I suggest: (1) all Harry needs is time, (2) Dumbledore refuses to give it to him, (3) Harry offers Lucius an Unbreakable Vow.
In theory, Obliviations and False Memories can be broken, right? So what’s Dumbledore’s excuse for not insisting on a delay in punishment long enough to attempt to break the alleged tampering with Hermione’s brain?
[ETA: actually, doesn’t matter whether the spells are known breakable; Harry could experiment with counterspells or just hunt for the real villain. Either way, Harry will be confident that he can get the truth—given time.]
It seems like Quirrell stands to take away three of Harry’s supports—if Harry realizes that Dumbledore won’t insist on even a delay in punishing Hermione to test whether she’s actually innocent, he’s hardly likely to ever trust Dumbledore ever again.
Meanwhile, it seems like the obvious “taboo tradeoff” for Harry to offer for Hermione is some kind of Unbreakable Vow for the Malfoys’ benefit—especially since Lucius believes (sort of correctly!) that Harry is Voldemort. That would be fun storytelling, since an Unbreakable Vow for Draco’s benefit also shows up in canon. Is there a more appropriate bribe Harry could offer than that?
And would Harry and Lucius actually come to an agreement in such a negotiation, or would Harry’s maximum offer be less than Lucius’ minimum offer? Since Lucius has Hermione as hostage, it would be tricky, though not impossible, for Harry to simply threaten the Malfoys into handing Hermione over.
But suppose Harry can’t make a deal with Lucius, can’t contact Quirrell in time, and can’t get Dumbledore to take effective action—then what is Harry’s best option at this point if he absolutely refuses to let Hermione be turned into a house-elf (or whatever)? Is Harry’s best solo option to get to Azkaban on his own and lead out a Dementor army? (I didn’t say good, just best...)
Is there a save-Hermione option that would make sense to us that Harry is unlikely to consider?
Harry may be unable to talk to Lucius privately before the trial. If negotiations take place during the trial, that’ll be an interesting scene.
Remember what each party sacrifices in an Unbreakable Vow. Lucius would sacrifice his ability to ever trust Harry again. Lucius may think this is not a problem, as he thinks Harry is Voldemort, but Harry may be hurt by this down the line. Also, they’ll need to find a Binder who’ll permanently sacrifice some of his magic to sustain the vow (are those routinely available for pay?)
Can the vow enforce factual claims about the past? E.g., “I vow that I am not Voldemort as you suspect”, “I vow that I was always Draco’s friend and am not to blame for the assassination attempt”, etc. If yes—that is, Harry would be unable to Vow falsehoods—then he could convince Lucius of his goodwill. OTOH, if he actually tried to vow “I am not Voldemort”, the result should be.. .educational.
The Vow can probably be engineered to enforce past-claims. E.g., “I vow to kill myself in one minute if this is not true: …”
Harry has a lot to offer to vow that he values low (because he already wants to do it) but Lucius values high (because he has no guarantee of it). Ideas: eternal friendship, honesty, and political alliance with Draco; eventually public political falling-out with Dumbledore (say, on his majority or graduation); dedication to exposing and punishing the real criminal behind the attack on Draco; personal declaration of war on whoever-killed-Narcissa (Lucius may not trust Harry at his plain word on this like Draco did); future favors to be redeemed by Draco.
Also, they’ll need to find a Binder who’ll permanently sacrifice some of his magic to sustain the vow (are those routinely available for pay?)
Yes. Presumably the person who bound the Auror Legillimancer did so out of pay rather than love. Additionally, Harry could just go find a dying wizard who wants to make some galleons since he’s solved that problem. I’d assume that finding a binder is not an obstacle to people like the Malfoys.
Can the vow enforce factual claims about the past? E.g., “I vow that I am not Voldemort as you suspect”, “I vow that I was always Draco’s friend and am not to blame for the assassination attempt”, etc. If yes—that is, Harry would be unable to Vow falsehoods—then he could convince Lucius of his goodwill. OTOH, if he actually tried to vow “I am not Voldemort”, the result should be.. .educational.
Should be able to, since enforcing honesty would seem to be on offer if ordinary Veritaserum can do as much… Now, the question is, does an Unbreakable Vow to tell the truth overcome obliviation/memory charming/pensieves etc? One might expect powerful sacrificial magic to be able to do that, but then again, if it did, you’d expect officials of some stripe to have such Vows as matters of course and we don’t see that (on the gripping hand, wizarding society is not that efficient or imaginative).
I would expect a Vow only binds you to tell the truth as you know it at that moment. Nevertheless:
“I vow that to the best of my knowledge in the past XXX. I also vow that if I ever discover evidence that this is false and I had been Obliviated or Memory Charmed to enable me to make this vow today, I will come tell you all about it and submit to your judgement with a specified possible penalty.”
So you can at least bind yourself irrevocably to your new position.
if it did, you’d expect officials of some stripe to have such Vows as matters of course and we don’t see that
Of course not, the high-grade politician doesn’t exist who could vow that they’d been honest upstanding citizens all their lives :-)
If IRL we discovered a really reliable neurological lie detector, it would be used by police and courts, but do you really think politicians and CEOs would ever submit to it?
If IRL we discovered a really reliable neurological lie detector, it would be used by police and courts, but do you really think politicians and CEOs would ever submit to it?
If we did that, I think we would just end up selecting CEOs and politicians with firm self-deceptions instead of those who gave accurate information.
I’m just saying that making lying extremely more difficult is also likely to cut down on lying. The advantage which you’d have to get from lying would have to be higher than the current threshold to bother.
If IRL we discovered a really reliable neurological lie detector, it would be used by police and courts, but do you really think politicians and CEOs would ever submit to it?
I’d expect some CEOs would submit to it and their stock would be rewarded for it.
In theory, Obliviations and False Memories can be broken, right?
Where’d you get this idea? As far as I know, the last word we had on that was
The courts use Veritaserum, but it’s a joke really, you just Obliviate yourself before you testify and then claim the other person was Memory-Charmed with a false memory. If you’ve got a Pensieve, and we do, you can even get the memory back afterward. Now, ordinarily the courts presume in favor of Obliviation having occurred rather than more complicated Memory Charms.
That doesn’t sound like it’s possible even in theory to detect, let alone remove, Obliviations or False Memory Charms.
I was reading the quote you cite as “too much trouble usually” rather than “absolutely impossible”, because canon indicates that both can be removed, albeit not easily:
The canonical False Memory Charm is obviously not the same thing as the MoR!FMC, given what canon!Hermione did with it. I don’t think we can draw conclusions from that.
Good point. They’re obviously at least somewhat different from canon. The rules on fixing their effects are unknowable without the author’s say-so.
I suppose it isn’t critical whether Obliviates and FMCs are normally removable in this universe—Harry would still be able to use a delay in carrying out sentence to either attempt to find a counterspell or find the real perpetrator or both.
So no matter what, for Harry, a one-year delay in carrying out sentence has a really good cost/benefit tradeoff.
And if Dumbledore won’t exert himself sufficiently to secure that, there’s no one Harry will be left trusting excerpt McGonagall—and Quirrell.
On reflection, it doesn’t even matter whether Obliviates and FMCs are normally removable in this universe—Harry would use a delay in carrying out sentence to either attempt to find a counterspell or find the real perpetrator or both.
This is a good point; agreed.
So no matter what, for Harry, a one-year delay in carrying out sentence has a really good cost/benefit tradeoff.
I would have said a one-week delay.
And if Dumbledore won’t exert himself sufficiently to secure that
I see no reason to think that Dumbledore is even remotely capable of that. Politically, Lucius and Dumbledore are near-evenly matched, and Lucius is presumably willing to exert all his influence on his end of the trial. Even assuming Dumbledore calls in every favor he’s owed, I don’t see that it would accomplish anything but get the situation to default to normal procedure- which is what’s happening now.
I agree that Dumbledore doesn’t seem able to get Lucius to delay the trial. But I suggest that Harry could suggest an agreement to delay the (irreversible part of the) punishment.
Since the only fixed rule of the wizards’ council is there are no fixed rules, such an agreement could be made. “She’s guilty, and we’ll house-elf her in a week.” Since Lucius’ priority is protecting Draco, genuine proof that someone else tried to killed Draco would be plenty of reason to release Hermione—in exchange for Harry/Voldemort’s help against the villain.
From Harry’s point of view, especially, why should Lucius exact a high price to postpone the house-elfing of Hermione by a week or a month, as long as he has the formal verdict and the young villain is under secure observation somewhere?
It seems more natural to have Hermione take an Unbreakable Vow to seek vengeance on Narcissa’s killer (ideally with qualifying clauses). This, in principle, would seem attractive to Lucius even or especially if he can’t reconsider his theory about Dumbledore (or any of his other beliefs). And I vaguely feel Lucius would worry less about Hermione tricking him than if Harry/Voldemort took the Vow. In any case, this approach to vengeance seems directly related to the trade Lucius publicly declared he would make in chapter 80.
This suggestion might work better coming from Draco’s snake-Patronus. They might even get away with adding some lawyer’s conditions then. Sadly, it sounds like Harry couldn’t signal Draco unobtrusively unless he slips away somehow (or, I guess, casts Expecto Patronum into his Invisibility Cloak while muffling the sound). But the time-turner could work here. I was going to say that even a brief disappearance might make L. Malfoy suspicious. But if LM sees him as Voldemort, that would make faking a Patronus intuitively unlikely.
Framing someone else who is already an enemy (Snape?)…
This can be done through a false memory charm on ie. Harry. This could be a good way for Quirrelmort to get Harry darker, make him appear lighter and earn more trust points all in one move. This would also qualify as a taboo trade-off. It could easily also be done on the Weasley brothers. All it’d take would be to find out who didn’t have a strong alibi at midnight (most people) and/or a time turner.
Frame Quirrell. (Assuming it’s even framing and not accidentally getting the right answer for the wrong reasons.)
Harry knows he’s an unregistered animagus. Harry has even better blackmail with Azkaban though he’d be loath to use it. People in universe also know that the defense professor is suspect #1.
Harry could just lie under veritaserum that Quirrell did all this. Nobody aside from Quirrell or Dumbledore would even imagine that Harry could do that (well, Snape and McGonagall). Way back in chapter 47, Harry said Bester thought Harry could beat veritaserum. Dumbledore and his faction would be unlikely to volunteer this information; Quirrell would have to GTFO of the country because he’s an unregistered animagus (and also Voldemort, though Harry doesn’t know that). Quirrell couldn’t offer any legal challenge to Harry, so Harry could successfully pull it off against him.
Harry is certainly CAPABLE of framing Quirrel, but I don’t think he’s anywhere NEAR close to framing anyone he considers a friend. I think he’s more likely to frame himself.
Draco only observed that Harry said he was an Occlumens. This was a line of thought that Draco wasn’t particularly able to follow though on anyhow (since he didn’t have the Veritaserum and didn’t even know where to get it). He only abandons it when he realizes a more feasible test exists (via patronus).
Keep in mind Draco’s first impulse is that it was a complete lie, and he knows Harry (and what Harry can do) personally. Nobody else would believe an 11 year old would be an occlumens this young. Plus, Harry has enough evidence incriminating Quirrell to make any charge stick.
Harry’s tutor was arranged through Gringott’s; I am sure that the goblins kept records. Whether or not they’re obliged to show those records is another issue.
Also, being an Occlumens can be proved directly to any Legilemens, so if Harry wants to prove it to someone it’s not that difficult. Just difficult to do it on the spot without any preparation.
Or if you were a perfect Occlumens, you could race ahead of any probes, answering queries as fast as they were asked, so that the Legilimens would enter through your surfaces and see a mind indistinguishable from whoever you were pretending to be.
Even the best Legilimens could be fooled that way. If a perfect Occlumens claimed they were dropping their Occlumency barriers, there was no way to know if they were lying. Worse, you might not know you were dealing with a perfect Occlumens. They were rare, but the fact that they existed meant you couldn’t trust Legilimency on anyone.
So, if Harry wants to prove he’s an Occlumens, he can. But if he is intending to lie under Veritaserum as part of a framing plot, he doesn’t want to prove it; he wants to lie. And if he’s gotten good enough at Occlumency over the last 50 or so chapters, he might be able to pull it off.
It might be too late for that. He told Draco that he’s an occlumens, and it’s highly probable that Lucius questioned Draco under veritaserum. Draco may already have told him, and if he hasn’t, the fact that he could could undermine any plan hinging on it.
I very much doubt Harry is already a perfect Occlumens. The last word we have on that is that he may grow to be one “in time”. It would an unforeshadowed and plot-convenient superpower if he was suddenly revealed as such.
Note: even a non-perfect Occlumens can apparently lie under Veritaserum, just not lie to a good enough Legilemens (even without Veritaserum).
even a non-perfect Occlumens can apparently lie under Veritaserum
Where did y’all get this? I had the vague impression that Veritaserum worked better to detect deliberate lying. Legilimency can detect other Legilimency better, because the potion doesn’t do that at all. (And neither of them can detect Obliviation or a perfect Memory Charm, per Chapter 79.)
Look, Draco, I’ll take one drop of Veritaserum if you can get it, I’m just warning you that I’m an Occlumens. Not a perfect Occlumens, but Mr. Bester said I was putting up a complete block, and I could probably beat Veritaserum.”
I suggest: (1) all Harry needs is time, (2) Dumbledore refuses to give it to him, (3) Harry offers Lucius an Unbreakable Vow.
In theory, Obliviations and False Memories can be broken, right? So what’s Dumbledore’s excuse for not insisting on a delay in punishment long enough to attempt to break the alleged tampering with Hermione’s brain?
[ETA: actually, doesn’t matter whether the spells are known breakable; Harry could experiment with counterspells or just hunt for the real villain. Either way, Harry will be confident that he can get the truth—given time.]
It seems like Quirrell stands to take away three of Harry’s supports—if Harry realizes that Dumbledore won’t insist on even a delay in punishing Hermione to test whether she’s actually innocent, he’s hardly likely to ever trust Dumbledore ever again.
Meanwhile, it seems like the obvious “taboo tradeoff” for Harry to offer for Hermione is some kind of Unbreakable Vow for the Malfoys’ benefit—especially since Lucius believes (sort of correctly!) that Harry is Voldemort. That would be fun storytelling, since an Unbreakable Vow for Draco’s benefit also shows up in canon. Is there a more appropriate bribe Harry could offer than that?
And would Harry and Lucius actually come to an agreement in such a negotiation, or would Harry’s maximum offer be less than Lucius’ minimum offer? Since Lucius has Hermione as hostage, it would be tricky, though not impossible, for Harry to simply threaten the Malfoys into handing Hermione over.
But suppose Harry can’t make a deal with Lucius, can’t contact Quirrell in time, and can’t get Dumbledore to take effective action—then what is Harry’s best option at this point if he absolutely refuses to let Hermione be turned into a house-elf (or whatever)? Is Harry’s best solo option to get to Azkaban on his own and lead out a Dementor army? (I didn’t say good, just best...)
Is there a save-Hermione option that would make sense to us that Harry is unlikely to consider?
Good ideas.
My thoughts:
Harry may be unable to talk to Lucius privately before the trial. If negotiations take place during the trial, that’ll be an interesting scene.
Remember what each party sacrifices in an Unbreakable Vow. Lucius would sacrifice his ability to ever trust Harry again. Lucius may think this is not a problem, as he thinks Harry is Voldemort, but Harry may be hurt by this down the line. Also, they’ll need to find a Binder who’ll permanently sacrifice some of his magic to sustain the vow (are those routinely available for pay?)
Can the vow enforce factual claims about the past? E.g., “I vow that I am not Voldemort as you suspect”, “I vow that I was always Draco’s friend and am not to blame for the assassination attempt”, etc. If yes—that is, Harry would be unable to Vow falsehoods—then he could convince Lucius of his goodwill. OTOH, if he actually tried to vow “I am not Voldemort”, the result should be.. .educational.
The Vow can probably be engineered to enforce past-claims. E.g., “I vow to kill myself in one minute if this is not true: …”
Harry has a lot to offer to vow that he values low (because he already wants to do it) but Lucius values high (because he has no guarantee of it). Ideas: eternal friendship, honesty, and political alliance with Draco; eventually public political falling-out with Dumbledore (say, on his majority or graduation); dedication to exposing and punishing the real criminal behind the attack on Draco; personal declaration of war on whoever-killed-Narcissa (Lucius may not trust Harry at his plain word on this like Draco did); future favors to be redeemed by Draco.
Yes. Presumably the person who bound the Auror Legillimancer did so out of pay rather than love. Additionally, Harry could just go find a dying wizard who wants to make some galleons since he’s solved that problem. I’d assume that finding a binder is not an obstacle to people like the Malfoys.
Should be able to, since enforcing honesty would seem to be on offer if ordinary Veritaserum can do as much… Now, the question is, does an Unbreakable Vow to tell the truth overcome obliviation/memory charming/pensieves etc? One might expect powerful sacrificial magic to be able to do that, but then again, if it did, you’d expect officials of some stripe to have such Vows as matters of course and we don’t see that (on the gripping hand, wizarding society is not that efficient or imaginative).
I would expect a Vow only binds you to tell the truth as you know it at that moment. Nevertheless:
“I vow that to the best of my knowledge in the past XXX. I also vow that if I ever discover evidence that this is false and I had been Obliviated or Memory Charmed to enable me to make this vow today, I will come tell you all about it and submit to your judgement with a specified possible penalty.”
So you can at least bind yourself irrevocably to your new position.
Of course not, the high-grade politician doesn’t exist who could vow that they’d been honest upstanding citizens all their lives :-)
If IRL we discovered a really reliable neurological lie detector, it would be used by police and courts, but do you really think politicians and CEOs would ever submit to it?
If we did that, I think we would just end up selecting CEOs and politicians with firm self-deceptions instead of those who gave accurate information.
I think you may be being too cynical here.
I’m being too cynical about… politicians?
...Maybe I need to move to wherever you live...
I’m just saying that making lying extremely more difficult is also likely to cut down on lying. The advantage which you’d have to get from lying would have to be higher than the current threshold to bother.
Good point, and politicians could use it to avoid the test too.
I’d expect some CEOs would submit to it and their stock would be rewarded for it.
To boot, I would be very surprised if people elected politicians who hadn’t submitted to the lie detector after it had the cultural time to sink in.
People with foresight would work very hard to discredit it before that happened though.
We might not know if they already had.
Where’d you get this idea? As far as I know, the last word we had on that was
That doesn’t sound like it’s possible even in theory to detect, let alone remove, Obliviations or False Memory Charms.
I was reading the quote you cite as “too much trouble usually” rather than “absolutely impossible”, because canon indicates that both can be removed, albeit not easily:
http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Memory_Charm
http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/False_memory_charm
I just realized- if Obliviation can be broken, Harry (but not Quirrell) is implicated in the Azkaban breakout.
The canonical False Memory Charm is obviously not the same thing as the MoR!FMC, given what canon!Hermione did with it. I don’t think we can draw conclusions from that.
Good point. They’re obviously at least somewhat different from canon. The rules on fixing their effects are unknowable without the author’s say-so.
I suppose it isn’t critical whether Obliviates and FMCs are normally removable in this universe—Harry would still be able to use a delay in carrying out sentence to either attempt to find a counterspell or find the real perpetrator or both.
So no matter what, for Harry, a one-year delay in carrying out sentence has a really good cost/benefit tradeoff.
And if Dumbledore won’t exert himself sufficiently to secure that, there’s no one Harry will be left trusting excerpt McGonagall—and Quirrell.
This is a good point; agreed.
I would have said a one-week delay.
I see no reason to think that Dumbledore is even remotely capable of that. Politically, Lucius and Dumbledore are near-evenly matched, and Lucius is presumably willing to exert all his influence on his end of the trial. Even assuming Dumbledore calls in every favor he’s owed, I don’t see that it would accomplish anything but get the situation to default to normal procedure- which is what’s happening now.
I agree that Dumbledore doesn’t seem able to get Lucius to delay the trial. But I suggest that Harry could suggest an agreement to delay the (irreversible part of the) punishment.
Since the only fixed rule of the wizards’ council is there are no fixed rules, such an agreement could be made. “She’s guilty, and we’ll house-elf her in a week.” Since Lucius’ priority is protecting Draco, genuine proof that someone else tried to killed Draco would be plenty of reason to release Hermione—in exchange for Harry/Voldemort’s help against the villain.
From Harry’s point of view, especially, why should Lucius exact a high price to postpone the house-elfing of Hermione by a week or a month, as long as he has the formal verdict and the young villain is under secure observation somewhere?
It seems more natural to have Hermione take an Unbreakable Vow to seek vengeance on Narcissa’s killer (ideally with qualifying clauses). This, in principle, would seem attractive to Lucius even or especially if he can’t reconsider his theory about Dumbledore (or any of his other beliefs). And I vaguely feel Lucius would worry less about Hermione tricking him than if Harry/Voldemort took the Vow. In any case, this approach to vengeance seems directly related to the trade Lucius publicly declared he would make in chapter 80.
This suggestion might work better coming from Draco’s snake-Patronus. They might even get away with adding some lawyer’s conditions then. Sadly, it sounds like Harry couldn’t signal Draco unobtrusively unless he slips away somehow (or, I guess, casts Expecto Patronum into his Invisibility Cloak while muffling the sound). But the time-turner could work here. I was going to say that even a brief disappearance might make L. Malfoy suspicious. But if LM sees him as Voldemort, that would make faking a Patronus intuitively unlikely.
Framing someone else who is already an enemy (Snape?)…
This can be done through a false memory charm on ie. Harry. This could be a good way for Quirrelmort to get Harry darker, make him appear lighter and earn more trust points all in one move. This would also qualify as a taboo trade-off. It could easily also be done on the Weasley brothers. All it’d take would be to find out who didn’t have a strong alibi at midnight (most people) and/or a time turner.
Frame Quirrell. (Assuming it’s even framing and not accidentally getting the right answer for the wrong reasons.)
Harry knows he’s an unregistered animagus. Harry has even better blackmail with Azkaban though he’d be loath to use it. People in universe also know that the defense professor is suspect #1.
Harry could just lie under veritaserum that Quirrell did all this. Nobody aside from Quirrell or Dumbledore would even imagine that Harry could do that (well, Snape and McGonagall). Way back in chapter 47, Harry said Bester thought Harry could beat veritaserum. Dumbledore and his faction would be unlikely to volunteer this information; Quirrell would have to GTFO of the country because he’s an unregistered animagus (and also Voldemort, though Harry doesn’t know that). Quirrell couldn’t offer any legal challenge to Harry, so Harry could successfully pull it off against him.
Harry is certainly CAPABLE of framing Quirrel, but I don’t think he’s anywhere NEAR close to framing anyone he considers a friend. I think he’s more likely to frame himself.
Draco know that Harry can beat Veritaserum. And the chances are decent that he’ll be well enough to attend the trial
Draco only observed that Harry said he was an Occlumens. This was a line of thought that Draco wasn’t particularly able to follow though on anyhow (since he didn’t have the Veritaserum and didn’t even know where to get it). He only abandons it when he realizes a more feasible test exists (via patronus).
Keep in mind Draco’s first impulse is that it was a complete lie, and he knows Harry (and what Harry can do) personally. Nobody else would believe an 11 year old would be an occlumens this young. Plus, Harry has enough evidence incriminating Quirrell to make any charge stick.
Harry’s tutor was arranged through Gringott’s; I am sure that the goblins kept records. Whether or not they’re obliged to show those records is another issue.
Also, being an Occlumens can be proved directly to any Legilemens, so if Harry wants to prove it to someone it’s not that difficult. Just difficult to do it on the spot without any preparation.
From Chapter 27:
So, if Harry wants to prove he’s an Occlumens, he can. But if he is intending to lie under Veritaserum as part of a framing plot, he doesn’t want to prove it; he wants to lie. And if he’s gotten good enough at Occlumency over the last 50 or so chapters, he might be able to pull it off.
It might be too late for that. He told Draco that he’s an occlumens, and it’s highly probable that Lucius questioned Draco under veritaserum. Draco may already have told him, and if he hasn’t, the fact that he could could undermine any plan hinging on it.
I very much doubt Harry is already a perfect Occlumens. The last word we have on that is that he may grow to be one “in time”. It would an unforeshadowed and plot-convenient superpower if he was suddenly revealed as such.
Note: even a non-perfect Occlumens can apparently lie under Veritaserum, just not lie to a good enough Legilemens (even without Veritaserum).
Where did y’all get this? I had the vague impression that Veritaserum worked better to detect deliberate lying. Legilimency can detect other Legilimency better, because the potion doesn’t do that at all. (And neither of them can detect Obliviation or a perfect Memory Charm, per Chapter 79.)
Waaay back in Chapter 47, we get:
Thanks, I’d remembered that wrong.
Yes that would most probably work. Even though the costs do seem rather huge (which is why I went for frame Snape).