I just commented below with my opinion on the Lily/Snape/Dumbledore-writing-in-a-potions-book situation. That comment is based on my firm belief that our existing knowledge of Lily’s and Snape’s relationship from canon is sufficient to tell us what really happened in the MoR backstory.
Eliezer has said that while HPMOR is not a strict single-point-of-departure fic, there is a “primary” point of departure somewhere in the past. It stands to reason that if he said that, then he knows exactly what that point is.
I want to know what that point is, too. So I’ve been briefly trying to think of the earliest significant departure that we’re aware of, as a latest possible time for the primary departure point.
The obvious answer is that history changed when Lily gave the potion to Petunia that made her pretty. That potion changed Petunia’s feelings toward the wizarding world, got her a genius husband, and generally made her a good person and put her in a good household that would love and nurture Harry as he grew up.
But there’s possibly a departure slightly before that that we’re aware of. Petunia says that when Vernon Dursley told her he wanted to name his son Dudley, it made her see her life stretching out before her, and it made her tell Lily that if she couldn’t be pretty she’d rather just— …something. (Kill herself?)
But it’s not clear whether Petunia would have gone on and married Vernon if Lily had turned her down a final time. She seems to have been pretty firmly against it, if she was considering something drastic and unspeakable instead. But then, marrying Vernon Dursley is itself pretty drastic and unspeakable.
And but so anyway, I was trying to think of some significant difference that took place before this that we firmly know of. We don’t know when Aberforth died; it could well have been after Petunia turned pretty. The stuff with the dojo in Asia probably took place afterward as well, and we don’t even have solid proof that it counts as a difference from canon. As far as I can recall, the bits we’ve heard about Dumbledore and Grindelwald are consistent with canon.
Do we know of any other differences that took place before Petunia turned pretty?
The “primary” point of departure is the general intelligence/rationality increase almost everyone received at birth. Almost everything else is explained by this increase in intelligence lottery winners.
Right. And I’m saying, it’s not a single point of departure in the sense that a) Transfiguration needed rules to not be a get-out-of-thinking-free card, and b) Smart!Rational!Harry vs Smart!Rational!Voldemort would be painful to read if everyone else was exactly as smart and rational as in canon.
Unless you can think of a single event which would result in everyone from Merlin on down to Draco Malfoy getting roughly an additional fifty IQ points...
Eh, everyone we have seen be smarter is a wizard, and if the /entire world/ got smarter, that would have derailed history so hard even hogwarts ought to have noticed, so presumably the departure point is something that affected wizardry. The true words of madness being lost? Alternatively, someone coming up with a intelligence boosting potion or spell.
Hmm. Lily was working on a way to permanently alter her sister, and she succeeded. If what she came up with was a way to.. I dunno, boost willpower, so that what actually happened is that she stuck with an exercise and diet regime in a way very few people actually do, then I could see the wizarding world dosing everybody and everything with it.. This is moving into wild ass guessing territory.
Petunia (but she was explicitly altered somehow by her sister) and Hermonies parents. Hermonies parents are.. pretty much exactly what I would expect them to be, in either canon or MoR. I dont recall ever seeing them in canon however, so no baseline.
Fair enough. The canon definition of a squib is specifically a non-magical child of wizarding parents. I’d assumed the Grangers had wizarding blood further back than that, making them genetically identical to squibs but not meeting the definition of the term as used in wizarding culture.
Roberta had been increasingly apprehensive about giving her daughter over to witchcraft—especially after she’d read the books, put the dates together, and realized that her magical mother had probably been killed at the height of Grindelwald’s terror, not died giving birth to her as her father had always claimed.
I’m having a hard time imagining how Hermione got two copies of the magic gene if they weren’t.
I just commented below with my opinion on the Lily/Snape/Dumbledore-writing-in-a-potions-book situation. That comment is based on my firm belief that our existing knowledge of Lily’s and Snape’s relationship from canon is sufficient to tell us what really happened in the MoR backstory.
Eliezer has said that while HPMOR is not a strict single-point-of-departure fic, there is a “primary” point of departure somewhere in the past. It stands to reason that if he said that, then he knows exactly what that point is.
I want to know what that point is, too. So I’ve been briefly trying to think of the earliest significant departure that we’re aware of, as a latest possible time for the primary departure point.
The obvious answer is that history changed when Lily gave the potion to Petunia that made her pretty. That potion changed Petunia’s feelings toward the wizarding world, got her a genius husband, and generally made her a good person and put her in a good household that would love and nurture Harry as he grew up.
But there’s possibly a departure slightly before that that we’re aware of. Petunia says that when Vernon Dursley told her he wanted to name his son Dudley, it made her see her life stretching out before her, and it made her tell Lily that if she couldn’t be pretty she’d rather just— …something. (Kill herself?)
But it’s not clear whether Petunia would have gone on and married Vernon if Lily had turned her down a final time. She seems to have been pretty firmly against it, if she was considering something drastic and unspeakable instead. But then, marrying Vernon Dursley is itself pretty drastic and unspeakable.
And but so anyway, I was trying to think of some significant difference that took place before this that we firmly know of. We don’t know when Aberforth died; it could well have been after Petunia turned pretty. The stuff with the dojo in Asia probably took place afterward as well, and we don’t even have solid proof that it counts as a difference from canon. As far as I can recall, the bits we’ve heard about Dumbledore and Grindelwald are consistent with canon.
Do we know of any other differences that took place before Petunia turned pretty?
The “primary” point of departure is the general intelligence/rationality increase almost everyone received at birth. Almost everything else is explained by this increase in intelligence lottery winners.
Maybe all the idiots in the Gene Pool of Atlantis killed themselves off with Transfiguration sickness before they could reproduce.
In that case, pretty much everything can be traced back to “Changes to the laws of magic so that, y’know, there are some.”
But actually, Eliezer does clearly state that there’s “a single event that happened differently, at some point in the past.”
Right. And I’m saying, it’s not a single point of departure in the sense that a) Transfiguration needed rules to not be a get-out-of-thinking-free card, and b) Smart!Rational!Harry vs Smart!Rational!Voldemort would be painful to read if everyone else was exactly as smart and rational as in canon.
Unless you can think of a single event which would result in everyone from Merlin on down to Draco Malfoy getting roughly an additional fifty IQ points...
Eh, everyone we have seen be smarter is a wizard, and if the /entire world/ got smarter, that would have derailed history so hard even hogwarts ought to have noticed, so presumably the departure point is something that affected wizardry. The true words of madness being lost? Alternatively, someone coming up with a intelligence boosting potion or spell. Hmm. Lily was working on a way to permanently alter her sister, and she succeeded. If what she came up with was a way to.. I dunno, boost willpower, so that what actually happened is that she stuck with an exercise and diet regime in a way very few people actually do, then I could see the wizarding world dosing everybody and everything with it.. This is moving into wild ass guessing territory.
Well, Petunia was at least able to figure out that Vernon Dursley would be a terrible father.
Have we seen any muggle characters other than Dr Michael Verres-Evans?
Petunia (but she was explicitly altered somehow by her sister) and Hermonies parents. Hermonies parents are.. pretty much exactly what I would expect them to be, in either canon or MoR. I dont recall ever seeing them in canon however, so no baseline.
Petunia and the Grangers are Squibs, though.
The Grangers are squibs?!
They had to be, in order for Hermione to be MuggleBorn. Mendelian pattern.
Both recessive magic-gene carriers. That’s the definition of Sqib in MoR—or have I got this wrong?
Fair enough. The canon definition of a squib is specifically a non-magical child of wizarding parents. I’d assumed the Grangers had wizarding blood further back than that, making them genetically identical to squibs but not meeting the definition of the term as used in wizarding culture.
That could still be true of Mr Dr Granger.
I’m having a hard time imagining how Hermione got two copies of the magic gene if they weren’t.
Not that I’m suggesting any of these are true or even reasonable, but;
She could be adopted.
Her mother could be a squib, and her father was not Mr. Granger.
Her mother could be a squib, and she could be the result of Parthenogenesis.
Extreme luck could spontaneously cause a mutation in either gene to the magic gene, with the other parent being a squib.
They could both be wizards, unawares.
Apparently my imagination is defective.
Has it been confirmed that magic is a single-gene trait?
The Horcruxes? The Pioneer launched in ’73, Lily was born in ’60, the potion almost certainly couldn’t have been before that.