Am I the only one with the feeling that it’s just too easy, too fast ? Harry uniting all of Hogwarts and most of Magical Britain, despite generation old hostilities, remaining hatred from a war that only ended 10 years ago, personal quarrels, and frontal opposition in terminal values (I don’t see how persons sharing Dumbledore ethics can so easily accept to side with wizards who just voted to torture to death a 11yo girl, nor how blood purists can easily side with muggleborn).
I can get Harry, the ultra-rational boy who wants to save Hermione at all cost putting back his rightful horror at siding with people who voted to send her to Azkhaban, but I just can’t see how the whole magical Britain letting aside their personal quarrels, hatred, and value conflicts that easily, just for one death, especially since “that still made Hogwarts safer than Beauxbatons, let alone Durmstrang”.
The alliance is so far just in the Hogwarts board, not in the Wizengamot. Perhaps they feel it’s a limited alliance with a limited purpose, and can be broken off if the purpose at hand changes—safety of the students in Hogwarts.
Even so, I agree that we haven’t seen what exactly the people outside Lucius’s faction and the House of Greengrass got as an inducement to enter the alliance.
I’ve felt like the whole story is too fast, but there are apparently reasons EY wanted to cram the story into a single year. To have only one defense professor? To avoid having to deal with Harry’s sex life? I’m not quite sure what all the reasons are (I imagine they’re multiple, and that some have probably been mentioned by EY and I’m forgetting), but while I think I would have preferred having Harry develop over 7 years as in canon instead of solving everything as an 11 year old, it’s obvious that as the story is actually set up some things just are going to have to happen implausibly quickly.
Perhaps the reason is that a rationalist wouldn’t waste time. A superior mind does not need 7 years to conquer the world with magic. It just needs to find the ways to recursively self-improve and then… FOOM!
That fine, except a perfect rationalist doesn’t exist in a bubble, nor does Harry. Much of what’s making the story feel rushed isn’t Harry’s actions, but rather the speed at which those actions propagate among people who are not rational actors.
Harry is not an above-human-intelligence AI with direct access to his source code. Therefore he cannot “FOOM”, therefore he’s stuck with a world that is still largely outside his ability to control, no matter how rational he is.
If that’s the reason, then any implausibility in how rapidly it happened (I mean, aside from any that’s the result of the people involved being wizards, Harry being superintelligent, etc.) is (weak) evidence against those claims about what a superior mind would do.
This is just starting. Harry has little formal power right now; ditto Draco. And while this alliance is landmark and a place to start, it’s also for the explicit purpose of dealing with Mr. Childkiller—it won’t hold up under any other circumstance, half the people still loathe each other, etc.
This is a very important move, but it’s nowhere near the last one.
Hypothesis: Perhaps the alliance is temporary, and to limited aims, at this point? Less likely from a narrative standpoint, but from a suspension-of-disbelief perspective maybe the Imperius Curse is about.
In the first possibility it would be less about Hermoine’s death, and more about the behind-the-scenes balance of power having drastically shifted (though the death makes a nice pretext) and about the threats and concessions we haven’t seen yet making it possible. In the second, this would be I Notice I am Confused, part two.
From an OOC perspective I doubt either sadly, but from an IC perspective we can’t rule it out yet.
the behind-the-scenes balance of power having drastically shifted (though the death makes a nice pretext) and about the threats and concessions we haven’t seen yet making it possible.
Remember that everyone saw Harry threaten a Dementor.
There are a certain few of the Wizengamot who have read through half-disintegrated scrolls and listened to tales of things that happened to someone’s brother’s cousin, not for entertainment, but as part of a quest for power and truth. They have already marked the Night of Godric’s Hollow, as reported by Albus Dumbledore, as an anomalous and potentially important event. They have wondered why it happened, if it did happen; or if not, why Dumbledore is lying.
And when an eleven-year-old boy rises up and says “Lucius Malfoy” in that cold adult voice, and goes on to speak words one simply would not expect to hear from a first-year in Hogwarts, they do not allow the fact to slip into the lawless blurs of legends and the premises of plays.
They mark it as a clue.
They add it to the list.
This list is beginning to look somewhat alarming.
My guess is that those in power who noticed all this are trying to ally themselves with this powerful new piece on the gameboard, and used their sway to get people to agree to it.
Well, regardless of whatever other plotting among each other, all participants actually do have a very good reason to join—their kids still go to Hogwarts, they want to keep them safe but at the same time groom them to inherit the family fortunes, and as was pointed out explicitly in the chapter, there are still good reasons, both politically and for safety, not to go to the other schools. An (at least temporary) alliance for the protection of their children is actually quite logical for all concerned.
Am I the only one with the feeling that it’s just too easy, too fast ? Harry uniting all of Hogwarts and most of Magical Britain, despite generation old hostilities, remaining hatred from a war that only ended 10 years ago, personal quarrels, and frontal opposition in terminal values (I don’t see how persons sharing Dumbledore ethics can so easily accept to side with wizards who just voted to torture to death a 11yo girl, nor how blood purists can easily side with muggleborn).
I can get Harry, the ultra-rational boy who wants to save Hermione at all cost putting back his rightful horror at siding with people who voted to send her to Azkhaban, but I just can’t see how the whole magical Britain letting aside their personal quarrels, hatred, and value conflicts that easily, just for one death, especially since “that still made Hogwarts safer than Beauxbatons, let alone Durmstrang”.
The alliance is so far just in the Hogwarts board, not in the Wizengamot. Perhaps they feel it’s a limited alliance with a limited purpose, and can be broken off if the purpose at hand changes—safety of the students in Hogwarts.
Even so, I agree that we haven’t seen what exactly the people outside Lucius’s faction and the House of Greengrass got as an inducement to enter the alliance.
I’ve felt like the whole story is too fast, but there are apparently reasons EY wanted to cram the story into a single year. To have only one defense professor? To avoid having to deal with Harry’s sex life? I’m not quite sure what all the reasons are (I imagine they’re multiple, and that some have probably been mentioned by EY and I’m forgetting), but while I think I would have preferred having Harry develop over 7 years as in canon instead of solving everything as an 11 year old, it’s obvious that as the story is actually set up some things just are going to have to happen implausibly quickly.
Perhaps the reason is that a rationalist wouldn’t waste time. A superior mind does not need 7 years to conquer the world with magic. It just needs to find the ways to recursively self-improve and then… FOOM!
That fine, except a perfect rationalist doesn’t exist in a bubble, nor does Harry. Much of what’s making the story feel rushed isn’t Harry’s actions, but rather the speed at which those actions propagate among people who are not rational actors.
Harry is not an above-human-intelligence AI with direct access to his source code. Therefore he cannot “FOOM”, therefore he’s stuck with a world that is still largely outside his ability to control, no matter how rational he is.
If that’s the reason, then any implausibility in how rapidly it happened (I mean, aside from any that’s the result of the people involved being wizards, Harry being superintelligent, etc.) is (weak) evidence against those claims about what a superior mind would do.
This is just starting. Harry has little formal power right now; ditto Draco. And while this alliance is landmark and a place to start, it’s also for the explicit purpose of dealing with Mr. Childkiller—it won’t hold up under any other circumstance, half the people still loathe each other, etc.
This is a very important move, but it’s nowhere near the last one.
I think it’s partly a matter of moving the story along so we can finally get to the end.
Hypothesis: Perhaps the alliance is temporary, and to limited aims, at this point? Less likely from a narrative standpoint, but from a suspension-of-disbelief perspective maybe the Imperius Curse is about.
In the first possibility it would be less about Hermoine’s death, and more about the behind-the-scenes balance of power having drastically shifted (though the death makes a nice pretext) and about the threats and concessions we haven’t seen yet making it possible. In the second, this would be I Notice I am Confused, part two.
From an OOC perspective I doubt either sadly, but from an IC perspective we can’t rule it out yet.
Remember that everyone saw Harry threaten a Dementor.
My guess is that those in power who noticed all this are trying to ally themselves with this powerful new piece on the gameboard, and used their sway to get people to agree to it.
Well, regardless of whatever other plotting among each other, all participants actually do have a very good reason to join—their kids still go to Hogwarts, they want to keep them safe but at the same time groom them to inherit the family fortunes, and as was pointed out explicitly in the chapter, there are still good reasons, both politically and for safety, not to go to the other schools. An (at least temporary) alliance for the protection of their children is actually quite logical for all concerned.