By this point Harry Potter had entirely forgotten the existence of Professor McGonagall, who had been sitting there this whole time undergoing a number of interesting changes of facial expression which Harry had not been looking at because he was distracted. [...]
So Harry, who at this point had a fair amount of adrenaline in his bloodstream, startled and jumped quite visibly when Professor McGonagall, her eyes now blazing with impossible hope and the tears on her cheek half-dried, leapt to her feet and cried, “With me, Mr. Potter!” and, without waiting for a reply, tore down the stairs that led to the bottom platform where waited a chair of dark metal.
It took a moment, but Harry ran after; though it took him longer to reach the bottom, after Professor McGonagall vaulted half the stairs with a strange catlike motion and landed with the astonished-looking Auror trio already pointing their wands at her. [...]
“Both of you stop being silly,” Professor McGonagall said in her firm Scottish accent (it was strange how much that helped). “Mr. Potter, hold out your wand so that Miss Granger’s fingers can touch it. Miss Granger, repeat after me. Upon my life and magic—” [...]
And then Minerva McGonagall, who was Head of House Gryffindor even if she didn’t always act like it, looked up high above at where Lucius Malfoy stood; and she said to him before the entire Wizengamot, “I regret every point I ever gave you in Transfiguration, you vile little worm.”
One hundred points to Gryffindor doesn’t seem to cut it.
Perhaps you’re expected to gracefully retract at some point.
I think the striken out posts can’t be further down voted and you are expected to use that tool to defend yourself against excessive down votes. That is entirely a guess and I am new here.
It’s a fact that stricken out posts can’t be further downvoted, but I don’t know about being expected to use that tool as a form of defense.
This was implemented because previously some people just deleted comments that got them lots of downvotes, and this caused disruptions in the flow of the conversation (one could no longer see what people were responding to).
You misread the passage. McGonaggal helped Harry take Hermione into the sworn service of House Potter. A very feudal type of thing, but certainly no marriage.
Sounded like marriage vows to me, though we have no idea what the standard marriage vows are in Magical Britain, nor the service vows. Context seemed to indicate that they just got married as well.
Can you please reread them instead of just going by memory? Here, I’ll make it easy for you:
“Upon my life and magic, I swear service to the House of Potter, to obey its Master or Mistress, and stand at their right hand, and fight at their command, and follow where they go, until the day I die”
“I, Harry, heir and last scion of the Potters, accept your service, until the end of the world and its magic”
Now, please actually read the above sentences again, and tell me now whether they sound like marriage vows to you?
And if you still think they’ve gotten married, in short if you’re arguing that P(they’ve gotten married)> 50%, then I’ll put my money where my mouth is and bet you they haven’t. I’ll bet 10 of my dollars for every 1 of yours, up to a maximum of $10,000 of mine. That should be an easy way for you to make some money.
Well, after yesterday, I certainly won’t be betting against you, even though my odds are (slightly) lower.
My reading is that Harry intended to get married, because that’s the only applicable law he knew of—but McGonagall figured out what he was about to attempt and instead triggered some sort of fealty or adoption law.
But I don’t think it’s totally inconceivable that the wizarding world has marriage vows that sound like that.
My reading is that Harry intended to get married, because that’s the only applicable law he knew of—but McGonagall figured out what he was about to attempt and instead triggered some sort of fealty or adoption law.
Agreed mostly, but I don’t think McGonagall figured out that he was about to propose marriage to Hermione. She just came up independently with the idea of inducting Hermione into House Potter; and of course she preferred to use a more age-appropriate (and less emotionally-charged) path than marriage. The alternate option of service, which Harry didn’t even know existed.
I’m not sure how good McGonagall’s model of Harry is, so maybe you’re right, and she didn’t figure out what he was planning.
Hm. In my model of the wizard world, what McGonagall did was a totally obvious solution to every wizard in the room except Harry; everyone in the room not on Malfoy’s side probably even came in expecting Lucius to extract this fealty vow or something similar from Hermione before Azkaban was mentioned—it should have been fresh in their minds.
″...The girl is no part of House Potter...”
So I kinda feel like Lucius must have picked up the idiot ball to utter this. I can’t explain why he didn’t think of the obvious counter (was he so fixated on Azkaban that the fealty thing never occurred to him this whole time?). Unless he was trying to get Hermione joined to House Potter, but that seems really unlikely. Perhaps he didn’t think there was any way he could lose to an 11 year old and thus didn’t try hard enough.
I assumed the vow was obscure, ancient, Almost Never Done in modern times for good reasons (consider the content!), and that Lucius just wouldn’t have imagined his model of Harry doing that with a mudblood girl.
Would’ve been fun to see Lucius’s expression if Harry had actually proposed marriage, but that wouldn’t have fit quite as well.
Ah, that makes sense. I forgot that Lucius thinks he’s dealing with Harrymort (and expects him to have a pureblood bias). Hm, that implies that Lucius didn’t use Veritaserum on Draco after all (or he’s really blinded by his bias). Well, either way I imagine Lucius is extremely confused right now...
Oddly, people seem to be assuming that “Lucius used Veritaserum on Draco” means “Lucius knows everything Draco knows”. Which wouldn’t follow even if Draco was given 3 drops, let alone the 2 he actually got.
I think that’s a reasonable default scenario. Truth is entangled (and Draco/Harry/Hermione’s dealings is more so than usual); I would expect that as soon as Lucius asked a question with an unusual answer, he’d keep asking questions until he figured out nearly all that Draco knew. If Lucius used Veritaserum and managed to not ask any such questions, then he might as well have not used Veritaserum at all...
That first, while Lucius was primarily concerned about Draco’s safety and what happened that night?
And it seems like a major breach of trust to ask that directly, which Draco will remember so that it will harm their bond permanently.
Also, I wonder how long Draco would be able to ponder which thing is the most important before starting to answer. It might be a moot point, since I’m pretty sure Veritaserum tends to make people think out loud.
“Well, I hide a lot of things from you intentionally. That’s what you taught me after all. But which one is the most important? I’m not even sure how to rank things like this, so I suppose I’m solving a problem. Harry would say that in this sort of situation, one should hold off on proposing solutions. So let me think of the salient features of how to sort a list of secrets in order of importance...” (no effort on my part to make this in Draco’s voice)
No, not that first. But I’d expect him to get around to it eventually. And it won’t harm their bond if Draco doesn’t remember it- the Hogwarts wards only protect students from being Obliviated while they’re in Hogwarts.
it won’t harm their bond if Draco doesn’t remember it
I doubt that’s true in the purely consequentialist sense, and I don’t expect Lucius to think like a consequentialist.
A major violation of trust from the person Draco cares about and respects most of all, seems like exactly the sort of damage that could survive Obliviation (as McGonagall hinted in Chapter 6).
And my model of Lucius would not want to violate Draco’s trust, even if Draco couldn’t remember it—he genuinely cares about being a good father to Draco. Old-fashioned nobles believe in virtue ethics, if any.
I don’t. But I think I have a better model of what sorts of things Harry has been up to with Draco, than Dumbledore does.
I think Dumbledore thinks that “whatever you have done with Draco” is one thing, and will be most salient to Draco. He’s not expecting the Bayesian Conspiracy, and Draco’s Patronus, and Harry’s Patronus, and discovering that the blood purist hypothesis is false, and actually becoming friends with Hermione, and becoming pregnant with Harry’s baby, and trying to reform Slytherin house, and so on...
So, if I’m understanding you correctly, you think that Lucius giving Draco Veritaserum is not in itself a violation of his trust?
In the context of “assume Lucius will know” “he’ll give him Veritaserum” the clear implication is that Lucius would use enough Veritaserum to make answering involuntary, which would seem a clear violation of trust to me.
Right, I assumed that the Veritaserum itself was just necessary as part of the legal process, for outside observers to make sure Draco isn’t lying, and that instance is what they were talking about. Even in that context, “Tell me things you wouldn’t want to tell me normally” is a violation of trust.
Okay, back up even further. You think that investigating Aurors will give a child victim Veritaserum and then leave him alone with someone else before it wears off? That’s horrifying.
No, I thought that the investigating Aurors would not give a child Veritaserum without his legal guardian there, and thus Lucius would have access to whatever Draco said under Veritaserum. It occurs to me now that Lucius wouldn’t be too prying in front of Aurors.
On reflection, I do believe I have a better model of Lucius than Dumbledore does. I’ve read a lot of the same fanfic as the author has and I know a decent amount about the author’s thought processes, neither of which is true of Dumbledore. And Dumbledore thinks of people in absolutes, and would probably think Lucius is incapable of honestly wanting to be a good father to Draco since he’s “Dark”.
Did Eliezer say that Lucius interrogated Draco himself? I can’t find it—I had assumed it was aurors, who in the course of investigating this particular crime would have no reason even to mention Harry’s name.
It looks like readers didn’t get this. They were overdosed on age-inappropriate romantic hopes or did not notice the gap between Harry’s idea and MacGonagal’s.
Is this the sort of thing you respond to by changing the chapters that are already out? The whole service thing will probably be explained in the next chapter anyway, along with Lucius’s “certain rights.”
Well, I mean that romance at eleven is inappropriate. I suggested marriage was seen because it would signal romance and signals of romance were desired because of hopes.
But thank you, Perry. If you hadn’t responded I would have answered the wrong question. I thought he misunderstood when I wrote about the gap between Harry’s marriage idea and MacGonagal’s fealty idea. And then maybe I would not have been clear enough again and there would have been more confusion and we might go on until one got fed up and both simply logged the other as ‘dense’ and left it at that.
Yeah, it would not have occurred to me that romance at age 11 is inappropriate, as I knew a lot of romantically-inclined people at age 11, and I tend to think of Wizarding Britain as a backwards, medieval society so “marriage at 11” doesn’t ring any alarm bells. Plus, 11ish-year-old characters have already talked at length about romance in the story.
And since we know no one has the idiot ball, that suggests that the fealty vow (or possibly wedding vow) to Harry was totally unexpected. My impression was that the Wizengamot was stunned by the events.
what McGonagall did was a totally obvious solution to every wizard in the room except Harry; everyone in the room not on Malfoy’s side probably even came in expecting Lucius to extract this fealty vow or something similar from Hermione
Yes, they expected Lucius to extract something similar from Hermione. They weren’t thinking of Lucius’s debt to Harry, so until Harry mentioned it and stunned the room, McGonagall’s actions wouldn’t have occurred to them.
They weren’t thinking of Lucius’s debt to Harry, so until Harry mentioned it and stunned the room, McGonagall’s actions wouldn’t have occurred to them.
I meant that it should have occurred to everyone immediately after Lucius’s statement ”...The girl is no part of House Potter...”
True. Maybe they were just so stunned by everything.
On the other hand, Lucius gets 100,000 gold and Potter in his debt, which apparently gives him some kind of control. And maybe he realized Hermione wasn’t the actual killer, but couldn’t back down at that point because he’d lose face. So it’s not like he ends up with a bad deal.
Alternatively, if he thinks Harry is his real enemy and Hermione just a minion, maybe having Harry in his debt is just as good as putting Hermione in the clank, according to his utility function.
Yes. I agree. I was just saying that the gender-inclusive language specifically isn’t a good reason to think that, given Wizarding Britain’s displayed attitude toward homosexuality.
It’s not the “gender inclusiveness” that’s the problem, it’s the vagueness. Harry is male, why not call him “Master” instead of “Master or Mistress”? It’s because the oath is a fealty oath sworn to the House, and after Harry dies, the mastery of his house may pass to a daughter of his (which Hermione would then be still sworn to obey).
Marital oaths are between specific people. In this case obedience was sworn to House Potter, and Harry accepted it as the heir and last scion of House Potter.
Well, yes, agreed that points more towards an oath of servitude. But I could easily imagine someone marrying me and promising to obey “the master of my house” as a poetic and formal way of referring to me. My point in the comment you were responding to was that obedience is hardly foreign to wedding vows.
The problem is that I don’t know enough about Magical Britain’s culture and customs to make a good estimate. There’s so much weird stuff going on there that there’s not much that would surprise me.
You are correct that taken completely out of context like that, they sound like service vows. And I’m biased because I want them to be marriage vows; after reading your posts I’ve updated in favor of service vows.
I don’t think P(marriage) > 50%. But you’re offering me 10 against 1, and I am sure P(marriage) > 1⁄11. So I accept your bet. I’ll put up $30 against your $300, to be judged either by an unambiguous statement in a future chapter of MoR, or by a comment on LW by Eliezer.
ll put up $30 against your $300, to be judged either by an unambiguous statement in a future chapter of MoR, or by a comment on LW by Eliezer.
It’s a deal on my part—but I’ll also understand/forgive/excuse you if you don’t pay up, because I think Eliezer has effectively already confirmed my position in a comment, before I got to say “Deal”.
It was posted after I said “I accept your bet,” so I am honor-bound to pay up. But if you feel bad taking the money I can always donate to SIAI instead.
Yeah that was the comment I was talking about, and nah, I am okay with taking the money, if you also consider it fair enough. I’ll PM you paypal detail. If paypal is not convenient for you, we’ll figure some other way.
The part where I totally didn’t notice that they didn’t get married.
But I’m still confused; why not? What are the benefits of servitude over marriage?
I’m also confused about what actually happened.
The boy took a deep breath, and opened his mouth -
Did he actually say anything? Or did McGonagall come up with the idea right before? And then didn’t mention to Harry that she was making Hermione his servant instead of his wife?
Fewer shrieks of horror from their parents? Also Hermione doesn’t need to change her name into Hermione Potter-Evans-Verres-Granger.
Did he actually say anything? Or did McGonagall come up with the idea right before?
He didn’t. It was right before. Harry knew of only marriage as a way to induct Hermione into his House. McGonagall knew of a somewhat simpler way, and one less emotionally charged than marriage.
And then didn’t mention to Harry that she was making Hermione his servant instead of his wife?
I think he realized it the moment he heard the words McGonagall was having Hermione say. Keep in mind that it’s not as if McGonaggal realized Harry was considering marriage at all.
I personally would find marriage to be vastly preferable to indefinite servitude. Servitude would definitely be emotionally charging for both of them, as humanists. And they’re already deeply in love.
Next of kin would be the mother (surely?). She now has an incentive to legally kill a wealthy heir to take their estate. That’s… something of a moral hazard or at least an unpleasant tradeoff to thrust upon someone.
If I recall correctly, in Louisiana, if a man dies and leaves children and a widow but no will, his estate goes to his children and his widow gets nothing.
If Louisiana inheritance law works that way because it is based on Code Napoleon and if the German laws of inheritance also come from Code Napoleon, then maybe the mother would not be incentivized if there were other surviving siblings.
You don’t inherit from the fetus, the fetus is the one getting the inheritance. Which makes sense, since she is related to the person who died. This might cause problems once someone makes a kid with frozen sperm of a dead person.
Think of this situation.
1) Dad dies.
2) Fetus inherits.
3) Mom gets an abortion.
4) Does Mom inherit? And if so, did we just give her a huge financial incentive to kill her kid?
Well, she certainly has a financial incentive to terminate her pregnancy in that scenario. She also has a financial incentive to murder her co-parent. (Still more so if Mom can inherit directly from Dad.) Also, given the costs of bearing and raising a child, I’d expect that most pregnant women have a financial incentive to terminate their pregnancies.
But killing Dad is murder, and you go to jail for that. Killing Baby is an outpatient procedure. with no legal sanction(and, in many places, outright subsidization). I’d say that the situations differ.
The situations differ in several ways, including their legal status.
You were discussing financial incentives, and I responded accordingly.
If your actual intention is to discuss more generally the similarities and differences between killing fetuses and adults (or babies and adults, if you prefer that language), then I’ll drop out here.
No, a generic debate about abortion is the last thing I want to partake in. It makes everybody stupid, and I suspect that I’m on the same side as most people here anyways. I just find this particular situation interesting, and that seemed like convenient shorthand.
Yes, that is what I was aiming at. If it is the rational choice to end a pregnancy, than it is good for us that not everyone in the past did so. I am aware that the OP wrote about the financial incentive, not about the most rational choice.
I’m speaking of a peculiar situation, not of a generic pregnancy. Still, I suppose that as “financial reasons to have an abortion” go, the fact that not having one obliges you to raise a kid does seem like it ought to weigh highly...
The mind is the body, and this is a rationalist fic.
Precocious children have a history of demonstrating they are not socio-emotionally prepared for some adult situations they are capable of confronting on an intellectual level. However smart or clever we are, we are still wet machines and we still grow in particular rhythms at particular times.
Before McGonagall’s stunt, I was worried the marriage would require consummation to be legally binding.
This doesn’t strike me as much of an issue. Considering what was at stake it would be an utterly trivial cost and a requirement comparatively easy to fulfill. Just another taboo tradeoff.
“Let’s see… is drastically underage sex with my girlfriend better than her death by torture?”. Death by torture really makes decision making easy at times!
Goreans are the creationists of lifestyle BDSMers...
I think that statement is likely to be insulting to just about everyone involved in the comparison. So I would like to learn exactly how you mean that.
“Goreans are to lifestyle BDMSers as creationists are to ___.”
I filled that in with ’theists” because that is the group creationists are part of like Goreans are part of the BDSM community. Now that community has their safe, sane, and consensual lifestyle choices compared to allowing the belief in an imaginary friend to control your life with little restriction. The believers have their faith compared to the depraved antics of perverts. The enlightened science of the creationists is compared to the escapist delusions of the Goreans. And finally the compared to the mockery of science and clumsy apologetics of creationism.
The point was to insult the Goreans by comparing them to creationists, and that I hoped no one took them as a representation of lifestylers. I’m not sure why I got voted to −2, though.
One hundred points to Gryffindor doesn’t seem to cut it.
-100? She just doesn’t know when to talk and when to keep her mouth shut.
You’re so upset that McGonaggal’s intervention prevented Harry from asking Hermione’s hand in marriage? You’re a Ravenclaw girl at heart, I see. :-)
You know, even if I’m wrong about the marriage, getting voted down to −10 seems a little excessive...
Perhaps you’re expected to gracefully retract at some point.
I think the striken out posts can’t be further down voted and you are expected to use that tool to defend yourself against excessive down votes. That is entirely a guess and I am new here.
It’s a fact that stricken out posts can’t be further downvoted, but I don’t know about being expected to use that tool as a form of defense.
This was implemented because previously some people just deleted comments that got them lots of downvotes, and this caused disruptions in the flow of the conversation (one could no longer see what people were responding to).
Not really. It’s a pretty silly theory.
Huh? McGonaggal helped Harry marry Hermione.
You misread the passage. McGonaggal helped Harry take Hermione into the sworn service of House Potter. A very feudal type of thing, but certainly no marriage.
Sounded like marriage vows to me, though we have no idea what the standard marriage vows are in Magical Britain, nor the service vows. Context seemed to indicate that they just got married as well.
Can you please reread them instead of just going by memory? Here, I’ll make it easy for you:
Now, please actually read the above sentences again, and tell me now whether they sound like marriage vows to you?
And if you still think they’ve gotten married, in short if you’re arguing that P(they’ve gotten married)> 50%, then I’ll put my money where my mouth is and bet you they haven’t. I’ll bet 10 of my dollars for every 1 of yours, up to a maximum of $10,000 of mine. That should be an easy way for you to make some money.
Well, after yesterday, I certainly won’t be betting against you, even though my odds are (slightly) lower.
My reading is that Harry intended to get married, because that’s the only applicable law he knew of—but McGonagall figured out what he was about to attempt and instead triggered some sort of fealty or adoption law.
But I don’t think it’s totally inconceivable that the wizarding world has marriage vows that sound like that.
Agreed mostly, but I don’t think McGonagall figured out that he was about to propose marriage to Hermione. She just came up independently with the idea of inducting Hermione into House Potter; and of course she preferred to use a more age-appropriate (and less emotionally-charged) path than marriage. The alternate option of service, which Harry didn’t even know existed.
I’m not sure how good McGonagall’s model of Harry is, so maybe you’re right, and she didn’t figure out what he was planning.
Hm. In my model of the wizard world, what McGonagall did was a totally obvious solution to every wizard in the room except Harry; everyone in the room not on Malfoy’s side probably even came in expecting Lucius to extract this fealty vow or something similar from Hermione before Azkaban was mentioned—it should have been fresh in their minds.
So I kinda feel like Lucius must have picked up the idiot ball to utter this. I can’t explain why he didn’t think of the obvious counter (was he so fixated on Azkaban that the fealty thing never occurred to him this whole time?). Unless he was trying to get Hermione joined to House Potter, but that seems really unlikely. Perhaps he didn’t think there was any way he could lose to an 11 year old and thus didn’t try hard enough.
I assumed the vow was obscure, ancient, Almost Never Done in modern times for good reasons (consider the content!), and that Lucius just wouldn’t have imagined his model of Harry doing that with a mudblood girl.
Would’ve been fun to see Lucius’s expression if Harry had actually proposed marriage, but that wouldn’t have fit quite as well.
Ah, that makes sense. I forgot that Lucius thinks he’s dealing with Harrymort (and expects him to have a pureblood bias). Hm, that implies that Lucius didn’t use Veritaserum on Draco after all (or he’s really blinded by his bias). Well, either way I imagine Lucius is extremely confused right now...
Oddly, people seem to be assuming that “Lucius used Veritaserum on Draco” means “Lucius knows everything Draco knows”. Which wouldn’t follow even if Draco was given 3 drops, let alone the 2 he actually got.
I think that’s a reasonable default scenario. Truth is entangled (and Draco/Harry/Hermione’s dealings is more so than usual); I would expect that as soon as Lucius asked a question with an unusual answer, he’d keep asking questions until he figured out nearly all that Draco knew. If Lucius used Veritaserum and managed to not ask any such questions, then he might as well have not used Veritaserum at all...
And I believe he was interrogated by aurors investigating this crime—in which Harry was not involved—not by Malfoy.
“What have you been intentionally hiding from me, in descending order of importance?”
That first, while Lucius was primarily concerned about Draco’s safety and what happened that night?
And it seems like a major breach of trust to ask that directly, which Draco will remember so that it will harm their bond permanently.
Also, I wonder how long Draco would be able to ponder which thing is the most important before starting to answer. It might be a moot point, since I’m pretty sure Veritaserum tends to make people think out loud.
“Well, I hide a lot of things from you intentionally. That’s what you taught me after all. But which one is the most important? I’m not even sure how to rank things like this, so I suppose I’m solving a problem. Harry would say that in this sort of situation, one should hold off on proposing solutions. So let me think of the salient features of how to sort a list of secrets in order of importance...” (no effort on my part to make this in Draco’s voice)
No, not that first. But I’d expect him to get around to it eventually. And it won’t harm their bond if Draco doesn’t remember it- the Hogwarts wards only protect students from being Obliviated while they’re in Hogwarts.
I doubt that’s true in the purely consequentialist sense, and I don’t expect Lucius to think like a consequentialist.
A major violation of trust from the person Draco cares about and respects most of all, seems like exactly the sort of damage that could survive Obliviation (as McGonagall hinted in Chapter 6).
And my model of Lucius would not want to violate Draco’s trust, even if Draco couldn’t remember it—he genuinely cares about being a good father to Draco. Old-fashioned nobles believe in virtue ethics, if any.
So, for what reason do you believe you have a better model of Lucius than Dumbledore does?
I don’t. But I think I have a better model of what sorts of things Harry has been up to with Draco, than Dumbledore does.
I think Dumbledore thinks that “whatever you have done with Draco” is one thing, and will be most salient to Draco. He’s not expecting the Bayesian Conspiracy, and Draco’s Patronus, and Harry’s Patronus, and discovering that the blood purist hypothesis is false, and actually becoming friends with Hermione, and becoming pregnant with Harry’s baby, and trying to reform Slytherin house, and so on...
So, if I’m understanding you correctly, you think that Lucius giving Draco Veritaserum is not in itself a violation of his trust?
In the context of “assume Lucius will know” “he’ll give him Veritaserum” the clear implication is that Lucius would use enough Veritaserum to make answering involuntary, which would seem a clear violation of trust to me.
Right, I assumed that the Veritaserum itself was just necessary as part of the legal process, for outside observers to make sure Draco isn’t lying, and that instance is what they were talking about. Even in that context, “Tell me things you wouldn’t want to tell me normally” is a violation of trust.
Okay, back up even further. You think that investigating Aurors will give a child victim Veritaserum and then leave him alone with someone else before it wears off? That’s horrifying.
No, I thought that the investigating Aurors would not give a child Veritaserum without his legal guardian there, and thus Lucius would have access to whatever Draco said under Veritaserum. It occurs to me now that Lucius wouldn’t be too prying in front of Aurors.
Why are you not assuming that Lucius could get his hands on Veritaserum himself and interrogate Draco later in private?
If we wanted to assume he would do that, we could assume that at any time—Harry should have been just as worried after the Christmas break.
On reflection, I do believe I have a better model of Lucius than Dumbledore does. I’ve read a lot of the same fanfic as the author has and I know a decent amount about the author’s thought processes, neither of which is true of Dumbledore. And Dumbledore thinks of people in absolutes, and would probably think Lucius is incapable of honestly wanting to be a good father to Draco since he’s “Dark”.
Did Eliezer say that Lucius interrogated Draco himself? I can’t find it—I had assumed it was aurors, who in the course of investigating this particular crime would have no reason even to mention Harry’s name.
I don’t think so, no.
Oh right. Slightly careless reading. Sorry about that.
It looks like readers didn’t get this. They were overdosed on age-inappropriate romantic hopes or did not notice the gap between Harry’s idea and MacGonagal’s.
Is this the sort of thing you respond to by changing the chapters that are already out? The whole service thing will probably be explained in the next chapter anyway, along with Lucius’s “certain rights.”
Waitwhat.
I did not think anyone thought Harry was marrying McGonagall. Or am I missing something here?
Marriage at eleven is inappropriate.
Aha. Missed the cultural context. Thanks!
Well, I mean that romance at eleven is inappropriate. I suggested marriage was seen because it would signal romance and signals of romance were desired because of hopes.
But thank you, Perry. If you hadn’t responded I would have answered the wrong question. I thought he misunderstood when I wrote about the gap between Harry’s marriage idea and MacGonagal’s fealty idea. And then maybe I would not have been clear enough again and there would have been more confusion and we might go on until one got fed up and both simply logged the other as ‘dense’ and left it at that.
Yeah, it would not have occurred to me that romance at age 11 is inappropriate, as I knew a lot of romantically-inclined people at age 11, and I tend to think of Wizarding Britain as a backwards, medieval society so “marriage at 11” doesn’t ring any alarm bells. Plus, 11ish-year-old characters have already talked at length about romance in the story.
Plus… polyjuice.
And since we know no one has the idiot ball, that suggests that the fealty vow (or possibly wedding vow) to Harry was totally unexpected. My impression was that the Wizengamot was stunned by the events.
Yes, they expected Lucius to extract something similar from Hermione. They weren’t thinking of Lucius’s debt to Harry, so until Harry mentioned it and stunned the room, McGonagall’s actions wouldn’t have occurred to them.
I meant that it should have occurred to everyone immediately after Lucius’s statement ”...The girl is no part of House Potter...”
True. Maybe they were just so stunned by everything.
On the other hand, Lucius gets 100,000 gold and Potter in his debt, which apparently gives him some kind of control. And maybe he realized Hermione wasn’t the actual killer, but couldn’t back down at that point because he’d lose face. So it’s not like he ends up with a bad deal.
Alternatively, if he thinks Harry is his real enemy and Hermione just a minion, maybe having Harry in his debt is just as good as putting Hermione in the clank, according to his utility function.
“to obey its Master or Mistress”
I don’t think it’s totally inconceivable that the wizarding world has marriage vows that sound like that.
It sounds more like a oath of obedience.
Yes. I agree. I was just saying that the gender-inclusive language specifically isn’t a good reason to think that, given Wizarding Britain’s displayed attitude toward homosexuality.
It’s not the “gender inclusiveness” that’s the problem, it’s the vagueness. Harry is male, why not call him “Master” instead of “Master or Mistress”? It’s because the oath is a fealty oath sworn to the House, and after Harry dies, the mastery of his house may pass to a daughter of his (which Hermione would then be still sworn to obey).
Marital oaths are between specific people. In this case obedience was sworn to House Potter, and Harry accepted it as the heir and last scion of House Potter.
Yes. I agree.
So was the traditional wedding vow… “I promise to love, honor, and obey.”
“I promise to love, honor, and obey you”, not “the master or mistress of your house”.
Well, yes, agreed that points more towards an oath of servitude. But I could easily imagine someone marrying me and promising to obey “the master of my house” as a poetic and formal way of referring to me. My point in the comment you were responding to was that obedience is hardly foreign to wedding vows.
Point.
The problem is that I don’t know enough about Magical Britain’s culture and customs to make a good estimate. There’s so much weird stuff going on there that there’s not much that would surprise me.
You are correct that taken completely out of context like that, they sound like service vows. And I’m biased because I want them to be marriage vows; after reading your posts I’ve updated in favor of service vows.
I don’t think P(marriage) > 50%. But you’re offering me 10 against 1, and I am sure P(marriage) > 1⁄11. So I accept your bet. I’ll put up $30 against your $300, to be judged either by an unambiguous statement in a future chapter of MoR, or by a comment on LW by Eliezer.
It’s a deal on my part—but I’ll also understand/forgive/excuse you if you don’t pay up, because I think Eliezer has effectively already confirmed my position in a comment, before I got to say “Deal”.
This one?
It was posted after I said “I accept your bet,” so I am honor-bound to pay up. But if you feel bad taking the money I can always donate to SIAI instead.
Yeah that was the comment I was talking about, and nah, I am okay with taking the money, if you also consider it fair enough. I’ll PM you paypal detail. If paypal is not convenient for you, we’ll figure some other way.
Sent via paypal.
Someone make more bets with me so I can come out ahead ;)
When you do that you are robbing Blueberry of a valuable and inexpensive learning experience.
This blew my mind.
What do you mean? Which part?
The part where I totally didn’t notice that they didn’t get married.
But I’m still confused; why not? What are the benefits of servitude over marriage?
I’m also confused about what actually happened.
Did he actually say anything? Or did McGonagall come up with the idea right before? And then didn’t mention to Harry that she was making Hermione his servant instead of his wife?
Fewer shrieks of horror from their parents? Also Hermione doesn’t need to change her name into Hermione Potter-Evans-Verres-Granger.
He didn’t. It was right before. Harry knew of only marriage as a way to induct Hermione into his House. McGonagall knew of a somewhat simpler way, and one less emotionally charged than marriage.
I think he realized it the moment he heard the words McGonagall was having Hermione say. Keep in mind that it’s not as if McGonaggal realized Harry was considering marriage at all.
I personally would find marriage to be vastly preferable to indefinite servitude. Servitude would definitely be emotionally charging for both of them, as humanists. And they’re already deeply in love.
I find it quite astonishing how often I have to remind people that they’re eleven years old.
I didn’t forget that (but sometimes I do). We can have a 12 year old be a slave to an 11 year old, but we can’t have them get married?
Welcome to feudalism.
Legal system do not have to be consistant. In Germany you can inherit since the time of conception, but still legally aborted afterwards.
That is seriously weird.
Not that much. Both rules have their reasons. Real consistency is hard.
It’s not implausible, or necessarily wrong, but it is weird. What are the rules for inheriting from a fetus?
Next of kin would be the mother (surely?). She now has an incentive to legally kill a wealthy heir to take their estate. That’s… something of a moral hazard or at least an unpleasant tradeoff to thrust upon someone.
If I recall correctly, in Louisiana, if a man dies and leaves children and a widow but no will, his estate goes to his children and his widow gets nothing.
If Louisiana inheritance law works that way because it is based on Code Napoleon and if the German laws of inheritance also come from Code Napoleon, then maybe the mother would not be incentivized if there were other surviving siblings.
That’s a lot of ifs.
Yeah, that was my first thought too.
You don’t inherit from the fetus, the fetus is the one getting the inheritance. Which makes sense, since she is related to the person who died. This might cause problems once someone makes a kid with frozen sperm of a dead person.
Think of this situation. 1) Dad dies. 2) Fetus inherits. 3) Mom gets an abortion. 4) Does Mom inherit? And if so, did we just give her a huge financial incentive to kill her kid?
Well, she certainly has a financial incentive to terminate her pregnancy in that scenario. She also has a financial incentive to murder her co-parent. (Still more so if Mom can inherit directly from Dad.) Also, given the costs of bearing and raising a child, I’d expect that most pregnant women have a financial incentive to terminate their pregnancies.
But killing Dad is murder, and you go to jail for that. Killing Baby is an outpatient procedure. with no legal sanction(and, in many places, outright subsidization). I’d say that the situations differ.
The situations differ in several ways, including their legal status.
You were discussing financial incentives, and I responded accordingly.
If your actual intention is to discuss more generally the similarities and differences between killing fetuses and adults (or babies and adults, if you prefer that language), then I’ll drop out here.
No, a generic debate about abortion is the last thing I want to partake in. It makes everybody stupid, and I suspect that I’m on the same side as most people here anyways. I just find this particular situation interesting, and that seemed like convenient shorthand.
Good for us that few people are mother economicae.
I do not know what that phrase means.
I think it’s a riff on “homo economicus”—i.e., the theory that humans are rational economic actors.
Yes, that is what I was aiming at. If it is the rational choice to end a pregnancy, than it is good for us that not everyone in the past did so. I am aware that the OP wrote about the financial incentive, not about the most rational choice.
I’m speaking of a peculiar situation, not of a generic pregnancy. Still, I suppose that as “financial reasons to have an abortion” go, the fact that not having one obliges you to raise a kid does seem like it ought to weigh highly...
They’re not, mentally.
But yeah, they may not be able to get legally married. Surprising that they can get legally enslaved, though.
Feudal vassalage is a few steps up from slavery, I think.
Yes, but there’s no verb that means to put someone into it...
Vassalize.
Actually I think it’s envassal. (I really wonder how I knew that)
They are, mentally.
The mind is the body, and this is a rationalist fic.
Precocious children have a history of demonstrating they are not socio-emotionally prepared for some adult situations they are capable of confronting on an intellectual level. However smart or clever we are, we are still wet machines and we still grow in particular rhythms at particular times.
Non-violation of bigamy laws if you marry someone else.
Before McGonagall’s stunt, I was worried the marriage would require consummation to be legally binding.
“I told you, no kissing!” and then some.
This doesn’t strike me as much of an issue. Considering what was at stake it would be an utterly trivial cost and a requirement comparatively easy to fulfill. Just another taboo tradeoff.
“Let’s see… is drastically underage sex with my girlfriend better than her death by torture?”. Death by torture really makes decision making easy at times!
Well, yes. I mean, a canonical purpose of torture is to simplify decision-making.
Canonical?
In
Your idea of marriage vows seems rather lifestyle-specific.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45lXXiLbTxM
Goreans are the creationists of lifestyle BDSMers...
I think that statement is likely to be insulting to just about everyone involved in the comparison. So I would like to learn exactly how you mean that.
I don’t see how it’s insulting to non-Gorean lifestyle BDSMers. And the others, well.
“Goreans are to lifestyle BDMSers as creationists are to ___.”
I filled that in with ’theists” because that is the group creationists are part of like Goreans are part of the BDSM community. Now that community has their safe, sane, and consensual lifestyle choices compared to allowing the belief in an imaginary friend to control your life with little restriction. The believers have their faith compared to the depraved antics of perverts. The enlightened science of the creationists is compared to the escapist delusions of the Goreans. And finally the compared to the mockery of science and clumsy apologetics of creationism.
Offense for everyone!
I was alluding to a Larry Summers quote:
The point was to insult the Goreans by comparing them to creationists, and that I hoped no one took them as a representation of lifestylers. I’m not sure why I got voted to −2, though.
That’s a fantastic quote.
Yeah, isn’t it?
What pedanterrific said. Fringe groups with false and harmful beliefs that act ridiculous.
+100. Prudence is really more of a Slytherin virtue.
Sure, but that’s a Slytherin virtue.