After thinking about this on a more meta-level… I’m coming around to this idea. My primary objection is still that is seems too complicated and, well, somewhat absurd.
However, I just checked and I don’t think Baba Yaga is a canon character at ALL. I can’t even find a source for the “undying Baba Yaga” (although I didn’t look that hard). This does point to some kind of importance. Why would EY dedicate so much of ch.108 to this if it’s just backstory?
So… updating in favour of Baba Yaga being an important plot point to more like 85%. That QQ got some of his story wrong is lower (naturally), more like 60%. The whole complicated edifice you bring up is still quite low I think.
The basic inference chain has gotten a fair bit more solid in the process of bouncing it around here and on reddit.
I started from the argument that the story Voldemort was telling just didn’t seem probable—Any young witch capable of executing the plot he describes ought to be clever enough not to try something so very suicidal. Picking as your very first major plot “I’m going to seduce, trick, murder and rob the most formidable witch or wizard on the planet” and succeeding is just so absurd that I discounted it out of hand.
BY being major girl-crush bait, and in a place in her life where she might go for a romance? Well, she did just decide to take up teaching, despite a fairly forbidding set of conditions - That’s an indicator she wanted to change her life.
So the far more likely set of events is that the romance was real, and that either BY is still alive, or Perenelle is on a 600 year quest to get her girlfriend back from the dead.
I then noticed a second plot point that fit in really well here;
I was a subscriber to the theory that Voldemort was just doing a separate plot to destroy each and every DADA teacher, on the grounds that this seemed like the sort of thing that would amuse him, and take only very moderate levels of effort.
But then we were told that he was out of commission for an extended period of time. Which means there is an actual curse on the DADA job which the combined might of the hogwarts faculty cannot break.
Erh, what?
That would be a working on a level with the interdict or the upgraded horcrux! That sound you are hearing is my belief Voldemort did this shattering into a thousand pieces.
We were also told of a great working being cast on the Battle Magic teaching position. And the exact wording of that working. The wording of the magic is very likely to be accurate just because the entire student body read it. That and the association with a very interesting story should carve the precise phrasing deeply and accurately into the historical record.
And looking at it, yes, that working could be read to preclude giving anyone other than Baba Yaga the job of teaching at hogwarts. If she is still alive. And the curse only starting recently could be down to the goblet being stolen. This is a more probable chain of events than two entirely different curses of enormous power being laid down on a particular schoolteacher position.
These are the things I have some confidence in. The rest of the details are fill-in, and thus less probable to be precisely accurate.
After thinking about this on a more meta-level… I’m coming around to this idea. My primary objection is still that is seems too complicated and, well, somewhat absurd.
However, I just checked and I don’t think Baba Yaga is a canon character at ALL. I can’t even find a source for the “undying Baba Yaga” (although I didn’t look that hard). This does point to some kind of importance. Why would EY dedicate so much of ch.108 to this if it’s just backstory?
So… updating in favour of Baba Yaga being an important plot point to more like 85%. That QQ got some of his story wrong is lower (naturally), more like 60%. The whole complicated edifice you bring up is still quite low I think.
The basic inference chain has gotten a fair bit more solid in the process of bouncing it around here and on reddit.
I started from the argument that the story Voldemort was telling just didn’t seem probable—Any young witch capable of executing the plot he describes ought to be clever enough not to try something so very suicidal. Picking as your very first major plot “I’m going to seduce, trick, murder and rob the most formidable witch or wizard on the planet” and succeeding is just so absurd that I discounted it out of hand.
BY being major girl-crush bait, and in a place in her life where she might go for a romance? Well, she did just decide to take up teaching, despite a fairly forbidding set of conditions - That’s an indicator she wanted to change her life.
So the far more likely set of events is that the romance was real, and that either BY is still alive, or Perenelle is on a 600 year quest to get her girlfriend back from the dead.
I then noticed a second plot point that fit in really well here;
I was a subscriber to the theory that Voldemort was just doing a separate plot to destroy each and every DADA teacher, on the grounds that this seemed like the sort of thing that would amuse him, and take only very moderate levels of effort.
But then we were told that he was out of commission for an extended period of time. Which means there is an actual curse on the DADA job which the combined might of the hogwarts faculty cannot break. Erh, what?
That would be a working on a level with the interdict or the upgraded horcrux! That sound you are hearing is my belief Voldemort did this shattering into a thousand pieces.
We were also told of a great working being cast on the Battle Magic teaching position. And the exact wording of that working. The wording of the magic is very likely to be accurate just because the entire student body read it. That and the association with a very interesting story should carve the precise phrasing deeply and accurately into the historical record.
And looking at it, yes, that working could be read to preclude giving anyone other than Baba Yaga the job of teaching at hogwarts. If she is still alive. And the curse only starting recently could be down to the goblet being stolen. This is a more probable chain of events than two entirely different curses of enormous power being laid down on a particular schoolteacher position.
These are the things I have some confidence in. The rest of the details are fill-in, and thus less probable to be precisely accurate.