyf bss Ibyqrzbeg cebcre naq fybjyl orpbzrf Dhveery. Guvf nyfb rkcynvaf jul gur Qrzragbef unir n orrs jvgu Dhveery, ur unf gur znex bs fbzrbar jub rfpncrq Nmxnona.
Dhveery unf gb pbnpu Uneel va guvf jnl gb sbez n fgnoyr gvzr ybbc.
Abj V qba’g ernyyl guvax vg vf guvf. Ohg fgvyy vg jencf hc n ahzore bs fgenaqf. V nyfb unira’g ernq rabhtu snasvp be gur ynfg srj obbxf bs Uneel Cbggre fb zl frafr bs jung unf orra qbar be fubhyq or qbar vf abg irel fgebat.
Ah, but how does he kill Voldemort? Your scenario doesn’t provide any power-up to go from irrational prisoner in Azkaban to Dark Lord-killer.
I suggest that before that, Harry remembers Quirrel’s story about the Chamber of Secrets, and regretfully kills the basilisk as well (to keep the time-loop stable). Indeed, a time-loop might explain how Quirrel found about it in the first place—the search procedure was simply to systematically investigate every old legend, and the Chamber was simply the one that panned out.
It depends how far back in time he is sent. He might have plenty of time to power up. Being fairly dead inside he might’ve got close to Voldemort and learnt his secrets, pretending to be an ally and then betrayed him.
It was mentioned that the time turner only works for 6h/24h. He first would have to invent time travel for longer distances.
I don’t endorse the future-Harry theory at all, but that said, I do think this would be a principled extrapolation… that is, it wouldn’t come out of nowhere, narratively.
We’ve already seen Harry experiment with time (and be warned not to). And we’ve seen, during Harry’s experiments with transmutation, that previously binding constraints on magic can be overcome by adopting a different model of what the magic is doing (1).
I’m no more an expert on the nature of time than I am on the nature of matter, but on the face of it a constraint like “6h/24h” seems as arbitrary as “whole objects only” (2).
So it stands to reason that a similar exercise of using a more accurate model of time could cause that constraint to evaporate (3), allowing Harry to develop an improved Time Turner with no practical upper limit on temporal range.
All of that said, Fermi’s Paradox as applied to time travel is a real problem. OTOH, if we’re willing to believe that “muggles” don’t notice the existence of wizards, I guess it’s not implausible that temporal natives don’t notice the existence of temporal tourists.
(1) One explanation is that by adopting a more accurate model of the manipulation being performed, one can discard constraints that were only ever consequences of the inaccuracies in one’s earlier model. (This seems the most likely explanation, given the author’s philosophical sensibilities.)
(2) Perhaps more, actually. There is a difference between how a cluster of iron atoms interacts with the other iron atoms in a chunk of iron, and how it interacts with the surrounding atmosphere, and that difference could fundamentally affect how transmutation works. It doesn’t in the MORverse, it seems, but it could have. Whereas I can’t think of any meaningful difference between a 6-hour displacement in time (“distimement”?) and a N-hour displacement for any N that is not a significant fraction of the age of the universe.
(3) That said, Harry would be well advised to take far more precautions than are currently available to him before experimenting. It may be that the 6-hour limit is actually a safety factor derived from the maximum distance over which the Turner can adjust the user’s spatial coordinates to keep them on the surface of the Earth, for example. Then again, the same could be said of experimenting with transmutation… at the very least, understanding where the extra energy goes seems like a good safety precaution. Then again again, I guess that sort of attitude is why I’m not a protagonist in heroic fiction.
And then he could bring some venture capital to save a certain car manufacturer from bankruptcy
I believe that the Dementors have a beef with Quirrell because (rot13) gur Qrzragbef ner Qrngu vapneangr naq Dhveeryy qrsvrq qrngu ol perngvat n ubepehk, abg gb zragvba qlvat naq abg fgnlvat qrnq. Gurl jnag gur cevmr gung’f orra qravrq gurz.
Reading some wikis tell me that Dementors didn’t have a problem with Voldy in canon, and that condition applies there. So either that is a deviation from canon, due to a change in the nature of Dementors or something else is going on.
The Dementors don’t represent death in Rowling’s canon. They are identified with depression.
Potential spoiler:
Vg pbhyq or gung Uneel vf fvzcyl zvfgnxra nobhg gur gehr angher bs Qrzragbef: Gurl qb abg ercerfrag Qrngu (gung vf Yrguvsbyqf), ohg engure zntvpnyyl pbapragengrq rkvfgragvny natfg (spoiler). Uneel’f gubhtug va gur Uhznavfz frdhrapr vf uvf guvat gb cebgrpg (spoiler), juvpu (jura uryq fgebatyl) vf n engvbany pbhagre gb rkvfgragvny natfg. Navznyf ner rssrpgvir Cngebav orpnhfr gurl’er abg ersyrpgvir rabhtu gb srry rkvfgragvny natfg.
Gur ovttrfg ceboyrz jvgu guvf gurbel vf gung Oryyngevk qbrf unir “fbzrguvat gb cebgrpg”—ure vagrafr ybir sbe Ibyql. Guvf gubhtug fubhyq unir rvgure fuvryqrq ure sebz gur vasyhrapr bs Qrzragbef be orra sbetbggra nf cneg bs gur Qrzragbef’ trareny rssrpg.
Fbzrguvat gb guvax nobhg sbe n zber pnabavpny fcvabss, gubhtu.
Nfvqr: Sha naq rkpvgrzrag jbhyq nyfb jbex nf rssrpgvir pbhagref gb rkvfgragvny natfg. Cerqvpgvba: Serq naq Trbetr Jrnfyrl jvyy qrirybc na rira zber rssrpgvir Cngebahf ol erqvfpbirevat fbzr bs gur 31 ynjf bs Sha (spoiler).
Yes, in canon he eventually recruited the Dementors, IIRC. This seems like a change in the nature of the Dementors.
If you edit your rot13 comments to plain-text I’ll upvote.
I think the general issue is that the overarching setting is essentially the same or very close to the original even if the details have changed. That’s an implicit pact that Eliezer has essentially made with the readers.
For what it is worth, prior to the end of the series there was a fair bit speculation that either Voldemort or Dumbledore was really a time traveling Harry (this speculation seemed most prominent after book 4 before book 5 came out).
At a general meta-level I also doubt Eliezer will do anything like this because this is still to a large extent Eliezer’s vehicle for trying to illustrate concepts about rationality and that sort of plot line would seriously distract from such a goal.
Not worth it. But this is:
Which would not requiring a rescue mission, but just going in & out. Which—as we learned—is rather cheap to do.
Quirrel seems to not know some theoretical concepts that Harry does know.
Yeah, I have a theory for that. See my rot13′d reply to JoshuaZ.
Maybe Quirrel was (acausally) decision theoretically obliged to save her.
“Acausal” and “(T/U)DT” aren’t magic words that, upon invoking them, suddenly make it rational to act like a good Samaritan and against your own goals and interests.
I was thinking more that he might have promised to rescue her if she needed it, so that she would agree to help him.
No, they only make it seem rational to some people.
Heh. If you had seen the part of my post I eventually deleted, you would have been digging a trench. Fortunately I didn’t feel yet ready to put such a broad accusation forward with the necessary confidence.