This was all well and good as long as the goblet was somewhere Baba could get at it. - Telling the goblet to lay of a new teacher every couple of decades isn’t much of an imposition. But then Voldemort stole the darn thing! and it has been striking down everyone that looked to move from the status of “Temp” to actually taking over her job. Because the job is hers.
Doesn’t the fact that the wards record the troll (and therefore probably Quirill too) as the Defence Professor falsify this?
Not as long as they do not hold the job more than a school year.
Bringing in someone to cover an absence temporarily—and she is, after all, never there—doesn’t count as taking the job from her. Certainly not if the goblet judges such things according to prevailing attitudes.
Heck, the fact that Voldemort was explicitly not planning to stay was probably what was keeping him standing.
Hmm. That might be why the job was renamed. If the castle refuses to recognize new hires as “Battle Magic” instructors… Well, Dumbledore would reason out that problem fast enough, but the headmaster that hired a dark lady under terms that make it magically impossible to fire her? That person was not good at logic.
And keeping a situation going in which there is a magically enforced peace between her and all hogwarts graduates at the cost of visiting the goblet when the job has a new hire? That would be absurdly attractive to anyone with a dubious past and a present desire for a peaceful existence.
This still seems unlikely. For starters, a lot of people seem convinced it was Voldie who lay the curse- this implies that they actually saw him do it. It also at least suggests that he acted like it was intentional.
For this to be true need Baba Yaga to intentionally join Hogwarts in order to fake her own death and thus not be able to be ‘fired’. This doesn’t tie in very well with falling in love with Perenelle, although Quirell could be wrong. THEN, we still need our (n+1) level Quirell to decide to figure this all out, steal the Goblet of Fire and lay a curse. Then to pretend to lay the curse in public at some other point in time.
While not all of those constraints are confirmed, the conjunction seems unlikely and it doesn’t really simplify matters. The main thing it solves is why Voldemort doesn’t simply remove the curse on the Defence position and thus save Quirell- he can’t.
There is no need for all of this to be plotted out in advance! In fact, I am pretty sure none of it was.
The wording on the binding is very much what I would expect someone to come up with if they wanted a binding to keep everyone involved safe, and had insufficient training in law and logic.
BY and Perenelle run off, and work out what happened when the replacement battle magic teacher is tragically struck by lighting, realize BY has stumbled into an absurdly broad defense and just keep it going while telling the goblet that they are giving each new teacher the position of her own free will.
Voldemort steals the goblet because he’s a thieving magpie when it comes to artefacts of ancient power, and promptly new teachers of DADA start dropping like flies. He’s credited with the curse, and not being an idiot just goes “Yup, that was me”. It’s not even weird that he doesnt make the connection—The teacher who held the job when he stole it should, if I am correct, have retired normally in his or her own time, so the curse starts quite a while after the theft.
A good bit of what is supporting this whole theory is that the DADA curse is ridiculusly powerful A Great Working. Thus, if it is a possible unintentional consequence of a Great Working which we know to have been preformed, well it likely is. This being more likely than two great workings being aimed at the same job. I mean, teaching at hogwarts is prestigious, but come on..
On the one hand, this is a plausible enough theory, with few enough moving parts that I can legitimately assign it a non-negligible probability.
On the other… from a narrative perspective, this doesn’t feel satisfying. It’s a violation of Knox’s First—we’re bringing barely-mentioned and undeveloped characters in at the last minute and giving them primary roles in the plot.
Well, I suppose if the point is that Quirrell gets taken down by adults and Harry can solve Death in peace, that’s valid...
Doesn’t the fact that the wards record the troll (and therefore probably Quirill too) as the Defence Professor falsify this?
Not as long as they do not hold the job more than a school year.
Bringing in someone to cover an absence temporarily—and she is, after all, never there—doesn’t count as taking the job from her. Certainly not if the goblet judges such things according to prevailing attitudes.
Heck, the fact that Voldemort was explicitly not planning to stay was probably what was keeping him standing.
Hmm. That might be why the job was renamed. If the castle refuses to recognize new hires as “Battle Magic” instructors… Well, Dumbledore would reason out that problem fast enough, but the headmaster that hired a dark lady under terms that make it magically impossible to fire her? That person was not good at logic.
And keeping a situation going in which there is a magically enforced peace between her and all hogwarts graduates at the cost of visiting the goblet when the job has a new hire? That would be absurdly attractive to anyone with a dubious past and a present desire for a peaceful existence.
This still seems unlikely. For starters, a lot of people seem convinced it was Voldie who lay the curse- this implies that they actually saw him do it. It also at least suggests that he acted like it was intentional.
For this to be true need Baba Yaga to intentionally join Hogwarts in order to fake her own death and thus not be able to be ‘fired’. This doesn’t tie in very well with falling in love with Perenelle, although Quirell could be wrong. THEN, we still need our (n+1) level Quirell to decide to figure this all out, steal the Goblet of Fire and lay a curse. Then to pretend to lay the curse in public at some other point in time.
While not all of those constraints are confirmed, the conjunction seems unlikely and it doesn’t really simplify matters. The main thing it solves is why Voldemort doesn’t simply remove the curse on the Defence position and thus save Quirell- he can’t.
There is no need for all of this to be plotted out in advance! In fact, I am pretty sure none of it was.
The wording on the binding is very much what I would expect someone to come up with if they wanted a binding to keep everyone involved safe, and had insufficient training in law and logic.
BY and Perenelle run off, and work out what happened when the replacement battle magic teacher is tragically struck by lighting, realize BY has stumbled into an absurdly broad defense and just keep it going while telling the goblet that they are giving each new teacher the position of her own free will.
Voldemort steals the goblet because he’s a thieving magpie when it comes to artefacts of ancient power, and promptly new teachers of DADA start dropping like flies. He’s credited with the curse, and not being an idiot just goes “Yup, that was me”. It’s not even weird that he doesnt make the connection—The teacher who held the job when he stole it should, if I am correct, have retired normally in his or her own time, so the curse starts quite a while after the theft.
A good bit of what is supporting this whole theory is that the DADA curse is ridiculusly powerful A Great Working. Thus, if it is a possible unintentional consequence of a Great Working which we know to have been preformed, well it likely is. This being more likely than two great workings being aimed at the same job. I mean, teaching at hogwarts is prestigious, but come on..
Hm.
On the one hand, this is a plausible enough theory, with few enough moving parts that I can legitimately assign it a non-negligible probability.
On the other… from a narrative perspective, this doesn’t feel satisfying. It’s a violation of Knox’s First—we’re bringing barely-mentioned and undeveloped characters in at the last minute and giving them primary roles in the plot.
Well, I suppose if the point is that Quirrell gets taken down by adults and Harry can solve Death in peace, that’s valid...
In canon that’s true but where in HPMOR do you see it?
Harry tells Quirrell to “lift his curse”, and he had to get that common knowledge from somehwere.