I wonder if the final room is not visible on the Marauder’s Map because it’s warded or because the room you enter is determined by whether/how the potion is flawed.
As a veteran Potion’s professor, Snape would be able to predict very accurately the way a first year would screw up such a fiddly task. Screw it up in the right way, see an innocuous final room with a little “Well done, don’t spoil it!” from the Headmaster. Execute it perfectly and trigger… what exactly?
This seems like a good occasion to quote the twist reveal in Orson Scott Card’s Dogwalker:
We stood there in his empty place, his shabby empty hovel that was ten times better than anywhere we ever lived, and Doggy says to me, real quiet, he says, “What was it? What did I do wrong? I thought I was like Hunt, I thought I never made a single mistake in this job. in this one job.”
And that was it, right then I knew. Not a week before, not when it would do any good. Right then I finally knew it all, knew what Hunt had done. Jesse Hunt never made mistakes. But he was also so paranoid that he haired his bureau to see if the babysitter stole from him. So even though he would never accidentally enter the wrong P-word, he was just the kind who would do it on purpose. “He doublefingered every time,” I says to Dog. “He’s so damn careful he does his password wrong the first time every time, and then comes in on his second finger.”
“So one time he comes in on the first try, so what?” He says this because he doesn’t know computers like I do, being half-glass myself.
“The system knew the pattern, that’s what. Jesse H. is so precise he never changed a bit, so when we came in on the first try, that set off alarms. It’s my fault, Dog. I knew how crazy paranoidical he is, I knew that something was wrong, but not till this minute I didn’t know what it was. I should have known it when I got his password, I should have known. I’m sorry, you never should have gotten me into this, I’m sorry, you should have listened to me when I told you something was wrong. I should have known, I’m sorry.”
There’s an old metaphor I read somewhere, that compared an unmeasured quantum state to the image in an unobserved mirror. The Map isn’t sure who is in the Mirror room; maybe it’s still indetermined.
The Map isn’t sure who is in the Mirror room; maybe it’s still indetermined.
Maybe indetermined because the room is (so far) causally disconnected from Hogwarts, there is still one hour of time turning left and a stable time loop has not formed yet, because it is not clear who and how is going to use the time turner to get into the room before now.
Alternatively, the true Cloak of invisibility hides you from the Death itself, never mind a mere map...
In canon, the Cloak does not hide you from the Map.
I don’t remember if this has appeared in MoR, but an Author’s Note referenced this fact: in canon, the Cloak does not hide you from Moody’s Eye. Rather than change this, EY made the Eye a venerable artefact, rather than something that Moody whipped up. And he also made the Map a venerable artefact, rather than something that the Marauders whipped up.
So I expect that the Cloak does not hide you from the Map in MoR either.
I wonder if the final room is not visible on the Marauder’s Map because it’s warded or because the room you enter is determined by whether/how the potion is flawed.
As a veteran Potion’s professor, Snape would be able to predict very accurately the way a first year would screw up such a fiddly task. Screw it up in the right way, see an innocuous final room with a little “Well done, don’t spoil it!” from the Headmaster. Execute it perfectly and trigger… what exactly?
This seems like a good occasion to quote the twist reveal in Orson Scott Card’s Dogwalker:
That is delightful.
There’s an old metaphor I read somewhere, that compared an unmeasured quantum state to the image in an unobserved mirror. The Map isn’t sure who is in the Mirror room; maybe it’s still indetermined.
Maybe indetermined because the room is (so far) causally disconnected from Hogwarts, there is still one hour of time turning left and a stable time loop has not formed yet, because it is not clear who and how is going to use the time turner to get into the room before now.
Alternatively, the true Cloak of invisibility hides you from the Death itself, never mind a mere map...
In canon, the Cloak does not hide you from the Map.
I don’t remember if this has appeared in MoR, but an Author’s Note referenced this fact: in canon, the Cloak does not hide you from Moody’s Eye. Rather than change this, EY made the Eye a venerable artefact, rather than something that Moody whipped up. And he also made the Map a venerable artefact, rather than something that the Marauders whipped up.
So I expect that the Cloak does not hide you from the Map in MoR either.
[Edits: capitalization.]