This is irrelevant in the grand scheme of things, because Draco is irrelevant to the final confrontation in HPMOR.[1] (If turning Draco to the light side counted, then Harry has done a dozen other things “moving the plot forward”—but he hasn’t! The plot doesn’t move forward unless either Quirrell sets up an adventure or Trelawney gives her second prophecy).
It does, however, accomplish something actually good, namely giving Draco an actual character arc. I’d say he’s the only character in HPMOR that gets a solid character arc. Too bad he doesn’t matter.
What in the story changes if Draco never existed? A few chats with Lucius have their lines removed, Hermione gets framed for killing another one of her acquaintances, Neville or whomever gets Legilimensed into opening the forbidden door in Chapter 104, and… what else? Harry had mostly figured out the genetic laws of magic himself already
I don’t think it’s fair to say that Draco doesn’t matter. There’s more than one plot line than the final confrontation. Also, the fact that Draco is sympathetic to Harry and got his mother back affects the valence of the ending and where we expect the story to go afterwards (compared to, e.g., if Draco still sees himself the same way he did in the beginning).
Also, the fact that Draco is sympathetic to Harry and got his mother back affects the valence of the ending and where we expect the story to go afterwards
None of this affects whether Draco is one of the characters who get the check mark for “proactively moving the plot forward.”
Snape also has story threads about him, but notice that he didn’t receive a check mark in the post.
Ender’s Game battles go another way entirely. More science with Hermione instead of Draco. Hermione doesn’t get framed because the only reason she was is to remove Lucius and protect Harry from his retribution for messing with Draco. Hermione doesn’t die. Trelawney gives no prophecies as Harry is not driven to extremes this year. Final confrontation doesn’t happen at all. Harry helps Quirrell obtain the Stone to save his life, he has no reason to suspect him as nobody has died. I think Azkaban arc stays the same, the rest is completely different.
Trelawney gives no prophecies as Harry is not driven to extremes this year
I don’t think the text as-written supports this inference at all. Harry being driven to extremes[1] is the cause of bringing apart the very stars in heaven? The latter is an extreme action and much more likely the result of his drive to fight against Death and to enact World Optimization, which he would do anyway, not because of Draco or any specific events that Hermione went through. Harry knew the magical world in HPMOR was crazy and exploitable all the way from the beginning (with his arbitrage scheme).
Hermione doesn’t get framed because the only reason she was is to remove Lucius and protect Harry from his retribution for messing with Draco.
“And you also thought,” Harry said, even with his dark side’s patterns he had to work to keep his voice level and cool, “that two weeks in Azkaban would improve Miss Granger’s disposition, and get her to stop being a bad influence on me. So you somehow arranged for there to be newspaper stories calling for her to be sent to Azkaban, rather than some other penalty.”
Professor Quirrell’s lips drew up in a thin smile. “Good catch, boy. Yes, I thought she might serve as your Bellatrix. That particular outcome would also have provided you with a constant reminder of how much respect was due the law, and helped you develop appropriate attitudes toward the Ministry.”
he has no reason to suspect him as nobody has died
Harry holds the Idiot Ball in Chapter 86 for not putting two and two together and figuring out all the clues about Voldemort’s existence matched with Quirrell, prior to Hermione’s death. The Aura of Doom, the ‘always one level higher than you’ combined with the David Monroe persona and Moody’s Constant Vigilance, the sickly Defense Professor who is always cursed to bring doom to himself and his position… none of this has anything to do with any deaths. There are alternative HPMOR endings where this flash of idiocy is avoided.
Indeed, the reason Harry ultimately figures out it was Quirrell in Chapter 104 isn’t because he suddenly had a flash of insight about Hermione or Firenze, but because Quirrell’s explanation for why he was at the door wasn’t predictable ex ante, and it felt too storybook-y for everything to do down at that exact time, and Quirrell’s plots were too much like Harry’s dark side.
This all happened because Quirrell sought to trick Harry into helping him with the Stone; if Quirrell had simply told Harry about where the Stone is in Chapter 102 and convinced him to keep quiet by saying Dumbledore has been tricked by Flamel into hiding this artifact (as in this alternative ending), Harry very likely[2] would have said ‘yes’ to one more adventure to save his mentor’s life. For Harry, this moment would serve as a first stepping stone towards defeating Death forever. In the context of the story, Quirrell’s decision makes perfect sense,[3] but the point is that the deaths were not the trigger for Harry peering beyond the veil and seeing the truth.
Because Quirrell, cold-hearted as he is, lacks the necessary theory of mind to understand positive emotions like the at-the-time love and care Harry felt towards him
Quirrell would be much less likely to make the whole plot just for Hermione spending a couple of weeks in Azkaban. And as he said, he certainly wouldn’t get Malfoys into it just for her. And so even if Harry failed to lose, he wouldn’t he in a giant debt to Lucius Malfoy (who blames Harry for what happened with Draco). So Quirrell wouldn’t need to kill Hermione for Harry to lose debt.
So Harry will never have a reason to have a discussion about Voldemort. He will not have a glimpse on Voldemort cold mind. He would think that the dark lord being alive is just insanity of Dumbledore, his wrong belief in souls and mistake about who is obvious person behind Bellatrix. Harry will not have any reason to ask where from the enemy plans at all. Because there wasn’t any hand of enemy.
There wouldn’t be Aurors in the castle, no Draco going to forbidden forest, because there are no silver slytherins and because Filch doesn’t think Lucius killed his cat, and also Harry will not closely track him because they are not friends. Harry wouldn’t bring the Aurors (because there are no Aurors), will at most just use his time turner to prevent it all. Or likely just nothing, because kids in forbidden forest will not have the mirrors, and so Quirrell will just memory charm them. No encounter with Firenze and Quirrell killing him. And Harry doesn’t quite realize Quirrell is dying, doesn’t bring him a unicorn and doesn’t discuss whether Quirrell intended to kill Auror, to know before Quirrell dies. He isn’t aware Quirrell is dying, they don’t discuss horcruxes. Quirrell doesn’t make an impression of accepting death, so it isn’t strange when at last Quirrell will ask Harry to go for philosopher’s stone.
Then when Quirrell needs Harry in forbidden corridor, he doesn’t need to ask Harry to avoid Constellation (one of suspicious things in the letter), doesn’t need to say to avoid allies of Life Eaters (hint at Quirrell through parseltongue). Harry doesn’t think to take Lesath because there is no rule about going with older students. And Snape questions him and noble kids less. And generally, Quirrell doesn’t really need to bypass Harry’s guards, because there weren’t framing’s and murders, so Harry is not on high guard. And again, without a glimpse on attacking cold mind, Harry thinks Voldemort is just Dumbledore’s insane idea. So Harry easily trusts Quirrell against Dumbledore.
Since Hermione does not die, Harry doesn’t make a firm decision to bring a friend back at all costs. So Quirrell doesn’t hear a prophecy yet that Harry is destined to bring the end to world where Quirrell lives. So Quirrell doesn’t count Harry as enemy. Doesn’t understand even that Harry’s values are incorrigibly different from his, still has hope that Harry his grow out from it. So Quirrell isn’t desperate to tell Harry all the things before he will be ought to kill Harry.
If Quirrell uses Harry as hostage for mirror, then either Harry is unconscious, or maybe even they both face the mirror and Harry thinks Dumbledore is evil for withholding the stone, and maybe even Dumbledore himself thinks that mirror have triggered on Harry’s presence, and after a lecture from Harry that Dumbledore is evil and Voldemort does not exist, Dumbledore decides that it is he the dark lord whom Harry should defeat, and so gives up.
Quirrell doesn’t show that he is the dark lord, still having hope to bring those news after Harry will let go his quibbles. Maybe, to support the idea that Dumbledore was wrong about everything, Quirrell even ditches the identity of Voldemort and instead imagines new funny role, incorporating new years of experience.
Without Draco plot line there are plenty of cascading subtle changes which sum up to entirely different background. The only thing by which Harry suspects Voldemort is suspicious framing of Hermione. Quirrell doesn’t understand that it is not plausible that Lucius will sacrifice his son, that Harry won’t sacrifice Hermione and that Lucius will not wish to accept money. So for Harry it looks like suspicious unknown enemy with cold mind, and not obvious Lucius attack. And without Draco line, Quirrell will likely invent some different plot to hurt Hermione. Say, when she goes to holidays Jagson kidnaps her for a week, while Harry is happily with his family. And Harry doesn’t know Jagson, he doesn’t need to think there is Voldemort’s hand instead of Jagson, as he believes in Voldemort instead of Lucius.
So, no, I disagree that Draco line has no effect. You would need quite a lot of everything going the same way, despite having different premises. Like, Quirrell says that he killed Hermione to remove Harry’s debt. And that plan against just Hermione wouldn’t include Malfoys. And so without saving those motives, story should not just repeat the very same course.
But, turning Draco is a part of the plot to move forward. There is a main plot-thread that things center around, but it seems odd to me to say that just because he didn’t matter for the big ending he is thus irrelevant. Stories have multiple branches.
There is a much more fundamental disagreement here between us than whether Draco is “part of the plot to move forward.” The best way I can summarize it is I disagree that there even is a “main plot-thread that things center around.” In the interest of time, I’ll quote another important part of Alexander Wales’s review:
The undeniable climax of Methods happens when Quirrell has been unmasked as Voldemort and gives Harry sixty seconds to surrender information prior to his death. Harry then kills the arrayed Death Eaters and incapacitates Voldemort, and everything after that is wrapping up loose threads. The climax of the work is then in Ch 113 and Ch 114.
Yet the plot of Methods is not about Quirrell as Voldemort fighting with Harry. Prior to Ch 88, Voldemort has no intentions of killing Harry. Voldemort’s plan, as laid out in a language that doesn’t allow lies, is to make Harry into the ruler of magical Britain. Harry’s plan is to figure out how science works and revolutionize magical Britain. Dumbledore has two primary plans. The first is to trap Voldemort beyond time, which Dumbledore is unsuccessful at; this happens almost entirely off-screen. The second is to thread the needle of prophecy, which Dumbledore presumably has succeeded at when the novel ends; this also happens almost entirely off-screen, and the parts of it that we do see are incomprehensible.
Do you see the problem here? Prior to Ch 88, the plot hasn’t actually begun. Harry and Voldemort share largely the same goals until that point, though they likely differ in how they would achieve them, and of course have obvious moral differences, but this is not what drives them into conflict in the climax
Draco doesn’t proactively move the plot forward because he does not change the structure/environment/ethos of the story through any of his actions. Same for Harry, same for Hermione; they are reactive and go along with the flow instead of changing anything. Dumbledore changes stuff, but that’s all prior to the start of the story and it happens in a way he doesn’t himself understand (after viewing the Halls of Prophecy, he serves a conduit for Fate as opposed to an agent optimizing for his own goals). Quirrell, on the other hand, is the one that actually acts intentionally to change the structure of what’s going on.
Also note that even if I granted you everything you wrote in your comment (which I don’t), the fact that Draco would be part of the plot to move forward wouldn’t even imply Draco is a character moving the plot forward. The example you’ve given is of stuff happening to Draco, as opposed to by Draco.
I agree Draco wasn’t moving the plot forward much by himself, but I was going with the focus of the comment you were replying to, in which this is Harry moving a part of the plot forward—the plot-point being that people like Draco can have their beliefs challenged and learn, that people are products of their environment to varying degrees but that doesn’t mean you should ignore them, and also showing off the various ways people react to differences in belief.
That is, while this doesn’t have huge effects in story, though I disagree that it has none, it was a core plot point with a specific message it was trying to extol. And so Harry pushing this through does affect things.
Harry is proactively moving the plot forward—he decided very early on that he was going to try turn Draco to the light side and succeeds in the task.
This is irrelevant in the grand scheme of things, because Draco is irrelevant to the final confrontation in HPMOR.[1] (If turning Draco to the light side counted, then Harry has done a dozen other things “moving the plot forward”—but he hasn’t! The plot doesn’t move forward unless either Quirrell sets up an adventure or Trelawney gives her second prophecy).
It does, however, accomplish something actually good, namely giving Draco an actual character arc. I’d say he’s the only character in HPMOR that gets a solid character arc. Too bad he doesn’t matter.
What in the story changes if Draco never existed? A few chats with Lucius have their lines removed, Hermione gets framed for killing another one of her acquaintances, Neville or whomever gets Legilimensed into opening the forbidden door in Chapter 104, and… what else? Harry had mostly figured out the genetic laws of magic himself already
I don’t think it’s fair to say that Draco doesn’t matter. There’s more than one plot line than the final confrontation. Also, the fact that Draco is sympathetic to Harry and got his mother back affects the valence of the ending and where we expect the story to go afterwards (compared to, e.g., if Draco still sees himself the same way he did in the beginning).
None of this affects whether Draco is one of the characters who get the check mark for “proactively moving the plot forward.”
Snape also has story threads about him, but notice that he didn’t receive a check mark in the post.
Ender’s Game battles go another way entirely. More science with Hermione instead of Draco. Hermione doesn’t get framed because the only reason she was is to remove Lucius and protect Harry from his retribution for messing with Draco. Hermione doesn’t die. Trelawney gives no prophecies as Harry is not driven to extremes this year. Final confrontation doesn’t happen at all. Harry helps Quirrell obtain the Stone to save his life, he has no reason to suspect him as nobody has died. I think Azkaban arc stays the same, the rest is completely different.
I don’t think the text as-written supports this inference at all. Harry being driven to extremes[1] is the cause of bringing apart the very stars in heaven? The latter is an extreme action and much more likely the result of his drive to fight against Death and to enact World Optimization, which he would do anyway, not because of Draco or any specific events that Hermione went through. Harry knew the magical world in HPMOR was crazy and exploitable all the way from the beginning (with his arbitrage scheme).
Except there’s also this, from Chapter 108:
“And you also thought,” Harry said, even with his dark side’s patterns he had to work to keep his voice level and cool, “that two weeks in Azkaban would improve Miss Granger’s disposition, and get her to stop being a bad influence on me. So you somehow arranged for there to be newspaper stories calling for her to be sent to Azkaban, rather than some other penalty.”
Professor Quirrell’s lips drew up in a thin smile. “Good catch, boy. Yes, I thought she might serve as your Bellatrix. That particular outcome would also have provided you with a constant reminder of how much respect was due the law, and helped you develop appropriate attitudes toward the Ministry.”
Harry holds the Idiot Ball in Chapter 86 for not putting two and two together and figuring out all the clues about Voldemort’s existence matched with Quirrell, prior to Hermione’s death. The Aura of Doom, the ‘always one level higher than you’ combined with the David Monroe persona and Moody’s Constant Vigilance, the sickly Defense Professor who is always cursed to bring doom to himself and his position… none of this has anything to do with any deaths. There are alternative HPMOR endings where this flash of idiocy is avoided.
Indeed, the reason Harry ultimately figures out it was Quirrell in Chapter 104 isn’t because he suddenly had a flash of insight about Hermione or Firenze, but because Quirrell’s explanation for why he was at the door wasn’t predictable ex ante, and it felt too storybook-y for everything to do down at that exact time, and Quirrell’s plots were too much like Harry’s dark side.
This all happened because Quirrell sought to trick Harry into helping him with the Stone; if Quirrell had simply told Harry about where the Stone is in Chapter 102 and convinced him to keep quiet by saying Dumbledore has been tricked by Flamel into hiding this artifact (as in this alternative ending), Harry very likely[2] would have said ‘yes’ to one more adventure to save his mentor’s life. For Harry, this moment would serve as a first stepping stone towards defeating Death forever. In the context of the story, Quirrell’s decision makes perfect sense,[3] but the point is that the deaths were not the trigger for Harry peering beyond the veil and seeing the truth.
By mundane-in-the-grand-scheme events
Based on the story as-written
Because Quirrell, cold-hearted as he is, lacks the necessary theory of mind to understand positive emotions like the at-the-time love and care Harry felt towards him
Quirrell would be much less likely to make the whole plot just for Hermione spending a couple of weeks in Azkaban. And as he said, he certainly wouldn’t get Malfoys into it just for her. And so even if Harry failed to lose, he wouldn’t he in a giant debt to Lucius Malfoy (who blames Harry for what happened with Draco). So Quirrell wouldn’t need to kill Hermione for Harry to lose debt.
So Harry will never have a reason to have a discussion about Voldemort. He will not have a glimpse on Voldemort cold mind. He would think that the dark lord being alive is just insanity of Dumbledore, his wrong belief in souls and mistake about who is obvious person behind Bellatrix. Harry will not have any reason to ask where from the enemy plans at all. Because there wasn’t any hand of enemy.
There wouldn’t be Aurors in the castle, no Draco going to forbidden forest, because there are no silver slytherins and because Filch doesn’t think Lucius killed his cat, and also Harry will not closely track him because they are not friends. Harry wouldn’t bring the Aurors (because there are no Aurors), will at most just use his time turner to prevent it all. Or likely just nothing, because kids in forbidden forest will not have the mirrors, and so Quirrell will just memory charm them. No encounter with Firenze and Quirrell killing him. And Harry doesn’t quite realize Quirrell is dying, doesn’t bring him a unicorn and doesn’t discuss whether Quirrell intended to kill Auror, to know before Quirrell dies. He isn’t aware Quirrell is dying, they don’t discuss horcruxes. Quirrell doesn’t make an impression of accepting death, so it isn’t strange when at last Quirrell will ask Harry to go for philosopher’s stone.
Then when Quirrell needs Harry in forbidden corridor, he doesn’t need to ask Harry to avoid Constellation (one of suspicious things in the letter), doesn’t need to say to avoid allies of Life Eaters (hint at Quirrell through parseltongue). Harry doesn’t think to take Lesath because there is no rule about going with older students. And Snape questions him and noble kids less. And generally, Quirrell doesn’t really need to bypass Harry’s guards, because there weren’t framing’s and murders, so Harry is not on high guard. And again, without a glimpse on attacking cold mind, Harry thinks Voldemort is just Dumbledore’s insane idea. So Harry easily trusts Quirrell against Dumbledore.
Since Hermione does not die, Harry doesn’t make a firm decision to bring a friend back at all costs. So Quirrell doesn’t hear a prophecy yet that Harry is destined to bring the end to world where Quirrell lives. So Quirrell doesn’t count Harry as enemy. Doesn’t understand even that Harry’s values are incorrigibly different from his, still has hope that Harry his grow out from it. So Quirrell isn’t desperate to tell Harry all the things before he will be ought to kill Harry.
If Quirrell uses Harry as hostage for mirror, then either Harry is unconscious, or maybe even they both face the mirror and Harry thinks Dumbledore is evil for withholding the stone, and maybe even Dumbledore himself thinks that mirror have triggered on Harry’s presence, and after a lecture from Harry that Dumbledore is evil and Voldemort does not exist, Dumbledore decides that it is he the dark lord whom Harry should defeat, and so gives up.
Quirrell doesn’t show that he is the dark lord, still having hope to bring those news after Harry will let go his quibbles. Maybe, to support the idea that Dumbledore was wrong about everything, Quirrell even ditches the identity of Voldemort and instead imagines new funny role, incorporating new years of experience.
Without Draco plot line there are plenty of cascading subtle changes which sum up to entirely different background. The only thing by which Harry suspects Voldemort is suspicious framing of Hermione. Quirrell doesn’t understand that it is not plausible that Lucius will sacrifice his son, that Harry won’t sacrifice Hermione and that Lucius will not wish to accept money. So for Harry it looks like suspicious unknown enemy with cold mind, and not obvious Lucius attack. And without Draco line, Quirrell will likely invent some different plot to hurt Hermione. Say, when she goes to holidays Jagson kidnaps her for a week, while Harry is happily with his family. And Harry doesn’t know Jagson, he doesn’t need to think there is Voldemort’s hand instead of Jagson, as he believes in Voldemort instead of Lucius.
So, no, I disagree that Draco line has no effect. You would need quite a lot of everything going the same way, despite having different premises. Like, Quirrell says that he killed Hermione to remove Harry’s debt. And that plan against just Hermione wouldn’t include Malfoys. And so without saving those motives, story should not just repeat the very same course.
But, turning Draco is a part of the plot to move forward. There is a main plot-thread that things center around, but it seems odd to me to say that just because he didn’t matter for the big ending he is thus irrelevant. Stories have multiple branches.
There is a much more fundamental disagreement here between us than whether Draco is “part of the plot to move forward.” The best way I can summarize it is I disagree that there even is a “main plot-thread that things center around.” In the interest of time, I’ll quote another important part of Alexander Wales’s review:
Draco doesn’t proactively move the plot forward because he does not change the structure/environment/ethos of the story through any of his actions. Same for Harry, same for Hermione; they are reactive and go along with the flow instead of changing anything. Dumbledore changes stuff, but that’s all prior to the start of the story and it happens in a way he doesn’t himself understand (after viewing the Halls of Prophecy, he serves a conduit for Fate as opposed to an agent optimizing for his own goals). Quirrell, on the other hand, is the one that actually acts intentionally to change the structure of what’s going on.
Also note that even if I granted you everything you wrote in your comment (which I don’t), the fact that Draco would be part of the plot to move forward wouldn’t even imply Draco is a character moving the plot forward. The example you’ve given is of stuff happening to Draco, as opposed to by Draco.
I agree Draco wasn’t moving the plot forward much by himself, but I was going with the focus of the comment you were replying to, in which this is Harry moving a part of the plot forward—the plot-point being that people like Draco can have their beliefs challenged and learn, that people are products of their environment to varying degrees but that doesn’t mean you should ignore them, and also showing off the various ways people react to differences in belief.
That is, while this doesn’t have huge effects in story, though I disagree that it has none, it was a core plot point with a specific message it was trying to extol. And so Harry pushing this through does affect things.