Harry Potter And The Methods Of Rationality

Nah, according to both their memories, he won and then she shot him in the back.

Which is absurd, and never happened.

The memories of the duel are at least very suspect as evidence, given that there's quite a significant chance they were planted entirely. However, given what happened at the battle, Hermione is of at least comparable power to Draco. I think they're probably at about the same level, which itself is significantly higher than the first-year student average. Not factoring into that calculation are Hermione's ability to do completely ridiculous things like pull off a Stupefy for the first time going off a remembered textbook illustration in the middle of combat, or whatever Draco's extra training with his family amounts to.

Also unknown is where Harry fits in there. Given he's also throwing Stupefy around, he's also significantly above average, but I don't think there's any data on how he might directly compare to Draco or Hermione.

If the blood-purist beliefs held water, Hermione wouldn't be anywhere near the same level as Draco considering the "purities" of their blood.

Magical power doesn't really seem to work like that in that while wizards and witches do sort of have a given quantity of raw magical power, despite Hermione's greater degree of study and practice (which IIRC are two of only three factors affecting how much magic you have, the other being age) leading to slightly stronger magic than Harry, the fact that Harry does a ridiculous amount of Transfiguration practice means he can out-perform Hermione in that one area. It seems difficult to devise a test for raw magical power.

edited 12th Oct '12 4:07:24 PM by LogicDragon

Note that Hermione is among the older students in the year, born in September; Harry and Draco are among the younger ones, born in July and June respectively.

You can argue that the shot to the back was implausible, but surely "Hermione and Draco dueled as Draco had planned, and then Draco won" is perfectly reasonable. That said, I'm going to make an argument that the duel was likely legitimate.

First, allow me to stipulate two things: that no one other than Quirrell would have faked the duel and that if anyone faked the duel that person was also Hat & Cloak 2. Therefore, I will continue this discussion from the perspective of Quirrell as Hat & Cloak 2, because if he wasn't the duel was surely real. Now, magically manipulating Hermione's mind seems to be a shockingly inefficient way to get her into a fight with Draco. Starting rumors or manipulating people would be enough to plant seeds of distrust, while Chapter 68 demonstrates that it would not be hard to set up a war rivalry between the two of them. He could also cheat on Hermione's behalf to put Draco in the "forced move" position. Certainly, the results of brainwashing would likely be too variable for Quirrell's taste if he were interested in a specific, immediate action. Thus, I must assume that Quirrell had some other reason for taking the brainwashing route which was not apparent due to a plan misfire of some kind.

The logical reason to pick the brainwashing route would be that others could watch Hermione degenerate, and thus more readily accept when Hermione "attempts to murder" Draco Malfoy. Hermione's behavior had been erratic ever since the brainwashing; she apparently missed Sunshine Army meetings, she appeared exhausted and frightened, and as Draco saw she became uncharacteristically angry. And, of course, everyone who saw that behavior attributed it to being yelled at by Snape, rather than postulating a brainwashing. The problem is that, as far as Quirrell is concerned, only one student really needs to accept that Hermione attempted to murder Draco: Harry Potter. If he had watched Hermione fall to paranoia after being yelled at by Snape, culminating in an attempted murder, it would have shattered his faith in not only Hermione, but the world in general. It would likely have sent him to the Dark Side forever. But the duel happened too soon after the brainwashing. Harry hadn't talked to Hermione, or at least not enough to realize that something was wrong with her. Certainly he hadn't gotten the impression that she might actually commit murder. Quirrell, then, would not have chosen to fake the murder before Harry would accept it. So why did it happen?

My only answer is that the brainwashed Hermione snapped too soon. Quirrell didn't see the duel coming, and didn't realize that it might drive Hermione over the edge. Surely a murder or some other atrocity was in Quirrell's plan for her eventually, but Quirrell would have waited until after Harry had seen her madness. Note that this scenario might still have been salvageable for Quirrell... at least, if he had been around to convince Harry of Hermione's culpability, as he surely could. Instead, he was cooling his heels in a prison cell, after saving Draco's life. This suggests that Hermione was intended to have a different target, one who Quirrell would actually allow to die. Possibly Severus Snape.

As I've said, though, I don't think Quirrell was H&C2 or had anything to do with the duel. The reason is that this plan had two major backfires, and both of them would be extremely uncharacteristic of Quirrell. First: Hermione snapped and committed murder too soon. Would Quirrell really overestimate how good of a person someone was? Second: Quirrell ended up unexpectedly detained and was unable to persuade Harry of Hermione's guilt. Would Quirrell really overestimate the speed of a bureaucracy? To both these questions, I must say "no." This plot originated from some other hand; that it injured Quirrell was likely the point rather than a backfire.

edited 12th Oct '12 4:53:51 PM by Exetera

"If the blood-purist beliefs held water, Hermione wouldn't be anywhere near the same level as Draco considering the "purities" of their blood."

Exactly. Hence all the in-story "must secretly be from a wizarding family" rubbish. Because apparently she somehow gains something from pretending to be muggle-born. Gah. You could destroy the entire blood purity movement with five minutes and a podium. Honestly, if Harry was serious about it he could just give Dumbledore some notes and destroy their pathetic excuse of a movement. Sure Malfoy could never admit to the truth but he'd never get any of the swing votes and like the slave owners of old his power would recess and probably end after Draco passed.

How so? I definitely can't see Harry getting into rape-as-revenge at all, or see how Draco is even remotely moving him in that direction.

Harry has done things to manipulate people, but I wouldn't say that we can chalk that up to Draco's influence. He's been messing with people's heads since day one, and it's not like there's any reason for him to draw a line between doing it for fun and doing it because it's useful. What has Harry done which you think he wouldn't have done without Draco's influence?

Curb stomped all the other armies to the extent that he did, perchance? He would have won handily already, as he is quite a smart wee lad, but association with Draco would have given him a tiny bit more ruthlessness in my view.

Let's use Draco's method of examining the intended outcome and asking who it benefits. Imagine Harry hadn't been able to save Hermione. Hermione is sent to Azkaban, and Harry is crushed and either turns Dark on the spot, dies destroying Azkaban or survives and loses influence as the Boy-Who-Lived. Whatever happens, Harry becomes substantially Darker and loses a lot of faith in the Ministry, making him an easy convert to the Death Eaters, or dies, getting rid of Quirrell's greatest threat. I cannot see how this would benefit anybody but Quirrell, and the brainwashing only makes it more believable. Quirrell also wins major brownie points with Lucius for saving Draco should he ever reform the Death Eaters.

I don't see why we should suspect this. It's not as if the army battles are even hurting anyone, he can be as ruthless as he pleases.

There are many different kinds of hurt apart from physical, are there not?

Why would kids be psychologically damaged by war games? Besides, Harry doesn't win every battle and him being the Boy-Who-Lived would soften the blow considering he killed Voldemort as a baby. Harry's also always been odd like that, Draco doesn't really come into it.

It's explicitly confirmed that Harry's learned at least a little bit about manipulation from Draco. See Chapter 26.

Remember that while Draco was handling Harry's success fine, it seemed to be messing with Hermione quite a bit in several chapters. 68 is the most obvious example. I suspect Hermione would have gotten unstable even without H&C intervention after the Taboo Tradeoffs battle; both Harry's and Draco's armies unambiguously handed it to her, and absent H&C making her mad at Draco she probably wouldn't even have been able to console herself with beating him.

I largely agree. I have lost a lot of confidence (right now I would consider myself barely short of tipping point) in the "Quirrell was not involved" theory because of it; I would, at this point, flip to "Quirrell attempted to execute the plan described in my post above and had it backfire" if I had less confidence in his planning abilities. That said, the Death Eaters did not run on brownie points. And, anyhow, Lord friggin' Voldemort has no plausible deniability whatsoever; Lucius should be able to predict that Voldemort would put his son in danger specifically to save him if that would earn Voldemort additional loyalty from Lucius. That said, it occurs to me that what actually happened might have been Quirrell's fallback plan, and his only error was incorrectly predicting that Harry would be unable to get Hermione freed. Still extremely confident that the duel took place as described, though.

edited 13th Oct '12 10:05:12 AM by Exetera

Harry stops winning battles (apart from the first one where Hermione curbstomped both him and Draco) only when Quirinus cheats and steals most of his army off of him.

And if you think kids can't get psychologically damaged playing and losing at team sports, have you ever been a kid that plays team sports?

edited 13th Oct '12 10:17:13 AM by TamH70

Harry wasn't in the lead by the time of the final battle before the generals got to make their wishes. If he had beaten Draco and Hermione every time between the first battle and that one, his score couldn't have been tied with Draco's, and almost certainly wouldn't have been behind Hermione's.

I don't contest that Harry's learned things from Draco. See also the part where Harry notes that Draco would have thought to ask what Quirrell stood to gain from the prison break. But there's a difference between learning from him and becoming more Dark.

edited 13th Oct '12 10:51:07 AM by Desertopa

Learning about manipulation is not a sufficient condition for becoming a qualified Dark player, but I'd argue that it is a necessary condition, and that Harry is doing much better at learning it with Draco than he would have without.

I'm sorry, no. This specifically can never, ever happen. Harry may become a ruthless, murderous, vengeful monster, but he'll never become an idiot. Once you've gone rational, there's no way back save maybe brain damage.

edited 14th Oct '12 3:50:48 AM by TheHandle

I'm guessing that in the original canon it's simply down to Rowling not thinking very hard about whether certain accidents, such as being hit by a flying iron ball the size of a cannonball and falling from tens of feet, realistically ought to be fatal.

At one point, Harry reflect on all the ridiculous accidents he's been through, so I'm sure she at least thought of it.

Wow, coming up to 4000 posts. Now to ruin that happy mood, count how many of those have been since the last chapter...

You monster! /Runs off crying.

Probably a lot. Posts since the last chapter, that is.

I don't see him joining the Death Eaters as they were, but let's be honest – he would, if nothing else, have a certain fondness for the name, and if he were going Dark I see no reason he might not revive it...

Hey, it's been fun conversation. I certainly don't have a problem with that. Hopefully Eliezer will be ready to fix that problem soon, now that he's got his new sequence going (and hopefully gotten rid of some of the massive distractions he mentioned in the update...)

footnoted for mild off-topic

edited 14th Oct '12 7:19:45 AM by Exetera

I would actually argue that it got better as it went on (getting less dry and boring, and more emotional and suspenseful), and didn't feel any significant dip in chapter 15 onwards. I'm curious as to where that feeling might come from.

I finished both of the books, and quite liked them. I have paid good money in the past for books that I could not do either for.

I'm not sure where you're seeing a drop in quality. It's true that's about where it goes really and truly irrevocably off the rails from the Twilight plot, but that's hardly a bad thing in my book. Moreover, I think the sequel, Radiance, is even more enjoyable than Luminosity was. You might find it worth pushing through to the end of Luminosity if only to understand Radiance. (Trying to read the latter without the former won't end well, I don't think.)

Terrible, terrible PR? Associations with a group which shares none of his ideology? Harry might see himself as, in some capacity, an adversary of society, but I don't think it's particularly plausible that he's going to go out of his way to make the public hate him as much as possible.

Maybe he'd become a magical equivalent of Captain Nemo, or a magical pirate of some sort?