If they all started off in a symmetrical position, they’d use Unbreakable Vows to keep from killing each other and then proceed to further affairs, not necessarily cooperatively.
Wouldn’t this require one Quirrell to agree to sacrifice a part of his power before any other Quirrell does? (Assuming that all of the vow rituals taking place at the same time would require each Quirrell to take part in more than one ritual simultaneously, which doesn’t seem possible.) It seems to me that a Quirrell wouldn’t agree to this.
You don’t have to sacrifice your own power for that, the bonder sacrifices power. And the Unbreakable Vow could be worded to only come into force once all Vows were taken.
But, in this case, the bonder is another Quirrell picked from this all-Quirrel community, right?
Of course, if we allow the ritual to depend on the completion of other rituals, then the problem is moot.
It strikes me that this conversation really hinges on just how evil HPMOR’s Quirrell turns out to be, which is problematic since you know a few chapters more plot than I do...
(Also, since I find myself having a conversation with you, might I say that I very much like HPMOR, and that I would like it even more if you were to amend chapter 19 so that Quirrell didn’t perpetuate one or two myths about martial arts, a subject on which I focus a certain amount of my own nerdly attentions? I posted a review under “James”, but the short version is that (1) martial arts aren’t particularly Asian, and (2) “I’m a sixth dan” means no more than “I once got a B- in a class whose subject I won’t divulge except to say that it was ‘Math’.”)
The great-grandparent comment did make me consider unbreakable vows as a theory of what happened on Halloween. E.g. to prevent one of his Horcruxes from later killing him, Voldemort made an unbreakable vow not to magically interact with his alter egos (this causing Harry’s sense of Doom around Quirrell). Doesn’t seem necessary, though.
If they all started off in a symmetrical position, they’d use Unbreakable Vows to keep from killing each other and then proceed to further affairs, not necessarily cooperatively.
Wouldn’t this require one Quirrell to agree to sacrifice a part of his power before any other Quirrell does? (Assuming that all of the vow rituals taking place at the same time would require each Quirrell to take part in more than one ritual simultaneously, which doesn’t seem possible.) It seems to me that a Quirrell wouldn’t agree to this.
You don’t have to sacrifice your own power for that, the bonder sacrifices power. And the Unbreakable Vow could be worded to only come into force once all Vows were taken.
But, in this case, the bonder is another Quirrell picked from this all-Quirrel community, right?
Of course, if we allow the ritual to depend on the completion of other rituals, then the problem is moot.
It strikes me that this conversation really hinges on just how evil HPMOR’s Quirrell turns out to be, which is problematic since you know a few chapters more plot than I do...
(Also, since I find myself having a conversation with you, might I say that I very much like HPMOR, and that I would like it even more if you were to amend chapter 19 so that Quirrell didn’t perpetuate one or two myths about martial arts, a subject on which I focus a certain amount of my own nerdly attentions? I posted a review under “James”, but the short version is that (1) martial arts aren’t particularly Asian, and (2) “I’m a sixth dan” means no more than “I once got a B- in a class whose subject I won’t divulge except to say that it was ‘Math’.”)
The great-grandparent comment did make me consider unbreakable vows as a theory of what happened on Halloween. E.g. to prevent one of his Horcruxes from later killing him, Voldemort made an unbreakable vow not to magically interact with his alter egos (this causing Harry’s sense of Doom around Quirrell). Doesn’t seem necessary, though.