History Fanfic / HarryPotterAndTheMethodsOfRationality

* OnlySmartPeopleMayPass: Harry guesses that the challenge of finding Platform Nine and Three-Quarters might be meant as an I.Q. test.

->'''Harry''': You can't DO that!\\
'''Minerva [=McGonagall=]''': It's only a transfiguration; an animagus transformation, to be exact--\\
'''Harry''': You turned into a cat! A SMALL cat! You violated Conservation of Energy! That's not just an arbitrary rule, it's implied by the form of the quantum Hamiltonian! Rejecting it destroys unitarity and then you get FTL signaling! And cats are COMPLICATED! A human mind can't just visualize a whole cat's anatomy and, and all the cat biochemistry, and what about the neurology? How can you go on thinking using a cat-sized brain?\\

'''Minerva''': ... that's the first time I've been called ''that''.

* AGlassInTheHand: During an omake, Harry sings "I Ain't Afraid of Dark Lords", [[FilkSong a variation]] on the theme song from ''Franchise/{{Ghostbusters}}''. Snape's reaction is to slowly crush the silver goblet he has been drinking from.

* StrawmanPolitical: Massively averted with [[spoiler: Quirrell]]. Though the author's notes stress that he is evil, he's allowed to make strong arguments in favor of dictatorship and against democracy.

* SympathyForTheDevil: Harry find himself not blaming Draco for his racist and elitist attitude, given that he's not particularly exceptional in his beliefs given the closed society he was raised in.
* TacticalRockPaperScissors: Shields beat most spells, dedicated shield breakers beat shields, other attack spells do actual damage once shields are down and so trump shield breakers. That's how it works among most wizards, anyway; the Killing Curse is unblockable and must be dodged, plus the best fighting wizards can drop shields in an eyeblink and thus tend not to bother with shields of their own. [[spoiler: Harry is able to exploit this quirk a few times with a special reorienting stunner Flitwick created, which would be useless against most enemies but is devastating against an unshielded opponent who thinks he's dodged it.]]

* TakeAThirdOption

* TakeThat

*** To be honest, [[ExactWords Eliezer never said the pentagons were regular]].

* ThoseTwoBadGuys: Crabbe & Goyle. It takes Draco a good chunk of the year to get them to stop playing it as a comedy routine complete with "thug" voices.
** This is not at all helped when, halfway through, Harry turns it around on Draco, convincing Mr. Crabbe to recreate his 'thug voice' for the sake of his own amusement.

* ASpotOfTea:
** Quirrell likes ''expensive'' tea. Harry doesn't see the difference and wonders if it is a means of messing with people who feel they should appreciate it.
** During the Taboo Tradeoffs battle Amelia Bones summons a cup of tea out of nowhere so she can sip from it before giving her snarky commentary on events.

** Harry gets an impression of the ''Sorting Hat'' wordlessly banging its head against a wall during his sorting; how, he's not sure.

* StuffedIntoTheFridge: Subverted. [[spoiler:Instead of vowing revenge and turning Dark in pursuit of it, as the killer intended, Harry doubles down on his opposition to pain and death by vowing to find a way of bringing the victim back to life.]]

* {{Hypocrite}}: Rianne thinks it's creepy when boys have crushes on her and watch her in secret, but not so much when she's the one who has a crush on a guy and watches him in secret.

* MoodRingEyes: Dumbledore's eyes reflect his emotional state.

** Bahry One-Hand. He is only present in half a dozen chapters, but his impact of the story is undeniable. If not for the scientific upbringing he gave to his son, Harry would be a completely different person and the story would look quite differently.

* KilledOffForReal: Aberforth Dumbledore was taken hostage and killed when his brother refused to negotiate during the last wizarding war. At the climax we discover that [[spoiler:Firenze really did die, Quirrelmort killed him and then made him an inferius so Harry wouldn't be suspicious of his intentions.]] By the end of the story [[spoiler: Quirrell is dead and so are 37 Death Eaters, including Lucius Malfoy and Nott's, Crabbe's, and Goyle's fathers, and many more.]] Averted with [[spoiler:Narcissa Malfoy]], who is actually ''not'' dead, and [[spoiler:Hermoine, who is brought BackFromTheDead]].

* NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast: The four founders fought a battle against a dark wizard named ''[[Literature/TheChroniclesOfThomasCovenant Lord Foul

[[folder: A-E]]

[[folder: F-J]]

[[folder: K-O]]

* NoteToSelf

* AbortedArc: Harry's quest to find the ''real'' rules of magic experimentally disappears less than a third of the way into the story. [[JustifiedTrope Justified]], as once Harry gets a look at a wizard's idea of a safe experimental working space[[note]]The "second degree of caution" for experimental transfiguration reseaerch involves a magic circle to contain any stray airborne particles and an ejector seat placed under a skylight[[/note]], we see how ''horrifyingly'' cavalier he was being about the process. He also runs into a brick wall because the magic system, as in the books, runs on RuleOfFunny and DogLatin puns as much or more than MagicAIsMagicA.

* AintTooProudToBeg: Quirrell feels this is an important quality to instill in Harry.
* AlienGeometries: Hogwarts has corridors which can change when no one is looking. The number of stairs you climb has only a passing correlation to your actual elevation when you look out the window. At least one corridor is tiled in pentagons (which, in the case of regular pentagons, is mathematically impossible).

* AlwaysSaveTheGirl: Subverted: the girl was the ''only'' person who didn't require saving. [[spoiler:In the final confrontation with Voldemort, he offers to spare the life of a single person Harry cares about for every secret Harry gives him. However, Hermione is ''not'' on this list, as Voldemort has given his followers orders that she should not be harmed under any circumstances, explicitly including should she somehow escape. Plus, since she's now a [[ItMakesSenseInContext troll unicorn with a Horcrux]], there's very little that anyone could do to permanently harm her anyway.]] As Harry explains to Hermione, he was fighting to save everyone he cared about ''except'' her.

* ItMayHelpYouOnYourQuest: Dumbledore, with great ceremony, gives Harry... his father's rock. It's just a big rock which is not special at all. [[spoiler: The fact that it actually does come in useful, and the circumstances where it does, are seen as so suspicious in-universe that it completely changes the state of political alliances by bringing the Malfoys in under Harry's personal banner. Later it turns out that there was a prophesy and Dumbledore didn't actually know about the specific threat it stopped, only that it would be vital later.]]

* BadassFingersnap: Most of the students in Hogwarts think that Harry Potter can do anything by snapping his fingers.

* NotSoDifferent:
** Harry and Snape, surprisingly. Although Snape doesn't have Harry's scientific background, his muggle upbringing gives him a perspective on the wizarding world similar to Harry's own. It's most obvious when they are trying to prevent [[spoiler:Hermione's]] trial, and Harry keeps getting dumbstruck at the ridiculously lax and corrupt legal procedures. Snape cynically notes that they're not in muggle Britain anymore.

* MisterXAndMisterY: Draco's bodyguards are Mr. Crabbe and Mr. Goyle.

** Neville, in his CrazyAwesome badass mode. Since his attacks require allies to buff him, it's [[JustifiedTrope justified]].

** Transfiguring against tension. [[spoiler:He uses this fact to come up with a way to use his transfigured nanotubes all the Death Eaters and cripple Voldemort.]]

--->'''Harry:''' They, ah, I have to do dishes and wash problems and they don't let me read a lot of books and—