There are better ways to keep yourself safe than invisibility,
Not many, especially for someone too young to have the raw magic for most powerful spells. When it comes to protection, having no one know you’re there is the next best thing to not being there.
Additionally, Harry’s first instinct when he realised how much personal danger he was in was to wear the Cloak 24⁄7. It seems odd that this instinct is 100% absent now that his survival also represents the survival of the entire world.
“I am now too valuable to the world to ever risk my life adventuring again. Here, Girl With Three Different Immortality Powers, take my invisibility cloak—you need it more than I do.”
Am I the only one who finds this act odd?
It was Hermione who knew more than than Draco and Harry how to properly make use of her army.
In fairness, it was Quirrell who gave her the idea. She was flailing until he spoke to her and then assigned a deliberately chosen group of people to be her army.
Draco was confused.
Therefore, something he believed was fiction.
Granger should not have been able to do all that.
Therefore, she probably hadn’t.
I promise not to help General Granger in any way that the two of you don’t know about.
With sudden horrified realization, Draco swept papers out of the way, hunting through the mess on his desk, until he found it.
And there it was.
Right in the list of people and equipment assigned to each of the three armies.
Curse Professor Quirrell!
Draco had read it and he still hadn’t seen it—
-
It was Hermione who formed and led a band of Mighty Heroes.
It was Hermione who inadvertently gave a bunch of 12-year old girls the idea that they should rush headlong into danger against superior opponents, and then was forced to stick with them as damage control.
“Huh,” Lavender said, now looking thoughtful herself. “That’s true. We should do something heroic. I mean heroinic.”
“Um—” said Hannah, which very much expressed Hermione’s own feelings on the subject.
“Well,” said Parvati, “has everyone already been through Dumbledore’s third-floor forbidden corridor? I mean everyone in Gryffindor’s been through it by now—”
“Hold on!” Hermione said desperately. “I don’t want you doing anything dangerous!”
There was a pause while everyone looked at Hermione, who was suddenly realizing, much too late, why Dumbledore hadn’t wanted anyone else to be a hero.
Most people simply didn’t have the power to combat Voldemort. Doing what you can isn’t getting yourself killed trying to do what you can’t.
There are plenty of things they could have done to support the war effort without fighting directly. Economic support, for example, which it seems from Dumbledore’s Pensieve memory was limited to a few wealthy families.
Let’s not forget this:
But I knew the Muggles would eventually destroy the world or make war on wizardkind or both, and something had to be done if I was not to wander a dead or dull world through my eternity. Having attained immortality I needed a new ambition to occupy my decades, and to prevent the Muggles from ruining everything seemed a goal of acceptable scope and difficulty.
Thank you so much for Methods of Rationality! That was a great ending to a great story.
If you can come up with a plausible reason why Dumbledore would pretend to be Deathist, I would love to hear it.
″...so shall it be,” Harry repeated, and he knew in that moment that the content of the Vow was no longer something he could decide whether or not to do, it was simply the way in which his body and mind would move. It was not a vow he could break even by sacrificing his life in the process. Like water flowing downhill or a calculator summing numbers, it was just a thing-Harry-Potter-would-do.
I think gattsuru is referring to global immortality, as Dumbledore is a Deathist.
I’m not sure what you’re arguing against. In the event that she decides to destroy the Dementors, which Harry anticipates to happen quite soon, she knows that the information she needs to be able to do so is already in her possession.
In that extremity, I went into the Department of Mysteries and I invoked a password which had never been spoken in the history of the Line of Merlin Unbroken, did a thing forbidden and yet not utterly forbidden.
It’s possible that the Line reference is misleading, but if so it is an odd piece of phrasing.
Hence the example I suggest—whatever price the Unbreakable Vow exacts, there will be things that are worth it, like not going to Azkaban.
You mean like the fact that criminals can make Unbreakable Vows not to commit crimes, as an alternative to permanent trauma and probable death in Azkaban? (other criminals can power them for a reduction in sentence time or as part of the same type of bargain—permanent loss of some magical power is still better than Azkaban)
My opinion is that Harry’s taught enough rationality at Hogwarts that the lie will fall apart.
Not judging by everyone’s reactions when Hermione was accused of murder. A select few individuals might manage to question it at best.
Now that I think about it, shouldn’t some Hogwarts students and/or teachers have figured out that they should be studying Muggle science? It’s possible that this was mentioned, and I’ve forgotten it, or that (since EY probably won’t write sequels, the subject will need to be left to fanfiction of HPMOR.
It hasn’t been, except for Harry’s suggestion in the latest chapter. Most people, though, still haven’t been exposed to any noteworthy Muggle science except individual “clever tricks” as used by Harry—nothing to compare with the obvious power of magic.
In Chapter 46, he gives her a sealed note containing the explanation.
But if you ever need to fight Dementors, the secret is written here, cryptically, so that if someone doesn’t know it’s about Dementors and the Patronus Charm, they won’t know what it means...
“Phoenix’s Price is the password that opens the stairwell to the room with broken wands, pictures and Pensieve vials. Phoenix’s Fate is the password that opens the final door into that room. Both times Dumbledore takes Harry to the room, he speaks the first password, then the second.
I didn’t say Harry will turn everyone into ponies
He’s already partially responsible for turning Hermione into a unicorn, and Hermione is a prototype for how he wants all human beings to be (immortal and invulnerable). As long as he replaces or drops the Horcrux portion of the ritual, this seems like a realistic final ambition for him as far as means of defeating Death are concerned.
As a point of interest, wasn’t it Merlin’s original intent that, at minimum, everyone mentioned in a prophecy should have access to it? It was only centuries later that the Unspeakables sealed the prophecy records away, so why does the Line of Merlin Unbroken have a function for bypassing that seal, how does anyone know this, and why is using it forbidden?
“Crap,” muttered Moody. His mad-eye was rolling wildly. “That’s not good, not good at all.”
(...)
“Crap,” Moody said. Then Alastor Moody repeated, “Crap. Kid, should you even be saying this to us?”
“I don’t know,” Harry said. “If there’s a user manual, I haven’t looked at it yet.”
“Crap.”
I don’t think Moody is trying to keep a poker face here.
I don’t think that’s realistic. Harry’s acknowledged that he needs to mature into a worthwhile adult in order to be able to save the world, and he’s not going to gain the experiences he needs to do that (or indeed maintain a reasonable standard of mental health) by becoming a full-on hikikomori.