Dumbledore correctly surmises part of Quirrellmort’s motivation for this arc’s events: he’s neutralizing all of Light Harry’s allies. What Dumbledore hasn’t realized, what is completely outside his hypothesis space, is that he’s not doing so to attack Harry, or at least not as part of a plan to defeat Harry. He’s doing it to remove all of Harry’s support except Quirrellmort himself, so as to hasten Harry’s consumption by his Dark Side. With only Quirrell to rely upon in the magical world, his conversion into Dark Harry will be much swifter.
Therefore, when speculating abut the rest of this arc, we must speculate about how this plan will neutralize the rest of Light Harry’s allies: Dumbledore and McGonagall. Harry has already hinted that he intends to investigate Dumbledore the next time he sees Quirrell. Assuming Quirrell gets out of the Ministry without causing a scene, he will almost certainly have manufactured evidence that implicates Dumbledore, which he will show Harry.
So perhaps one of the “taboo tradeoffs” of the arc will be Harry successfully politically attacking the Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot, the Supreme Mugwump of the International Confederation of Wizards, the rediscoverer of the twelve uses of Dragons’ blood, the defeater of Grindelwald, and the defender of magical Britain in order to get a first-year Hogwarts student off the hook.
That would leave only McGonagall, and Minerva would drop Harry in a heartbeat if he successfully neutralized Dumbledore. Thus his isolation from all except Quirrellmort would be complete.
Interesting. That’s a kind of reverse taboo tradeoff.
In a normal taboo tradeoff, you sacrifice a sacred value (lives, torture, ideals) to gain a mundane value (money, jobs, political influence). Here Harry would be doing the reverse: sacrifice a huge amount of mundane value (Dumbledore’s political standing and his being an ally to Harry) to gain a sacred value (Hermione’s life and freedom).
For an ordinary thinker (i.e. not Harry or Quirrel), this might even feel like a morally imperative tradeoff, one you have no right not to make no matter what the amount of mundane value you lose.
Ooh, you’re right, from Harry’s perspective. But if we take Dumbledore’s word that there’s no way Hermione will be sent to Azkaban or Kissed by a Dementor, then from everybody else’s (or at least Dumbledore’s allies’) perspective, it would be a played-straight taboo tradeoff.
From a strategic point of view having Light-Harry as a gullible ally is worth way more than having Dark-Harry be so knowingly. If the plot is to gain control of Magical Britain under one single leader who you puppeteer (him being embedded with your brain patterns and all) there’d be no sense in turning him dark now. The political strategist would rather:
Put Dumbledore in a bad position by allowing Harry to be the one to stand up for the students. Possibly in a way that humbles Dumbledore by the great “wisdom” of Harry, but meanwhile in a way that doesn’t alienate Harry from Dumbledore’s political allies before he’s been groomed and positioned to lead them. A way to do this would be to present evidence that Harry would be able to deduct and present on basis of being the Boy-Who-Lived AND someone who actually thinks. It might very well involve Harry find out, and proof, that Snape burned the letters. Snape being a double turncoat means that he’d be an easy suspect. Quirrelmort already has good reason to see him gone (that’s how he deals with traitors if you recall) plus it’d severely weaken Dumbledore’s hold on the Slytherin part of Britain. Here the taboo trade-off is Snape’s future who Dumbledore trades to keep the school.
Quirrelmort might already have been there for the duel between Hermione and Draco. Hence he’d have a memory of it and be able to pull that memory to a pensive. That memory would be enough to proof Hermione innocent. If this is the case Quirrelmort ends up distancing Harry from Lucius; which might be a good idea considering that Quirrelmort probably prefers to be the one in charge of the dark side and have Harry as a champion of the light. The taboo trade-off would then be Draco’s father.
I see no reason to make Harry appear dark. Actually I’d consider that extremely stupid since Quirrelmort has obtained all the political power he could hope to and now knows that that is not enough. He needs both the wolves and the sheep.
Your reasoning makes sense, but I believe we’re clearly supposed to understand that Harry’s going over to his Dark Side was the premeditated purpose of Quirrell bringing the Dementor to Hogwarts in the first place. Quirrell’s plan was defeated that day, more or less because of Harry’s love (not romantic love, necessarily) for Hermione. That day Quirrell realized that to really turn Harry Dark, he had to neutralize those Harry holds dear.
Thank you. {EDIT} I reserve most of my nonsensical actions for comic relief in tense real life situations.
Well for me two obvious questions arise:
Why are we supposed to believe so? Given that Quirrelmort is dark, wouldn’t the Dementor just be the experimental method applied so as to test whether or not his brain-wave patterns interfered with Harry’s ability to act as a champion of light? {added} Also any of the given actions that day might as well have been a test of Harry’s current limits and willingness to follow a plan.
Even if not, shouldn’t Quirrelmort realize that after the Stanford Prison Experiment other venues for reaching his goal might be more attractive?
I do believe that Quirrelmort is currently trying to get Harry into thinking Dark and acting Light. [ADDED] At least that would make extreme amounts of sense to me for Controlling Britain purposes.
I think Eliezer gave us some good advice for understanding some of his characters’ plots: “One way to fathom a strange plot is to look at what happened, assume it was the intended result, and ask who benefited.”
Quirrell knows how Dementors affect him, and he knows that Harry’s got a piece of Voldemort stuck inside him, so it was a reasonable guess that Harry might be similarly affected, and permanently, if he was exposed for long enough.
Quirrell certainly anticipated the possibility of failure — his experiment was orchestrated so that failure left him no further from his goal — and in fact, he almost did succeed; I think it is highly more likely that he was hoping for an easy route to victory that almost occurred, rather than that what happened was an unexpected side effect.
I like the guess about Quirrellmort trying to remove Harry’s allies, but there’s a further detail I’m considering. Quirrellmort knows that Harry knows how to break people out of Azkaban. If Hermione is sent there, I would estimate a pretty high probability Harry would make a move to get her out. He would have to do something clever to divert suspicion away from himself, but that doesn’t seem to be an insoluble problem. If Quirrell wanted to prevent this, the simplest way would be to blackmail Harry, but doing so would require him to overtly take a position as Harry’s enemy, which he may not wish to do. Alternatively, he could sabotage Harry’s plans, but Harry would almost certainly try again.
Any situation in which Harry knows that Hermione is in trouble is an unstable equilibrium, and Quirrell presumably knows that.
Additionally, you take it for granted that Quirrellmort is trying to turn Harry dark. What’s the basis for that conclusion? I’ve got one guess, but it seems far-fetched.
If Quirrell wanted to prevent this, the simplest way would be to blackmail Harry
The simplest way would be not to help him. Harry can’t make portkeys to and from Azkaban himself, he can’t Disillusion himself once inside, fight random Aurors in the corridors (bet they’ve tightened security for a while), and now he can’t even leave Hogwarts against Dumbledore’s will.
Disillusionment isn’t a real problem, since Harry has a cloak, and I’m fairly confident he could find other ways to hide. Polyjuice might be another way, but it has some disadvantages. The upshot is that I would expect Harry to be able to pull it off, given enough time to prepare.
We still haven’t heard from Lucius, who’ll decide what punishment to request from the Wizengamot. Maybe Quirrel has influenced him somehow. Either way I feel Lucius’ POV is a major piece of missing information that may be preventing us from predicting the future.
You’re right of course. I only really paid attention to Dumbledore saying it would be something in between the kiss and snapping her wand. But in any case, Hermione can’t suffer any long term punishment without Harry trying to do something about it.
Quirrellmort is trying to turn Harry Dark because it’s now his best way of averting his death. He tried to kill Harry once and that was a miserable failure, so now he’s trying to recruit him instead. The only way he can do that, though, is by turning him Dark.
I take it for granted that this is the case because I think Quirrell brought the Dementor to Hogwarts with the goal of turning Harry Dark that day. He almost succeeded then, and now he’s destroying Harry’s connections to his Light side to make his second attempt succeed.
I don’t really buy that motivation. Even if Harry becomes Dark, it’s unlikely that he will then instantly become buddies with everyone else on the Dark side. Instead, I would expect Dark Harry and Dark Voldemort to be bitter enemies, trying to be the sole ruler of the world.
The best motivation I came up with for Voldemort turning Harry dark is that he intends to possess him, or dispose of him and sustain himself on polyjuice. In that case, Quirrellmort might well take actions that look like actions intended to help Harry rule, in addition to moves intended to separate Harry from his allies, since Quirrellmort presumably doesn’t want to side with Dumbledore, McGonagall, etc. (BTW, this is not the far-fetched theory I alluded to earlier)
I’m now considering your hypothesis about Quirrellmort instigating this to be the most plausible. I still do not believe it to have been his best move unless there’s a good reason for him to turn Harry Dark.
Besides I consider the option posted as a reply to Daniel_Starr to be more likely. Regardless, you get the up-vote for the better deduction.
What Dumbledore hasn’t realized, what is completely outside his hypothesis space, is that he’s not doing so to attack Harry, or at least not as part of a plan to defeat Harry. He’s doing it to remove all of Harry’s support except Quirrellmort himself, so as to hasten Harry’s consumption by his Dark Side. With only Quirrell to rely upon in the magical world, his conversion into Dark Harry will be much swifter.
I made a similar, though less elaborated, observation in the previous MoR discussion thread.
Dumbledore correctly surmises part of Quirrellmort’s motivation for this arc’s events: he’s neutralizing all of Light Harry’s allies. What Dumbledore hasn’t realized, what is completely outside his hypothesis space, is that he’s not doing so to attack Harry, or at least not as part of a plan to defeat Harry. He’s doing it to remove all of Harry’s support except Quirrellmort himself, so as to hasten Harry’s consumption by his Dark Side. With only Quirrell to rely upon in the magical world, his conversion into Dark Harry will be much swifter.
Therefore, when speculating abut the rest of this arc, we must speculate about how this plan will neutralize the rest of Light Harry’s allies: Dumbledore and McGonagall. Harry has already hinted that he intends to investigate Dumbledore the next time he sees Quirrell. Assuming Quirrell gets out of the Ministry without causing a scene, he will almost certainly have manufactured evidence that implicates Dumbledore, which he will show Harry.
So perhaps one of the “taboo tradeoffs” of the arc will be Harry successfully politically attacking the Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot, the Supreme Mugwump of the International Confederation of Wizards, the rediscoverer of the twelve uses of Dragons’ blood, the defeater of Grindelwald, and the defender of magical Britain in order to get a first-year Hogwarts student off the hook.
That would leave only McGonagall, and Minerva would drop Harry in a heartbeat if he successfully neutralized Dumbledore. Thus his isolation from all except Quirrellmort would be complete.
Interesting. That’s a kind of reverse taboo tradeoff.
In a normal taboo tradeoff, you sacrifice a sacred value (lives, torture, ideals) to gain a mundane value (money, jobs, political influence). Here Harry would be doing the reverse: sacrifice a huge amount of mundane value (Dumbledore’s political standing and his being an ally to Harry) to gain a sacred value (Hermione’s life and freedom).
For an ordinary thinker (i.e. not Harry or Quirrel), this might even feel like a morally imperative tradeoff, one you have no right not to make no matter what the amount of mundane value you lose.
Ooh, you’re right, from Harry’s perspective. But if we take Dumbledore’s word that there’s no way Hermione will be sent to Azkaban or Kissed by a Dementor, then from everybody else’s (or at least Dumbledore’s allies’) perspective, it would be a played-straight taboo tradeoff.
From a strategic point of view having Light-Harry as a gullible ally is worth way more than having Dark-Harry be so knowingly. If the plot is to gain control of Magical Britain under one single leader who you puppeteer (him being embedded with your brain patterns and all) there’d be no sense in turning him dark now. The political strategist would rather:
Put Dumbledore in a bad position by allowing Harry to be the one to stand up for the students. Possibly in a way that humbles Dumbledore by the great “wisdom” of Harry, but meanwhile in a way that doesn’t alienate Harry from Dumbledore’s political allies before he’s been groomed and positioned to lead them. A way to do this would be to present evidence that Harry would be able to deduct and present on basis of being the Boy-Who-Lived AND someone who actually thinks. It might very well involve Harry find out, and proof, that Snape burned the letters. Snape being a double turncoat means that he’d be an easy suspect. Quirrelmort already has good reason to see him gone (that’s how he deals with traitors if you recall) plus it’d severely weaken Dumbledore’s hold on the Slytherin part of Britain. Here the taboo trade-off is Snape’s future who Dumbledore trades to keep the school.
Quirrelmort might already have been there for the duel between Hermione and Draco. Hence he’d have a memory of it and be able to pull that memory to a pensive. That memory would be enough to proof Hermione innocent. If this is the case Quirrelmort ends up distancing Harry from Lucius; which might be a good idea considering that Quirrelmort probably prefers to be the one in charge of the dark side and have Harry as a champion of the light. The taboo trade-off would then be Draco’s father.
I see no reason to make Harry appear dark. Actually I’d consider that extremely stupid since Quirrelmort has obtained all the political power he could hope to and now knows that that is not enough. He needs both the wolves and the sheep.
Your reasoning makes sense, but I believe we’re clearly supposed to understand that Harry’s going over to his Dark Side was the premeditated purpose of Quirrell bringing the Dementor to Hogwarts in the first place. Quirrell’s plan was defeated that day, more or less because of Harry’s love (not romantic love, necessarily) for Hermione. That day Quirrell realized that to really turn Harry Dark, he had to neutralize those Harry holds dear.
Thank you. {EDIT} I reserve most of my nonsensical actions for comic relief in tense real life situations.
Well for me two obvious questions arise: Why are we supposed to believe so? Given that Quirrelmort is dark, wouldn’t the Dementor just be the experimental method applied so as to test whether or not his brain-wave patterns interfered with Harry’s ability to act as a champion of light? {added} Also any of the given actions that day might as well have been a test of Harry’s current limits and willingness to follow a plan.
Even if not, shouldn’t Quirrelmort realize that after the Stanford Prison Experiment other venues for reaching his goal might be more attractive?
I do believe that Quirrelmort is currently trying to get Harry into thinking Dark and acting Light. [ADDED] At least that would make extreme amounts of sense to me for Controlling Britain purposes.
I think Eliezer gave us some good advice for understanding some of his characters’ plots: “One way to fathom a strange plot is to look at what happened, assume it was the intended result, and ask who benefited.”
Quirrell knows how Dementors affect him, and he knows that Harry’s got a piece of Voldemort stuck inside him, so it was a reasonable guess that Harry might be similarly affected, and permanently, if he was exposed for long enough.
Quirrell certainly anticipated the possibility of failure — his experiment was orchestrated so that failure left him no further from his goal — and in fact, he almost did succeed; I think it is highly more likely that he was hoping for an easy route to victory that almost occurred, rather than that what happened was an unexpected side effect.
I like the guess about Quirrellmort trying to remove Harry’s allies, but there’s a further detail I’m considering. Quirrellmort knows that Harry knows how to break people out of Azkaban. If Hermione is sent there, I would estimate a pretty high probability Harry would make a move to get her out. He would have to do something clever to divert suspicion away from himself, but that doesn’t seem to be an insoluble problem. If Quirrell wanted to prevent this, the simplest way would be to blackmail Harry, but doing so would require him to overtly take a position as Harry’s enemy, which he may not wish to do. Alternatively, he could sabotage Harry’s plans, but Harry would almost certainly try again.
Any situation in which Harry knows that Hermione is in trouble is an unstable equilibrium, and Quirrell presumably knows that.
Additionally, you take it for granted that Quirrellmort is trying to turn Harry dark. What’s the basis for that conclusion? I’ve got one guess, but it seems far-fetched.
Quirrellmort doesn’t have to stop Harry, just make sure Hermione is already broken by the time he succeeds.
The simplest way would be not to help him. Harry can’t make portkeys to and from Azkaban himself, he can’t Disillusion himself once inside, fight random Aurors in the corridors (bet they’ve tightened security for a while), and now he can’t even leave Hogwarts against Dumbledore’s will.
Disillusionment isn’t a real problem, since Harry has a cloak, and I’m fairly confident he could find other ways to hide. Polyjuice might be another way, but it has some disadvantages. The upshot is that I would expect Harry to be able to pull it off, given enough time to prepare.
Except that Dumbledore’s pretty sure Hermione won’t be sent to Azkaban. No reason not to take his word on this.
We still haven’t heard from Lucius, who’ll decide what punishment to request from the Wizengamot. Maybe Quirrel has influenced him somehow. Either way I feel Lucius’ POV is a major piece of missing information that may be preventing us from predicting the future.
You’re right of course. I only really paid attention to Dumbledore saying it would be something in between the kiss and snapping her wand. But in any case, Hermione can’t suffer any long term punishment without Harry trying to do something about it.
Quirrellmort is trying to turn Harry Dark because it’s now his best way of averting his death. He tried to kill Harry once and that was a miserable failure, so now he’s trying to recruit him instead. The only way he can do that, though, is by turning him Dark.
I take it for granted that this is the case because I think Quirrell brought the Dementor to Hogwarts with the goal of turning Harry Dark that day. He almost succeeded then, and now he’s destroying Harry’s connections to his Light side to make his second attempt succeed.
I don’t really buy that motivation. Even if Harry becomes Dark, it’s unlikely that he will then instantly become buddies with everyone else on the Dark side. Instead, I would expect Dark Harry and Dark Voldemort to be bitter enemies, trying to be the sole ruler of the world.
The best motivation I came up with for Voldemort turning Harry dark is that he intends to possess him, or dispose of him and sustain himself on polyjuice. In that case, Quirrellmort might well take actions that look like actions intended to help Harry rule, in addition to moves intended to separate Harry from his allies, since Quirrellmort presumably doesn’t want to side with Dumbledore, McGonagall, etc. (BTW, this is not the far-fetched theory I alluded to earlier)
I’m now considering your hypothesis about Quirrellmort instigating this to be the most plausible. I still do not believe it to have been his best move unless there’s a good reason for him to turn Harry Dark. Besides I consider the option posted as a reply to Daniel_Starr to be more likely. Regardless, you get the up-vote for the better deduction.
I made a similar, though less elaborated, observation in the previous MoR discussion thread.