For a particularly evil flourish, Harry could have polyjuiced into Quirrell and Quirrell into Harry before returning to Mary’s Place, and Quirrell can just Confundus Flitwick himself without worrying about sending any signals, while Harry rests at St. Mungo’s.
No way. They must have checked Harry for polyjuice and Harry wouldn’t have posed any problem for Snape in subduing.
True. And I just realized another, much easier way to handle it would be to make Harry unavailable from 9 PM until midnight for some reason that looked accidental. An attack at 8:30 by someone who looked like one of Voldy’s minions that left him unconscious would work nicely.
Hah. I thought of that immediately upon reading Ch. 60. McGonagall’s decision to leave the whole test up to Harry in Ch. 61 came as a big surprise for me. Didn’t write a comment about it then, because such minor flaws are obviously not enough to stop your Harry.
That would require informing the Ministry that harry was under suspicion. Even if you made up another reason you suspected him of misusing the time turner that day, if the test failed, more people than Lucius would put it together.
True. McGonagall is planning the test, and she both expects and hopes that Harry is innocent. Also, she’s stressed out from the war starting. So she’s not thinking particularly clearly about this.
You must mean: for some reason that didn’t look accidental at all.
A Death Eater sent to gather Harry’s blood would work quite well, since it fits in and supports quite well any model of reality in which the prison break involved Voldemort and not Harry (the two options being complementary in Dumbledore’s thinking).
But if an unrelated accident were to happen, all of the Order of the Phoenix would ask themselves “how high are the chances that Harry randomly ends up incapacitated during the exact evening in which he is to be put to a critical test of good behaviour?”, answer “pretty damn low” and treat it as a 95% chance of guilt.
No way. They must have checked Harry for polyjuice and Harry wouldn’t have posed any problem for Snape in subduing.
True. And I just realized another, much easier way to handle it would be to make Harry unavailable from 9 PM until midnight for some reason that looked accidental. An attack at 8:30 by someone who looked like one of Voldy’s minions that left him unconscious would work nicely.
The time-turner could be (should’ve been!) tested without Harry’s participation.
I didn’t think of that.
EDIT: And it wouldn’t have worked because the Time-Turner is sealed to a single user alone.
Hah. I thought of that immediately upon reading Ch. 60. McGonagall’s decision to leave the whole test up to Harry in Ch. 61 came as a big surprise for me. Didn’t write a comment about it then, because such minor flaws are obviously not enough to stop your Harry.
I didn’t remember if that rule was in place, assumed that it probably was, but that the Ministry or someone could lift the restriction for the test.
That would require informing the Ministry that harry was under suspicion. Even if you made up another reason you suspected him of misusing the time turner that day, if the test failed, more people than Lucius would put it together.
Hence the “or someone” clause, which intends Dumbledore or one of his private allies.
True. McGonagall is planning the test, and she both expects and hopes that Harry is innocent. Also, she’s stressed out from the war starting. So she’s not thinking particularly clearly about this.
You must mean: for some reason that didn’t look accidental at all.
A Death Eater sent to gather Harry’s blood would work quite well, since it fits in and supports quite well any model of reality in which the prison break involved Voldemort and not Harry (the two options being complementary in Dumbledore’s thinking).
But if an unrelated accident were to happen, all of the Order of the Phoenix would ask themselves “how high are the chances that Harry randomly ends up incapacitated during the exact evening in which he is to be put to a critical test of good behaviour?”, answer “pretty damn low” and treat it as a 95% chance of guilt.