Why does Quirrel need Harry’s help to obtain the Stone? What can Harry do that can’t be done by Quirrel, Sprout, Snape (who is now controlled by Quirrel), the other students present (who want to get the Stone but not to use it, bypassing the Mirror), Harry’s Cloak and Time-Turner (now in Quirrel’s possession), and every other resource Quirrel could have prepared (e.g. Bellatrix)?
Finally, why did Quirrel have to bargain for Harry’s help, instead of having Sprout or Snape use Imperius on him?
I haven’t seen any theory that explains this, but surely such a major plot point should have been hinted in advance.
ETA: Harry agrees with my interpretation that we’re missing something:
Harry knew that this was too good an offer to make to someone at whom you were pointing a gun.
Unless you desperately needed their help to get the Philosopher’s Stone out of the magic mirror.
I think we’ve got Dumbledore to thank for this one, honestly.
CanonVoldemort went to every effort to kill Dumbledore, but it seems clear that RationalistVoldemort could have murdered him at leisure. He keeps Dumbledore around as a sort of Batman to his Joker. It puts the story where he taught him not to respond to hostage taking in perspective.
Despite his disdain, Voldemort has to recognize that Dumbledore’s madness is occasionally an advantage. Since he elects not to kill Dumbledore, he has to compensate for it. I’d argue that he actually enjoys it on some level.
Thus, while all logic has Voldemort dead long ago (for all the reasons Harry/Quirrel discuss) Dumbledore leaps to the conclusion that Voldemort is alive and behind everything. That is, he leaps to the correct conclusion, for no reason.
Similarly, given a belief in the existence of Voldemort somewhere in the world, any other wizard would be searching diligently and inventively. Dumbledore, by contrast, sets up a trap that couldn’t be more obvious if it was a box propped up by a stick. Quirrel openly mocks it earlier in the tale.
Its a trap that should never work, and yet, here we are, with Lord Volodemort entering the trap.
Harry is, to Voldemort’s mind, mostly just a subset of his own abilities. Not as smart, shackled by stupid teachings, not as magically powerful. If the creator of the defenses was some kind of RivalVoldemort there would be no need whatsoever for him to bring the potentially traitorous Harry, but the defenses were designed by Dumbledore, and will be just as stupidsmart as you’d expect.
The traps set up by faculty are more or less just foreplay. They are set up by the Snapes of the world, just weaker and dumber versions of Voldemort. But Dumbledore’s might be a whole other kettle of fish.
Perhaps, in order to reach the mirror you must pass a Dementor? Its a stretch to imagine him having a dementor in the school, but maybe its trapped somehow so it can’t kill students?
Maybe you have to persuade a phoenix to bring the mirror? Or casting the spell to get to it requires your life energy so that if you don’t have a phoenix giving you strength you’ll die in the process.
Perhaps its as simple as the magical equivalent of a rock that only Dumbledore is strong enough to life. Or it is just keyed to only open for Harry Potter, because Dumbledore irrationally believes that Harry will be the next Great Hero.
The edges of Voldemort’s abilities, those minor tricks and habits that Harry has that Voldemort hasn’t deigned to acquire yet, might be the key to Dumbledore’s final barrier. Its worth bringing Harry along for that.
Beyond that, I think there is a bit of Steerpike syndrome here. Voldemort is probably, on some level, lonely, and Harry/Tom is useful as a sop to this.
I don’t think Dumbledore does shit for no reason. I think he knows more than he can let on, so he acts on what he knows but doesn’t provide the real justification because it would compromise his sources and methods. He probably has extensive access to prophecies, which are the only way we know about that information can travel back more than 6 hours. Dumbledore has done some very long range things, like “your father’s rock”, and the hint to Lily about thestral blood. This is a guy who has access to many more relevant prophecies than we have seen. He at least has bugged Trelawney’s bedside, and he may have sorted out better access than that. Plus, by being someone who is very powerful and extensively engages with, interprets, and acts upon prophecy, he becomes a relevant actor that prophecies tend to come to. Dumbledore is an excellent tool for prophecy, and vice versa.
Spoilers for Chapter 108 should be in rot13 in the thread on Chapters 105–107. (At least, I think that’s the rule, and I support such a rule. For now, I am having the good sense to not scroll up.)
The Gormenghast books are more or less about a castle full of what I’d call anti-rationalists. They are entirely ruled by customs passed down from prehistory, and are generally incapable of change or improvement.
Enter Steerpike, villain of the piece and scullery boy. He is, I guess I ’d call it awake, and strives to improve his lot rather than being content with what his birth dooms him to. He is resisted at every turn by the denizen’s bloody minded traditionalism (Spoilers: at one point he murders the 90 year old Master of Rituals, hoping to take his place, only for his 70 year old apprentice to come creeping out of the Room of Abiding where he has been waiting for this moment his entire life.)
Steerpike ultimately descends into terrorism out of more or less pure frustration. There’s an incident where his evil works are discovered, but he feels relief more than anything else, since he no longer has to pretend to swallow their dogmas. I see shades of him in Voldemort’s expressed deep loathing of the ordinary folks. I think he’s delighted to have Harry to talk to, despite being his enemy.
Thanks. Gormenghast is one thing that I found in my Google search, but the description that I read of Steerpike didn’t highlight loneliness as a character trait.
I started reading the first book, but stopped about 20% of the way in (may have been less, it’s been a while since then), because I found it stupefyingly boring. Does that trilogy get any better later on ?
If you find it boring it’s probably not for you. I enjoy the language, the descriptions and so on. It’s the same as my recommendation for LOTR. I liked it a lot but I don’t think everyone should. I find both pleasant to read even when nothing is really happening in the story.
Oddly enough I really like LOTR as well as The Silmarillion… So maybe I should give this Gormenghast thing another shot, I don’t know.
I think the difference between LOTR/Simlarillion and Gormenghast is that Tolkien’s books contain well-crafted language and descriptions of scenery that are punctuated by moments of sheer epicoverload; whereas Gormenghast contains the former but not the latter.
But again, I haven’t made it that far into it, so I could be wrong.
But then why go through all the trouble of first trying to convince, and then coercing, Harry to cooperate in retrieving the Stone? He can just go get the Stone by himself, and then tackle Harry later. Or stun Harry and take his body along.
Why do the complex plot that got Harry to come there at the same time as Quirrel, potentially disrupting his maneuvers against Snape, and risk Harry’s interference while obtaining the Stone?
I was too flat about that statement. It was more of a guess what they were thinking. Making more ideas up—If he retrieves the stone, then Dumbledore will be on-site very quickly. Evidence will point to Quirrell, and Harry will become inaccessible.
He needs Harry there the moment he gets the stone so he can already be Harry by the time Dumbledore shows up.
That still doesn’t explain why he needs Harry to cooperate in obtaining the Stone. Even if it’s more convenient to have Harry walking along, rather than towing his stunned body, Quirrel went to a lot of trouble to secure Harry’s explicit help. He actually bargained and traded promises with him.
Which also leads me to ask: why couldn’t Quirrel just make Sprout or Snape mind-control Harry using Imperius? Why did he have to bargain with him?
Based on Harry apparently still feeling the aura of doom when Sprout was casting spells while Imperiused in Ch. 104, it’s likely that casting spells on Harry through someone else is subject to the same problems that doing it directly causes. I guess he could still use more mundane means like a tranquilizer dart and some kind of gurney, but it would be difficult to accomplish without either touching or using magic on Harry in the process.
That’s a plausible answer as to why he couldn’t make Sprout or Snape cast Imperius on Harry. But it doesn’t explain why he seems to need Harry’s active help.
He could just put Harry into a small, nonmagical cage or box, and float the box along, without his magic ever touching Harry directly. Or he could stuff Harry into the pouch, like Harry did to him in the Azkaban arc. (Granted, Harry can’t turn into a snake.) If he needed Harry to be stunned for the duration, he could have told Harry to stun himself, threatening to torture the other students if he didn’t.
I think this is all part of Quirrel’s long game. Voldemort could have taken Magical Britain by force, but didn’t. Why Voldemort, then? To be a scary villain and make people rally to “David Munroe”. Why? Political power is one answer, and it has been much talked about in the story, but I’m not convinced. “Rule Magical Britain” seems too small. But Magical Britain is the site of Merlin’s creations. It contains the Philosopher’s Stone. It contains Nicolas Flamel and his lore. It contains the Department of Mysteries, the Ministry has control over time-turners, and so on. Tom Riddle has been playing a very long game to obtain magical power. He has the secrets of Slytherin. He isn’t stopping there. Because of the Interdict of Merlin and the resulting decline of magic, old magic is powerful magic. This makes Flamel (Baba Yaga?) a huge, obvious, and dangerous target for Riddle. Dumbledore is as powerful as he is in large part because of what Flamel has shared with him. Riddle wants that power too, and force will probably not do the trick. What he needs is to inhabit a personality that Flamel and/or Dumbledore would support during a time of great need.
The Philosopher’s Stone is a huge milestone on his journey to power, but it’s not the end. I think Quirrel is setting up a narrative in which Harry destroys Voldemort/Quirrel, but Riddle actually ends up inhabiting Harry (or already does). “Voldemort” can, of course, be resurrected as a convenient antagonist at any time, creating a crisis that will induce Dumbledore to teach Harry all he knows. Dumbledore can be killed, in either that or a subsequent crisis, inducing Flamel to share with Harry even more than Dumbledore knew. And Harry, as leader of Magical Britain and potentially Head Warlock, etc., will have access to other powers as well.
So that’s why Harry has to be along, and possibly why Quirrel has suddenly turned obviously villainous instead of just taking Harry up on his offer to help get the stone. Harry is part of the narrative; he has to be there so he can be the hero. Harry’s remaining hour on his time-turner might be an intended part of this to make the whole thing plausible to Dumbledore and/or the rest of Magical Britain, who must believe in the end that Harry did actually best Voldemort in some clever way.
Does Flamel live in Britain? In real life, Flamel lived (and died) in France; I can’t remember if either canon or MOR said anything about his moving to Britain, but the Wikia doesn’t.
Why does Quirrel need Harry’s help to obtain the Stone? What can Harry do that can’t be done by Quirrel, Sprout, Snape (who is now controlled by Quirrel), the other students present (who want to get the Stone but not to use it, bypassing the Mirror), Harry’s Cloak and Time-Turner (now in Quirrel’s possession), and every other resource Quirrel could have prepared (e.g. Bellatrix)?
Finally, why did Quirrel have to bargain for Harry’s help, instead of having Sprout or Snape use Imperius on him?
I haven’t seen any theory that explains this, but surely such a major plot point should have been hinted in advance.
ETA: Harry agrees with my interpretation that we’re missing something:
I think we’ve got Dumbledore to thank for this one, honestly.
CanonVoldemort went to every effort to kill Dumbledore, but it seems clear that RationalistVoldemort could have murdered him at leisure. He keeps Dumbledore around as a sort of Batman to his Joker. It puts the story where he taught him not to respond to hostage taking in perspective.
Despite his disdain, Voldemort has to recognize that Dumbledore’s madness is occasionally an advantage. Since he elects not to kill Dumbledore, he has to compensate for it. I’d argue that he actually enjoys it on some level.
Thus, while all logic has Voldemort dead long ago (for all the reasons Harry/Quirrel discuss) Dumbledore leaps to the conclusion that Voldemort is alive and behind everything. That is, he leaps to the correct conclusion, for no reason.
Similarly, given a belief in the existence of Voldemort somewhere in the world, any other wizard would be searching diligently and inventively. Dumbledore, by contrast, sets up a trap that couldn’t be more obvious if it was a box propped up by a stick. Quirrel openly mocks it earlier in the tale.
Its a trap that should never work, and yet, here we are, with Lord Volodemort entering the trap.
Harry is, to Voldemort’s mind, mostly just a subset of his own abilities. Not as smart, shackled by stupid teachings, not as magically powerful. If the creator of the defenses was some kind of RivalVoldemort there would be no need whatsoever for him to bring the potentially traitorous Harry, but the defenses were designed by Dumbledore, and will be just as stupidsmart as you’d expect.
The traps set up by faculty are more or less just foreplay. They are set up by the Snapes of the world, just weaker and dumber versions of Voldemort. But Dumbledore’s might be a whole other kettle of fish.
Perhaps, in order to reach the mirror you must pass a Dementor? Its a stretch to imagine him having a dementor in the school, but maybe its trapped somehow so it can’t kill students?
Maybe you have to persuade a phoenix to bring the mirror? Or casting the spell to get to it requires your life energy so that if you don’t have a phoenix giving you strength you’ll die in the process.
Perhaps its as simple as the magical equivalent of a rock that only Dumbledore is strong enough to life. Or it is just keyed to only open for Harry Potter, because Dumbledore irrationally believes that Harry will be the next Great Hero.
The edges of Voldemort’s abilities, those minor tricks and habits that Harry has that Voldemort hasn’t deigned to acquire yet, might be the key to Dumbledore’s final barrier. Its worth bringing Harry along for that.
Beyond that, I think there is a bit of Steerpike syndrome here. Voldemort is probably, on some level, lonely, and Harry/Tom is useful as a sop to this.
I don’t think Dumbledore does shit for no reason. I think he knows more than he can let on, so he acts on what he knows but doesn’t provide the real justification because it would compromise his sources and methods. He probably has extensive access to prophecies, which are the only way we know about that information can travel back more than 6 hours. Dumbledore has done some very long range things, like “your father’s rock”, and the hint to Lily about thestral blood. This is a guy who has access to many more relevant prophecies than we have seen. He at least has bugged Trelawney’s bedside, and he may have sorted out better access than that. Plus, by being someone who is very powerful and extensively engages with, interprets, and acts upon prophecy, he becomes a relevant actor that prophecies tend to come to. Dumbledore is an excellent tool for prophecy, and vice versa.
Univat ernq 108, V srry fhcre cebhq bs guvf thrff.
Spoilers for Chapter 108 should be in rot13 in the thread on Chapters 105–107. (At least, I think that’s the rule, and I support such a rule. For now, I am having the good sense to not scroll up.)
Edit: Thanks!
Reference for Steerpike syndrome please?
The Gormenghast books are more or less about a castle full of what I’d call anti-rationalists. They are entirely ruled by customs passed down from prehistory, and are generally incapable of change or improvement.
Enter Steerpike, villain of the piece and scullery boy. He is, I guess I ’d call it awake, and strives to improve his lot rather than being content with what his birth dooms him to. He is resisted at every turn by the denizen’s bloody minded traditionalism (Spoilers: at one point he murders the 90 year old Master of Rituals, hoping to take his place, only for his 70 year old apprentice to come creeping out of the Room of Abiding where he has been waiting for this moment his entire life.)
Steerpike ultimately descends into terrorism out of more or less pure frustration. There’s an incident where his evil works are discovered, but he feels relief more than anything else, since he no longer has to pretend to swallow their dogmas. I see shades of him in Voldemort’s expressed deep loathing of the ordinary folks. I think he’s delighted to have Harry to talk to, despite being his enemy.
Thanks. Gormenghast is one thing that I found in my Google search, but the description that I read of Steerpike didn’t highlight loneliness as a character trait.
It’s a reference to the Gormenghast trilogy, of which one of the main characters is an isolated teenager named Steerpike.
I started reading the first book, but stopped about 20% of the way in (may have been less, it’s been a while since then), because I found it stupefyingly boring. Does that trilogy get any better later on ?
If you find it boring it’s probably not for you. I enjoy the language, the descriptions and so on. It’s the same as my recommendation for LOTR. I liked it a lot but I don’t think everyone should. I find both pleasant to read even when nothing is really happening in the story.
Oddly enough I really like LOTR as well as The Silmarillion… So maybe I should give this Gormenghast thing another shot, I don’t know.
I think the difference between LOTR/Simlarillion and Gormenghast is that Tolkien’s books contain well-crafted language and descriptions of scenery that are punctuated by moments of sheer epic overload; whereas Gormenghast contains the former but not the latter.
But again, I haven’t made it that far into it, so I could be wrong.
One theory voiced on the HPMOR subreddit is that Quirrell wants to use the stone to permanently transfigure himself into Harry.
That doesn’t explain why he needs the real Harry to obtain the Stone.
He wouldn’t need Harry to obtain the stone. He’d need Harry as a model.
But then why go through all the trouble of first trying to convince, and then coercing, Harry to cooperate in retrieving the Stone? He can just go get the Stone by himself, and then tackle Harry later. Or stun Harry and take his body along.
Why do the complex plot that got Harry to come there at the same time as Quirrel, potentially disrupting his maneuvers against Snape, and risk Harry’s interference while obtaining the Stone?
I was too flat about that statement. It was more of a guess what they were thinking. Making more ideas up—If he retrieves the stone, then Dumbledore will be on-site very quickly. Evidence will point to Quirrell, and Harry will become inaccessible.
He needs Harry there the moment he gets the stone so he can already be Harry by the time Dumbledore shows up.
That still doesn’t explain why he needs Harry to cooperate in obtaining the Stone. Even if it’s more convenient to have Harry walking along, rather than towing his stunned body, Quirrel went to a lot of trouble to secure Harry’s explicit help. He actually bargained and traded promises with him.
Which also leads me to ask: why couldn’t Quirrel just make Sprout or Snape mind-control Harry using Imperius? Why did he have to bargain with him?
In canon, Harry is very good at resisting Imperius, even when cast by Voldemort himself.
In canon, Harry has also resisted even scarier magic cast by Voldemort.
Good point. Although there’s also whatever mind control spell Quirrel just used on Snape:
Which Google informs me is a quotation from Horace meaning ‘[puppet-]wires that others pull’.
Still, I agree it might be too hard to control Harry on short notice using intermediaries.
Based on Harry apparently still feeling the aura of doom when Sprout was casting spells while Imperiused in Ch. 104, it’s likely that casting spells on Harry through someone else is subject to the same problems that doing it directly causes. I guess he could still use more mundane means like a tranquilizer dart and some kind of gurney, but it would be difficult to accomplish without either touching or using magic on Harry in the process.
That’s a plausible answer as to why he couldn’t make Sprout or Snape cast Imperius on Harry. But it doesn’t explain why he seems to need Harry’s active help.
He could just put Harry into a small, nonmagical cage or box, and float the box along, without his magic ever touching Harry directly. Or he could stuff Harry into the pouch, like Harry did to him in the Azkaban arc. (Granted, Harry can’t turn into a snake.) If he needed Harry to be stunned for the duration, he could have told Harry to stun himself, threatening to torture the other students if he didn’t.
I just made a mental connection—probably a stupid one. The pouch’s capacity was recently expanded and Cedric has yet to make an appearence...
I think this is all part of Quirrel’s long game. Voldemort could have taken Magical Britain by force, but didn’t. Why Voldemort, then? To be a scary villain and make people rally to “David Munroe”. Why? Political power is one answer, and it has been much talked about in the story, but I’m not convinced. “Rule Magical Britain” seems too small. But Magical Britain is the site of Merlin’s creations. It contains the Philosopher’s Stone. It contains Nicolas Flamel and his lore. It contains the Department of Mysteries, the Ministry has control over time-turners, and so on. Tom Riddle has been playing a very long game to obtain magical power. He has the secrets of Slytherin. He isn’t stopping there. Because of the Interdict of Merlin and the resulting decline of magic, old magic is powerful magic. This makes Flamel (Baba Yaga?) a huge, obvious, and dangerous target for Riddle. Dumbledore is as powerful as he is in large part because of what Flamel has shared with him. Riddle wants that power too, and force will probably not do the trick. What he needs is to inhabit a personality that Flamel and/or Dumbledore would support during a time of great need.
The Philosopher’s Stone is a huge milestone on his journey to power, but it’s not the end. I think Quirrel is setting up a narrative in which Harry destroys Voldemort/Quirrel, but Riddle actually ends up inhabiting Harry (or already does). “Voldemort” can, of course, be resurrected as a convenient antagonist at any time, creating a crisis that will induce Dumbledore to teach Harry all he knows. Dumbledore can be killed, in either that or a subsequent crisis, inducing Flamel to share with Harry even more than Dumbledore knew. And Harry, as leader of Magical Britain and potentially Head Warlock, etc., will have access to other powers as well.
So that’s why Harry has to be along, and possibly why Quirrel has suddenly turned obviously villainous instead of just taking Harry up on his offer to help get the stone. Harry is part of the narrative; he has to be there so he can be the hero. Harry’s remaining hour on his time-turner might be an intended part of this to make the whole thing plausible to Dumbledore and/or the rest of Magical Britain, who must believe in the end that Harry did actually best Voldemort in some clever way.
Does Flamel live in Britain? In real life, Flamel lived (and died) in France; I can’t remember if either canon or MOR said anything about his moving to Britain, but the Wikia doesn’t.
I didn’t know that and I may have made a bad assumption about Flamel’s location.