I think the missing insight was that there were students who would be willing to convey messages back in time with no explanation and keep their mouths shut.
I’m definitely a bit confused on how this is expected to work, unless the additional money is for bribing Professor Flitwick (which seems unlikely to work), seeing as how McGonagall explicitly asks whether Harry gave him the message. Then again, if he doesn’t know what is being tested for, he might not know that its not being delivered in person is a problem… though he would probably find Margaret’s insistence that she was delivering a message from McGonagall on behalf of Harry a bit strange—normally you just specify who the message is from and who it’s to; why would he care about an additional messenger? OTOH you would expect this sort of testing to be not so unusual and thus expect Flitwick to know what was the point was.
...yeah, I’m definitely still confused about this. Alternative hypothesis: Harry has failed McGonagall’s test, he just hasn’t heard about it yet.
EDIT: …oh. I just realized she would be conveying the message to Harry, not Flitwick. Nevermind. I ignored that possibility. (Assuming he was there at 3 PM...)
Harry picked up the message in the empty class room while invisible, decoded it and told Flitwick the message. He was already waiting there because Quirrel had anticipated that he would be subjected to a test of this sort. It’s all in the chapter.
It wasn’t til around this post that I realized that Harry’s plan was going to work. I was thinking the situation was something like Harry at 9 PM being Time-Turned from 9 PM +t, so that by the laws of time, no piece of information from him could travel back past 3 PM +t. I think I can see now that that wouldn’t have made sense, but now I’m back to DanArmak’s question.
I think the missing insight was that there were students who would be willing to convey messages back in time with no explanation and keep their mouths shut.
I’m definitely a bit confused on how this is expected to work, unless the additional money is for bribing Professor Flitwick (which seems unlikely to work), seeing as how McGonagall explicitly asks whether Harry gave him the message. Then again, if he doesn’t know what is being tested for, he might not know that its not being delivered in person is a problem… though he would probably find Margaret’s insistence that she was delivering a message from McGonagall on behalf of Harry a bit strange—normally you just specify who the message is from and who it’s to; why would he care about an additional messenger? OTOH you would expect this sort of testing to be not so unusual and thus expect Flitwick to know what was the point was.
...yeah, I’m definitely still confused about this. Alternative hypothesis: Harry has failed McGonagall’s test, he just hasn’t heard about it yet.
EDIT: …oh. I just realized she would be conveying the message to Harry, not Flitwick. Nevermind. I ignored that possibility. (Assuming he was there at 3 PM...)
Harry picked up the message in the empty class room while invisible, decoded it and told Flitwick the message. He was already waiting there because Quirrel had anticipated that he would be subjected to a test of this sort. It’s all in the chapter.
It wasn’t til around this post that I realized that Harry’s plan was going to work. I was thinking the situation was something like Harry at 9 PM being Time-Turned from 9 PM +t, so that by the laws of time, no piece of information from him could travel back past 3 PM +t. I think I can see now that that wouldn’t have made sense, but now I’m back to DanArmak’s question.
Someone somewhere proposed something that included sneaking in and using Dumbledore’s time turner.