Things I notice I’m confused by: If Quirrel needs Harry’s help to get the stone, why didn’t he just ask? (Edit: okay, he did ask. But why didn’t just ask earlier? And why is he playing all these tricky games?) I mean, it already worked for freeing Bellatrix. If there’s a disturbance which Dumbledore suspects is a distraction, why did he send only Snape, rather than several aurors/coming himself?
What could Quirrel need Harry for? In canon, Harry could get the stone because he wanted to find it, not to use it, or something like that? But this Harry definitely wants to use it.
If there’s a disturbance which Dumbledore suspects is a distraction, why did he send only Snape, rather than several aurors/coming himself?
Hypothesis: the situation is a trap for Voldemort. The corridor itself is blatantly a trap—it’s easy to enter, but we know from Fred and George that it’s full of invisible wards. Voldemort wouldn’t risk confronting Dumbledore, and an unguarded corridor would be too suspicious, but Snape is just right in terms of difficulty level (and also has the option of going “my lord, you have returned!”, surviving an encounter which would be fatal for anyone else, and possibly sneaking off to call Dumbledore).
The flaw with this is that the trap is really obvious, and Voldemort’s intelligence is known to be very high, so it’s implausible that he would enter the corridor at all unless he was absolutely certain of being able to steal the Stone despite the wards, and before Dumbledore could return.
If there’s a disturbance which Dumbledore suspects is a distraction, why did he send only Snape, rather than several aurors/coming himself?
In canon, Dumbledore is called away for some business (Supreme Mugwump duties?), and I presume the same happens here. Now, why Dumbledore didn’t time-turner to both be at that business and here is harder to say—unless Quirrel explicitly used the time-turner prevention on going back more than X hours to send a message to Dumbledore preventing him from using his time-turner? I didn’t look closely enough at those rules to figure out whether or not it would be likely to work (and don’t have the time to pull out the relevant bits of HPMOR).
One way of preventing Dumbledore from using a time-turner is to have the disturbance take place at Azkaban. And after Bellatrix’s breakout, it shouldn’t be difficult to have him consider another potential Death Eater escape as a matter of absolute emergency requiring his personal intervention.
Of course, Azkaban is the one place Quirrell can’t act in directly, so he’d probably want to Imperius an off-duty Auror or something.
In the Azkaban arc, they were able to Time Turn away from Azkaban, do some preparation, then arrive after being informed of the breakout. I don’t think this would work to prevent Dumbledore from using a Time Turner to be in two places at once.
Things I notice I’m confused by: If Quirrel needs Harry’s help to get the stone, why didn’t he just ask? (Edit: okay, he did ask. But why didn’t just ask earlier? And why is he playing all these tricky games?) I mean, it already worked for freeing Bellatrix. If there’s a disturbance which Dumbledore suspects is a distraction, why did he send only Snape, rather than several aurors/coming himself?
What could Quirrel need Harry for? In canon, Harry could get the stone because he wanted to find it, not to use it, or something like that? But this Harry definitely wants to use it.
Hypothesis: the situation is a trap for Voldemort. The corridor itself is blatantly a trap—it’s easy to enter, but we know from Fred and George that it’s full of invisible wards. Voldemort wouldn’t risk confronting Dumbledore, and an unguarded corridor would be too suspicious, but Snape is just right in terms of difficulty level (and also has the option of going “my lord, you have returned!”, surviving an encounter which would be fatal for anyone else, and possibly sneaking off to call Dumbledore).
The flaw with this is that the trap is really obvious, and Voldemort’s intelligence is known to be very high, so it’s implausible that he would enter the corridor at all unless he was absolutely certain of being able to steal the Stone despite the wards, and before Dumbledore could return.
In canon, Dumbledore is called away for some business (Supreme Mugwump duties?), and I presume the same happens here. Now, why Dumbledore didn’t time-turner to both be at that business and here is harder to say—unless Quirrel explicitly used the time-turner prevention on going back more than X hours to send a message to Dumbledore preventing him from using his time-turner? I didn’t look closely enough at those rules to figure out whether or not it would be likely to work (and don’t have the time to pull out the relevant bits of HPMOR).
One way of preventing Dumbledore from using a time-turner is to have the disturbance take place at Azkaban. And after Bellatrix’s breakout, it shouldn’t be difficult to have him consider another potential Death Eater escape as a matter of absolute emergency requiring his personal intervention.
Of course, Azkaban is the one place Quirrell can’t act in directly, so he’d probably want to Imperius an off-duty Auror or something.
In the Azkaban arc, they were able to Time Turn away from Azkaban, do some preparation, then arrive after being informed of the breakout. I don’t think this would work to prevent Dumbledore from using a Time Turner to be in two places at once.