In the lack of Comed-Tea, I suggest taking a sip of something before the final line.
Regarding the fact that, at the start of the scene, Quirrell skips one of the thirty security Charms, the most straightforward explanation is that it was just the one preventing time-travel within the room, but could there have been a more devious purpose?
What seems strange to me is going to such a convoluted setup just to speak privately, when they already have a way of doing so. Either Quirrell doesn’t actually trust the privacy of Mary’s Room, or he’s up to something. The latter seems more likely.
Maybe not “need”, but could use as a precaution. Getting located as hypothetical culprits is too close to failure for expected outcome. On the other hand, what alibi given timeturners?
Harry is bound to be a potential culprit in Dumbledore’s mind, since he knows about the Patronus 2.0 and invisibility cloak. Although any alibi that places Harry with Quirrell is liable to increase Dumbledore’s suspicions instead of reducing them, no matter how airtight it seems.
Although any alibi that places Harry with Quirrell is liable to increase Dumbledore’s suspicions instead of reducing them, no matter how airtight it seems.
This would provide an opportunity to have Harry explain conservation of expected evidence to Dumbledore, which is very slight evidence that it’s going to happen (and would make a fun scene, in any case).
I think that’s almost it. My bet is that the invisibility cloak detector is the missing charm. Harry and Quirrell are already in the room when they arrive for the first time, and as soon as they see themselves leave via Time-Turner, they take the cloak off and finish their meal before leaving. But yeah, they have to be in the room at the same time that a bunch of charms are on it, so they can’t seal it off completely.
I’m pretty sure you (and VN) have it right. EY commented (to VN) that someone had already figured it out, and your theory had already appeared in a comment at the main fanfic review site.
I can’t see how it’s possible to deduce such things, in the sense of obtaining an answer associated with high degree of confidence. It seems to be hindsight bias on your part to assume it’s deducible, and similarly for some of the other hidden “facts” (or, alternatively, you meant to say something else, and didn’t mean to imply high degree of confidence being obtainable, but I can’t imagine what).
(Imagination allows noticing promising hypotheses, where a person lacking said imagination would need to learn that hypothesis from someone else. But it doesn’t allow making confident conclusions despite lack of information, where uncertainty is appropriate. So there could be hypotheses which are better than any other possible hypothesis, but none of them would be “the deduced answer”. If you argue that imagination is the problem, you need to be able to argue for your conclusion in a way that fends off other possible conclusions, and not just consistently determine your conclusion as an author by adding more facts to the story.)
Actually this is a fallacy I’ve seen coming up a lot in discussions of the fic. People are so enchanted with being able to come up with many possibilities that they forget to ask which are the probable possibilities. Sure, the laws change somewhat when you’re matching wits with an author instead of reality; but when it comes to people talking about lots of other possible explanations for the Mendelian pattern in wizard genetics, for example, they seem to be doing a Culture of Objections thing where they declare victory as soon as they come up with an overlooked possibility that can be used to reject the paper, never mind the prior probability on it.
I’ve seen this answer gotten, so I know it’s gettable.
Do what? Confidently name the “official” hypothesis, guess teacher’s password? There certainly are good hypotheses, possibly one hypothesis significantly better than any other, which makes the probability of privileging the one you had in mind non-trivial and thus explains your observations. It doesn’t follow that it’s correct to assign high level of certainty to that hypothesis (as a within-world event, not prediction about what you had in mind, as the latter would be biased towards the best guess and away from the long tail).
(My best guess in this particular case is “enable time turners (in some sense)”, but I won’t be confident it’s indeed so, it could be something else. ETA: On reflection, “revealing if someone is already in the room” is a better guess, although one could sidestep the defenses by entering from the future as well as from the past, and so not be present at the time of the casting.)
Seconding Nesov’s point. If you ask people to guess the number you have in mind, and someone says “three” (while others say “one” or “five” or “a hundred”), and you did in fact have in mind “three”, that doesn’t prove the answer is “gettable”. Not saying that it isn’t in fact gettable, only that you need a stricter test. For example, sometimes ask someone else to post a comment with the correct answer (or do it yourself using an alias) and see how it fares compared to other hypotheses.
I assume that it’s been suggested before but . . . . may I suggest (cast a vote) that you spend a bit more effort to advertise HP&tMoR in more places? It’s awesomely accessible (especially when considered in comparison to virtually anything else with close to the explanatory power) and an awful lot of fun to boot. (Actually, I should be suggesting that everyone here who likes it should make an effort to advertise it to all their friends. It certainly should have far, far more than 578 people who Like it on Facebook.).
As far as I can tell, the likeliest (i.e., simplest IMO) in-world hypothesis is that Azkhaban already has lots of wards on it, and one of the “standard” ones was not necessary because of that.
ConservationOfDetail suggests that’s not the case, but I don’t quite see how we can deduce what you’re trying to do, especially keeping in mind that authors can do the same deductions we do and like to twist things by just picking a less-likely hypothesis and explain it after the fact (or just make the dice fall that way).
Oh, you’re right. I got confused about which chapter we were discussing, sorry about that.
That said, something similar applies here: Quirell did 29 charms in Mary’s room, and 30 outside of it. A very simple hypothesis would be that the 30th was something already “implemented” in Mary’s room. (In fact, given that Mary’s room is described as particularly safe even before the charms, the surprising thing is he didn’t do significantly more than 30 charms outside it. The uniqueness of Mary’s room suggests that it would be hard to duplicate it, but it seems strange that nothing could be done to at least approximate it.)
What if: a) Quirrell and Harry’s actions in ch 51 only make sense in light of their planning to do something in particular, and b) doing that thing requires a charm not to be in place? I think that counts as a correct deduction.
(Somewhat) plausible hypothesis, not something to be confidently believed (which is the working interpretation of “deduction” I’m using, as stated at the beginning of the comment).
From the differing ways we treated the same two hypotheses just now I think we’re disagreeing on how fine a distinction we accept between two hypotheses before we say that they’re significantly different. From my perspective, apparating into the room and walking in under the cloak are functionally the same. In both cases, the purpose of leaving a charm off is to enable Q and H to walk out of the door as if they never left, and it’s that which I’d say is a valid deduction. Within all the hypotheses which fit that pattern, some seem more likely than others, but perhaps none are more than plausible.
Oh yes, I suspect it’s meant to make Harry traceable. Here’s my take on what’s going on:
Guess One: Voldy is still an evil bastard, and in addition to that, he’s immensely cocky. He lied by speaking the truth to Harry [Why else would that dialogue be there?], ‘Black is innocent of being a slave to Voldy.’ The truth being that she was an independently evil witch.
Guess Two: Three people excluding Voldy and Harry know that he can kill Dementors. When evil Black lass escapes, blame falls on him.
Guess Three: The lack of the security charm allows time-travel to be tracked. They see Harry going back in time shortly before the escape. Harry is ostracized by society and attacked by ministry, turns against ministry for obvious reasons.
Guess Four: The above is Voldy’s plan for Harry. What actually happens is that he meets Serius and frees him, leading to a fallout between Harry and Voldy.
New chapter.
In the lack of Comed-Tea, I suggest taking a sip of something before the final line.
Regarding the fact that, at the start of the scene, Quirrell skips one of the thirty security Charms, the most straightforward explanation is that it was just the one preventing time-travel within the room, but could there have been a more devious purpose?
What seems strange to me is going to such a convoluted setup just to speak privately, when they already have a way of doing so. Either Quirrell doesn’t actually trust the privacy of Mary’s Room, or he’s up to something. The latter seems more likely.
Maybe they’re headed straight to Azkaban and they need Mary’s Room as their alibi.
Maybe not “need”, but could use as a precaution. Getting located as hypothetical culprits is too close to failure for expected outcome. On the other hand, what alibi given timeturners?
Harry is bound to be a potential culprit in Dumbledore’s mind, since he knows about the Patronus 2.0 and invisibility cloak. Although any alibi that places Harry with Quirrell is liable to increase Dumbledore’s suspicions instead of reducing them, no matter how airtight it seems.
This would provide an opportunity to have Harry explain conservation of expected evidence to Dumbledore, which is very slight evidence that it’s going to happen (and would make a fun scene, in any case).
I would guess that he omitted the one preventing anyone from apparating into the room. They have to get back in somehow in a few hours.
I think that’s almost it. My bet is that the invisibility cloak detector is the missing charm. Harry and Quirrell are already in the room when they arrive for the first time, and as soon as they see themselves leave via Time-Turner, they take the cloak off and finish their meal before leaving. But yeah, they have to be in the room at the same time that a bunch of charms are on it, so they can’t seal it off completely.
I’m pretty sure you (and VN) have it right. EY commented (to VN) that someone had already figured it out, and your theory had already appeared in a comment at the main fanfic review site.
They don’t. They just need to already be there, which opens another possibility for the omitted Charm: to avoid detecting/incapacitating themselves.
Conservation of Detail. Obviously it means something; with some imagination on your part you could deduce what.
I can’t see how it’s possible to deduce such things, in the sense of obtaining an answer associated with high degree of confidence. It seems to be hindsight bias on your part to assume it’s deducible, and similarly for some of the other hidden “facts” (or, alternatively, you meant to say something else, and didn’t mean to imply high degree of confidence being obtainable, but I can’t imagine what).
(Imagination allows noticing promising hypotheses, where a person lacking said imagination would need to learn that hypothesis from someone else. But it doesn’t allow making confident conclusions despite lack of information, where uncertainty is appropriate. So there could be hypotheses which are better than any other possible hypothesis, but none of them would be “the deduced answer”. If you argue that imagination is the problem, you need to be able to argue for your conclusion in a way that fends off other possible conclusions, and not just consistently determine your conclusion as an author by adding more facts to the story.)
Saw someone else do it already.
Actually this is a fallacy I’ve seen coming up a lot in discussions of the fic. People are so enchanted with being able to come up with many possibilities that they forget to ask which are the probable possibilities. Sure, the laws change somewhat when you’re matching wits with an author instead of reality; but when it comes to people talking about lots of other possible explanations for the Mendelian pattern in wizard genetics, for example, they seem to be doing a Culture of Objections thing where they declare victory as soon as they come up with an overlooked possibility that can be used to reject the paper, never mind the prior probability on it.
I’ve seen this answer gotten, so I know it’s gettable.
Do what? Confidently name the “official” hypothesis, guess teacher’s password? There certainly are good hypotheses, possibly one hypothesis significantly better than any other, which makes the probability of privileging the one you had in mind non-trivial and thus explains your observations. It doesn’t follow that it’s correct to assign high level of certainty to that hypothesis (as a within-world event, not prediction about what you had in mind, as the latter would be biased towards the best guess and away from the long tail).
(My best guess in this particular case is “enable time turners (in some sense)”, but I won’t be confident it’s indeed so, it could be something else. ETA: On reflection, “revealing if someone is already in the room” is a better guess, although one could sidestep the defenses by entering from the future as well as from the past, and so not be present at the time of the casting.)
Seconding Nesov’s point. If you ask people to guess the number you have in mind, and someone says “three” (while others say “one” or “five” or “a hundred”), and you did in fact have in mind “three”, that doesn’t prove the answer is “gettable”. Not saying that it isn’t in fact gettable, only that you need a stricter test. For example, sometimes ask someone else to post a comment with the correct answer (or do it yourself using an alias) and see how it fares compared to other hypotheses.
I assume that it’s been suggested before but . . . . may I suggest (cast a vote) that you spend a bit more effort to advertise HP&tMoR in more places? It’s awesomely accessible (especially when considered in comparison to virtually anything else with close to the explanatory power) and an awful lot of fun to boot. (Actually, I should be suggesting that everyone here who likes it should make an effort to advertise it to all their friends. It certainly should have far, far more than 578 people who Like it on Facebook.).
Fanfiction is low status. Signaling considerations keep me from doing this with anyone associated with my offline identity.
Sad, but true.
I’ve found integrating the two identities to be a very pleasant experience. A great cognitive dissonance reducer.
As far as I can tell, the likeliest (i.e., simplest IMO) in-world hypothesis is that Azkhaban already has lots of wards on it, and one of the “standard” ones was not necessary because of that.
ConservationOfDetail suggests that’s not the case, but I don’t quite see how we can deduce what you’re trying to do, especially keeping in mind that authors can do the same deductions we do and like to twist things by just picking a less-likely hypothesis and explain it after the fact (or just make the dice fall that way).
They’re not in Azkaban at the time; this is the discussion in Mary’s Room.
Oh, you’re right. I got confused about which chapter we were discussing, sorry about that.
That said, something similar applies here: Quirell did 29 charms in Mary’s room, and 30 outside of it. A very simple hypothesis would be that the 30th was something already “implemented” in Mary’s room. (In fact, given that Mary’s room is described as particularly safe even before the charms, the surprising thing is he didn’t do significantly more than 30 charms outside it. The uniqueness of Mary’s room suggests that it would be hard to duplicate it, but it seems strange that nothing could be done to at least approximate it.)
But didn’t he do all 30 charms on a previous visit to Mary’s room?
There are too many chapters now for me to track this down easily.
What if: a) Quirrell and Harry’s actions in ch 51 only make sense in light of their planning to do something in particular, and b) doing that thing requires a charm not to be in place? I think that counts as a correct deduction.
(Somewhat) plausible hypothesis, not something to be confidently believed (which is the working interpretation of “deduction” I’m using, as stated at the beginning of the comment).
From the differing ways we treated the same two hypotheses just now I think we’re disagreeing on how fine a distinction we accept between two hypotheses before we say that they’re significantly different. From my perspective, apparating into the room and walking in under the cloak are functionally the same. In both cases, the purpose of leaving a charm off is to enable Q and H to walk out of the door as if they never left, and it’s that which I’d say is a valid deduction. Within all the hypotheses which fit that pattern, some seem more likely than others, but perhaps none are more than plausible.
It seems so, which would seemingly provide an airtight alibi for anyone except HP and his friends.
Oh yes, I suspect it’s meant to make Harry traceable. Here’s my take on what’s going on:
Guess One: Voldy is still an evil bastard, and in addition to that, he’s immensely cocky. He lied by speaking the truth to Harry [Why else would that dialogue be there?], ‘Black is innocent of being a slave to Voldy.’ The truth being that she was an independently evil witch.
Guess Two: Three people excluding Voldy and Harry know that he can kill Dementors. When evil Black lass escapes, blame falls on him.
Guess Three: The lack of the security charm allows time-travel to be tracked. They see Harry going back in time shortly before the escape. Harry is ostracized by society and attacked by ministry, turns against ministry for obvious reasons.
Guess Four: The above is Voldy’s plan for Harry. What actually happens is that he meets Serius and frees him, leading to a fallout between Harry and Voldy.
Well, that’s that.