There was something this summer, but I missed it.
cultureulterior
Karma: 162
The deeper problem in Ch. 6 is that Harry’s conflict with Professor McGonagall looks too much like a victory – it is a major flaw of Methods that Harry doesn’t lose hard until Ch. 10, so he must at least not win too much before then. That’s the part I’m working on at this very instant.
Strongly disagree with this. That’s the bit that caused me to continue reading. Luckily, I have the raw text downloaded, and can make my own canonical printed version.
But Professor McGonagall had made other visits after her first trip, to “see how Miss Granger is doing”; and Roberta couldn’t help but think that if Hermione said her parents were being troublesome about her witching career, something would be done to fix them...
This quote in particular makes that point...
I’m not sure the Powers that Be at Hogwarts would allow her to be taken home by her parents...
I think that Salazar’s Serpent was a trap Tom Riddle fell into. It was a Langford Basilisk Horcrux, like the book Ginny got in the original timeline, so When Tom Riddle read out the information embedded, he was possessed by Salazar Slytherin. That’s why nppbeqvat gb Ibyqrzbeg/Evqqyr/Fnynmne vg frrzf gb unir whfg orra n terng frecrag, abg n onfvyvfx, juvpu vf whfg jung ur jbhyq fnl. Guvf nyfb rkcynvaf gur qnzntrq guvaxvat Uneel frrf.
This might well explain Harry as well, since in OT Voldemort had a giant serpent hanging around. He might not have had one in this timeline, but if he did, it would explain a lot of why he kept it around- it was a horcrux duplicator/imprinter.
I admit all the above flaws.
In re: Interdict of Merlin- if the Interdict of Merlin did not block the creation of high-level spells, the loss of old high level spells would not matter, since newly invented high level spells would replace them. You might say that this is due to loss of knowledge, but then we have to assume that the interdict of Merlin actually limits not only spells but also knowledge.
In re: Random Effects: Booger-tasting jelly beans from OT universe would be one.
My non-conclusive arguments for this are as follows:
Each rotation equals one hour.
We cannot privilige the human experience, and therefore the length of the earth day cannot be a physical constant.
How Magic Works, Some Facts, Inferences, Conclusions, and Speculations
The Facts:
Wizards did not have clocks before muggles did.
Time turners are limited to 6 solar hours.
Therefore time turners were limited after the invention of Equinoctal hours, in 127CE.
The Aurors are planning a jinx to stop opposite reaction effect rockets, but they don’t understand rockets.
There was a significant flux in children’s spells, but children did not seem to use more or fewer spells in the past.
Brooms work via Aristotelian physics.
It’s easier to put together spells to make a broom than to make a new spell to make a broom.
You can create semi-intelligent objects without understanding what you’re doing or creating a copy of yourself or breeding.
Mass production of magical effect-bound objects is easier than individual crafting of individual spells for each item.
Objects and animals can be made to understand and respond to speech.
Magical animals and plants exist and contain magical power and but are all sized more or less a few orders of magnitude around the human norm. No magical ticks or ants seem to exist.
Created animals and object are not aware by default.
The Interdict of Merlin seems to be blocking the creation of new powerful spells but allow old powerful spells to be rediscovered.
The Interdict of Merlin does not block the creation of new spells, only new powerful spells
Random unwanted effects seem to seep into the creation of new spells.
New spell creation does not seem correlated with magical power or skill.
New spells are created, but not all the time- it is either random, requires effort, or requires time.
Nobody was as good as Merlin, and then nobody was as good as the four founders.
Children have unconscious magic, but not to the extent that OT Harry did.
Wizards seem to spend most of their time in pocket universes, otherwise you’d spot dragons and hogwarts trains on satellite imagery.
The Speculations:
The source of magic has a certain limited number of permitted Spell to Effect associations on each power level. These associations are susceptible for expiration when no-one knows the spell anymore. High level associations were frozen in place by the Interdict of Merlin, but low level slots are still expiring, and whatever ritual the wizards use to create spells is merely triggering a garbage collect and conditional new spell insert.
Upon reception of the insert ritual, the Source of Magic scans the Wizard’s mind, and performs an optimization algorithm on a set of existing spells to make a new spell which is close enough in some set of dimensions to what it thinks the Wizard wants, after which it associates the spell and effect. Therefore it would use thousands of years of existing infrastructure for making intelligent object effects.
In this scenario a wizard might be trying to create a spell for years, until a slot opens up that he will get to first, competing with everyone else trying to make spells.
Wizards, of course, not willing to accept the apparent randomness of this, have additional learned behaviors about creating spells, things they believe are required, most of which are not required and boil down to daydreaming about the effect you want and practice with the spell string and wand wave.
You only need 100 votes to get nominated, and then the nomination itself will get more people reading it.
Not only the attendees. People with supporting memberships can vote as well.
All you need to vote is a supporting membership, cost $60 or so. You don’t have to attend.
As soon as HPMOR is finished (hopefully not soon), I will buy a supporting membership to the next year’s worldcon. On that note, let me urge Eliezer to finish HPMOR in the summer of some year, so enough supporting memberships can nominate it by January 1.
Personally, I think Eliezer keeping the train- qua train- is a mistake. It shows too much influence from the muggle universe. I mean, what did Hogwarts use as soon as 200 years ago? Why would they change it given their extremely conservative world-view? A Eberron-style lightning train would be more plausible.
Hat and Cloak might have tried the algorithm on Ron first.
I’m not sure there is a difference:
“You know that spell?”
“Oh, no, it’s the Charm of the Most Ancient Blade, it’s only legal for Noble and Most Ancient Houses to use—”
Hermione stopped talking and looked at Harry, or Harry’s grey hood rather.
“Well,” said Harry’s voice, “I guess I could take down the rest of the Sunshine Regiment by myself, then.” She couldn’t see his face, but his voice sounded like he was smiling.
Oh, crap. Malfoy’s blue krait is Voldemort’s spy in the Malfoy home.
I guess you’re right, even though there’s no reason for that limitation either, given how the physics of transfiguration works- e.g is there really a difference between the electron clouds in a metal and clouds of gas.
Anyway, he can transfigure through the ground, up through a leg, and to the face.
All powerful wizards have this ability and it is implied that every magical power in the world would turn against him if he tried anything that foolish.
I’ve always felt that that was peculiar. Iraq used chemical weapons and no-one cared in the least.
Now that I think about it, why hasn’t Harry bought a pet snake yet? Having an animal minion he could command would be extremely useful in any amount of situations, and you’d think he’d make the best of his abilities. If he’s worried about remembering to feed it, he can have Hermione be responsible for it.
In fact, a pet snake would be a great gift from professor Quirrel.
Why doesn’t voldemort have a source of prophecies? If I were him, I’d have kidnapped a known seer, and kept them locked up inside a mountain, or something like that, and recorded their output like it seems dumbledore does. Every power he sees he tries to take for himself, etc..