A Patronus (incorporeal!) intercepting an Avada Kedavra spell is bizarre and ridiculous. Anything less ridiculous would not have been able to interfere. With hindsight, sure, he should have known, but he doesn’t have hindsight, we do. Before the event, he couldn’t have possibly planned for Harry interfering like this, and we can see he already planned for any more probable level of interference—making Harry lie down on the steps far away, ordering him not to get involved, etc. If you really honestly think he should have expected a smart eleven-year-old boy possessed of a stronger-than-usual Patronus charm to be able to deflect the undeflectable curse, then he also should have planned for some equally bizarre event such as Dumbledore breaking the Apparation wards on Azkaban in order to teleport in front of the Avada Kedavra spell, and just taking it on chin because he’s invincible.
Honestly. Quirrell would have to be holding either the Idiot Ball or Batman’s belt in order to prepare for this.
I don’t think the relevant category here is an incorporeal Patronus intercepting an Avada Kedavra spell, so much as it is Harry’s magic coming into contact with Quirrell’s. Which does seem like a possibility plausible enough to be worth considering.
Also, Harry has a history of interacting unusually with Avada Kedavra spells, which might lead one to predict an unusual interaction in this case as well.
That said, I expect a lot of that is hindsight bias.
Which does seem like a possibility plausible enough to be worth considering.
Quirrell put Harry on the steps, out of direct line of fire, so that Harry wouldn’t try any magic to interfere with the duel or be hit by magic accidentally, and at this point he (rightfully) didn’t know the Avada Kedavra could be intercepted or deflected by any magic, so he shouldn’t have expected that Harry would be able to send any magic at all out into the line of fire of the spell.
I think it is mostly hindsight bias: before this particular event, nobody knew you could put magic in the way of an Avada Kedavra. Therefore, Quirrell should not have expected that Harry could put magic in the way of his Avada Kedavra, causing the reaction.
I think orthonormal was referring to Harry becoming royally pissed off and quite a bit more suspicious, more than (or rather than) Harry blocking the Killing Curse.
Ch. 58 shows that Quirrell expected the Auror to dodge, and had plans in case he wouldn’t be able to dodge. Harry would have been royally pissed that Quirrell tried, right up until Quirrell says exactly what he said to Harry when confronted about it later. And hell, if his explanation worked when Harry was that far into believing Quirrell was evil, it would have definitely worked immediately after the fact.
Ch. 58 shows that Quirrell expected the Auror to dodge
No it doesn’t. It shows that Quirrel knows what to say in response to being accused of trying to kill someone to make it look like that wasn’t actually his intention.
Given that AK is an Unforgivable, and according to canon the caster must ‘mean it’ to cast such a spell, I’m fairly confident that Quirrel’s explanation is a lie, though I will admit that I haven’t checked the exact mechanism for that kind of spell failure—if a not-meaning-it casting of AK would produce a similar visual effect, he could be telling the truth, and it could have been significantly safer than it looked—but in that case, why would he claim that he was intending to move the auror, rather than explaining that the spell was actually harmless?
Also, I doubt that when Voldemort kills some random mook he’s feeling personal hate towards him. And IIRC in canon Quirrelmort (ETA: no, not him, another Evil Teacher) kills some lab animals in class to demonstrate the killing curse; I’m sure he didn’t hate them. The requirement for hatred is a sort of “Negative Emotions == Dark Side” thing.
That’s interesting. Rational!Harry might not be well-versed in subtleties of casting unforgivables, so Quirrel’s explanation might look more plausible to him.
No it doesn’t. It shows that Quirrel knows what to say in response to being accused of trying to kill someone to make it look like that wasn’t actually his intention.
That he had an excuse ought to be evidence that he was intending to cast the Avada Kedavra and miss. The story makes more sense that way, too: Consider what would have happened if Quirrell had actually killed the Auror, without some crazy reaction from Harry’s magic. Now consider what would have happened if Quirrell had just barely missed. The first option has Quirrell and Harry in an emotional, full-blown argument in the middle of Azkaban with Bellatrix watching the Dark Lord berating a henchman for killing someone, and they haven’t escaped yet. The second option has protestations from Harry quickly squashed and a ready escape, with Bellatrix seeing the Dark Lord mock his henchman for failing to kill, leaving behind an Auror who will tell everyone they are looking for a phenomenally powerful sallow-faced wizard all by himself, not a professor and a student.
You’re misinterpretating the parent comment’s argument. It didn’t say Quirrel’s excuse was evidence he was intending to kill the Auror. It said it didn’t SHOW he wasn’t intending to kill him.
There’s a difference between ‘shows’ and ‘is evidence for’. I’d say that “shows” typically means “is CONCLUSIVE evidence for”.
That Quirrel had an excuse IS evidence he was not intending to kill the Auror—of course it’s evidence for that. It’s just not CONCLUSIVE evidence for that.
leaving behind an Auror who will tell everyone they are looking for a phenomenally powerful sallow-faced wizard all by himself, not a professor and a student.
Leaving behind a memory-wiped Auror who has no idea what happened.
Personally if I was Quirrell I would have expected a smart eleven-year-old boy with a strong desire to help people to very easily muck up a prison break in Azkaban. He almost did it when he almost killed himself with his strong patronus thinking about killing all the dementors. No doubt there are other things that could have gone wrong. No Plans survive first contact with the 11 year-old Harry.
Edit: Also: Why did Quirrell need the guy to dodge from an AK spell, if he could get through his shields to move him magically? Why not just place him wherever he wanted him.
And I maintain that Quirrell planned out all the reasonable methods for Harry to interfere, and took steps he felt were enough to combat these methods. That they weren’t enough is not something he could have known ahead of time; he was reasoning under uncertainty. We aren’t reasoning under uncertainty: we are reasoning with the certain fact that he did not prepare for enough ridiculousness. He doesn’t have that fact!
If you want to claim that Quirrell should not have been surprised, should have been prepared for anything Harry could do because he is that much better than Harry and that if he isn’t that much better, he is holding the Idiot Ball, well… this is where the needs of the story comes in. If Harry is to be masterful at interfering and creating dramatic tension, he needs to be surprisingly good at interfering: if he can’t surprise Quirrell, he can’t interfere, because it will already be planned for.
I maintain that EY is doing a believable job of keeping Harry surprising, because even if a perfect rationalist had updated on all the evidence available to Quirrell so far, it could not have predicted that Harry would be able to interfere, under the restrictions Quirrell had placed on Harry.
By the way, that is where all these rationalisations for Quirrell holding the Idiot Ball are coming from. Quirrell is updating on all evidence prior to his decision and making the right decision. We’re updating on evidence that comes after his decision: namely, that his decision was wrong. It is, of course, very tempting to say that Quirrell did something wrong, and that is why his decision was always wrong. But it was right when he made it! That later evidence makes him wrong does not mean he was always wrong; we are not talking facts here, but decisions.
I’m not so much concerned with the reasoning around the duel (apart from why AK was needed to make someone dodge). I’m mainly against Quirrell taking the boy to Azkaban in the first place. General common sense says that is not a good idea unless it is a desperate situation. Especially since Quirrell can’t cast magic on Harry if he decides to do something rash.
What is the expected utility of taking Harry to Azkaban in total, from Quirrells point of view?
What is the expected utility of taking Harry to Azkaban in total, from Quirrells point of view?
I don’t know his numbers, but something like (Bellatrix’s life—risk of failing and both dying). Given that he had the perfect plan, is maybe the most powerful wizard around, and had Harry along to beat the Dementors, the risk of failing was probably lower than half, which means the expected utility is positive.
We have very different views on how Quirrell reasons… the stakes are a lot higher from my perspective.
Taking him at face value I would expect him to be concerned with the outcome of the wizarding world’s fight against the human, thus him and Harry dieing would jeopardize that fight (there is no one else that seems concerned, no lieutenants to carry on the fight). So we are talking thousands of lives, from this perspective.
Bellatrix might be able to help the fight, whether she would save half as many lives than Harry and Quirrell, I’d guess not.
Surely Quirrell should have considered the possibility that Harry would come up with a surprisingly powerful move. It’s at least plausible that Quirrell’s plan was too brittle.
Surely Quirrell should have considered the possibility that Harry would come up with a surprisingly powerful move. It’s at least plausible that Quirrell’s plan was too brittle.
Actually, judging from his rant upon being awoken, his error was that he overestimated Harry. He thinks that someone as smart as Harry should have realized it would make no sense to kill the auror.
Essentially Q’s error was simply the Usual Error, i.e., assuming that others think in a way similar to ourselves, and especially, that they will find our intentions or conclusions equally obvious. To Q, it was obvious that nobody would be dumb enough to kill the auror under those circumstances.
That’s assuming Quirrel is telling the truth, though. If he didn’t intend to kill him, why use the Killing Curse? If the goal really was to subdue, to dominate, this doesn’t seem to be the logical approach:
The battle was almost won at that point, surely using other attacking spells would have been almost as successful. I think real-life fights could be used as analogy: If you intend to subdue, not kill, in real life, you use a taser/pepper spray/whatever, not a gun.
If you intend to subdue, not kill, in real life, you use a taser/pepper spray/whatever, not a gun.
Ever heard of a “warning shot”? ;-)
Seriously, though, you’re not noticing that you’re confused, here. For at least a week, a whole bunch of people here and on Fanfiction were going, “Wtf? Why is Quirrel holding the idiot ball?”, precisely because it would be idiotic to kill the auror, unless Q’s plan is considerably more complex than the story lets on.
In a way, we were suffering from Harry’s Intent To Kill bias, and thereby overlooking the non-lethal strategic potential of having a spell that must be dodged, and thus can be used to put an opponent on the psychological defensive.
Bahry took all the non-lethal damage Q could dish out, and spat at the offered terms—but he took the AK threat seriously, and might have negotiated in preference to having to dodge a second AK -- especially if Q told him the first was just a warning shot.
It was clearly within Quirrelmort’s power to subdue Bahry without escalating to the use of the killing curse. He wasn’t even exerting himself during the duel; if he needed to position Bahry for some reason, he could simply have started to pursue and maneuver. Bahry was clearly already on the psychological defensive, and was being forced to dodge his attacks, so using the killing curse is redundant for those purposes. Bahry’s own monologue notes that his magic was almost completely exhausted. He wouldn’t have been able to hold out much longer anyway.
If Quirrelmort had been forced to maneuver Bahry out of the way of his own curse, it would show Bahry that he was not actually trying to kill him, which stands to lower Bahry’s threat estimate of him and further galvanize his resistance, because Bahry will know Quirrelmort is committed to taking him alive. Bahry is certainly not going to decide to surrender because of Quirrelmort’s willingness to kill him, since he’s already been using potentially lethal spells, and he’s already aware that he’s outclassed. He’s implicitly prepared to go down fighting. It’s simply not clear how using the killing curse is useful in this situation.
When Quirrelmort used the killing curse, I noticed that I was confused, and after his explanation, I noticed that I was still confused. Quirrelmort’s explanation simply doesn’t add up.
On the other side, one doesn’t usually say “So be it” before firing a warning shot.
True—Q’s use is more akin to walking away from the bargaining table in a marketplace or a business negotiation. That is, it’s intended to make the other side go, “no, wait, let’s work something out”. ;-)
I don’t know what you think I’m confused about, if you elaborated on that, it would be helpful.
I do know that I’m confused about the current events in the story.
I don’t know wether Quirrel lies, I just noted that your explanation doesn’t make sense to me because it relies on Quirrel telling the truth, something we shouldn’t take for granted, in my opinion.
I can’t offer a better explanation, though.
It doesn’t rely on Quirrel telling the truth, it concludes that something (which Quirrel happened to say) is true.
This turns out to be an important distinction, at least in my own life. Trying to decide a priori whether someone is lying almost never works for me. (Paul Ekman, I’m not.) The answer always turns out to be “maybe,” and I frequently end up biased by whether I like the person, whether I’ve caught them lying in the past, etc.
It works better for me to decide what I think is or might be true, regardless of who said it.
Q1: Did Quirrel try to kill Bahry? It seems dumb for him to do so… it achieves no goals I can think of that couldn’t be achieved more easily, and it makes his stated goal of not being noticed far more difficult. So either (A) he was being dumb, (B) his actual goals are entirely opaque to me, or (C) he didn’t try to kill Bahry.
Q2: Did Quirrel try to achieve some nonlethal goal using an AK, as he claimed? That doesn’t make a lot of sense to me… like you, my intuition is there have to be better weapons for that purpose. So either (A) he was being dumb, (B) my intuition about Battle Magic is wrong and AK really is a sensible spell to feint with, or (C) he was trying to kill Bahry, see Q1.
I’m prepared to eliminate both A’s on narrative grounds… the author seems committed to not having Quirrel do dumb things. Both B’s are plausible, so my jury is still out… but I have more confidence in my intuitions about human goals than about Battle Magic, so if I have to choose I choose (Q1-False, Q2-True). But there’s a lot of uncertainty there.
If this were reality, I could (eventually) reduce the uncertainty by researching Battle Magic—is it ever tactically plausible to use an intentionally nonlethal AK as a forcing move? If not, then my tentative decision changes; if so, I hold it more strongly.
Of course, Harry does not have the time right now to consider that (or maybe he already knows enough to make it seem plausible, and the audience simply isn’t privy to that).
Anyway, my primary point here is that it’s often more useful for me to think about the events that happened and what seems a more plausible explanation, than to think about whether the person reporting them is lying or telling the truth. Accuracy is not reversed deception.
If this were reality, I could (eventually) reduce the uncertainty by researching Battle Magic—is it ever tactically plausible to use an intentionally nonlethal AK as a forcing move? If not, then my tentative decision changes; if so, I hold it more strongly.
Interestingly, my intuition tells me that AK is perfectly sensible to feint with. It’s like putting someone in check in chess—they have to get out of it by one of a very few limited ways. To not do so would be checkmate and the end of the game, much like dying is the end of the duel.
(And there are plenty of analogues in existing martial arts. In a taekwondo sparring match, I might execute a very strong roundhouse kick to the head, knowing that the other fellow will see it coming well in advance and that their only sensible reaction is to dodge it by stepping backwards and loosening their guard—giving me room to instantly follow up upon landing with a front snap kick.)
In a taekwondo sparring match, I might execute a very strong roundhouse kick to the head, knowing that the other fellow will see it coming well in advance and that their only sensible reaction is to dodge it by stepping backwards and loosening their guard—giving me room to instantly follow up upon landing with a front snap kick.
My first thought when reading that was rather skeptical. Stepping back and loosening one’s guard in response to an attempted roundhouse kick to the head is far from the only sensible reaction and the defender is not the one left in the vulnerable position.
That said, you did say taekwondo match, and not actual combat. Most of the most effective responses to that move are forbidden in that game. Grappling to exploit the complete lack of stable balance is kind of a no no and incapacitating blows in the areas you leave wide open don’t get you points because they aren’t on the red dot.
Your point stands even though I prefer your chess analogy. Wizard duels with AK are not a game. Chess is, but at least it is up front about it. On the other hand the thing that allows the use of a strategic ‘very strong roundhouse to the head’ is the very thing that makes it different to a duel to the death with AK. Or AKs, for that matter—laying down ‘covering fire’ is another obvious illustration of the principle that relevant.
very strong roundhouse kick to the head
*cough* Oxymoronic! Roundhouses to the head are fun and they make you feel (and look!) badass but they are definitely not very strong.
Stepping back and loosening one’s guard in response to an attempted roundhouse kick to the head is far from the only sensible reaction and the defender is not the one left in the vulnerable position.
It’s the most sensible one. Assume closed cover and I’m kicking with the right leg. There are 4 directions to move. If he moves to my left, then I simply continue my kick and hit him. If he moves right, then he still gets hit but the kick might be a little weaker. If he moves back, then it’ll be a clean miss. If he moves forward, then he’s jamming himself as well as me and moving into a punch. If he blocks high, then he’s exposed a good chunk of his chest. And so on. Of these moves, the best one is to move backwards and try to hit me with something when I land.
That said, you did say taekwondo match, and not actual combat. Most of the most effective responses to that move are forbidden in that game.
Yes, that is a very important point and why I specified taekwondo! In a match with grappling, assuming we’re in closed cover, the best move would then be to block high, step forward between my legs, and simply sweep me backwards. (Alternately, block high and then do a push kick to knock me down even more spectacularly; but there might not be enough room to chamber your leg.) There would be more than enough time to do that before I could bring my leg back down.
Your point stands even though I prefer your chess analogy.
I tried to offer multiple analogies so people could pick the one they like best. The idea of forcing via feints is a general one and so we should expect to see it frequently.
Roundhouses to the head are fun and they make you feel (and look!) badass but they are definitely not very strong.
I disagree. In one tournament, I ran out of wind (aerobic endurance is my weakest point), my guard fell apart, my opponent won with 1 roundhouse to my head, and I walked away with a concussion. At least, I think that’s what happened; my memory of the match is very hazy.
I disagree. In one tournament, I ran out of wind (aerobic endurance is my weakest point), my guard fell apart, my opponent won with 1 roundhouse to my head, and I walked away with a concussion. At least, I think that’s what happened; my memory of the match is very hazy.
Being a relatively weak move doesn’t preclude it being effective against an opponent incapacitated by both fatigue and rules that preclude all the most appropriate responses. In the same way it would work against an untrained opponent, a baby that you were trying to steal candy from or someone who was kneeling down and bound hand and foot. It remains trivially true that trying to kick that far above the waist sacrifices much of your power.
The one feature avada kedavra has could be seen as analogous to a roundhouse to the head is a high syllable count; it is vulnerable to a stupify interrupt..
Definitely. Can you think of something better than stupify for a crippling strike that could interrupt an avada kedavra, or even the stunner itself? I don’t recall too many of the names.
Being a relatively weak move doesn’t preclude it being effective against an opponent incapacitated by both fatigue and rules that preclude all the most appropriate responses.
I think you’re equivocating on ‘weak’ and ‘strong’. Your first comment clearly was using it in a sense of physical or mechanical force measure, which struck me as deeply implausible given the length of the leg-lever and the long time period in which one can power up a roundhouse kick, and given my own personal experiences with being kicked in the head. But now you seem to be using it in some sort of strategic or game-theoretic sense and claiming a roundhouse to the head is dominated by other moves in most situations.
I think you’re equivocating on ‘weak’ and ‘strong’.
On that you are mistaken (and there is nothing that I have said that implies such meaning). Of course, I did also discuss strategic relevance—because that was the whole point of the analogy.
which struck me as deeply implausible given the length of the leg-lever and the long time period in which one can power up a roundhouse kick
You appear to be leaving off the to the head part, which is precisely what ensures that the move is not a strong one. I am surprised that this is even remotely controversial, particularly among those who profess personal expertise. Every instructor I have trained under has taken care to point out how much power is lost when trying to kick so high and I have no particular qualms in suggesting that if you have been advised to the contrary you need a better instructor.
and given my own personal experiences with being kicked in the head.
I refrained from mentioning my own experience being kicked in the head because I didn’t consider it particularly strong evidence. I had a saw jaw for days after I won that bout. I’m lucky he didn’t hit me in the head with a solid punch instead, I would quite probably have been hospitalised or worse!
I am surprised that this is even remotely controversial, particularly among those who profess personal expertise. Every instructor I have trained under has taken care to point out how much power is lost when trying to kick so high and I have no particular qualms in suggesting that if you have been advised to the contrary you need a better instructor.
I think we have gone as far as we can here, and there’s no point discussing it further without citations.
and there’s no point discussing it further without citations.
But now that you mention it, I took a glance at the old faithful reference. Brief, but it seems well balanced. This part in particular seemed spot on:
On the other hand, the high kicks practised in traditional martial arts or the flying/jumping kicks performed in synthesis styles are primarily performed for conditioning or aesthetic reasons.
Reasoning by analogy is great, but at some point you have to be able to demonstrate sufficient isomorphism to justify the analogy.
What I’d be trying to determine by researching Battle Magic is precisely whether your analogies to chess and TKD hold. As opposed to, for example, the analogy Aharon used in the first place of taser vs. revolver.
Trivial example: if it’s just as easy for a shield to block a “kill” spell as a “sleep” spell, then you can feint with a sleep spell just as effectively… whichever one hits me, I lose, so I have to dodge them both. In that world, your TKD analogy doesn’t hold, and Quirrel’s claim is unconvincing.
I don’t know enough about the HPverse to know if the analogy holds there, nor am I sure Harry does, which is why I’m uncertain. (By contrast, I still have no firm idea what Quirrel is doing with the flask in Bella’s cell, but I’m fairly sure that Harry has a firm idea that the audience simply hasn’t been informed of.)
Trivial example: if it’s just as easy for a shield to block a “kill” spell as a “sleep” spell, then you can feint with a sleep spell just as effectively
Right, not the case in HPverse—the killing curse is special because it’s the only one that can’t be blocked (though it’s pretty vague what “can’t be blocked” means)
Ah! If that’s true, then Quirrel’s explanation is a lot more convincing… in fact, I think that tips me well over the edge of uncertainty into believing Quirrel’s account is correct.
Thanks! (As may be obvious, I’m not actually that much of an HP fan. I’ve read a few of the books and have some grasp of the world, and have browsed some online sources while thinking about the various puzzles in MOR, but I’m woefully ignorant. In fact, I got through most of MOR before realizing that Quirrel had been Quirrelmorted in the original.)
“Would have pusshed him out of the way with own magic, fool boy!”
Under what magic system can you push someone out of the way with magic that you can’t also just cast sleep on them? He could always cast ghetto sleep, i.e. quickly accelerating the guys head into a solid object.
Is there some reason I’m not seeing that Quirrell needs to make him submit in a non-magical way?
Nope, Quirrell is obviously lying to Harry; he really did intent to kill the guy. Seriously, cast a spell at close range and then push the target out of the way? That’s absurd; not only is telekinesis almost certainly much too slow for that, it would be a stupid thing to do even if it worked.
Okay that makes a bit more sense. Occlumency seems odd (like animagus) in that it still works when you are unconscious, I was assuming other more active types of mental defence,
It still strikes me as an odd tactic, though.
If I was trying to dominate someone I would knock them out, strip them, restrain them, gag them. Then wake them up. Make them powerless, not engage in an elaborate duel where they still have the agency to dodge and defend and may nurture the flame of hope of a lucky strike.
Under what magic system can you push someone out of the way with magic that you can’t also just cast sleep on them?
One where the defenses have to be matched to the attacks—i.e., the one that is clearly in effect at the time of the duel. ;-)
If wizard duels were strictly about relative power rather than strategy, nobody would ever duel someone at or above their own power level. Ergo, strategy and skill are involved, and as illustrated part of that skill is reaction time and choice of blocking spells. While Bahry is dodging the AK, he may not be shielding against something that gives him a little nudge or increases his speed, or changes his relative time perception, or something else that gives him an edge at dodging.
IOW, it’s unlikely he has any shields up against people helping him. That may actually be quite important in a magical world where intent actually matters. ;-)
While Bahry is dodging the AK, he may not be shielding against something that gives him a little nudge or increases his speed, or changes his relative time perception, or something else that gives him an edge at dodging.
But Quirrell specifies pushing. Pushing is something that should always be guarded against else it can muck up your spell casting gestures.
Eta: Shields against nudges/telekinesis is the only kind of shield useful for AK, so you can’t be held in place, so I would expect him to have them up then, if he ever has them up.
IOW, it’s unlikely he has any shields up against people helping him.
Shields that can tell whether something is helpful or harmful (telekinesis can be either)? Blegh. I don’t like those types of systems. I don’t remember other things that can tell intent apart from artifact level spells.
I’d expect shields to be like firewalls and allow allies to cast spells through or certain classes of spells (such as healing) to solve that problem.
Otherwise it is getting close to being intelligent! Harry will have to start worrying about stopping casting some shields in case they are sentient.
Otherwise it is getting close to being intelligent! Harry will have to start worrying about stopping casting some shields in case they are sentient.
My opinion is that this is exactly where the story is going. Harry will eventually conclude that magic must be intelligent to do what it’s doing. (The best outcome, from Harry’s perspective, would be a single AI consciousness that merely fakes the sapience of snakes, the Sorting Hat, etc, so no harm done. A better outcome, for us readers, would be Harry’s sudden realisation, almost too late, that his research into the fundamentals magic is causing an exponential explosion in the number of tortured sophonts.)
This is probably a place where Q’s original lesson on the curse in MOR (the one where he keeps saying, “One killing curse will bring it down!”) might have been usefully supplemented by it being mentioned that it’s the only unblockable spell—as opposed to just saying that nobody can block it.
However, there’s plenty of places in MOR where shock and awe are expressed over Harry’s surviving a (presumed) direct hit from the killing curse. IOW, it’s shown in MOR that the killing curse is unblockable and that this is an important fact about it. But perhaps for this particular plot point, it isn’t emphasized enough that it’s the only fighting spell that can’t be blocked by something.
In a taekwondo sparring match, I might execute a very strong roundhouse kick to the head, knowing that the other fellow will see it coming well in advance and that their only sensible reaction is to dodge it by stepping backwards and loosening their guard
looks like you are used to fighting people who are significantly less skilled than you, ie. complete loosers. I you were fighting me, it would be your biggest mistake is to let me see it coming well in advance, because the only sensible reaction of a normal person (vs. a looser) is to use the “advanced notification” effectively—i personally like to move in and cut your move short working on your liver and heart.
And yes, i once won a fight against 3 guys on the street using exactly the roundhouse you described right into the jaw of the central, strongest, guy. I got him knocked down, and the other 2 got scared and stopped attacking me. You see, they were loosers.
looks like you are used to fighting people who are significantly less skilled than you, ie. complete loosers.
This is true; most of my sparring matches are with relative beginners or new people in the clubs. I’m not sure I would try that sort of feint in a match against a fellow black-belt; but those matches are so fast that I’d need to watch video to see what sort of feint I would use.
I got him knocked down, and the other 2 got scared and stopped attacking me. You see, they were loosers.
3 or 4 years ago I saw a sort of study using statistics about n-on-1 fights which concluded that the odds were against the 1, but if they had to fight, the best approach was to single out and defeat 1 of the n others; so your anecdote would not surprise me.
(I haven’t been able to refind that web page/study even though I’ve looked for it more than once, so if this sounds familiar to anyone, I’d appreciate a citation!)
Well, yeah, Quirrell could have considered the possibility that Harry would do something he couldn’t have possibly planned for. But considering the possibility isn’t the same as planning for it, and almost by definition he couldn’t have planned for it. If you look at the passage just before the fight with Bahry, he did maneuver Harry into a position where even if he did have some spell that could block an Avada, he wouldn’t have been able to direct it into the fight in time. He was expecting some interference, and he planned for it so that Harry wouldn’t be able or would feel inclined not to interfere.
A Patronus (incorporeal!) intercepting an Avada Kedavra spell is bizarre and ridiculous. Anything less ridiculous would not have been able to interfere. With hindsight, sure, he should have known, but he doesn’t have hindsight, we do. Before the event, he couldn’t have possibly planned for Harry interfering like this, and we can see he already planned for any more probable level of interference—making Harry lie down on the steps far away, ordering him not to get involved, etc. If you really honestly think he should have expected a smart eleven-year-old boy possessed of a stronger-than-usual Patronus charm to be able to deflect the undeflectable curse, then he also should have planned for some equally bizarre event such as Dumbledore breaking the Apparation wards on Azkaban in order to teleport in front of the Avada Kedavra spell, and just taking it on chin because he’s invincible.
Honestly. Quirrell would have to be holding either the Idiot Ball or Batman’s belt in order to prepare for this.
You’re right- here’s the Idiot Ball, in my pocket all along.
I don’t think the relevant category here is an incorporeal Patronus intercepting an Avada Kedavra spell, so much as it is Harry’s magic coming into contact with Quirrell’s. Which does seem like a possibility plausible enough to be worth considering.
Also, Harry has a history of interacting unusually with Avada Kedavra spells, which might lead one to predict an unusual interaction in this case as well.
That said, I expect a lot of that is hindsight bias.
Quirrell put Harry on the steps, out of direct line of fire, so that Harry wouldn’t try any magic to interfere with the duel or be hit by magic accidentally, and at this point he (rightfully) didn’t know the Avada Kedavra could be intercepted or deflected by any magic, so he shouldn’t have expected that Harry would be able to send any magic at all out into the line of fire of the spell.
I think it is mostly hindsight bias: before this particular event, nobody knew you could put magic in the way of an Avada Kedavra. Therefore, Quirrell should not have expected that Harry could put magic in the way of his Avada Kedavra, causing the reaction.
I think orthonormal was referring to Harry becoming royally pissed off and quite a bit more suspicious, more than (or rather than) Harry blocking the Killing Curse.
Ch. 58 shows that Quirrell expected the Auror to dodge, and had plans in case he wouldn’t be able to dodge. Harry would have been royally pissed that Quirrell tried, right up until Quirrell says exactly what he said to Harry when confronted about it later. And hell, if his explanation worked when Harry was that far into believing Quirrell was evil, it would have definitely worked immediately after the fact.
No it doesn’t. It shows that Quirrel knows what to say in response to being accused of trying to kill someone to make it look like that wasn’t actually his intention.
Given that AK is an Unforgivable, and according to canon the caster must ‘mean it’ to cast such a spell, I’m fairly confident that Quirrel’s explanation is a lie, though I will admit that I haven’t checked the exact mechanism for that kind of spell failure—if a not-meaning-it casting of AK would produce a similar visual effect, he could be telling the truth, and it could have been significantly safer than it looked—but in that case, why would he claim that he was intending to move the auror, rather than explaining that the spell was actually harmless?
According to canon, the spell must be cast with hatred. I’m not sure it has to be cast with the intent to be lethal.
Also, I doubt that when Voldemort kills some random mook he’s feeling personal hate towards him. And IIRC in canon Quirrelmort (ETA: no, not him, another Evil Teacher) kills some lab animals in class to demonstrate the killing curse; I’m sure he didn’t hate them. The requirement for hatred is a sort of “Negative Emotions == Dark Side” thing.
You’re thinking of Barty Crouch Jr. masquerading as Alastor Moody in Goblet of Fire.
EDIT: typo
Right, thanks!
Alastor.
thanks
That’s interesting. Rational!Harry might not be well-versed in subtleties of casting unforgivables, so Quirrel’s explanation might look more plausible to him.
So him having an excuse prepared for when he casts AK and doesn’t end up killing an Auror is evidence that he was intending to kill the Auror? Then him not having an excuse for when he fails to kill the Auror would have been evidence that he wasn’t intending to kill the Auror..
That he had an excuse ought to be evidence that he was intending to cast the Avada Kedavra and miss. The story makes more sense that way, too: Consider what would have happened if Quirrell had actually killed the Auror, without some crazy reaction from Harry’s magic. Now consider what would have happened if Quirrell had just barely missed. The first option has Quirrell and Harry in an emotional, full-blown argument in the middle of Azkaban with Bellatrix watching the Dark Lord berating a henchman for killing someone, and they haven’t escaped yet. The second option has protestations from Harry quickly squashed and a ready escape, with Bellatrix seeing the Dark Lord mock his henchman for failing to kill, leaving behind an Auror who will tell everyone they are looking for a phenomenally powerful sallow-faced wizard all by himself, not a professor and a student.
You’re misinterpretating the parent comment’s argument. It didn’t say Quirrel’s excuse was evidence he was intending to kill the Auror. It said it didn’t SHOW he wasn’t intending to kill him.
There’s a difference between ‘shows’ and ‘is evidence for’. I’d say that “shows” typically means “is CONCLUSIVE evidence for”.
That Quirrel had an excuse IS evidence he was not intending to kill the Auror—of course it’s evidence for that. It’s just not CONCLUSIVE evidence for that.
Leaving behind a memory-wiped Auror who has no idea what happened.
Harry is masterful at interfering.
Personally if I was Quirrell I would have expected a smart eleven-year-old boy with a strong desire to help people to very easily muck up a prison break in Azkaban. He almost did it when he almost killed himself with his strong patronus thinking about killing all the dementors. No doubt there are other things that could have gone wrong. No Plans survive first contact with the 11 year-old Harry.
Edit: Also: Why did Quirrell need the guy to dodge from an AK spell, if he could get through his shields to move him magically? Why not just place him wherever he wanted him.
And I maintain that Quirrell planned out all the reasonable methods for Harry to interfere, and took steps he felt were enough to combat these methods. That they weren’t enough is not something he could have known ahead of time; he was reasoning under uncertainty. We aren’t reasoning under uncertainty: we are reasoning with the certain fact that he did not prepare for enough ridiculousness. He doesn’t have that fact!
If you want to claim that Quirrell should not have been surprised, should have been prepared for anything Harry could do because he is that much better than Harry and that if he isn’t that much better, he is holding the Idiot Ball, well… this is where the needs of the story comes in. If Harry is to be masterful at interfering and creating dramatic tension, he needs to be surprisingly good at interfering: if he can’t surprise Quirrell, he can’t interfere, because it will already be planned for.
I maintain that EY is doing a believable job of keeping Harry surprising, because even if a perfect rationalist had updated on all the evidence available to Quirrell so far, it could not have predicted that Harry would be able to interfere, under the restrictions Quirrell had placed on Harry.
By the way, that is where all these rationalisations for Quirrell holding the Idiot Ball are coming from. Quirrell is updating on all evidence prior to his decision and making the right decision. We’re updating on evidence that comes after his decision: namely, that his decision was wrong. It is, of course, very tempting to say that Quirrell did something wrong, and that is why his decision was always wrong. But it was right when he made it! That later evidence makes him wrong does not mean he was always wrong; we are not talking facts here, but decisions.
I’m not so much concerned with the reasoning around the duel (apart from why AK was needed to make someone dodge). I’m mainly against Quirrell taking the boy to Azkaban in the first place. General common sense says that is not a good idea unless it is a desperate situation. Especially since Quirrell can’t cast magic on Harry if he decides to do something rash.
What is the expected utility of taking Harry to Azkaban in total, from Quirrells point of view?
How many more months could Bellatrix last in there?
I don’t know his numbers, but something like (Bellatrix’s life—risk of failing and both dying). Given that he had the perfect plan, is maybe the most powerful wizard around, and had Harry along to beat the Dementors, the risk of failing was probably lower than half, which means the expected utility is positive.
We have very different views on how Quirrell reasons… the stakes are a lot higher from my perspective.
Taking him at face value I would expect him to be concerned with the outcome of the wizarding world’s fight against the human, thus him and Harry dieing would jeopardize that fight (there is no one else that seems concerned, no lieutenants to carry on the fight). So we are talking thousands of lives, from this perspective.
Bellatrix might be able to help the fight, whether she would save half as many lives than Harry and Quirrell, I’d guess not.
Surely Quirrell should have considered the possibility that Harry would come up with a surprisingly powerful move. It’s at least plausible that Quirrell’s plan was too brittle.
Actually, judging from his rant upon being awoken, his error was that he overestimated Harry. He thinks that someone as smart as Harry should have realized it would make no sense to kill the auror.
Essentially Q’s error was simply the Usual Error, i.e., assuming that others think in a way similar to ourselves, and especially, that they will find our intentions or conclusions equally obvious. To Q, it was obvious that nobody would be dumb enough to kill the auror under those circumstances.
That’s assuming Quirrel is telling the truth, though. If he didn’t intend to kill him, why use the Killing Curse? If the goal really was to subdue, to dominate, this doesn’t seem to be the logical approach: The battle was almost won at that point, surely using other attacking spells would have been almost as successful. I think real-life fights could be used as analogy: If you intend to subdue, not kill, in real life, you use a taser/pepper spray/whatever, not a gun.
Ever heard of a “warning shot”? ;-)
Seriously, though, you’re not noticing that you’re confused, here. For at least a week, a whole bunch of people here and on Fanfiction were going, “Wtf? Why is Quirrel holding the idiot ball?”, precisely because it would be idiotic to kill the auror, unless Q’s plan is considerably more complex than the story lets on.
In a way, we were suffering from Harry’s Intent To Kill bias, and thereby overlooking the non-lethal strategic potential of having a spell that must be dodged, and thus can be used to put an opponent on the psychological defensive.
Bahry took all the non-lethal damage Q could dish out, and spat at the offered terms—but he took the AK threat seriously, and might have negotiated in preference to having to dodge a second AK -- especially if Q told him the first was just a warning shot.
It was clearly within Quirrelmort’s power to subdue Bahry without escalating to the use of the killing curse. He wasn’t even exerting himself during the duel; if he needed to position Bahry for some reason, he could simply have started to pursue and maneuver. Bahry was clearly already on the psychological defensive, and was being forced to dodge his attacks, so using the killing curse is redundant for those purposes. Bahry’s own monologue notes that his magic was almost completely exhausted. He wouldn’t have been able to hold out much longer anyway.
If Quirrelmort had been forced to maneuver Bahry out of the way of his own curse, it would show Bahry that he was not actually trying to kill him, which stands to lower Bahry’s threat estimate of him and further galvanize his resistance, because Bahry will know Quirrelmort is committed to taking him alive. Bahry is certainly not going to decide to surrender because of Quirrelmort’s willingness to kill him, since he’s already been using potentially lethal spells, and he’s already aware that he’s outclassed. He’s implicitly prepared to go down fighting. It’s simply not clear how using the killing curse is useful in this situation.
When Quirrelmort used the killing curse, I noticed that I was confused, and after his explanation, I noticed that I was still confused. Quirrelmort’s explanation simply doesn’t add up.
On the other side, one doesn’t usually say “So be it” before firing a warning shot.
True—Q’s use is more akin to walking away from the bargaining table in a marketplace or a business negotiation. That is, it’s intended to make the other side go, “no, wait, let’s work something out”. ;-)
I don’t know what you think I’m confused about, if you elaborated on that, it would be helpful. I do know that I’m confused about the current events in the story. I don’t know wether Quirrel lies, I just noted that your explanation doesn’t make sense to me because it relies on Quirrel telling the truth, something we shouldn’t take for granted, in my opinion. I can’t offer a better explanation, though.
It doesn’t rely on Quirrel telling the truth, it concludes that something (which Quirrel happened to say) is true.
This turns out to be an important distinction, at least in my own life. Trying to decide a priori whether someone is lying almost never works for me. (Paul Ekman, I’m not.) The answer always turns out to be “maybe,” and I frequently end up biased by whether I like the person, whether I’ve caught them lying in the past, etc.
It works better for me to decide what I think is or might be true, regardless of who said it.
Q1: Did Quirrel try to kill Bahry? It seems dumb for him to do so… it achieves no goals I can think of that couldn’t be achieved more easily, and it makes his stated goal of not being noticed far more difficult. So either (A) he was being dumb, (B) his actual goals are entirely opaque to me, or (C) he didn’t try to kill Bahry.
Q2: Did Quirrel try to achieve some nonlethal goal using an AK, as he claimed? That doesn’t make a lot of sense to me… like you, my intuition is there have to be better weapons for that purpose. So either (A) he was being dumb, (B) my intuition about Battle Magic is wrong and AK really is a sensible spell to feint with, or (C) he was trying to kill Bahry, see Q1.
I’m prepared to eliminate both A’s on narrative grounds… the author seems committed to not having Quirrel do dumb things. Both B’s are plausible, so my jury is still out… but I have more confidence in my intuitions about human goals than about Battle Magic, so if I have to choose I choose (Q1-False, Q2-True). But there’s a lot of uncertainty there.
If this were reality, I could (eventually) reduce the uncertainty by researching Battle Magic—is it ever tactically plausible to use an intentionally nonlethal AK as a forcing move? If not, then my tentative decision changes; if so, I hold it more strongly.
Of course, Harry does not have the time right now to consider that (or maybe he already knows enough to make it seem plausible, and the audience simply isn’t privy to that).
Anyway, my primary point here is that it’s often more useful for me to think about the events that happened and what seems a more plausible explanation, than to think about whether the person reporting them is lying or telling the truth. Accuracy is not reversed deception.
Interestingly, my intuition tells me that AK is perfectly sensible to feint with. It’s like putting someone in check in chess—they have to get out of it by one of a very few limited ways. To not do so would be checkmate and the end of the game, much like dying is the end of the duel.
(And there are plenty of analogues in existing martial arts. In a taekwondo sparring match, I might execute a very strong roundhouse kick to the head, knowing that the other fellow will see it coming well in advance and that their only sensible reaction is to dodge it by stepping backwards and loosening their guard—giving me room to instantly follow up upon landing with a front snap kick.)
My first thought when reading that was rather skeptical. Stepping back and loosening one’s guard in response to an attempted roundhouse kick to the head is far from the only sensible reaction and the defender is not the one left in the vulnerable position.
That said, you did say taekwondo match, and not actual combat. Most of the most effective responses to that move are forbidden in that game. Grappling to exploit the complete lack of stable balance is kind of a no no and incapacitating blows in the areas you leave wide open don’t get you points because they aren’t on the red dot.
Your point stands even though I prefer your chess analogy. Wizard duels with AK are not a game. Chess is, but at least it is up front about it. On the other hand the thing that allows the use of a strategic ‘very strong roundhouse to the head’ is the very thing that makes it different to a duel to the death with AK. Or AKs, for that matter—laying down ‘covering fire’ is another obvious illustration of the principle that relevant.
*cough* Oxymoronic! Roundhouses to the head are fun and they make you feel (and look!) badass but they are definitely not very strong.
It’s the most sensible one. Assume closed cover and I’m kicking with the right leg. There are 4 directions to move. If he moves to my left, then I simply continue my kick and hit him. If he moves right, then he still gets hit but the kick might be a little weaker. If he moves back, then it’ll be a clean miss. If he moves forward, then he’s jamming himself as well as me and moving into a punch. If he blocks high, then he’s exposed a good chunk of his chest. And so on. Of these moves, the best one is to move backwards and try to hit me with something when I land.
Yes, that is a very important point and why I specified taekwondo! In a match with grappling, assuming we’re in closed cover, the best move would then be to block high, step forward between my legs, and simply sweep me backwards. (Alternately, block high and then do a push kick to knock me down even more spectacularly; but there might not be enough room to chamber your leg.) There would be more than enough time to do that before I could bring my leg back down.
I tried to offer multiple analogies so people could pick the one they like best. The idea of forcing via feints is a general one and so we should expect to see it frequently.
I disagree. In one tournament, I ran out of wind (aerobic endurance is my weakest point), my guard fell apart, my opponent won with 1 roundhouse to my head, and I walked away with a concussion. At least, I think that’s what happened; my memory of the match is very hazy.
Being a relatively weak move doesn’t preclude it being effective against an opponent incapacitated by both fatigue and rules that preclude all the most appropriate responses. In the same way it would work against an untrained opponent, a baby that you were trying to steal candy from or someone who was kneeling down and bound hand and foot. It remains trivially true that trying to kick that far above the waist sacrifices much of your power.
The one feature avada kedavra has could be seen as analogous to a roundhouse to the head is a high syllable count; it is vulnerable to a stupify interrupt..
Syllable count should be an important principle of Battle Magic.
Definitely. Can you think of something better than stupify for a crippling strike that could interrupt an avada kedavra, or even the stunner itself? I don’t recall too many of the names.
I think you’re equivocating on ‘weak’ and ‘strong’. Your first comment clearly was using it in a sense of physical or mechanical force measure, which struck me as deeply implausible given the length of the leg-lever and the long time period in which one can power up a roundhouse kick, and given my own personal experiences with being kicked in the head. But now you seem to be using it in some sort of strategic or game-theoretic sense and claiming a roundhouse to the head is dominated by other moves in most situations.
On that you are mistaken (and there is nothing that I have said that implies such meaning). Of course, I did also discuss strategic relevance—because that was the whole point of the analogy.
You appear to be leaving off the to the head part, which is precisely what ensures that the move is not a strong one. I am surprised that this is even remotely controversial, particularly among those who profess personal expertise. Every instructor I have trained under has taken care to point out how much power is lost when trying to kick so high and I have no particular qualms in suggesting that if you have been advised to the contrary you need a better instructor.
I refrained from mentioning my own experience being kicked in the head because I didn’t consider it particularly strong evidence. I had a saw jaw for days after I won that bout. I’m lucky he didn’t hit me in the head with a solid punch instead, I would quite probably have been hospitalised or worse!
I think we have gone as far as we can here, and there’s no point discussing it further without citations.
That had been my conclusion.
But now that you mention it, I took a glance at the old faithful reference. Brief, but it seems well balanced. This part in particular seemed spot on:
Buyer beware.
I think the general term here is “offensive pressure”.
Reasoning by analogy is great, but at some point you have to be able to demonstrate sufficient isomorphism to justify the analogy.
What I’d be trying to determine by researching Battle Magic is precisely whether your analogies to chess and TKD hold. As opposed to, for example, the analogy Aharon used in the first place of taser vs. revolver.
Trivial example: if it’s just as easy for a shield to block a “kill” spell as a “sleep” spell, then you can feint with a sleep spell just as effectively… whichever one hits me, I lose, so I have to dodge them both. In that world, your TKD analogy doesn’t hold, and Quirrel’s claim is unconvincing.
I don’t know enough about the HPverse to know if the analogy holds there, nor am I sure Harry does, which is why I’m uncertain. (By contrast, I still have no firm idea what Quirrel is doing with the flask in Bella’s cell, but I’m fairly sure that Harry has a firm idea that the audience simply hasn’t been informed of.)
Right, not the case in HPverse—the killing curse is special because it’s the only one that can’t be blocked (though it’s pretty vague what “can’t be blocked” means)
Ah! If that’s true, then Quirrel’s explanation is a lot more convincing… in fact, I think that tips me well over the edge of uncertainty into believing Quirrel’s account is correct.
Thanks! (As may be obvious, I’m not actually that much of an HP fan. I’ve read a few of the books and have some grasp of the world, and have browsed some online sources while thinking about the various puzzles in MOR, but I’m woefully ignorant. In fact, I got through most of MOR before realizing that Quirrel had been Quirrelmorted in the original.)
What makes me doubt is this:
Under what magic system can you push someone out of the way with magic that you can’t also just cast sleep on them? He could always cast ghetto sleep, i.e. quickly accelerating the guys head into a solid object.
Is there some reason I’m not seeing that Quirrell needs to make him submit in a non-magical way?
Nope, Quirrell is obviously lying to Harry; he really did intent to kill the guy. Seriously, cast a spell at close range and then push the target out of the way? That’s absurd; not only is telekinesis almost certainly much too slow for that, it would be a stupid thing to do even if it worked.
Quirrell’s stated reason is that he wants Bahry to take down his Occlumency barrier.
Okay that makes a bit more sense. Occlumency seems odd (like animagus) in that it still works when you are unconscious, I was assuming other more active types of mental defence,
It still strikes me as an odd tactic, though.
If I was trying to dominate someone I would knock them out, strip them, restrain them, gag them. Then wake them up. Make them powerless, not engage in an elaborate duel where they still have the agency to dodge and defend and may nurture the flame of hope of a lucky strike.
I...imagine you can’t read the mind of any sleeping person.
One where the defenses have to be matched to the attacks—i.e., the one that is clearly in effect at the time of the duel. ;-)
If wizard duels were strictly about relative power rather than strategy, nobody would ever duel someone at or above their own power level. Ergo, strategy and skill are involved, and as illustrated part of that skill is reaction time and choice of blocking spells. While Bahry is dodging the AK, he may not be shielding against something that gives him a little nudge or increases his speed, or changes his relative time perception, or something else that gives him an edge at dodging.
IOW, it’s unlikely he has any shields up against people helping him. That may actually be quite important in a magical world where intent actually matters. ;-)
But Quirrell specifies pushing. Pushing is something that should always be guarded against else it can muck up your spell casting gestures.
Eta: Shields against nudges/telekinesis is the only kind of shield useful for AK, so you can’t be held in place, so I would expect him to have them up then, if he ever has them up.
Shields that can tell whether something is helpful or harmful (telekinesis can be either)? Blegh. I don’t like those types of systems. I don’t remember other things that can tell intent apart from artifact level spells.
I’d expect shields to be like firewalls and allow allies to cast spells through or certain classes of spells (such as healing) to solve that problem.
Otherwise it is getting close to being intelligent! Harry will have to start worrying about stopping casting some shields in case they are sentient.
My opinion is that this is exactly where the story is going. Harry will eventually conclude that magic must be intelligent to do what it’s doing. (The best outcome, from Harry’s perspective, would be a single AI consciousness that merely fakes the sapience of snakes, the Sorting Hat, etc, so no harm done. A better outcome, for us readers, would be Harry’s sudden realisation, almost too late, that his research into the fundamentals magic is causing an exponential explosion in the number of tortured sophonts.)
This is probably a place where Q’s original lesson on the curse in MOR (the one where he keeps saying, “One killing curse will bring it down!”) might have been usefully supplemented by it being mentioned that it’s the only unblockable spell—as opposed to just saying that nobody can block it.
However, there’s plenty of places in MOR where shock and awe are expressed over Harry’s surviving a (presumed) direct hit from the killing curse. IOW, it’s shown in MOR that the killing curse is unblockable and that this is an important fact about it. But perhaps for this particular plot point, it isn’t emphasized enough that it’s the only fighting spell that can’t be blocked by something.
looks like you are used to fighting people who are significantly less skilled than you, ie. complete loosers. I you were fighting me, it would be your biggest mistake is to let me see it coming well in advance, because the only sensible reaction of a normal person (vs. a looser) is to use the “advanced notification” effectively—i personally like to move in and cut your move short working on your liver and heart.
And yes, i once won a fight against 3 guys on the street using exactly the roundhouse you described right into the jaw of the central, strongest, guy. I got him knocked down, and the other 2 got scared and stopped attacking me. You see, they were loosers.
This is true; most of my sparring matches are with relative beginners or new people in the clubs. I’m not sure I would try that sort of feint in a match against a fellow black-belt; but those matches are so fast that I’d need to watch video to see what sort of feint I would use.
3 or 4 years ago I saw a sort of study using statistics about n-on-1 fights which concluded that the odds were against the 1, but if they had to fight, the best approach was to single out and defeat 1 of the n others; so your anecdote would not surprise me.
(I haven’t been able to refind that web page/study even though I’ve looked for it more than once, so if this sounds familiar to anyone, I’d appreciate a citation!)
Well, yeah, Quirrell could have considered the possibility that Harry would do something he couldn’t have possibly planned for. But considering the possibility isn’t the same as planning for it, and almost by definition he couldn’t have planned for it. If you look at the passage just before the fight with Bahry, he did maneuver Harry into a position where even if he did have some spell that could block an Avada, he wouldn’t have been able to direct it into the fight in time. He was expecting some interference, and he planned for it so that Harry wouldn’t be able or would feel inclined not to interfere.