So, if this were Pact, I would expect that Dumbledore has one of Voldemort’s Horcruxes, and he can be possessed by Voldemort at will. Dumbledore would show up to save the day, and then the brief uptick in probability of success would be followed by a precipitous drop.
I am fairly confident this will not happen, but I’m noticing that most of my confidence seems to come from arguments that I am not confident in once I give them explicit form. For example, that seems too hard an antagonist for Harry, and he needs to have some chance of success, and EY seems against giving the protagonist the plot armor* that Wildbow gives them. But when I observe that this is an outside view argument that’s reference class specific, HPMoR seems much closer to Worm or Pact than to other works of fiction, which says I should expect it to follow the same convention. Thoughts?
* Typically, Wildbow protagonists look like they’re taking two steps back for every one step forward, but I see it more as “trading away parts of themselves / resources for success, and eventually getting to the end goal / end of the story.” If you predict that they will eventually win but it will be the most Pyrrhic victory possible (over the long haul), I think you have a good shot at getting all the details right.
We’re not sure the Horcrux 3.0 doesn’t need the target to touch a horcrux, or at least to have touched one sometime in the past. All we know is that Voldemort can possess any suitable target at will, choosing which one he wants, and almost certainly without being forced out by his current host body dying.
Note that they still get to resist if they’re strong enough.
I should have been able to float free of my horcruxes and possess any victim that consented to me, or that was too weak to refuse me.
(Emphasis mine.) There’s no suggestion that introducing the Resurrection Stone does away with victims’ ability to resist. It just means that Voldemort’s spirit can “fly where it pleases” rather than having to stay attached to the horcruxes, as he always planned for Horcrux 2.0.
ETA: gjm is right: Voldemort himself says the target must be either willing or too weak to resist him. So Voldemort can’t possess most random people, and certainly not Dumbledore.
If Voldemort could possess Dumbledore, he could have done so earlier and simply given himself the Stone, as well as the Elder Wand and any other interesting gadgets Dumbledore has. He’d have made Dumbledore teach him all the spells he knows, too, if those survive possession. And he’d have used Dumbledore to attack by surprise Flamel or anyone else if he wanted to.
In the least convenient world, possessing someone doesn’t give Voldemort access to any of their previous memories or spells, it just wipes the mind and takes over the body. Then it might be hard to possess Dumbledore and use him to get the Stone. But he could still take out Dumbledore, cause Flamel to remove the Stone from Hogwarts, and then possess Flamel while he has the Stone.
Possessing anyone in the world (or at least, any wizard other than Harry) just by making them touch any object you prepared beforehand is so overpowered that if it’s true, the only possible reason Quirrel is still plotting anything or playing games or appearing to ever be in danger, is that he’d be bored otherwise.
If Voldemort can possess Dumbledore at will and chooses not to, the only reason I can think of is that it would make the game too boring, like he said about the Wizarding War. This strikes me as… inadequate. With the Stone involved, Voldermort is playing for real stakes, and waiting for the end of the year increases the chance something will go wrong, weakens the Quirrel body, and eventually forces Voldemort to operate on the last day of the school year, when others might guess something important would happen.
(Edited:) But why wouldn’t Voldemort be able to possess Dumbledore, or anyone else in the world, other than Harry? He claims the only requirement is to have the target touch a Horcrux 2.0. This seems fairly easy: to give make sure your target will touch a Horcruxed coin, you can just toss them one and they will catch it by reflex, as an earlier chapter pointed out. And you can horcrux the doorknob of their office, a chair they’ll sit on in a public park, etc. It may be, however, that since Voldemort has only had this ability for a few months, during which Dumbledore has been on high alert, he hasn’t been able to accomplish this yet.
I just realized Voldemort probably cast the revised Horcrux on Roger Bacon’s diary with wordless magic:
The book vanished back into Professor Quirrell’s robes, and he rose up from his chair. Professor Quirrell started to walk over to the door -
and staggered, suddenly lurching into the wall.
“It’s all right,” said Professor Quirrell’s voice, which suddenly sounded a lot weaker than usual. “Sit down, Mr. Potter, it’s just a dizzy spell. Sit down.”
[...]
“That, Harry Potter, is the diary of Roger Bacon.”
Harry almost fainted.
Nestled up against the wall, where Professor Quirrell had stumbled, glistened the crushed remains of a beautiful blue beetle.
Or he could have just cast the spell at any other time of his choosing prior to giving Harry the diary. For that matter, he could have not done it at all, since there’s no actual benefit to making the diary a Horcrux—he already has all the Horcruxes he needs, and it’s not like he can possess Harry anyway.
So, if this were Pact, I would expect that Dumbledore has one of Voldemort’s Horcruxes, and he can be possessed by Voldemort at will. Dumbledore would show up to save the day, and then the brief uptick in probability of success would be followed by a precipitous drop.
I am fairly confident this will not happen, but I’m noticing that most of my confidence seems to come from arguments that I am not confident in once I give them explicit form. For example, that seems too hard an antagonist for Harry, and he needs to have some chance of success, and EY seems against giving the protagonist the plot armor* that Wildbow gives them. But when I observe that this is an outside view argument that’s reference class specific, HPMoR seems much closer to Worm or Pact than to other works of fiction, which says I should expect it to follow the same convention. Thoughts?
* Typically, Wildbow protagonists look like they’re taking two steps back for every one step forward, but I see it more as “trading away parts of themselves / resources for success, and eventually getting to the end goal / end of the story.” If you predict that they will eventually win but it will be the most Pyrrhic victory possible (over the long haul), I think you have a good shot at getting all the details right.
Riddle no longer needs the target to touch a horcrux, and Dumbledore is too powerful to possess.
We’re not sure the Horcrux 3.0 doesn’t need the target to touch a horcrux, or at least to have touched one sometime in the past. All we know is that Voldemort can possess any suitable target at will, choosing which one he wants, and almost certainly without being forced out by his current host body dying.
Note that they still get to resist if they’re strong enough.
(Emphasis mine.) There’s no suggestion that introducing the Resurrection Stone does away with victims’ ability to resist. It just means that Voldemort’s spirit can “fly where it pleases” rather than having to stay attached to the horcruxes, as he always planned for Horcrux 2.0.
ETA: gjm is right: Voldemort himself says the target must be either willing or too weak to resist him. So Voldemort can’t possess most random people, and certainly not Dumbledore.
If Voldemort could possess Dumbledore, he could have done so earlier and simply given himself the Stone, as well as the Elder Wand and any other interesting gadgets Dumbledore has. He’d have made Dumbledore teach him all the spells he knows, too, if those survive possession. And he’d have used Dumbledore to attack by surprise Flamel or anyone else if he wanted to.
In the least convenient world, possessing someone doesn’t give Voldemort access to any of their previous memories or spells, it just wipes the mind and takes over the body. Then it might be hard to possess Dumbledore and use him to get the Stone. But he could still take out Dumbledore, cause Flamel to remove the Stone from Hogwarts, and then possess Flamel while he has the Stone.
Possessing anyone in the world (or at least, any wizard other than Harry) just by making them touch any object you prepared beforehand is so overpowered that if it’s true, the only possible reason Quirrel is still plotting anything or playing games or appearing to ever be in danger, is that he’d be bored otherwise.
If Voldemort can possess Dumbledore at will and chooses not to, the only reason I can think of is that it would make the game too boring, like he said about the Wizarding War. This strikes me as… inadequate. With the Stone involved, Voldermort is playing for real stakes, and waiting for the end of the year increases the chance something will go wrong, weakens the Quirrel body, and eventually forces Voldemort to operate on the last day of the school year, when others might guess something important would happen.
(Edited:) But why wouldn’t Voldemort be able to possess Dumbledore, or anyone else in the world, other than Harry? He claims the only requirement is to have the target touch a Horcrux 2.0. This seems fairly easy: to give make sure your target will touch a Horcruxed coin, you can just toss them one and they will catch it by reflex, as an earlier chapter pointed out. And you can horcrux the doorknob of their office, a chair they’ll sit on in a public park, etc. It may be, however, that since Voldemort has only had this ability for a few months, during which Dumbledore has been on high alert, he hasn’t been able to accomplish this yet.
No. They must either consent or be too weak to resist. It seems unlikely that either Dumbledore or Flamel would meet either condition.
You’re right. I’ll amend my comment.
I just realized Voldemort probably cast the revised Horcrux on Roger Bacon’s diary with wordless magic:
[...]
http://hpmor.com/chapter/26
Or he could have just cast the spell at any other time of his choosing prior to giving Harry the diary. For that matter, he could have not done it at all, since there’s no actual benefit to making the diary a Horcrux—he already has all the Horcruxes he needs, and it’s not like he can possess Harry anyway.
Turns out I was quite wrong anyway.