2d) Something Voldemort didn’t expect. If Slytherin’s Monster transferred it’s secrets with a Dark Ritual, Salazar could have planned for Rule 12 and plotted to transfer secrets to future heirs. How would you identify a baby as a parselmouth?
rdb
Karma: 48
Harry & Draco have learnt to send Patronus messages. With the goal of preserving Hermione unbroken while working towards her exoneration, Harry could
Arrange teaching of sending messages to any Patronus wielders in SPHEW/Sunshine or anyone else willing to help Hermione ** will confirm whether it is possible to maintain a Patronus at a distance for long periods
Arrange teaching of Patronus to those willing to help who don’t know it.
Given the Cloak & Harry’s Patronus hide those protected from Dementors, research Rituals/Potions to confer that ** An aim of Quirrel’s?
Enlist help in finding evidence for Hermione’s memory charming (Daphne noting she missed the Sunshine army council of war in 79).
Last night Damian Conway talked about Lingua-Romana-Perligata as part of his “Fun with Dead Languages” talk. He makes the point that Latin’s suffixes don’t constrain the word order. Given Harry’s dream of destroying Azkaban and Dumbledore in Ch 79 muttering strange incantations that sounded not quite like Latin and echoed in their ears in an unusually creepy fashion, maybe Latin provides a larger space to search for a mnemonic phrase that the Source of Magic will match and action, than languages with a more constrained grammar.
Perhaps Imperius is one of the charms detected by Hogwart’s wards.
If transfiguration can only result in non-magical substances, then science would help to transfigure to CBW agents—ending up too close for comfort. Wards cast in transfiguration classrooms and dormitories to detect intent to violate transfiguration rules would catch those, a wise expansive interpretation would catch the worst I can think of (critical mass of fissile material ⇒ will generate gas). The Hogwarts House system should force conformity and channel risk-taking into known paths. If failing to attempt homework would lose points, depression and mental illness could be caught early. Would the wizarding world have something of the culture of manners of the Diamond Ages’s Victorians, with wards and parlours working as firewalls and time for threat assessment/decontamination?
Why not use the epub or mobipocket versions, depending what the Kobo supports? Calibre reads both, the mobipocket is fine on my iRex and I have an epub version on my phone.
http://ikeran.org/rationality.epub http://ikeran.org/rationality.mobi
(mentioned on http://www.fanfiction.net/u/2269863/Less_Wrong ) Android, iPhone/iPad app links there too.
Chapter 24: Machiavellian Intelligence Hypothesis: Act 2 … The line of reasoning continued: Atlantis had been an isolated civilization that had somehow brought into being the Source of Magic, and told it to serve only people with the Atlantean genetic marker, the blood of Atlantis.
And by similar logic: The words a wizard spoke, the wand movements, those weren’t complicated enough of themselves to build up the spell effects from scratch—not the way that the three billion base pairs of human DNA actually were complicated enough to build a human body from scratch, not the way that computer programs took up thousands of bytes of data.
So the words and wand movements were just triggers, levers pulled on some hidden and more complex machine. Buttons, not blueprints.
And just like a computer program wouldn’t compile if you made a single spelling error, the Source of Magic wouldn’t respond to you unless you cast your spells in exactly the right way.
The chain of logic was inexorable.
Under that hypothesis, accidental magic by wizarding children — otherwise without appreciable magic power, could be a Source of Magic initiated emergency “Help” spell.
In part 7, Michaelos observed that Dumbledore blames himself for Harry being left with his evil stepparents, and wrote the comment on Lily’s musing on modifying the (D&D-style) Eagle’s Splendor potion in her text book while she slept.
Ch 1. “And Lily would tell me no, and make up the most ridiculous excuses, like the world would end if she were nice to her sister, or a centaur told her not to—the most ridiculous things, and I hated her for it. … “Anyway,” Petunia said, her voice small, “she gave in. She told me it was dangerous, and I said I didn’t care any more, and I drank this potion and I was sick for weeks, but when I got better my skin cleared up and I finally filled out and… I was beautiful, people were nice to me,” her voice broke, “and after that I couldn’t hate my sister any more, especially when I learned what her magic brought her in the end—”
Perhaps, the brighter Lily, child of the enlightenment, growing up in the technological optimism of the 60s had determined to help her sister, and minimize the risks as she understood them. Giving Petunia the potion being a major change in the time line. Dumbledore may have been trying to prevent that.
If Salazar Slytherin foresaw use of Rule 12, a hidden requirement to pass on the knowledge to the next heir in the transfer ritual could explain Harry’s survival. The transfer ritual requiring a later deposit, a checkpoint of the recipient’s state, could explain why Quirrell seems more than how Voldemort has been described—if he does contain multitudes. Or the different instantiation has avoided physical pathologies Voldemort lived with.
Is this partly a practical in updating estimates?
I guessed Quirrell for Mr-Hat-and-Cloak after Zabini’s interaction and obliviation
Since then
Snape has been shown to be a player
I think Quirrell has never been shown using obliviation
Quirrell comments on Snape’s 52 obliviations after the ambush
Quirrell has been shown to have a very good model of Harry. Assuming that is of importance to him, he would have needed a better model of Hermione that Hat&Cloak has shown and “I do permit myself to read faces”.
House Slytherin Marauder’s Map equivalent to simplify logistics?
Though thinking about it, Quirrell’s knowledge of the 3rd floor corridor corridor could have been Legimens and Obliviation of the more astute Gryfindors—like Fred & George with their ward breakers monocles...
I’m probably missing an tag, but consider the evidence.
Dumbledore told Harry that Quirrell intervened so Daphne could take down Astorga
As I understand it, all the bullies have been under Snape’s tutelage, their entire Hogwarts careers, with the Slytherin bullies having had him as head of house.
Prof. Sprout was warned off after dealing with Slytherin bullies on Harry’s first day
Quirrell’s “they have tolerated worse in their hallways” and give a finger from my wand hand, suggest that bullying has been tolerated for a long time.
What are Snape’s adult motives and goals? How much of a panopticon is Hogwarts or House Slytherin there? When he tasked 7th-year Rianne Felthorne, presumably with sending the message back via Bullstrode, she lost count of the charms cast and didn’t show recognition of them. Harry would have recognized them from Bester and Quirrell. Hogwarts is a centre of power, perhaps funds his Potions research and precautions againts Voldemort’s return. Is conditioning Hogwarts students to fear him defending his future position or building a power base.
Are Dumbledore & Snape treating Quirrell as a bird in the hand, under close observation—Bellatrix’s escape is still under investigation after all. Who set up the ambush outside the library? Snape or Quirrell? 2PM is too early for Harry’s Time-Turner unless the shield was circumvented. Was testing for The cloak of Invisibility a hint from Snape?
Timing his disclosure spell so that Snape is stunned by the massed fire of his own proteges, would be a more satisfying move in his game against Snape. Plausible deniability again, once the disciplined educated adult observer is removed? What are the longer term goals here? Increase pressure within Hogwarts so Harry feels his confinement more?
Is the Half-Blood, Legilimens, Snape sending a message to Quirrell with the SPHEW setup? Harry’s use of Slytherin messaging and Margaret Bulstrode’s Time-turner declare a Slytherin confederate, if Snape has looked. [Snape requested the check of Harry’s time turner after Azkaban (para 62.99)]
“a successful Legilimens was extremely rare, rarer than a perfect Occlumens, because almost no one had enough mental discipline.” (Dumbledore, Snape, Mr Bester, presumably Quirrel)
“Harry noticed that he was confused. And his threat estimate of the Head of House Slytherin shot up astronomically.”
[Rianne being memory-charmed would be required for information security if she was part of the SPHEW setup using Bulstrode’s time-turner, perhaps also in tuning Jaime Astorga’s fall to Daphne’s Most Ancient Blade.
If Hermione or another SPHEW member, (Tracey?) remembers that Quirrel has permission to teach the Killing Curse, the dynamics change.]
Perhaps SPHEW will help there. Harry has had knowledge of the nature of the “magical remnant of the Dark Ages” since meeting Draco at the station, reinforced by Azkaban,.
Hermione would know intellectually (quoting Harry) “So the world is broken and flawed and insane and cruel and bloody and dark. This is news? You always knew that, anyway...”, but should lack direct experience, that her fellow students may have.
Will Draco conspire to protect Hermione against the Slytherin bullies?
If there is a training effect in increasing magical strength, and or improving concentration, keeping the rock transfigured works that way too, without being Transfiguration specific. Quirrel’s armies help too—would normal classroom activity exhaust magic that much?
Harry could try a controlled experiment over the Easter holiday if he thinks about it. With McGonagall’s permission, ask his classmates to keep a loop of cord transfigured into an unobtrusive platinum toe ring (or more than one) over the holiday when they’re not otherwise allowed to use magic. Then compare deltas in transfiguration scores on the next test between those who did & didn’t attempt it.
Is Harry getting letters back from his parents? He doesn’t yet seem to be thinking about measuring magical strength, but a tool to compare would permit some kind of scale—if it could use embodied magic in magic items as markers. That could argue for faster access to later year charms. Similarly of pre-electronic tech that may be useful, that his parents may remember. (Slide rules, Curta calcs, Microfiche & hand held readers, …)
Harry could usefully collaborate with Hagrid, but Hermione or Draco may need to point that out. Hagrid has had limited access to practicing his magic, so provides something of a control to his classmates, to test whether magical strength is an increasing function of magical use, if magical strength is easily measured—Dumbledore seemed to be able to sense it. Hermione challenged by Fawkes, may see improving the performance of everyone in the class as the effective way of working harder. Asking Harry “Why are we different?” and based on “Great artists steal”, what existing techniques should we look at could be both effective for both of them.
Is it an error? The reply in McGonagall’s voice with Dumbledore’s voiced reaction is good authentication, he is after all still supposed to be under Quirrell’s guard, and trying to avoid causing suspicion.
Has Harry ever been offered any useful threat assessment on Voldemort by anyone but Quirrell? Depending on the requirements of the spell, Quirrell could easily have a sample of Harry’s blood from their Saturday lunches. (Disillusioned confederate or magic item, magical anasthesia, healing, even transfusion, …) If magical stasis and templated copying is possible, he can have any needed amount whenever needed. If the Philosopher’s Stone remains in play, why rush if healing Bella improves that choice?
Because a Dark Ritual could force a sacrifice that adds redundancy. Leave the Basilisk alone, mostly satisfied. Kill it and you are bound to transfer the knowledge to the next heir. Attempt to kill the heir and end up as a horcrux.